[Reader-list] Ways of Life and Transgressions

[Danny Butt]

Kia ora all

I've also been learning a lot from the recent discussion, as I try to  
map these conversations back onto the very different cultural  
histories (though equally fragmented perhaps, if less recently as  
bloody) here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Having seen a huge retrospective of Picasso's work (and collection)  
close to my hometown recently, I couldn't help but be struck by the  
fact that while it might be true that, as Yousuf says, "Picasso  
probably never had people killing each others angered by his  
paintings", it is nevertheless equally true that his work is  
unthinkable without the death that accompanied the European  
colonisation of Africa and the Pacific. The works in his collection  
acquired from those regions seem to take on additional significance  
when read in light of that history. So perhaps the question of time,  
where we sequence events and consequences to say "this causes this",  
becomes inverted and displaced in situations where the affect seems to  
precede the event of production. In some respects, when hurt is  
experienced, the potential of that hurt seems to have been structured  
in advance.

This was just one of the thoughts brought to mind by Aarti's very  
productive questions. While I am not really fluent enough in the  
specific issues which prompted this discussion to comment more  
specifically, I would like to share a quote from a writer that I have  
learnt a lot from about the issues Aarti raises, which I think does  
speak to the recent discussions on the list.

"The exposed traumas of workers in ongoing extreme conditions do not  
generally induce more than mourning on the part of the state and the  
public culture to whose feeling-based opinions the state is said to  
respond. Mourning is what happens when a grounding object is lost, is  
dead, no longer living (to you). Mourning is an experience of  
irreducible boundedness: I am here, I am living. He is dead, I am  
mourning. It is a beautiful, not sublime, experience of emancipation:  
mourning supplies the subject the definitional perfection of a being  
no longer in flux. It takes place over a distance: even if the object  
who induces the feeling of loss and helplessness is neither dead nor  
at any great distance from where you are. In other words, mourning can  
also be an act of aggression, of social deathmaking: it can perform  
the evacuation of significance from actually-existing subjects. Even  
when liberals do it, one might say, "others" are ghosted for a good  
cause. The sorrow songs of scandal that sing of the exploitation that  
is always "elsewhere" (even a few blocks away) are in this sense  
aggressively songs of mourning. Play them backward, and the military  
march of capitalist triumphalism (The Trans-Nationale) can be heard.  
Its lyric, currently crooned by every organ of record in the United  
States, is about necessity. It exhorts citizens to understand that the  
"bottom line" of national life is neither utopia nor freedom but  
survival, which can only be achieved by a citizenry that eats its  
anger, makes no unreasonable claims on resources or control over  
value, and uses its most creative energy to cultivate intimate spheres  
while scrapping a life together flexibly in response to the market  
world's caprice."

Lauren Berlant, "The Subject of True Feeling: Pain, Privacy, and  
Politics", in Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns (eds.) Cultural  
Pluralism, Identity Politics, and the Law. Ann Arbor: University of  
Michigan Press. 1999.

(In the notes for this paragraph Berlant references Douglas Crimp and  
the politics of AIDS in the US: "Crimp is especially astute on the  
necessary articulation of sentimentality and politics: because  
processes of legitimation cannot do without the production of consent,  
and empathetic misrecognition is one tactic for creating it. The  
question is how, and at what cost, different kinds of subjects and  
contexts of empathy are imagined in the struggle for radical social  
transformation.")

I'd be happy to forward a PDF of Berlant's article to anyone who is  
interested in these questions of subjectivity, affect, and public  
recognition.

Cheers,

Danny

--
http://www.dannybutt.net

On 4/09/2008, at 9:09 PM, Aarti Sethi wrote:

