V.V.(6) & M&D 52/54

[Terrance]

Reading those chapters I think, how can one even contemplate
these matters, such horrifying, intensely discomfiting the
subjects. How can one even pretend to some deconstructed
text and maintain the requisite emotional distance?
Moreover, I begin to think on Torture and Truth and Slaves
and Women. There is always a danger that P stands on its
head, that feel, the one thing you can't lose, that feel,
intensely felt, that feel that distracts the mind the heart
away and there is the danger and impertinence of not taking
it seriously enough, but laughter, comedy is so present
thematically, satirically, I would say, didactically, just
my reply to Weisenburger's Fables of Subversion and McHale's
reader processed reader tortured by an author become a
Pointsman to a quester for the meaning of words. Molly Hite
understands the Humor in Chaos and Order, no doubt. But
perhaps there in lies the rub a dub snub in the bed like a
bug biting the safety of the academic's white legs under the
covers of critical blankets. Rub a dub, trivialize it as
literary play. How to resist lyricizing the tortured body,
resist the perverse pleasures  associated with
sado-masochism and torture, not sensationalize and exoticize
and create desire for torture, to celebrate torture. The
torture of Christ on the cross, his Widow now, his Groom,
these seem to argue, in P's texts, that our civilization is
based on barbarism, torture in the name of the Word, in the
pursuit of truth. The salve cannot speak the truth till he
be tortured, this is an idea that is not only Plato and
Aristotle but all through history, including in the U.S. 
Women have the truth too, but like the slave they have not
the capacity to make useful, no reason you see. To
understand what P is up to with torture though, it's
religion, not deconstructed politics and history that must
be our guide. 

	"Torture is senseless violence, born in fear." "The
           purpose of torture is not only the extortion of
           confessions, of betrayal: the victim must
disgrace
           himself, by his screams and his submissions, like
a
           human animal."

        Jean-Paul Sartre






J L wrote:
> 
> can't get over the quality and economy of the writing in the
> first couple of pages of chapter four.
> esther's journey is a pilgrim's progress in an enlightened bubble
> of new self-righteousness. some very human dichotomies and divisions
> are set up and passed by; the religious imagery becoming more overt
> as she arrives at the temple/surgery.
> all setting up the (cf. m&d chapter 53/54) pornographic description
> which follows: the mechanics of transfiguration.
> it's even interesting that the Bridey Murphy story crops up just
> when we're pondering that 'dreams and impersonations' stuff and
> changes of identity by conscious and other means.
> 
> (plus i couldn't resist posting with this subject line - i've been
> saving it up for ages)
> 
> JL, listening to _coppelia_
> _____________________________________________________________________________________
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