Poetic Communities

Poetic Communities Author(s): Gerald L. Bruns Source: The Iowa Review, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Spring, 2002), pp. 1-38 Published by: University of Iowa Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20155050 . Accessed: 03/11/2014 17:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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GERALD

L. BRUNS

Poetic Communities And

one day they

was

shepherding first the

word

daughters of "Shepherds

Olympus,

i

song while he glorious taught Hesiod and this his lambs under holy Helicon, Muses of said to me?the goddesses of Zeus who

holds

the aegis:

the wilderness, things of false shame, mere bellies, we know how to speak many we we were as when but true; know, though they things true to utter will, things." wretched

of great Zeus, and So said the ready-voiced daughters a me a of sturdy laurel, shoot and rod, gave they plucked a divine voice to me a marvellous into thing, and breathed that shall be and things that were afore me sing of the race of the blessed bade time; they are both eternally, but ever to sing of themselves gods that first and last. But why all this about oak and stone? celebrate

things

and

?Hesiod,

Theogony, 26-33

like Homer before Scholarly tradition pictures Hesiod, as a great pedagogue.1 The poet is in charge of a vast ency (and also, in Hesiod's partic gods and heroes clopedia concerning we also learn that poet Hesiod But from ular case, everyday life). ry itself is not a kind of learning but a species of ecstasy. No one ecstasy.

him,

to be a poet. No one asks to be such a thing. One is, for no to a kind of out of one's house and exposed reason, summoned not always is of kind transcendence what transcendence. Exactly the life of the belly where peo clear. One can imagine preferring studies

at ple who say they are hungry can usually be taken a of is election condition Like biblical prophecy, poetry a curse as a calling since as much of responsibility, a to voice" "divine (or perhaps we would now hostage voice voice

on the poetic or prophetic itself," Jean-Luc Nancy says: "Someone singing, Levinas: is not a subject."2 Likewise Emmanuel

itself").

In an essay

song, "does not leave any place of refuge,

any chance

their word. and amode one

is now

say: to "the voice, "the during

the

inspiration to slip away...."3 In

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ecstasy I am turned inside out, exposed to others, still myself per agent haps but no longer an "I," that is, no longer a spontaneous obsessive but only a "who" or a "me": a passive, responsive, reper cussion of the Muses. 2

gives the basic theory of poetry as a that is, of being touched, gripped, or mag condition of fascination, Fascination is a reversal of subjectivity from netized (hypnotized).4 to obsession. Of the fascination of images, for example, cognition Maurice decisive Blanchot writes: distance, "Seeing presupposes partage.

In the Ion Plato

the power to stay out of contact and in con separates, tact to avoid confusion. that this separation has nev Seeing means ertheless become an encounter. But what happens when what you seems to touch you with a gripping at a distance, see, although see the manner of seeing is a kind of touch, when contact, when

ness which

is seen happens when what ing is contact at a distance? What on as were if in the the touch itself seized, put gaze, gaze imposes a with appearance?"5 An image is different from concept. Seeing is it it the holds for world, grasps up conceptual: scrutiny as if at (and therefore aesthetics) length; but in fascination distance a It and the seizure. is transfixed or fixed in suffers eye collapses can see else. A visionary nothing experi place by the image and arm's

ence

of is always a condition or consumed what by

absorbed vacant

in which the eye is is seen; hence the avid or the look. I am no longer myself but liquidated a in is not likeness but a Medusa-event confusion

stare, the stony, another. A true image I no longer know what which

I am looking at. Although still part as a surface to be crossed I experience of the world, the world that (starting rather than a place to be occupied. Ecstasy means I am outside of and uncontainable within with myself) any order of things, an exile or nomad. However, shares my condition. On the contrary,

this does not mean

no one the con

Plato emphasizes one to another like the from its flows of poetry; tagion magnetism communities forms delirious that (536A-D). spell Dionysian one is no in which Fascination is a condition of participation which longer separated but is caught up in an ecstatic movement, a gath is always a movement from one to another that produces or conversation (which ering or string, that is, not a dialogue a formed by friends stepping would be community philosophical

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in off the street) but what Jean-Luc Nancy calls a partage, a shar the divine voice or "voice itself" ing or division of voices in which to another like is multiplied by being passed from one singularity rumor or panic (Nancy prefers the metaphor of the gift).6 There is no abiding or indwelling communion universal of spirit?no the "poetry in general," as Nancy says?but only singular "beingoutside-oneself" round of voices

that

is received

in traditional

and handed

song?"the

(think

of

the

voice

itself," Nancy says, ecstasy is what poetry the sharing of ecstasy

[BP237]). This yours or mine" not a vision or a revelation; communicates, rather than of mind or spirit, language or myth, "can become

on

is the essence

of

Such a com

and of the poetic community (PV66/SV236-37). can never not grow or develop it be does into a munity sedentary; a structure A has the of order. series of unitary poetic community into one.7 Hence rather than a fusion of many the singularities poetry

in flight?"panic" is Blanchot's word topos of poetry as discourse for it: "Flight now makes each thing rise up as though it were all of things?not like a secure order in which things and the whole one might one must

take shelter, nor even like a hostile order against which that steals and steals struggle, but as the movement

away. Thus flight not only reveals reality as being this whole (a one must and without without that flee: issue) gap totality flight is this very whole that steals away, and to which it draws us even while repelling us."8 Poetry opens a hole in being through which that the poet is out every totality drains away. So it is not merely side and uncontainable with any order of things; it is that poetry in advance (an-arche) the possibility of any such order. As disrupts (d?s uvrement) is its principle?"a says, incompletion (1C5/UC5). Ecstasy, says Nancy, "defines principle of insufficiency" the impossibility, both ontological and gnoseological, of absolute Blanchot

immanence

and therefore of immanence) and (or of the absolute, an the impossibility in the either of consequently individuality or sense a of the of In collective term, pure precise place totality."9 the village, the realm, the social (or in advance) of the settlement, civil society, liberal democracy, the total or merely proce dural state, poetry opens up an ecstatic or anarchic community?a that (Nancy says) "resists collectivity itself as much as community contract,

it resists assembles

the

individual"

and disperses

(CD177/1NC71). An ecstatic community (as at games, festivals, and rallies) but is

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3

to last.

not meant

has

Havelock

Incompleteness, shown that an ecstatic

as said,

is its principle. Eric is what Socrates community

cul around him: a vast theater, a performance ture basically hypnotic and anarchic in its operations and results.10 Whence denial of ecstasy became for Socrates the first principle of saw

4

in the Athens

is a totally integrated economic order "city of words," which con administered sealed-off rational egos exercising punctual by once trol (our and future philosophers). Recall that the starting in construction is of his the point critique of mimesis in Book " a is mimesis where mode of (393A-398B), "being-outside-oneself or impersonation rather than the category of representation that it his

in Book x. The problem of poetry is not its logical weak its power to project people outside of themselves. Poetry in which no one is of subjectivities is a dispersal or dissemination

becomes ness

but

and everyone is somebody else, as in theater. Here would be the place to recall Nietzsche's analysis, which neatly summa rizes Plato's (and anticipates Bataille's): Georges poetics a to excitation is of whole mul communicating "Dionysiac capable one at and titude this artistic power to feel itself surrounded by, oneself

a host of spirits. What happens in the dramatic chorus is the oneself outside oneself primary dramatic phenomenon: projecting

with, and

then acting as though one had really entered another body, character.... It should be made clear that this phenomenon

another

a whole crowd becomes rapt in this singular but epidemic: to a crowd (the first principle of theater) is a manner."11 Belonging condition of rapture. Possibly mystics levitate alone. The ecstasy of is not

In The Unavowable Community is a social experience. poetry, however, Maurice Blanchot recalls that for Georges Bataille ecstasy "could not take place if it was limited to a single individual...: [it] accom it

itself...when

plishes

is

Walter [C134-35/UC17].) contact with the cosmos only error of modern men to regard this

shared"

Benjamin:

"man can be

communally.

It is the dangerous as unimportant it to the and to consign and avoidable, as the poetic rapture of starry nights."12 And he quotes as follows: "The pleasure of being in a crowd is a mys

experience individual Baudelaire terious ber.... cation

expression Number of

('Fus?es').

is

great

Extract

in ecstatic

of sensual in all... cities....'

is a number....Religious

Ecstasy Ch.

of num

joy in the multiplication B.,

uvres,

the root of the human

vol.

intoxi 2,

pp.

being!"13

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626-627

or rule of dis history. Aristotle's Organon Socrates' form of the city. Here a gives purely logical as mimesis mathesis or place for poetry is found by reconceptualizing learning (1448^4, 2-6), and then by laying bare as its deep struc poetry:

a

short us

course

reasoning called muthos or plot (i45oa.7, or it has a therapeutic for spectators on whom or enhances an it produces Instead of fascination

ture a form of consecutive is now

1-7). Poetry calming effect.

is thought to have subjectivity. Aristotle essentially philosophical of invented the concept of the critical spectator whose experience has and reflective. Gadamer literature is essentially (As solitary is at least shown, the Platonic spectator is always ecstatic.)14 What a into true is that has been introduced principle of disengagement factor the theory of poetic experience?a (perhaps we distancing can speak of this as the aestheticizing of the poetic).15 As a species be largely a branch of rhet of discourse, poetry will henceforward in its that is, not so much a discipline oric reducible to handbooks, in the service of other dis own right as a technique of mediation (or, as Horace said, in the service of empire). Poetry field of its own ("the alle is defined by not having any discursive One can remark in from derives of the gory theology). poets" on affirms the ecstatic tradition but is (1) Longinus, who passing cursive

fields

lost to the world until the Seventeenth (2) on the Century; erotic satiric traditions with its and lethal of the (the genre lyric, one drives people to perdition, the other to suicide; Rome in fact tradition of (3) on the classical satire); passed a law forbidding Joyce); (4) on the myth of the poetic exile (Ovid, Dante, Milton, von who says: "I don't like Wolfram unschooled Eschenbach, poet himself

a single letter of the alphabet" (Parzival, 11.115). But what most is its of its history characterizes poetry throughout For example, in to institutions not of its own making. confinement

know

European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages Ernst Robert Curtius of the medieval of existence asks about "the mode poet." For cat is a social rather than ontological Curtius "mode of existence" is: "Why did one write poetry? One was question wrote poetry A to in medieval authors school. great many taught because one had to be able to do so in order to prove oneself a c/er egory.

