Avec l'aide de Dieu et de la Très Sainte Vierge Marie, RIEN n'est insurmontable ! Alors ...

A vos Chapelets pour le réveil de l'Eglise et de l'Europe !!!

La Vierge du Rosaire n’a pas fini de remporter des victoires. Elle attend seulement pour cela une ferveur redoublée, une confiance plus filiale et un courage sans défauts.

Nous lançons donc un appel à tous les Européens qui ont la Foi : ce 7 Octobre 2008, en souvenir de toutes les victoires de nos ancêtres, faisons tous en même temps un Chapelet pour le réveil de l’Eglise et de l’Europe. Un Chapelet pour reprendre notre destin en mains face à nos ennemis jurés actuellement au pouvoir. Un Chapelet pour sortir de l’oppression moderniste et mondialiste qui sème l’impureté chez nos enfants. Un Chapelet pour une Europe européenne, chrétienne et fière. Un Chapelet pour la victoire !

Seuls ou à plusieurs, chez vous ou à l’intérieur d’une église ou d’une chapelle : priez la Vierge du Rosaire !

“Je suis convaincu, en effet, que les Nations ne doivent jamais accepter de voir disparaître ce qui fait leur identité propre.” (Benoix XVI)

En savoir plus : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataille_de_L%C3%A9pante

«Today architecture gains a great success: the more it becomes spectacular, the more it gets spectacularized. But this success itself could be indicative of a crisis of sense. And a crisis of sense starts when a discipline loses the essential causes of its own existing, acting, projecting and building. Looking for a really not minor part of contemporary architecture, the one most frequently shown on every kind of magazine, the impression is that architecture ends in a series of shapes, more and more unusual and almost incomprehensible. But all these shapes, just as in fashion, soon get to a certain tire and, overworked, quickly lose their value. In this situation it seems just right to make a philosophical reflection upon the aims and essence of building. A reflection, like the one made in this book, that faces seriously and rigorously the meanings attributed to architecture by Plato as first and then by many other thinkers – Martin Heidegger, Georges Bataille and Jeremy Rifkin among them -, architects, Bruno Taut, and artists, Mondrian, the Situationists and Josef Beuys in particular. The result is a philosophical map, necessary to understand and criticize contemporary and also to find better answers in projecting, with a not-ephemeral sense and value. An older Plato, for those who lost the aim of preserving the wealth for the territory as a whole and just longed for a private interest, suggested control, censure and even “the beatings”… He probably exaggerated, but today we should start a rediscovery of the virtues of creative self-control, with the aim of a space decolonization.
The free aesthetical research should then proceed at the same rate with a care for a socially and economically sustainable resolution of the organization of space as a fundamental common good.»

There’s no doubt this is an ambitious project, but it’s even more fascinating since quite close to our inquiry field.
Nevertheless, reading this essay left me with a series of uncertainties.
In my modest opinion, the worst fault of the book is to be found in the highly fragmented structure of the argumentation. The book, indeed, is divided in four sections that are apparently and actually mutually disconnected.
In the first one, with the title of The law architecture: Plato, a path of urbanism and architecture is reconstructed inside the books of Laws by the Athenian philosopher; a very interesting path, not lacking about hints of modernity despite its historical location, that the reader expects to end in an organic analysis of some possible conclusions in line with the general plan of the book.
Just read these partial conclusions to the first part, one immediately plunges into the second, looking for new, stimulating shades of the same dissertation, maybe as seen in a different historical context. And then one has to face the Abstraction and Metropolis: Mondrian section, with its lapidary incipit: «Mondrian’s identity is in the itinerary.». Lapidary and quite enigmatic for the disoriented reader who has just left Plato on his back and doesn’t know that he (she)’ll have to do with a dissertation - even by itself thrilling – about the Dutch painter that will be long more than one third of the whole book. If the artist’s personality is absolutely magnetic and the study about his Calvinist obsession for the research of ways to express the “real” leaves no room for bore, there are really a few references to architecture (some hints to De Stijl and to Le Corbusier’s shortsighted opinion about it) and the reasons that led the author to insert this section in this book are definitely obscure.
Then it is the turn of the third part, entitled Space decolonization. Finally, Emery hits the mark, and the essay is actually useful. Wheting the first chapter, that criticizes Popper’s “piecemeal tinkering” when applied to urbanism. The need for overall urban visions clashes with the effectiveness of complex urban evolutions. Are we still allowed to think a townplan as a whole project, or is it a preindustrial anachronism? The rest of the section is full of remarkable points of view too. The questions of sustainable development as seen by Heidegger, Rifkin, Bataille, Beuys, Debord, just as the back cover announced and the hungry reader expected. It’s really a pity that just sixty pages have been dedicated to this issue, which could (should?) have well been the core of the entire work.
In the end, the last short section reprises some platonic positions, but much more shallow, and concludes the essay with a fascinating “gloss” with Bruno Taut adding something visionary, but nothing new to the central meaning.
In conclusion, as I said, the work is interesting even just for the ambitious aspire initially proposed; but as it often happens, it is probably a later collage of professor Emery’s personal studies, and he indubitably owns a rich and complete vision of the matters presented, but maybe this time lacks in the will of make clearer those relations (obvious for him) that link the interesting investigations made in so many distant fields of knowledge.
This slightly sour review be not an offense for the professor, whose effort, as said, truly inspired me in opening this blog and, more, who is obviously invited here to sincerely discuss on what has been written. It would be a greatly appreciated debate: I really hope this happening. No malice!

Sur le rivage se tenait l'armée ennemie avec son déploiement de guerriers en armes, pendant que des femmes couraient entre les rangs, vêtues de noir comme les Furies, les cheveux défaits, brandissant des torches. Tout autour, les druides, tendant leurs mains vers le ciel, se répandaient en imprécations sinistres, et ce spectacle étrange épouvanta nos soldats au point que, comme si leurs membres étaient paralysés, ils restaient immobiles et s'exposaient aux coups. Puis, pressés par les appels de leur général et s'encourageant mutuellement à ne pas craindre une troupe de femmes fanatiques, ils se portèrent en avant, brisèrent la résistance, et enveloppèrent les ennemis dans les flammes de leurs propres feux. Une garnison fut ensuite imposée aux vaincus, et leurs bosquets, consacrés à des superstitions inhumaines, furent coupés. Car ils estimaient comme un devoir de couvrir leurs autels avec le sang des captifs et de consulter leurs dieux avec des entrailles humaines.

"A ce moment, sans cause évidente, la statue de la Victoire à Camulodunum tomba et se retourna, comme si elle fuyait devant les ennemis. Des femmes excitées jusqu'à la frénésie prédisaient des destructions imminentes ; on raconta que des délires en une langue étrange avaient été entendus dans la maison du Sénat ; le théâtre avait résonné de lamentations, et dans l'estuaire de la Tamise on avait vu l'image d'une ville renversée ; même l'océan avait pris l'aspect du sang, et quand la marée se retirait, elle laissait l'empreinte de formes humaines, et tous ces signes étaient interprétés par les Britanniques avec espoir, et par les vétérans avec inquiétude."

Tacite, Annales (XIV, 29-37)

« Ce n'est pas en tant que femme de noble ascendance, mais comme une femme du peuple, que je veux venger la liberté perdue, mon corps fouetté, la chasteté outragée de mes filles. L'avidité romaine est allée si loin que ni nos personnes, ni l'âge ni la virginité, n'ont été épargnés par la souillure.

Mais les dieux sont favorables à une juste vengeance ; une légion qui avait osé combattre, a péri ; les autres se cachent dans leur camp, ou pensent à s'enfuir. Ils ne pourront même pas soutenir le vacarme et les cris de tant de milliers d'hommes, encore moins notre assaut et nos coups.

Si vous pesez bien la force des deux armées, et les causes de la guerre, vous verrez que dans cette bataille vous devez vaincre ou mourir. Cela est la résolution d'une femme ; quand aux hommes, ils peuvent préférer vivre et être esclaves. »

Tacite, Annales, XIV, 29-37

Boadicée, ou Boudicca, semble avoir porté cette appellation comme un titre de reine guerrière, dès les premiers temps de la révolte qu'elle mena. C'était également le nom de la Déesse de la victoire des Britons.

