PRETEXT, a Re/INter/VIEW
       with Death of Bill Burroughs, 4

From: "Michael T. Harper"
Subject: Re: vv: a flood, a drop, an erruption?
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 10:18:43 -0500 (EDT)

Dear(he)st rotcivvie/(ie)victor:

Who esse the Marine lover? Or is this even the right question---for it is Socrates flirting behind Lyseus' text and Plato behind the mask.

However, the question still bothers me, especially since you yourself state she is (Iriguray) Dora.

My question is this: to what extent does Iriguray embrace the constructions of woman--the constructions you maintain that Nietzsche himself was parodying--and to what extent is she parodying them in the dialogue?

This question makes all the difference. I think that to read Iriguray at face value would most certainly lead to a negative essentialism: I am truth because woman is truth. However, I prefer to read Iriguray as in drag (is this possible?), parodying the very constructions that Nietzsche parodies, as a means of engaging him in dialogue:

"Unless there be a (female) other of ice who takes nothing and, at least apparaently, gives back everything. Whose "yes" declares that she wills nothing except that you should keep everything and that she should *mimic* that completeness. Perfect as a mirror." (Marine Lover, 54)

In this pantamime, Iriguray stages gender as appearance and thus goes beyond (the good and evil) of the simplistic categories you yourself want to critique.

Again, I am reading Luce I. as a drag queen, especially given what Baudrillard says of drag queens:

"Transvestism. Neither homosexuals nor transexuals, transvestites like to play with the indistinctness of the sexes. The spell they cast, over themselves and others, is born of sexual vacillation and not, as is customary, the attraction of one sex for the other. They do not really like male or female women, nor those who define themselves, redundantly, as distinct sexual beings. In order for sex to exist, signs must reduplicate biological being. Here the signs are spearated from biology, and consequently the sexes no longer exist properly speaking. What transvestites love is this game of signs, what excites them is *to seduce themselves.* With them everything is makeup, theater, and seduction. They appear obsessed with games of sex, but they are obsessed, first of all, with play itself; and if their lives appear more sexually endowed than our own, it is because they make sex into a total, gestural, sensual, and ritual game, an exalted but ironic invocation." (Seduction, 13)

In many ways, I vascillate between reading a transvestite as your third woman, and reading it as a Platonic extreme: for at the end of the day, the transvestite removes the mask and becomes (wo*man?) again. Moreover, a case can be made against Baudrillard that such transgressions often reinforce gender categories on a biological level rather than break them open. I must admit that here I am not sure of which, if either, I agree.

Needless to say, another question arises with Baudrillard, that is, can a woman be a transvestite. Baudrillard gives the exampe of the prostitute who plays the roles of woman in a manner which subverts them by being excessive (too much make-up, over dramatized role playing, etc. . .). Is Luce I Nietzsche's prostitute? He also gives the example of Nico "And there was deception: she was a false drag queen, a real woman, in fact, playing the queen" (13). Baudrillard goes onto comment negatively on the female drag queen: "Only the non-female can excercise an untainted fascination, because s/he is more seductive than sexual. The fascination is lost when the real sex shows through; to be sure, some other desire may find something here, but precisely no longer in that perfection that belongs to artifice alone" (13). To Baudrillard, I ask, isn't this true of males as well?

Needless to say:

I used to think that transvestism in woman was unheard of until I saw Karen Black play a transexual in *Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean*. While the character that Black plays is a transsexual male who has become a biological female, Black's acting borders more on transvestism, especially as she recreates the overexaggerated gestures, the effected feminine accent, and the model walk. In short, Black is parodying the parody of drag queens.

Again, my question: to what extent is I embracing these constructions, and to what extent is she parodying them, so that when she claims to be the water under N.'s lava or other maternal metaphors, she is merely dragging Nietzsche's drag.

I am all run out. This is where I come apart.

todd

Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 11:02:07 -0500 (CDT)
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Subject: Re: vv: a flood, a drop, an erruption?

