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Alain Badiou
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Martin Hielscher
Geert Lovink
Larry Rickels
Avital Ronell
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Siegfried Zielinski
Slavoj Zizek
2012 by Jeremy Fernando
Think Media EGS Series is supported by
the European Graduate School
ATROPOS PRESS
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151 First Avenue # 14, New York, N.Y. 10003
cover design: Yanyun Chen
all rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-9853042-1-8
for Tykhe
Authors
Jeremy Fernando
Robert Lumsden
Mark Brantner
Julia Hlzl
Nicole Ong
Lim Lee Ching
Michelle Wang
Jeremy Fernando
Michael Kearney
Paoi Wilmer
Setsuko Adachi
Shaoling Ma
Cui Su
Wernmei Yong Ade
Jeremy Fernando
Contents
ForewordTo read or not to read .................................... 8
In Difference .................................................................. 23
I hear Dead People
......................................................... 75
............................................... 233
Jeremy Fernando
10 January , 2011
Singapore
Foreword
to read
or not to read
That is the question.
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Foreword
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opening the possibility of themselves as a nonreader, as other to themselves. Thus, all that can
be said is that they have attempted to reada
reading that never ceases reading.
Since these readings are always fragmentary,
remain plural, remain readings, this suggests
that to attend to themto read these writings of
readingsrequires an imaginative gesture. And
here, there is a crucial lesson to be gleaned from
Oscar Wilde: if you desire to see a Japanese
effect, you will not behave like a tourist and go
to Tokio. On the contrary, you will stay at home
and steep yourself in the work of certain Japanese
artists, and then, when you have absorbed the
spirit of their style, and caught their imaginative
manner of vision, you will go some afternoon and
sit in the park or stroll down Piccadilly, and if you
cannot see an absolutely Japanese effect there,
you will not see it anywhere. 8 Perhaps, to even
conceive of reading, one must first imagine the
possibility of reading itself. If one closes oneself
to itin the interest of ideology, particular
preconceptions of what reading is, or even in the
adherence to a single, absolute truthone might
never be able to see it anywhere, even if it was
8
40.
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Foreword
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Robert Lumsden
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In Difference
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conference.pdf
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In Difference
Analogy
All discursively presented reasoning is analogic,
and all analogies are partial. 10
Knowing this does not tell us in what aspects
or to what degree insufficiencies lie as we seize
upon such items in a particular analogy perceived
as being helpful to whatever case we had been
inclined to favour. Such icons of quasi-rationality
encourage the deception that we are extending
our understanding when we cannot know but
that we are doing little more than confirming
dispositions to image the world in one way and
not another, realisations already inscribed as
expectations to which we might have little access.
Here as an example is an analogy from a book
which relates western scientific findings to
Eastern cosmologies:
The quantum vacuum turns out to be
responsible for the fate of the universe
as well. The universe could be flat.
So that lightexcept near massive
bodiestravels in a straight line, or
open (with an infinitely expanding
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In Difference
Reading Stages
If aesthetic judgements are infillings of
neurological matrixes from the invitations each
text presents, initial reading will be seen, not as
a resolution top down of the often competing
requirements of whatever the reader is able
to command of her or his latent intent, but a
coolness of the surface congealing chaos into
tolerably acceptable forms. First reading is a
primal matter of the unconscious coursing
towards disclosure, fluid, in flux, and falling
always out of those forms it assumes, unceasing
in sleep and waking. The image for it is, not a
desk lamp shining steady on the open pages of a
book, but a decorative oil lamp, lit from within,
whose matter takes on form prior to dissolving
back into the undifferentiated mass from which it
arose, to rise again in new forms, sliding up into
and over the visible surface. Re-reading re-visits
this first acceptance of the previously unknown
to take it in the direction of a reasonable account,
a description suitable for public conversation.
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Postmodernism?, 32.
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In Difference
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Mark Brantner
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Pictures, 2001.
