"Si bien la serie de letreros de “Atención…” está configurada valiéndose de formas y estrategias de la massmedia informativa, incluso publicitaria, el contenido de esa frase nos invita a tomar una posición sumamente diversa a la del receptor de publicidad. Pues mientras la publicidad busca la obediencia del consumidor ante su imperativo “consume”, la invitación que hace Muntadas deja espacio para que sea posible un sujeto (y no un autómata) capaz de leer la obra, y construir un sentido." (Farriol, 2007)

Naturalmente Internet es incorporado como nuevo medio en la obra de Muntadas desde el mismo momento de su popularización a principio de los noventa a través de la World Wide Web. En 1994, a raíz de la censura que la televisión española había ejercido en 1989 contra su obra TVE: Primer Intento, Muntadas realiza The File Room, una instalación física temporal (en el Randolph Street Gallery de Chicago) y una base de datos permanente y ampliable en el espacio virtual de la Red. Un archivo sobre la censura a escala mundial, desde casos recónditos de la historia hasta los de más candente actualidad. La obra comporta, tanto en su ejecución como en su evolución, un espíritu público y social de diálogo, discusión y aportaciones sucesivas. La instalación recrea el ambiente burocrático de un archivo, con las paredes repletas de cajones archivadores que aumentan la oscuridad del recinto, el cual queda tan solo iluminado por los monitores que permiten la consulta del archivo recopilado.
La obra de Muntadas, en las antípodas de la corporeidad, se esparce por el torrente saturado de estímulos que generan los innumerables soportes de significación actuales. Las nociones postestructuralistas de “texto” y “simulacro” no operan simplemente como disoluciones de los conceptos modernistas de “verdad” y “política democrática” (Ballesteros, 1989), sino que son puestas en funcionamiento en su praxis artística gracias a un exhaustivo conocimiento de las nuevas tecnologías y entornos sociales que las posibilitan.

El texto se vuelve físicamente ubicuo, sus lecturas se multiplican, se superponen sus significados, como “un tejido de citas provenientes de los mil focos de la cultura” (Barthes, 1994, 69). Se produce una doble apertura hacia el receptor: tanto en cuanto a la libertad total para pactar el significado, como en la posibilidad material de intervención. De este modo, los límites de los conceptos autoría, obra finita y realidad/ficción quedan voluntaria y significativamente desdibujados. En cuanto al simulacro, no se trata de ninguna protesta ante la espectacularidad fingida de la sociedad. Muntadas simula el discurso televisivo, propagandístico, artístico... utiliza el simulacro omnipresente de la cultura como material conceptual para sus representaciones, por ejemplo, evidenciando o poniendo en crisis los mecanismos espectacularizantes de las galerías y museos; esto es (como en Borges, como en Fellini) en lo que consiste su verdadera metáfora realista.
En 2005, Muntadas recibe el Premio Nacional de las Artes Plásticas, concedido por el Ministerio de Cultura, a juicio del jurado:

“por su trayectoria artística y por su influencia en el arte español contemporáneo. Muntadas es, sin duda, uno de los artistas con un reconocimiento internacional más amplio. A caballo entre los medios de comunicación y las artes visuales, su contribución a la renovación del lenguaje artístico, incluyendo el vídeo, la televisión, etcétera, es excepcional” (ORDEN CUL/4074/2005, de 16 de diciembre, por la que se conceden los Premios Nacionales de Artes Plásticas y de Fotografía, correspondientes a 2005. Boletín Oficial del Estado Nº 310/2005. Publicado el 28/12/2005).

Actualmente es profesor invitado del Programa de Artes Visuales de la Escuela de Arquitectura del M.I.T. en Cambridge (MA) y del Instituto Universitario de Arquitectura del Veneto de Venecia. En una de sus últimas actuaciones participó en la 51ª edición de la Bienal de Venecia, transformando el Pabellón Español en el Pabellón On Translation.

Everything about Beijing needed to be pristine - so pristine that the little girl who sung during the opening ceremonies was actually a lip syncer. Apparently the other girl wasn't pristine and cute enough. The fireworks - many were digitally added post-ceremony for airing on NBC. The city itself was transformed, from new buildings (usurping older ones, often family-run businesses) to duct taping brand names (even on toilets).

All is not as it appears. (The games have been a Barthes heaven really.) As we continue into our digital existences, I hope that we do not lose sight of the smoke and mirrors. Yes, China gave us an opening and closing ceremonies the like we haven't seen. They also needed to in order for us to turn our attention away from Tianamen Square, Tibet, a controlled Internet and press. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Tema de reflexión:
El presente escrito pretende hacer un análisis del proceso de construcción del objeto de estudio y de algunos lineamientos metodológicos utilizados para la investigación realizada por Barthes en “La cámara lúcida”.

Razones por las cuales elegí esta investigación para analizar:

 En primer lugar mi elección se basó en la misma razón por la que Barthes seleccionó las fotos para su corpus: por placer, desde este punto de vista recorrí el libro por primera vez. En segundo término, considero que la imagen fotográfica en nuestra sociedad actual es de gran relevancia, por el creciente uso de cámaras digitales y de celulares con cámaras integradas, es decir, simbólicamente le damos hoy en día un papel preponderante a las fotografías. Y por eso mismo es que la teorización de Barthes en este libro puede aportarnos para la problematización de lo social a partir de la comunicación, especialmente con sus conceptos de Studium y Punctum. Esto es, inteligir a la luz de su teoría los modos en que la sociedad construye el sentido a partir de la imagen fotográfica, apuntando a dar cuenta del plano de lo simbólico y de la dimensión de lo imaginario en este tipo de prácticas. Al no ser una disciplina con un objeto de estudio predeterminado, el campo de estudios de la comunicación, podemos construir conceptualmente (ya que el objeto nunca esta dado) nuestro objeto teórico, articulando nuestra percepción de la realidad, esto es, el fenómeno empírico (que es el sentido social que se le atribuye a la imagen fotográfica) con una elaboración teórica acerca del tema de indagación. Y esto se debe a que la construcción del sentido es siempre un proceso social.

Ahora bien, ¿Cómo va construyendo Barthes su objeto de estudio?
La cámara lúcida, paradójicamente es un libro en donde no se pretende realizar un estudio de las técnicas fotográficas o el análisis de los estilos, sino todo lo contrario, lo que intenta ver es la foto como signo, como productora de sentido, es decir un análisis semiológico de la imagen. Nada tiene que ver con una historia de la fotografía. Hay además una relación que cruza todo el libro entre la fotografía y la muerte.
A partir del estado de cosas del campo de la realidad, de lo fenoménico, él encuentra una falta: la fotografía nunca ha sido estudiada desde el punto de vista fenomenológico. Decide entonces intervenirlo con producción de conocimiento científico. Ese estado de cosas, esa situación previa se llama situación problemática.