The

icus and litteratus; in order to turn out compliments, epitaphs, peti and thus gain favor with the powerful or corre tions, dedications, The writ spond with equals; as also for the sake of vile Mammon.

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5

and a ing of poetry can be taught and learned; it is schoolwork writers' workshop school subject."16 The modern pre university's serves this tradition. Curtius notes that the concept of the poet's as a rhetorical topos. Pope memorial "divine frenzy" is preserved 6

izes this topos in the Peri Bathous; or, The Art of Sinking in Poetry, a aimed at a new poetic culture whose origins parody of Longinus to the development of print technology and the new autonomous social spaces that it opens up: with the rise of mod ern cities poetry becomes a discourse of the street (the tavern, the are internal

rather than of the court, the church, coffee house, the periodical) of the concept of art (in which and the school. The invention can now

poetry

reflect on itself as if in a space of its own) ismade as when Friedrich Schlegel char about poetry being": conversing

by these social changes, the poet as "a sociable

possible acterizes

a condition of poet poets and lovers of poetry now becomes as as as counts But what such? such.17 ry poetry Beginning with the is arguably the first literary com Jena Romantics (the Athen?um of the avant-garde of modernity and a prototype munity group) with

an open question:

this becomes tinction,

theories

poetic

are

as poetry

now

necessary

ceases

to be a genre dis

in order

to

pick

out

a

as poetic Athen?um (see Friedrich Schlegel, language as a nos. we 116 onset So of & the modernism .l8 238) get Fragments, The distinction between the culture of prefaces and manifestoes. of

piece

or between

ceases to be self poetry and poetics, the distinction between fragment and work. The Bernstein that which says: "I imagine poetry...as

ory and practice, evident, as does

poet Charles can't be contained

It becomes by any set of formal qualities."19 Blanchot calls "fragmentary writing"?writing that to masterpieces, from the idea of and even withdraws

what Maurice is "averse the work

to the point

of making

the latter a form of worklessness As

hundred years if, twenty-five [d?s uvrement]" (E1592/1C403).20 later, poetry were breaking out of the Organon.21 As Bernstein says: "I imagine poetry as an invasion of the poetic into other realms: the bounds of genres, spilling into talk, essays, poli overflowing this break tics, philosophy" (P151). The Athen?um group iswhere out

or dissemination

among

other

is first to make

as a program (the idea is, and poetry philo poetic philosophy and of the group Lacoue-Labarthe enacted

things, In their account sophical). Nancy write: "the fragment is the romantic

genre par excellence....

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In fact, only a single

title, published with the one-word as possible) to the (or as much Fragments, corresponds entirely ideal of romanticism, fragmentary notably in that it has no partic ular object and in that it is anonymously of pieces by composed ensemble,

Imagine poetry not so much as a work of the spirit as a group experiment (Fr. 125: "Perhaps there would new era of the sciences and arts if symphi be a birth of a whole several different

authors."22

so universal became and heartfelt that it losophy and sympoetry no longer be anything for several comple would extraordinary to create works communal of minds art"). mentary the

of

college

sociology. In Paris in 1937 Georges Bataille, Michel Callois, Leiris, and Pierre Klossowski, Roger a of series lectures called The College began organizing bi-monthly was to investigate of Sociology, whose purpose the nature of such along with

social

as the army,

structures

secret

societies, or brotherhoods, salons, drinking, companies, sporting gaming, on the even political clubs, youth groups, parties (normally) Le will Bataille later add the (in coupable 1944) fringe.23 Crucially, of

community tures are, where

lovers

and

orders,

religious

the artists'

community.24 or "sacred"

ecstatic Callois, according "in the outburst the sacred consists

life: a sacred

These

struc

communities, of violations of rules of

expends itself, that spends itself (the orgiastic sacred is not a theological but a social con The sacred)" (CS152). are not part of the productive communities Sacred cept. that

func of modern states; or rather, whatever capitalist to them in the bourgeois tion or goal might be assigned order of Bataille calls "nonproductive things, by what they are defined of energy [d?pense]."25 A nonproductive expenditure expenditures economies

is one

of energy gratuitous

in which

expenditure, or use-value.

there

the

gift. In an essay on "The Notion of such (1933) Bataille gives several examples

economy

Expenditure"

of

It is a

outside

of any economy a of loss upon principle if anywhere, of capital. It belongs,

absolutely It is predicated

exchangerather than on the accumulation to

is no return on investment.

the

of free

art. expenditures: jewelry, religious sacrifice, kinky sex, gambling, It is important to know that within the category of art he singles out poetry as the premier example of free expenditure:

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7

term poetry, applied to the least degraded and least intellectualized forms of the expression of a state of loss, can be considered with expenditure; it in fact synonymous

The

in the most precise way, signifies, is therefore close loss. Its meaning true

8

of creation by means to that of sacrifice. It is can only be appropriately

that

the word "poetry" an rare residue of what it commonly to applied extremely a preliminary and without the that, reduction, signifies worst confusions could result; it is, however, impossible to speak of the infinitely vari in a first, rapid exposition limits separating formations from the subsidiary

able

residual

element

the rare human posal,

poetic

of poetry. beings who

It is easier have

to indicate

that, for at their dis

this element

ceases to be symbolic in its con expenditure thus, to a certain extent, the function of repre

sequences; sentation engages the very life of the one who assumes it. It condemns him to the most disappointing forms of activ to despair, to the pursuit of inconsistent ity, to misery, that provide nothing but vertigo or rage. The can use words poet frequently only for his own loss; he is the destiny of a reprobate, often forced to choose between as who is separated from society as dejecta are profoundly shadows

from apparent whose life, and a renunciation to mediocre subordinated activity, vulgar and needs (PM30-31/VE120).

price

is a

superficial

ceases to be sym line here is: "poetic expenditure important in its consequences." This is the thesis of modern poetics.26 Poems are made of words but are not a use of them. That is, the

The

bolic

words become Bataille

of the poem are no longer forms of mediation; events in the special of communication attaches

to this word.

they have sense that

a concept to the transmission of mes

Communication

is not

theory; it refers not to states of existence but the relation in which sages contagious are passed along from one subject to another (Nancy's partage). Communication has the structure of Plato's magnetic chain rather from

information

and social commerce, anatomy of dialogue, of communication is "conta made words, or of of transfers of movement, elements, warmth, gions of energy, than the give-and-take In Bataille's struggle.

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which never

inevitably the life of your organized being. Life is a particular point: at it passes situated rapidly from one to another like a (or from multiple points to other points), constitute

point current or a sort of streaming of electricity."27 At all events in poet or things: are no longer to be exchanged for meanings ry words of reversal that they are now like images of fascination?moments displace the logical or cognitive eignty and control. As Blanchot

subject from its position of sover says apropos of Kafka: "The writer

is heterogeneous with (EL21/SL26). up saying T" Poetry an to of from the of the order respect things organized perspective we at So should least from the say that, poet's logical subject. point of view, Plato got poetry right.28 gives

la

boh?me.

Notice

that Bataille

defines

the poet's choice as against submission

in

terms of "the destiny of the reprobate" to a as the principle of necessity. this condition that Imagine destiny of Walter tend to be makes poetry possible. Students Benjamin about

guarded

the fact that he was

in Bataille's

among the occasional partici of saintliness (Benjamin's College Sociology in this morally and politically dubious environ

pants seems out of place to In fact in the spring of 1939 Benjamin was scheduled ment). in Baudelaire," but his presenta deliver a paper on "Some Motifs tion was postponed until the Fall, and by then France was at war a few months and within Benjamin would be a refugee (fortunate to Bataille, a librarian, for safekeeping). ly he gave his manuscripts of Bataille's in any case no more meetings group. as we text is in Baudelaire" of "Some Motifs have the However, it, with of both the letter and coherent spirit inquiry remarkably had organized his College. around which Bataille Benjamin's There

were

ecstasy. In the first place there is the thesis that a state of shock.29 to produce his poetry intended was not the first Surrealist.) Rimbaud, Baudelaire, (Undoubtedly is But perhaps more of the mode social existence that important theme

is social

Baudelaire

for Benjamin, represents namely that of the homeless environment is the street and the crowd, where "the fl?neur whose man of the crowd" is restless, manic, in and unstable obsessive, his identities of Baudelaire: (GS.1.2.626-27/CB128). says Benjamin a refuge for him" ("The Paris of the Second "the street...became Baudelaire

Empire

in Baudelaire,"

GS.1.2.573/CB70).

In the

street

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one

is

9

is nothing and for Benjamin Baudelaire always outside of oneself, in himself but is the consummate role-player ("fl?neur, apache, were so to him") and roles many dandy, ragpicker "On of And the (GS.1.2.600/CB97). again: physiognomy as that of the mime:

Courbet reports that he looked Baudelaire's Moreover, (GS.V.1.419/AP333). every day" sense of an art that and Guattari's is "nomadic" in Deleuze

Baudelaire 10

different

poetry is uncontainable writes:

"Around

order of things. Benjamin any rationalized of the century, the conditions of artis the middle a change. This change consisted in the underwent within

tic production fact that for the first

time the form of the commodity imposed on the work of art, and the form of the masses on itself decisively as can be to these developments, its public. Particularly vulnerable

seen

now

in our century, was the lyric. It is the unmistakably to of Les Fleurs du mal that Baudelaire unique distinction responded a It these conditions with book of the altered is poems. precisely to be found in his of heroic life" conduct best example was not to have Baudelaire's achievement (GS.V.1.424/AP336-377). not merely is Baudelaire the left us a novel. However, Benjamin's a in romantic artist rebellion against fallen solitary metaphysical world. He is rather the representative of the ecstatic social struc ture

him possible, the Boh?me (gs. 1.2.513 namely The Boh?me is the the first 14/CB11-34). underground (by no means of its kind when we think of Grubstreet, Bartholomew Fair, and crowd that begins writing?about the Elizabethan the London that makes

the printing press; think of how Marlowe Benjamin defines the Boh?me as the hiding-place

streets?for

ends

days). cal conspirators

of politi

his

("Professional conspir during the Second Empire ator and dandy meet in the concept of the modern hero. This hero secret society" in his own person, a whole for himself represents It crimi is world of the lowlifes, wastrels, [GS.V.1.478/AP378]).

and nals, prostitutes, realm of the "accursed."