En ce moment, mes yeux tombent régulièrement sur des allusions à sa vie, sur des images la représentant, sans que cela soit vraiment concerté. Je prends cela comme une invitation à méditer sur son existence, sur ce qu'elle peut représenter ; sur le message, qu'à travers le temps, elle peut encore transmettre. En tant que femme ; en tant que non-épouse ; en tant que mère de deux filles violées sous ses yeux en représailles par les envahisseurs, qui espéraient sans doute ainsi les rendre impropres au mariage et éteindre sa lignée - voire les engrosser de gamins de leur sang pour asseoir leur domination jusque dans les ventres des femmes des Icènes ; en tant que reine ; en tant que guerrière ; en tant que stratège ; en tant que femme humiliée, battue devant son peuple ; en tant que femme victorieuse ; en tant que femme défaite.

L'histoire de Boadicée fait bouillir mon sang chaque fois que je la parcours. Il y réside, lové comme un serpent, le parfum de la vengeance, l'appel des armes, la vindicte ardente et l'appel au jugement des Dieux. Le dernier recours des outragés, des gens à qui l'on vient dérober leurs biens les plus chers.

Je pense de plus en plus à dessiner cette forte femme, et ne sait trop bien encore par quel bout la prendre. Tant de facettes. Tant de visages possibles. Comme Antigone, c'est celle qui dit non. Ce qui la résume le mieux, à mon sens, c'est ce "non".

La représenter, justement, en train de prononcer ce "non", sûre d'elle et de son bon droit ? Peut-être là où on ne l'attend pas... Cassant le mythe, pourquoi pas ? Un "non" de mère qui réprimande sa fille, de reine-amante qui se refuse au désir d'un amant potentiel ? La force du NON, tout un éventail de possibilités...

J'ai pour m'aider la description succinte de Dio Cassius, quien parle en ces termes : « grande, terrible à voir et dotée d'une voix puissante. Des cheveux roux flamboyants lui tombaient jusqu'aux genoux, et elle portait un  torque d'or décoré, une tunique multicolore et un épais manteau retenu par une broche. Elle était armée d'une longue lance et inspirait la terreur à ceux qui l'apercevaient. »

Du travail en perspective, donc. Aussi bien inner work qu'outer work, j'ai l'impression.

*happy*

]]> http://laperiodicarevisiondominical.wordpress.com/?p=283 Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:18:06 +0000 laperiodicarevisiondominical http://laperiodicarevisiondominical.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/escribir-y-tocar/ En El color púrpura (1982), novela de la afroamericana Alice Walker, la idea de escribir una historia, y estructurarla en torno a cartas, permite que la novela indague en la más profunda de las intimidades del personaje.

La conversación con Dios que desarrolla la protagonista, Celie, en El color púrpura, debe posicionarnos, al momento de leer, ante un gesto de suma intimidad. No hay nada, pero absolutamente nada más auténtico, que una carta. Y si esa carta, como es el caso, no será leída por nadie, entonces la escritura no tiene ningún filtro externo, salvo el que la propia autora de las cartas quiera tener consigo misma. Si escribo para mí, yo seré mi censura. No hay un entorno que me condiciona. La escritura es mi otredad. Soy la medida de lo que puedo o no puedo decir. Y si escribo para Dios, creo, como lo hace Celie, también, ya que nos remite –dependiendo el caso- a la más absoluta de las presencias o ausencias.

La novela de Walker, en consecuencia, es una novela que se escribe para uno por uno. Novela de fragmentos, de anotaciones al margen, que esconden el miedo a la vida en la pasión y necesidad de la escritura. Otro caso, como en la novela de Sandra Cisneros, La casa en Mango Street, donde escribir se convierte en un acto secreto, constructor de espacios íntimos que no existen. Método de aspiración y rebeldía. La escritura como un lugar donde la mujer, excluida y oprimida, puede contar su secreto, cerquita de dios.

En la novela aparece, a su vez, el cuerpo como mapa. Un hombre que no da placer; y una mujer que, en su momento, no le importa porque no lo conoce. Shug diciéndole a Celie aquí, aquí es. Aquí está el placer. Celie que no sabe, que no responde, que apenas siente. Una mujer le enseña el cuerpo a otra, como si el cuerpo fuera un mapa desconocido, un atlas nunca antes visto. Celie se descubre. Celie palpa, siente, goza, por primera vez goza. Descubrir el placer, a través del cuerpo, ajeno o propio. A través de un cuerpo -qué importa que ambas sean mujeres- similar al de ella. El hombre, en la novela de Walker, desconoce el mapa. No sabe dónde, cuándo, cómo, qué. Se mueve, torpemente, a través de golpes. Violenta el territorio. No lo camina; lo atraviesa a la fuerza. La aparición de la figura masculina está condicionada por la mujer secreta, presionada y golpeada, que escribe. Y la novela, entonces, se convierte en medio para que la mujer conozca su cuerpo. Para que denuncie, para que muestre, para que cante (Shug) el placer

La necesidad de que venga alguien, sin importar su sexo, y te enseñe un cuerpo que, por sí misma, no puedes, no te dejan, descubrir. El propio cuerpo, porque el placer, el erotismo, el descubrir (se), el develar, como dice Bataille, “es uno de los aspectos de la vida interior del hombre.” En la novela, el descubrimiento del placer viene a ser el primer paso para que la mujer comience a anhelar su propia libertad. Saber que el deleite sexual lo puede descubrir, y ayudar a producir, otra mujer, es el primer paso para una sublevación genérica.

R.S.

Bravo Kyoko comment faire un gâteau de l'amour avec rien, même le fils spirituel de Macgyver et de Baracuda n'aurait pas fait mieux.

Même Cyril Lygnac ton idole c'est un pitit joueur a cote.

Proteus ce gâteau il est pour toi.

‘MUSEUM’
From Encyclopedia Acephalica
Georges Bataille

According to the GrandeEncyclopédie, the first museum in the modern sense of the word (that is to say the first public collection) would seem to have been founded on 27 July 1793, in France, by the Convention. The origin of the modern museum would thus be linked to the development of the guillotine.
However, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, founded at the end of the 17th century, was already a public collection belonging to the University. The development of museums has plainly surpassed even the most optimistic hopes of the founders. Not only does the totality of the world's museums today represent a colossal accumulation of riches but, above all, the totality of visitors without any doubt represents the most grandiose
spectacle of a humanity freed from material cares and dedicated to contemplation.

We must take into account the fact that the galleries and the objects of art are no more than a container, the contents of which is formed by the visitors: it is the contents which distinguish a museum from a private collection. A museum is comparable to the lung of a
great city: every Sunday the throng flows into the museum, like blood, and leaves it fresh and purified. The pictures are only dead surfaces and it is within the crowd that the play, the flashes, the shimmerings of light technically described by the authorised critics takes place. On Sundays, at five o'clock, at the exit door of the Louvre, it is interesting to admire the torrent of visitors, visibly animated with a desire to be in all things at one with the
celestial apparitions with which their eyes are still ravished.

Grandville has schematised the relations between the container and the contained in museums by exaggerating (at the very least, on the face of it) the bonds that are temporarily established between the visited and the visitors. In the same way, when a native of the Ivory Coast places polished stone axes of the Neolithic period in a container
filled with water, bathes in the container, and sacrifices chickens to what he believes to be thunder stones he is doing no more than prefiguring the attitude of enthusiasm and
profound communion with objects which characterises the visitor to a modern museum.

The museum is a colossal mirror inwhich man contemplates himself, in short, in all his aspects, finds himself literally admirable and abandons himself to the ecstasy expressed in all the art journals.

Dans quelques semaines, le 7 Octobre, nous fêterons la victoire écrasante de la Sainte Ligue européenne et chrétienne sur la flotte turque à Lepante.

Ce 7 Octobre 1751, l'Europe catholique est rassemblée par le Pape Pie V pour libérer Chypre. 200 galères contre 300 vaisseaux turcs. La suprématie navale en Méditerranée appartenait aux Turcs.  Et pourtant, nous les avons vaincus en l'espace de quelques heures. Seuls 30 navires turcs parvinrent à fuir. On dénombre 7500 morts Catholiques pour 30 000 morts turcs, ainsi que 8000 prisonniers turcs et 15 000 forçats chrétiens libérés de leurs fers. L'amiral turc est décapité. C'était une autre époque ...

Dans l'Église catholique romaine, la victoire fut rapidement attribuée à la Sainte Vierge et l'anniversaire de la bataille fut inscrite dans le calendrier liturgique romain.