On Mon, 18 Aug 1997, Michael T. Harper wrote: >
> Again, my question: to what extent is I embracing these constructions, and to
> what extent is she parodying them, so that when she claims to be the water
> under N.'s lava or other maternal metaphors, she is merely dragging
> Nietzsche's drag.
>

Todd, good post.

If we agree that "readings" are political, that is, they serve our various interests, then, yes. I can see your reading and I would agree with it. But ... ya gotta know ... that many other readers will not. Their politics/interests will be different.

>From time to time, my interest is to counter-read, which is what I was doing with Irigaray. By counter-read, I mean reading the opposite of the way, in this case, people in composition studies or rhetorical studies, might read _ML_. Moreover, I was picking up on an old conversation about I's _ML_ that Lynda and I had. But towards the end of the post, my attempt was to push my reading beyond a simple counter-reading.

Writing and reading and speaking are often talked about, theorized about, acted out in terms of lovers' exchanges. There is the Phaedrus of course. There is Barthes's A Lover's Discourse, and there is I's _ML_. To point to only three.

I find it difficult, but possible, to salvage the first two. Barthes's is so, oh, oh, modernist. The loss (das Ding) thing! I find it very unlike much of his other writings. I's ML is easier, I think, to play with, doing something 'interest'ing with. Which I will not go into any more.

I am much interested in Lynda's thoughts, for she is a female, nonacademik. She would not have to dis/engage by way of saying it one way in public and another in private, though in one way or another we are all constrained by those different (?) whirls.

Todd, I take your reading of Irigaray to be very much in the sprit and materialism of a Judy Butler reading.

There are so many Irigarays before we even get to the various academic readings of her.

Once upon a time when I was present at the Marxist Literary Group in Pittsburgh, there was a female student (from the Chinese mainland) speaking in a session. She was well read in what westerners had to say about LI. I wish that I could repeat most of what she said and how she expressed it all, for she was very articulate in her criticisms of 'our' readings. She broke into a routeen on the two lips speaking passages in Irigaray and how they were received by westerners; her performance was a 'riot.' She was excellent, as you suggest LI is, at lively parody and caustic satire. She stirred our minds. I did not leave with the same olde take on LI.

some more later.

Lynda, Adnyl, vvhere art thou, LGH?

v

From: "Haas, Lynda G. (EXCH)"
Subject: lh>>vv&mth: I have always been haunted by water
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 12:40:21 -0400

>... I love all things that flow!

>Afterall "is" said and undone, ... a lovers' difference. A marine
>lover
>and a lava lover's difference. And so you see ... There esse no
>difference. There, in that lovers' xchange, a revaluing of value.

>without verbs,
>--rotcivvie

So Victor, has there been some flood, some fluidity, to shake the ground we stand upon, to make us realize there is no steady ground to stand upon, to cause us to write with, journey with? You fold back upon your own question and return to "a revaluing of value." What is the value of all that we've said since we started this reinterview? I must confess that because of where I am now, I always have to look for the value-the "bottom line." We've certainly flown and folded, but what of that? "There's nothing new under the sun except for the history you don't know" (Harry Truman)

Todd writes: "I am all run out. This is where I come apart." A very good place to start, no? (btw, I think she is a mimic... a mimic's mimic, until the one who is mimicked is folded over into the one who mimics and the boundaries blur) Not that I want to leave this discussion of Luce and water and lava and all things fluid, but I have to talk to you about what I do now, because I can't get it off of my mind, and I have been wondering for a week how to write to you about it. And because I think you'll find it somehow familiar. We try to see through the glass darkly-what will the world be in five years? More specifically for my company, what will telecommunications be like in five years? We think that the world will become much more like Silicon Valley in five years. And things are different there. Different economic rules, different culture, different perspective. In fact, in the most recent issue of Wired, Kevin Kelly heralded the "Network Economy" as the inevitable replacement to Industrial Economy. (Different words, similar ideas to what Greg has written about here). Things change. I know things here, at this company will change. I'm pretty sure they will change for academics too. And that, perhaps, will be the fluidity, the flood, that will shake the very ground you stand on.