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Goodbye
How then do we discuss the aphonic voice that we
are arguing for here? How do we account for an
aphonic voice that is both evoked and concealed
in its material grounds? To end, I want to push us
toward a possible way of reading that illustrates
how we can hear in a written text an aphonic
voice, which should not be conceived of in terms
of Elbows metaphor for the phonic voice. The
Lacanian aphonic voice, which is nothing more
than an excess produced by the signification
process, is what remains of the encapsulation of
the real in language and reminds us of that which
resists signification. To demonstrate this I want
to end with a reading of the appropriately named
poem Going by Pulitzer Prize winning poet W.
S. Merwin.
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Julia Holzl
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Fidem Frangere
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Prelude .
If we give credence to Maurice Blanchot,2 there are
three ways of reading.
First, an active, productive way of reading, which
produces text and reader and thus transports us;
the second, a passive kind of reading which betrays
the text while appearing to submit to it, by giving
the illusion that the text exists objectively, fully,
sovereignly: as one whole; and, third, there is the
reading that is no longer passive, but is passivitys
reading.
In what follows, all three ways will be pursued,
and a fo(u)rth shall be addedthe reading of unreadability, a reading of impossibility. Impossible
readings: the only reading possible, perhaps.
For what is at stake here is nothing but the(re) is.
Fidem Frangere
TENEBRAE
Komm auf den Hnden zu uns.
Wer mit der Lampe allein ist,
hat nur die Hand, draus zu lesen.3
Come on your hands to us.
Who is alone with the lamp
has only his hand to read from.
That there is an is, that there is in such is: such is
the possibility of possibility to be thought here.
Et lux in tenebris lucet, that there is (in and
through) such lightthat there is to read, that
there is to read from: such are the textures we are
to depart from.
This first beginning, then, co-responds to the
Heideggerian Grundstimmung (groundingattunement) of an initial Er-staunen (deep
wonder): that there is, that there is (in) such is.
In den verfahrenen Augenlies da:
In the eyes all awryread there:4
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an incision, marks an incidere, indicates a cuttingin, signals the incident, the befalling itself. The
reader is cut by the text, each time, only one
time, the only time etc. A(t) once, the never: only
once, only one time, the only time ; such once is
always a(s) never, and there is no witness for the
witness.7 There is cannot be witnessed, the only
witness[:] there is.
To read is to be alone with the word. Reading
is (to) utter solitude; she who is alone with the
text has only her word to read from. The work
is solitary, writes Blanchot,8 and this does not
mean that it remains uncommunicable, that it has
no reader. But whoever reads it enters into the
affirmation of the works solitude, just as he who
writes it belongs to the risk of this solitude. To
sacrifice ones own solitude, ones being-alone
(and we are always already alone) to the works
solitude: there is no greater sole-ness, perhaps.
And just as there is no distinction between
being and being-with/outthere is no being
7
an Introduction, by Ann Smock. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 21.
Fidem Frangere
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Fidem Frangere
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& Bookstores, trans. David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008,), 20.
Fidem Frangere
FIDEM
Je suis un prostitu de la lecture
Il ny a pas dIthaque
ni l ni au-del de l
I am a prostitute of reading
There is no Ithaca
neither there nor beyond there 23
The presence of the there is is, perhaps, as (an)
ex-posure. No text is true to its words, and there
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Fidem Frangere
in a particular context.24
Hence reading is a(s) re-presentation. Reading
does nothing but a re-presentation of the
singularity and otherness of the text, just as it
adds the singularity and otherness of every reader
to the text. As Chris Fynsk points out, the text
is a presentation of thought; reading requires a
relation to the text as presentation [] and as a
presentation of thought [] It requires constant
recollection of the fact that as long as we are
interpreting, we are not yet reading.25 We need
to begin, we need to begin to read. Only through
reading can such relation be established. To write
with Avital Ronell, the connection to the other
is a readingnot an interpretation, assimilation,
or even a hermeneutic understanding, but a
reading. 26
And what is reading, after all? Nothing but an
assignation of signs, of the sign as designator of
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and Difference. Translated, with an introduction and additional notes, by Alan Bass (London an New York: Routledge,
2002), 371 (pp. 371-378).
Fidem Frangere
121
the text.35
Without a text an sich, no book can be read.