En effet, ce dimanche 7 Octobre 1751, tous les fidèles du Rosaires, toutes les confréries, toutes les associations unanimement, s'étaient mises en prière à la demande de Saint Pie V. En quelques heures, la grande offensive turque fut réduite à néant. Dès ce jour là, les nations de la chrétienté comprirent que la puissance ottomane n'était pas invincible, que sa domination n'avait rien de fatal. La peur avait changé de camp !

La Vierge du Rosaire n'a pas fini de remporter des victoires. Elle attend seulement pour cela une ferveur redoublée, une confiance plus filiale et un courage sans défauts.

Nous lançons donc un appel à tous les Européens qui ont la Foi : ce 7 Octobre 2008, en souvenir de toutes les victoires de nos ancêtres, faisons tous en même temps un Chapelet pour le réveil de l'Eglise et de l'Europe. Un Chapelet pour reprendre notre destin en mains face à nos ennemis jurés actuellement au pouvoir. Un Chapelet pour sortir de l'oppression moderniste et mondialiste qui sème l'impureté chez nos enfants. Un Chapelet pour une Europe européenne, chrétienne et fière. Un Chapelet pour la victoire !

Seuls ou à plusieurs, chez vous ou à l'intérieur d'une église ou d'une chapelle : priez la Vierge du Rosaire !

"Je suis convaincu, en effet, que les Nations ne doivent jamais accepter de voir disparaître ce qui fait leur identité propre." (Benoix XVI)

On a pu remarquer combien la position de ces derniers était étendue. Leur ligne tenait de Ruremonde à Sprimont et Esneux. Le général Kray, posté sur la rive gauche de la Meuse, couvrait la place de Maëstricht. D'abord героussé jusque sous le canon de cette forteresse, le général autrichien ayant reçu quelques renforts, reprit bientôt sa position. Dès le 14, la droite et le centre de l'armée française avait forcé le passage de la rivière d'Ourte à Durbuy et Comblain-Pont. Le 18, les Français passèrent l'Aywaille, rivière assez escarpée, sur quatre colonnes, depuis le bourg du même nom jusqu'à Esneux , tandis que l'aile gauche inquiétait les Autrichiens sur leur centre et sur leur droite.

Ce mouvement avait pour but d'attaquer les troupes aux ordres des généraux Alvinzy et Latour, formant la gauche de l'armée ennemie. La division Marceau marcha sur Esneux, celle du général Bonnet sur Sprimont, et le général Schérer se dirigea sur Chartreuse, près de Liège. Ces trois attaques bien combinées, et menées avec beaucoup d'intelligence , eurent le succès qu'on devait attendre de la bravoure française. La position de la Chartreuse fut abandonnée par les Autrichiens , après quatre heures d'un combat opiniâtre.

Deux mille hommes restés sur le champ de bataille , douze cents prisonniers, trente-cinq pièces de canon, deux cents caissons et fourgons , cinq drapeaux , tels furent les résultats de cette journée, qui força les Autrichiens, après quelques autres engagemens peu meurtriers , à se replier sur Juliers, derrière la Roër, après avoir jeté dix bataillons dans Maëstricht. "

_{Victoires, conquêtes, désastres, revers et guerres civiles des Français, Charles Theodore Beauvais de Preau, Tome troisième, Paris, 1817.}

_{Guerres et batailles à Liège
Liège au 18ème siècle}

C'était humain - en tout cas la forme de cette sorte de gnome difforme portait à penser que c'était proche de l'humain. C'était un morceau de corps nu, d'environ quatre-vingt-dix centimètres, on décelait les traces d'une castration du pénis, le tronc était court et potelé. Absence de pieds en deça des chevilles comme si les extrémités avaient été broyées et rognées, pas d'ongles aux doigts des deux mains. (...) Plus on l'observait, plus sa forme monstrueuse imposait cette conclusion : le gnome avait un pénis à la place de la langue. Shozo Numa in Yapou, Bétail humain (éd. Désordres/Laurence Viallet) - description d'un cunnilinger salement amoché par une chute depuis l'espace.

Adoncques, ai commencé de lire les deux ouvrages que je cite en épigraphe. Le premier est une somme géniale sur l'érotisme, sa naissance et son devenir, où l'on voit se profiler la relation tendue entre érotisme et mort, cette "petite mort" qui préfigure la mort définitive. Il s'agira de dépasser les limites de la raison pour entrevoir les correspondances désordonnées, une fois ce seuil franchi, "de l'horreur et d'une volupté qui m'excède, de la douleur finale et d'une insupportable joie." Tant il est vrai que pour celui qui ne "rêvait que de tombes sans colombes" (dixit Lo Duca dans sa préface), le rire, caressant par trop souvent l'abîme, est plus divin que les larmes. C'est ce qu'il avance dans Ma Mère. Références artistiques à foison et parfois déroutantes. Brassaï et Pierre Klossowski y sont souvent évoqués. Pour l' instant, je divague quelque part entre les aurignaciens et les "calembours plastiques."

A noter d'ailleurs que les deux livres commencent par Le ou Au commencement. Une sorte de genèse du mal revisité par de très grands disciples et maîtres. Mais quand Bataille tutoie le sublime, Numa coudoie l'immonde, le fantastique, la violence et la volupté. Il y a évidemment de cela chez Bataille, mais suggéré, pas exposé avec autant d'ardeur. Je ne parle ici que des Larmes d'Eros. Ce qui est à l'oeuvre dans Le bleu du ciel - en avais acheté un exemplaire à Lannion dans la librairie Voyelles -une libraire très aimable qui disait que les gens gardaient leur Bataille - ou Madame Edwarda, Le Mort, Histoire de l'Oeil, quoique dépassant les simples voies de faits SM, fétichistes, scato, uro de Bataille et lui conférant le pouvoir d'être au-delà de tout, ne nous intéresse pas ici puisque c'est d'Eros que nous parlons. Mais oui, une partie plus équitable eût dû opposer le nain qui se fait pisser dessus chez Bataille à la tête de pénis du cunnilinger nomien.

Mais avec Numa, c'est différent. Ce livre est drôle. N'ai pour l'instant lu que trente pages du premier tome. Les trois réunis doivent atteindre les 1300 "écrit petit." Portrait croisé. D'abord, un jeune homme japonais et sa fiancée allemande, se promenant à Wiesbaden à cheval, devisent de l'art du dressage. Déjà sont employés les termes de "maîtresse", "esclave". Puis, "au même moment", le deuxième chapitre s'ouvre sur les pérégrinations d'une tribu nordique 1600 ans auparavant mais à la même date : année 380 est-il écrit. Mathématiquement impossible puisque les deux tourtereaux conversent en 196X. Passons. Pourquoi 380 ? Parce que cette tribu est surveillée par la fille de la marquise Jansen, Pauline. Elle a pour mission de voyager à travers le temps pour recueillir des clichés de la Terre. Elle, vit sur Karl, la planète mère avec sa femme, Robert (ou Bobby). Territoire de l'Empire EHS. Année 3970. Notre époque est bien sûre dite an-historique. Les femmes ont le pouvoir et mettent des ceintures de chasteté à leurs époux quand elles partent en mission. Rentrant chez elle une fois sa tâche accomplie (une seconde équivaut à une année terrestre), envie prend à Pauline de se délasser en se masturbant avec son cunnilinger, sorte de marche-pied vivant, doté d'un névraxe, et répondant aux mouvements des cuisses de sa maîtresse. Tout va pour le mieux : Bobby est son boy utérin et de lui elle a fait cinq bonbons et un cigare hormonal. Mais se laissant aller à trop de langueur, Pauline en oublie le pilotage automatique. Bug ! Elle tombe avec son vaisseau en 196X à quelques mètres des amoureux. Sa chute tuera au passage les deux chevaux attelés dans le cabanon et le chien. Clara - cravache en main et bombe en place - et Rinichiro - nu car il était allé se baigner dans le lac - se précipitent pour la secourir. S'ensuit un quiproquo car Pauline, pensant avoir atterri sur une colonie de la planète mère, ne pourra jamais se douter qu'elle est en fait revenue en 196X. Elle croit (à tort ?) que Clara est la maîtresse de Rinichiro qui lui, serait son Yapou - sorte d'esclave élevé en batterie, autrefois humain et vivant avec les siens sur une planètes qui les cultive. Le terme yapou serait formé à partir de Jaban, pays des barbares. Jaban + yapou a donné Jap. Oui, les Yapous sont les descendants des Japonais et sont appelés à devenir les meubles et les objets sexuels des habitants de Karl. Le cunnilinger est sévèrement puni pour avoir empêché sa maîtresse de contrôler mieux une situation désespérée. Rinichiro nu comme un ver - ce que ne cesse de répéter le narrateur - et Clara suivent Pauline à l'intérieur du vaisseau. Toute ressemblance avec les noms utilisés par Sade serait-elle fortuite ? Je ne sais pas. Et ce Jansen, serait-il innocent ? En lisant Pauline, j'entends Justine.

