Jeez.
This has become an amazingly odd thread, at least given my comprehension of
it.
First, why is "cutting" inherently to be perceived as violent? Are tailors
and quilters, then, doomed to sharing the cultural/symbolic implications of
Jack-the-Ripper? As even children know, often one must cut things to make
them more useful.
Second, I would urge caution in the habitus of recoil from "violence."
Magritte's and Duchamp's (and, of course, Breton's) writings stress the
importance of a strategy of violence in artistic work. Not violence for
violence's sake (as popular culture would likely be inclined to take it it),
but as a form of useful aesthetic resistance to the practiced habit of
perceiving objects of beauty and wonder. Breton saw this as vital to the
surrealist "movement" (in fact, he holds Lautremont and Sade as cultural
heros); Magritte and Duchamp had no interest at all in movements. They both
forcefully shrugged off the "surrealist" label at key points in their lives.
The "violence" entailed in cutting, it seems to me, is simply the practice of
separation, a practice that is inescapable in embodiment. In a life one
cannot walk all paths, read all books, know and live the allness of
everything. One does not eat the whole cheesecake. One must slice it first,
and then eat until one is reasonably sated. I fear what I see to be a
tendency to discard the practice of the "either/or" in contemporary cultural
theorizing. At least with regard to the cheesecake, if my fear of cutting
pervades my knowledge of it, I will either eat none (or give none away), or I
will eat until I throw up.
With regard,
Frank Macke
Mercer University
USA
This has become an amazingly odd thread, at least given my comprehension of
it.
First, why is "cutting" inherently to be perceived as violent? Are tailors
and quilters, then, doomed to sharing the cultural/symbolic implications of
Jack-the-Ripper? As even children know, often one must cut things to make
them more useful.
Second, I would urge caution in the habitus of recoil from "violence."
Magritte's and Duchamp's (and, of course, Breton's) writings stress the
importance of a strategy of violence in artistic work. Not violence for
violence's sake (as popular culture would likely be inclined to take it it),
but as a form of useful aesthetic resistance to the practiced habit of
perceiving objects of beauty and wonder. Breton saw this as vital to the
surrealist "movement" (in fact, he holds Lautremont and Sade as cultural
heros); Magritte and Duchamp had no interest at all in movements. They both
forcefully shrugged off the "surrealist" label at key points in their lives.
The "violence" entailed in cutting, it seems to me, is simply the practice of
separation, a practice that is inescapable in embodiment. In a life one
cannot walk all paths, read all books, know and live the allness of
everything. One does not eat the whole cheesecake. One must slice it first,
and then eat until one is reasonably sated. I fear what I see to be a
tendency to discard the practice of the "either/or" in contemporary cultural
theorizing. At least with regard to the cheesecake, if my fear of cutting
pervades my knowledge of it, I will either eat none (or give none away), or I
will eat until I throw up.
With regard,
Frank Macke
Mercer University
USA