Posted by D Hendler (bison) on February 27, 1997 at 22:51:15:
some things that i wanted to address this semester. maybe some of y'all are interested in this, too.
i find the crary stuff really interesting, especially shoved up next to baudrillard's ecstasy of communication. baudrillard,
if i remember correctly, talks about the moment when artifice falls (like scales form the eyes) and one is able to directly communicate,
to end profanity, i believe, is what he says on the back cover of the codex book; and when the artifcice does fall,
then we enter the ecstasy of communication.
this comes up to crary quite nicely, especially taking the metaphor baudrillard opens with (sorry I have to write about 2 things at once here).
Jean B talks about the gaze of orpheus (in a very slight way) about how that act of vison works. (a spectacular work about this very act is
written by maurice blanchot, whom i will address in a moment). we "know" from crary (sorry for the scare quotes... but i am not sure i know much of anything
anymore) that vision is an active process, where one creates the vision as much as takes it in, or moreso (haven't finished all of that book, yet, so my knowledge about
that is a bit shakey at the moment). this goes back to our discussion a week or so ago about colors and how does one person know that what she sees is what another person sees.
this is underscored by the principle of active sight. how does one person know that how she constructs the world is even similar to how another person does?
and yet we strive (through jean b) to match these connections, these constructions. to eliminate the resistences between two modes of vision, modes of reality.
this is so at least through language, which is another mode of vision, or a medium in which we transport vision.
so we attempt to meet the gaze of the other through language (or perhaps another form of communication, especially if the 'other' is a non-human
agent in the john law/ michel callon way where the agent/ other cannot use language and it is "speciesist" to put a primacy on language. and yet
we are now back at orpheus, who tried to meet the gaze of his other, whom he was trying to resurrect or to bring into the world (or his world... into
his reality). and he succeeds in meeting the gaze, but it is just at the moment when euridice is about to become real. this moment, argues blanchot,
and i think jean b would agree here, is the moment that art is made. and it is a necessary moment of loss.
which brings me to this idea: perhaps we don't want to bring our vision to bear with another, because the loss (the ecstasy (notice the male coding
of the orgasm as loss here)) is too great. i think this is also interesting to think about in terms of the meeting of technology and art
in the terms of this class.