Dickinson’s handwritten manuscript of her poem “Wild Nights – Wild Nights!” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way?”
~ Emily Dickinson

Certainly the above quote does not sound of a voice without knowledge, or knowing, or … a life worth living beyond her open window. Yet, when Emily Dickinson is discussed the dialogue circles round to her “small life”. I question, though, was Dickinson’s life that  much smaller than one’s own?

An article today entertained this small life. As it was read under the canopy of trees while hearing the occasional whirl of a cyclist going by, I could not help but again wonder why this poet carries such a mystique, albeit a rather unflattering one.

“How do we understand the work of a person who chose not to live in the world the way most of us do?”

Posits the author of the Boston Review article regarding Dickinson’s place in the  world – a world that, at the time, was still dominated by the patriarch. A time when society did not oft consider a woman as equal despite those occasional rebels who were trying to pave new roads. Was Dickinson really living that odd of a life for the times? Yes, she was a spinster and did not venture from Amherst, but does that mean that there was some mental hiccup. Frankly, perhaps she was an introvert gone a bit extreme.

Sadly, this post is not going where I wished it to go — too much on the mind, too little time to compose before another bell will chime of morning. Perhaps I was hoping that by vocalizing what swirled around my head this afternoon, there would be an epiphany. As a non-scholar of poetry or criticism, in the end this just ends as a rant. A vocalization against the often dramatic criticism or conjecture about a woman who honored a guilty pleasure – penning her observations, her feelings and her intellectual knowledge with results that place her in our awe. An awe that turns to something else… an inability to just let a person “be”. 

Perhaps writing this did help to cement one thing – the importance of being a “citizen of the world”. Emily was certainly a citizen of the world, for despite her “small life,” she always imagined the possibilities. ~

(Apologies – it has been forever since there was freedom to just write a bit of stream. I am a bit lost without having a paper to write, a lecture to watch or a chapter to read. This bit of breath (2 courses start soon) has me choking on air.)

“So long as the artist does not belong, in the most concrete sense, to one of the great historical classes of humanity, so long he cannot realize a social expression in all its public fullness. Which is to say, an expression for, and not against. The artist is greatest in affirmation.”

~ Robert Motherwell

It is interesting, searching Motherwell’s book this weekend for personal research, I stumbled upon the above quote. The quote reads as the artist equivalent to Judith Butler on defining gender and sex. It should really come as no surprise for Motherwell was a philosophy student first, artist second. I left notes in the margins pointing out echoes of Marx, Rousseau and Foucault.

“To express the felt nature of reality is the artist’s principal concern.” ~ Robert Motherwell

What is reality…really? Is it the artist’s reality or the reality of society, a certain faction that is addressed within said art? How is it that this goes expressed in art? What is the purpose of art if the artist’s concern is expression of Felt nature – are we involved in this feeling too? If we do not get moved, who failed who?

A thought to leave with you – actually two:

1) I recently watched The Examined Life which is a fascinating documentary featuring several of the philosophers mentioned in recent papers on this blog. žižek’s brief interview took place in a garbage facility. He spoke of consumption, i.e. overconsumption and our throw-a-way society. He felt that society is too quick to forget where all this garbage goes – we just throw and ‘poof’ it is gone from our mind. It had me thinking – it would be wonderful if school age children took a field trip to a local garbage facility to understand where everything is going. In this “wonderful world”, they then would visit an artist’s studio whose work is composed from garbage or found things….

2) Would it be wrong to have a Conceptional Art Museum with nothing in it?

(This blog post has been powered tonight by First Listen @NPR : Laura Marling.)

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

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Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Cosmopolitan, asks us to consider the idea of being a citizen of the world. A citizen of the world, or to practice “cosmopolitinism,” which he takes from the 4th century B.C. definition, “citizens of the cosmos”. Cosmos, not in the sense of stars and space, but of the world. “Talk of cosmopolitinism originally signaled, then, a rejection of the conventional view that every civilized person belonged to a community among communities.” [1]

Appiah would certainly find kinship of cosmopolitanism ideology in the writings of Post-Modern American philosophers, Judith Butler and Cornel West. Though each philosopher is approaching philosophy from a different context, each has a similar cosmopolitan objective, that of a citizen of the world. Appiah defines the world citizen concept as: 1) obligation to others beyond one’s kinship and 2) valuation of not just human life, but particular human lives. [2] Appiah goes on to stress the need for great appreciation of our differences.