Reading, again, remains impossible, is possible
only as such: as the possibility of impossibility. As
a matter of principle, we read Nancy, the book
is illegible, and it calls for or commands reading
in that illegibility. Illegibility is not a question of
what is too badly formed, crossed out, scribbled:
the illegible is what remains closed in the opening
of the book, what slips from page to page but
remains caught, glued, stitched into the binding
[] What is illegible is not for reading at all, yet
only by starting from it does something then offer
itself to reading. Of itself the book is untouched
and sealed; it begins and ends in that sealing; it is
always its own epitaph: here lies an illegible one.36
Becoming its own epitaph, always already,
the (textual surface of the) book must remain
untouched. Its problem, as Nancy rightly points
out, is that a unity and uniqueness are implied
in it.37 The sacredness of the book, he states,
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stores, 27.
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stores, 15.
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stores, 18.
Fidem Frangere
FRANGERE.
The favorable fragment 39
Thus reading, perhaps, is possible only as (the
possibility of) fragmentary reading, a(s) reading
of the fragment. It is the fragmentary that offers
the ghost of a chance, not the void of pure
absence but the ambiguous image of a word
effacing itself.40 Beyond absence or presence, the
fragment is, il y a: The fragment is to be written
singularly, the fragment is a written singularity,
never to be written in the plural; the fragment
happens only once. Etymologically rooted in
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40
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Fidem Frangere
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43
Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments, trans. P. Firchow (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1991),
27 (pp. 18-93).
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Nicole Ong
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The Trauma of
Language,
in reading, ethics
and Beloved.
Reading would be a lovely thing,
if it werent for the words that get in the way.
Perhaps reading is not very far from trauma
for trauma, like reading, is a reading of the self.
For we can never pre-empt what will become
a traumatic event in our lives, or know why
something has traumatised one person and not
the other, or even why an event that may have
not been traumatic to an earlier version of the
self now causes such distress. In this way, trauma
reveals there is something about the self that is
unique, inconstant; the self remains a secret to
itself, a secret from the self.
Perhaps a similar thing happens as one reads,
in the sense of there being no knowing how
reading will potentially change the self. In every
encounter with a text, there is an unknown part of
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and secrecy.9
To illustrate the aporetic nature of responsibility,
where it is both accountability and yet secrecy
at the same time, Derrida uses the example of
Abrahams sacrifice of his son, Isaac. In this story,
without revealing his intentions, the secret,
hidden, separate, absent, or mysterious,10 God
asks Abraham to offer his son as a sacrifice to
him. As father and son prepare to climb the
mountain, Isaac asks his father where they will
find the sacrificial lamb. Abraham responds by
saying that God himself will provide one. He
keeps the secret of what God has ordered him
to do, and does not speak of it to his son or the
rest of his family lest they hinder the process of
sacrifice.
And, because he doesnt speak, Abraham
transgresses the ethical order, that is, the highest
expression of the ethical is in terms of what
binds us to our own and to our fellows (that can
be the family but also the actual community of
friends or the nation). By keeping the secret, and
remaining responsible to God, Abraham betrays
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Reading in Practice:
Literary Silence
and Violence in J.M.
Coetzees Foe
If we had a keen vision and feeling of
all ordinary human life, it would be like
hearing the grass grow and the squirrels heartbeat, and we should die of
that roar which lies on the other side of
silence.
George Eliot, Middlemarch.1
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apartheid South Africa. Post identifies, for example, Cruso and the scheming shipmaster in Bristol
with the Afrikaner government; Susan Barton
with the liberal white South African, and simultaneously, Mother Africa.2 Other patterns are
also observed, such as the ideas of confinement
and interlopation being read, not incorrectly, but
no less predictably, as representative of the full
spectrum of colonisation, isolation and segregation, with the obvious immanence of dominion
suggesting white ownership.
While not exhaustive, the foregoing nonetheless
gives a good idea of the analogous way in which
Post furnishes his reading. By extension, it may
even be argued that the intent domestic episodes
in the novel represent the restriction of congregation, of the address to an audience, and of the
dissemination of any written material, as well as
the house-arrest that form the cumulative effect
of a apartheid-era banning-order; and Barton and
Fridays misidentification as gypsies and denial
of hospitality at the inn are further evidence of
the widespread practice of racial segregation at
a social level. But such critical responses may be
2 Robert M. Post. The Noise of Freedom: J.M. Coetzees
Foe. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, (vol.XXX,
No.3, Spring, 1989: 143-154), 145.
