For today’s post I want to tie the past (week) to the present (week), in order to make some sense of the future (week). So far we’ve discussed textual experiments as relating to scientific experiments (Retallack), writing to action (Debord and Theory of the Derive), and the kind of acting that writing is or might be as trying to suspend the normative spatial/temporal order such that one is open to a kind of “bliss” (to use Kate’s term – a nod to Barthes, I assume) or to seeing everything, even for a moment, as “sublime” (to use Kant’s term). We’ve discussed how this may or may not relate to the notion that writing is not so much a thing one does or an endproduct in a captialist marketplace, but a state of mind-body, a “poetic state” that Celan spoke of as living one’s life as if every word is one’s last.
There is so much to consider here. This is why we’re going to come back to these themes, albeit under different conditions, throughout the quarter: 1) writing as a kind of active discovery unique to itself (PLAY); 2) writing as an active process rather than a product; 3) the need for strategies, constraints, and above all, collaborative structures, to carry through any such process we might call “writing” (again, I prefer “playing”) in this context; and 4) finally, the aching question of how we might situate the writing process, the (when you really think about it) truly radical act of pure play, within a broader socio-political framework. Though one’s writing may not be overtly political, one would be hardpressed to find a good argument that any writing can be truly divorced from social-political structures–local systems of power, habituation throughout one’s lifetime, broader economies, etc.
We’ll come back to each of these interrelated themes, looking at work ranging from Hannah Arendt to Samuel Beckett to, yes, each other’s work. For now, I’d like to zero in on a couple of wonderful ideas that came out of the very good discussion we had last Wednesday.
First, on the Situationist notion of The Spectacle. The question came up: how do you know when you’re “in” The Spectacle or outside it? Other questions followed. Supposing that The Spectacle is some kind of network of power structures that has a “shock and awe” effect on us, and supposing this network is not something that just dropped out of the sky, but involves people making decisions, just what IS The Spectacle? Like, WHO comprises The Spectacle? And is Debord suggesting that we can somehow step outside it, and if yes, for how long? In what ways?
I cannot here claim to have answers to these questions–maybe there are no complete answers–but at least I can clarify some, echo them, as it were. One of you, for instance, said that in thinking about The Spectacle, we must a) realize that we are actively playing a role in its generation and persistence through time, and b) that it would be helpful to make the distinction between The Spectacle and “a spectacle,” i.e., between the systems Debord is speaking about (and in different ways Marx, Foucault, Jameson and others) and the common use of the term, which, paradoxically, is closer to Debord’s notion of a “situation” (a constructed moment that may, say, elicit, “wow, what a spectacle!”). We’re speaking here about a system of media-induced distractions and simplifications - reality-as-image, not something that momentarily stuns or delights us. But, the comment that we are ’active’ (actively passive?) participants in The Spectacle, that we are responsible for this reality (these realities?), is, I think, what Debord and The Situationists were keen to point out: this is a subtle notion and is what allowed them think strategically about how to deal with the stark possibility that we cannot “step outside” of The Spectacle any more than we can step outside of space-time. What we can do is set up situations in which The Spectacle shows its own machinations, its own logic/systemic effect, by constructing things that aren’t easily digestible/reproducible by, say, mass media. Or, again, to use mass media, the city, social systems–all of that which The Spectacle is–to expose parts of life that may be otherwise obscured. “If the spectacle can be defined as the autonomous movement of nonlife…then the situation represents the recovery or liberation of moments of pure life…” write Harris and Taylor in Digital Matters. How to deal with this reality, if taken as, at least partly true? “This was to be achieved,” they further note, ”by detournement - the reverse, or better still, the preverse engineering of media messages through the juxtopositions of inappropriate words and images…and the derive or drift - urban space was to be reclaimed through a form of nomadism attuned to the singularities of the city that lay below the surface of its commodified space.”
Whether this reclamation was possible, and whether the strategies employed to get there could work, were for The Situationists, always a matter of dispute. In his later writings, Debord noted that such radical acts would, in the end, either be subsumed by mass culture and tamed so as to be marketable, or they would be discarded as moments of nonsense. But if this is so, are these constructued moments–these situations–still not worth performing? If for no other reason than that the alternative to acts of pure play seen as absurdities by your culture, alternatives such as the autonomous movement of non-life, just as absurd, and, potentially, less pleasurable? If we are to take Celan’s challenge of living one’s life as if every breath were your last, what would you do? Certainly, there is something to be said about watching television and believing in the realities of the stock market, various sundry products to purchase online, and going to work or school and then home again, day after day, until you die. There is, after all, something comforting about that life. But once one questions where the comfort comes from, and if one concludes that such comfort doesn’t completely come from sources that are neutral to your existence, then one is faced with asking such questions as “why am I taking this writing course, anyway?” and “what is the purpose of this institution I am paying for?” and “who decided that I should pay for this public institution anyway?” So, the quandry begins and the possibility of trying to manipulate these familiar structures in order to understand them suddenly looms.
Lastly, I’d like you to consider all of this in relation to the two other strands of thought viz. creative writing, that we’ve so far encountered: writing analogous to a good scientific experiment, and the problem of how to capture or record a situation. The two strands are connected. As Retallack notes, a good scientific experiment is one that involves a great deal of chance, or, uncertainty regarding outcome. You begin with a set of questions for which you honestly do not know the answers ahead of time, and then you produce a set of procedures that will focus your questions into some kind of action that will produce some kind of data. How is this that different from setting up a writing experiment? Think of our collective minds as a creative writing laboratory. To think along those lines (and if you disagree, please comment), you are liable to run into the realization that to ask certain questions, let alone perform experiments to elicit answers and further questions, you need to partner up with others. One cannot trace the trajectory of uncertainties alone. We’ve begun to work together to open up unknowable results with our derives. But derives are one set of experiments among countless others. Think of ways that two, three, or four of you set up a different experiment using materials you are already working on. This would mean, of course, finding some common ground–but also challenging your own work in the face of the work and strategies of others.
Further readings for those interested:
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (available free online)
Jan Harris and Paul Taylor, Digital Matters, Routledge, 2005
Karl Marx, Capital
Theodor Adorno, “The Schema of Mass Culture,” from The Culture Industry