Here are some rules of the Network Economy (read Wired for the long version)

1. Embrace Dumb Power. Lots of computers out there today, even more non-computer chips. By 2000ish, a trillion non-computer chips, tracking the lock on your door, the location of your car, how many cans are left in your coke machine, etc. Alone, they are dumb; networked together, they are a powerful, global web of communications. And the web will grow because of the human need for communications. Moral: Communication will be in the hub of the Network Economy.

2. More gives more. Value in the industrial age came from scarcity-a diamond, oil, gold, a college degree-all more valuable because they were few. In the network economy, more gives more-the more people on the web, the more valuable it becomes (and the cheaper it gets to hook up). If this law flows over to academics, what does it mean for you?

3. Success is nonlinear. In the industrial economy, businesses grew predictably on a curve. Success was linear. In the network economy, sometimes the smallest ripple creates the largest effects-and sometimes the biggest disturbance disappears overnight. Unlike the more predictable industrial machine-age, the network economy is a bio-techo entity, that can grow as fast as red algae on the beach, or disappear as suddenly.

4. Create Virtuous Circles. Unlike the law of diminishing returns, the network economy works on the law of increasing returns. You don't have to put Apple out of business if you're Microsoft-you can give them 2.5 million dollars and everyone involved makes more $$. The law of increasing returns means that it is always important to create relationships of virtuous circles instead of vicious competition.

5. Anticipate the cheap. Moore's Law: Technogadgets like computer chips half in price every six months. Gilder's Law: Bandwidth for communication will triple every 12 months. The moral: The future will make it cheaper to communicate with more people. Anticipate a flood.

6. Follow the Free: One of the founding laws of the Network Economy is the Law of Generosity. Give it away for FREE (for awhile at least). Why? Because of Rule #2 above-more gives more-the more people who come to the web, the better. Make it free to get there (as free as possible). Moral: The way we value the world will change.

7. Feed the Web. (from wired): "The distinguishing characteristic of networks is that they have no clear center and no clear outer boundaries. The vital distinction between the self (us) and the nonself (them)-once exemplified by the alliegiance of the industrial-era organization man-becomes less meaningful in a Network Economy. The only "inside" is now whether you are on the network or off." Sound familiar?

8. Let Go at the Top: The Network Economy behaves ecologically-the fate of an organization is not dependent entirely on its own merits, but on the ecosystem. What biomes are most resilient, will survive the most, no matter the environment? (It's a Kafka high). Things that adapt most easily-things that have not evolved into a level of specialization to where they can only live one lifestyle, only do one thing. Moral? Devolution may be necessary. The walk down the hill into chaos may be healthier than perfecting the knowedge you know.

9. Seek Sustainable Disequilibrium. (from Wired): "In the industrial perspective, the economy was a machine that was to be tweaked to optimal efficiency, and, once finely tuned, maintained in productive harmony..... As networks have permeated our world, the economy has come to resemble an economy of organisms, interlinked and coevolving, constantly in flux, deeply tangled, ever expanding at the edges..... no balance exists in nature; rather, as evolution proceeds, there is perpetual disruption as new species displace old, as natural biomes shift in their makeup, and as organism and environments transform each other. So it is with the network perspective: companies come and go quickly, careers are patchworks of vocations, industries are indefinite groupings of fluctuating firms." Who will win? Those who can sustain disequilibrium, who can see that within the chaotic churn is life-giving renewal and growth. Those who can re-make themselves constantly, those who can speak in many rhetorics. Sound familiar? 10. Don't solve Problems. In the network economy, the only ones who will worry about productivity will be robots. It is better to reach out imperfectly to the unknown than to perfect the known in order to be more productive. Don't solve problems, seek opportunities. When you are solving problems, you invest in yoru weakness; when you seek opportunities, you bank on the network. "The wonderful news about the Network Economy is that it plays right into human strengths. Repetition, sequels, copies, and automation all tend toward the free, while the innovative, original, and imaginative all soar in value."