Reading in Practice
useful only in their directness, and are unfortunately also simplistic. Foe can be read as a kind of
political allegory, but not in the specific, grounded sense that a text like Animal Farm is. In many
ways, Coetzees novel defies the limiting confines
in which allegorical correspondence operates. He
says in an interview that:
Foe is a retreat from the South African
situation, but only from the situation in
a narrow temporal perspective. It is not
a retreat from the subject of colonialism
or from questions of power. What you
call the nature and processes of fiction
may also be called the question of who
writes? Who takes up the position of
power, pen in hand?3
The kind of allegorical procedure that is worked
out in Foe takes place at a more general level,
which challenges the social and political status
quo in an indirect but nonetheless vigourously
intellectual manner. This includes raising questions about the nature of power-formation, its
consequences on the making and manipulation
3 Tony Morphet. Two Interviews with J.M. Coetzee, 1983
and 1987. TriQuarterly, 69 (Spring/ Summer, 1987: 454464), 462.
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and speech:
We are accustomed to believe that our
world was created by God speaking; but
I ask, may it not rather be that he wrote
it, wrote a Word so long we have yet
come to the end of it? May it not be that
God continually writes the world, the
world and all that is in it? 15
What is thrown into relief is not just the notion
of theological linearity but also established eschatological concerns. These form a trajectory that
the novels structure readily subverts, and whose
non-linear, discontinuous narrative structure,
and spatial logic can only be intimated but never
fully grasped, because the implied vastness lies
in the texts continual re-inscription of itself. The
issue raised by Foes words transcends even these
to question the very nature of creation itself: that
there is a foreboding possibility of reading all the
world in its textuality. The ontological implication, then, lies in the problematics of signification,
because language is persistently and potentially
a failed vehicle, as witness the impossibility of
Susan Bartons inscripted emancipation of Friday.
These relate pointedly to the question, and sug15 Coetzee. Foe, 143.
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W. Michelle Wang
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Encountering
Formal Beauty: An
Aesthetic Reading of
Saramagos All the
Names
The sense of literature as a mass noun referring
to written works, especially those considered
of superior or lasting artistic merit,1 underpins
our general understanding and, subsequently,
our readings of literary texts. However, as Allan
Singer and Allen Dunn observe, while the study
and reading of literature characteristically proceed from the assumption that the literary text
is a work of art [] far less frequently do [we]
inquire what this means or entertain the proposition that it matters.2 In this vein, the reading I
undertake in this chapter, of Portuguese novelist
1 Literature. Oxford Reference Online. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005). Web.
2 Allan Singer and Allen Dunn, eds. Literary Aesthetics: A
Reader. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 36.
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Jos Saramagos All the Names, is not only an attempt to respond to the text, as Jeremy Fernando
puts it, but a further endeavor to respond to its
intrinsic artistic merit. Compared to other functional responses we may have to the text, aesthetically-oriented readings of literature proceed from
the fundamental premise that the text is a literary
work of art and derives at least part of its significance as literature when we appreciate it as art.
In their readings of Saramagos novels such as All
the Names, literary critics tend to pass cursorily
over the extraordinary beauty of his writing in
order to get at some innate symbolic meaning
of his work, whether this has to do with its function as an existential allegory or a commentary
about epistemological instabilities. Steven Kellman, for instance, emphasises the novels function
as an allegory about the impossibility of knowing
another and knowing oneself,3 while Margaret Birns describes its milieu as a nightmarish
dystopia.4 A reviewer from Publishers Weekly also
observes, Alternately farcical, macabre, surreal
and tragic, this mesmerizing narrative depicts the
3 Steven Kellman. All the Names. Magills Literary Annual,
2001.
4 Margaret Boe Birns. All the Names. Magills Survey of
World Literature. (Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2009).
