Sunday, July 13, 2008

nostalgia to karma - scattered notes

Nostalgia, that longing for a past that longing has created, is a trap that is hidden in the path of that philosophical critic – like LI – upon whom the contemporary lies like a nightmare on the brain of the living. A revenant, in fact. For such a critic, this nightmarish condition is recognized, justly, as the result of multiple framing conditions constructed over the course of the past. The contemporary is a synthesis, and it is the critic’s job to dissolve it into it composite parts, each the result of decision after decision, systematic shifts in production and attitude, a social psychology that represses its lost opportunities, and even individuals, singularities, karma. And once the critic has done his job, he thinks he’s found the key, the story, the narrative. But, in fact, he’s still entangled in the synthesis he has supposedly dissolve, he’s still unconsciously seeing the contemporary as the destination to which the past tends. Which is how it becomes easy to slip into the language of heroes versus villains. And, if the critic is a dreamer, as LI is, he approaches his task with the sigh, “if only,” on his lips. “If only” is the prologue to the utopian dream.

So it goes with the strange story I am putting together, that story of the happiness of the people, the happiness of the individual, the happiness of the system. In Milan, in 1796, the occupation government set up by Napoleon’s soldiers launched a contest for the best essay on the topic, “which form of free government is most conducive to the happiness of Italy?” I can see that this is a beautiful question. The beauty of it is buried, of course, under centuries of trivializing the terms, but – it is definitely a beautiful question.

... I’ve been following the adventurer because it is under the form of adventure that an individual could range the positional social structure in the early modern period. And because, unlike the artist or the politician, other creations of the early modern period, the adventurer never ceased to be a character type and only a character type. It never became a vocation. However, as a character type, it loaned itself to both artist and politician.

And at certain extraordinary moments, the adventurer became universal. In a sense, that is what a revolution is: the interval in which everyone, whether they want to be or not, is an adventurer.

....

I came across a wonderful description of a Neapolitan poet, Eleonora Fonseca Pimental, who supported the French when the French army took Naples and proclaimed a Republic in 1799. The French were extremely unpopular with the peasants, the aristocracy, and the lazzaroni. Pimental was aware of this, but believed that education was the answer – the people must be enlightened. Unfortunately for her, the counter-revolution, led by priests, retook Naples for the King. It was a bloodbath for the Jacobins and Republicans. According to Christopher Duggan’s history of Italy, The Force of Destiny, many of the intellectuals, the radicals, were rounded up and hung or decapitated. About Pimental he writes: She went to the scaffold on 20 August, her brown skirt tucked modestly around her legs, and uttering the words of Virgil: Forsam et haec olim meminisse juvabit – “Perhaps one day even these things will bring pleasure.” Oblivious to such erudition, the crowd cheered loudly as she hanged.” (23)

Karma is a royal family. Pimental was hung due largely to the actions of the King Ferdinand’s Queen, Caroline. Queen Caroline had, at one time, been a patron of culture, and of all things French, at the Court, to display opposition to her enemy, the King of Spain. Everything changed, changed utterly for her on October 16, 1793. That was the date of the death of her sister. Queen Caroline’s sister was a woman named Marie Antoinette.

9 comments:

Roger Gathmann said...

North! I read this article this morning, and since then, I've been dreaming about you - but I don't want you to float away on a lawn chair! It sounds too dangerous. Still, those are some -nauts: balloonopsychonauts.

If you put me on a lawn chair and launched me 10 thousand feet in the air, I would, of course, be dead of panic by the time I landed. They wouldn't even find my heart in my body. It would exit, stage left, through my mouth and parachute to safety somewhere over Idaho.

northanger said...

my goodness Mr LI, how do you manage to put me in the most oddest of positions?

northanger said...

btw, there's a scene in Becoming Jane that made me think of exactly you. you must see it & guess.

northanger said...