Balzacian It iswhere

destitutes?Bataille's

sacred

at the the gambler is deposited is the detective It is also story.

run. Its defining genre condition of the modern poet's

end of his

existence. On Benjamin's a is of modernist (this is his analysis poetics principle was In it the the of Baudelaire-thesis). ecstasy poet that, antiquity to the magnetic the condition of the according theory, constituted the

the Boh?me

anarchic

community;

in Benjamin

it is the anarchic

community

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of poetry. In order to become a poet to (as if by nature) a certain kind possess longer enough is all one needs); it is now jectivity (a dissatisfied memory a to take to to in certain kind of world order sary belong that is the condition

of

romantic

neces on the man

that that world makes available?the of subjectivity the painted woman, the beggar, the painter the barricades, ern life. ("In the guise of the beggar Baudelaire continually model of bourgeois society to the test" [GS.V.1.427/AP338].) kinds

end

it is no of sub

of

of modput the At the

is a kind of urbanized the day Benjamin's Baudelaire artist: ironist, a transcendental buffoon, a performance did not have

Baudelaire

the humanitarian

idealism

of a

or a Lamartine. The emotional buoyancy of a not at his disposal. He did not, like Gautier, in his times, nor could he deceive himself take pleasure about them like Leconte de Lisle. It was not given him to

Victor Hugo was

Musset

nor to heighten like Verlaine, find a refuge in devotions, the youthful vigor of his lyric ?lan through the betrayal of is in like Rimbaud. As rich as Baudelaire his adulthood, the knowledge with stratagems

craft, he is relatively unprovided to face the times. And even the grand

of his

tragic part he had composed role of the "modern"?could All

himself.

eccentricities of the mime

this Baudelaire

such pleasure were those who has to perform before a public incapable further the action on the stage?a mime, in which

of following more, who knows formance,

for the arena of his day?the be filled in the end only by no doubt The recognized.

allows

he took

this about his audience that

knowledge

in his per due rightful

and, its

(g s. V.1.429/AP340).

black Clamans tion of

mountain

college.

Jean-Luc Nancy says in "Vox in Deserto," is not an expression of the self but a projec to itself, it is only an exterior it. "Voice is not present Voice,

a trembling that offers itself to the outside, the half manifestation, beat of an opening?once again, a wilderness exposed where in heat. of the voice in the air the The wilderness of vibrate layers no subject, no infinite unity; it in all its clamor?has wilderness, without self self-presence, always leaves for the outside, without

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11

(BP243). In Charles Olson's poetics the poetic sub like a breath ject does not reflect on itself but rather is projected (hence it is an "objectivist" rather than expressive or "subjectivist"

consciousness"

12

or working-out of genres poetics).30 The poem is not the reworking and conventions (what Olson called "closed form); it is rather an event on the model of free expenditure (or "open form"): "The is energy transferred from where the poet got it (he will have several causations), by way of the poem itself to, all the*way over to, the reader.... Then the poem must be, at all points, a high

poem some

and, this

energy-construct

(PV52).31 Crucially, by the poet's breath?the

a high at all points, energy-discharge" is an expenditure of energy that is shaped of poetic line comes not from a manual

"(I swear it) from the breath of the poet, from the identifies as breathing of the man who writes" (PV54), which Olson "voice in its largest sense" (PV58). (Compare Adorno on breath as prosody

a musical

but

unit allows

in Sch?nberg.)32 In composition, Olson says, the the poet to score the voice of the poem, so that else itmight be, becomes the communication of

typewriter poetry, whatever voice: "It is the advantage and its space precisions,

of the typewriter that, due to its rigidity it can, for a poet, indicate exactly the even of the syllables, the suspensions the jux

the pauses, even of part of phrases, which he intends. For the first tapositions time the poet has the stave and the bar a musician has had. For the

breath,

of rime and meter, record first time he can, without the convention own to his the listening he has done speech and by that one act to indicate how he would want any reader, silently or otherwise, not So the is voice his work" but (PV57-58). poem just composition and understanding the poem will mean performing it performance, it to exegesis. the rather than subjecting Sherman Paul compares verse of other action to, among composition things, projectivist painting and jazz: "Projective verse is not only a poetics of presen tation but a poetics with spectatorship

of enactment. experience, and participation, brings the whole

of present

It replaces self?the

soul?to the activity of creation. single intelligence: body, mind, it recalls us to our bodies Dance, which Olson appreciated because is a correlative of this poetics; and so are and 'we use ourselves,' action painting and jazz, which poets at this time turned to because they wanted. There was no poetic,' they offered the instruction was Olson said of this time. Tt Charlie Parker.'"33 After Nancy one

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can think of the poem as a voice that passes from poet to reader. and reader are linked as a sharing or partage rather than as It author and exegete, artist and critic, or producer and consumer. to think of it as amovement of poetry from poet to poet, is possible

Poet

inwhich poems appear. up amode of existence is a social poetics as idea is that projectivism

where

poetry opens Stephen Fredman's

as a poetics of verse. It is a poetics aimed not only at the pro more of the group?or, but at the formation duction of works

well

exactly, the formation of a space (an open field) in which poets and artists can come and go and in which works of art are free to take place under any description. The formation of such a space is what at Black Mountain (or sustained) College during the early 1950s.34 Black Mountain College was an art school found was Josef Albers, who ed in 1933. One of its first artists-in-residence an to outlook aesthetic that he had acquired at the school brought achieved

Olson

the Bauhaus

"art is concerned

how

literal content

years: during the Weimar not with and not with the what; The of factual content. performance is the content

done?that

with

the

but with

performance?how of art."35Olson was the school's

the it

is

director

In Black Mountain: An years of operation. during Martin in Duberman's gives a detailed Community, Exploration account of Olson's of the college from an art school transformation its

last five

a colony of performance into an art colony?indeed, art.36 In 1952, to take a famous example, John Cage (who had been visiting the one in his "circuses" the of since which college early forties) staged ten

were each dancers, musicians, painters) of forty-five minutes (each running concur to do whatever in which the others) they wished:

people (poets, a time-slot assigned rently with

in the square arena forming four triangles created by diagonal aisles, each holding the white cup that had been placed on their chair. White paintings by a visiting student, Robert Rauschenberg, hung overhead.

Spectators

took their seats

From a stepladder Cage, in a black suit and tie, read a text to Zen Bhuddism" "on the relation of music and excerpts from Meister with At

Eckhart.

Then

he performed

a "composition "time brackets."

a radio," following the pre-arranged the same time Rauschenberg played an old record on a

hand-wound

gramophone

and David

Tudor played

a "pre

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13

pared piano." Later Tudor turned to two buckets, pouring water from one to the other while, planted in the audience, and Mary Caroline Richards read poetry. Charles Olson and others danced Cunningham an excited dog, Rauschenberg by (created by coloured gelatine

14

through flashed

the aisles

chased

"abstract

slides"

sandwiched

between

the

glass) and film clips projected onto the ceiling showed first from the school cook, and then, as they gradually moved a sun. In corner, the the ceiling down the wall, the setting composer "whistles

instruments and JayWatt played exotic musical was babies and coffee served screamed, blew, by

four boys dressed It was

in white."37

at Black Mountain

that Merce

assembled Cunningham a all Charles Olson, his first dance company?with Dionysian two hundred of class. him, six-foot-seven, taking fifty pounds to watch was him?he says: "it wasn't (Cunningham unhappy a can One like imagine what Bataille light walrus.")38 something would

have made

Fielding Dawson companionship. an enthusiastic in those days and teacher, in his talk: the white blackboard absorbed

of Olson's

"Charley was

recalls:

optimistic, completely began to fill with blue

blue words diagrams, turned blue and he had blue

long blue sen smudges on his face and

tences, his hands from smoking his cigar with his chalk hand, on he and mustache towards the edge and once, with no place to write, he wrote went, wrote there was no right of the blackboard, down the right margin, but he went on, crossing over and going through already margin, tray, and bending over went to the clean off the blackboard floor, laughing with us."39 (Recall of l'?criture.) Blanchot on the interminability sentences

d?s

until he came

uvrement:

to the chalk

worklessness.

What

conception

of art,

if

itself to the theory of "nonproductive expenditure"? art freed the concept of art-in-general: Duchampean Perhaps only from genre distinctions music, verse).40 sculpture, (painting, is not a genre of writing thinks that fragmentary writing Blanchot any, attaches

fields are but is just the thing itself, l'?criture, where all discursive to the d?s uvrement of l'?criture?in The Philosophical vulnerable defines postmodernity Discourse ofModernity Habermas as, among

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other

the seeping of poetry self-reflexive lan things, (opaque, a into certain into and then the (of stripe) prob guage) philosophy communicative that defines the praxis lem-solving public sphere.41 follows. The question of nonproductive has expenditure Anarchy relevance

particular

to the problem of the avant-garde work. The does not belong to the history of genius, much

avant-garde work less the history of taste, but to the history of the anarchist The avant-garde work is less likely to resemble a monumental struction Cage's sufficient

like Joyce's 433". Whereas

Ulysses than a minimalist the monumental work

event

group. con

like John self

is classically

ideal of the origiriary selfstanding Greek (Heidegger's edifice, which appears to have created itself), the avant-garde work is accessible only through layers of social mediation, that meaning

one has to belong to the social space in which the work appears in to sense at of it make all (but Gadamer would order say that this a is of condition aesthetic ancient or every experience, belonging to such a space entails belonging to modern). Moreover, belonging its history and therefore understanding the conditions that make a possibility at hand (that not everything in the moment at every moment is the motto of art history: the experi ence of the work demands responsiveness to historicity?Blanchot the work

is possible

In this respect the exigency of the avant garde). a more is like social practice understanding understanding or a form of life than it is understanding or a concept, proposition, use to the of criteria. This helps explain why the avant-garde work

would

call

this

a work

is often ditional Fried's

to critical spectators of a certain tra really accessible A clear and fruitful example of this isMichael disposition. famous reaction to the Minimalist (or, as Fried prefers, "lit not

eralist") work of Donald Judd and Frank Stella during the sixties. Judd's sculptures appear to be simple indeterminate shapes with out parts or design or any sign of assembly or composition; Stella's are paintings painted stripes (famously, four identical paintings of black whose

in 1959-60). Fried meanwhile is a formalist stripes exhibited the issue relation to works of art is essentially Thus judicial.

to tell a work of art from the materi is how, analytically, it ismade al of which (frame, canvas, painted shapes). "What is at the paintings or objects in question are stake," he says, "is whether for Fried

experienced materiality

as paintings or as objects."42 Fried's position is that the as a medium of the work must be experienced and not

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15

as material;

simply

16

we haven't

otherwise

got art but simply a mere insists formalism, which

is similar to Adorno's thing. The position on matter as mediation, not in order to represent or intend some to set the work apart from the empirical world but thing simply to an empir ("The concept of form marks out art's sharp antithesis ical world in which art's right to exist is uncertain").43 To be an art work

the work must

of conscious

control

exhibit

"aesthetic

over

its materials

rationality"

Exeunt (AT58/AET34-35). as soon "As (Adorno again:

and the Minimalists.

