Date: Wed, 22 Jun 1994 22:37:28 -0400 (EDT)
From: Judith Frederika Rodenbeck <jfr10-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: the uses of theory
To: film-theory-AT-world.std.com


On Wed, 22 Jun 1994, Alan Sondheim wrote:
> 
> > 1) Is (the consumption of) narrative naturalized?
> 
> I don't understand "naturalized" here - are you asking whether narratives 
> are consumed cross-culturally? Narrative itself is somewhat "naturalized" 
> and somewhat not - check out the Franz Boas Kwakiutl transcriptions for 
> narrative strategies without foreclosure, etc.

Yes. Or Whorf on other first peoples. Or whoever on Bedouin poetry. I am
using "naturalize" here in the sense that a thing becomes so familiar that
we take its given attributes as being natural. Your example is, as they
say in the UK, spot on. In The Makioka Sisters there are these great
segues--long drifting takes across beautiful, fancy obi fabric--which I
had the distinct sensation of not "getting" in any but the most banal way.
The real-life Cop shows are interesting in this light, and its the
naturalizing of certain narrative structures that makes them so
disturbing. Part of the difficulty that the current (or maybe it's tired
already) discourse of multiculturalism is having, at least in the art
world, has to do with a tendency (of institutions) to naturalize
difference so that X culture=X practice, and that translates into Y
culture's Y practice, or, if we have this show we've got to have one of X,
one of Y and one of Z, as if those are natural categories. 

> > 2) Is apprehension of the visual field naturalized? (I will be sending a 
> > short post on Ernie Gehr's Serene Velocity which may give this a poke.)
> >
> Well, in that post you said a "nanosecond" which translates several 
> magnitudes up to a minim of 1/24 -AT-soundamerican. Beyond this, David Marr 
> makes a good cae in Vision (which is accepted I believe as the class 
> current account of vision processing) that there are hierarchial layers 
> to perception, most of which are automated (the 2 1/2 d level, blurs and 
> bars, etc.) and all of which imply _active_ processing from the arrival 
> of quanta/waves onward. But again perhaps this isn't what you mean.

What I mean is, do we assume we're all seeing the same thing? And apart
from experience, culture, etc., what is the thickness of the body as lens?
What happens, given the hierarchical layers to perception, at the level of
individual difference and at the level of active processing.  I wish I had
posted Sitney's description of the same film; it's a great summary of the
technique but in his description this film has no apparent, oh, I dunnno,
jouissance, sprezzatura, jiz. Here's a fable: Donald Judd showed some work
at Pace last year, huge hollow squares made of 4x4 foot sheet steel
(imagine square sewer pipes), layed out on their sides in arrays of four
so that a small x-shaped alleyway ran between them. Now the standard take
on this work has to do with pedestals and eliminating pedestals, with
repetition and facture, with the exchange between architecture and
sculpture (and, for Judd, painting). Well, I walked in between these
things and--I'm not very tall--had the distinct sensation of my head being
severed from my body, of suddenly splitting into two ameboid sensoria, and
of my head being stable while my body was kind of humming or vibrating in
the space between the voids contained by these steel plates. The piece
worked like a sort of battery. Judd would probably roll over in his grave
if he saw a post like this, btw; he thought this stuff was all about
paintings. It's not that I discount the standard take by any means, but
there's specific flesh which apprehends these objects.

[snip]
> humanities (tailgaiting at times onto specificities) while IBM arranges 
> 32 or so atoms on a matrix to spell, guess what, "IBM". Now that's 
> poetry! (Now that's poetry?)

Oh, Alan! Not! If they had fucked up and spelled "BIM" maybe...

> > 4) Are the "humanities" trying to replicate the cultural success of such 
> > language? To denaturalize, as it were? (Or are these two incompatible 
> > notions?)
> > 
> Yes - that way lies power/academic success/messy but promising erotic 
> relationships with students and other faculty members - in short, the 
> unravelling of desire.

Yes. Herein lies the answer to the jargon/theory question. But I think my
question was really badly put. The humanities _are_ trying to
denaturalize; but I'm not so sure the impulse is about _copying_ science,
per se.  It's more, uh, simulacral. #) AIEEEH oh NO not another virus from
DELEUZE!!!! 

-fido