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theory watch/ theory gossip

07:48 / 30.08.01

Allegedly, so my sources say, Judith Butler, praise her, is now reading Bracha Lichtenberg-Ettinger. Briefly, they met and BLE foisted all her works upon the sexiest academic in the states. I'm very interested to know what might transpire here. A further psychoanalytic turn on the part of Butler, or not? The Rise of BLE to international metatheorist stardom? Plums, you mentioned BLE once, have you heard anything?

13:46 / 30.08.01

here's BLE
for example, in case none of the theory bitches I thought lived here have heard of her.
I'm hopping up and down about this JB/BLE connection because its either brilliant or disastrous...

22:37 / 30.08.01

I'm sorry, I've never heard of BLE, possibly because I'm indifferent if not hostile to psychoanalysis. i.e. "Sexuality is the domain where art may be articulated, since we enter both art and sex via the same 'hole' in the Real" - what? Quick, somebody stick their finger in the hole in the Real.

deletia

06:20 / 31.08.01

Well, there's an insightful comment.

Blue, this sounds v. interesting, but I am not up at all on BLE...

06:47 / 31.08.01

The link gives as clear an intro as it gets [

] I've kind of avoided her myself - principally bcs I don't like theological teaching enviroments where any criticism is disallowed...and I'm also more beholden to a derridean critique of the phallus as transcendental signifier so I'm not immediately entranced by the idea that what we need is another such signifier - her proposed 'matrix'. And she always cites really really obscure Lacan not available in English. But you never know, I'm trying to be more open-minded theorywise and act on the idea [common to BLE I think] that there are more ways to relate than assimilation or annihilation.
The Judy connection is clearly a move for BLE to get famous in the US, - part of posting this here was to try to glean just how locally read/promoted BLE is in the UK [or indeed France].
later.

Goodness Gracious Meme

22:03 / 01.09.01

Gaah, I don't know anything about this, and i'm pretty dubious about BLE, partly that could be because I don't really understand what she's on about with the matrixial space construct, think its interesting but she's very woolly about it. And her prose, what i've reead of it, is a nightmare, all those bloody hyphenated sentences...

Haven't been in academia for a few years so don't know how big she is, think she was reasonbly known but not a big star by any means when i encountered her stuff ('98)

Sounds like a bad idea to me suspect a huge degree of academic social climbing... but that's a pretty kneejerk response and I'm certainly interested to see what JB (who i'm rather a fan of) does with this idea, wonder how it'll fit with her 'iterable subject'?

keep me informed, theory bitch

12:51 / 02.09.01

Maybe, this post doesn't really belong in this discussion but anyway, I'm not saussure . . .
I've been out of touch with cutural theory for about 6 years now, and I am what you might call a recovering post-structuralist.

Just looked at BLE's art/text site - thanks muchly Blue-stocking - and certainly did find the art therein unsettling, mysterious and curious (i'll definitely go back for a more sustained look). But, while I may have sworn off P/S, I still like the odd cocktail of post-colonialism, Cornelis Castoriadis and (god forbid) Marty Heidegger, and Kristeva. And this brings me to BLE's text.
First sweeping generalisation: The rise of French theory (Lacan, Foucault, Derrida et al)in the Arts faculties of universities/ colleges etc, has been concommitant with the rise of global capital, the depoliticization of universities and the production of more arcane dribble than a televangelist speaking in tongues.
I s'pose what I'm trying to say is that I disagree with any understanding or theory of subjectivity that deploys language in order to explicate 'what really happens' in the/a psyche, while founding such explication on the theoretical tenet of the absolute impossibility of language to refer to anything outside of language itself.Is such a contradictory position radical ambivalence or radical shite?
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, too unbending or mired in metaphysics of presence, but I can't seem to go along with this endless drive to deconstruct, to assimilate new,even more arcane terms, explicated in prose so convuluted and dry that you could only agree that language is indeed only a prison-house, and not also an eco-system . . .not just liberation gone wrong, but sustenance, magic, mystery, place, shelter . . .

10:06 / 03.09.01

agarchy wrote:

quote: this endless drive to deconstruct, to assimilate new,even more arcane terms, explicated in prose so convuluted and dry

please, please go and read The Post Card. the prose is delicate and wet... and as I understand it the point of deconstruction is to use very non-arcane terms like 'nature' and 'hymen' and whatever, and precisely *not* to assimilate them but to expose the difference/differance within them. I agree tho' that there's something suspicious about the timing of the rise of poststructuralism: as bell hooks (I think) says, it's a bit of a coincidence that the notion of voice, identity and agency comes under attack just as minority groups begin to attain voice, identity and agency.

Blue, dear, I can't say anything about the Butler/Bracha slash (tee hee), partly because I know not this thing you Earthlings have called BL(U)E (?) and partly because from what I've heard I can't see their different uses of psychoanalysis coming together...

11:16 / 08.09.01

well, I must say I've very disturbed to have my name, my 'I' brought into contact with the non-I, nay 'co-emerging' with the non-I, wit(h)nessing a new part subject formation, or some such thing.....thanks for your replies and sorry to miss Miss Plums possible disappearance, have been away sorting out a new flat in london meself.
agarchy, I tend to agree with Deva's defence of good old deconstruction (which calls on no higher authority but reads the text in hand)...and hey, Heidegger (just got my first one) and Kristeva are no easy reads, albeit less hyphenated.

19:57 / 08.09.01

Deva wrote:

quotelease, please go and read The Post Card. the prose is delicate and wet...

"the post card" by Derrida? Can you please point me to this, Deva?

BL(U)E, you're right about Heidegger (and Kristeva) being "no easy reads"; and in some ways they are just as arcane as BLE. I spose the point I was trying to make is that "good old deconstruction" has its limited uses - i.e it (as if there is a monolithic deconstruction !)can only employ the difference/differance "move" up to certain limits, before the deconstructive text becomes arcane babble. In other words there are limits to what any pofessedly deconstuctive "text" is willing to deconstruct. I am not trying to champion any full, absolute presences, nor trying to close or centre any terms, but I do believe that it would be more intellectually honest for a lot of writers/theorists working in and around post-structuralism/ pomo to acknowledge that certain terms/presences have more valency than others, if only having greater value for themselves.
That said, I am just a big ambivalent hypo -crit, maybe in need of more of the right sort of deconstruction?

09:57 / 09.09.01

Hey, agarchy (um... rule by kitchen stoves? rule by the Aga Khan? Rule by wonder?)

will get back to you on decon sometime when I'm less knackered. meanwhile: Jacques Derrida, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. Translation, Annotation and Introduction by Alan Bass. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1987.