This idea of appreciating differences, as well as valuation of particular human lives, is a key component to Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender. “What is most important is to cease legislating for all lives what is liveable only for some, and similarly, to refrain from prescribing for all lives what is unlivable for some.” [3] Butler recognizes that in order to find a place for everyone within this world, we must be open to the possibility of a more inclusive environment where all can be recognized. Appiah champions this cosmopolitan idea when he writes, “Because there are so many human possibilities worth exploring, we neither expect nor desire that every person or every society should converge on a single mode of life.” [4] Both thinkers insist that we must find a place for everyone without demanding that every body fit a certain context.

Cornel West’s “Prophetic Pragmatism,” not only echoes the sentiment of Appiah and Butler, but draws heavily on the thoughts of another thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson could be said to be cosmopolitian as he posited the idea of creative freedom of self, but not at the expense of others. West writes that he is, “promoting an Emersonian culture of creative democracy by means of critical intelligence and social action.”[5] West does not wish to deny the individual, but to find a place for all individuals of this world via social action. He coins his philosophical approach as “prophetic pragmatism”- “I have dubbed it “prophetic” in that it harks back to the Jewish and Christian tradition of prophets who brought urgent and compassionate critique to bear on the evils of their day.”[6] West believes that we must not ignore the suffering of the world, but give it a voice so that we may hear the truth.

Butler and West see that a community within a community is limiting and propagates alienation of the individual. If we spend too much time defining communities in order to find place for said community, there will be negative consequences. Butler cautions on defining rights for a person as it can disenfranchise another person who does not fit within that norm. Butler reminds us we must have possibilities in order to cope in this cosmo, “Possibility is not a luxury; it is as crucial as bread.”  A person who is not recognized as human within the norms of society will fail to find a place within this world.

Appiah’s closes the introduction of Cosmopolitinism by addressing the state of the world post 9/11. Appiah posits that there has been a great divide based on values between “us” and “them’. “This is what we take to be good; that is what they take to be good”.  He cautions this division and repositions our thinking by asking, “What do we owe strangers by virtue of our shared humanity?”[7]

Not in response to his question, but certainly a response Appiah would appreciate from a cosmopolitian level, Butler and West both address how to reach out globally. Butler, in her own post 9/11 dialogue, taking note of how the violence opens us up to vulnerability to a point that may actually become a postive, “Or are we, rather, returned to a sense of human vulnerability, to our collective responsibility for the physical lives of one another?”[8] Cornel West would say we must be open to the possibilities in order to fight for a democracy that takes in account our fellow man’s plight, “None of us alone can save the nation or the world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so.” Cosmopolitianism may just be a key to shrinking a world that will soon host eight billion humans in need of possibilities.

[1, 2, 4, 7]  Appiah, Kwame Anthony, Cosmopolitanism (2006).

[3,8] Butler, Judith, Undoing Gender (2004).

[5] West, Cornel, “Prophetic Pragmatism” Cornel West Reader (2000).

As an aside, one paper left, due in two days. I do not understand the question that needs to be addressed – it would help if I did the readings and watched the lectures. I shall sigh relieved regret when this course is done. It has been enlightening, but three at one time has been time-consuming, especially this one with its papers. MOOCs are receiving  a lot of discourse in academia now – discussing relevancy, efficacy, and impact. Personally, after a year of MOOCs, I am ready to start the paperwork to formally apply for an online Masters degree …yes, I am finally open to the possibilities recreating myself despite being forty…

and you, are you still open to the possibilities…?

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“….And as regards method, the improviser employs the oldest in music-making…Mankind’s first musical performance couldn’t have been anything other than a free improvisation.” –Derek Bailey

Improvisation is to create something new within the confines of what is known and unknown. One who has the courage to improvise is one who can make their world survivable. Judith Butler points that often this improvisation comes out of necessity in order to act freely within the world on one’s own terms. This is not another Enlightenment, per se, but a step beyond  by recognizing the need to converge the biological and the cultural. In the same vein, but two hundred years prior, Charles Baudelaire also saw the need to improvise, to reinvent one’s self, in order to experience the world within the current order of society. Butler and Baudelaire both address the idea of being “open to the possibilities”.

How is it that Butler and Baudelaire can be centuries apart while still echoing the same sentiment? Perhaps, part of this answer resides in the fact that both are addressing a sense of desire to be of the world, but not confined by its constraints. Butler writes, “The fact that desire is not fully determined corresponds with the psychoanalytic understanding that sexuality is never fully captured by any regulation.” [1] Butler believes that sexuality must remain static in its definition, not to be solely defined by biology or society. “On the contrary, it emerges precisely as an improvisational possibility within a field of constraints.” [2] The constraints of society must be considered, but for true equality they must not define how a person is identified.

