From: "Edward Moore" <monsieurtexteem-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: completeness
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 18:40:09 PDT



You cited me, citing the following:

>> >	You are right to be wary of any notion of a 'complete reality.'  
The 
>> sur-
>> >in surreality apparently is best translated as over-."  

I wrote, now I cite:

>> Sure, just like Nietzsche's "Overman."  Bataille wrote an essay _The 
>> "Old Mole" and the Prefix Sur-_ in which he made use of the 
implications 
>> of the "over-" prefix to critique Breton's (and the Surrealist's) 
>> theories.
>
>Before this discussion goes on, I would like to mention a small 
>point.
>The word "surreality" is not surrealist
>Just like the word "situationism" is not situationist.
>
>Could any one of you find ONE place in a SURREALIST paper mentioning 
>anything like a surreality ?
>Same question with "surreal"

What are you talking about?  Is this a matter of self-referentiality? 
Maybe Surrealists don't refer to things surreal by name... But wait! we 
are doing so now, and we (Michael and I) did so before...

There, I mentioned TWO places.
>
>Why invent concepts that have never been there for the most excellent 
>reasons ?

Why not? (see below)

>>  I metaphorized this state with the term 
>> "godhead" -- although I hasten to say that I meant it in no religous 
>> sense.  I rather intend it to signify the huge "text" in which we are 
>> all "signifiers"... "brain-cells" was the term I used (in my text, 
_Soul 
>> and Body Two_).
>
>
>Something like history then
> 
>> If Surrealism were truly "first and foremost 'of the lived world,'" 
then 
>> that "ideal" I spoke of would merely be a supplement to its original 
>> endeavor -- thus linking it, by way of similarity, with pretty much 
>> every movement or school in the arts since Romanticism.  Surrealism 
is 
>> first and foremost of those "lofty spiritual heights, in which one 
>> shakes off the shackles of the material world and soars..." 
(Huysmans, 
>> _La-Bas_).  I think it is safe to say that the origin of Surrealism 
was 
>> a kind of soaring, a birth in the aether, if you will. The "man cut 
in 
>> two by a window" who pranced across Magnetic Fields was certainly not 
of 
>> the "lived world."
>
>I do not understand how anything could ever be excluded of the "lived 
>world". Do we have any other world for a change ?

The world of our dreams, perhaps?  Do creations of the mind like the 
"man cut in two by a window" or the "scorpion-man" of Gilgamesh owe 
their existence to carbon atoms?  Have they ever lived?  Do we live our 
imaginary/fictional experience of these things in such a way that we 
interact with them and "evolve" with them...  ? 

>Stating that there might be another world, is showing 
>that the actual scope of this one is not really understood.

And the part that is not understood is, by virtue of its "otherness," an 
Other World, which we are trying, I assume, to "reach" -- that is, 
understand.

>By which means could THIS world be restricted anyway ?

Let's see... maybe by attempting to restrict the creation or 
proliferation of certain concepts which may or may not have been created 
before for a good or bad reason?

>
> 
>> >I have for quite
>> >some time made the subtle yet crucial distinction between Surrealism 
>> and
>> >surrealism.  I would ask, initially, if you acknowledge such a 
>> distinction, and
>> >why or why not.  
>> 
>> "If a distinction cannot be made rigorous and precise, it is not a 
>> distinction at all" (Jacques Derrida).  
>
>"Dis-sting-uish" is etymologically "piquer entre deux"
>("making a sting in between"), Derrida or not.

Be that as it may, I have always associated the word with "extinguish."

>Whether rigourous and precise has no meaning at all
>as long as you do not specify rigourous according to which set of 
>rules, and how much precise.
>For instance, Derrida's sentence above is neither rigorous, nor 
>precise.
>
True, because it extinguishes distinction.
>

Edward Moore
<monsieurtexteEM-AT-hotmail.com>




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