J'en suis là ! Je n'en puis mais !

Le livre a été publié en 1956 et déjà l'auteur évoque des sex toys vivants, comme les cunnilingers ou les penilingers (dont les hommes se servent avec un profond sentiment de culpabilité puisqu'ils prouvent leur frustration de voir partie leur épouse). Item, la lecture autant que l'écriture est vive, sans temps mort. L'auteur dit de quoi il parlera dans les chapitres suivants et où trouver une description détaillée de ce qu'il évoque. Bien sûr, les premiers chapitres regorgent de phrases accrocheuses : "Ces deux-là ne se doutent pas le moins du monde de l'étrange destin qui les attend. Le rideau est déjà levé, ils se trouvent sur la scène..." Néanmoins, c'est entêtant, endiablé, généreusement masochiste, sadique et cruel. C'est Yukio Mishima -il faudrait que je parle de la fin du Tumulte des flots un soir - qui d'ailleurs célèbre Yapou en quatrième de couverture : "Yapou, bétail humain est le plus grand roman idéologique qu'un Japonais ait écrit après-guerre. Ce que j'admire dans ce roman, c'est qu'il apporte la preuve que le monde change. L'une des prémisses à ce qu'on appelle le masochisme est que l'humiliation est une jouissance; à partir de là, quelque chose est possible. Et quand ça se réalise, ça prend la forme d'un système qui finit par recouvrir le monde entier. Plus personne ne peut alors résister à ce système théorique. Et tout finit par être englobé, la politique, la littérature, la morale. Ce roman parle de cette terreur."

This is the concluding phrase of Solar Anus. Anus, the 'blind eye' of the flesh, is described intact and belonging to a young woman. Unspoiled, longs to be celebrated, open and be opened to knowledge, to gnosis. Blinding as only Sun can be, though the Night itself. Blindingly bright in a manner that obscures it from our incapable eyes, darkness from light, not due to the absence of it but to excess.

Anus is the entrance to the labyrinth of our intestines, to the 'labyrinth-built' Acéphale abdomen. Anus is also the mouth of the snake. According to some Gnostic traditions, referring mainly to the Ophites sect, the whole history of the world begins and ends with the serpent [thus their name deriving from the Greek word ophis, meaning serpent]. In the cosmic level [Leviathan], in the earthly level [Ocean] and finally in the human level [the meanders and spirals of the intestines, where food is transformed and life is sustained], the serpent is present everywhere.

The serpent is the first Rebel of history, in Paradise it defied false god's authority and gave man the secrets of his birth and his destiny. The serpent freed Adam and Eve by luring Eve [luring meaning penetrating]. Sethian Gnostic went even further to claim that Adam was also lured in the same way. Thus the serpent offered to man the double apocalypse of knowledge [gnosis] and pleasure.

Anal penetration is a rebellious action. Infertile pleasure [the erotic movements of the ground are not fertile like those of the water, but they are far more rapid] against any social, sacred, ethical or even emotional regulations. Bataille is familiar with the teaching and the myths of Gnosis, Sun worshiper, transformed into the great penetrator, longs to have his throat slashed while violating the girl to whom [I] he will have been able to say: you are the night, unity in excess, eros and death, the smashing of discontinuity of the one.

read the Solar Anus

«Oggi l'architettura riscuote un grande successo: più essa si spettacolarizza e più essa viene spettacolarizzata. Ma proprio questo successo potrebbe essere l’indice di una crisi di senso. E una crisi di senso si apre quando una disciplina smarrisce le cause essenziali per cui essa esiste e per cui dovrebbe agire, progettare e costruire.
Guardando una parte certo non minoritaria dell’architettura contemporanea, quella più gettonata sulle riviste di ogni genere, si ha l'impressione che l'architettura si esaurisca in un gioco di forme, rese sempre più insolite e quasi impenetrabili. Se non che tutte queste forme, proprio come quelle della moda, vanno presto incontro a una certa stanchezza e inflazionandosi si svalutano rapidamente. In questa situazione sembra più che opportuna una riflessione filosofica sugli scopi e sull'essenza del costruire. Una riflessione, come quella sviluppata in questo libro, che si confronta in modo serio e rigoroso con il significato attribuito all'architettura in primo luogo da Platone e poi da molli altri pensatori - fra cui Martin Heidegger, Georges Bataille e Jeremy Rifkin – architetti, Bruno Taut, e artisti, in particolare Mondrian, i Situazionisti e Joseph Beuys. Ne risulta una sorta di mappa filosofica, necessaria oltre che per capire e criticare I’attualità, anche per cercare risposte progettuali migliori, provviste di senso e valore non effimero. L'anziano Platone, per chi smarriva lo scopo di preservare la salute dell'intero territorio e rincorreva esclusivamente l'interesse disciplinare privato, invocava il controllo e la censura e talvolta finanche "le bastonate" ... Probabilmente esagerava, ma oggi bisognerebbe cominciare a far riscoprire in primo luogo le virtù dell'autocontrollo creativo, in vista di una decolonizzazione dello spazio.
La libera ricerca estetica dovrebbe insomma andare di pari passo con la cura tesa a risolvere in maniera socialmente ed ecologicamente sostenibile l'organizzazione dello spazio inteso come fondamentale bene comune.»

Un progetto senz’altro ambizioso, ma estremamente affascinante ed assai affine al nostro campo di indagine.
Tuttavia, la lettura del saggio ha lasciato in me una serie di perplessità.
Il più grave difetto del libro sta, a mio parere, nella struttura assai frammentaria dell’argomentazione. Il volume è infatti diviso in quattro sezioni apparentemente ed effettivamente del tutto scollegate tra di loro.
Nella prima, intitolata L’architettura della legge: Platone, si ricostruisce un percorso di idee di urbanistica ed architettura all’interno dei libri delle Leggi dell’ateniese; un percorso molto interessante, argomentato magistralmente e non privo di spunti attuali anche a dispetto della sua collocazione storica, intrapreso il quale il lettore si aspetta e trova, a valle delle considerazioni estratte dall’analisi del testo, una disamina organica di certe conclusioni alla luce dell’intento complessivo dell’opera.
Apprese tali conclusioni parziali alla fine della prima parte, ci si tuffa subito nella seconda, alla ricerca di nuove, preziose sfumature del medesimo discorso, magari ricercate in un contesto storico diverso. Ci si trova allora alle prese con la sezione Astrazione e Metropoli: Mondrian, il cui lapidario incipit è: «L’identità di Mondrian è nell’itinerario.». Lapidario nonché alquanto enigmatico per il lettore disorientato che un momento fa era alle prese con Platone, e che non sa che lo aspetta una dissertazione – benché di per sé interessantissima – sulla sola figura del pittore olandese, lunga più di un terzo dell’intero libro. Per quanto la personalità dell’artista sia assolutamente magnetica ed il discorso sulla sua abnegazione calvinista per la ricerca dell’espressione del vero non lasci spazio alla noia, ben pochi sono i riferimenti all’architettura (qualche accenno al De stijl e all’opinione miope che ne aveva Le Corbusier) e ancor più incomprensibili sembrano le motivazioni per le quali una così lunga sezione sia stata dedicata al personaggio all’interno di questo saggio.
Dopo lunghe pagine si passa quindi alla terza parte del libro, dal titolo La decolonizzazione dello spazio. Finalmente Emery coglie nel segno, e la trattazione è veramente utile al lettore. Davvero stuzzicante il primo capitolo, che critica la posizione popperiana del “piecemeal tinkering”, ovvero del processo incrementale, a piccolissimi passi, secondo il quale la città contemporanea sarebbe destinata a svilupparsi per il pensatore austriaco. La necessità di visioni urbane complessive si scontra con l’effettività delle evoluzioni urbane complesse. È ancora lecito pensare il piano come progetto d’insieme, o è un anacronismo preindustriale?
Il resto della sezione è ugualmente pregno di punti di vista di grande interesse. Vengono a galla le questioni dello sviluppo sostenibile viste da Heidegger, Rifkin, Bataille, Beuys, Debord, proprio come annuncia la terza di copertina e proprio come il lettore affamato si aspetta. È un vero peccato che solo sessanta pagine siano state dedicate in totale a questa argomentazione, che da sola avrebbe potuto (dovuto?) costituire il baricentro di tutta la costruzione dell’opera.
Infine, l’ultima breve sezione riprende alcune posizioni platoniche, ma assai più volatili, e conclude il saggio con una affascinante “postilla” su Bruno Taut che aggiunge al progetto visionarietà, ma forse non nuovo significato.
Nel complesso, come ho detto, l’opera è interessante anche solo per l’anelito ambizioso che si era proposta inizialmente; come però spesso accade, si tratta probabilmente di un collage a posteriori di studi personali del professor Emery, il quale possiede senz’altro una visione complessa e ricca delle problematiche che presenta, oltre ad un'ottima penna, ma che in questo caso manca forse di volontà nel rendere più chiare le relazioni, a lui palesi, tra le interessanti ricerche svolte in così distanti ambiti del sapere.
Questa recensione amarognola non offenda il professore, la cui opera, come ho detto, ha molto ispirato la sottoscritta nell’apertura di questo blog, e che anzi, è senz’altro invitato ad un confronto sull’argomento in questa sede. Sarebbe un dibattito apprezzatissimo: spero davvero che l’invito venga colto. Senza rancore!