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Traversing Labyrinths
As Schumanns golden thread does for music, another legendary thread gives organisational force to the yarn Saramago spins in All the
Names.17 I use the word yarn richly in the sense
of its meaning as both thread and story, for the
organising principle that lies at the heart of Names
is the mythological story of Ariadnes thread
through the labyrinth.18 Names derives its shape
and wholeness from the overarching narrative
frame that the Grecian myth provides, where rich,
17 The novels title, All the Names, will hereafter be shortened to Names.
18 Ariadne is the Greek weaving mistress who comes to
the aid of the hero-figure Theseus with her ball of red yarn,
allowing him to follow her thread to safely make his way out
of the monster Minotaurs labyrinth, and to eventually save
the day.
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situated between two voids.26 Patterns of images are established not only between objects and
characters that serve as foils to one another, but
more importantly, emphasise the wholeness and
perfection of the narrative structure in the methodical, symmetrical patterns of events created.
The reader learns that straight lines in the Cemetery are like the straight lines in a labyrinth of
corridors, theyre constantly breaking off, changing direction[:] you walk around a grave and
suddenly you dont know where you are.27 This
labyrinth of corridors is further convoluted by
the mischievous shepherd28 Senhor Jos encounters at the unknown womans grave, in the
section for suicides.
So what is the truth about the land of
suicides, asked Senhor Jos, Not everything here is what it seems [. . .] its
a labyrinth, You can see when somethings a labyrinth, Not always, [t]his is
the invisible kind, I dont understand,
For example, the person lying here, said
the shepherd, touching the mound of
26 Saramago. All the Names, 189.
27 Saramago. All the Names, 194.
28 Saramago. All the Names, 209.
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metry amidst the chaos, [and] to discover unexpected links between men and symbols. Pontiero
does not explicitly articulate to what ends these
patterns of symmetry and links between men
and symbols serve, but I offer the suggestion
that it must inevitably have to do with the formal
artistry of Saramagos writing. The novelist himself affirms Pontieros observation when he writes
in The Double: chaos is merely order waiting to
be deciphered.62 This order, I propose, may be
discerned by making sense of standards in wholeness (of formal structures and narrative shapes)
and principles of harmony (including symmetry,
corresponding echoes and patterns of images)
that are purposefully constructed for artistic ends
in Saramagos novels.
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tions that resist realism, the poesis of his eloquent expressions, and especially the wholeness
and harmony of its narrative unityis congruent
with the novelists own outlook on his work. As
Onsimo Almeida affirms, Saramago himself
has disavowed all attempts to identify cleavages,
ruptures, or breaks in his works, and has openly
supported the critics who privilege readings of
his writing where unity prevails.63 The prevailing
unity of Saramagos writing, I contend, is most
comprehensively expressed in an aesthetic reading of his novels.
More importantly, however, I hope to have demonstrated the significance and value of an aesthetic reading in the approach of literature or fiction
as art. The kind of analysis I have undertaken
with Names, with its focus on literature as an
art form, is, as Peter Lamarque observes, rarely
found within Theory, and where literature as art
does get mentioned it is usually in dismissive
terms. Yet literature [...] has been designated an
63 Onsimo Almeida. Jos Saramago: O Ano de 1998.
Colquio/Letras 151/152 (Janeiro-Junho 1999). Portuguese
Literary and Cultural Studies 6: On Saramago. Ed. Anna
Klobucka. (Dartmouth, MA: University of Massachusetts
Dartmouth Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture,
2001), 249.
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Jeremy Fernando
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Randori with
Franz Kafka;
on reading, irony,
and the law 1
As in judo, the best answer to an
adversary manoeuvre is not to retreat,
but to go along with it, turning it to
ones own advantage, as a resting point
for the next phase.
Michel Foucault
Since we are attempting to speakwriteof
randori, of a grappling that is always in relation
with another, it might be apt to open with a line
from one of my favourite thinkers of the body
not just the body as corporeal being, but a body in
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Michael Kearney
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The Unknown
Pleasures of
Interpretation:
Reading the Shadows
of Joy Division
Reading Icons(?)