Cage, Duchamp, the artwork fears for its purity so fanatically and begins to display outwardly possibility art?canvas

and

mere

tones?it

or the exercise

becomes

that it loses faith in its what own

its

cannot

become This

enemy....

in the happening" [AT158/AET103].) In Fried's tendency medium the modernist work tries "to language, by foregrounding its own objecthood" defeat or suspend (A0120). No one sees a culminates

as reducible

to its material, although is perhaps from the per inseparable of its composition. But with formance Stella the difference a painting and a painted canvas is no longer self-evident. between One cannot tell that the thing is art simply by looking at it (in one is perilously Clement Greenberg's famous expression, close to Jackson Pollock drip-painting as action painting the work

a flat surface).44 looking simply at a frame and canvas exhibiting or literalist work For Fried this means that the Minimalist is art as art. Minimalism or literalism that can no longer be experienced its own objecthood, but on the "aspires, not to defeat or suspend as to In discover and such" (A0120). contrary project objecthood which case it is something other than art: an object, although per haps not a real one. calling the Minimalist longer

takes

prophetically answer

theater

was:

that Fried stops short of (!) It is interesting work a mere thinglike thing, although he no it as art. What is it, then? Or, as John Cage asked in a 1957 essay, "Where do we go from here?" (His

"Towards

of

cruelty.

theater.")45

The

interest

of Fried's

analysis

is that he

the Minimalist work as an event or performance: "the interprets amounts to nothing other than a literalist espousal of objecthood this as an plea for a new genre of theater" (A0125).46 Fried means insult but like Plato's rejection of the poets it is the medium of an essential

insight:

"theater,"

he says,

"is now

the negation

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of art"

is, subtly, not the same as non-art) (A0125). The mode of Minimalist work?its of the appearance presence?"is basically a It is a func kind of stage presence. theatrical effect or quality?a (which

and, often, even aggressiveness tion, not just of the obtrusiveness that that work the but of of the literalist work, special complicity is the essential extorts from the beholder" (A0127).47 Complicity essential about the social nature note, that is, it defines something is not that of a work of the avant-garde work, whose "objecthood" rather the work is folded into an event in that one simply beholds; and not simply a beholder, at least not which one is a participant a critical observer whose The and assessment. job is zoning and close to what Deleuze work occupies something a can that call "haptic" or non-optical space space, only as a whole or from a perspective.48 be entered, not comprehended in which one's participation makes the It is an event, moreover, the in work Gadamer's work possible may (as theory). Possibly

Minimalist Guattari

art. Theater has this tran its event, as in performance "theater of cruelty" tries to isolate sitory ontology which Artaud's theater-event from the any notion of work or text: in by separating not outlast

"pure theater," otherwise there are no antecedents

called

the "anarchic

to performance?in the language of theater becomes dramatization; of theater and physical shock; the after-effect trauma.49

Performance

art

is a

strong

example

poetry of space," no other words, a medium of noise is not catharsis of

but

nonproductive

its purse is entirely exhausted because by what takes expenditure a case uvrement. A piece of of d?s Dance is likewise good place. to pre a art that is difficult kind of is extremely body choreography grow old, the dance mistress forgets, or never him understand why people wanted dies. Balanchine could to revive his earlier achievements. There is no text for the chore serve over

time: dancers

or a a score for its music ography of Swan Lake the way there is a of notation is for its story (dance narrative good example can be repeated A performance of translation"). "indeterminacy a is not a of video but not preserved. (A recording performance In an essay on of anything but the video recording.) performance Art" (1955) Merce Cunningham said that his "The Impermanent that is just the thing itself: idea of dance is to perform something but when for example, a jump (without musical accompaniment, Cunningham

collaborated

with

his friend John Cage,

not without

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17

noise). Cunningham's choreography, following Cage, sometimes a to coin of determine what shape the jump takes the form tossing is shaped is not only a bodily movement will take, and what but the movement the time and space in which occurs, a shape that never an occur instant and will for again. On other only

exists 18

their movements. improvise are superbly the dancers trained, cannot help being dance (as if a dancer could no their movements in the per But their movement is exhausted longer merely move).

occasions This

is not

Cunningham's artlessness:

dancers

since

call a haecceity, a of it; it is what Deleuze and Guattari There will be other five o'clock like yesterday evening.50 singularity five o'clocks but not that one. Fried says: "The success, even the formance

to depend on their abil survival, of the arts has come increasingly as it approaches to "Art defeat theater" (A0139); degenerates ity of theater" (A0141). So once more the history of art the condition comes art followed to an end.51 In the 1970s performance of objects alto the production by doing away with see one whether could create an gether.52 The idea was in part to art that could not be bought or sold. This was already the goal of One can think of the New Dada and the (or some) Surrealists. York of the 1970s as a recuperation of Dada the way the New York

Minimalism

True to of Duchamp. and sixties was a recuperation the spirit of the age but also to the spirit of Artaud, Bataille, and artists perhaps before them all, Alfred Jarry, certain performance as an when Chris Burden had absolute stopping-point, probed for or when Orlan had her face himself shot in the arm with a pistol of the fifties

telecast surgically removed, with the surgery being simultaneously to several places around the world.53 Here is an end-of-art story to as were over art if into Bataille's end all end-of-art stories, crossing In its obsession of mutilation, underworld sacrifice, and suicide. to the history of art belongs with extreme situations, performance or at all events to Artaud's kind of theater as "an area Surrealism, in which there are no precise rules," except for one: "Without an of every spectacle, the theater element of cruelty at the foundation as a not of condition is (0C118/AA251). Imagine cruelty possible" theater (this was already the insight of the Jacobean stage?think of Jonson's Bartholomew Fair in which someone pours hot grease on the foot of Ursula the Pig Woman). Bataille, who knew Artaud once to went hear him speak: slightly,

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A few years before I had attended a lecture he gave at the He talked about theatrical art, and in the Sorbonne.... state aware

of half-somnolence that he had

in which

I listened

risen:

I understood

I became

what he suddenly to state of mind the saying, he had resolved personify of Thyestes his when he realized that he had devoured own children. Before an auditorium the with bour packed

was

(there were hardly any students), geoisie inhuman stomach and let out the most ever come quiet

from a man's

that would

throat:

have been

it created

the sort of dis

felt if a dear friend had

Itwas awful denly become delirious. for being only acted out) (AM43). la

he grasped his sound that has

(perhaps

the more

sud so

uvr?e. d?s The avant-garde work empha the theatricality that is arguably a condition of all art. One could put this in a slightly different way. In the avant-garde the cannot of the work be separated from the formation of production communaut?

sizes

the group, and vice versa: in the case of the Surrealists, for exam is the Blanchot the work?"Surrealism," group says, "is and ple, a work has always been a collective experience" (E198/1C08)?but in the sense of Nancy's communaut? d?s uvr?e rather than on the or in Aristotle's of order of Socrates' words" of conception "city as an extension of the form of (which is politics logical friendship the form of the proposition: follows friendship the relation of than rather identity alterity).54 Benjamin on the Surrealists the primacy of ecstatic emphasizes also

the

logic of in his essay

experiences over the production of works: "anyone who has perceived that the are not of this circle literature but something else? writings if you documents, demonstrations, watchwords, bluffs, forgeries but at any rate not literature?will are concerned reason, that the writings not with and still less with theories

will,

also know, literally with

for the same

experiences, phantasms."55 The group the historical location) of a

(and often always has the structure that does not hang together, Boh?me: a non-productive community which does not last, and whose floating center is the performance the reading, the happening, and more generally (the exhibition, the scene). Its population it exists like a Deleuzean

is Baudelairean "war machine."56

in the sense

of nomadic; Its distinctive modes of

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19

are gossip, the quarrel, and the collaboration, In review. his memoir, short-lived The Black Mountain inevitably recalls Ezra Pound's advice: think of a lit Review, Robert Creeley communication

20

around which you gather people, not a erary review as something box to put them in.57 Its solidarity is the solidarity of theater, where sense in which in Artaud's theater should to be understood the narrows to zero? and spectators as a in crowd the street, a porous, pictures ancestor audience whose is the Dionysian exposed, Nietzschean are "We the and the auditorium and stage community: eliminating

distance

between

Artaud

performers his audience

replacing them with a kind of single site, without partition or bar rier of any kind, which will itself become the theater of the action. A direct

communication will be reestablished between the specta tor and the spectacle, between the actor and the spectator, because in the middle the spectator, of the action, is by being placed in it and its crossfire" The (0014-15/AA248). enveloped caught by as Marjorie