Nagisa Oshimas "Im Reich der Sinne" (1976). Hatte mich damals sehr beeindruckt. Bis heute. Ich hatte damals eine umfassende Analyse des Films geschrieben, die heute leider verschollen ist.

Georges Bataille sagt: "Die innere Erfahrung mit der Erotik verlangt von dem, der sie macht, eine nicht weniger große Sensibilität für die Angst, die das Verbot begründet, wie für das Verlangen, das zu seiner Übertretung führt."

Die innere Erfahrung mit der Erotik verlangt von dem, der sie macht, eine nicht weniger große Sensibilität für die Angst, die das Verbot begründet, wie für das Verlangen, das zu seiner Übertretung führt.

(Georges Bataille, "Die Erotik")

Die erotischen Erzählungen Batailles kamen erst nach dessen Tod ans Licht, wobei für den französischen Surrealisten und Theoretiker nicht die Erotik, sondern mehr der Tabubruch, die durch ihn ausgelöste Obszönität des Sexuellen, das Überschreiten der Grenzen, im Mittelpunkt steht. Batailles verbindet Tod und Trieb zu einer Art rasenden Wahnsinn, der jeglichen Scheu verliert, keine Hemmungen, keine Beschränkungen mehr kennt, Erotik wird bei ihm zum Zwanghaften, Düsteren.

In diesem Sinn und mit entsprechendem Bezug auf Batailles ist das Büchlein von Deforges zu verstehen (es mit seinen 92 kleinen, locker beschriebenen Seiten im Stil eines Tagebuches als Roman zu apostrophieren ist allerdings ein wenig übertrieben...). Ähnlich wie in Batailles "Der Tote" gerät bei Deforges die junge Witwe in eine Art Wahnzustand, sie redet weiter mit ihrem verstorbenen Mann, besucht ihn nächtlings auf dem Friedhof, beschwört ihr gemeinsames Liebesleben und in ihrem Wahn schläft sie mit ihrem Mann auf dem Grab. Die Rolle, die bei Batailles Pierrot spielt, übernimmt hier bei Deforges Lulu, ein zurückgebliebener junger Mann, der sie bei ihrem Treiben auf dem Friedhof beobachtet. Was bei "Der Tote" die Wirtschaft ist, ist im "Unwetter" die Familie Lulus und ebenso wie bei ihrem Vorbild erliegt auch bei Deforges die junge Frau ihrem Fieberwahn und folgt ihrem Mann ins Grab.

Eingebettet ist diese Geschichte mit ihren zum Teil extremen und obszönen Schilderungen in eine kleine Rahmenhandlung, bei der der Neffe bei der Durchsicht der Hinterlassenschaft seiner Tante das versteckte Tagebuch findet, welches er nach langem Zögern veröffentlicht als "einer der schönsten Liebesgeschichten".

Dadurch, daß Deforges ihre junge Frau in den Wahn schickt und jegliche Begrenzung ihres Verlangens löscht, es unmäßig werden lässt, führt sie vor Augen, wie der Mensch durch Tabus, moralische, ethische Grundsätze in seinen Handlungen eingeschränkt ist und zu was der Mensch bereit ist, wenn er sich über diese Grenzen hinwegsetzt.

Facit: Ein verstörendes Buch, denn wenn man Lust und Erotik mit Leben und Freude daran gleich setzt, bietet diese Geschichte einen vollständig anderen Ansatz.

Regine Deforges
Das Unwetter
Egmont vgs Verlagsgesell. 1997
ISBN-10: 3802525388
ISBN-13: 978-3802525384

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(1) Georges Batailles: Der Tote aus: Das obzöne Werk, Rowohlt-TB

La seconde étape est plus subtile. Selon le nombre de signataires de chacune des contributions générales, les chefs de clans décident de négocier un ralliement avec une autre contribution ou de se lancer seuls dans la bataille. C’est là qu’intervient le dépôt des motions. Lesdites motions étant soumises aux suffrages des adhérents socialistes pour faire émerger une majorité de gouvernement interne et, à son sommet, un premier secrétaire, présidentiable ou non. Pour beaucoup, c'est l'enjeu.

Aujourd'hui donc, le Parti socialiste est en effervescence. C’est le dernier jour de la 1ère étape, celle de l’enregistrement des contributions. Et tous les dépositaires de contributions n’ont pas ménagé leur peine pour créer du buzz et amener les adhérents à signer leur texte en ligne : Laurent Fabius souhaite « reconstruire la gauche », Martine Aubry tente « une vision pour espérer, une volonté pour transformer », Ségolène Royal veut « combattre et proposer », Bertrand Delanoë aspire à la « clarté, courage et créativité », quant aux reconstructeurs, courant mené par Pierre Moscovici, ils ont « besoin de gauche », pas moins que les "reconquêtes" d'Henri Emmanuelli et Benoît Hamon.

La ligne claire
Devant ces combats fratricides, cette guerre des chefs, Gérard Collomb, maire de Lyon, Jean-Noël Guérini, président du Conseil général des Bouches-du-Rhône et Vincent Feltesse, président de la Communauté urbaine de Bordeaux (photo), révulsés par la chronique d’un échec politique annoncé, ont décidé de lancer leur propre contribution : « La ligne claire ».

Au lancement de cette initiative, beaucoup de journalistes comme ceux de Libération, du Monde ou du Parisien titraient sur le refus d'un affrontement Royal-Delanoë, les qualifiant de "casques bleus" pour Profession Politique. Pourtant, assez rapidement, on pouvait lire que le trio d'élus locaux étaient "courtisés" et "dragués", synonyme d'un intérêt croissant pour les ténors du parti et pour les médias. Comme aucun d’entre eux n'est candidat au poste de 1er secrétaire du PS, certains confrères notaient leur liberté de ton tout en pointant la « révolte des baronnies » (Revue de presse complète).

Le 24 juin dernier, lors d'une conférence de presse commune, le médiatique Député-maire d'Evry, Manuel Valls, est venu renforcer leurs rangs." Cette contribution apporte un regard neuf, une pensée moderne et contemporaine [...] parce que les socialistes doivent être courageux et sans tabou. Cela est possible grâce à l’ancrage local du PS confirmé aux dernières élections locales et cantonales » affirmait-il à l’occasion.

Avec ce texte, les élus locaux souhaitent mettre en avant la gestion moderne et pragmatique de leur territoire, sans avoir à recevoir de leçon d’ouverture de quiconque et notamment des éminences nationales. Ils se prévalent aussi d'une connaissance et d'une expérience précise pour gagner les élections et veulent clairement peser lors du prochain congrès pour enrayer la machine à perdre de Solférino. Faiseurs de roi, donc.

L’union est presque sacrée à Marseille
Dans les Bouches-du-Rhône, avec près de 8000 cartes, la fédération socialiste est la quatrième plus importante de France et, à l’heure où chaque carte d’adhérent va peser lourd, ce poids n’a pas de prix. D’autant que l’homme fort de ladite fédération, Jean-Noël Guérini, emmène avec lui la quasi totalité de ses troupes dont le 1er fédéral, Eugène Caselli (lui même fraîchement élu à la tête de la Communauté urbaine de Marseille : MPM) et Michel Vauzelle, le président de la région Paca.

