Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 20:52:15 +0000
From: "steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Pander and Circuses


eric/hugh/all

the quote is from the sublime and the avant garde - the quote is from 
the original art forum translation whereas the revised translation in 
the book 'the inhuman' is a bit longer - and is translated less 
pointedly on p107 as (i didn't realise there was a difference until I 
got home and compared...(sigh sorry)

"the avant-garde task remains that of undoing the presumption of the 
mind with respect to time. The sublime feeling is the name of this 
privation..."

"the avant-garde task is to undo the spiritual assumptions regarding 
time? The sense of the sublime is the name of this dismantling..."

it means the same but the language is better...

steve

Eric wrote:

>Steve,
>
>I would phrase this differently. I see the chief characteristic of the
>sublime as one of negative presentation rather than mere indeterminacy.
>I also think, for this very reason, the sublime is not external to
>history, that it is more concerned with formlessness than with form,
>and, as Leotard presents it, it is more ontological than aesthetic. I
>believe the chapter entitled 'Presentation' in "The Differed"
>demonstrates this thesis.   
>
>One question I have for you is this. Where did the quote come from: the
>"avant-garde task is to undo the spiritual assumptions regarding time?
>The sense of the sublime is name of this dismantling..." (Lyotard)  
>
>I don't remember this one.  
>
>-----------------------------------------
>
>Back to the culture wars.... 
>
>Isolated as you are in Great Britain, have you heard anything at all
>about our momentous Superbowl scandal?
>
>I find it ironic at a time when both the Bush and Blair administrations
>are under attack for lying and manipulating intelligence reports, Sharon
>is finally shown to be the corrupt figure we always suspected he was,
>the proposed Bush budget will entail huge deficits and even further
>social stinginess, it is now finally revealed that the Bush
>administration falsified its projection of the Medicare bill costs in
>order to get it passed, the only thing really being talked about over
>here in the U.S. is the great Janet/Justin affair.  
>
>What appears to fascinate everyone (like a glittering talismanic object)
>is the bare breast adorned by the nipple shield.  What isn't really
>discussed at all, amid all the gestures of disgust, is the fact that
>this was a dramatization of a violent and aggressive act by a man
>perpetuated on a defenseless woman and that this man was white and the
>woman black.  
>
>In other words, it was a display of white male domination with both
>racist and sexist overtones, performed as spectacle during the half-time
>of the highest rated television show of all - the Superbowl, which has
>over time taken on the pomp and circumstance of our great national
>holiday, the secular equivalent of Christmas, with its own kind of
>consumer potlatch in the form of a fetishistic display on fondness for
>the 'infant birth' of commercials.    
>
>What only added to the frisson of the moment was the fact that earlier
>CBS refused to air an ad during the game produced by the anti-war group
>Move-on, bought and paid for by American citizens, because CBS said it
>doesn't do advocacy ads.  This didn't stop them, however, from running
>advocacy ads for Beer and Viagra, which strangely strangely and
>misogynistically mirrored the content of its own unanticipated half-time
>show.
>
>Does this display of Pander and Circuses, with its censorship of free
>speech, signal the end of the Republic and the inauguration of Empire?
>Is George W. our own homegrown Nero/Caligula? Has American culture
>become the equivalent of the Roman chariot races and gladiator
>conflicts?
>
>Who knows - but the brief moment seemed to weirdly and symbolically
>crystallize the stark image of a Justin Timberlake representing America
>and a Janet Jackson representing the rest of world in a Freudian pageant
>that liminally crossed the threshold into our public consciousness. 
>
>In an uncanny moment it showed us what we had actually become, even
>though the elites had pompously attempted to orchestrate the event with
>grandiose patriotic gestures - the Nazi-like waving of flag placards and
>the public mourning of the space mission while a scantily clad MTV
>singer belted out a hip-hop version of the National Anthem.
>
>I think this moment fulfilled all the characteristics of the sublime;
>that it filled us with feelings of revulsion and horror in a way we can
>barely understand, and that is why Americans can't stop talking about
>it.  The nipple shield is just a cover-up for what really happened.  
>
>Eric 
>
> 
>
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