NEVER MIND THE SIGNIFIER

Walter Benn Michaels’s little, but intriguing book, The Shape of the Signifier (2004) comes to my mind as Vincent talks about reference today. Michaels is interested in the function of the materiality of the sign for reference, precisely as it relates to the distinction between affect and cognition. In other words, as he says: “to understand a text is one thing, to feel its force is another” (9). When Vincent says that it helps little to know how language works when the meaning ascribed to objects signify different things for different people, he suggests the same as Richard Rorty: “The world does not speak. Only we do” (On Contingency, 6). By the same token, language does not speak itself, only we do. Ultimately this is in fact precisely what explains the mistake that students at Roskilde U make when they believe that what they work on in their report, namely the original Lutheran works, has anything to do with Martin Luther King, whom they see as the originator of these works. The five minute talk ends with a speechless gesture that indicates mind boggling.

For Michaels, what is at stake in following the consequences of replacing ideological difference (based on belief in different things) with identitarian difference (based on our speaking different languages) is a process of ontologizing the argument. As it is a common given that, to begin with, professors and students speak different languages, and that in spite of their beliefs, referentiality works performatively only as a means of indulging, or as Rorty has it, as “redescription.” Thus we are able to better understand what Gottlob Frege means to say when he says this: “sometimes I seem to see a difficulty, but then again I don’t see it.”

And so it goes, ra-ra-ra-ra-ra. I signify here that there is more to say, but the less noise one makes at such hours the better.

PUBLISHING: SHIT OR SHINE

People have been asking me why I don’t gather all of my writings with view to systematically publish with solid publishing houses. Well, yes, one can elect to do that, and one does, particularly when the pressure from above gets tight – if you’re an academic. But as far as I’m concerned, I don’t give a flying fuck as to who gets to publish what and where. In fact, I much prefer the more honorable business of publishing myself, which I do, both in print and on the internet – apart from the other shit, that is, which one also does as a necessity. With myself in charge, however, at least I get to design everything. And as to balancing between theory and analysis according to my own senses, the fact that I get the final word on how serious I want to be about it pleases me a great deal. There are qualified readers, to be sure, but I hand pick them myself when I go about asking them to assess what I have to say. This activity saves me in the final analysis from having to invest any unnecessary energy in explaining to myself why in another context, while some readers love my ideas, others don't. Depending on where one submits the stuff, when one does, it never ceases to amuse me how different mentalities are. For instance, the ability the French have to value some shit is amazing compared to the anal types that populate the Anglo-American world, who are more often than not very quick at pointing out just what is wrong with your stuff, which, ironically, has already been deemed quite divine by the French. Talk about sheer arbitrariness. Now, some may ask, why this attitude towards the academic publishing industry? Are you envious, or frustrated? Maybe, or maybe not. Meanwhile, here are a couple of reasons:

1. I’m way too old to presume that what I write should have a major impact on anything or anybody whatsoever. Here I much prefer the occasional comment from random people as to the efficiency of some formulation, and if some think that some sentences are down right elegant or beautiful, then that is already more than I can wish for.

2. I’m way too silly to take any discourse seriously. Including my own. Nothing is as cutting edge or as original as we like to delude ourselves is. Therefore, where publishing is concerned, if there’s anything that I do take seriously then it’s the kind of philosophy such as the one formulated by Gertrude Stein: “the smartest ones publish themselves.”

3. I’m way past the naivety which holds the belief that Harvard and Oxford publish people without first getting ‘serious’ letters of recommendations from established scholars willing to vouch for the quality of thought of this or that aspirant. Here, I still vividly remember Gayatri Spivak, a renowned scholar at Columbia University, yelling over the phone on a weekly basis at an editor with one of these houses, and in the presence of just about anybody, that if they didn’t listen to her and publish one of her protégés, then they’ll have to suffer the consequences of losing her own writing. Right. Now, I don’t mean to suggest that all those who submit to Harvard and Oxford have to kiss somebody’s ass in order to get in, but as it’s a fact that just about the whole world fancies being published by these guys, and consequently swamp the poor editors with book abstracts, the fact that no one gets to be reviewed before a hot shot had put a word in for the candidate is much more likely than unlikely.