Entre los antecedentes de la cuestión, Barthes encuentra una dificultad en enfocar el tema de la fotografía por el hecho de que el referente se adhiera al significante: los libros que son técnicos, para ver el significante fotográfico deben enfocar de muy cerca, así mismo, los que son históricos o sociológicos, para observar el fenómeno global de la fotografía deben enfocar de muy lejos. Ninguno de ellos le hablaba a Barthes de las fotos que le interesaban, le producían placer o emoción. A pesar de la voz científica y clasificatoria, su deseo le hace negar el comentario sociológico. Explica su incomodidad de encontrarse en medio de 2 lenguajes (expresivo y crítico) y entre varios discursos en el seno del lenguaje crítico: los de la sociología, la semiología y del psicoanálisis. Barthes se encuentra insatisfecho de unos y de otros, porque pretende no reducir en su análisis el afecto, es que se resiste a todo sistema reductor.
Es así como intenta, convirtiéndose en mediador de toda la fotografía, “formular, a partir de algunos movimientos personales, el rasgo fundamental, el universal sin el cual no habría fotografía”

La hipótesis central del libro de Barthes sobre la fotografía consiste en reivindicar el carácter INDICIAL (en la terminología de Peirce) como principio básico de la fotografía, diferente de su naturaleza analógica.
Debido a que su objeto es indagar acerca de la esencia de la fotografía, aquel rasgo esencial que la distinga de la comunidad de las imágenes, deja de lado la naturaleza analógica puesto que esta característica es la que tiene en común con ellas.

Planteo teórico del problema: la teoría domina el proceso de investigación y de ella dependerá lo que se va a investigar (la esencia del fenómeno), desde qué perspectiva se lo hará y el método o las técnicas que se seguirán, de acuerdo a esa teoría. Por eso, una vez precisado el objeto de estudio, construye un referente teórico para su problema: “En esta búsqueda de la fotografía, la fenomenología me prestaba un poco de su proyecto y un poco de su lenguaje”. Entonces, el problema de investigación, la construcción conceptual que se refiere a un determinado proceso o fenómeno, la realiza a partir de la fenomenología de Husserl. Además se nutre de las teorizaciones de Nietzsche, Proust y Pierce entre otros. A partir del concepto de esencia el autor puede construir a la fotografía como objeto de estudio científico.
Construye variables teóricamente: que son interrogantes o preguntas, es decir, las dimensiones del fenómeno. Barthes utiliza diversas “Guías” para su análisis a lo largo de su investigación. Por ejemplo, toma como punto de partida para su investigación las fotos de las que estaba seguro que “existían” para él.
Como “medida del saber fotográfico se interroga” a si mismo qué es lo que sabe su cuerpo sobre la foto. Y clasifica así a la foto como objeto de 3 prácticas que pueden considerarse también emociones o intenciones: hacer, experimentar, mirar (operator, spectator, spectrum). Lo que hace él, y lo dice explícitamente, es mirar una serie de fotografías y guiarse por la atracción y no por otra cosa. Decide elegir un corpus de imágenes que va publicando en el libro y se da cuenta no todas las fotografías lo atraen de la misma manera.
De allí convoca dos conceptos que van a guiar al texto que son el concepto de Studium y el concepto de Puntum.

STUDIUM                                                      PUNCTUM
Verbo to like                                                          Verbo to love
Cultura                                                           Hieren / punzan / me lastiman / violentas
Educación                                                          No del orden de lo representado/ Certifican
Convencional / codificado                                  Tiene que ver con el azar
Carácter simbólico                                              Carácter Indicial

Se advierte en sus movimientos personales una vigilancia epistemológica, una operación de vigilancia crítica permanente sobre la selección del punto de vista para analizar su corpus. Esta interacción entre las definiciones y las observaciones se encuentra al finalizar la primera parte del libro, en ella concluye que su placer “era un mediador imperfecto, y que una subjetividad reducida a su proyecto hedonista no podía reconocer lo universal”. Comprende que debe descender más en sí mismo para interrogar “lo evidente” de la foto, así es como encuentra la esencia en “La fotografía del invernadero”, ya no interrogándose desde el punto de vista del placer, sino en relación con lo que llama románticamente “el amor y la muerte”.

Concluye que la esencia misma de la fotografía es la posición conjunta de realidad y pasado que se encuentra en ella, el NOEMA cuyo nombre será: “esto ha sido”.
Por eso mismo, “el rasgo inimitable de la foto (su noema) es el hecho de que alguien haya visto el referente en carne y hueso o incluso en persona”. “La esencia de la fotografía consiste en ratificar lo que ella misma representa”.

This article was a bit hard to swallow, but it discusses the relationship between the Author and their Work. It puts forth the arguement that in literature, even though the writer is the origin of the words on the page, the voice it could be could be anyone's, for any purpose, thus resulting in (dun dun duuuun), 'the death of the author'. That the writing isn't taking place from any sort of perspective, and thus the concepts of time and space can be bent and broken to achieve the desired effect.

At least, that's what I gathered from it.

I've been reading Michel Houellebecq's The Possibility of an Island  and am trying to decide whether I thought it was good or not. Sound stupid? Maybe. The schism seems to be between my appreciation of the scope of ideas and themes the book tackles, while being simultaneously completely non-plussed by his actual style/use of language, and the insufficient way with which the 'big' ideas are handled.

For those unfamiliar with Houellebacq's ouevre, the misanthropic Frenchman writes with a nihilism that's breath-taking to behold. So much so, that I've been wondering if it's a canny device, designed to invoke such great disgust or shock in the reader as a way of getting them to alter their thinking or behaviour, if Houellebecq's intent is somehow polemical, even if his methods are confoundingly inappropriate for that project. And, if that is the case, what does that say about such harsh cynicism as a literary device? To use exaggerated cynicism as a tool to incite revolution/response surely suggests an actual idealism? A belief in The Possibility of Change?