I first heard Joy Division in the summer of 1978,
probably June, but it could have been July; actually, it might even have been 1979, or even as late
as the early summer of 1980, which would be just
after the death of Ian Curtis1, and which would
make a lot of sense. Anyway, it was definitely in
Ireland, and I am pretty sure I heard them on
a tape my friend Frank played in a car outside
his house; although, if my first exposure to Joy
Division was in 1979 or after, there is a good
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of 1984 I had become friends with other fans of Joy Division, punk, post-punk, and alternative music, and I started
frequenting clubs and shows, so from this point on I was
imbibing the pre-constructed narratives attached to Curtis.
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that for Closer Ian felt all his words were writing
themselves; [he] also felt he was in a whirlpool
being pulled down, drowning.51 Genesis P.
Orridge, from Throbbing Gristle and Psychic
TV, said that Curtis told him that he felt he was
becoming more and more shut-off from what
people perceived him to be: Orridge believes that
the actual Ian Curtis was hurt, angry, lost,
very lonely and didnt feel that people would treat
him with respect if he explained who he really
was;52 this reading by Orridge becomes very
important when we consider the phrase duel of
personalities53 and the notion of the shadow play,
both of which will be discussed a little later in the
chapter. It seems such a shame now that Sumner,
Hook, Morris and Mason never really listened
to what he was singing and that Wilson saw it as
merely art. It seems that only Honor was taking
things seriously. Yes, what a shame, because when
reading the lyrics a deep despondency is so clearly
evident; it courses through every song:
From Insight on Unknown Pleasures:
Guess your dreams always end.
They dont rise up just descend,
51 Gee. Joy Division.
52 Gee. Joy Division.
53 A line from Dead Souls from the album Still.
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Paoi Wilmer
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excitement at the prospect of analysing the fourletter EOKA, and the cutting remark at the end
effectively condemns his own lengthy readings.
When the content of an upheld piece of work is
called into question, style is often resorted to as
its saving grace: Mark Twains Huckleberry Finn
and Lights Out for the Territory both sharing this
reputation. Despite strong arguments to remove
Huckleberry Finn from the national school
curriculum for its racist portrayal of black people,
Twain supporters have argued that the work is
an invaluable asset to the American tradition
because of its authentic language and American
style.
The prose of Huckleberry Finn
established for written prose the virtues
of American colloquial speech It has
something to do with ease and freedom
in the use of language. Most of all it has
to do with the structure of the sentence,
which is simple, direct, and fluent,
maintaining the rhythm of the wordgroups of speech and the intonations
of the speaking voice [Twain] is the
master of the style that escapes the fixity
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Setsuko Adachi
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Negotiating
Isolation:
A Reading of
Japanese Illusions
Surviving the Globalisation Force of
AICS
Watching BBC, CNN and/or cable TV anywhere
in the world, say Ontario, Oxford, Putrajaya,
Singapore or Tokyo in the first decade of the 21st
century, one would notice charming and alluring
invitations were made to international tourists
in English from Asian nations: India, Incredible
India, Korea, Be Inspired, Malaysia Truly
Asia, My Indonesia: Just a Smile Away, and
Uniquely Singapore. These catchphrases clearly
reflect the national readings of how to survive
and be successful politically and economically
in todays globalised world. The catchphrases
show their awareness of the globalised capitalistic
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7 Hyman Kublin. Japan: Selected Readings, Houghton Mifflin, 1968. Found under, Traditional History: The Constitution of Prince Shtoku, http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/
japan/japanworkbook/traditional/shotoku.htm
8 Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary. (Oxford: Oxford
UP, 2000).
9 Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary.
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system is implanted. For example, Sogi (14211502), a scholar living in the Age of Civil Wars
and who sought for ideal human relationships
for peace, found wa as the ideal medium to
construct a sublime human relationship.13 Sogi,
commenting on a Japanese poem, said:
The part that says it is my fault teaches
us the essence of the Japanese poem. No
matter how bad human relationships
may be, no matter how cold the world
seems to you, never feel resentment
toward others or the world; this is the
utmost crystallization of the wa spirit.