Certains élus néanmoins, défaits par les dernières élections ou en « froid » politique, ont préféré soutenir la contribution de Bertrand Delanoë, créant ainsi une minorité, difficilement audible dans le département. Il en va de la députée européenne Marie-Arlette Carlotti, de Christophe Masse et de Michel Pezet. Si l’on peut imaginer que Jean-Noël Guérini ne voit pas d'un très bon œil cette mini-fronde socialiste, ce dernier demeure très attentif à ne briser aucun lien. Pour preuve, il déjeunait vendredi dernier avec le maire de Paris descendu à Marseille pour promouvoir son livre et sa contribution. Chacun joue plus ou moins cette partition d’ailleurs, en témoigne la visite éclair de la députée ex-fabusienne, Sylvie Andrieux, à la librairie du Virgin Megastore pour saluer Bertrand Delanoë.

Rares sont les militants qui vont lire et analyser les contributions durant l'été, l’appel des vacances sera sûrement plus délectable. Mais, en fin tacticien, Jean-Noël Guérini sait qu'il pourra compter sur une grande majorité des militants provençaux pour signer sa contribution et le suivre dans ses choix stratégiques. Pour le moment, la ligne est claire donc, elle le sera encore durant la torpeur estivale. L’université d’été de la Rochelle, fin août, relancera sûrement la machine en affûtant les stratégies…

Introduction. On Shortage, Excess, and Expenditure
At the end of the twentieth century, we were regaled with arguments concerning history: it had ended, we were told. /.../
Barely a few years into the new century, may have concluded that that "posthistorical" ideal is radically insufficient. /.../
In short, energy has been rediscovered. In the 1970s and very early 1980s, first world society was made acutely aware of energy, its limited supplies, and the consequences of energy shortages. A U.S. president (Jimmy Carter) even based his central policies on the idea that energy sources (fossil fuels) were scarce and could only grow scarcer in the coming years. /.../ He was, of course, brusquely turned out of office and replaced by a president (Ronald Reagan) who cheerfully answered that "the free market" would take care of energy supplies forever. Luckily for him, the quantities of fossil fuels available shot up in the mid to late 1980s and throughout the 1990s /.../
As I write this, in 2006, even mainstream news sources have become aware that fuel supplies are fundamentally limited. /.../
The labor of construction of civilization is not over, in other words, history is not at an end, because labor itself is not autonomous: you can't work or produce anything if you don't have the fuels (the sources of energy) to do it. The great myth that Man "forms himself" by forming, and transforming, brute matter is over. The idea that Nature is dead is over because fossil fuels were not made by Man, they were only extracted by "him". They are brutally natural, and their shortage too is a natural shortage (their lack is natural). And when a profound, irremediable shortage of those fuels supervenes, history opens back up. /.../ No one yet wants to think about how History should continue in the absence of an adequate supply of fossil fuels. It is too horrible to think about. Human die-off is quite natural, but it also constitutes an incontrovertible historical event. With the finitude of cheap energy, alas, the end of history is itself finite. But how do we think the end of the end of history?
Now along with a permanent energy crisis, or rather a permanent shortage of cheap fuel supplies, we face another crisis: a permanent religion crisis. It seems as if energy and religion are inseparable issues. /.../
Marxism was the canary in the coal mine, so to speak, because its decline was due to an energy crisis, the first to shock the world since the crises of the late 1970s. Marxism collapsed because its great, worldwide patron, the Soviet Union, collapsed, and the Soviet Union collapsed because it could no longer support itself by selling its oil profitably on the world markets. It was driven into the ground by Saudi Arabia, which in the late 1980s produced so much oil that the world markets became flooded. /.../
The great irony is that religion came to the fore in the very countries whose vast production of fossil fuels had made the Soviet system untenable. The Islamic countries of the Middle East were the producers of the fuels that the West needed to continue its individualist lifestyle. /.../
Many of the regions that provide these fuels have turned to a religion that is, in principle at least, indifferent to the fossil fuel lifestyle and to the cult of the human. /.../
As fuel reveals its finitude, we come to recognize our dependence on it and our dependence on others who affirm a religious culture that survived and flourished in the profound absence of fossil fuel. /.../

This book is about Bataille's take on these issues and my version of what Bataille's take would be if it were extrapolated to the twenty-first century. /.../

On the other hand, an ever more counterproductive orientation will assert itself in the years ahead. Such an orientation sees energy as an adjunct of, at best, a certain humanism: we spend to establish and maintain our independent, purpose-driven selves, our freedom as consumers, spenders of certain (rather lavish, given available reserves) quantities of refined energy. This model is doubly humanistic in that not only is the benificary the "free" self of Man; the human spirit itself is incessantly invoked to get us out of the jam. We are told over and over again that the human mind alone produces energy; when reserves are short, there is always a genius who comes along and devises some technology that turns things around, makes even more energy available, and so on. Technology transcends energy, in other words, and reflects the human mind's infinite ability to derive energy from virtually nothing. /.../
One can argue that the religion that confronts the fossil fuel-driven civilization of Man is equally grounded in the demands of a human subjectivity. People demand salvation, an ultimate purpose for which they are consuming so much fuel: I spend, or waste, so that I will ultimately be saved. Conversely, energy inputs are available because God has blessed me with them; the faithful are rewarded with a healthy, fertile, and energy-rich environment. /.../
Against this energetico-theological model is arrayed an ecoreligion, one that would defy the "comfortable" or "free" (and nonnegotiable) lifestyle of consumerist humanism, not through a recognition of the literal truth of the divine Word but through a religiously inspired truth of austerity, simplicity, and personal virtue. Such a cult refuses certain basic human urges to consume or destroy, and in the process involves the affirmation of yet another humanism (the self as virtuous in its austerity) and, after consumer profligacy, yet another model of nature as a standing reserve to be protected largely for its value to Man.
Fossile fuel civilization, then, and its antitheses, or antidotes. Man and/or God as ultimate referent: a couple we can expect to hear more from in the coming years. Bataille poses a very different model of the interrelation of energy and religion. /.../ Bataille's energy and religion are not an alternative; they promise nothing for the future, certainly no salvation, although their aftereffect may entail a future more livable — by whom? — than that promised under the signs of God or Man.
Bataille's energy is inseparable from that which powers cars and raises elevators, but it is different as well. It is excess energy, and in that sense it is left over when a jo is done, when the limits of growth are reached, or, in the current situation, when fossil fuels themselves reveal their profound limitations. Bataille's energy is a transgression of the limit; it is what is left over in excess of what can be used within a fundamentally limited human field. As such, it is quite different from what can be used: it is not just left over in the sense of not being consumed; it is fundamentally unusable. At the point at which quantification reveals its finitude, energy asserts itself as the movement that cannot be stockpiled or quantified. It is the energy that by definition does not do work, that is insubordinate, that plays now rather than contributing to some effort that may mean something at some later date and that is devoted to some transcendent goal or principle. /.../ Energy is expended in social ritual that is pointless, that is tied not to the adhesion of a group or the security of the individual but to the loss of group and individual identity — sacrifice.
Bataille's religion is thus inseparable from Bataille's energy. /.../ If there is community, it is the unplanned aftereffect and not the essential meaning of this energy, of this mobement of the death or void of God.
Thus ethics for Bataille, the community, and its meaning and survival are aftereffects of the expenditure of the sacred. Bataille's theory is profoundly ethical but only in the sense that the instant of preservation, of meaning, of conservation, of knowledge, is the unforeseen offshoot of another movement, that of the drive to spend without counting, without attempting to anticipate return. To deny the ethical moment, the moment, the moment in which conservation and meaning are established only the better to affirm the destruction of expenditure, is to relegate that destrection to the the simple, homogeneous movement of the animal, unaware of limit, meaning, and purposive act. Expenditure, in other words, is not the denial of the human, its repression, but instead its affirmation to the point at which it falls: the sacrifical act, the recognition of an energy that does not do "work" for the maintenance of the human, is the affirmation of a God who is not the slave of the human. It is the impossible movement in which awareness doubles the unknowable loss of energy and the virulence of a God who disbelieves in himself.
The ethics of Bataille, then, entail a vision of the future in which the "left-hand sacred", the sacred of impurity, of eroticism, of the radically unconditioned God, spins off a community in and through which expenditure can be furthered (a community of those with nothing in common). Not nuclear war, the channeling of excess in ways that ensure survival so that more excess can be thrown off. And (one can continue along these lines) not generalized ecocide, but an affirmation of another energy, another religion, another waste, entailing not so much a steady state sustaininability (with what stable referent? Man?) but instead a postsustainable state in which we labor in order to expend, not conserve. Hence the energy, and wealth, of the body — the energy of libidinous and divine recycling, not the stockpiled, exploited, and dissipated energy of easily measured and used fossil fuels.
This book has two goals: in the first part, to sketch out Bataille's positions on energy expenditure, religion of and against the Book, and the city; in the second, to extrapolate from those positions and consider current questions of energy use and depletion, religious literalism and fervor, and urban "life". /.../

This book is a small effort that tries to suggest that there are other ways of thinking about how we power our lifes, with energy and with religion: these ways, these directions have been there all along. These other ways are not so much opposed to sustainability (as it is conventionally conceived) as they logically precede it and spin it off not as a goal but as an aftereffect. /.../ In a future (and imminent) era of scarcity we rethink what it means to be happy — thereby recognizing that happiness is tied not to the mere consumption and disposal of materials, but to their wise use — we will perhaps also realize that happiness means something more, or other, than a meager conservation or a placid contentment grounded in a placid sociability.