So where does that leave us? The self-proclaimed brilliant ones? The arrogant ones? The insufferable ones? The ones who fancy their writings as subversive and unabashed? Well, it leaves us with a mountain we can inhabit the day our mighty and uncompromising selves will get fired for not complying with the norms. I say this while in the middle of peer-reviewing a volume for Sage Publications – I’m fair though, and my ass hasn’t been entertained yet – while all the while, however, wishing that the whole world would go for open source, eradicate copy rights, and let whatever is there to flow, flow. As to action, or what we choose to do or not do, let’s give Gertrude the final word. She was after all a genuine and bona fide genius: “Generally speaking, everyone is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything.” So then, we’ll go with that. And this: “It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.”

DIAMOND CUT

For Dora

My lava jewelry is sunk into the blue lagoon. What stands between my ring and my now steamy golden watch is a poem. Audre Lorde in astrakhan black coat, black goggles, and black hair has diamonds in her mouth. Some sight. “I / is the total black, / being spoken / from the earth’s inside. / There are many kinds of open / how a diamond comes / into a knot of flame / how sound comes into a word, coloured / by who pays what for speaking. / Some words are open like a diamond / on glass windows." I kiss my chess playing sister before she goes to work. I open the door for her.” Then the window. On the threshold she tells me what the word is. Paul in Acts 18 had a vision: “do not remain silent.” I think about that. But how to reclaim someone else’s word? And I also want to claim Lorde’s word: “Love is a word, another kind of open.” The Bible is on the table. I open it and Proverbs 24 unfolds: “A wise man has great power; and a knowledgeable man increases strength.” I prefer the prophets to the converted patriarchs. Wisdom is a polished jewel in the open morning. It’s seven, my watch tells me. Its name is Omega. But time reflected in the diamond is boundless. Lord-less. The lava bedevils me. It’s coffee time.

THE AXIOM OF LOVE

Today Vincent tackled what is at one and the same time the simplest and most complex topic: unending love. Referring to how love can be measured and against which background, he made a distinction between algebraic numbers and transfinite numbers. The last line was delivered as a piece of advice to lovers who want to make an ultimate declaration of love. In his opinion, the proposition “I love you, my love, with an infinite love on the real numbers line” should do it. Those with a basic understanding of math are able to see why this is not only beautiful, but also very and verily simple, although there are the fewest who possess the right intuitive power to realize what is at stake in Cantor’s continuum hypothesis. In other words, how many people’s imagination can grasp endlessness without being deterred by endlessness itself?

The complexity of the topic arises when one poses a question that relies on cultural competence and recognition. To whom does one engage in making this ultimate declaration of love, as this presupposes that the other is able to identify what one is talking about. So love assessed in its simplest form, paradoxically enough, has little to do with numbers, and quite a lot with a gut feeling. Conversely, love assessed as a complex phenomenon is, paradoxically enough, the result of fallacious thinking about numbers. Vincent indirectly suggests that when lovers often want to know how infinite exactly this infinite love that they mutually declare is, they stupidly, or should I say, ignorantly, complicate the matter, insofar as they insist on seeing infinity as a number. But infinity is not a number, as Peano also beautifully demonstrated. If it were, then, the whole foundation of mathematics would come crumbling down – and so would our sense of culture beyond the world of mathematics.

Vincent said nothing about the implication of his declaration – which shows that he is a good mathematician who trusts himself. As he is primarily a logician, however, - or so he claims - one would like to know to what extent he sees trust in the other to understand what he understands as part of the set which, in group theory, all it requires is a value and an operator. Here, there are three obvious possibilities. Either one goes with Cantor, who followed St. Augustine’s declaration concerning the condition for the existence of the Absolute: “Every number is known to Him whose understanding cannot be numbered. Although the infinite series of numbers cannot be numbered, this infinity is not outside His comprehension. It must follow that every infinity is, in a way we cannot express, made finite to God. (St. Augustine, City of God, 496-7). Or goes with Dante: “That man should speak in nature’s doing; but whether thus or thus. . .” (Paradiso XXV). Or follows my advice: “Say 'Aleph One' without thinking it.” Ein-Sof.

