Alison,
Late replies are really GOOD by me. Still have rotten health problems,
so slow down or you will join me in this basket (my health problems go
back to leading a far too busy professional life, just to explain.)
Thanks for the theatre notes reference, also. The perhaps disagreeing in
the first post had more to do with avoiding a not intended reading (as
Bakhtin would say) which quarantines Artaud as a theatre critic only and
avoids the more challenging suggestions which confronts classical
logic's understanding of bodies as relations. (Bodies, atoms, monads as
relations of composition and decomposition and so forth.) Artaud's
suggestions of absolute bodies and absolute affects too often gets
dismissed as a diagnosed symptom of his madness which is then too easily
ignored as madness and of course is chauvinistic. To explain a bit more,
classical logic demands that bodies, that is to say atoms and monads,
are to be understood as relations and not as absolute deviations. In
this way it can follow that Artaud has a very basic quarrel with third
person singular and indeed the accepted theories of narrative.
Anyways, there is a lot more to this but this could be a book length
reply, no doubt.
best wishes
Chris Jones.
On Sat, 2006-09-30 at 18:25 +1000, Alison Croggon wrote:
> Hi Chris
>
> Apologies for the late response; I've had server problems and have
> been offline for the past few days.
>
> I basically agree with you on Artaud's importance, though I think
> influencing most of the best 20C theatre is no small thing; but I
> don't think Sontag talks pathos. Or maybe I have similar reactions
> reading Artaud. Hard not to when he speaks of anguish so often. He is
> of course more complex than it's possible to say in a small space.You
> might be interested in the further discussion going on a theatre notes
> - http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>
> All the best
>
> A
>
>
> On 9/27/06, Chris Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > Maybe somewhat disagreeing with Alison here... Atraud provides far much
> > more then then an inspiring text on theatre and I cringe reading the
> > pathos presented by Susan Sontag in the pathetic rendition of her
> > encounter with Artaud.
> >
> > Artaud, first must be understood as one of the grand theorists of
> > modernist poetics, his breaks with the bearded critic (Kant) and the
> > catalogue of affects (Spinoza) alone mark Artaud as one of the grand
> > modern poetics writers for he truly understood what the infinite is more
> > so then Mallarme could ever have. Artaud knew more then any other what
> > affect is and what it was to create true affects.
> >
> > Chris Jones.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 2006-09-27 at 13:30 +1000, Alison Croggon wrote:
> > > There's a lot of Artaud (15 volumes in the Gallimard complete works)
> > > and he can be hard going (I wouldn't put myself through the 15
> > > volumes) but at his best the writing is dazzling. Theatre and its
> > > Double is an essential and inspiring text for anyone interested in
> > > theatre. And Nietzsche is one of the few philosphers I can read with
> > > enjoyment, though it's the Nietzsche of The Gay Science rather than
> > > Thus Spake Zarathustra, which is a bit portentous for my taste...but I
> > > do find both of them funny as well as terrifying. They do have a lot
> > > in common.
> > >
> > > All best
> > >
> > > Alison
> >
>
>
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