tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post8240936465573085374..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: "Nature"; also Guigemar's Hermaphroditic CervidCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-90339782779143324692011-01-29T06:18:46.046-05:002011-01-29T06:18:46.046-05:00The suggestion that narrative (as a meaning-making...The suggestion that narrative (as a meaning-making system) is inherently epistemological and will never enable access to a pure ontology was mine. I don't know how firmly I believe it, but it's something I'd like to think about for a while.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-86764025972675308922011-01-28T18:04:04.970-05:002011-01-28T18:04:04.970-05:00Liza, DOOD, I *own* that book and have owned it fo...Liza, DOOD, I *own* that book and have owned it for the better part of 20 years (my roommate in the early or mid 90s altered the cover to read 'Studies in Turds' after I left it on the toilet). And it's probably been that long since I read it: THANKS THANKS for the reminder.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-9857609782644588132011-01-28T17:31:42.744-05:002011-01-28T17:31:42.744-05:00Hi all. Just catching up on this conversation and ...Hi all. Just catching up on this conversation and its comments, but: JJC, did I say that you can't really get to essences once your narrativize them? Or were you saying that was where conversation went? Because I'd have to think whether I agreed with that statement ...<br /><br />Karl: on nature (from natura), kynd (from gecynd), and physics (from physis) you can't beat C.S.Lewis's chapter tracing meaning and etymology in the “Nature” chapter in C.S. Lewis’s Studies in Words. I think I've got a pdf of it somewhere if you want me to send it. It might not answer your question entirely, but it would be a place to start. <br /><br />Jacques told me today that (based on my first chapter) he thought my dissertation was writing a new genealogy of nature. Not sure how I feel about that, but it does at least make me want to do some more nature reading so I know what I'm up against ... (in case you have any good bibliography to hand, hint hint).Liza Blakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05105726464955172469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-61653129318497371612011-01-20T14:16:14.300-05:002011-01-20T14:16:14.300-05:00x that you can't really get to essences once y...<i>x that you can't really get to essences once your narrativize them</i><br /><br />Word. See <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=EWsqTjt6LYkC&lpg=PA26&ots=zPNbGzpqex&dq=%22No%20matter%20how%20many%20facets%20of%20the%20engine%20we%20eventually%20unveil%20or%20catalog%20for%20ourselves%22&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q&f=false" rel="nofollow">Harman's</a> <i>There is an absolute gulf between Heidegger's readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand. No real passage between them is possible, since the tool as a brutal subterranean energy and as a shining tangible surface are utterly incommensurable. Stated differently, the as-structure is incapable of variation or improvement. No matter how many facets of the engine we eventually unveil or catalog for ourselves, we cannot possible draw any closer to the tool in its being than we already were</i>.<br /><br />MKH: cool. "gecynd": this will show my appalling ignorance when it comes to OE, but could this be read as a verbal noun? Is nature naturing? (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natura_naturans" rel="nofollow">natura naturans</a>)? I hope so.<br /><br />EJ: can't wait! Agree w/ your point Harman and withdrawal, but I wonder if the withdrawal analysis allows us to privilege any particular weird object for ethical attention. That's my BIG question, and so far in my reading, so much as I remember, Harman doesn't address it.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-71481362506731400182011-01-20T12:33:35.965-05:002011-01-20T12:33:35.965-05:00Karl: you have posed some amazing questions here, ...Karl: you have posed some amazing questions here, worthy of another post, really. I am halfway through reading Bennett's book with my students, and I have quite a few notions to share in relation to your questions here, and I actually think Harman's thinking on the ultimate "withdrawn-ness" of objects provides one route for approaching the singular thing aside from its enmeshment with other things. But what I just want to say now is: thank you for these rich questions, and after I talk about Bennett with my students next Monday, I will return to them in a new post.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-92173650255914113032011-01-19T12:54:52.785-05:002011-01-19T12:54:52.785-05:00I love the question you raise right off the bat he...I love the question you raise right off the bat here Karl (the rest of the post too, obviously, but I'm so far behind on my reading for anything that *isn't* in my dissertation that I can't speak to much of what you're saying here except to nod in fascinated agreement). <br /><br /><i>When did "nature" become a place? When did it become possible to go out into nature? When did nature cease to be, primarily, a synonym for "kynde," or a word meaning "all of creation"? The Middle English Dictionary, the OED, the Anglo-Norman Dictionary, and Glossa aren't helping me here.</i><br /><br />In the writing course I taught a few years back, we had a segment on "wilderness" and its multiple meanings -- based on Cronon's "The Trouble with Wilderness" we can blame the nineteenth century for making it possible to go out into nature (or the wilderness) as something one can do. I have access to the texts from that segment, if you want them...