THE SEMIOTIC WOUND

[luka]

Hope Craner's gone down to show his support.

He's satanically proud of never having done anything for anyone

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

He's satanically proud of never having done anything for anyone

He did us a beautiful 100.

 

[william_kent]

There's a page on Not Bored that rips into her re: some clip where she talks about Debord:

In only one minute and fifty seconds, Rachel Kushner (speaking in a video uploaded on 30 July 2009 by her publisher, Simon & Schuster, which also has placed it on the page that advertizes her latest novel) racks up an impressive number of mistakes about Guy Debord and his film In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni. She gets the title wrong in both languages: she drops the word “et” out of the Latin; and she mistranslates the phrase into English (it actually means “we turn round in the night and are consumed by fire”: she imagines people turning around a fire instead of being consumed by it!). The footage that was not shot by Debord himself was not “found footage,” which implies snippets from generic or non-artistic works, but extended excerpts from famous films that he specifically requested.​

​

What Rachel Kushner Knows About Guy Debord

lol, some of the funniest bits in "CREATION LAKE" are where she rips into Debord

psychogeography dismissed as getting lost, stumbling home drunk at night detourned into philosophical endeavour

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

He's satanically proud of never having done anything for anyone

 

[william_kent]

a couple of years ago I read a biography of an ugly human being, Alexander Trocchi, who was an original member of the Situationist International, and Debord came across as a dick in that book, in fact he came across as a complete cock, so I'm on board with Kushner when she dismisses Debord as a "dissipated" individual ( even though I like some of the hand me down ideology, got to separate the person from the art, etc )

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

a couple of years ago I read a biography of an ugly human being, Alexander Trocchi, who was an original member of the Situationist International, and Debord came across as a dick in that book, in fact he came across as a complete cock, so I'm on board with Kushner when she dismisses Debord as a "dissipated" individual ( even though I like some of the hand me down ideology, got to separate the person from the art, etc )

Debord's memoir's really obnoxious, but I like some of his ideas and writing. Have you read any other Kushner? I heard The Flamethrowers is partly about the Years of Lead and that piqued my interest. I remember @sus saying he rated it. She's supposed to be a big Manchette fan, which bodes well.

 

[william_kent]

His, Debord's, memoir is really obnoxious, but I like some of his ideas and writing. Have you read any other Kushner? I heard The Flamethrowers is partly about the Years of Lead and that piqued my interest. I remember @sus saying he rated it.

"Creation Lake" is the first I have read by her. I'd read more if it was up to that standard. @sus: is it worth reading more by her? The photo on the slipcase looked a bit like she might give readings at Sovereign House. I don't want to enable a ketamine habit. that would be wrong.

 

[Murphy]

The wound framing's interesting to me as it suggests a whole cleaved in two by Saussure and co. Maybe @sus or @Murphy can weigh in on how people viewed cave paintings or totems back in the day. Surely they still considered them representations and not the real thing?

heavy for a Friday but go on then

 

[Murphy]

Firstly *in Alan Moore droll Northampton voice you have animism followed by totemism

Cave art as symbolic representation evolved globally out of maybe a few limited terms relational to viewer, culture, environment, species, deities, will, transformation, the laziest word of all ‘ritual’ and all originating from a single continent with common tongues. No surprise the earliest cave art tends to ally when mapped

Genevieve Petzinger and David Lewis-Williams, cited here, are the clearest minds (DLW specifically). By the time we get to the Palaeolithic such symbols are consistent but linguistics has moved on globally too. You need a solid chronology- 70,000BC aboriginal populations hit Australia bearing minds already laden with myths

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To counter, Venus figurines have multiple interpretations. Even people like Vervaeke misunderstand the evolution of something as key as empathy - to him it evolves in later prehistory which is painted all wrong - Mum/Mama/Mom/Mother are similarities across cultures and deep time illustrating clear relational universality as if it needs spelling out. Bill Kent’s graphic nailed it up thread

 

[Murphy]

Cradle of Humanity is alright but outdated at this point in analytics, have a copy in front of me after it came up recently and has been too long (except for its biases). A more fully articulated position could be pulled from the trinity as it involves a convergence/divergence away from binary modes of interpretation - male = agrios, female = domus, wtfness, oh right so I have to take into account these other cunts to exist ok gotcha

Add Bourdieu’s habitus as ‘field’

Part of cave art had to be the sheer fuckin thrill of submerging yourself into the Earth itself, leaving intention, desire and will manifested in an ‘other’ elemental realm. It’s inherent risks - bears, falls, getting lost

It’s so easy to trip bomb at this juncture but light deprivation and natural entopic phenomena of the eye are key too, certain geometric abstraction I dunno thinking out loud eating noodles surrounded by death

 

[Clinamenic]

Elaborate, geezer.

