Monsters (De)Forming at Dusk/Half-Way

This post has been in various states of incompleteness for several weeks, so I shall use it as a half-way, formative-assessment-directed reflection. 

 We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
   (T. S. Eliot, 'Little Gidding', Four Quartets)

How do I articulate what can seem so... fragile, flickering, intangible, un-graspable by a fist made of flesh or law? In infinite and shifting shades of graphite, it finds some degree of expression (there/not-there), ambiguous, delicate (or uncertain), blurred, smudged, indeterminate. In words, though, it's too clean, too up front. This, a fragment from Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project, is some kind of approximation:

A trace is the apparition of a distance, however close that which it evokes may be. Whereas the aura is the apparition of a nearness, however far away that which left it behind may be.

Approximations, like perception at twilight. No clean, cold, bright (illusory) knowing designed to warp the (self-)perception of the viewing subject. Not surveillance, surveys, clinical or legal judgements, objective evaluations, all tending towards suasion, herding the masses through inculcation, internalisation (no big sticks required).

It's not dawn (O brave new world...). It's crepuscular.

Eleanore Mikus, Tablet Litho #3 1968

'The worst/Are full of passionate intensity'. 'Look', say all the authoritarian politicians, when interviewed and challenged. Never 'Listen', always 'Look'. At what?

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
 
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

~W. B. Yeats

This comes closest (linguistically):

I see well what limits my gaze; and it is precisely there, against those high insurmountable walls, that I like to get lost…

To give a name to this joy would be to mislay it … These are approximations because the mystery remains whole …

Writing. By tiny brushstrokes, tiny hard brushstrokes. Brevity, from the heart…

Shadows that arise and lie down as evening comes on, lengthening shadows that cross the hills and that I watch until they disappear, with a final leap, beyond the last ridge where I know that they will continue to break up and fade yet where also, it seems to me, inexplicably, a kind of speech gathers them together...

The wound at the edge of the heart, the tireless night cricket, and the sculpting of the sky amid the crackling of the solar grass are all nourished by the same hope…
(Poem Fragments by Pierre-Albert Jourdan)

  Or, more/most briefly, in Jourdan's words:

The abyss is likeable when you can find lodgings in it.

The slogan of the Italian Fascists under Mussolini was 'Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato' (everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state). Soon even this tiny nook in Blogland is likely to be drawn inside the state should I persist in mentioning contemporary news events. I shan't be seeking lodgings.

"Cut the Wires"

And so it begins:

Max Mosley, the former Formula One Boss turned privacy campaigner following a News of the Word sting, has told MPs he supports "cutting the wires" to internet sites who publish "the worst" pieces in breach of press regulation.

He was speaking alongside press regulation campaign group Hacked Off at Department of Culture, Media And Sport select committee into press regulation, 24 hours after MPs agreed a landmark Royal Charter.

 Favourite response, a tweet from Mark Wallace:

Quite quaint that Max Mosley seems to think that the internet works like a tin can telephone.

And one gloriously combative solution:

You newspapers know who the front-men are in Hacked Off and you know some of the backers. Let’s take a prominent example. Hugh Grant. Here’s what I would do right now if I were you. I’m speaking to all newspapers here. All you have to do is comply with his demand for privacy to the letter.

Delete every story in your archive that mentions his name.

Delete every photo of him in your database.

Delete every review of everything he has ever been in.

When reporting on Hacked Off in future, refer only to ‘a Mr. Grant’ and do not include a photo. Better yet, use a pixellated photo and caption it ‘blurred to respect Mr. Grant’s demand for privacy’. Even better yet, use a pixellated photo of Shrek.

Report nothing on the man in any way at all. Do not cover any films or other roles he appears in in the future. Show no pictures of him and do not mention him when reporting on any showbiz parties or awards ceremonies.

No matter how outrageously he behaves, don’t report it. Not one word. Even if he wins the Nobbly prize for unelected petty dictator of the year, don’t report a single word.
He says he wants privacy from the Press but really he wants you to report the good stuff and keep quiet about the bad stuff. Give him total privacy. Absolute and unconditional privacy. Report nothing at all about him, ever. Either you can report it all or you report nothing at all. Allow no middle ground.

That might learn his censorious, dictatorial little soul.

Witkin: un dialogue inédit

Joel-Peter Witkin: Enfer ou ciel / Heaven or Hell

Sous la direction d'Anne Biroleau

 

Présentation

 

^"Le photographe américain Joel-Peter Witkin élabore depuis près d’un demi-siècle une œuvre singulière et troublante. Troublante par l’univers intérieur qu’elle révèle, à la fois tourmenté, étrange, et habité par la certitude d’une réelle présence du divin. S’il se situe au plus près de l’humain en choisissant ses sujets dans des milieux marginaux ou aux pratiques extrêmes (transsexuels, adeptes du SM, malades mentaux, handicapés physiques), il transcende l’anecdotique et le spectaculaire : la gloire et la misère de la chair manifestent dans ses photographies une inquiétude métaphysique et philosophique, voire mystique, qui s’enracine dans l’immense culture artistique de Witkin.

L’occasion était belle de souligner ici cette circulation constante des thèmes, en faisant entrevoir la richesse et la diversité de la collection d’estampes de la Bibliothèque à travers une cinquantaine de gravures précieuses, dans un dialogue inédit et fécond avec l’œuvre du photographe : Durer, Rembrandt, Goya, Rops, Picasso, Ensor…

Cette confluence des influences revendiquées et du travail de la photographie comme collage, comme palimpseste (avec ses grattages, déchirures, abrasions du négatif, appositions de filtres et d’obstacles divers entre le support et l’agrandisseur) donne naissance à une œuvre qui se situe dans la grande lignée de Sade, de Bataille et aussi des mystiques chrétiens. "

 

Witkin claims that his vision spring from an episode he witnessed as a young child, an automobile accident in front of his house in which a little girl was decapitated.