"Futurist moment," theatricality whose

Perloff has shown, form is the manifesto,

is a moment

of

"a new

principal literary a as to work intervention like rather than genre" designed political a work of art.58 The idea is to alter the art world and not simply to in it or merely find one's place take it over as is. Futurism Italian or Russian) the original defines difference (whether aes between in aesthetics and the formalist avant-garde general thetics of high modernism in and Fried's "mod (as Greenberg's the artist's task is to create a new environment and not ernism"): Indeed the one is the condition of the other, just new objects. because the avant-garde environment is the (the Cabaret Voltaire locus classicus) works like an anarchic space in which any innova take place. ("Do Whatever" is tion?indeed, anything at all?can the rule of Duchampean modernism, In Years Roman Futurist [KD327].) My

according

to Thierry

de Duve

and gives a moving a into such up just

Jakobson funny account of the way he was swept and Xlebnikov, collection of whose space created by Majakovskij A was Face in Taste the and Public manifestoes, (1912), poems Slap of often

one of the texts

inspired Jakobson to become a linguist spe in the study of poetic language. Of course Jakobson tried cializing his hand at poetry and at writing manifestoes, and he collaborated on many projects, but the moral with Majakovskij and Xlebnikov that

of his story is that one doesn't

have

to be an artist

to belong

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to an

is of it?and the experience art world; the idea is to experience a new "The social transformation world): evenings of (inhabiting the Futurists brought together an amazing number of the public: the Large Hall of the Polytechnic Museum was completely packed! The public's reaction to them was various: many came for the sake of scandal, but a broad segment of the student public awaited the new art, wanted this is interest the new word (by the way?and in prose. This was a time interested weren't particularly ing?they readers... when thought that the main thing was poetry, and that new word to say. Apart from these large a had poetry genuinely were there many closed groups, circles, and private public evenings the main place was allotted to the new word)."59 gatherings, where In his study of the poetic communities of North Beach in San the best Davidson Michael the Francisco, poet gives perhaps and Jack account we have of how deeply poets like Allen Ginsberg in the formation of such communities, Spicer invested themselves and how poetic own) took shape (like Davidson's subjectivities an aesthetics whose such formations.60 within goal is not Imagine so much the creation of the work as the creation of a form of life teaches writers that produces ("An author who poets. nothing, no Davidson teaches one," says Walter Benjamin.)61 As Michael or a like a Utopian aesthetics be something this would suggests, art and in other which, among things, poetry imaginary political no longer be required to justify themselves (before whom?) no regrets. Imagine poetry as a in order to exist. No apologies, from the Socratic exigency that lovers of poetry must given?freed

would

a culture of the gift in Poetry presupposes well and as, to be sure, acceptance?as responsiveness It presup what make reality inhabitable. exposure and risk?are calls community: poses what Nancy being together or being-in come

to its defense.

which

"we are not a 'being' but a 'happening.'" ("Finite of [BP157]). The poet David Antin captures something History" to be avant-garde": "what itmeans this in one of his talk-poems, common

inwhich

and i under the circumstances

did the best i could there is

then

which

somebody

who

circumstances

is my does

without

image the best worrying

of being

of what

an artist

does

can

under

the

he

about

making

it new

and

or

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21

because

shocking to do

have

the best

and where

can do depends

you

if you

and

new to do the work at hand you will that will

ready-made to get

on with

rest

the

22 the

tool

thats

work of

and

upon

to invent

have

what

you

something

but not if you have a at hand

is close

and

you want

the business

then youll pick up a tool

there

that

has made

else

somebody

and youll lean on it and feel grateful when its good to you for somebody elses work and youll a as as think of him friend who would borrow freely from you that will work

if he thought of it or needed to

because there is

a

don't

of artists

who

or shouldn't

except

community

patents who

send

language sometimes or

l=a=n

other tools 62 , in a bar

writing. in North

written

gone

by

= g = u=a=g

the

during name

the

= e

Poetry,

of

circumstances

exchange

the most

and

copyrights

unusual or

of

Much America

under

in the mail

each

in conversation

recognize

them

memorable

past

poetry has half-century

"Language after

Poetry,"

the

journal

edited by Charles Bernstein and Bruce L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and Andrews between looks 1981. Language Poetry 1978 very much cen movement like the longest-running of the twentieth literary tury. Its poets are flourishing thirty years after the fact. This may is not an aesthetic concept; Language Poetry a not at it is all but a family name. No concept strictly speaking of formal features or tendencies could define the term; description it is not a kind of ism but simply a number of large, diverse, and be

in part because

fluid interactions among York but also embracing into Eastern extending

in San Francisco and New poets centered Canada and Great Britain, with filiations and Australia (and translations Europe

into, among other languages, Chinese.) Poets share practices rather Language

Like

the Surrealists

than views. What

the

makes

them a group is their involvement with one another in a variety of to publication from poetry readings to literary criticism in a surprising number of journals, anthologies, web sites, and

activities

books of poetry published by an array thoroughly non-commercial Sun & Moon). of small presses they (Figures, roof, Individually so of but do within the framework do very different things, they

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social

interaction

Charles

Bernstein

above

highlighted writes:

all by

the poetry

reading.

are the central social activity of poetry. They Readings as the most of distri rival publishing significant method bution of poetic works. They are as important as books

23

in bringing poets into contact with one and magazines in and another, cross-generational, forming generational and cross-cultural, cultural links, affinities, alliances, and the like.... The scenes, networks, exchanges, reading is the site in which reconstitutes

itself.

the audience It makes

of poetry constitutes and to itself.... I itself visible

criticism that everyone at a poetry reading is a poet to say that this is just what is a even essence a of vital about the poetry reading series, For is constituted poetry reading. dialogically through an audience with of peers, and exchange recognition turn around

would

the familiar

to invisible readers or the poet is not performing listeners but actively exchanging other per work with The poetry is an formers and participants.... reading convention of for poetry, by poetry, ongoing poetry.63

where

"The performances, pieces, and talks on poet ics that took place frequently during the initial stages of the for mation of the language group were communal events, casual, that took place in lofts and art spaces. But they intense interactions Bob Perelman writes:

were

not only addressed to immediate participants: they were also some However and trivial the remarks of contingent

recorded.

tapes were aimed at entering and redefining literary were at One could also aimed say they appropriating liter history."64 as if to keep it from the of ary history, specifically poetry, history

were,

those

coming

to an end. The

seems point that the extension

crucial

to be

Language Poets it is a given poetry cannot be closed by a frontier.

that among of the concept of

Language poets are widely to conceptual in poetics and poetic theory investigations as a way of keeping and to formal experimentation the limits of what counts as poetry unsettled or controversial. Sound poetry and dedicated

poetry are perhaps not so much face each other across a vast poetic circus.

concrete

limits

as horizons

In any event

that

the spirit of

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that of the anarchist group: the idea Language Poetry is essentially a space inwhich is to create and maintain (granting historical con is possible. What informs Language Poetry is in ditions) anything any case historical self-consciousness 24

These poets are deeply one might at "the call their situation as to (and end of history." They understand themselves belonging a tradition made of William up specific essentially responsible for) rather

Ezra Pound, Charles the Black Mountain

Carlos Williams, Jackson MacLow, the Beats, as well New

than theoretical.

of what

York continue

Louis Zukofsky, Reznikoff, and Poets, Allan Ginsburg

as the avant-garde groups that San Francisco to make possible. Historical self-awareness

feature

and is a

of

the Language Poets?whence their idea, distinctive turn by William derived from Mallarm? but given a particular that poetry is an exploration of language in all of Carlos Williams, in its formal, material, and in particular and semantic dimensions, an array of social and its historical conditions of existence within contexts. A great many of these poets hold the view that economic a particular way poetry is not simply another species of discourse, of using language that can be contrasted with other discursive gen res (philosophy, science, law, everyday speech), but is simply a con dition of language as such, so that what counts as a poem will depend as much upon how we listen to language in the world around us as upon our capacities as speakers or writers. There is as much poet to know that in the noise of the world. It is interesting ry as music of "language as such" originated the motto the Russian among Futurists

that

so

intoxicated

Roman

Jakobson.65

But

for

the

It is accessible Language Poets language is invisible to linguistics. at of and the level (street level, or at experience participation only the level of theater) and not at the level of formal description. the

entity. Hence the concentration among a mode of performance, as of the idea upon poetry Language where the emphasis falls, among other places, on how a poem (or can think of this its appearance.66 We how language) makes h?t?roclite

Poets

as a modification thesis that a poem is of the modernist emphasis made of words but is not a use of them. This is not just an inten sification of the thesis but (as in Blanchot's poetics of d?s uvre ment) made

of it away from the idea of a poem as something is that performance is (an artifact). The point to understand

a bending

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not something added to something made; it iswhat is made?the is itself. This the because of the poem is not of thing temporality but of something that interrupts the present by something present one In of there. his "durations," David taking shape talk-poem, Antin

calls attention

to the two modes

of existence

of his "work": 25

as a

im an

performer

so

improviser

i dont

know

exactly what im going to say when i begin though ive about of and when ive thought talking particular things finished talking imay still be interested in something ive said and imay want to think about it again and sometimes i'llwant

to look at it and transcribe it and maybe

even

in a more or less extensive form that hangs to the original talk or the sense of it close pretty even when ive extended it because immuch less it

publish

in revision and polishing than in the difference between print and performance (wim65)

interested

The difference

between

and print is, for Antin, analo performance between gous (that is, objects) poetry and works of art: "most people / in art schools are interested in making objects," that is, "objects of duration." Such objects don't interest Antin. To say why they don't he recalls a visit of his to the Louvre in which he hunts up mainly the paintings of low-profile artists to the difference

trying very hard (but failing) to avoid the Mona Lisa tour. On his way out he passes one of Rembrandt's self-portraits:

while

as

i passed

the

for a moment

stopped

rembrandts to

look

once

on

the way

again

at

out

the

i

self

portrait

with

the pallette in his hand and the turban tied around his head which looks more like a painters cloth to protect his

hair

and

an

expression

that

some

suggests

kind

of

comment

on the object of painting its meaning and perhaps its duration a comment that looks to me like the beginning of a very rueful Jewish grin that expresses something of my own disdain for the idea of duration are "objects of duration"? They that don't get thrown away?unlike

What

(wim72)

are evidently Duchamp's

not just things Readymades,

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we

which cultural

know icons

Rembrandt's

is a self-interrupting icon (like the one in John a in Convex Portrait it incor Mirror). As a self-portrait Self Ashbery's could say: perpetually porates?one interrupts?the performance on Rembrandt's of its composition. The expression face is a

Antin's 26

or replicas; they are of chiefly from photographs the Mona and also of course like Lisa, but the Rembrandt that catches self-portraits; like

attention

moment

of d?s uvrement?unworking?inserted one thinks about whether An entretemps. Naturally of the Mona

Lisa's

smile. We

into

the work.

the same

is true

underestimate

the difficulty of such as a disinterested to smiles with aesthetic respect experience event. At any rate Antin reads Rembrandt's face as a "rueful Jew own ish grin that expresses of / disdain for the idea my something to say that this disdain of duration expresses the fundamental anarchism (one could call the anti-principle prin Antin's the d?s of uvrement) (and of the avant garde, ciple: poetics

of duration."

