On Sun, 2003-05-04 at 15:21, Alison Croggon wrote:
> Not that I'm sure what that other matrix is which might describe the
> activity usefully. The extant models all seem unsatisfactory really.
Yes, the whole conceptual idea of art needs far more theoretical writing
to be done, in a more approachable or more easily understood manner.
There are directions available, but these tend to be difficult to read
philosophical arguments. I am thinking about what I can contribute in my
non-fiction writings, but the queer angle demands more time for me, I
find and you can't do everything that needs doing.
> At the same time I find myself equally conscious of how
> things like childbearing and raising are divested of value by a range
> of mechanisms, including and especially the upraising of Motherhood
On of the big concerns I have is with the way recent gay male literature
treats questions like this and women in general. I don't feel
comfortable with the women characters in As Queer as Folk, for example.
It is something I have spent a lot of time on, looking for ways to
reconfigure motherhood and basically do away with it as a privileged
concept which keeps women in their "place" in the home, in domestic
duties and without a life outside of this. To invent perhaps what could
be an uptopic vision, a type of fabulation which doesn't in any way buy
into this was one of the really vexing questions I spent a lot of time
on.
> As Christine Battersby has shown in her excellent study
> Gender and Genius, Genius is a concept heavily weighted against
> women:
I would love to read that book, again, some time. I trust you know Kant
considered women incapable of thought and said women might as well grow
a beard as be capable of reason. The notion of genius comes from Kant,
of course, and ties in with this. Genius is masculine, in the final
Kantian argument. Kant is also homophobic and racist and his thought
forms the ideological structure of the capitalist state which influences
and attempts to direct what writers can write. Writing or literature as
judgment can be traced to Kant. Kristeva does another good analysis and
shows how by setting up the rocking boat called the sublime as a problem
by Kant, this takes you into the judgment of the Super Ego. What is the
problem with a rocking boat, I have to ask. As soon as you get into
transcendental structures you can quickly end up in masculine thinking,
I have found. Homophobia travels along these structures, as well.
Although, I do like setting these structures up just so I can smash them
to pieces. Marx's silkworm can be read as immanent production, following
Milton, I think, rather then this Kantian transcendental. One of my
difficulties with writing is it requires an immanent way of writing,
rather then following the formal transcendental path and there is a huge
pressure on writers to follow this transcendental path. Best not to read
reviews, or listen to what is said, I suppose. Don't read silly things
like the Times Literary Supplement, to name a high profile offender. The
TLS and the New York Review of Books are on my boycott list. If I do
read them, it is with an attitude of combat and opposition to the
prescriptions being offered. the local broadsheet book reviews... well
what can I say that is polite?
best
Chris Jones.
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