It is the wa spirit that will best mediate
for the peaceful ruling of the nation and
good morals.14
Sogis wa explanation brought forth the second
point in the tenth article about when one is not
in concordance with others, it automatically
means the fault lies with the individual: never
find fault with others or the world, but singularly
blame yourself is the gist of wa when human
13 Keiji Shimauchi. Genjimonogatari monogatari. (Tokyo:
Shincho, 2008), 112. In the paper, unless it is noted, the
Japanese-English translations are mine.
14 Shimauchi. Genjimonogatari monogatari. 109-110.
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It was so amusing, I tried again
when another passerby came along, this
time taking the opposite attitude.
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Moshi, moshi, I began. But
may I ask you something, please?
I used the style of an Osaka
merchant, and began the same
nonsensical questions. I knew all the
dialects of Osaka, having been born
there and lived there as a student.
Probably the man thought I was a
merchant on the way to collect money;
he eyed me haughtily and walked on
his way without giving me much of an
answer.
So I proceeded, accosting
everyone who came along. Without
any allowance for their appearance,
I spoke alternately, now in samurai
fashion, now merchantlike. In every
instance, for about seven miles on my
way, I saw that people would respond
according to the manner in which they
were addressedwith awe or with
indifference.
Finally I became disgusted. I
would not have cared if they were polite
or arrogant so long as they behaved
consistently. But here it showed that
they were merely following the lead
of the person speaking to them.
Even though the situation was the
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18 Yukichi Fukuzawa. The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa, translated by Eiichi Kiyooka. (New York: Columbia UP,
1966), 244-246.
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I will not, he replied.
I saw that this answer was in
keeping with Joes shrewd suggestion
[Do you not see that every reply is in
the negative? No matter what you ask
him he says No.]. I sat thinking for a
moment until I had thought the same
thought inside out.
Will you refuse to answer a
straight question? I asked.
I will not, he replied.
This answer pleased me. It meant that
my mind had got to grips with his, that
I was now almost arguing with him and
that we were behaving like two ordinary
human beings.
Very well, I said quietly, Why
do you always answer No?
He stirred perceptibly in his chair
and filled the teacup up again before
he spoke. He seemed to have some
difficulty in finding words.
No is, generally speaking,
a better answer than Yes, he said at
last.20
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the Emperor. The names of his superior officers are revealed with reluctance.
The above remarks apply particularly to
Japanese officers, who have been given
some instruction on security. So far as
the rank and file are concerned, they
do not seem to realize that by talking
they may be betraying their comrades.
This serves to emphasize the necessity
of segregating officers from other
troops, as soon after capture as possible.
Segregation should be arranged
immediately and prisoners sent back to
the next higher echelon under separate
guard.
Aside from officers, information
has been forthcoming from straight
forward interrogation. Although the
Japanese soldier may prefer death to
capture, yet, when captured, he has
been a valuable source of information.31
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34 http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/japan/bilateral_treaty.
pdf
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Shaoling Ma
387
Reading Chinese
Women in Two Maoist
China Ballets
Chinese women should not be criticized for not
finding that they need what Western feminists
think they ought to need or for not getting what
they havent asked for. It is of interest, however,
if Chinese women neither ask for nor crave the
liberties which we feel in their places we would.
Judith Stacey1
1 Judith Stacey, When Patriarchy Kowtows: The significance of the Chinese Family Revolution for Feminist Theory, Feminist Studies, 2: 2/3 (1975): 102, my emphasis.
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Prologue
If reading can no longer be understood as an act,
but an encounter with an unconditional relation
around which this collection of essays is gathered,
can it be a dance? What kind of dance would such
a reading be? Or rather, where would such a dance
take place, if it takes place at all?
Act I. Beginnings
In 1964 and 1965, two new ballets, Red
Detachment of Women and The White-Haired Girl
premiered in China, respectively. Together with
2 Jacques, Derrida and Christie V. McDonald, Interview:
Choreographies: Jacques Derrida and Christie V. McDonald, Diacritics, 12, 2, (1982): 69.
389
3 Daniel S. P. Yang, Censorship: 8 Model Works. The Drama Review: TDR, 15, 2: Theater in Asia (Spri ng 1971): 259.
4 Zhong Yaoyun, Behind the Three Reds: Zhou Enlai and
Lin Mohan, Tongzhou Gongjin 3 (2008): 43.