“All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation.” ~ Charles Baudelaire [3]

Baudelaire often wrote of the importance of beauty. This was not a beauty created by nature, but a beauty created by she who dared to be created. “All that I am saying about nature as an evil counselor in questions of morality, and about reason as the real redemptive and reformative force, may be transported into the order of beauty.”[4] Baudelaire sees ‘true nature’ as ugly, it is only through recreating identity  that one can escape, “Art is necessary to correct the natural state of man, which on the physical level is unattractive and on the spiritual level is a state of original sin.”[5] Baudelaire, therefore, championed the idea of creating identity, to be a “dandy”. [on dandism] “Above all else, it is the burning need to create an originality for oneself, a need contained within the exterior limits of convention.”[6]

As stated before, Baudelaire and Butler’s writings address desire. Butler approaches desire from the Hegelian tradition linking desire to recognition. It is only through this recognition that we are then seen as viable humans. [7] Butler, however, sees a problem with this type of identification because often this recognition as human is restricted by social norms. What happens with the human who defies these norms? Butler states in this week’s video that it is important not to celebrate our differences, but to be open to the possibility of a more inclusive environment where all can be recognized. Butler sees improvisation as imperative, so one does not become victim of norms. Butler wants us to acknowledge the norms, and from that, create an identity. Butler seems to be asking us to be artistic with our own life.

Baudelaire was artistic with his life. He practiced the art of poetry and the art of living creatively. He plunged into the world either as himself or someone else; life was bearable when one recognized the possiblities. As Baudelaire penned in the poem, “Crowds”: “Multitude, solitude: synonymous terms and convertible by the active and creative poet. He who cannot people his solitude, cannot be alone in a busy crowd.”[8] He recognized the freedom of the artist who dared to be a man of the world; to be in the crowd without getting defined by its standards.

[1] Butler, Judith, Undoing Gender (2004).

[2] Ibid

[3]Baudelaire, Charles, The Painter of Modern Life, ”In Praise of Make Up” (1863).

[4] Ibid

[5] Ibid

[6] Baudelaire, Charles, The Painter of Modern Life, “The Dandy” (1863).

[7] Butler, Judith, Undoing Gender (2004).

[8] Baudelaire, Charles, Spleen of Paris, “Crowds”

“What human beings seek to learn from nature is how to use it to dominate wholly both it and human beings. Nothing else counts.” – Horkheimer and Adorno

Horkheimer and Adorno, philosophers during the reign of the Nazi regime, sought to understand why human beings continued to be oppressed – why society remained dominated by the ‘slave-master’ ideology that Karl Marx had contemplated 100 years prior. Perhaps Rousseau’s observation on the problem of Enlightenment stated it best: “So long as government and law provide for the security and well-being of men in their common life, the arts, literature and the sciences, less despotic though perhaps more powerful, fling garlands of flowers over the chains which weigh them down.”[1] Domination became a sole focus for Marx, Horkheimer & Adorno, as well as other philosophers, for it was through its understanding that perhaps these chains could be broken for future generations.

Historically, it seemed, it was Enlightement that perpetuated domination. As Horkheimer and Adorno wrote: “Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity.”[2] A calamity that evolved from our domination over nature. This understanding, this knowledge of nature, that Kant declared essential in order to be mature, “to dare to know”, only helped to disenfranchise the individual from self in an age now focused on advancement via technology. “Technology is the essence of this knowledge. It aims to produce neither concepts nor images, nor the joy of understanding, but method, exploitation of the labor of others,* capital.”[3]

Horkheimer and Adorno ideas were not new, though, for in 1844, Marx too saw how domination was destroying society, specifically the worker in capitalistic society. Marx understood that man identified with his work – his labor, the process of creation was an extension of one’s self. In a political economy, whose sole focus is quantitative production, the idea of creation becomes obsolete, lost to numbers. Marx posited that this focus on production makes the worker, the laborer, a commodity. Man as commodity is a dangerous thing according to Marx, believing that work itself is part of our intrinsic nature. As a worker addressed the demand for more production, he or she disconnected from self in order to dominate the very object that used to bring connection to nature, “Thus, if the product of his labor, his labor objectified, is for him an alien, hostile, powerful object independent of him, then his position towards it is such that someone else is master of this object, someone who is alien, hostile, powerful, and independent of him.” [4] This is key, for the worker no longer is free, “If he treats his own activity as an unfree activity, then he treats it as an activity performed in the service, under the dominion, the coercion, and the yoke of another man.” [5]

Dominion over labor cannot be anything but a byproduct of a society seeking knowledge in order to control. “Of course, this social character of intellectual forms is not, as Durkheim argues, an expression of social solidarity but evidence of the impenetrable unity of society and power.”[6] Horkheimer & Adorno see power linked to knowledge, which they view synonymous with Enlightenment. The division of labor is but one faction of society that becomes dominated and destroyed because the sole purpose is not to free the individual into nature, but to understand and dominate that very nature in order to gain more power.