To give some sense of what I'm on about, these are the plot synopses for:

Atomised - two brothers who barely know each other endure divergent trajectories with the experience of love as a human phenomenon, with one being simply too emotionally immature to love and the other - via his career as an exceptional genetic biologist - trying to eradicate it by perfecting a cloning process that ensures sexual reproduction and human attraction are no longer necessary for the continuation of the species. Much explicit sex, most of it joyless and weary, voicing continual links between the decay of the body and the subordinate importance of every physical function to sex.

Platform - More about the commodification of desire and attraction, posits the idea of how westernised industrial capitalism would respond to sex tourism as appealing (rather than appalling) if it were packaged correctly, while taking some blatant shots at Islam along the way. Much explicit sex, filtered through the author's trademark bored misogyny, ensues.

The Possibility of an Island's central plot conceit is alternating chapters told by a wealthy, influential and successful shock comedian of the contemporary era, Daniel, and those recounted by Daniel24/25, his neo-human descendants of 1000 years later. The neo-humans, it becomes apparent, are conceived of by a cult of Raelian-like ascetics (the Elohim) obsessed with developing a cloning process that would allow both physical and limited intellectual 'immortality', whom Daniel gravitates toward after realising at age 47 that his belief in love is flawed (he has only loved two women; Isabelle who had no interest in sex, and Esther, who had no interest in love), and that human existence would be improved if desire were simply 'bred out'. Sporadic sexual descriptions, with the misogyny factor at its usual high levels.

Heady stuff, and even with these brief outlines, there are some recurring thematic concerns that are interesting at the very least.

At first, I simply wanted to run with the whole 'Death of the Author'  thing, and detach Houllebecq from the content of his works, but some elements of Possibility's plot are eerily (surely intentionally?) autobiographical: Daniel's non-relationship with his estranged son (Houellebecq himself has a son whom he ignored for years); Daniel's reputation as founded on deliberate shock tactics in his work (Houllebecq was taken to court, the charges ultimately dismissed, by Islamist groups accusing him of inciting racial/religious hatred through some of the statements in Platform); Daniel (like Houellebecq) lives in Spain, where he first became exposed to the Elohim/Raelians.

And this is precisely why I think the book ultimately fails to resonate more broadly.

The diminishment of the female characters to superficially developed sexual foils for Daniel's own insecurities about his libido is, if nothing new in much fiction of many kinds, fairly telling in the consideration of a novel that seeks to posit a 'solution' for the conundrum of unchanging male desire in a doomed/decaying body. But my confusion is to do with the extent - it is often so cold, so cruel in its reductiveness of female sexuality, so calculating, so imbricated in a certainty of sex and love having nothing to do with each other, that it seems paradoxical that Daniel continually espouses a belief in love. That is, until the sexual availability of his partner is finally disconnected, and Daniel's nihilism becomes all consuming - though, in pursuit of immortality, it's really only the destruction of painful desire that Daniel seeks.

The book is not an enjoyable read - the use of prose is not artful - and the ideas thrown up are told in such a phallic voice as to alienate at least half the potential readership from the get go; blatantly angry cultural assumptions and essentialisms about what men and women are are invoked, covered over by a patina of quasi-academic 'references' aimed at conveying some gravity of pronouncement.

What am I asking? This: is such a confrontational tactic (the rawly misogynistic, misanthropic voice in which the future is imagined) useful or valid if that approach creates mistrust in the narrative position? How can we identify with Daniel if we see him as very extreme? If he is not 'like us', then why would we want to alter our behaviour/beliefs to avert experiencing the malaise his entire narration is drenched in?

In simpler language - if Houellebecq is, as I suspect, trying to make us think 'woah, we have to rethink how we look at sex and love and relationships or else we will become like this Daniel guy and society is doomed!' - does it help to align the content so closely with himself (an extreme figure, in many ways, hardly an 'everyman') - and his own personal history and position, making incredibly challenging ideas (humanity should seek to do away with desire; love is an aberration that obstructs evolution) just seem like the exaggerated personal beliefs of a wordy, pseudo-intellectual crank flummoxed by society's apparently insufficient explanations for why young women don't want to fuck old men?

By no means is it any polemical writer's obligation, nor even an effective literary conceit, to speak from the 'everyman' position; what I am suggesting is that the *specific* project of The Possibility of an Island might have been more effectively realised if it had.

To sum: a book I would definitely recommend, if only for the fact that it is so artless in its manipulation of the reader - yet while addressing inherently interesting subjects - that one can't help but engage with it critically, even if it's not particularly enjoyable. Essentially, it forces you into a 'well what do you think?' dialogue with it, simply because of the extremity of the caustic and bitter sense of weltschmerz it expresses.

Which doesn't make it a good read, but still somehow a worthy one.

mood - chipper
music - Frengers, Mew
reading - the last few chapters of Snowblindby Robert Sabbag that I put aside to finish The Master and Margarita

instant awareness of
icon's idea,

wine or sour milk.

It is to see
the opaque in
the concept.

2

You turn from your history

but form brings

you back there

without all of the global signs

(city

of nebula,

appearance of

reflections)

& then you name &

rename the star's sanctions

(walls with no doors)

To leap is to transgress

imperial trees...

3

O oblique!
in your seried

space I write you!

The signifier is not the signified

- Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)

The Imp - when she's not imping - has a nursery-rhyme name; so, in fact, does her lover. Her sister's has a Z in it and her father's siblings' names almost all (it's a large clan) sound exciting and Celtic-poetical; and they're all such gifts. What am I on about?

Ferdinand de Saussure was a very important linguist - he came up with a couple of things. Bear with me. Firstly, separating the synchronic and diachronic elements of (verbal) meaning, ie, the various different meanings a word has right now, as opposed to its etymological, historical development of meaning over time. This observation gradually disabused society (and leafy acedeme) of what's known as the "etymological fallacy" - the idea that the older version of a word is the "true" one. Just think of Col. Bufton-Tufton (Ret'd.) who writes regularly to The Telegraph along these lines:

Sir

Your correspondent incorrectly used the adjective "sophisticated" to describe the elegant surroundings of the Beefeater's Harim in Lower Ranja-Ullapool ("What I did in my summer holidays",30th February).

You must surely be aware that this is the incorrect use of "sophisticated" - unless I failed to register the use of sophistry and a cheating, spoilt and sullied nature in our own tour guide when Mrs Bufton-Tufton and I last soujourned in Lower Ranja-Ullapool.

&cetera.....

Secondly, but linked, he challenged the rarely-acknowledged, but very potent, notion that the word basically IS the thing; that there is some intrinsic link between a word and the thing it represents (respectively, the signifier and the signified).