Iwant

art, and of Language Poetry). The idea is to pro in which the work takes place without taking final or even it materializes without becoming objectified

of performance duce an event

form; finished. The poem can be communicated

a haecceity that in this respect is a singularity, a voices but which can no partage of through

longer be identified on its own as a thing set apart from the com in its company. John Cage remarked on the that assembles munity to escape the fixity of Robert of Rauschenberg's ability paintings canvases of paint, not to mention painting despite being made stretched on a frame and hung on a wall, for all the world objects to memorize of art: "Over and over again I've found it impossible I 'Have it?' you changed paintings. Rauschenberg's keep asking, And

I'm looking that it changes. I look out the then noticing while and see the icicles. There dripping water is frozen into an

window

object. The icicles all go down. Winter more season of quiescence."67 What's the principle io"

The principle

than the others here?

called mobility-immobility

is this:

every thing is changing some things but while are changing others

are

not.

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is the

20"

eventually that were

those

not 30"

changing

27

begin suddenly to change (S154) The principle of art belongs

d?s uvrement) is that the work (mobility-immobility: to an unstable environment is internal (historicity

to its essence); it cannot be sealed off from this environment it is, whatever else it is, an event that happens simultane with else taking place in the ongoing ously everything places it to form. (Recall Celan's traverses and which, indeed, it works

because

of

the

Meridian," ["Der poem: Unterwegssein no are art. Poets There works of GW3:i86/cP34].) unaccompanied and audiences of poetry are clandestine of poems that companions figure

travel from one environment in school bracketing

to transform

works

them?Gadamer

to another.

To be sure, we are trained of art into aesthetic phenomena by calls this "aesthetic differentiation"

as a one (wm8i/ TM85). But the poem cannot be differentiated time thing that gets picked up now and again by the isolated read er. On the contrary, as Peter Middleton in an essay on suggests "The Contemporary to be radically

needs

the concept of the poem Poetry Reading," "Instead of thinking of the poem socialized: around being variously that moves read interpreted,

as something in different forms, and generally provoking dis aloud, published we might be better to think of it all as a large tinct interpretations, memo h?t?roclite texts, people, performances, entity, that mixes a in other and that ries, affines, process engages many possible people, perhaps only briefly, over a long period of time, whose out comes are usually hard to see, and which has no clear boundaries, not the page, the reading, the critical study."68 without myth. regards mod Thierry de Duve as a Utopian project that failed (KD191). A hundred years of rhetoric has (he thinks) left modernity?the alienat in-your-face world of industrial-technological ed, rationalized capitalism?

community ernism

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at the end of the (This is a universal disappointment unchanged. is like art, century: unredemptive.) politics, Says de Duve: the art in is New commercialized?a York, world, thoroughly especially if there ever was one?and institution market painters mostly "man of'68" (KD191-92). As a self-professed (KD288) But for (KD462). longs community probably not a poetic since such a community does not fit anywhere along community,

work 28

alone

de Duve the

axis

between

or

libertarian-communitarian as a "h?t?roclite

The poem categories. of partage: as a formal model of itself?ecstatic: journeying

entity"

liberal-socialist

is anarchic

on the

object the poem is always in excess its sur outside itself and absorbing

into itself as it goes. Why not think of this as the his roundings is not a torical mode of existence of the poem, whose self-identity the but entails communities that it gener logical ipseity multiple ates through those whom it fascinates? Nancy points out that lit erature

a certain romantic, functionalist, nation is not myth?on of myth as a unitary narrative that gathers a whole into a totality. Whereas (in this certainly erroneous myth

alist notion people

sense) produces communion?heterogeneous people united as in a sharing or divi one voice?literature is serial in its production, sion of voices: its unity is not organic, that is, as Nancy puts it, it is "articulated" "articulation rather than "organized," where is only a juncture, or more exactly the play of a juncture: what takes touch each other without different pieces place where fusing where together, they slide, pivot, or tumble over one another, one at the limit of the other?exactly at its limit?where these singu fold or stiffen, flex or tense themselves pieces one and this another, unto one another, without together through same a at mutual the time, always remains, play?which play between them?ever forming into the substance of a higher power lar and distinct

of aWhole"

(CD188/1C76). So one could (or ideology, law, or philosophical myth is not a totality or a unitary produces or tradition theatrical

of communities

whose

and performative

rather

say that, unlike romantic rationality), what poetry

but a series community I if it right, is have sociality, or even than civil, economic,

ideological.

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NOTES i. Werner

is a poet

"Hesiod

says:

Jaeger

because

is a teacher."

he

The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. Gilbert Highet Press,

University to Plato 2. "Vox al.

p. 74; and

1939,1, Mass.:

(Cambridge,

Harvard

in Deserto,"

Clamans

Stanford

(Stanford:

3. Emmanuel

Levinas,

also

example,

University

Press,

Otherwise

than

Havelock,

Press,

to Presence,

The Birth

(New York: Oxford Eric

University

1963),

trans.

Preface

or

105-6.

pp.

Brian

bp. trans.

Essence,

Beyond

et

Holmes,

p. 239. Hereafter

1993), Being

Paideia:

Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinuus Nijhoff, 1971), pp. 141-42. 4. Ion, 533d-534e. It is worth noting that Socrates identifies lyric poets as particularly Dionysian: shipping Corybantes are

poets

lyric

in their

senses

when

they make

these

lovely

lyrics.

once they launch into harmony and rhythm, they are seized

No, when with

not

"So it is with the good lyric poets: as the wor are not in their senses when they dance, so the

the

Bacchic

transport,

bacchants,

when

not when

in their senses"

possessed,

and

are

draw

milk

and

the

[katexomenai]?as

possessed

from

honey

the

but

rivers,

(534a; Lane Cooper trans.) Maurice 5. Blanchot, Lespace litt?raire (Paris: Gallimard, 1955), p. 28; The Space of Literature, trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,

1982),

32.

p.

6. Jean-Luc Nancy, Le partage de voix (Paris: ?ditions Galil?e, 1982), pp. 62 65 (hereafter pv); "Sharing Voices," trans. Gayle Ormiston, Transforming the Hermeneutic and Alan

See Walsh,

sv).

on

Havelock pp. 7. See

Schrift

suny

(Albany: The Varieties

"The

to Nancy,

From Nietzsche

Context:

D.

Press,

1990),

of Enchantment, Poetic

of

Psychology

ed.

L. Ormiston

Gayle

234-35;

pp.

Performance,"

(hereafter

and

3-36;

pp.

Eric

esp.

Preface

to Plato,

145-64. Maurice

Minuit,

La

Blanchot,

1983),

18-19;

pp.

communaut?

hereafter

ci;

inavouable

Editions

(Paris:

The Unavowable

de trans.

Community,

Pierre Joris (Barrytown, New York: Station Hill Press, 1988), p. 7; here after

uc:

"It

of his

readers

quest

for

an

is striking signifies ecstatic

that Georges

Bataille,

the mystique

of an

experience,

name

whose ecstasy

excludes../fusional

or

the

for

so many

non-religious

fulfillment

in some

(Jean-Luc Nancy). It is something he is deeply hypostasis' averse to. One must never forget that what counts for him is less the collective

one forgets everything (oneself included) than the demanding process that realizes itself by bringing into play and carrying outside itself an existence that is insufficient [unto itself], a state of ravishment where

movement

that

ruins

immanence

as well

as

the

usual

forms

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of

tran

29

d?s

uvr?e,"

no.

Alea,

Christian Bourgeois revised

and

additional

30

"De

essays,

"Divine

(1983).

"La communaut?

Nancy's

La communaut?

Nancy's

P?tre-en-commun"

d?s

uvr?e

d?s

and

uvr?e"

"L'histoire

or

?clats,"

"Shattered

and

Love,"

two

plus finie."

"Des

The

adds two

The Inoperative Community, cited below,

en

(Paris:

contains a

to Blanchot,

"La communaut?

of

version

enlarged

"L'amour

more, or

4

to

Editeur, 1986), responding

translation,

English

is a response

text

Blanchot's

scendence."

lieux

divins,"

Places."

8.Maurice Blanchot, La question la plus profonde," Lentretien infini (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), p. 28; hereafter ei; "The Most Profound Question," The Infinite Conversation, trans. Susan Hanson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 9. La

Press,

(Christian Community,

Nouvelle

trans.

Connor,

Peter

ic

Lisa

96:

p.

fact of poetry's

account

"Plato's

over

control

Stanford

remains

Press, 1991), p.

first

See Giorgio

an

conception], aesthetic

Content, 1999),

4-5:

pp.

experience The

enjoyment.

and

the

indeed

of

Albert

Georgia

"Plato,

and

Greek

of art

experience little

having power

"The

Agamben,

trans.

in general, had a very different

antiquity and

the

and with clarity the central

culture." Without

Press,

University

our modern

disinterest

Greek

The Man

Thing,"

Uncanny

(Stanford:

[from

and

Holland,

of Minnesota

(Minneapolis: University

augment?e

The Inoperative

cd;

inc.

to Plato,

classical

et

Michael

Garbus,

only Greek attempt to articulate consciously Most

revue

?dition

p. 22; hereafter

1990),

6. Hereafter Preface

21. Hereafter

pp.

uvr?e.

Bourgeois,

Simona Sawhney 10.

1993),

d?s

communaut?

art

to do with

over

the

soul

to him so great that he thought it could by itself destroy the foundations of his city; but nonetheless, while he was forced to very seemed

it, he

banish

so

did

'since

reluctantly,

of her spell.' The term he uses when is Oeio?

imagination

inspired benevolent

no

spectators,

their

in the

time, experience

notes

find

in which

he wants 'divine

pp.

55-56.

very

conscious

to define the effects of terror,'

inappropriate

a

term

to define

that our

we, reac

increasing frequency, after a

modern

artists

attempt

to capture

of art."

11.The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Francis Golffing 1956),

are

ourselves

is found with

tions, but that nevertheless certain

cpo?oc,

doubt

we

See Martin

Heidegger,

(New York: Anchor

"Rapture

as Aesthetic

Books, State,"

Nietzsche: TheWill to Power as Art, trans. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper

and

Row,

1979),

1, pp.

92-106.

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12. Gesammelte

g s.

Marcus

Bullock

p. 290

1999),

and Method,

G. Marshall

Jennings

146-47. ed.

Harvard

(Cambridge: The Arcades

Benjamin,

ap).

trans.

ed.,

trans.

