Karl: Er...diane, I was wondering whether there is any point
responding to the following "trash". However I eventually decided to
reply, despite being like yourself a very busy bee, in the hope that
someone on the List may realise how loquacious and empty some
pomo stuff is.
Diane: Err...karl, whoever you are, please don't be personally
offended by the fact that I've been trashin foucault/french
fem/d&g/baudrillard/and ACW-L messages for the last few weeks and that
one of yours happened to be one of them. I did mention that I'm busy
as hell right now, no? And yes, of course I know there are archives.
But ya know, I've got to admit that nothing in your post made me want
to hop over there and sift through them. I did indeed scroll down and
see my message attached to yours, though. Your message doesn't really
click for me...even with the context. Here's what you said:
Karl: It is not possible to conceive or experience the human body
independently of human reality. All reality is human.
Diane: Bit terminology problem here. What do you mean "independent of
human reality"? And what do you mean "all reality is human"? How does
this relate to my comments about butler? I can't tell if we're
agreeing or disagreeing or talkinga bout something else all together.
Even if "all reality is human" (and who knows? The X-files makes
me wonder), that doesn't mean all humans call the same fantasy
"reality." Dig? The body is fantasmatically constructed across
our own interpretive/ideological grids and then made iterable.
Butler is suggesting that if there is something we can call the
"matter" of the body, it is always already mediated by language
and/or interpretation.
Karl: So you are saying that if a person is knocked down by an
automobile and severely injured that this is a fantasy of some "human"
and that it does not necessarily mean that other "humans" would
entertain this fantasy. The conclusion then is that the person in
question has not been necessarily knocked down by the automobile and
severely injured. Instead it is just mere fantasy. It never really
happened. It is a purely subjective matter: the fantasy created by an
individual.
Err... Diane what unadulterated nonsense. Dig?
Incidentally you ask: What do you mean "all reality is human" and
then proceed to discuss this very description. If you do not know
what my description means then how can you proceed to discuss it as
if you do know? Perhaps of course this is just one more fantasy.
Furthermore there is nothing in my message to suggest that I have been
personally offended, by above all, your mail. Perhaps you were
"fantastamically" constructing my "message" across your own
"interpretative/ideological grid." hehhe.
Diane: We can't know anything called "pure"
matter. Just as there is no "reality" that is not the fantasy of
a certain system or systems of thought, understanding. Reality,
as well as the body, is always mediated by our own cognitive
grids...by what is iterable, thinkable, knowable. Butler never
suggests that we might access the "body" as it's "natural" self.
She's saying quite the opposite.
Karl: Then the "body" is a fantasamical construct. In other words as
fantasy or image or whatever kind of weird yuppie language you want
to use bodies don't objectively exist. It is all in the head. When I
catch a cold I am fantasising. I don't really have a "cold" at all.
The " cold" is just a word. Indeed the doctor only concludes that I
have a "cold" as medium through which power asserts itself. The "cold" as a
word is a fantasmatical construct (this yuppie language is an
amusement). The "cold" is the medical doctor and I fantastamically
constructing the "cold" across our own interpretative/ideological
grid. But even then maybe the doctor is a fantasy of mine too.
When people were tortured and killed in the German death camps by the
Nazis during the second worl war we only think that this is what happened.
It is merely our subjective way of experiencing "reality". It is not
objective. Indeed there are reactionary historians who claim that there
never were concentration camps: "an ideological construct" developed by
certain interests.Ya know!
Yours etc.,
Karl Carlile