Octavio Paz suggests that the purpose of eroticism is to be “a lightning rod” to the “perpetual electrical discharge of sex.” The purpose of this “invention” is to protect society from “onslaughts of sexuality” (11-12). Bataille states the same when he refers to society as “the world of work,” and that this world is protected from the animal violence of sexuality by taboos (42). Eroticism and taboo go hand in hand. The sexual drive to reproduction is a natural instinct. Eroticism is thus a construction which subverts and deflects this drive. It is imagination, which “turns sex into ceremony and rite.”( Paz 3)

Eroticism is representation, a construct of our own invention. We live in a world suffused with our inventions; we are dominated by eroticism and technology. Robert Romanyshyn, as quoted by J.P. Telotte, states that technology is not so much a thing as an “enactment of the human imagination in the world” (20). It is “a work of reason,” but also a “reason lined with desire.” Our dreams have manifested in technology, and, having allowed us to transform the world around us, are now refiguring our humanity and our sexuality. We attempt “to banish our sense of limitation” through these technologies (20). Technology as a manifestation of eroticism and as a desire for continuity binds these three films together.

Bataille writes that “between one being and another, there is a gulf, a discontinuity”. This is inherent to all beings as reproduction implies a distinction from one being to another, and that those who are reproduced are likewise distinct. However, we are capable of experiencing the dizziness of this gulf when we come together. We can become hypnotised by it. Bataille suggests that this gulf is, in one sense, death. That in this gulf is the possibility of continuity: “death means continuity of being” (12-13). But death is not the only point at which beings can touch continuity. In birth, at the opposite end of the life cycle;

“sperm and ovum are to begin with discontinuous entities, but they unite, and consequently a continuity comes into existence between them to form a new entity from the death and disappearance of the separate beings. The new entity is itself discontinuous, but it bears within itself the transition to continuity, the fusion, fatal to both, of two separate beings” (14).

We are caught between the desire for life to continue ever on, and the desire to return to this continuous state of being, of which we may have no inkling of yet still find ourselves nostalgic for. “We yearn for our lost continuity. We find the state of affairs that bind us to our random and ephemeral individuality hard to bear.” (15) We become bound up in eroticism, the purpose of which is the destruction of participators self-contained character, of who they are in their normal lives (17). Sex and death are thus bound together.

Technology within these three films becomes a portal into continuity. These steel dreams are a promise of more, ever more. Cronenberg states that we have “incorporated the car into our understanding of time, space, distance and sexuality. To want to merge with it literally in a more physical way seems a good metaphor. There is a desire to fuse with techno-ness” (Rodley, 1996, 10). The vehicles are eroticised, bound to creative sexuality. The very forms they take are sexually charged, being both phallic and vulvic. The telepods of The Fly are both erect and open. They are a transformative womb, giving birth to new wonders. The cars are thrusting and angular, while also being enveloping and containing. They are home for some, and tombstones for others. The Porsche 550 Spyder marks the death of James Dean while the Lincoln Cosmopolitan stands in for JFK. Through technology the dialectic metaphor of sexuality which is eroticism is presented as a graspable object; life-death, male-female, human-animal, animate-inanimate. These become more than possibilities of juncture in theory and are instead played out on the flesh and steel of subjects and objects.

The linking of sex and death is openly engaged in Death Proof. Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) is a sexual predator. He is “a wolf” who marks beautiful women, slowly circling his prey until finally he murders them. “Beauty has a cardinal importance,” writes Bataille, “for ugliness cannot be spoiled, and to despoil is the essence of eroticism” (145). However, the phallic knife is not his instrument of death. Instead it is an automobile, one which he has made “death proof” so as the person sitting in the drivers seat will survive any collision. The car accident is a moment of climax; to quote Sheriff Earl McGraw (Michael Parks):

“it's a sex thing. High velocity impact, twisted metal, busted glass, all four souls taken at exactly the same time. Probably the only way that diabolical degenerate can shoot his goo.”

The accident to which the sheriff is referring to is lovingly repeated four times in a matter of seconds, each time shifting to a different part of the car in order to clearly demonstrate the violent damage inflicted upon the four female occupants. The moment is eroticised, but not for the general audience whose response is most likely one of horror as shattered limbs fly through the air. It is porn-like in its attention to close up intersections of flesh. This is perhaps a moment of sexual climax for Stuntman Mike, but it is also the climax of an elaborate ceremony. These girls are a sacrifice upon the altar of the automobile. It is a ceremony designed to bring him into confrontation with continuity and yet, as his death proof car suggests, continue to live. Bataille, in discussing the meaning of religious sacrifice, states that

“a violent death disrupts the creature’s discontinuity; what remains, what the tense onlookers experience in the succeeding silence, is the continuity of all existence with which the victim is now one” (22).

In this film and Crash, when car and flesh collide it is never as simple as penetration. It is the despoiling of beauty, and the dream of continuity made presence.

Crash details an overtly eroticised world of automobiles, where the sex act and the car crash become forcefully entwined. It is perhaps the most straightforward of the three films in its deployment of these ideas, as it envisions a newly “conceptualised relationship of flesh and metal; man and machine” (Rodley, 1996, 6). There is an element of ceremony to this film as well. The restaged accidents of famous deaths are designed to bring the participants as close as possible to the ghosts of the beautiful dead, while still allowing them to survive. However, as opposed to Death Proof, the car accident is a regenerative occurrence. The destructive elements are viewed in a positive light instead of a negative. When Helen Remington’s (Holly Hunter) husband is flung through the windscreen of the car he is passing through the veil, traversing the gulf of discontinuity. He is not a destroyed body but is instead a sign of the unity promised by death. The collision of bodies in the sex act is aligned with the entangling of metal in car accidents; they are metaphors for each other. Semen and blood mingle with motor oil as pain and pleasure become indivisible. It is established from the beginning that the sexual act is simply not enough. Reproduction does not appear to be the goal of the couplings between James Ballard (James Spader) and his wife, Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger). The characters instead desire to become entwined in eroticism, drowned in a flood of unbound sexual energies.

This returns us to the idea of the car as a physical construct of our desires. The cars are eroticism driven to the edge of reason. When reproduction and socialisation cease to be the ultimate goal of the sex drive, the human imagination (as demonstrated in Crash) turns toward reunification with the universal matter from whence we were born. It is however not so simple as just killing oneself. As Bataille said, it has to be a violent death. The collision with the automobile is not only violent; it is symbolic, as it represents both the ideal we want to become indistinguishable from and the idea of transport – moving to another place.

The car crash is also regenerative in that it places the characters back into their bodies, regenerating sensual awareness. Our human world, always in transition, is now sliding into the digital age. It is an age of ethereal 1s and 0s. Daily items are increasingly ghost-like, losing their weighty reality. Literature shifts from textured pages to digital readers; music stops existing in the “real” world of instruments and vinyl; transport shifts from muscular, living animals and steely, muscle cars to sleek, seemingly weightless, silent science-fiction cars. Film is slowly giving up its flickering vitality to weightless computer generated images and beyond perfect digital projection. In Crash, Ballard ruminates on his car accident and how, after years of simulated car safety awareness advertising, having a real accident was something of a relief. In his detached world, the car accident forcefully reconnects him with his body and the elusive reality of the physical. It is the violence of the immediate world.