ATMOSPHERE

If it's not modern furniture, then it's architecture that my sister wishes to see while in Denmark in the weekend. "Let's see a fun building today," she said, so we went to Malmö to see Santiago Calatrava's Turning Torso. While going around it, I was reminded of some of the statements that Calatrava always makes to the press in which he emphasizes the mystical quality of architecture. Some of his key concepts are: slender transparency, atmospheric poetry, sculptural design, noiseless signals, and the like. I'm beginning to think that religious feeling, like philosophy begins in medias res. There is a boundlessness in both which approaches the thought of infinity. This thought, while going somewhere, starts with nothing and from nowhere; it is in the middle of things, as it were. Indebted to the Romanian modernist sculptor, Constantin Brancusi, and whose Infinity Column inspired a host of artists, Calatrava sees his own works as the works of a wizard. I felt touched by his wand, yet where the desire to articulate elegant thoughts about this feeling is concerned, it was Brancusi's ghost that spiraled my torso. In turning to formal infinity via fantastic sensuality there is always the question of what we believe, how we believe it, and to what extent. Here's some Brancusi wisdom for you all:

"Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave."

"What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things. . . it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface."

"The people who call my work 'abstract' are imbeciles. . . what they call 'abstract' is in fact the purest realism, the reality of which is not represented by external form but by the idea behind it, the essence of the work."

"To see far is one thing, going there is another."

"Don't look for obscure formulas or mystery in my work. It is pure joy that I offer you. Look at my sculptures until you see them. Those closest to God have seen them."

RELIABILISM

And now again, off we go to have our five minute philosophy fix – although these days, what with my class in feminism, queer, and diaspora film studies I think more about the implications of formalizing positions that agents across class, gender, race, age, love relations etc., can avail themselves of when such positions are not made available to them by some circumstance than I think of distinctions between concepts of right or wrong vis-à-vis true or false statements. Mind you, however, and if you ask me, these days Vincent is doing cultural studies rather than philosophy, which is a good thing. At least he spares us all the pain and embarrassment in deliberately having to dismiss moral philosophy on account of its being a political question rather than anything else.

Thus, when Vincent makes the point that a true statement is not always synonymous with a right action, and nor does a false statement always indicate a wrong action, what he indirectly points to is a context within which such statements or moral evaluations are not only aligned with but also stem from a subject’s position of enunciation. In cultural studies, one does not even want to bother with anything else other than analyze the discursive functions of positions of enunciation. And why is that the case? Why, for the simple reason because positions, and the ways in which positions are negotiated, create categorizations. So, there we have it. If some think that it’s right to have the jungle deforested because it helps the Indians to get rid of their cocaine addiction, the evaluation of such an act as both truthful and rightful is more often than not the result of someone assuming a position of power which validates the legitimacy of such a statement however false this very same statement may also prove to be if enunciated from another position. Hence, it makes sense to follow Vincent’s suggestion that, sometimes, some shit is best left in the gutter rather than give it a virtuous status in the bedroom.

If however, I should want to follow Bush, whom Vincent quotes for saying that he believes that what he believes is right, then, I should like to anticipate what Vincent will make of active agents who believe in the radicalization of relativity in its relation to a presupposed absolute. For, what Bush’s statement suggests is that if belief enters in a relationship with righteousness then it does so because belief is assumed to be not only an absolute in itself but an absolute made relative to itself by the introduction of the modifier ‘right’. In other words, what Bush is saying is that he is right to believe in whatever he sees rightful to believe is right because he is the fucking president. A radical position. Now, I have a feeling that the cross between contextualism and epistemic logic, if filtered through cultural studies, has the potential to yield some smashingly interesting results. As they say, you can always count on reliabilism. Or what?

