Re: <documenta X><blast> aesthetics-ethics/emerAgency
Jordan Crandall (xaf@interport.net)
Sat, 19 Jul 1997 12:35:09 -0400
Greg
Gayatri Spivak gives an example in the documenta X book, which may be
helpful. She is talking with Jean-Francois Chevrier. Chevrier brings
up a work by Marcel Broodthaers where the phrase "A Political Map of the
World" is altered by the superimposition of an "e", to transform
"Political" to "Poetical," though not in a way to obliterate the former
but to make a tensional oscillation between the two terms. (This work
is referenced on the cover of the documenta book, where the two terms
POLITICS and POETICS jostle. It is very much a challenge for our work
at the documenta. How to contextualize these terms in cultural
manifestations and make the tension productive?) The conversation turns
to the contextualization of the political and the poetical. What
separates/joins these? Spivak gives an example. When she is in India,
she is very much of the upper class, the high caste, and in certain
contexts, when she gives a statement, it can be taken as an instruction,
if not a command. But she remarks that nothing is learned in this
situation, nothing is gained; it does not benefit anyone. The challenge
is to find out how to get around it, how to frame it so that it calls
forth a response.
My thoughts to add to this would be that this operation is subtle and
strategic, requires a high precision in its own way, or, on the other
hand, it generates a kind of crisis itself within the convention.
Surgical, or a radical stripping-away of the stageset, instituting
emergency. But the best work always does it in an informed way, knowing
the power vectors, and with respect for the gravity of the stakes.