AO 405 = PRACTICAL SHREWDNESS AND SENSE OF MEASURE THAT GUIDES AN AGENT IN THE ABSENCE OF A NETWORK OF PROTECTION FROM HIS FELLOW BEINGS (AO-42 PHRONESIS, AO-47 PAOLO VIRNO, AO-55 WE DO NAPOLEON, AO-72 APPLICATION OF A RULE, AO-72 BIOGRAPHICAL CRISIS, AO-72 FOR A LOGIC OF CHANGE, AO-72 HAPPY CONCLUSION, AO-72 LOGICAL FORM OF WIT, AO-76 WIT AND INNOVATION, AO-77 A GRAMMAR OF THE MULTITUDE, AO-77 EMERGENCY SITUATION, AO-93 PER UNA LOGICA DEL CAMBIAMENTO, AO-93 THE FORMS OF VERBAL THOUGHT).

AO 321 = THE FORMS OF VERBAL THOUGHT THAT ALLOW FOR CHANGE IN ONE'S BEHAVIOUR IN AN EMERGENCY SITUATION = [ABILITY TO AFFECT MATTER = GODS LATENT IN THE EARTH × SQUARE OF INTELLIGENCE REGARDING RITUAL PROCEDURE] = ALL OUR ENDEAVOUR… TO CONFINE OURSELVES TO WHAT IS SIMPLE AND LIMITED WAS LOST WHEN MOZART APPEARED = IF THERE INDEED IS A 'PHILOSOPHY' OF PROCESS, IT MUST PIVOT NOT ON A THINKER BUT ON A THEORY = WHITE POWDER FORMS WHEN USING LUNAR REGULUS FROM THE ADDITION OF SILVER TO THE MARTIAL REGULE.

AO 555 = [THE PROPERTIED CLASS] FEELS COMFORTABLE AND CONFIRMED IN [HUMAN ALIENATION], RECOGNISES THIS SELF-ALIENATION AS ITS OWN POWER AND THUS HAS THE SEMBLANCE OF HUMAN EXISTENCE (AO-78 THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY) = THE DETERRITORIALIZING POWER OF THE MULTITUDE IS THE PRODUCTIVE FORCE THAT SUSTAINS EMPIRE AND AT THE SAME TIME THE FORCE THAT CALLS FOR AND MAKES NECESSARY ITS DESTRUCTION (Empire, p. 61).

AO 616 = WE CANNOT QUESTION WAGE LABOUR WITHOUT INTRODUCING A POWERFUL IDEA OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH; WE CANNOT SERIOUSLY INVOKE FREEDOM OF SPEECH WITHOUT AIMING TO SUPPRESS WAGE LABOUR (AO-73 LESSICO POSTFORDISTA) = TO RESOLVE THE APPARENT ANTI-THESIS BETWEEN MECHANICAL DETERMINATION AND SELF-CONSCIOUS ACTIVITY MUST INCLUDE THE POINT THAT IN THE FIRST INSTANCE MATERIAL CIRCUMSTANCES CONDITION US (AO-78 THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY).

Anonymous said...

LI, today might be a day to raise a toast to Eleonora Fonseca Pimental.

You might like the following:

http://ftp.youtube.com/watch?v=8NX4r44cqME

Amie

Anonymous said...

LI, I can't resist one more song from the Montpellier Paris TGV concert. I love this.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=35641339

Amie

Roger Gathmann said...

Amie, could you put that last link up again? It goes off the page. When I put it in the adress area, it leads to some weird thing, and not Tetes Raides.

And happy Raze the Prisons day!

Roger Gathmann said...

North, balloon travel - like an outtake from the Big Lebowsky!

Anonymous said...

LI, here is a retry of the link.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=35641339

If this doesn't work either, you could Google: myspace Têtes Raides 2008 Ginette TGV. That should bring the video up.

The Joanie song/video is quite something. I didn't know it. In 1968, Genet wrote "vous êtes en train de perdre cette guerre parce que vous n'écoutez pas le chant des hippies." (Un salut aux cent mille étoiles, Evergreen Review, December 1968)

Genet would first meet Foucault in 1984. Foucault had just written in Libération that "le malheur des hommes ne doit jamais être un reste muet de la politique."

Amie

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