<br /><br />As for the actual word, I have nothing on the etymology. The OE was "gecynd," and I don't think there was a synonym (though I'd be grateful for the correction if there was).Mary Kate Hurleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14892991966276345782noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-40774888873715070882011-01-19T12:09:39.767-05:002011-01-19T12:09:39.767-05:00That's a provocative comment Karl. last night,...That's a provocative comment Karl. last night, spurred by the inimitable Liza Blake, my seminar was puzzling over ontology v. epistemology, and esp. the paradox that you can't really get to essences once your narrativize them, since that already moves you into ways of knowing rather than substantialities (and their potentially emergent causalities).<br /><br />More on this topic, I am sure, will be appearing here at ITM as the semester unfolds -- especially because you, me and Eileen seem to be teaching seminars in dialogue with each other.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-31647835065702140562011-01-19T09:21:49.908-05:002011-01-19T09:21:49.908-05:00I tried to figure out another way to go at this pi...I tried to figure out another way to go at this picture and Guigemar, and something occurred to me about Morton's book and perhaps about OOO more generally (inasmuch as I've read in it, which isn't very far): whatever its various versions, OOO at heart calls for us to remember the things themselves. But the ontological arguments (variously about the relationships between sensual objects and withdrawn real objects; about the mesh; about particular actors, like the power network in Bennett) lead to the same conclusions: it's all connected; or it's not ALL connected (think of the likelihood of multiple universes), but self-same objects as we've typically understood them need to be reunderstood; and the epistemological loneliness of the Kantian revolution took us as far it could go. <br /><br />But: maybe I'm being obtuse, but how do we distinguish between various kinds of lively objects? What's the difference in the way we think about the dead deer, the absent penis (as an idea, also a lively object), the hunter, his pants, and perhaps even the object formed of the aesthetic balance between the hunter's light-blue pants and the deer's white belly? How do we think of them in particular in contrast to Harmon's tree?<br /><br />I'm thinking here of the weakest part of Bennett's book, p. 104, <i>"Since I have challenged the uniqueness of humanity in several ways, why not conclude that we and they are equally entitled? Because I have not eliminated all differences between us but examined instead the affinities across these differences, affinities that enable the very assemblages explored in the present book. To put it bluntly, my conatus will not let me 'horizontalize' the world completely. I also identify with members of my species, insofar as they are bodies most similar to mine. I so identify even as I seek to extend awareness of our interinvolvements and interdependencies. The political goal of a vital materialism is not the perfect equality of actants, but a polity with more channels of communication between members" (104).</i> As a side note, it goes without saying that "perfect equality" can't be a goal: on what transcendental plane would we compare things to determine equality? in what sense are objects even equal to themselves? Of course that can't be a political goal.<br /><br />To my point here, however, Bennett throws in her lot with humans on the ethically weak grounds of familiarity. What she does here is indefensible.<br /><br />But it's also laudable because at least she raised the point. At the Barnard Animals conference, Laurynn Lowe asked me about the relationship between ethics and ontology. How do we get, say, from Harmon to an ethics? How do we attend to the <i>particular</i> thrivings (or whatever) of particular lively objects (which, of course, means a particular mesh)? Once we have a basic new ontology of--Harmon again, because I'm reading more--sensual and withdrawn real objects, do we just have a tool for analyzing <i>anything</i> (and for recognizing all relationships, including those between nonhumans, as analysis) but no map for singling anything out for ethical care, nor even any map for talking about this <i>particular</i> world (of past deer and present corpse, of hunter, of pornography)? It's easy to talk about chairs and trees and even viruses and the milky way: these are nice neutral objects. But what do we do when we get to the photo I shared on this post?Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-12019510923600598292011-01-18T14:51:15.433-05:002011-01-18T14:51:15.433-05:00I'm actually not *entirely* sure what Derrida&...I'm actually not *entirely* sure what Derrida's up to with that word 'dignity.' I get that it links up with Derrida's ethics and analysis of responsibility and temporality, but precisely what it means, I don't know: which may be sort of the point.<br /><br />For what it's worth, I also find the image disquieting. And, for what it's worth, that disquietude is a way of being responsible to this image. We preserve the deer's dignity when its body has been displayed in such an undignified way precisely by being disquieted, even if we have to, or should, look away. That recuperation of dignity can occur both in looking (refusing to look away) and in not looking (granting the deer, even or especially in death, a body/self that can hide itself or display itself as it sees fit).<br /><br />The hunter's treating the deer-object/carcass/corpse in a quasi-scientific fashion: come here and look if you don't believe me. That's not all of course. He's holding the antlers, sign of this being a buck, yet he's displaying the absence (the title of the article is, after all, "Something's Missing on this 10-Point 'Buck'"). The temptation to psychoanalysis is irresistible: we can read the deer's absent penis conjoined with the legible masculine antlers (bound to be displayed, maybe, by this hunter, who will carry with him, maybe secretly, the knowledge that the antlers point not to a penis but to nothing where he expected something). Disappointment and surprise are there in this highly sexualized splaying. And violence too, not least of all because the deer's been shot, but also because of the all too obvious way the splaying makes the deer available for pornography or even--given the blood etc--rape. <br /><br />Behind the deer, we have the hunter's own posture, practical, of course, but also demonstrative, since his own light underpatch, his jeans, the analog of the deer's belly, compels us to look at his crotch. We have to imagine that something's there, but we might imagine, just as well, that we are looking at TWO absences, doubled, the deer's and his, hidden yet displayed.