It happened on a Sunday when my mother was escorting my twin brother and me down the steps of the tenement where we lived. We were going to church. While walking down the hallway to the entrance of the building, we heard an incredible crash mixed with screaming and cries for help. The accident involved three cars, all with families in them. Somehow, in the confusion, I was no longer holding my mother's hand. At the place where I stood at the curb, I could see something rolling from one of the overturned cars. It stopped at the curb where I stood. It was the head of a little girl. I bent down to touch the face, to speak to it -- but before I could touch it someone carried me away".

^{When you learn early in life that heads may fail to stay attached to their bodies, very little is likely to seem obvious or stable.}

Goya's Last Caprice

ununmbered plate from Goya's Disasters of War

Goya's handwritten draft title of the volume now known as Disasters of War was Fatal consequences of Spain's bloody war with Bonaparte, and other emphatic caprices (Spanish: Fatales consequencias de la sangrienta guerra en España con Buonaparte, Y otros caprichos enfáticos). Amongst three unnumbered etchings gathered at the end of the sequence is the one above, usually labelled 'Proud Monster' or 'Fierce Monster', and usually placed first of the three, followed by the two concerning Truth. One of the 'emphatic caprices', all of which are connected by some element of allegory, there is a double ambiguity here, both in the nature of the creature itself (which finds a curious echo in the Montauk Monster), and in the direction of the bodies of humans in its maw - are they being devoured or disgorged?

Barbers Again

Soldiers - don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you - who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.

Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate - only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers - don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty. ('Barber' speech from The Great Dictator)

On not tolerating intolerance

It's the ultimate modern shibboleth. We've passed far beyond the quotation attributed (in The Friends of Voltaire, 1906, by S. G. Tallentyre) to Voltaire, that 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it'. Now it runs 'I disapprove of what you say because it hurts my or someone else's feelings and I demand something be done to shut you up and make you pay!'.

'Hate Speech' is the new lucrative and exciting area for the state and the law(yers) in which to spread their tentacles. Saying hateful/hurtful words now appears to be a more serious crime, in terms of sentencing, than actual physical hurtful acts. Whatever happened to pointing and laughing at idiots as a way of dealing with their idiocy?

On 27 February 2013 the Canadian Supreme Court explained why expressions of intolerance are intolerable:

Hate speech is an effort to marginalize individuals based on their membership in a group. Using expression that exposes the group to hatred, hate speech seeks to delegitimize group members in the eyes of the majority, reducing their social standing and acceptance within society. Hate speech, therefore, rises beyond causing distress to individual group members. It can have a societal impact. Hate speech lays the groundwork for later, broad attacks on vulnerable groups that can range from discrimination, to ostracism, segregation, deportation, violence and, in the most extreme cases, to genocide. Hate speech also impacts on a protected group’s ability to respond to the substantive ideas under debate, thereby placing a serious barrier to their full participation in our democracy. (h/t Reason)

The Supreme Court's unanimous decision that punishing a man for expressing disapproval of homosexuality is perfectly consistent with freedom of expression...subject to 'reasonable limits' upheld the Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal ruling against Bill Whatcott, who in 2001 and 2002 distributed flyers condemning the normalization of homosexuality in public schools. The  Tribunal ordered Whatcott to pay a $17,500 fine and to stop handing out anti-gay literature, citing a provincial law banning material that 'ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of' people based on various prohibited criteria, including sexual orientation. The Supreme Court concluded that two of Whatcott's flyers, headlined 'Keep Homosexuality out of Saskatoon’s Public Schools!' and 'Sodomites in our Public Schools', were hateful enough to be banned:

Passages of these flyers combine many of the hallmarks of hatred identified in the case law. The expression portrays the targeted group as a menace that threatens the safety and well-being of others, makes reference to respected sources in an effort to lend credibility to the negative generalizations, and uses vilifying and derogatory representations to create a tone of hatred. The flyers also expressly call for discriminatory treatment of those of same‑sex orientation.  It was not unreasonable for the tribunal to conclude that this expression was more likely than not to expose homosexuals to hatred.

The court said prohibiting such speech 'balances the fundamental values underlying freedom of expression with competing Charter rights and other values essential to a free and democratic society, in this case a commitment to equality and respect for group identity and the inherent dignity owed to all human beings'.

But the cognitive dissonance of this apparently doesn't hurt the brains of the Court's judges as it does mine. I've met many Mr Whatcotts over the years, with sandwich boards and flyers, telling me that I'm going to Hell. Unless any of them had actually hit me with a sandwich board or tried to force feed me a flyer, it would never have occured to me to phone the police and whine about hurt feelings. Because, oddly, the Mr Whatcotts also have 'the inherent dignity owed to all human beings'. To stand outside in all weathers and risk mockery and attack means, if nothing else, that he really believes what he says.

But only selected groups get awarded the right to never be offended without recompense. In victimhood poker I hold a high value hand. But playing it would make me that most regrettable creature, a government pet. Coddled, protected, performing tricks on command or risking being put out in the back yard. Thanks, but no thanks.

Aphorism #6

The pen may be mightier than the sword but if they`ve confiscated your pen what else is there to reach for? (Anon)