Filed under: Affect Theory, ambivalence, Attachment, Belonging, Craziness, Detachment theory, economy, Encounters, Love, Mood, optimism, sexuality, sovereignty, supervalent_thought, teaching, Theory of this Blog, trauma, writing | Tags: Foucault, Fred_Moten, Harryette_Mullen, Joshua_Clover, Juliana_Spahr, Katie_Stewart, Keston_Sutherland, Lacan, Lee_Edelman, Wittgenstein
The Hundreds: Method 2x
The game is a form of life coming into being, extension, and activity, the blinking open at the start of the day and the beyond to anything that was explained. If I run out of gas but not out of love, if you let a piece go without completion, if the session isn’t finished but definitively over, if the delicious coffee could only wake us forever, if we could come forth as “I” with the other objects, if we would take in that all things don’t happen for a reason, if the flat voice were other than contract or trauma. If we could be the person we would go out with again, if we could hoist our accusations against ourselves, if I could stop motion sugar and labor power, if we could feel the chance touch with soft eyes and no ducking, if you can bear the arbitrary, if they can bear the common structure, or vomit, or accident, if we could take the hard hit that it’s all brevity and struggle, if the form of life turned toward a way of life, sidestepping this event and that one’s tough but only seeming infinity. Sometimes things have to be forced.
(Lee Edelman, Juliana Spahr, Keston Sutherland, Katie Stewart, Lynn Hejinian, Fred Moten, Joshua Clover, Lacan, Foucault, Wittgenstein, Harryette Mullen, Catherine Malabou)
Filed under: Affect Theory, Attachment, Belonging, class, Craziness, depression, economy, emotion, Encounters, Mood, non-sovereignty, optimism, Ordinariness, pedagogy, Politics, sovereignty, teaching, writing | Tags: " masculinity, "American Dream, Freud, Lacan, precarity
I’m converting a cafeteria to a café—Valois just got wi-fi and I wanted to be in a capacious space, light with big tables and no soundtrack. It’s empty, almost, mid-afternoon. A few old people are sitting around schmoozing as they will, and we look after each other’s tables when we need bathroom breaks or a refill. After a few hours a father and son come and sit two tables up. The father, young, instructs his son relentlessly: on how to use a laptop, how to play a game, how to sit, how to be quiet, and how to eat without smacking his mouth. I am working with my head down trying to drown out the noise. Then at one point I hear him say to his son, why do you want to give up on your dream, why do you want to give up on your dream of being a football player? Kid: I want to draw cartoons. Father: you also want to be in the NFL, why do you want to give up on your dream? Kid: I want to draw cartoons, I have lots of stories to tell. Father: tell me, why do you want to give up on your dream?
A piece of paper falls off the table. It has boxes drawn on it and word balloons. The figures they’re attached to look better than stick, but there’s a not lot of detail. His father says, Don’t you see, when you’re 35 and you’ve been in the Super Bowl, you’ll have the skills of a 35 year old man, not a 9 year old boy, and when you’re 35 and a cartoonist, you’ll have the skills of a 9 year old boy?
They call it a skill set, the father says.
. . . . . . . Supervalent Thought 