Hi, TP3 (oh all right--Kate--if you insist!),

Interesting post, especially your teasing out of the implications
of "detail" relative to complex thought/politics and Debbie Comerford's
Deleuzian angle, which, in taking up D&G's molecular/molar distinction
shifted the emphasis from complex thought and the politics thereof to
complex politics and the poetics thereof (I think), whereas enfolding
Deleuze into this thread via his rhizomatics, say, would maybe have
kept the stress on the thought/complexity question raised by Ron
Silliman and picked up by Alison and Doug.

Which is not meant as a criticism or complaint about the direction
taken by this thread, but more of a nod toward Deleuze's manifold
applicability. Does anybody know, btw, if JK's coauthored book on
D&G is out yet? It's got a wonderful foreword by Ian Buchanan of Uni
Tasmania--our resident-alien Deleuzian here at SAQ (pardon me, Ian!)--
in which he lays the ground for a poetic/dramatic angle on Deleuze
that's presumably the one JK and his coauthor (whose name I've
forgotten--sorry) take. Going by the foreword alone, I'm guessing that
the book will counter some of that atheoretical criticism cited by
Debbie.

On the issue of detail in relation to complexity (of thought and/or
politics), I think I catch your (feminist-political) drift, Kate, and
suspect you're quite right about the connection between detail/context
and a politics of (some) women's writing, feminist or not. With respect
to complexity and thought per se or poetic thought in particular, tho,
I'm not so sure and would counterpropose that detail may be complexifying
but is more likely to be complicating or compounding instead (analogizing
from complex vs. compound sentences to a thought or a poem as one). For
example, or rather exemplification (which is what Christopher Walker
gave us in a post of awhile back about his "life is a journey" analyses),
Frost's "Road Not Taken" yielded relatively uninteresting results under
Christopher's testing, it seemed to me: that is, the "life as a journey"
metaphor complicated the woods and the roads of its imagery (or maybe it's
the other way around, from Christopher's perspective), while "Because I
Could Not Stop For Death" could be said to complexify a "master metaphor"
(as I think Lakoff et al. call this one)--as stunningly suggested by the
circuitous structure of Dickinson's thought in that poem--that still was
one (i.e., dominant) in her historical/poetic times (and, as Frost's use
of it indicates, for long after her time as far as some poets of Frost's
time--modernity--were concerned).

And "structure" is what makes all the difference in this comparison of
poetic thought between Dickinson and Frost (or at least these two,
arguably representative poems by them). That is, Christopher's analysis
turned up more detail than structure relative to the "life is a journey"
metaphor in Frost's poem, while revealing the underlying structural
dynamic of Dickinson's with no more detail coming to light--just (just!)
this odd circuitry or (in more po-mo terms) feedback loop between life
and death in a poem by a poet who lived and wrote before houses became
wired for electricity and acquired circuits (plus breakers), and even
longer before other scientific/technological developments gave us either
our literal vocabulary of loops and folds or (thanks in part to Deleuze)
our extended metaphoric/conceptual terms based on them. What this says
about "life is a journey" (to me) is that it was already losing its grip
on our thinking by Dickinson's time (in advance of which she was so far
ahead as to have poetically instantiated her thought's beyondedness, if
unconsciously) and had already become exhausted as a master metaphor by
Frost's time (in the midst of which he was so firmly plunked as to be
unable to recognize the lag of his own thought poetically, let alone
consciously).

So what I'm wondering (and would be interested in Christopher's view on
this along with yours, Kate, and others who've contributed--or will do--
to the complex thought/politics thread) is what the status of the "life
is a journey" metaphor is now, in these here postmodern times (without
getting into postmodernism--the aesthetic, the ideology, the movie,
whatever). Are people still writing and/or reading poems based on "life
is a journey" anymore? If not, has this master metaphor of "life" been
superseded in our thought, poetic or otherwise, and by what?

I nominate "life is a bargain."

Candice


At 08:06 PM 7/21/00 +1000, you wrote:
>thanks Deb for your thoughts about molecular and molar politics; they're
really provocative. to follow your flight-line, just a few bits about a
'microcosmic' poetic, and the idea that this
>might be a politically suspect, or apolitical, mode.
>
>What might be offered by a politics/poetics of detail? this, to me, is
fascinating & rich terrain. One objection to seemingly endless splintering &
detailing (i imagine) might be that it
>can effect a kind of stasis of dispersal. Discrete particles might be seen
to float without context, and seemingly adrift from more macro-political
'anchors'. But there are complex
>political currents at work in detail, too - even though these might not fit
with solidity-principles, or grand narratives.
>
>Strategies of detailing can encode some pretty intense resistances - to
homogenisation, to totalising languages, to prescribed/prevalent
commodification logics. I'm being reductive here.
>This might be due partly to defamiliarisation, and the capacity for
'microcosmic' (poetical) attention to generate strangely different ways of
perceiving 'existing' orders. At its most
>optimistic: a detail jumps out, preventing complacency in reading, or
suggesting a kind of epistemological swerve, or reminding us of the dozens
of ways in which 'languages' can mean, or
>helping us to be alert to the subtle (& not-so-subtle) ways in which power
works, or just delighting us... all political engagements.
>
>Microcosmic detailing might help to ensure against kinds of forgetting, too
- it is a way of keeping trace, keeping histories - a possibly
anarchically-ordered kind of archivalism, humming
>with potential energy. I think this is valuable political work. Detailing
can provide context; which to me is one of the most politically-crucial
'things' to take into account, when reading
>poetry, or reading/responding to anything. (How can a thing be without
context?) If poetical 'microcosms' preserve contexts that can then enable
political resistance to certain kinds of
>injustice, or erasure, then I think that's a good thing.
>
>It might be telling that excessive detailing, and wandering texts, have
often been feminised - and not positively.
>
>This all assumes that poetry matters; that it has effect, and 'real'
political significance as a labour practice; which of course it does. Its
strategies/politics might be subtle as Ron
>says, or gossamer as Deb says, or help to quietly loosen knots, as Alison
says... but there are important politics at work there.
>
>Navel-gazing is often seen as a political dead-end, of course; and
microcosms that don't reach equilibrium with 'bigger pictures' are probably
pretty suspect. My big fear about 'detail' is
>to do with technologies of commodification. If everything can be
molecularised and sold, in isolation, or used purely in the service of
capital flow & capital generation, then the whole
>thing breaks down a bit. A limitless carousel of dis-embodied detail (eg a
supermarket) can suggest a fairly disenfranchising politic, even while
claiming to provide a certain freedom to
>choose.
>
>I've been thinking recently about this in terms of interiorisation (or
turning in) and exteriorisation (or turning out). Needing the internal to
exemplify an 'external', and vice versa.
>It's another version of 'think global act local', perhaps - one
spatialising of political strategies.
>
>I wonder what people on the list think about 'superfluity' and political
engagement?
>
>This is just a localised rave, tired on friday night with a sore arm, & of
course there are many s p a c e s in it. I'd be interested to hear other
responses to Deb's idea of
>molecular/molar politics. What kinds of poethics are at work in
'miscrocosmic' poetries? A mote of Louis Zukofsky to end; a poet, maybe, of
the macrocosmic microcosm.
>
>'A poem. This object in process... Impossible to communicate anything but
particulars... Poems are only acts upon particulars.'     - An Objective
>
>cheers
>kate fagan



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