The idea, hitherto, had been that as everything had been named in the Garden of Eden (ahem), the original name of something must be right, must be intrinsically (and, I suppose, sacredly) linked to that object. He said, simply, that names are completely arbitrary; as are any notional associations you may make between words (passion with rose, to cite another studier of language, Roland Barthes.) - they're not "real" links. Another signifier (word) would do just as well.

Now, we risk running off into neuro-linguistics (why do cultures / languages choose particular new words to represent certain objects / notions? And have you noticed that the words for Big Philosophical Concepts in English are still linguistically Latinate, ie, they are very little changed - which is usually because they're not much used....), but we won't. No. Not today, anyhoo.

The reason I wanted to splash around in this one is that I think we do - no matter what common sense & Ferdie d S tell us - draw a near-superstitious link between a person's name and that person. Just think how carefully parents choose their children's names; authors' their characters'; and perhaps what judgements you make of someone based on their first name before you meet them. We may not mean to, but we do. Think of the children who make up new names for themselves, to match their fantasy of themselves - and the pop stars who make it a reality.

So - even if first names are completely arbitrary, there is something powerfully resonant about them for most of us (ask a practising spell-maker what they think of the power of words...). Could it be that Saussure was not entirely right, then?

What's in a name? Perhaps more than we dare to dream....

Tinimbang Ka was Brocka's breakout film, starring Lolita Rodriguez, Christopher de Leon, Eddie Garcia, and scriptwriter Mario O'Hara in a pivotal role. In many ways, the script and directing here is still unrefined, and the film often lapses into unnecessary melodrama, but it nonetheless indicates the best of things to come: Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag (1975), Insiang, Jaguar (1979), Bona (1980), and Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim (1985)--Brocka's more committed social realist work. Known for their preferential sympathy for the poor, Brocka's films can nonetheless be grim and pessimistic about their prospect in life. The characters remain trapped in cramped spaces, unable to escape the vicious cycle of poverty; their defeat is assured from the start. His films, however, are not as humorless as commonly fussed about. Some of the best scenes in Brocka's films involve droll, almost documentary rendering of Filipino life, probably best appreciated by insiders. The funeral scene where the townsfolk prop the casket up and take turns taking pictures with the corpse is perhaps one of my favorites in Tinimbang Ka.

Insiang, starring Hilda Koronel, Mona Lisa, and Ruel Vernal, has the reputation of the first Filipino film to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival (1978). It is without reservation my favorite Brocka film. Shot in the slums of Tondo through neorealist lenses, its domestic melodrama at the same time aspires to Greek tragedy. It is Brocka's tightest, most well composed film; the character's fates play out inevitably from the opening slaughterhouse scene to the catastrophic last act. As usual, Brocka brings levity to the nastiness of poverty with cinema verité details, as when Tonya very publicly throws out a clan of in-laws living in her shanty. She demands the clothes she had given the children to be handed back; their mother, outraged, strips off the garments from the bewildered kids right there on the streets. This, for me, is the punctum of the film, as Barthes would say. There is another: at the end, when Insiang visits Tonya in prison, she confesses to her mother that she deliberately provoked her jealousy in order to get back at Dado; Insiang rushes to embrace her, and there, for a split second, Tonya's expression yields to motherly tenderness, before quickly turning, once again, into that of the jealous rival.

Brocka's films are are always marked by strong acting, not just from the stars, but also from the rest of the cast; there is a feeling of an ensemble effort, which is not unexpected, since Brocka brings with him the crew of the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) Kalinangan Ensemble. I saw Insiang for the first time on the big screen when a print restored by the French government was played in a Makati theater. Mona Lisa, silver-haired, graced the screening.

Insiang in review:

• From Film Society of Lincoln Center, a long-winded academic review from José B. Capino: "This [slaughterhouse] sequence seemingly foreshadows the fate of Brocka’s waifish heroine... Too vulgar to qualify as allegory, this analogy aspires instead to exhaust the signifying powers of hyperbole... This calculated mimetic failure can be found in Brocka’s best work..."




• From Slant Magazine, a smart review by Nick Schager: "Brocka's portrait of familial treachery and societal abandonment... channels its Sirk/Fassbinder melodrama through the filter of neorealism, its story's heightened emotions kept at a simmer by an aesthetic at once verité-blunt and yet shrewdly, meticulously composed."




• From Internet Movie Database, a gushing user comment by Noel Vera: "Insiang is arguably Brocka's masterpiece--it's his most intense work."




• From Reverse Shot, a perplexed review by Michael Joshua Rowin that is more telling of the reviewer's own lack of finesse: "Insiang is fueled with missionary morality, a sense that the world’s wickedness is a pure state in need of nothing less than divine clean-up."

"La cámara registra para aliviarnos del esfuerzo de la memoria." Algo así decía aquella frase.

Ya sabes que soy muy malo recordando frases; me quedo un poco con lo que vienen a querer decir y luego lo suelto otro poco como me parece. No sé si eso está muy bien, pero puede que sea revelador. No sé. Puede que eso ocurra también en las fotografías.

¿Quién era, Barthes, el que hablaba del punctum?

Sí, asientes, era Barthes, de aquello de las fotografías que captaban el instante, ya veo que te acuerdas, y entonces daba igual que apareciera un caimán, una luz roja en los ojos o una tela negra, algunos de esos montajes que tanto hacen ahora. Daba igual porque de alguna manera todo lo demás era accidental.

Lo importante suele ser aquello de lo que escapas.

¿Ves? Eso no recuerdo quién lo dijo.

La mayor conquista es la de la realidad.

Eso tampoco.

Pero sí aquel álbum de fotos y tú de pequeño con tu madre señalando algo fuera de plano. La cara de tu madre y tu cara y el pie de foto en el que dices:

"Mamá, ¿eso es más bonito que yo?"

Y ahora pienso que es algo así, que el arte de sacar fotografías consiste en hacer que lo accidental esté pero no importe, que no sean tan necesarios los caimanes, las luces rojas, los pies de foto.

Que la memoria cuente.

Pero que también se alivie.

De este lado del Atlántico, en la antigua Nueva Francia, la margarina produjo otro tipo de controversias. La industria láctea de Quebec estaba formada en esos tiempos por pequeños productores que en su gran mayoría seguían con una tradición familiar. Su fortaleza económica y política se vió reflejada en la disposición del gobierno de Quebec de prohibir la fabricación- y el consumo- de margarina en toda la provincia por muchos años.

