Comments for . . . . . . . Supervalent Thought

Comment on On Potentiality, #1 by a.feenstra

a.feenstra — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:20:52 +0000

I´ve had an interesting experience with potentiality just in moving from high school to college…in the course of a few weeks or so I went from having immense and infinite potential that would be, I assumed, tugged or pulled out of me into some kind of tangible achievement, to being responsible for this enactment of my own potential. The optimistic side of potentiality harkens back to your entry about trauma and the life drive in which the possibility of repetition´s interruption is what keeps one going. It seems to me that there are also interesting issues about potentiality and responsibility, or the deferment thereof. There is something very limiting and enigmatic about potential; when it comes down to it, at the pivotal moment, one has either lived up to one´s potential or failed to do so. And in the face of this question it seems that one can only ever fail, since the infinite promises of potentiality are so sunnily optimistic.

Comment on On Potentiality, #1 by » On Potentiality, #1 All Living Fear: What The World Is Saying About All Living Fear

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:37:16 +0000

[...] Potentiality, #1 Posted in June 28th, 2008 by in Uncategorized On Potentiality, #1 Thwarted potential is an endtime discourse–involving deep knowledge of the time you have wasted, [...]

Comment on From my mouth to your ear… by Lisa Henderson

Lisa Henderson — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 04:06:34 +0000

I saw Sex and the City last night, finally, and kind of expected guilty pleasure. But it wasn’t guilty, just only so much pleasure. It’s a shopping pic and I can like a good shopping pic if the merchandise holds up–their’s was kind of wacky. I was sitting way up front in a big theater, and a lot of color swooshed by. I did like being able to see the actors’ faces up close; they’re all groomed within an inch of their lives, but still you could see they were older than in the series and had been shot to reveal that, which I appreciated. But you are so right about why-talk-to-your-lover-when-you-can-complain-to-
your-girlfriends. I couldn’t believe it when
Miranda was already moving out within 3 cuts of Steve telling her he’d had sex with someone else. (Do people over 20 still do that?) Get mad, be hurt, make someone deal with your anger and hurt feelings. But walk out? The temporality of the film was pretty compressed (from snow to forsythia across a cut), but that was one place where it just collapsed.

I knew to expect the other shoddy places–the mammy vibe of Jennifer Hudson’s BBF (Hudson looks great but will she ever get another role that doesn’t lead with her ladies?)–but I didn’t know to expect Lily, a near-mute China doll of a 6-year-old girl. Good grief! Why hasn’t the film been cited for child abuse? Dressed up and dragged around like Samantha’s humping terrier, with lines confined to “again” for another go at Cinderella. In the tv series the child was adopted as an infant, so it isn’t like Lily wouldn’t be a chatty, 6-year-old English speaker by then. Just one of the 5 girl-children but this one racially marked and voiceless. Awful, kind of like watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s and wondering how the hell they got away with Holly Golightly’s Chinese landlord. Made me want a kid power protest of the film, no adults allowed. But maybe that’s how you become a woman obsessed with romance who only complains to her friends; start as a high-fashion accessory child who doesn’t talk at all.

Comment on On Potentiality, #1 by danny

danny — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 02:36:18 +0000

And there I was struggling to articulate (to someone who knows more than me) some of my dissatisfaction with the genre of sociality I see mobilised in much affect discourse in cultural studies. You’ve made me realise that I was missing what was underlying my feelings, that they were not just about european methodological individualism uninfluenced by the collective rupture of colonisation that is constitutive of that subjectivity (along the lines of Christopher Miller’s excellent take on D&G back in diacritics), as I had thought. It’s more what you capture in your closing, about the procedural importance of difference and incommensurability in the practical, ethical work of solidarity. Thanks so much for sharing your thinking in progress.

Comment on On Potentiality, #1 by Mandy

Mandy — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:00:18 +0000

This is incredibly interesting. What I’m not sure about is the sunny-ness of the potentiality position. For me, I want to hear more about how you see it as sunny–or what sunny stuff it motivates etc. The transition between the 3rd to last paragraph to the 2nd to last loses me a bit. Isn’t loss compatible with the potentiality stuff? I mean, already?

Comment on From my mouth to your ear… by not the motorcycle diaries » Pleasures, text, etc.

not the motorcycle diaries » Pleasures, text, etc. — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 05:50:14 +0000

[...] Oh Lauren Berlant, you dreamy dream woman. On Sex & the City The Movie: [...]

Comment on On Potentiality, #1 by cathy davidson

cathy davidson — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:19:00 +0000

A whole lot, yes. This is powerful and moving, Lauren. Thanks.

Comment on From my mouth to your ear… by ashtor

ashtor — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:18:32 +0000

Thank you for posting on Sex & the City. I wish I had, like you, forgotten about the movie a moment after seeing it because I am rather embarrased by the depth and persistence of my disappointment with it. I feel like the political subjects you describe in a post on political optimism (and Obama) that tentatively (and in hushed voices) name their political allegiance out of fear for the desire ‘naming’ brings into being. I was shocked at how badly I wanted Sex&the City to talk about sex and love in ways that were risky, curious and suggestive.
In the context of your post, I am thinking about the movie as it compares with how the television show attended to the function of “talking” as a fall from intimacy. In the television show, it felt like the conversation amongst women was accomplishing what they could not do in their relationships: they talked openly and freely with each other, laughed, felt ashamed and needy, and attempted to navigate difficult questions. But what your post brings my attention to is that in the movie, not only did the women retreat from talking about sex with their partners, but barely talked about it with each other either. Why do you think that is? I wonder if after 6 years of talking together about sex the only thing left for them to do, in a movie, was either to have it with each other or banish it completely. Or is that simplistic? Could this be why, for a group of women who, with humor and love, had heretofore talked so much, there was nothing left to say? Becuase I think more than anything, what felt depressing about the movie was that there was no conversation *anywhere*. Shopping as the movie’s alternative to talking-about-sex?
If we shift the focus from the womens’ relation to their partners to their relationship to each other, how does our understanding of sex-talk and proximity to desire change, if at all?

Comment on From my mouth to your ear… by Blind Man

Blind Man — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:34:19 +0000

Great post and great opening line! I also cringed at “colouring outside the lines.” Sheesh. For a show that claims to be about sex–about open, honest sex–they sure do a great job of glossing over it.

Comment on From my mouth to your ear… by cathy davidson

cathy davidson — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:49:22 +0000

That really is the funniest line in the world. Oh, gosh, do I really have to see this movie??? xo great post, Cat