dig

Dig

  • Fantasy parses ambivalence

    “fantasy parses ambivalence in such a way that the subject is not defeated by it.” (LB)

    It is precisely this holding together of multiplicity and power—and of the different critical imperatives that follow from them—that leads to the productively ambivalent conundrum in much of Berlant’s work: the tension between ‘the productivity of never-mere-description beyond the fantasy of tying things down’ (Berlant, 2019b, p. 291) and the need for critical analyses of and alternatives to (extra)ordinary violence and precarity. Different people and projects will be differently drawn toward these imperatives; for us, it is appealing to remain with the questions that the conundrum of ambivalence open up rather than seeking their resolution, to stay a little longer in the realm of undecidability so as to not delimit a given affective relationship to an object, or not arrive at a settled point of (mis)recognition too early (Ruez & Cockayne, 2021). However, rather than inaction or indifference, maintaining such a position requires careful and uncertain work. This work is important precisely because of its (im)possibilities: we are never fully in control of our own psychic processes, the ‘we’ at work here is differentially and unevenly precarious, and the contingency of thinking and acting in common necessarily entails ambivalence. All of which are lessons that Berlant’s work can help us (un)learn. (Daniel Cockayne and Derek Ruez, Encountering Berlant part two.)

  • The otherwise and elsewhere

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    “speculative knowledge of freedom would establish the vision of what might be, even if unrealizable within the prevailing terms of order.”

    “everyday practices explored the possibility of transfigured existence and cultivated an imagination of the otherwise and elsewhere”

    “At secret meetings and freedom schools, hidden away in loopholes of retreat and hush arbors, gathered at the river or dwelling in the swamp, the enslaved articulated a vision of freedom that far exceeded that of the liberal imagination. It enabled them to conceive other ways of existing” (SH, Scenes of Subjection)

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    “split open the dreary world to expose an enchanted one”

    “It was the name that called forth the true him.”

    “The other selves were like the words he spoke—fabrications of the moment, misinformation required to protect Son from harm and to secure that one reality at least.”

    “There were no photos of them, but they were there in the pictures of trees behind their houses, the fields where they worked, the river they fished, the church where they testified, the joints where they drank.”

    “This is the place. Where you can take a choice.” (TM, Tar Baby)

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    “cities arranged primarily not to improve the lives of their citizens”

    “absented itself from the art of the possible”

    “Deriving not only from the landscape but from the claiming of it, from the romance of emigration, the radical abandonment of established attachments, this imagination remains obdurately symbolic, tending to locate lessons in what the rest of the country perceives only as scenery.” (JD)

  • AG2023_1011934a or elagant, golden

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    “an invisible band strung between us, connecting us and preventing us from straying …”

    “elegance attracted me. I liked the way it hid pain.”

    “in my dream we were golden!”

    “It gave me an unexpected but not unpleasant sense of stillness, of being outside of time” (ZS, Swing Time)

  • AG2023_1000103a or tranquility

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    “this place is indifference. This place is utterly neutral on the question of whether he lives or dies; it doesn’t care about his last name or where he went to school; it hasn’t even noticed him.” (ESM, Sea of Tranquility)

  • AG2023_1022862a or a system of renewal

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    Roses for the Home, Farmers’ Bulletin 750, by United States Department of Agriculture (Home and Garden Bulletin 25, May 1953).

    “To garden is to make whole” […] “even if it’s a windowsill geranium high above a city street, it can be significant in meaning.”

    “Close attention itself can be a kind of sustenance.” [Part of a] “system[s] of renewal” (RS)

  • Exquisitely human was the wish

    “They drove off into a violet so ultra it broke her heart.”

    “exchanged that danger for the relative safety of brutal work”

    “love is its desperate state when she saw it […] poorly veiled by his business ventures”

    “after she spoke, the smile that followed made the sun look like a fool”

    “And yours are like the beginning of the world”

    “How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness” (Toni Morrison, Paradise)

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