<br /><br />I'm still thinking through how this 'real' wonder should shock symbolic readings of the ambisexual deer of Guigemar. It undoes divisions between wonder and the supposedly normal,fictional world, interconnecting everything everywhere. Guigemar and others have thought they were looking out there, past their own mundane lives, but, armed with the real possibility of ambisexual deer, aware that our structures of knowing have a long way to go before they catch up with what science knows, we should now know that the disquieting strangeness, the 'strange stranger', is right here, and always has been.<br /><br />Something like that. I'm not quite sure yet how to connect the violence of this image to Marie.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-68467635279474147152011-01-18T14:06:17.776-05:002011-01-18T14:06:17.776-05:00A few things:
is there such a thing as "dign...A few things:<br /><br />is there such a thing as "dignity"? This has been much on my mind lately ever since Michael O'Rourke raised the term in his plenary address, "After," at BABEL's conference in Austin this past November, the full text of which we also published here on ITM:<br /><br />http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2010/11/guest-post-michael-orourke-after.html<br /><br />I ask because, frankly, I really did not like seeing the photograph of the dead/killed deer here, especially also because of the way the body is framed/splayed. I don't have the time right now to parse out all of the weird/psychological/pseudo-theological and/or so-called "logical" impetuses behind my reaction; I can only say for now that, as I am currently teaching a grad. seminar on "object-oriented ontology" that includes a segment on critical animal studies, that I found the image jarring and upsetting, both in its status as "object" [both for the hunter but also for us, as viewers of it] and also in its status as murdered, once-vital "life." <br /><br />Does this deer have any "dignity"--should it, does it, and why might that matter [or not]? If you want us to consider the possibility of a "real" and not a "symbolic" hermaphroditic deer in Marie's fictional narrative, how does that "real deer" possibly "twist"/queer Marie's narrative [and maybe even double-twist/double-queer academic queer readings of that narrative, such as the one written by Bill Burgwinkle in his book "Sodomy, Masculinity and Medieval Law in Medieval Literature, 1050-1230"?] and also, maybe, this photograph?<br /><br />I know you've responded to Jeffrey's similar query [at least, on the level of how a "real" ambisexuality, let's say, impinges on the figuration in the poem], but I think there's a larger question here [hewing closely to the themes of Timothy Morton's book, which I am also reading right now] having to do with collapsing the boundaries between the [false] idea of a Nature supposedly "Out There" somewhere and the interconnectedness of everything [human, deer, and otherwise], and between all of that and the themes of Marie's story [which is very much about a kind of shape-shifting of identity within the "interzone" of the "forest," which is never really a forest at all, but only an idea of one].Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-81683425413801283122011-01-17T17:54:34.764-05:002011-01-17T17:54:34.764-05:00Great questions. I think what happens is that it p...Great questions. I think what happens is that it puts the ambisexual deer back in the world. It breaches the boundaries of fairy, allowing us to discover the wondrous and weird having always been here among us rather than only over there, on the other side of the river/inside the barrow. Reality itself (a phrase I'm saying with all the appropriate provisos) is ALSO strange.<br /><br />To expand: Marie's loaded the deer with some of the features common to fairy and Celtic wonder literature: it's white; it talks. That makes its strange, out there, it loads it with sacral or eerie detail. But its ambisexuality, rather than just being one more 'weird detail' 'out there' is a weird detail IN HERE, one familiar to hunters, perhaps, and perhaps not talked about. <br /><br />And the NOT talking about it something perhaps worth tracking down in romance and in hunting literature more generally. If we can assume that ambisexuality is 1 in 10 or even 1 in 20 in farrow or roe deer, or in Elk, and IF these numbers were similar in the 12th-15th centuries, AND if the hunting literature of William Twiti, Gaston Phebus, etc., does NOT mention it, THEN we have a VERY interesting absence: a gap in the archives of what we know the hunters must have known.<br /><br />As for the boat, I'll propose that one aspect of the beautiful ship IS here in 'our' world too, namely, that the boat wants to go somewhere. To ask a question much in line with your current grad seminar: what does a boat want? What does a beautiful boat want in a lai? To do what it does.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-87979807587459129292011-01-17T07:07:47.158-05:002011-01-17T07:07:47.158-05:00I love this post, Karl, but it's intensely unf...I love this post, Karl, but it's intensely unfair: you're not allowed to marshal the evidence but back away from the verge of a conclusion like that! You are better equipped than any of us to ruminate: what difference does an actual, physical, historical, real ambisexual deer body make?<br /><br />And I wonder: does the reality of the hermaphroditic deer matter so much because it is an organic body? That is, should an impossibly beautiful ship with a bed similar to the one that conveys Guigemar to his beloved be discovered, would we care so much?Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.com