SOLITUDE

While being solitary at the edge of the world - in Denmark this means being in Traedholm - I was reminded of a conversation with the former permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy (Horace has recently ‘un-permanented’ himself, as it were, by stepping down as the Nobel prize for literature guy, to my regret). I shall never forget the tone of confidentiality, and his expressive body language that combined a secretive allure with insight, when he told me that E.M. Cioran changed him intellectually, irrevocably and irredeemably. I’m tempted to write some more about Horace, but what with Cioran, I’ll stick to quoting 5 aphorisms. Those who are familiar with this genre will get the picture. On the other hand, as Horace and I are fragment lovers, I’m tempted to send him an email asking him to make a selection for my upcoming translation of fragments from Cioran’s The Book of Delusions. Now there is a thought for solitude! Enjoy what’s left of your Sunday.

"The task of the solitary man is to be even more solitary."

"Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls."

"Under each formula lies a corpse."

"Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth."

"Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone."

SIGNATURE

Some years ago I taught a course called Fragmentary Signatures: Baroque Manifestations in Postmodern Literature. I was intent on tracing some theological thought in Caravaggio, Poussin, and the like, and see how some of the visual visions of these painters come to expression in poststructuralist critical discourse that is both fictional and academic at the same time. “Jolly good,” I said to myself, while my husband showed his skepticism. Upon seeing my course description, he went: “jolly good, nobody will attend this class; you’re using key words describing the topic with too many syllables in them, so students will dismiss it on account of that alone.” But, “jolly good,” a third time around. While my husband’s prediction almost came true, I did have the privilege to run the class with ten students in it – all foreigners, however; no Danes, alas. I said to myself on account of the missing ones: “their loss,” and for the ones present, I used these welcoming words: “small group, but fucking select.”

As it turned out, the whole affair was select. The reason for it was also because most of the people attending the course were rather special. In particular, one of them. He was a Canadian, a student of comparative religion at his home university, and the owner of several ships and yachts. He was 21 at the time. He loved the texts on the curriculum, he got everything I said, and he would catch my most brazen ideas in their flight. He also never shied away from showing his growing irritation whenever someone else in class would pose a question that demanded elaboration on something that, at least to him, seemed perfectly clear already. He would often end his exposition to the others with these words: “I really don’t understand why we have to waste time going through such and such. What is wrong with you all?” I must have to say that he often formulated what was sometimes also my very thought. Yet, as it goes with such attitudes, he ended up being mocked. But he didn’t mind.

After the last session, five British students and my Canadian ambushed me and insisted that we all had beers, British style, at the university’s bar. That turned out to be an interesting session. The Brits thought that they had an occasion to finally bash the Canadian. It started with their asking him, “so, if you’re so smart, and run your own business, what do you need to study religion for? Why not engineering, or some other ship related science?” To this he answered: “well, I’m generally smart, but as I often get bouts of doubt which make me think I’m also really stupid, I hurry to enroll in some class at the university, and then lock myself up a whole month in a room, and read everything that is required for a whole year in the program.” The Brits laughed. I didn’t. On engineering, he claimed in a most nonchalant way that he had learned all that he needed to learn from the encyclopedia. The Brits made a grimace. I didn’t. Then we went on to talk about their assignments, and the Brits made a final attempt to make the Canadian stumble. They asked him: “so, can you also write an interesting paper for Camelia, as she only likes to read something intelligent and edgy?” To this, while dismissing the others, the Canadian turned to me, looked straight into my eyes with a penetrating gaze, and said: “I’ll give you all the jouissance you can take.” I made a bowing gesture. He got it. The Brits, didn’t.