La transformación de la economía mundial y la adquisición de enormes ramas de la industria canadiense por multinacionales y capitales estadounidenses permitió el ingreso de corporaciones al mercado lácteo y de alimentos. La prohibición de fabricar margarina fue levantada en Quebec en los 80s, pero con la condición que debía diferenciarse de la manteca, no sólo en el envase sino también en la característica como producto. La margarina de Quebec, entonces, se empezó a fabricar, pero de color blanco.

Hace unos días, los productores perdieron la última batalla de la margarina. La corte dispuso que la margarina podía fabricarse del mismo color que la manteca. La última máscara que separaba lo "real" de lo real cayó y desde este mes los quebequenses disfrutaran de los mismos privilegios que la población mundial, el aceite vegetal solidificado tendrá el color de su hermana mayor. Eso si, el envase seguirá siendo el famoso pote redondo que era para untar.

Le mythe est un mode de signification qui se définit par une forme et une fonction.

Le mythe comme forme

Le mythe est tout d'abord une forme d'expression particulière : « Le mythe ne se définit pas par l'objet de son message, mais par la façon dont il le profère : il y a des limites formelles au mythe, il n'y en a pas de substantielles ». (p181)

Tel un parasite, il détourne des signes existants et en déforme la signification afin d'en faire les signifiants de nouveaux concepts qu'ils ne contiennent pas a priori. Les signes deviennent des « valant pour », des équivalents qui, grâce à un principe d'analogie, expriment de nouvelles idées. Ainsi, par exemple, le simple évènement que constitue la prise de la Bastille, devient le signifiant de concepts beaucoup plus larges comme la Révolution Française, ou encore l'idée de République.

A ce titre, le mythe est ambigu, car il se prête à une double lecture. Cette ambiguïté est la source de son efficacité sociale, car elle l'innocente en lui permettant de ne pas se présenter explicitement pour ce qu'il est :

- « L'appropriation du concept se retrouve tout d'un coup éloigné par la littéralité du sens » (p188).

- « Le mythe est une valeur, il n'a pas la vérité pour sanction : rien ne l'empêche d'être un alibi perpétuel : il lui suffit que son signifiant ait deux faces pour disposer toujours d'un ailleurs : le sens est toujours là pour présenter la forme, la forme est toujours là pour distancer le sens » (p 196).

Le mythe comme fonction :

Sous l'apparence inoffensive de son sens littéral, le mythe véhicule en réalité une charge axiologique et idéologique : « Le mythe est lu comme système factuel alors qu'il n'est qu'un système sémiologique » (p204). Il constitue l'expression et la légitimation de la vision du monde d'un groupe social.

Le mythe dépossède des états de fait sociaux de leur caractère historique et contingent afin de les faire passer pour des nécessités naturelles : « le mythe est constitué par la déperdition de la qualité historique des choses : les choses perdent en lui le souvenir de leur fabrication. Le monde entre dans le langage comme un rapport dialectique d'activités, d'actes humains : il sort du mythe comme un tableau harmonieux d'essences » (p 216).

Le mythe est donc conservateur par essence. Il vise à immobiliser le monde, tout comme la représentation du Cosmos, véhiculée jadis par les mythes grecs, assignait à chacun sa place dans l'ordre des choses : « Car la fin même des mythes, c'est d'immobiliser le monde : il faut que les mythes suggèrent et miment une économie universelle qui a fixé une fois pour toutes la hiérarchie des possessions » (P229).

Pour en savoir plus : Mythologies, Roland Barthes

From this excellent book, on Roland Barthes's "Chronique" column that ran in the Nouvel Observateur for three months toward the end of his life, from December 1978 to March 1979.

Each column comprised an average of four separately titled and unconnected entries ranging from a few lines to a couple of substantial paragraphs. In each case Barthes gave his reactions to a few things that had caught his attention that week, for example, in the first column, a book about Leni Riefenstahl, an encounter at the hairdresser's, media coverage of the collective suicides of a sect in Guyana, and a rumor that Mayor Chirac planned to outlaw busking.

[...]

On 26 March 1978 Barthes's readers were confronted with a single entry announcing a temporary suspension of his column that would in fact prove permanent. In 'Pause' Barthes outlines very lucidly what he had been trying to achieve and then explains why he feels he failed. Scotching the rumor that he was trying to resurrect Mythologies, Barthes insists that his 'Chronique' was an experiment, a quest for a new form of writing that would be deliberately brief, minor, and gentle, whilst at the same time political. In fact the political and moral chanrge would come from this deliberate doceur, aimed at contrasting with the overheated clamour of surrounding discourses. For Barthes, to use the pages of a political weekly to talk about incidents that had struck him that week, 'mes scoops à moi' (my personal scoops), was to counteract the scale of values imposed by the press's obsession with big events. To risk talking about 'le ténu, le futile, l'insignificant', is to change the scale [...] the media should make room for 'weak' events that nevertheless point to real malaises.

He even, it seems, understood what the problem is with blogging:

"The flaw is that for every incident I bring up I feel myself drawn (by what power - or weakness?) to give it a meaning (social, moral, aesthetic, etc.) to have the last word." What prevents the columns from embodying the kind of writing Barthes had dreamt of is the seemingly irresistable tendency to moralize, to make a point, to have the last word, to lay down the law (even if it is one's own).

Roland Barthes's essay, "The Death of the Author," has had precisely the opposite impact of its intent. Its intent was to prevent critics from achieving finality in their interpretations of a text by claiming to know the author's intention:

Once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile. To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing. Such a conception suits criticism very well, the latter then allotting itself the important task of discovering the Author (or its hypostases: society, history, psyche, liberty) beneath the work: when the Author has been found, the text is 'explained' -- victory to the critic. (Roland Barthes, "Death of the Author," Image - Music - Text, trans. Stephen Heath [New York: Hill and Wang,1977], 147.)

Paradoxically, cultural studies is full of "victories" for critics, of moments when the critic triumphantly claims to know better than a writer what motivates that writer's text, a cultural producer his or her production. That is, uncritically deployed, gender, sexual-preferance, heterosexism, racism, sexism, classism, the economy, politics -- these are as much "hypostases" susceptible of standing in for "Author" as "society, history, psyche, liberty," Barthes's examples.

It is possible for someone who lived before me to know more about something than I do, and so I'm trying to extract those things here, but not in a way that is naively anti- or a-theoretical.

