Replying to both Alison and Lawrence here.
Very interesting, potentially misleading!
I'm really not happy with this warmed-over pseudo-Foucauldian post-humanism.
It seems to me that it exhibits two contradictory tendencies: on the one
hand, by denying that there is such a quality as 'human' you are also
denying that you have any link with the oppressed and 'outsider' groups that
you listed; but on the other you are telling me that it is their exclusion
from, well I don't know what, but 'the rest of us' I suppose, that is the
problem. This concern that the displaced, the 'other', are not classed as
human, dosen't that imly that they are, indeed, human. So where's your
problem with the term human? I just don't get it. Equally, who started
talking about superior and inferior? Not me! I've never said or believed
that being human was about being superior or wise (despite the name) to
other animals. What I said is that it is characterised by an ethical
engagement. Our discussion about poetics follows on from that.
And, Alison, you are absolutely correct, it is just this idea post-humanism
that has lead to some extremely dubious moral judgements about these
'others' - post-humanism is not a reaction to colonialism it is simply a
post-colonial continuation of it. What else can be the motivation behind
Germaine Greer supporting women's rights in this country, but saying that
it's OK for Somali women to be horrifically mutilated in their own country,
'because they're different from us'; or Michel Foucault supporting the
Ayatollah Homeini's barbaric respression of any shred of democracy in Iran,
'because they're muslims, and so they're different from us'. It is only
someone who recognises the common human relation between 'I' and Iranian
communists, democrats and women's right's campaigners, or the most powerless
girls in East Africa, who can do anything about campaigning on their behalf
- it was only people with an extremely strong sense of what it is to be
human, to be a moral being, with moral responsibilities and duties of care
towards all othes, who risked life, limb and livelihood to save Jews from
Auschwitz - I agree, always remember Auschwitz! That is what I mean by
humanity, in both senses of the term. So don't tell me that I am a potential
racist of fascist on account of using a word that in fact has the deepest
moral basis. A basis which allows us to react to, and challenge, the
inhumanity of Nazism and its ilk.
Again 'spirit'. This time, you have to admit, I was good enough to give a
definition. Did you read it though? - 'SPIRITUAL' AND 'RELIGIOUS' ARE NOT
SYNONYMS! To be spiritual does not imply membership of any religion,
organised or other, and does not imply belief in 'spirits', 'gods',
'demons', or any other bogies that have been thought up to scare us. I am
unashamedly atheist, but I will not let the lexicon police tell me that I
cannot use a perfectly good word like 'spirit' or 'spiritual' to mean
exactly what it says in any good dictionary. Here's another bash, this time
from the Encarta Concise English Dictionary: 'Spirit n. vital force that
characterizes a living being as being alive: a person's will, sense of
enthusiasm for living: somebody's personality or temperament ... the
intention behind something ... prevailing mood or outlook' etc. Well, OK,
but I still prefer the Chamber's 'principle of thought', which is a far cry
from some half-baked nonsense about being kind to children or having a close
relationship with a piece of wood or whatever.
What still concerns me far more is you comments on the 'chalking' and the
'mob'. That to me sounds like a very suspicious way of having phrased your
criticism - 'in that context handing out bibles to supposed savages and
inviting the mob to join in chalking poems seems rather uncomfortably close
to me'. I don't even know how to react to that - I invited you to join in,
but I don't think that I would regard you as part of the 'mob'. The 'mob' in
this case being defined so because of numbers only I suppose. I can only
suggest that you choice of words reflects your own anxieties about crowds
and spontaneous reaction from people, than to any real intention behind the
'chalking' event. I was simply trying to engage with people - I left it
entirely up to them to decide how to engage (and in point of fact I didn't
'hand out chalk', most of it was simply taken and used without my even
knowing by the 'enthusiastic natives'. There was certainly no preaching
going on, and I had absolutely no control (or desire for it) over the final
outcome. I'm sorry that that is your feeling about it, but I can only say
that you are mistaken.
Lawrence, you've given me a long list of failings that I must deal with.
