The Barthes I've found enjoyable and fascinating is the Barthes of A
Lover's Discourse and Camera Lucida (his most moving book, and I
think his last). But I read them, as Rebecca suggested poets do, as
works which influenced my thinking, rather than as templates for
action: and it's been a while, though this discussion prompted me to
pull out A Lover's Discourse and have an enjoyable wander through
some of it. But yes, theory applied to art seems to me to be after
the fact, something that Brecht said specifically in his
theorisations of his theatre practice; although this is complicated
by the fact that artists will use such thinking as a springboard to
further thinking/practice. More a kind of double helix than any
cause-effect chain.
Yes Mairead, I have similar thoughts about how the self got disproved
the moment is became useful to Others as a Subject. It's hard not
to. Bit like GPs' salaries and status plummeting as soon as women
entered the ranks in any decent number. Something in there about an
economy of value.
At 5:50 AM -0700 3/1/04, Trevor Joyce wrote:
>or example (and because he seems to
>be away at present, I can mention it without discomfiting him), I've
>always admired the way cris cheek uses a wide range of theoretical
>approaches in the production of work which surprises and intrigues me.
Forgive a pre-emptive advertisement: but another is Alaric Sumner,
whose work I'm currently putting together for the next Masthead (if I
survive the process - hello Lawrence...). In both writers a large
part of the energy is the performative aspects of the work. It's
fairly impossible to generalise about it, but it posseses a polysemic
energy bouncing from queer theory, modernist ideas of collage, things
like Richard Foreman's Ontological Hysterical Theatre, &c&c&c, a
probing and theatricalisation and often destruction of selves and
sexuality through the medium(s) of language which I find fascinating,
funny, challenging, and sometimes disconcertingly honest and moving.
In such work, you realise that the word notated as text can't be but
partial, since such a large component is visual, and since he worked
with musicians, performers, visual artists &c as well as other poets,
and so the whole notion of text as notation _and_ as object is
especially foregrounded in these works.
Are you being rude about Yates as well as Bruno, Robin? What's wrong
with you? .
Best
A
--
Alison Croggon
Blog
http://alisoncroggon.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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