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 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%