As we know, Marx’s answer to this domination never quite fulfilled his manifesto. Perhaps this is due to what Horkheimer & Adorno and Foucault have all stated, “that the very act of liberation is another means toward oppression”, as brought forth by Professor Roth in lecture. Horkheimer & Adorno, however, strove to find a way to break free from this domination. How can one ‘get back to nature’ so to speak in order to reclaim nature? Horkheimer & Adorno would suggest the answer resides in addressing Enlightenment, “Enlightenment is more than enlightenment, it is nature made audible in its estrangement.” If this estrangement is recognized then there is perhaps a chance to rescue the past, to break the cycle of domination, “By modestly confessing itself to be power and thus being taken back into nature, mind rids itself of the very claim to mastery which had enslaved it to nature.”[7] This confession of power is perhaps the very thing that shall free future societies from it.
Citations:
[1] “A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences.” Jean Jacques Rousseau, E.P. Dutton & Co. 1913.
[2] Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Chapter 1 From Stanford University Press
[3] Ibid
[4] Karl Marx, “Estranged Labor”, 1844
[5] Ibid
[6] Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment
[7] Ibid

(that was composed a few nights ago- never did like its flow- forced- closed it down at 2:30am and forgot about it until tonight when figuring if the inspiration from the day was still here.. it has gone waxen under her bright glow but oh how young frogs sing under the window and there is a hint of summer’s humidity ready to bathe skin in sweet misery; so much waits upon death’s rising, or is it life’s cycling round… Zizek wails about Saint Paul and Christianity, it intrigues for it is yet a reveal if this is true or false, which offers a great segue into David Shield’s book Reality Hunger started today, too (one gets so much more done when allowing the mind to wander in books without punching a clock, if only there were a fairy to carry my financial burdens) – Shields has quite a few clever observations on the state of truth in writing today … not tucked in enough to complete a summation, but shall leave a few nuggets; blank slate started me here in the first place…a vista that reminded me of a contrary nature of self -a war, country beauty vs city energy)

“Collage, the art of reassembling fragments of preexisting images in such a way as to form a new image, was the most important innovation in the art of the twentieth century.”

blank slate -a quiet beauty in its death, yet its life writhes under us

“One responds to the history of his art so far; the other responds to life itself.”

“Art is a conversation, not a patent office.”

(Quotes have been patented in Mr. Shields’s manifesto.)

(sadly, there are still three pages left for me to state it has been read cover-to-cover – i wished to leave a few thoughts in light of the prior’s post negative edge.)

Susan Howe may become my new obsession after reading “Sorting Facts”. Her brilliance, versatility and above all, her ability as an experimental writer continues to blow me away. There is not enough time to give due credit to this beautiful pamphlet, especially at 1Am, so I shall post what I wrote on Goodreads….

This review only covers Susan Howe’s “Sorting Facts; or, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker”. (Though, upon reading this lovely pamphlet, the others shall be ordered…)

There really is no way to give this work, to give Susan Howe’s words, proper due for there is a quiet beauty that must be expressed best with silence. Howe tackles Marker’s works “Sans Soliel” and “La Jetée”, however, in doing so she brings in other experimental works such as Tarkovsky and Vertov. Howe offers a bit of insight as to her state of being and why she is writing on film (not her forté) which does not come into play (for me) until about 3/4 the way and the realization that this whole piece is an experiment, an apt one – one of interwoven voices – a montage. She quotes Eisenstein’s writing, “So, montage is conflict”. Howe’s own montage approaching this not as a critique only, but as an extension of Marker, Tarkovsky, Vertov cinematic poetry as mirror. A piece languaged -a film- shot with a “kino-eye” a “disruptive-associative montage” where the subliminal and real merge. Howe seems to approach this as she states Dickinson, Williams and others approached poetry – ‘to translate words into Things thought of’… (or not, as stated, words fail to quite describe the beauty that Howe creates) ~  

There is a longing to be better versed on film theory and criticism in order to best grasp Howe’s vision. Howe, however, offers an out to those who champion words for she goes full circle as what she highlights IS visual poetry  or poetic cinema. One should not misunderstand, though, for what lends to the quiet beauty of this work is no different from the stills that come to life in Chris Marker’s work – there is a ‘ghost’, a spirit that seems to surface in her words.

Surely nonfiction filmmakers sometimes work intuitively by factual telepathy. I call poetry factual telepathy. ~ Susan Howe

(and that must explain the silent beauty that paints her words across my tongue… ~ a) 

this is only a