> Pr=E9face = =E0 la transgression, as
> title, is very funny, it's a joke. Commonsensically even, transgression
> wouldn't seem to need *any* kind of preface, no auspicious sending off. On
> any level of conceptual thinking of transgression there is always this
> *levity* of which F's preface acts as a reminder, as if to say, yes what you
> will read here in Bataille is Highly Serious, quite troubling, insane to
> some, but it's also light, weightless, even funny at times. It is
> expendable, to use Bataille's word. [Nobody ever writes about the humor in
> =46oucault, which is such an important part of his work, and which is --as
> with the best humor-- never just funny.]. Just a thought.
But humor is not really something that wants to be written about; it wants
to be humored. There is a problem with discussing this text -- which, in
addition to being ironic and humorous, also has the quality of speaking
with a multiplicity of voices and being an "imitatio" of Bataille.
So for example I find John's exerpts hard to work with, because they present
the text linearly, in order, and force one to think about the text in a way
which is somehow out of tune with the text itself -- as if it was a sequence
of propositions, or as if one was doing a Schenker analysis on it. Although
it's not like I have a better proposal, alas.
-m
> title, is very funny, it's a joke. Commonsensically even, transgression
> wouldn't seem to need *any* kind of preface, no auspicious sending off. On
> any level of conceptual thinking of transgression there is always this
> *levity* of which F's preface acts as a reminder, as if to say, yes what you
> will read here in Bataille is Highly Serious, quite troubling, insane to
> some, but it's also light, weightless, even funny at times. It is
> expendable, to use Bataille's word. [Nobody ever writes about the humor in
> =46oucault, which is such an important part of his work, and which is --as
> with the best humor-- never just funny.]. Just a thought.
But humor is not really something that wants to be written about; it wants
to be humored. There is a problem with discussing this text -- which, in
addition to being ironic and humorous, also has the quality of speaking
with a multiplicity of voices and being an "imitatio" of Bataille.
So for example I find John's exerpts hard to work with, because they present
the text linearly, in order, and force one to think about the text in a way
which is somehow out of tune with the text itself -- as if it was a sequence
of propositions, or as if one was doing a Schenker analysis on it. Although
it's not like I have a better proposal, alas.
-m