What can I say? Well here goes (and forgive me if I get into even more
trouble):
avant-garde: well I think that we've established that there are a number of
ways of taking this one, although generally speaking I would take it in the
original sense of an art movement that sets off into unexplored territory,
trailblazing if you like - I suppose it is connected with the left because
of the obvious revolutionary intention behind any decision not to accept the
status quo. As a term I think it probably has little practical application
for the current art scene, which is politically in a very uncertain
condition. Is that a fair summary?
difficulty: well, it's an imputed 'problem' of innovative art-forms, made by
their critics. That said there are a number of poets who are happy to
consider their work difficult, because they want people to work when reading
it. You yourself made a statement of the sort at the beginning of this
discussion. Difficulty is not an attribute that I would intentionally
introduce into a work of my own, as some seem to, but that's a question for
another day.
elitism: elitism is a quality that can appear in all the arts - those who
'get it' and those who don't. It 's the same for any cultural activity that
requires some kind of apprenticeship. I think it can be particularly acute
in the arts, poetry being no exception, when some kind of restrictive jargon
appears that requires deciphering by 'experts' - maybe 'linguistically
innovative poetry' is a such a jargon. Who knows? I should be careful to
point out that this elitism is not a quality of the art itself, but rather
of some of its practitioners and hangers-on when trying to decide who 'us'
and 'them' are.
style: well I gave a definition of what I meant by style in a previous mail.
accessible: likewise. I know what you're thinking, but I would still argue
till I'm blue in the face that some of our colleagues (and before you ask,
no I'm not) want to be inaccessible so that they don't have to make any
serious engagements with the rest of the world. It's kinda cosy being
completely ignored. This is manifested by a refusal to be open to influence,
or to engage in dialogue, and by the erection of impenetrable vocabularies
and dialects to prevent any understanding of what it might be that they're
up to (the opposite of what we're trying to do). I stand by my definition of
this term.
Haven't I dealt with the other terms you mention above? I'm looking forward
to seeing what you make of Antin, since, as I say, I'm rather taken with his
work.
Alison. Prose and verse: you say that you have some kind of rule of thumb
explanation of the differences between them, but you didn't say what it is?
I would ask, how useful can it be when you yourself acknowledge that there
is a such a large grey area that it doesn't illuminate?
That's enough for now.
Piers
>From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
>To: Piers Hugill <[log in to unmask]>, [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Animals, People, Prose, Spirit (was Re: Speech)
>Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 08:06:58 +1100
>
>At 10:34 PM +0000 28/11/03, Piers Hugill wrote:
>>I am
>>trying to make a distinction between prose and poetry on the basis of
>>something other than their apparent form - given that it is not possible
>>to
>>say that a poem is a poem because the first letter of every line is
>>capitalised any more (nor has it ever really been the case) we have to
>>find
>>other ways of doing that. I'm just throwing out a tentative suggestion on
>>the basis of the 'spirit' that guides a use of language.
>
>Hi Piers - I guess I was too, in the second half of that email... it isn't
>the form/mode alone which signals a "discourse of power", and to make
>distinctions between "poetry" and "prose" on that basis seems to me
>misleading or obscuring. I'm personally quite happy with a conventional
>division of poetry and prose, it's basically a useful rule of thumb which
>distinguishes one kind of writing from another, with a large shadowland in
>the middle inhabited by all sorts of disconcerting texts, such as prose
>poems or novels like Beckett's Trilogy or epic length poems. It's the
>how rather than the what that counts, I would think.
>
>Like Lawrence, I'm not sure about the use of "spirit". And I think (I went
>and read back this conversation in the archives) that by referring to
>Nazism, Lawrence meant that as soon as you start defining what is human,
>you immediately create the negative, what is not-human, which has
>historically very often included human beings - Australian Aborigines,
>Jews, Palestinians, Armenians, asylum seekers, ie, any group of people
>another group of people finds politically inconvenient. And this
>heroicisation of the "human" has also underlaid a great deal of the
>ideology which permits the exploitation of the natural environment, the
>inferior status of women, and so on.
>
>That doesn't mean, however, that I'm especially happy with the response
>that ethical/moral ideas of humanity ought to be therefore damned as
>mistaken, even if they need to be examined warily. It's the unspoken
>assumptions they carry which are so often problematic: that to be "fully
>human" means to be male, or white, or whatever (it's not just a Western
>vice). An ideology which embraces otherness and seeks an ethical
>relationship with the world seems to me something greatly to be desired.
>Impossible, maybe. But maybe not entirely on an individual level, and
>society is made up, after all, of a lot of individuals in relationship with
>each other. I guess it's in such limited spheres that whatever hope I have
>resides.
>
>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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