Of late, I seem to have neglected this blog a little. Partly because I recently went here on this. Also, I've been working exclusively on my dissertation, and I'm wary of saturating this blog with posts about the iconography of May '68 (snore?), especially as we're now in June and online attention to that period seems to be calming down. But I am determined that this blog won't be going the way of my childhood karate lessons or brief dalliance with ornithology, and so, in a gesture of resurrection, this post will begin with a quote uncovered during my dissertation research, from Roland Barthes' 1967 paper "Semiology and Urbanism":

The city is a discourse, and this discourse is actually a language: the city speaks to its inhabitants, we speak our city, the city where we are, simply by inhabiting it, by traversing it, by looking at it.

Of course, this isn't an unfamiliar proposal, but it places slightly different emphasis to the psychogeographical approach to urbanism with which it may seem indistinguishable. Barthes gives primacy to place: the city is there, concrete, and we traverse it as an already written text. The Situationists have it the other way around, in that we write the city ourselves, and the importance is how we internalise it. This is likewise Michel de Certeau's angle that I've quoted previously.

The image above comes from Voices of Resistance from Occupied London, which is available online and as a very well produced little zine/journal. It reminds me of Guy Debord's 1957 Psychogeographic Guide to Paris. As I was cycling through Holland, similar maps came into being in my own head, constructing mental arrangements of real places which made absolute sense to me at that moment but would invariably have been unrecognisable if charted and compared with the real topography of the places I was moving through. Specifically, I became interested in how the physical entrance that one makes into a city affects a more psychological transgression. Or, the relationship between physical experience and internal perception of new (urban) environments.

I noticed, for example, that the Dutch bike paths (which are brilliant, and this is one area where aping our Continental neighbours' approach to urbanism would be of great benefit) often follow different routes into the cities than the major arterial roads. The bike paths regularly run alongside roads - separate, not in the glass-strewn gutter as they are here in Britain - and along pavements; but where roads all converge into hemorrhaged roundabouts, bike paths can pass under, over or around congested areas, and generally allow access into a city via routes that are more integrated with the urban environment than roads which are themselves boundaries and obstacles.

A slightly different example that I noticed when we returned to England was how London's grandiose train stations act as portals that make a binary divide between being in the city or not. These terminals are like giant gaping mouths that swallow and spew people to and from the street. This arrival at the urban environment promts a different sensory experience to the more gradual entry by car or bike: you are suddenly there, in the midst of it all. At the train station, the city feels bigger, endless; less located and finite than having felt first hand its suburbs and physical make up. The bike can shatter the myth of the metropolis.

PS - I was thinking of making this a post about reconfigured maps, but it seems thats already quite well-trodden ground. Particularly interesting is this, Strange Maps, which demonstrates some of the effects of ideology on cartography. There's also this oldish post from Fantastic Journal which looks at some reworked Tube maps, to which I commented a link to this map of DBB's nascent sexuality. I like these collections of map tattoos, too, although they mostly err a bit close to Union Jack/Bulldog tattoos for me.

PPS - Later in that Barthes paper, he talks about how "the problem is to extract an expression like 'language of the city' from the purely metaphorical stage... the real scientific leap will be achieved when we can speak of the language of the city without metaphor". Looking about on what I've just written above, its riddled with metaphor. I can't decide whether Barthes is here offering a realisable methodology for urban thinking, or making a more vague conceptual projection as, y'know, those French philosophy guys are prone to doing.

Seen on the Oprah Winfrey show (whilst at the gym): a series of short films illustrating The Top Five Causes of Aging. The Number One cause of aging is apparently Bad Diet; the film shows a panoramic view of three morbidly obese women stuffing their greasy faces with all manner of cakes and hamburgers; then the camera switches to a damning close-up of Enemy of Youth #1 -a plate of croissants. As well as being made from butter, a substance actually made from pure fat, croissants are also of course French and the message was thus clear: croissants are evil - you wouldn’t see a croissant fighting in Iraq, they’d just surrender, plus they make you old. The second major cause of aging according to Oprah is Lack of Sleep. To illustrate this point, we are treated to a short film of an obese woman tossing and turning in bed, her excessive bulk and loud, water-buffalo-esque snores rendering her incapable of more than five consecutive minutes of sleep,  presumably prior to attempting which she consumed a large quantity of butter-rich croissants.

Oprah, whilst well-intentioned, is obviously wrong about the top causes of aging: the top cause of aging, as any fool knows, is Time. Yes, Time itself, the March of History,  is woman’s number one enemy against which she must exercise constant vigilance. Fortunately, there is no need for alarm, because the world’s leading scientists, all of whom are, if we are to believe the ads, employed by the world’s leading cosmetics manufacturers have been working around the clock (as it were) in the War on Time. Their aim: to halt Time in its dastardly tracks and end the misery it causes with its fine lines and their sidekicks, the sinister and horrific-sounding deep wrinkles. Cosmetics company Borghese have ‘invented’ a product called Time Defying Foundation that not only confers a perfectly even, light orange complexion upon the consumer, but according to the marketing literature is “Fortified with unique, restorative Acqua di Vita mineral water complex” that “Minimizes fine lines with advanced micro-milled pigments”. 

Well, of course it does.

For the edification of Borghese’s marketing department, here are some things that can be said to “Defy Time”: The Time Machine from H G Wells’ eponymous classic, Superman, the Alcubierre Warp drive. Things that do not, in any sense, “Defy Time”: croissants, Borghese Time Defying Foundation, cats.

Whilst the final three Top Five Causes of Aging were lost to history (i.e. I moved away from the television screen showing Oprah as I’d completed my workout), it is noted that world-leading physicists at Clinique have developed an “Anti Gravity Firming Face Cream”, and we can thus reasonably be sure that (a) “gravity” is high on Oprah’s list of major age antagonists and (b) excellent use is being made of the world’s particle accelerators in the War on Time.

I själva verket är vi alla nedsänkta mitt ibland dem, myterna. Och det produceras ständigt nya.

En myt är bilden av någonting, inte tinget, saken, händelsen i-sig; en representation som fastnat. Därmed stannar den upp en hel tankeprocess, man kommer inte ända fram, ända ner, man hindras på vägen, leds på avvägar, hamnar alldeles galet. Ett slags runt-runt-enebärsbusken. I all evinnerlighet.

Detta tänkt medan jag läser Barthes Mytologier. Boken känns emellanåt aningen oprecis, den slinter liksom. Men karl’n tar dem, myterna, på allvar. Och bara det gör boken värd att läsa.