When I went to pick up the assignments, the secretary was concerned. She said, “yes, they’re all here, but, I don’t know what to do about the Canadian. He didn’t hand one in. He delivered a photocopy of a book.” I snatched the batch of papers, without explaining, and got very excited. In class we had been talking about Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text, A Lover’s Discourse, and the function of paratext and architext for the heightening of emotional thought in reading. I approached the Canadian’s ‘assignment’ with an expectation that was already bordering orgasmic pleasure. As I leafed through the first pages, I could see that what I was leafing through was a book, indeed. It had a title, a publisher, an ISBN number, and a dedication. I leafed through some more, when it hit me. The dedication. I went back. It said: “for Camelia Elias, the most devoted teacher. “Holy shit,” I said to myself, “this guy is enacting the fucking paratext, even to the point of not handing in the ‘original’ version of the book he wrote for me, but a photocopy. Oh, my God!” How can one describe the pleasure in making the realization that one’s student had not only learned the lesson, but also made such an effort to present his assignment in such an original way? As to the quality of the thought? What can I say? It was of the highest caliber. The form followed the fragmentary discourse and the student’s implicit baroquingly postmodern signature was strategically placed sous rature in a most fascinating way. The external examiner, upon grading the paper together with me, wanted to know everything about this person. He kept saying, “oh my God! How often does this happen in a teacher’s life time?” He was infinitely jealous, and wanted to know what I did in class that made students think of such intricate ways of approaching a topic that they thought I would like to read about. I said, “nothing.” The Canadian would say “everything.” As to the jouissance, hell, yes. I got off on that. Long live such texts, and long live dedicating the dedication.

STEP & STONE

For Sébastien

Steps. I know the sound of these steps. Keys rattling. I know the sound of these keys. Accelerated breath. I know the sound of this breath. Hesitating thoughts. I know the frequency of these thoughts. Passing. The voice passes through wires. The whistle, before the open door, ajar, transforms into a call. Telephone numbers are turned into expectation. I don’t whistle. In the supermarket the mother tells her child: “don’t stare at her!” The child is stubborn: “But I like her.” I lean forward - while my keys rattle, while my boots make a military sound, while my breath accelerates - and whisper: “I like you too.” Our eyes smile. The piper at the gate of silence needs no calls.

ATARAXIA-WTF

Today I told some 40 students attending my course in film theory, who by the way were completely crammed into the relatively small lecture room in the English wing at Roskilde U, that I insisted on my preserving my prerogative to stay a skeptic where the evolution of gender inequalities towards diminishing was concerned. When I teach I usually activate a larger field of mental and emotional engagement both in myself and my students than is otherwise the case, which usually results in my getting evaluations that, more often than not, skyrocket in praise. That is to say that if indignation, bafflement, bedazzling, or approving occurs, then, it is because it all gets filtered through some version of WTF. It works every time.

The morning began with my sister insisting that I took some antibiotics against the weird bronchitis I must have acquired during last week somewhere and which has been bothering me ever since. “WTF,” I said to her, “why is this necessary,” and I tried to use some argument that legitimized my skepticism towards medical remedies. To this she replied that my knowledge of such things is faulty, and that I should stick to my favorite pastime, which, among other things, is reading about medieval philosophy, kabalistic numerology, and other such mysticism – although she also said that she wouldn’t mind it if I stopped pestering her with how coincidental the putting together of certain letters and numbers on page 22 (my birth date) is and so on. “WTF,” she said, “you are a Marxist for God’s sake”, and then asked: “have you gone skeptical of materialism?” Before I got to answer in the negative, she hurried to remind me of some really good philosophy that I should turn to, namely the one that explains every system in a very commonsensical way, and one which is also beautifully performed in The Life of Brian. She had a point. I swallowed the pill without further ado, and now I can say it must have been that which later in the afternoon saved me from fainting in the university’s cafeteria because of bad smell, and which made me rush out, and which also made me swear that one of these days I shall renounce going there altogether.