Death Proof also stands in opposition to an artificial world. It began life as part of a double feature entitled Grindhouse (2007), which was an attempt by Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to emulate the seventies trashy horror double feature.[2] It has been judged harshly in this regard as it doesn't actually resemble in style, genre, structure or execution, any of the films to which it is devoted to.[3] However, in one significant way it is precisely “old school”: the cars and the accidents are not digital effects.[4] Death Proof is a film dedicated to the physical. Stuntman Mike is a flesh bound monument to a past made up of roaring muscle cars and men who’d drive a death proof car into a wall at 100mph just for the hell of it. The film stock has been deliberately scratched and beaten up to give the appearance of a classic grindhouse film. This was apparently not done with computers; instead the film stock itself was attacked to better create the random, physical sensation of damage.

Death Proof is first and foremost a sensual film. It is best experienced on the cinema screen, where every detail is fifty times the actual size and the sound system can tickle every bone in your body. It is after all a car film, and rarely has the vibrating textures of steel and the growling rattle of an engine been so powerfully realised. The audience is made to feel the world which envelops these characters, from the aural textures of LP vinyls to the cascading rain of water running from a bared foot. Unlike Crash, which has often been described as a cold and distant experience for the audience, Death Proof desires to engage the audience’s senses. This is never more apparent than the final scene, when Zoe (Zoe Bell) is riding on the bonnet of the car. We the audience can practically feel the wind pounding down on her highly eroticised body as it fuses with the super-powered muscle car.

Now that we have reached the topic of fusion, it is time to examine The Fly. Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) suffers from motion sickness when travelling in vehicles. His is the opposite problem to that of Ballard in Crash: he is too aware of his body. The teleportation device is an attempt to bypass the problem: it removes the physical traversing of distance. The telepods are still transportation devices, heightened to an extreme of immediacy. However, there is still a distance travelled, an evolutionary distance. To begin with, the telepods cannot transport meat, the computer reconfigures it “all wrong.” Brundle realises that this is due to a lack of understanding with regard to flesh on the part of the computer, and that he has to make it as “crazy” about flesh as humans are. His education of the machine has unusual results however, resulting in gene-splicer, which fuses his body and a fly. Brundle's achievement is to become “a point of absolute singularity” (Shaviro 148), a BrundleFly, an artificial[5] creature. It embodies the artificial eroticism of a computer. It is the erotic imagination of the computer made flesh.

The telepod is a portal to continuity, but unlike the cars it does not take us to continuity. Instead it brings continuity to us, drawing it out from the hereafter. “Cronenberg’s ‘monsters’ are forms of alterity that cannot be reduced to the economy of the Same, but that also cannot be identified as purely and simply Other” (Shaviro 146). What I mean to suggest by this quote is that BrundleFly has gone too far beyond the world of the flesh, drawing a form of continuity back into our world of work. This singularity is completely incapable of assimilating, of returning to anything that is familiar. While this may seem obvious, there is the important secondary element, that this creature is not altogether unknown to us. Cronenberg has stated that The Fly is about “the disease of being finite” (Rodley, 1992, 128), a disease from which we all suffer. As BrundleFly becomes supercharged, never failing in energy and vitality, he also begins to rot. He is the physical embodiment of the duality of eroticism: the beautiful perfect dream and the rotting earthly matter of death. This “hell of embodiment” (Shaviro 148) becomes overly invested in the computer’s eroticised imagination, and his body begins to abandon those unwarranted accessories that relate to reproduction, the genitals. His humanity begins to break apart as the dreams and functions of the human being become archaic museum pieces. BrundleFly attempts once more to generate continuity through the telepod by fusing himself to Veronica (Geena David). However, it is too late. There is no returning to the “Same”, there is only moving further into the “Other”. In the final scene of the film he is fused with the telepod itself, becoming the holy trinity: animal, man and machine. “This new body, this mass of mingled tissue and metal, is a burden to great to bear. Its sheer weight epitomizes sensory and corporeal overload” (Shaviro 148). BrundleFly’s last act is to choose death, a final dream of entering into a naturalised continuity.

The hidden purpose of technology and the body is key too all three films. It is a secret mystery that brings itself into focus through chance encounters in Crash and The Fly, much like the chance encounters that lead us to love. The hidden secret of the technology in these films is that they unmake humans. They break apart all our defences and structures (physical and mental) in bouts of erotic violence. This violence is birth and death, destructive and regenerative. In Death Proof, this secret purpose is not unknown to Stuntman Mike. It is the purpose around which his whole existence revolves. He attempts to dominate it, a never ending ride on the waves of eroticism which can only be achieved by being “death proof.” The ultimate goal in Crash differs in that the protagonists desire to be immersed in these waves. “Maybe next time,” whispers Ballard to his wife as they lie besides a shattered car. They are not survivors. They are the abandoned, marooned in the flesh as is BrundleFly. His trajectory to the stars has failed. He has blasted sideways into a horrific limbo of ultimate fusion and ultimate singularity; a continuity displaced.

Eroticism is a step beyond sexuality; it is a dream grafted to the animal need. Love is perceived as being the next step beyond eroticism. Yet in these films love exists as a background note, a sideshow to the marvels and horrors of technology and man. They are the true lovers of the new world, human and machine. These new intersections of subjects and objects promise unbound dreams of new experiences and the banishment of limitation.

Works Cited

“Artificial.” Def. 1. Collins English Dictionary: Discovery Edition. 2^nd Ed. 2006.

Bataille, Georges. Erotism: Death and Sensuality (San Francisco, 1986).

Caputo, Rolando. “Lecture.” Cinema and Sexuality. La Trobe University. 27^th May 2007.

Crash (1996): Dir: David Cronenberg. Alliance Communications Corporation. (DVD: Reel).

Death Proof (2007): Dir: Quentin Tarantino. Dimension Films. (DVD: Village Roadshow).

The Fly (1986): Dir: David Cronenberg. Brooksfilm. (DVD: 20^th Century Fox).

Grindhouse (2007): Dir: Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, et al. Dimension Films.

Paz, Octavio. The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism (New York, 1995).

Rodley, Chris. “Crash: David Cronenberg Interview,” Sight and Sound (June 1996).

Rodley, Chris. Cronenberg on Cronenberg (Toronto, 1992).

Shaviro, Steven. The Cinematic Body (Minneapolis, 2006).

Telotte, J.P. A Distant Technology: Science Fiction and the Machine Age (Hanover, 1999).

"For some years, being obligued on occasion to answer the question 'What are you working on?' I was embarrassed to have to say, 'A book on political economy.' Coming from me, this venture was disconcerting. at least to those who did not know me well.

(The interest that is usually conferred on my books [see here] is of a literary sort and this was doubtless to be expected: One cannot as a matter of fact class them in a pre-defined genre.)

I am still annoyed when i recall the superficial astonishment that greeted my reply; i had to explain myself, and what i was able to say in a few words was neither precise nor intelligible. Indeed, i had to add that the book I was writing did not consider the facts the way qualified economists do, that i had a point of view from which a human sacrifice, the construction of a church or the gift of a jewel were no less interesting than the sale of wheat.

In short, i had to try in vain to make clear the notion of a 'general economy' in which the "expenditure" (the "consumption") of wealth, rather than production, was the primary object..."

But here's the really interesting stuff from MAXIM:

"Mmm, Mexican water taste fine to me" p.52

"Q: How can you tell if a blonde does your land-scaping? A: The bushes are darker than the rest of the yard."

"5. The numer of seconds Moose intercourse lasts..."

"48,964. The # of Americans (from the U.S. only) who required emergency-room treatment in 1998 for injuries caused by their toilets."

"71. Number of records that Ahrita Furman, Guinness Book of Records' record-holding record holder, holds (including Hula-Hooping while walking and climbing Mount Fuji on a pogo stick)."

"How to Spot a One-Night Wonder"

"Use Longitude and Win My Lamborghini Diablo!" hmmm....

"Veronika VarekOVA Dresses Down for Summer!

"Corona Extra. Miles Away from Ordinary"

"Simply Perfect! TEQUILA 100% de AGAVE Silver PATRÓN. The world's #1 ULTRA PREMIUM TEQUIL4"

es todo por hoy.

Así que aquí lo tenemos, 65 revistas para hombre (o mujer), incluyendo 3 (TRES!) de la borracha y operada TARA REID!

No se lo pierdan!

Saludos,

R

Los solicitantes del evento en donde se hizo el primer trueque pidieron que se protegiera su identidad, así que NRDA.