Myterna handlar ytterst om historielöshet, frånvaron av historia, som Barthes skriver. ”Myten berövar det föremål som det talar om all historia. Historien försvinner i myten; den är en sorts idealisk tjänarinna: hon gör i ordning, bär fram, ordnar, när husbonden kommer försvinner hon tyst: det är bara att njuta utan att fråga sig varifrån detta vackra föremål kommer.” (245) Här hänvisar Barthes till ett mycket precist Marx-citat: ”[D]äremot måste vi ta itu med människornas historia, eftersom nästan hela ideologin reduceras till antingen en förvrängd uppfattning av denna historia eller till en fullständig abstraktion av den.”

Och så kommer jag att tänka på något Debord skrev i sin Kommentarer till Skådespelssamhället:

”Den största fördel skådespelet dragit av att det förklarat historien fredlös, förpassat all nutida historia till underjorden och lyckats få allt historiskt sinne i samhället att rent allmänt falla i glömska, det är framför allt att det lyckats dölja sin egen historia, sin egen erövring av världen. Dess makt framstår redan som så välbekant, att det verkar som om den alltid varit där. Inkräktare vill alltid skyla över att de just har anlänt.”

Mittlerweile haben sich die Gegensätze von Schreibendem und Lesendem vollkommen aufgelöst. Denn während sich die Menge der Kommunikation zu Benjamins Zeiten noch durch gewissen Selektionsmaßnahmen definierte, ermöglicht es heute das Internet, dass durch die schier endlosen Speicherkapazitäten Informationen in unbegrenztem Maße ausgetauscht werden können. Wir erleben durch die Negation dieses Unterschieds eine vollkommene Transparenz der Oberflächen: die Texte schreiben sich immer weiter, es gibt gewissermaßen nur noch „schreibbare“ Texte, da es nur noch unendliche Signifikantenreihungen gibt, die in einem Universum bedeutungsloser und gleichgültiger Algorithmen zirkulieren und mit prinzipiell allen anderen Signifikantenstrukturen vernetzt sind. Dabei kehrt sich die eigentlich negativ-entropische Tendenz kommunikativer Prozesse in eine entropische um: die sich verschiebenden Signifikantenstrukturen werden in sich stetig auflösende Datensupplemente verwandelt, die, je nachdem wie weit sie in ihrer semantischen Beziehung voneinander entfernt liegen, sich gegenseitig aufheben. Durch die Gleichschaltung auch noch so gegensätzlicher Informationen, durch die Verlinkung auf einer Oberfläche, dem Bildschirm, entledigt sich das Wissen seiner Legitimationsgrundlage eines Gültigkeitsanspruches: Feier einer „tiefen Oberflächlichkeit“, die ins Unendliche ragt. Alles wird wissenswert, ohne dass es etwas zu wissen gäbe – an die Stelle des Geheimnisses, das seine Herkunft verhüllt und sich als Differenz offenbart, tritt die totale Sichtbarkeit der Dinge, die keine Herkunft mehr haben und sich im Hyperraum jeder „wahren“ Opposition entledigen.

Während die früheren Generationen den Faschismus und Kommunismus erdulden mussten, plagt sich unsere Generation mit einem Totalitarismus der Kommunikation, mit dem, was Flusser den postindustriellen Faschismus nannte, herum. Lester Bangs schreibt nach dem Tod von John Lennon: „Remember that other guy, the old friend of theirs, who once said, „Don’t follow leaders“? Well, he was right. But the very people who took these words and made them into banners were violating the slogan they carried. And there still doing it today.” An die Stelle der Propaganda setzt sich die Propaganda der Anti-Propaganda, ein Faschismus, der nicht mehr den Oppositionellen diskreditiert, da dieser eine unerwünschte Position einnimmt, sondern denjenigen, der scheinbar keine Position mehr einnimmt, denjenigen, der schweigt. Denn der Schweigende ist der, der keine Meinung hat, der nur zustimmt, der immer einverstanden ist und so gegen eine goldene Regel der Kommunikation verstößt, nämlich weiter zu kommunizieren, ganz gleich ob in Repetition, Variation oder Opposition. Die Funktion der Kommunikation zeigt sich so in ihrem Funktionieren selbst, im „Rauschen der Sprache“ (Barthes) – sie ist sich selbst genug.

Es gibt so weder Spiegel noch Tausch, sondern nur noch das konturlose Ineinandergleiten sich gegenseitig aufhebender, leerer Antinomien, die ein Wissen erzeugen, das keines ist, und eine Wahrnehmung hervorbringen, die ihrer selbst beraubt ist. Und so schreibt Ernst Jandl kurz vor seinem Tod das schöne Wortspiel: „die ohren sehen wie augen hören. die augen hören wie ohren sehen.“ Dieser Kollaps des Sinnlichen ist indes längst Realität geworden in einer Kunst, bei der es nichts mehr zu sehen und einer Musik, bei der es nichts mehr zu hören gibt, die ihre Qualität nicht mehr aus sich selbst heraus, sondern nur noch in Abschattung zu anderen medialen Dispositiven bezieht. Der Anfang dieser Entwicklung fällt im strengeren Sinn wohl mit dem Beginn des Tonfilms zusammen, lässt sich aber auch in der Programmmusik der Zweiten Wiener Schule, ebenso freilich in den Boogie-Woogie-Bildern Mondrians, schließlich im Musiktheater eines Mauricio Kagel oder Wolfgang Rihm und der mittlerweile weit verbreiteten audiovisuellen Musik finden. Diese Tendenz der Liquidierung der ursprünglichen Sinnesleistungen findet ihre Erfüllung in jüngerer Zeit dann gerne nicht nur im traditionellen Medium des Films, sondern vor allem auch in gigantomanischen Multimediashows, in der das Partikulare vom Ganzen aufgesogen und so entfremdet und schließlich aufgehoben wird. Hier haben wir es wieder mit „tiefen Oberflächen“ zu tun, allerdings mit dem Unterschied, dass diese Oberflächen nicht unendlich explodieren, sondern sich zusammenziehen, d.h. implodieren.