Later at home, after the fever has been reinstalled, I almost experienced a moment of ataraxia. But not as absolute happiness resulting from freeing myself of preoccupations, as the Stoics and the Cynics had it, but as an “absence of passion” that leads, paradoxically enough, to prophecy and such things (at least according to Abulafia and other such holy men). More specifically, the kind of ataraxia that I had in mind is a condition which not only combines but also aligns skepticism with knowledge in the realm of silent meditation that is induced by a desire to scream. In Judaic studies this is called hitbodedut. Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, a weird but fascinating 18th century Hassidic master, was a practitioner of it. He describes the silent scream this way:

“You can shout loudly in a ‘small still voice’… Anyone can do this. Just imagine the sound of such a scream in your mind. Depict the shout in your imagination exactly as it would sound. Keep this up until you are literally screaming with this soundless ‘small still voice.’ This is actually a scream and not mere imagination. Just as some vessels bring the sound from your lungs to your lips, others bring it to the brain. You can draw the sound through these nerves, literally bringing it into your head. When you do this, you are actually shouting inside your brain.”

While I thought of this my sister skeptically shouted, upon having read an email from home: “WTF!” Apparently, two of our close family members are dying. I responded cynically: “What else is new? My fever went up to 39. I thought I was seeing things, but, nope, this one was real: you can’t miss Vincent on TV, especially if you are intent on hearing what he has to say. He also talked about ataraxia. But at that point I had decided that I was too tired of making connections between things that exist beyond skepticism, but won’t let themselves be acknowledged; I was too tired of making assumptions that won’t let themselves be confirmed; I was too tired of Cartesian logic that wouldn’t try going the ‘imaginary logic’ way (or maybe all this has already happened, but with my fever right now, I can't tell for sure).

Vincent delivered a quote from Annie Hall, in which Woody Allen says this: “what if everything is an illusion? Then I definitely paid too much for my carpet,” which reminded me of a joke my sister told me. In an inter-denomination church the vicar poses a question to the parishioners and promises to exempt them of the church tax for a whole year if they answer correctly: who was the most important person on earth? While the Irish hurry to say: “Saint Patrick,” and the Scots retort: “St. Andrew”, the Jew says: “Jesus.” The vicar registers his answer as the correct one, but privately, having been intrigued, wants to know beyond doubt: “surely you don’t mean that, as a Jew...” to which the other responds: “of course not. If you want my personal opinion, then, I think that Moses was the one, but let’s face it, business is business.”

Between skepticism and knowledge there is a condition we can enact, namely situating ourselves beyond what the whole point is with knowing what we know, believing what we believe, and suspending our disbelief in an act of faith. This will leave us with the ultimate certitude: while our brain will not end in a vat, it will certainly end in a box, along with the rest of our bloody bones. This I said to my sister before closing my eyes imagining things. “Yes, yes,” she said, “all true; the only absolute truth, but and in the meanwhile, WTF, 40 students already love your new book, and they’re waiting for you next week to deliver the word of wisdom.” Amen.

TRIBES

For Kathleen Gibbons

I’m having Stilton blue cheese marinated in port wine, with a shot of 70 percent slivovitch, 2 times distilled. Tribal knowledge. While I think that I should get paid heavy money for my invention, I go back to thinking about church. I think of churches I’ve been to, and on Sundays I paint them with the twelve tribes of Israel in mind. The first two in the series are awaiting the rest of the company. Asher, who plotted to sell his brother Joseph into slavery gets this blessing from his father, Jacob: “From Asher will come the richest food; he will provide the king's delights.” I take another bite of cheese, and with Benjamin in sight, I imagine my spirit poured from the silver cup hidden in his sack. I’m having a hard time seeing him as a ferocious animal. But not his father, obviously, since he issued this vision for him: “a vicious wolf, devouring the prey in the morning, and dividing the spoil at night.” I see Benjamin as the son of my yoga master, Kathleen, whose golden hair and a body to die for, inspires to things beyond sins. The silver cup turns into gold. I leave the company of thieves and traitors, and start seeing the best in everything. Joseph blesses me: “act as if what you want is already true.” I go ask my gut feeling what that is.