Project,

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard

(hereafter

rev.

2nd

1, pp.

1913-1926,

486-87.

pp.

369. Walter

p.

I:

Writings,

and Kevin McLaughlin

Press,

Truth

after

1996),

Eiland

University 14. See

W

and Michael

gs.v.i,

13. Benjamin,

Selected

iv,

1972),

Suhrkamp,

Street,"

"One-Way

Press,

University

Howard

(Frankfurt:

Schriften

Hereafter

and Donald

Joel Weinsheimer

(New York: Crossroad Publishing,

1989), pp. 125-26 (here

tm):

The true being of the spectator, who belongs to the play of art, cannot be adequately understood in terms of subjectivity [i. e., as a

cognitive

disengaged

sciousness

But

itself.

conducts

as a way

subject],

this

that not

does

nature of the spectator cannot be described at

present ment

of human

conduct,

has

present

being

that

the

in terms of being

as a subjective

Considered

something....

con

aesthetic mean

the

accomplish of being

character

In the Phaedrus Plato already described the blun der of those who take the viewpoint of rational reasonableness outside oneself.

the ecstatic condition of being outside and tend to misinterpret oneself, seeing it as a mere negation of being composed within In fact, being outside oneself and hence as a kind of madness. is the positive possibility

oneself else. a

This

kind

one

is watching. for

condition,

privative tion

to the matter

tive

accomplishment.

15.This distancing

into

in

oneself

and

from this

to be

and

to

is anything

devoting is the

something

self-forgetfulness

self-forgetfulness

it arises

at hand,

one's

spectator's

full

a

but atten

own

posi

factor by which an audience is constituted is already ironically in the Ion when Socrates gets Ion to confess

conceptualized that he (Ion) watches produces

giving

Here

of being wholly with is a self-forgetfulness,

present in

consists

spectator

what

of being

the Dionysian effects that his recital of Homer (535d-e). In Plato poetry is already integrated

in his audience

a culture

of

rhetoric.

16.Trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), p. 468. See also Max Weber, "The Chinese Literati," SociologicalWritings, ed. Wolf

Heydebrand

(New

York:

Continuum,

1994),

pp.

122-50,

135-36.

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esp.

pp.

31

17. See

the

on

"Dialogue

Poesy,"

as Practice:

Theory

trans.

A Critical

of

Anthology et

al.

18.Philosophical Fragments, trans. Peter Firchow (Minneapolis: University

of

Early

German

Romantic

(Minneapolis:

of Minnesota

University

Minnesota

Press,

ed. &

Writers,

1991),

31-32,

pp.

Jochen

Press,

50-51.

Schulte-Sasse,

1997),

Compare

181.

p.

"The philosophy

Hegel:

of art is therefore a greater need in our day than itwas when art by itself as art yielded full satisfaction. Art invites us to intellectual considera

32

tion, and that not for the purpose of creating art again, but for knowing art

philosophically

what

Knox

Clarendon

(Oxford:

Press,

19. See Charles Bernstein, Poetics 20.

See

(Cambridge:

"The

Fragment

Word"

since

it is a word

to translate, take place.

1992), and

(1C51-59);

(Process)," A

his

an easy

term

does

something are

"uneventfulness"

"worklessness,"

on Ren?

essay

is not

in which

p.

151; hereafter

p.

also

uvrement

D?s

for an event

T. M.

13.

Press,

(1C07-13).

"Unworking,"

trans.

and Critical Excess

University

"The Athenaeum"

Blanchot,

Char,

1, p.

1975),

"Optimism

Harvard

on Fine Art,

Lectures

is." Aesthetics:

not

some

of

the possibilities. For Blanchot d?s uvrementmeans that writing is not a mode of production but an experience of the interminability of writing: writing without arche or telos. It belongs to the family of Bataille's or non-productive

d?pense 21. The

break-out

in

Content, artist

28-39.

pp.

whose rather

is arguably

painting

See

galleries.

or poet

al but

expenditure. as

earlier?perhaps,

Giorgio

suggests, when people begin collecting paintings and hanging

Agamben them

of

work

a the

Cabinet

longer unique

a

subjectivity, can

spectator

no

an alienation,

experiences

is

in

a craftsman

simply

moment

that

see

of

mode a reflection

Without

when

with

working

special

longer a

The Man

of Wonders,"

interest

Agamben's

is no

becomes

"The

the

his materi in

inwardness of himself

but

(p. 37).

"being-outside-himself"

22. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, The LiteraryAbsolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism, trans, by Phillip Barnard and Cheryl Lester (Albany: suny Press, 1988), p. 40. 23. See The College of Sociology, 1937-39, ed, Denis Hollier, trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University The Unavowable

Blanchot, iments

in community

conviction number external

animating

of people ties

of

the

whose action,

1930s,

Later

project.

names by

today more

on

12-16,

pp. starting

Bataille

[Andr? Breton] but

Press, 1988). Hereafter esp.

Community, during

as a group

Surrealism

of Minnesota

would

Bataille's his

with

es. See

write:

exper of

experience "the

force

of

allowed him to bring together a are

known

intimate

everywhere?not ties

of

passion.

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by It was

Breton

Andr? have

the

who

is in his

to say what

power

a poet

that

recognized

rightly

but

heart,

or painter an

that

not

does

or

organization

a collective body could. This 'body' can speak in different terms from an individual. If painters and poets together took consciousness of what on poetry and painting, anyone who speaks in their name must

weighed

it is the

that

plead

How

on Surrealism,

trans.

Michael

trans.

The Guilty,

(1947), TheAbsence ofMyth: Writings

Richardson

Verso,

(London:

1994),

Bruce

Boone

California:

(Venice,

Lapis

p.

Press,

25. See "La notion de d?pense," Lapart maudite (Paris: ?ditions p.

and

"Surrealism

necessity."

impersonal

60.

am.

Hereafter 24.

of

vehicle

ItDiffers from Existentialism"

hereafter

28;

"The

pm;

of

Notion

1988).

de Minuit),

Visions

Expenditure,"

of

Excess:

SelectedWritings, 1927-1939, trans. Allan Stoekl (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press,

communities they

are

1985),

To

be

all

sure,

ecstatic

relation to the social order in which

have an ambiguous are

contained?armies

ve.

118; hereafter

pp.

the most

emphatic

But

example.

one

think of armies not so much

as disciplined orders in which everything is regulated by command but as packs or bands that a state cannot finally keep under control. See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, should

on

"1227: Treatise trans. 1987),

Brian

The War

Nomadology:

Massumi

(Minneapolis:

A Thousand

Machine,"

Plateaus,

of Minnesota

University

Press,

351-415.

PP.

26. See Steve McCaffery, Critical

Intention:

"Writing as a General (New

York:

(Paris:

Gallimard,

1973-86

Writings,

Economy," North of

Roof

Books,

1986),

pp.

147;

Inner

201-21. 27.

See

Bataille,

Experience, 28.

See Giorgio

29.

gs.1.2.614-8; trans.

L'exp?rience trans.

Harry

Boldt

The Man

Agamben,

(London:

Content,

A Lyric Poet

Verso,

1973),

1943),

suny

(Albany:

Without

Baudelaire:

Charles Zohm

int?rieure Anne

Leslie

Press,

of High

Press,

1967),

p.

94.

Capitalism, cb.

113-17; hereafter

30. "Projective Verse," TheHuman Universe, ed. Donald Allen Grove

p.

5.

p.

in the Era pp.

p.

1988),

(New York:

pv.

59. Hereafter

31. Compare Louis Zukofsky, "A Statement for Poetry [1950]," Prepositions: The Collected Critical Essays (Hanover, New Hampshire: Wesleyan University is to

read

Press,

2000),

poems.

That

p. 23: way

"The

the

best

reader

way becomes

to find

out

something

about of

poetry a poet

himself: not because he 'contributes' to the poetry, but because he finds himself the subject of its energy."

This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

33

32. Adorno, mit

trans.

Prisms,

Press,

1981),

Samuel

and

Weber

Shierry

MA:

(Cambridge,

152:

p.

Schoenberg's instinctive mode of reaction ismelodic; everything in him is actually "sung," including the instrumental lines. This his music

endows

with

its articulate

character,

and

free-moving

yet structural down to the last tone. The primacy of breathing

34

over

the beat

of abstract

and to all those who, existence,

more

to

Schoenberg

than

modern

Stravinsky

to contemporary

having adjusted better

themselves

fancy

contrasts

time

The

Schoenberg.

is allergic to the elaboration and fulfilment of which it substitutes the docile repetition of mutilat melody, for ed melodic fragments. The ability to follow the breath of the reified mind

music unafraid had already distinguished Schoenberg from older, post-Wagnerian composers like Strauss and Wolf, in whom the seems

music

to

unable

its

develop

substance

to

according

intrinsic impulses and requires literary and programmatic even

port,

in the

33. Olson's

Push:

Rouge:

Louisiana

34.

and Recent

Black Mountain,

Origin,

Press,

University

1978),

American

Grounding

American

kind

Fredman of mystery

"the

says

that

sect,

particularly

Black

Charles

Poetry:

1970, when

Olson

ers

this

to join

died.

As

the of

community

Mountain

leader,

Olson

resistant

poets.

Black

Mountain

Review:

Olson,

Creeley,

as

1950, when

a

Olson

a host a group

Thus,

the

started Origin, and

encouraged

formed around such centers as Black Mountain

and

functioned

years

and Cid Corman

Olson

Press, 1993), pp.

poets

the

between

and Creeley began corresponding

(Baton

Poetry

39.

p.

Emersonian Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University 52-57.

sup

songs.

Fredman,

Stephen

its

of oth

of writers

College, Origin, and The

Duncan,

Denise

Corman,

Levertov, Edward Dorn, Paul Blackburn, Joel Oppenheimer, Fielding Dawson, Michael Rumaker, Hilda Morley, John Wieners, Larry Eigner, Jonathan Williams, Le Roi Jones, Gilbert Sorrentino, and others. In the course

of

this

twenty-year

appeared and intermingled with be mentioned,

the

following

a second

period,

wave

of projectivist

writers

the first; of a larger number that could

writers

maintained

a more

or

less

strict

to the projectivist doctrine during at least some of this time: Robert Kelly, Theodore Enslin, Kenneth Irby, Jerome Rothenberg, Edward David Richard Eshleman, Sanders, Bromige, Clayton adherence

Grossinger,

Ronald

Johnson,

and Armand

Schwerner"

(p. 55).