Die unendlichen Explosionen und Implosionen dieser „tiefen Oberflächen“ ist ein paradoxer Stillstand – immer weiter gehen und sich dennoch nicht bewegen, Trägheit einer leeren Geschwindigkeit. Mit Blanchot wäre dieses Phänomen als Verirrung zu bezeichnen: „Der Verirrte geht vorwärts und er tritt auf der Stelle, er erschöpft sich im Gehen, indem er nicht geht, nicht bleibt.“ Der Grund für diesen Stillstand liegt im wesentlichen darin begründet, dass sich der Irrende jeder Begegnung entzieht, denn Be-Gegnung heißt, Konflikt und Gegensatz aushalten, Differenz denken. Im Irrtum aber treffen wir nur noch auf Kollisionen, die im Moment des Zusammenprallens schlichtweg verpuffen; das Sich-Verbergen und Sich-Zeigen der Bedeutungen hat seine Kraft verloren, weil die Bedeutungen in ihrer Zirkulation immer wieder aufgeschoben werden, dabei aber sich in stetigen Auflösungsprozessen selbst destruieren. Das ist die Gleichmäßigkeit und Gleichförmigkeit der Kommunikation – alles geht und nichts geht.

Die Starre der Bewegung, diese völlige Indifferenz der Differenz lässt sich auch als „Medusa-Effekt“ bezeichnen. Die Medusa ist bekanntlich jene der drei Gorgonen, bei deren Blick man in seinem Entsetzen zu Tode erstarrt und in der Aufgabe des Selbst ebenfalls zum Boten des Todes wird. So auch in der Kommunikation: wer sich auf Indifferenz einlässt, wird selbst indifferent und gibt alle Gegensätze auf, um seine Position nur noch je abändernd auszutarieren und so das Gleichgewicht der Kommunikation aufrecht zu erhalten. Ein Beispiel par excellence für diesen „Medusa-Effekt“ ist die Beziehung von Sendeformat und Zuschauer im Fernsehen. Diese befinden sich durch regelmäßige Meinungsfragen in einem Zustand ständiger, gegenseitiger Regulierung und Kontrolle – der „ideale“ Zuschauer und das „ideale“ Programm werden unablässig empirisch ermittelt. Wir finden hier keine Indifferenz der Form, sondern der Veränderung, der Differenz in ihrer stetigen Rückkopplung vor; Zuschauer wie Sendeanstalten verfallen in eine Bewegung der Erstarrung und haben in dieser wechselseitigen Integration den gleichen „Zweck“: sich zu assimilieren. Es ist offensichtlich, dass von Differenz hier keine Rede mehr sein kann, allenfalls von einer Hyper-Differenz, die in einem Raum liegt, der allen Beteiligten verschlossen bleibt. In dieser Assimilation wird der Mensch selbst zur „tiefen Oberfläche“, die ihre Ex-sistenz und so ihre Tiefe bloß in der Simulation erfährt, die sich in der Virtualität aus ihren verschiedenen Teilschichten reversibel zusammensetzen lässt. Erinnert sei in diesem Zusammenhang nur an jenen zum Tode verurteilten Amerikaner, dessen Körper nach seiner Hinrichtung in tiefgefrorenem Zustand in hauchdünnen Scheibchen abgetragen wurde, um aus den photographierten und digitalisierten Oberflächen, die am Computer wieder zusammengesetzt wurden, den bis dahin vollständigsten Anatomieatlas zu fertigen.

Baudrillard bemerkt schließlich: „[…] bislang sind alle Veränderung der Umwelt einer irreversiblen Tendenz zur formalen Abstraktion von Elementen und Funktionen entsprungen, […], einer Tendenz zur zeitlichen und räumlichen Miniaturisierung der Vorgänge, […].“ Gerade in der „formalen Abstraktion von Elementen und Funktionen“, in der elektronischen Kodierung und Dekodierung von Sprache, Körper und Handlung zu einem umfassenden homogenen Vorgang und der daraus folgenden Miniaturisierung menschlicher Tätigkeiten in verdichteten Knotenpunkten, die als Tableau fungierend die verschiedensten Funktionsbereiche zusammenfassen, besteht ein grundlegendes Problem: alles, was diese Knotenpunkte nicht umfassen und nicht übersetzen können, wird unnütz. So wird unser Körper, mit den vielfältigen und komplexen Funktionen seiner Organe in dem Maße überflüssig, wie sich seine Operationalität mehr und mehr durch das Gehirn und das Genom definiert. Die Möglichkeiten solcher Knotenpunkte finden wir andererseits darin wieder, dass die Einzigartigkeit unserer Körper missbraucht wird, indem durch Scannen einer einzigen Oberfläche, der Iris oder des Fingerabdrucks, eine Tiefe dieser Oberfläche erzeugt wird, die, durch Verschaltung unterschiedlichster Speicherfelder, einen umfassenden Katalog von Informationen zu der entsprechenden Person bereit stellt. Der Mensch wird so selbst zum „Bestand“ (Heidegger) und löst sich in seiner Gegen- und Widerständigkeit in die Dienlichkeit technologischer Verfügbarkeit auf. Er verliert sich als bloße Oberfläche in die Tiefe seiner medialen und kommunikologischen Dispositive.

Pleasure moves the text. It is an embarrassment that halts the interpretive closure of a work. It keeps interpretation alive within the work of art (It keeps the world alive by refusing its final interpretation).

In few discourses is pleasure a value. Yet in art pleasure is a value.

Art is disruptive because it accepts pleasure. It is adverse to the notion of pleasure that reigns elsewhere.

Displeasure is treated like an ethical experience to be embraced (endured). Displeasure finds itself linked to noble causes. Barthes states it explicitly, “Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc(59).” Pleasure in art argues against this notion of truth. An embarrassment to most, art affirms the smallishness of pleasure.

Here a duality is set in place and I trace my own line of associations made between: realism, truth, the ugly, displeasure.

(Displeasure, a form of self-hatred, is treated like a virtue. Displeasure, often-unhealthy narcissism, is treated like heroic individualism.)

Well, I know you don't need me, but apparently I need you, Dear Reader. Not only do you give me a life in a sphere outside of myself (by this I mean your pretty little head, not the Internets), but you provide me with a legitimate means to continue to avoid finishing up my chores. Thank you so much. And for this service, I will leave you with a lovely few words from Roland Barthes, from The Pleasure of the Text:

If I read this sentence, this story, or this word with pleasure, it is because they were written with pleasure (such pleasure does not contradict the writer's complaints). But the opposite? Does writing in pleasure guarantee--guarantee me, the writer--the reader's pleasure? Not at all. I must seek out this reader (must "cruise" him) without knowing where he is. A site of bliss is then created. It is not the reader's "person" that is necessary to me, it is this site: the possibility of a dialectics of desire, of an unpredictability of bliss: the bets are not placed, there can still be a game. (1975, 4)

That was good.

Now, back to my duties.