Doug wrote:
> Weren't we discussing an essay in which the whites of exorbited eyes
> figure prominently?
Right, and I assume that what you're getting at is not simply the essay's
use of this kind of imagery, but its attempt to valorize such a use.
You won't get a very fervent polemic here from me. The reason I am
trying to understand this essay is precisely because I have grave doubts
about the value of literary, or artistic, "transgression" per se,
and it helps me to think about it against something that argues in its
favor lovingly.
Your questions about this focus on the "moral relativism" angle, which
I believe is not really at issue here. However, I wouldn't go so far
as to argue that there are no moral issues at stake. I find it
impossible to think about de Sade without at the same time thinking
of Pasolini's relentless self-denunciation in _Salo_. The whole issue
of the impossibility of drawing a borderline between sexually
transgressive discourse and and pornography -- the, as they say in the
art biz, "recuperability" of transgression -- makes it profoundly
questionable to me. All the time I see performances which think
of themselves as "political" and which differ from pornography only
by virtue of the fact that they take place in "art spaces".
To me, they just seem to add, and in particularly disturbing (because
blindly self-righteous) way, to the crap that we are otherwise surrounded
with.
The Trangression essay, I think -- and Sebastian has voiced this too --
does not draw its categories finely enough, and I am also very skeptical
about the central role that sexuality plays in its argument. There are
many examples of "trangressive" discourses that have nothing to do with
the sexual -- movements like Dadaism or Futurism or Situationism are
chuck full of them. I think the general category of "trangression"
is so sweeping and crude as to be useless; one has to evaluate each
of these actions separately, on its own terms, in its own context.
But as for the Transgression essay, I have not yet digested it enough
to judge how much it illuminates and how much it obscures.
-m
> Weren't we discussing an essay in which the whites of exorbited eyes
> figure prominently?
Right, and I assume that what you're getting at is not simply the essay's
use of this kind of imagery, but its attempt to valorize such a use.
You won't get a very fervent polemic here from me. The reason I am
trying to understand this essay is precisely because I have grave doubts
about the value of literary, or artistic, "transgression" per se,
and it helps me to think about it against something that argues in its
favor lovingly.
Your questions about this focus on the "moral relativism" angle, which
I believe is not really at issue here. However, I wouldn't go so far
as to argue that there are no moral issues at stake. I find it
impossible to think about de Sade without at the same time thinking
of Pasolini's relentless self-denunciation in _Salo_. The whole issue
of the impossibility of drawing a borderline between sexually
transgressive discourse and and pornography -- the, as they say in the
art biz, "recuperability" of transgression -- makes it profoundly
questionable to me. All the time I see performances which think
of themselves as "political" and which differ from pornography only
by virtue of the fact that they take place in "art spaces".
To me, they just seem to add, and in particularly disturbing (because
blindly self-righteous) way, to the crap that we are otherwise surrounded
with.
The Trangression essay, I think -- and Sebastian has voiced this too --
does not draw its categories finely enough, and I am also very skeptical
about the central role that sexuality plays in its argument. There are
many examples of "trangressive" discourses that have nothing to do with
the sexual -- movements like Dadaism or Futurism or Situationism are
chuck full of them. I think the general category of "trangression"
is so sweeping and crude as to be useless; one has to evaluate each
of these actions separately, on its own terms, in its own context.
But as for the Transgression essay, I have not yet digested it enough
to judge how much it illuminates and how much it obscures.
-m