Hell if I know. Any guesses @constant escape?

 

[Murphy]

Venus figurines - the power of a grandmother to share a child-raising load represented symbolically?

Why are their faces nearly always abstracted? Why are they mostly chunky ladies either mature or pregnant? What changes by the Neolithic in the Balkans and how? Are they more like toys, Barbie dolls?

Figurines are peculiar, Rust Cohle meme it’s like a conversation

 

[kid charlemagne]

It's what @kid charlemagne said when someone complained about his relationships thread.

boom. i was thinking of going to a book store calle "lot 49" tomorrow..... they surely have some of his work if they have that name.

 

[sus]

"Creation Lake" is the first I have read by her. I'd read more if it was up to that standard. @sus: is it worth reading more by her? The photo on the slipcase looked a bit like she might give readings at Sovereign House. I don't want to enable a ketamine habit. that would be wrong.

Haven't read Creation Lake, but Flamethrowers is lovely

She's part of the LA mafia, and a different generation, so you're safe

 

[sus]

Trying to remember what I liked about Flamethrowers. The opening section, set in the desert, the Great Basin salt flats. This minimalist idea of clean lines and speed and purification through gesture. Trace: writing as that which is left by dancing, movement, action.

 

[sus]

You get peeks into all these different worlds that Kushner seems, somehow, to know intimately. Old world Italian aristocracy. Manhattan's visual art scene in the 70s. Speed demons and choppers and landspeed record-setters.

 

[william_kent]

@sus: I'm sold

 

[sus]

I think the characters are good. I think her portrayal of the sexual economy is good.

It's always stuck with me—this character in New York, an artist. Her performance piece is being a waitress at a diner. It's exactly like being a waitress except in her head she's framed it, given it a spin and transformed it. I think a lot of the book is about this, the way we frame and spin things, what this does to us good and bad. e.g. I saved this passage

“A good realtor says ‘home.’ Never ‘house.’ Always ‘cellar’ and never ‘basement.’ Basements are where cats crap on old Santa costumes. Where men drink themselves to death. Where children learn firsthand about sexual molestation. But cellar. A cellar is where you keep root vegetables and wine. Cellar means a proximity to the earth that’s not about blackness and rot but the four ritual seasons. We say ‘autumn,’ not ‘fall.’ We say ‘The leaves in this area are simply magnificent in autumn.’ We say ‘simply magnificent,’ and by the way, ‘lawn,’ not ‘yard.’ It’s ‘underarm’ to ‘armpit.’ Would you say ‘armpit’ to a potential buyer? Say ‘yard’ and your buyer pictures rusted push mowers, plantar warts. Someone shearing off his thumb and a couple of fingers with a table saw. A tool shed where water-damaged pornography and used motor oil funneled into fabric softener bottles cohabitate with hints of trauma that are “as thick and dark as the oil... You have to be careful about words. You’re thinking about your commission, your hands are starting to shake at the idea of the money, and meanwhile your client hears ‘yard’ and sees himself nudging icky amateur porno with his foot, potato bugs scattering from their damp hideout underneath. Again, it’s ‘lawn.’ ‘Lawn’ means crew-cut grass. It means censorship, nice and wholesome. It means America. And you know what I mean by America, and by the way, ‘cul-de-sac.’ Not ‘dead end.’ If I have to explain that, you’ll never pass the exam to get your license.”

 

[sus]

Saussure. Signified and signifiers. All that bollocks.

I remember I was listening to this CD full of raga theory, a guy walks you through it and you listen to different excerpts. He had this whole schpiel about how all music begins in silence. And then music is a wound on the silence. You have to wound silence for the music to come out.

 

[sus]

I guess it's not so different than the idea in Flamethrowers. Purification, minimalism, getting back to simplicity that is pre-speech.

Thinking too about how the Fall is often linked with self-consciousness. Self-conscious thought it what interrupts flow ("thought is the enemy of flow") so it causes you to crash out from blissful immersion. And language and self-consciousness are all tied up, what it means to be human vs an animal

You want to get away from the messiness of language and into a pure nonverbal silence

And also that language is a wounded removal from reality