This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

by RoseLee Goldberg, Performance: Live Art 1909 to the Present York: (New Harry N. Abrams, 1979), p. 79. 36. (New York: E. P.Dutton, 1972), pp. 334-67 ("ANew Black Mountain"). 35-Quoted

37.

Goldberg,

82.

p.

Performance,

See

Black

Duberman,

Mountain,

pp.

350-58. Black Mountain,

38. Duberman,

p.

35

380.

39. The BlackMountain Book: A New Edition (Rocky Mount, North Carolina: North

Carolina

Press,

Wesleyan

1991),

178-79.

pp.

40. See Thierry de Duve, Kant after Duchamp (Cambridge: mit Press, 1996), p. 375; hereafter kd: "Something unprecedented in the whole history of legitimate to be an artist with

art surfaced in the sixties: it had become out

being

ist,

a

either

architect,

or a poet,

painter,

or art at

in general,

in traditional disciplines." seems

Nancy

to

(Stanford:

or a new

A

was

large?that

novel

sculptor,

art

of

'category'

no

absorbed

longer

In "Why Are There Several Arts?" Jean-Luc

contest

Stanford

etc.

filmmaker,

choreographer,

appeared?art

or a musician,

de Duve.

See

Press,

University

trans.

The Muses,

1994),

1-39. Cf.

pp.

Peggy

Kamuf

Stanley

Cavell,

It" (1967) on the work of Anthony Caro, whose sculpture is no longer sculptured, thus depriving us of criteria for deter mining what we are looking at. This is the modernist project, which "AMatter

of Meaning

leaves us in the dilemma of always having to discover anew the condi tions

that

the possibility nal

to our

Essays 41. Trans.

us

enable

to accept

experience

Frederick

art.

of

43. ?sthetische

See Must

G.

Battcock

We Mean

Lawrence

mit

(Cambridge:

Press,

always inter

(Berkeley:

University

of California

of

188-90.

pp. 1987),

pp.

205-7.

(1967), Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, Press,

1995),

212;

hereafter

p.

ed. 120.

ao. Theorie

(Frankfurt:

1973),

Suhrkamp,

Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor Minnesota

1969),

event

Say? A Book

We

What

Press,

University

Cambridge

42. "Art and Objecthood" Gregory

in which

of art,

of fraudulence, Cavell says, is henceforward

(Cambridge:

Hereafter

as a work

something

Press,

1997),

p.

141. Hereafter

p.

(Minneapolis: University

at;

of

aet.

"Modernist Painting," The New Art, ed. Gregory 44. See Greenberg, Battock (New York: Dutton, 1973), pp. 72-73. See also Arthur Danto, "Works of Art

and Mere Real Things," The Transfiguration of the A Commonplace: Philosophy ofArt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 1-32. Thierry de Duve has a good chapter on this matter in Kant After Duchamp, pp. 199-279 ("The Monochrome and the Blank Canvas").

This content downloaded from 129.74.250.206 on Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:51:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Silence (Middletown,

45- "Experimental Music," Press,

University 46.

deep 36

p.

In an

can be

summed

up

footnote

important

by

Connecticut: Wesleyan

s.

that

saying

on

remarks

Fried

and Surrealist

literalists

between

affinity

affinity

1961),

so new.

not

Perhaps

12. Hereafter

sensibility....

Surrealist

"the

This lit

sensibility...and

eralist sensibility are both theatrical" (A0145). 47. See Marjorie Perloff on Fried's separation of art from theater, The Moment:

Futurist

Avant-Guerre,

See A Thousand

Plateaus,

pp.

of Rupture

492-99.

uvres completes (Paris: Gallimard),

49. See Artaud, et

the Language

of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 109-11

(Chicago: University 48.

and

Avant-Garde,

la m?taphysique,"

and

40-57,

pp.

"En

finir

en sc?ne

IV, "Lamise

avec

les

chefs-d'

uvre,"

89-100; hereafter oc; The Theater and ItsDouble, inAntonin Artaud: Selected Writings, ed. Susan Sontag (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988),

en

"Mise

esp.

to Masterpieces."

another

with

to come

not

is "not

experience silent

presence

alist

objects

rooms?is not

were 50.

the

just

of

"theater

A Thousand

reserve

give

or of

in

that

a person,

the name

haecceity

the

by

liter

darkened

ifMinimalist

art

cruelty."

p. 261:

of

is

The

upon

coming

somewhat

(A0128). As

Plateaus,

from

does

ground.

crowded,

Becoming-Animal,

Becoming-Intense,

different

or

experience

example,

work

the beholder, who

back

distanced,

being

person;

but

theater

stand

in just this way"

disquieting

very We

unlike

of another

Imperceptible...,"

stance.

any entirely

Minimalist

It confronts to

but

unexpectedly?for

"1730:

viduation

closer

The

person.

not just sit there; it is aggressive. warned

describes

"object" as if itwere a not-altogeth

the Minimalist

encounter

Fried

Interestingly,

"An End

and

227-39,

pp.

aa.

hereafter

252-59;

pp.

the encounter with er-friendly

and Metaphysics,"

sc?ne

for

"There

Becoming is a mode

subject,

it. A

season,

thing, a winter,

of

indi

or

sub

a sum

mer, an hour, a date have a perfect individuality lacking nothing, even though this individuality is different from that of a thing or a subject. in the sense that they consist entirely of relations

They are haecceities of movement affect

and

and be

rest

between

molecules

or

capacities

particles,

to

affected."

51. See Arthur Danto, "The End of Art," The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 81-115. For Danto,

however,

art comes

to an end,

not when

it turns

into

theater,

but

into philosophy," that is, when the work just is the theory that constitutes it: "Now ifwe look at the art of our recent

when

it is "transmuted

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we

past...what

to a world

But

itself.

that

so

infinity,

that

as

remaining,

sciousness" Muses,

it were,

(p. in).

and more

upon external

something

in understanding

that

is another

all

virtually

it

its object

exhibited

feature

these

by

there

as the object

solely

Jean-Luc

Compare

is at the

art

is theory,

end

in a dazzle of pure thought about itself,

having finally become vaporized and

is not

theory

so

there

more

depends

is that the objects approach zero as their theory

late productions which approaches

so

as art,

to understand,

it seeks

to understand

has

which

is something

its existence

for

theory

see

its own

of

Nancy,

con

theoretical

"The Vestige

of Art,"

The

81-100.

pp.

52. See Henry Sayre, The Object of Performance: The American Avant-Garde Since 1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 1-34; and Lucy Lippard, Six Years:TheDematerialization of theArt Object from 1966 to 1972 (New York: Praeger, 1973). 53. See Chris Burden and Jan Butterfield, "Through the Night Softly," The Art of Performance:A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock and Robert Nickas

E. P Dutton,

York:

(New

1984),

Parveen

and

222-39;

pp.

Adams,

"Operation Orlan," The Emptiness of the Image (London: Routledge, p.

esp.

1991),

145.

54. The Surrealists were always a plurality in which, in Nancy's words, "different pieces touch each other without fusing" (1NC76). In The Unavowable

remarks

Blanchot

Community

on

the

character

aleatory

of

Andr? Breton's group: "There it is: something had taken place which, for

a few moments existences,

gular

gave

established

munity

to

due

and

the misunderstandings to recognize

permission

though

previously

at the

to

peculiar

the same

of a com

possibility time

sin

posthu

already

mous: nothing of itwould remain, which saddened the heart while also exalting it, like the very ordeal of effacement that writing demands" (UC2l). 55. Gs.i

1.1.297.

Street

One-Way

and Other

Writings,

trans.

Edmund

Jephcott

and Kingsley Shorter (London: Verso, 1979), p. 227. 56. A

"war machine"

is like

a

pack,

band,

or

ducible to the State apparatus, to be outside its

law:

it comes

from

elsewhere."

"it

gang:

seems

to be

irre

its sovereignty and prior to

See A Thousand

Plateaus,

p.

352.

57. Robert Creeley, Was That a Real Poem & Other Essays, ed. Donald Allen (Bolinas, 58.

Moment,

Four

California: and

"Violence pp.

Precision:

Seasons The

Foundation, Manifesto

1979), as Art

p.

Form,"

17. The Futurist

80-115.

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37

Futurist

59. My

Marsilio 60.

ed.

Years,

Publishers,

See

Michael

Bengt 1992),

trans.

Jangfeldt,

York:

(New

Rudy

4-5.

pp.

San

The

Davidson,

Stephen

Francisco

Renaissance:

Poetics

and

Community atMid-century (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989). 61.

38

"The

as Producer"

Author

(gs.u.2.696);

Books,

1978),

62. what

it means

Essays,

Reflections:

Autobiographical Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott

Aphorisms,

(New York: Schocken

p. 233. to be avant-garde

(New

New

York:

Directions,

1993),

pp.

46

47. to

"Introduction"

63.

Close

Listening:

Poetry

and

the Performed

ed.

Word,

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 24. See Ron Silliman, "The Political Economy of Poetry," TheNew Sentence (New York: Roof Books, 1987), and Charles Bernstein, "I Don't Take Voice Charles Bernstein

Mail: The Object of Art in the Age of Electronic Technology," My Way: Speeches and Poems (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 73 80,

p.

esp.

76.

64. The Marginalization Princeton

(Princeton: 65.

See

of Poetry: Language Writing

Marjorie

Press,

University

as

"The Word

Perloff,

and Literary History

14.

1996),

p.

Such:

l=a=n

= g = u=a=g

= e

Poetry in the Eighties," TheDance of the Intellect: Studies in thePoetry of the Pound Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 215-38. 66.

pp.

Steve

for example,

See,

162-77.

Antin,

See Marjorie

and

the

McCaffrey, Perloff,

Poetry

of

"Voice "'No More

in Extremis," Margins': The

Performance,"

Poetics

Close John of

Listening,

Cage,

David

Indeterminacy:

Rimbaud to Cage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 288 339; and Stephen Fredman, "The Crisis at Present: Talk Poems and the New

Poet's

Prose."

Poet's

Prose:

The

Crisis

in American

Verse,

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 136-49. 67. "On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and His Work" (S102). 68. Close

Listening,

p. 294.

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2nd

ed.