5 Zhang, Behind the Three Reds: 43.
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21 Tani E. Barlow, The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 191.
22 Barlow, The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism,
191.
23 Barlow, The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism,
191.
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39 China Ballet Troop, Red Detachment of WomenA Modern Revolutionary Ballet, 29.
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Su Cui
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Printlessness
Many are declaring that print is already dead.
Content producers have been migrating in droves
towards the World Wide Web since blogs were
invented in the late 90s with fervent belief in
the power of the online universe for offering
new freedoms for reading and writing content:
quick, easy and mobile, as the advertorials say.
The old and clunky book, the print text, has
nosedived in the trend stakes. Print has been
abandoned in favor of hypertext; physical content
is now regarded as something for old-fashioned
hobbyists, nostalgic librarians or stubborn
academics.1 Apparently, bookless-ness has arrived.
To self-proclaimed digital savvies, Free and
Fast has come to characterize the experience of
paperless reading and writing, thus explaining
the name of one of the most famous and most
used online manifestations, Wikipedia: in
Hawaiian wiki means quick or fast. Like a closed
1 According to The Guardian, UK academics got together in
July 2010 to advocate what they call slow readingreading
in print form because they thought that skimming online
texts is making people stupid. Patrick Kingsley, The Art of
Slow Reading. (The Guardian, 15 July, 2010), 1.
Printed Matter
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metaphorical composition6.
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simplicity.29
Coincidences
As such, the novel is replete with coincidences;
being a concurrence of events with no apparent
connection. Perhaps the most significant of
these in The Tale are the (co)incidents of death
experienced by Granero, and Simone:
The events that followed were without
transition or connection, not because
they werent actually related, but
because my attention was so absent as
to remain absolutely dissociated. In just
a few seconds: first, Simone bit into one
of the raw balls, to my dismay; then
Granero advanced towards the bull,
waving his scarlet cloth; finally, almost
at once, Simone, with a blood-red face
and a suffocating lewdness, uncovered
her long white thighs up to her moist
vulva, into which she slowly and
surely fitted the second pale globule
Granero was thrown back by the bull
29 Bataille. Story of the Eye, 66.
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Jeremy Fernando
21 October, 2011
Singapore
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Afterword
With friends like
these .
Plato teaches us that there are 3 kinds of
friendships: agape, eros, and philia. And in each
of these relationalities lies a certain condition:
divinity, madness, and reason. It is not so much
that the condition determines the friendship,
but it certainly has an effect on the nature of the
relationalities.
So, as I receive responses to my calls to think
readingeven as I am one of those responding to
the said callthe question of why would one do
so, the conditions of the responses, continues to
haunt them.
Even as the responses were kind, much like the
people responding, there were surely not of the
order of the divine. For, part of the deal, as it
were, was for their responses to be published
and even though this is not the place to open
that question, we should allow notions of
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Contributors
Sonic Soma: Sound, Body and the Origins of the Alphabet, Elise Kermani
Sovereignty in Singularity: Aporias in Ethics and Aesthetics, Gregory Bray
The Art of the Transpersonal Self: Transformation as Aesthetic and Energetic Practice,
Norbert Koppensteiner
The Ethics of Uncertainty: Aporetic Openings, Michael Anker
The Image That Doesnt Want to be Seen, Kenneth Feinstein
The Infinite City: Politics of Speed, Asli Telli Aydemir
The Media Poet, Michelle Cartier
The Novel Imagery: Aesthetic Response as Feral Laboratory, Dawan Stanford
The Organic Organisation: freedom, creativity and the search for fulfilment, Nicholas Ind
The Suicide Bomber; and her gift of death, Jeremy Fernando
The Transreal Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities, Micha Crdenas
Theodore, Sofia Fasos
Trans Desire/Affective Cyborgs, Micha Crdenas
Trans/actions: art, film and death, Bruce Barber
Transience: A poiesis, of dis/appearance, Julia Hlzl
Trauma, Hysteria, Philosophy, Hannes Charen
Upward Crashes Fractures Topoi: Musil, Kiefer, Darger, Paola Piglia-Veronese