Pomo meets Economics. It's quite a trip to see it take hold from this side of the fence. I know this isn't the answer you all sought to the recent posts, but-I thought you all might enjoy a little disequilibrium on a Monday. :-)

L

Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 13:36:53 -0500 (CDT)
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Subject: Re: lh>>vv&mth: I have always been haunted by water

On Mon, 18 Aug 1997, Haas, Lynda G. (EXCH) wrote:

> So Victor, has there been some flood, some fluidity, to shake the
> ground we stand upon, to make us realize there is no steady ground to
> stand upon, to cause us to write with, journey with? You fold back
> upon your own question and return to "a revaluing of value." What is
> the value of all that we've said since we started this reinterview? I
> must confess that because of where I am now, I always have to look for
> the value-the "bottom line." We've certainly flown and folded, but
> what of that? "There's nothing new under the sun except for the
> history you don't know" (Harry Truman)

Hi, L. There is a huge difference between revaluing value and asking the question, What is the value of what we have said?

Revaluing value (out of the negative foundation it would rest on) does not allow us to ask "What is the value of -------? or ask What of that? Truman sounds like a current traditional historian of rhetoric.

I've read the Kelly article along with some of his other articles and read his book _Out of Control_. He's still interesting, but you know ... I read so much of this stuff when I was an undergraduate in the middle 60s. At last, the ideas become popular enough when technology becomes popular enough. About three years ago I came across so much of this stuff again when I was reading for material to include in _CyberReader_. Don't misunderstand; I'm not trashing it ... I'm just saying that it does not have much of an impact on me intellectually or emotionally.

Call it the Truman Effect!

I still get more of a weird kick out of _Mondo2000_ and what Alison Kennedy (a.k.a Queen MU) is doing than _Wired_ and its ... let's-be-a-business-success ... writers and associates. (There is an interesting personal story behind all this, but I will not go into it.)

There is something missing, however, in Kelly's work. He does begin to think in terms of a new economy, one that does not figure from a 'restricted economy' but a 'general economy' (excess). There is, in other words, an element of Bataille in his thinking, but there is no real sense of the celebration or sense of the dark side of this economy, which has the rotting body in it. And human beings' repulsion to it. Or the human body being skinned alive. Etc. (Please, let's not talk about cyborgs, etc. replacing the body that rots. This cannot be in an economy of excess, for bodies must still rot. Certainly not all bodies, but some must rot. And that rotting must not be seen--given the revaluing of value--as negative. Instead, it will have been seen as the most positive force of the economy of excesses. And Sade? And the human flesh eaters? And. And. And.)

...

I've got to go to a committee meeting .)>= but I will return to your stimulating (simulating) p(o)st.

evoL, v

From: "Haas, Lynda G. (EXCH)"
Subject: RE: lh>>vv: I have always been haunted by water
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 19:11:42 -0400

Hi V!
I brought up the Truman quote because as old as pomo may seem to you all, and as much as you have rehashed it and discussed it and analyzed and reanalyzed it and then reanalyzed the value of reanalyzing it-it's a very new concept to the business world. Not to the silicon valley Microsoft/Sun/Apple types-but very new to, for instance, telco types. The method by which the Bells deliver voice service, for example, is the same basic method (with a few enhancements) that they used in the early 1900s to deliver voice service. And the way that the Bells have done business-their culture, their values, their plans-has been pretty much the same since then, too. They have perfected their knowledge on how to do what they do. They are big steamships with huge engines and millions of coal shovelers, designed to navigate on top of the ocean and never have to be immersed.

