Date: Thu, 23 Jun 1994 00:39:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: the uses of theory
To: film-theory-AT-world.std.com
Cc: film-theory-AT-world.std.com




On Wed, 22 Jun 1994, Judith Frederika Rodenbeck wrote:
> 
> 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. 

This is true - for example, I have a close friend, a Chinese-American 
painter, who refuses to consider her work "Chinese-American painting"; 
multiculturalism - which is an obvious and good thing, turns quickly into 
quotas, tags, and ideological struggle. Speaking of this, I want to 
recommend In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture, by 
Kwame Anthony Appiah, a great and beautiful book

 
> 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.

I must say that the artworld is the most pretentious place on the planet 
- I'm connected much more to it, unfortunately, than to the filmworld at 
this point. And good heavens, an experience in a Donald Judd! (Thank God 
not _in_ Donald Judd!) I want your autograph!

I like the part about "specific flesh," by the way - bringing another 
related issue into play. For years, I've loved Alice Aycock's work, 
particularly the outdoor pieces - but the fact that they're connected 
with an "artworld signature" and signature style robs them (for me and my 
experience) of some otherwise experiential power. Signing (re. 
"autograph" above) becomes the measure of things all too often.

Are films always signed? What is the power behind or within "found" home 
movies? What about collage work - the reuse of materials from the 40s to 
60s - of which there's a great deal? This could go on and on.


> 
> [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
> 
No, probably a virus from Baudrillard. Here's an idea - to have a list 
called "BOYS-L" or "The Boys" where we could view On Seduction in peace, 
along with Schopenhauer, _those_ passages in Nietzsche, Sartre on the 
male Other, "Fisting Deleuze," and other texts which are troubling and 
exclusionary... (Okay, flame me on this one...)

Alan