> A few thoughts on an interesting discussion.
>
> One term I think that has remained unexamined in this discussion is  
> "hurt"
> or "sentiment". By this I mean not an assessment of whether that  
> hurt is
> justified, valid etc, who is to decide whether this offends or not,  
> whether
> this is offensive or not, the relative self-sufficiency of value  
> systems and
> speaking across them. But the inherent value of hurt as a positive  
> force in
> itself. Let me try and explain what I mean.
>
> Why is "hurt sentiment" a bad thing in itself? Can having one's  
> sentiments
> hurt, sometimes quite badly, not be a positive force? Might it not  
> impell me
> to re-think, or think, about my sentiments in a manner that is  
> creative?
> Maybe those sentiments are better discarded. Maybe my outrage alerts  
> me to a
> violence I have been commiting without realising it. Maybe if more  
> people's
> sentiments were outraged a little more forcefully, then we would be  
> living
> in a far more democratic and tolerant world.
>
> Further, I do not see why only religious communities have a monopoly  
> on
> sentiments which can then be hurt. As a feminist, my sentiments are
> assaulted on a routine and regular basis. As someone who believes in a
> version of social justice and equality, once articulated by, but not  
> only
> by, Marx for instance, my feelings are continually trampled over. As  
> someone
> who believes in a secular vision, the discussions on this list  
> offend me
> everyday. However i do not see this being taken very seriously. And it
> needn't, that is the point. It is up to me to alchemize this  
> outrage, hurt,
> sadness in a manner that enables me to live and act in the world.
>
> This is actually how we live our lives generally. My mother, or  
> father, or
> lover, or friend might say something that hurts me terribly. Not  
> always is
> this clarified, discussed, put in its right perspective. All our  
> lives are
> all littered with silent archives of hurts we have never expressed.  
> There is
> no heroic moment in which resolution is sought for hurts. And no one  
> can do
> this for anyone...
>
> The recent Vogue advertisements doing the rounds, around which there  
> has
> been some discussion on this list, have hurt the sentiments of many  
> people.
> A few years ago another set of advertisements for brand equity in  
> which two
> tribal women are shown discussing the tans they have got in Monte  
> Carlo to
> an accompanying snide and contemptous copy which said something  
> about how
> advertisers need to accurately reach their consumers, also outraged  
> many of
> us. Having thought about this, I realised that though both the Vogue  
> ads and
> the brand equity ads trouble me, they do so in different ways.
>
> The Vogue ads can be read in one of many ways - that it posits a  
> horizon of
> desire that is unachievable for the people it uses for the ad. In  
> some sense
> then the frisson of the ad derives from the discrepancy in what is  
> desired
> and what is possible. Further it assumes that their horizon of  
> desire will
> follow the trajectory laid out by Vogue. But most interesting to me  
> is that
> both Vogue and the critics work with a fixed definition of poverty  
> in the
> first place, and  certain trajectory of the direction a life can take.
>
> The second set of ads function on precisely the opposite principle.  
> Rather
> than positing an eventual horizon of desire, they deem a present  
> life as
> failed, and urges us to recognise its failure. It presumes and makes  
> me
> complicit in a social consensus in which we can use languages in a  
> manner as
> if we are all agreed on the terms in operation.
>
> Can you see the difference in both ads? They both trouble me deeply,  
> but
> they trouble me in different ways. How is this at all useful, or  
> valuable? I
> think it is. I think to be able to carefully work through how and  
> why and in
> what ways something arrives to me and what it disturbs is a critical  
> thing,
> if we are to fashion any sort of language to deal with the violence  
> of the
> present.
>
> with regards
> Aarti
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 11:00 PM, inder salim <indersalim at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
>
>> dear yousuf
>>
>> thanks for response.
>>
>> no i dont agree that people are killing each other because Hussain
>> painted this or that, People want to kill people and there is always
>> an  excuse available. We will always not blame people for that  
>> because
>> people have ceased to be people with their existential choice to be '
>> being-in-itself'. Prime symbols of our society have  perhaps
>> cultivated bad tastes because of a deep bourgiouse-captilist-fascist
>> leanings. We are indeed in a deep mess.  For example, Sudhir Kakkar
>> talks about how unresolved sexuality has a deep relationship with
>> violence.  Now who is the culprit. At least Artists are trying to  
>> heal
>> themselves. let them, even if people are not healed...
>>
>> about what is good to society ? Stalin's USSR did this mistake and
>> killed lot of intellectuals poets and artists, Theortically what,
>> poets are artists were doing at time had little relevance to the  
>> times
>> ' of bolshivik ' but in the end we can see how wrong was that policy
>> of actually believing what is good for society and what is not.  We
>> need to provide a space to everything for everybody.
>>
>> People like TV reality and  other such heaps of trash....., how much
>> we can carry is seriously with us, you know better, at least i cant
>> take the popular bullshit of saas Bahu and bootnath serials.
>>
>> About market and art  via ' conspiracy of art' we already know  
>> Hussain
>> sahib is not in a great spiritual health. But a fanatic has  no right
>> to dislodge something which is already dislodged by the Tusnami of
>> sheer profitalbity of americansim..
>>
>>
>> love
>> is
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 8:34 PM, Yousuf <ysaeed7 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> Dear Salim
>>> You are right, an artist should never have to explain. But Picasso
>> probably never had people killing each others angered by his  
>> paintings. But
>> (as we have discussed earlier on this theme) if you are doing an  
>> art for
>> public, would you not be concerned if the public appreciates it? No  
>> one is
>> born appreciating high art - we acquire a tastes for everything.  
>> The point
>> is, whose responsibity is it to inculcate the appreciation of art in
>> society? If its a Madhubani painting done on the facade of my  
>> village house
>> by my mother, its very much there in my genes. But if it is a horse  
>> by
>> Hussain kept in a gallery to which I have no access, somebody has  
>> to do a
>> bit of explaining on why such art is distanced from social reality  
>> (which
>> actually is not, but the market has made it look so).
>>>
>>> Yousuf
>>>
>>>
>>> --- On Wed, 9/3/08, inder salim <indersalim at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> From: inder salim <indersalim at gmail.com>
>>>> Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Ways of Life and Transgressions
>>>> To: reader-list at sarai.net
>>>> Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 7:14 PM
>>>> Picasso said, if it is possible to explian, it is futile to
>>>> paint.
>>>>
>>>> even if i we gnore picasso, who is an old hat in modern art
>>>> now, let
>>>> alone hussain sahib who is immensely supported by
>>>> investors, and 'post
>>>> colonialism' as theoritical justificaioin to do
>>>> whatever he or we
>>>> sometimes  are doing which can pass as derivate at the
>>>> best.
>>>>
>>>> what is education or what is not , what is offensive or
>>>> what is not,
>>>> is difficult to explain, if one chases the text, and its
>>>> meaning
>>>> profoundly...
>>>>
>>>> what we forget also is the fact that what we see are
>>>> phtographs of the
>>>> the original
>>>>
>>>> .and is photogaphy representing real, if so then we have
>>>> truly
>>>> disappeared from the face of this earth. and it does not
>>>> matter if
>>>> there is hussain or not,
>>>>
>>>> there is book by Jean Baudilard ' conspiracy of
>>>> art'
>>>> which speaks  the contemporary art practices , and that
>>>> makes us feel
>>>> that the whole world is in fact a piece of modern art work
>>>> , and we
>>>> are not there, simple not part of it.
>>>>
>>>> the question of relevance of hussain in our social
>>>> structures is open
>>>> to this sort of criticism,
>>>>
>>>> but not once it lands as amunition in the hands of
>>>> fanatics.
>>>>
>>>> love
>>>> is
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>