Oi, vv, for you, there's nothing new under the sun. :-) But let's not throw out the whole discussion because you don't like Kelly. Wired has been a suspect enterprise since the time they tried to pull a fast-one stock offering. No matter how we say it, or who we read it from-- things will be changing for the industrial economy soon-it may be that the changes started incubating since the 60s, and as you say, now the technology is here to bring them to the fore- But in telco, we already feel the difference. Some will be rearranging the chairs on the Titanic-some will learn to maneuver in a much smaller boat--and some will learn to swim. (btw, any of you who care to know about this company I work for that I keep talking about, check out www.tampatrib.com/news/busi101w.htm)

Here's the thing. Universities deliver classes to students today in pretty much the same way they delivered classes to students in the early 1900s. If the network of communications changes the way we value in 2001, what will that do to the way you deliver classes? And the way you value? Nobody on this side of the fence gives a rat's ass about your tenure, btw. What do you really think will happen with that? Here's another thing-if you went to that web page about my company, and you searched around a bit, you saw another article about how Intermedia wants to hire computer literate people but can't find enough of them-so it decided to invest in the future by giving computers and internet access to elementary schools across the country and to offer free computer classes via adult education. And we're small potatoes. Witness Bill Gates giving millions of dollars to university libraries to research new ways to catalog knowledge. Businesses giving out knowledge for FREE! What does that mean for a discipline of communicators and rhetoricians? The town and gown discussion, fine, but what of that?

there is no real sense of the celebration or sense of the dark side of this economy, which has the rotting body in it...

I have to sleep on that one.

L

Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 21:15:45 -0500 (CDT)
From: sophist@utarlg.uta.edu
Subject: RE: lh>>vv: I have always been haunted by water

LiNda, oops, my apologies: I did not mean to suggest that we should throw out the discussion concerning Kelly's new economy. Please forgive.

There is a move to computer literacy in composition studies, right? And there is this 'distance education' thing, right? These will take time. Unfortunately, many college administrators are throwing money at it in hopes of making more money, in hopes of making up for the fall in enrollments. I say unfortunate because they ahve no vision beyond $$$. And they tend to select people who don't have a vision of how this can work productively. E.g. the ones that I observed still think of computers as teaching machines as in speedy multiple choice medium.

We have just gutted a three story building and filled it with computer labs and classrooms with a balance of PCs and Macs and some great hardware and software. This building complements the other labs and centers that we already have. Our classes are filled and the people who teach these courses are getting repeat students. Our grad students are doing innovative things here, if they are not getting hired already by major companies: Last year one of our students went to work for ABC to help build their site and programming on the Web. So it's happening in my immediate environment and I think elsewhere.

My 19 year old son got hired out of his first year in college. He's a system admin.! (But that's another story.)

Greg is certainly attempting something that is different and innovative in the area of distance education. And there are a few others as well.

Perhaps others on the list have something to say about all this.

vv

From: "Haas, Lynda G. (EXCH)"
Subject: lh>vv: of air and water
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 00:30:20 -0400

We are separated by so many similar things that the flow which attracts us to each other is exhausted as it beats against these obstacles. It no longer flows, held back by boundaries that are too water-tight. We are divided by that part of the selfsame and its theatre, which cannot be traversed. Exchanged without a reckoning.

I look at you, identify you, recognize you in that distance which constitutes us, distinguishes us, and paralyses us in the certainty of being ourselves.

But in this resistance of air being revealed, I feel something akin to the possibility of a different discovery....

Proximity? Two lips kissing two lips. The edges of the face finding openness once more. Openness is not reflected, not mimed, not reproduced. Not even produced. Openness: A clearing without surrounding walls. A space, not demarcated, not enclosed. Outside any possible symmetry or inversion.

But when lips kiss, openness is not the opposite of closure. Closed lips remain open. And their touching allows movement from inside to outside, outside to in, with no fastening nor opening mouth to stop the exchange.

An exchange of nothing? Which is not without value. Unless you count as nothing the interest accruing to openness. The economy of which does not easily appreciate the price. Openness permits exchange, ensures movement, prevents saturation in possession or consumption. But openness dwells in oblivion...because it cannot be represented, nor made into an object, nor reproduced in some position or proposition. Who knows that the possibility of exchange is born from two lips remaining half open?

Listen: nothing. The sound of silence. The rustle of air in the silence. The music of air touching itself-silently.

ML XV & X