(No part of this re/inter/view discussion may be published elsewhere without written permission from victor j. vitanza and the individual posters.) --Full Copyright notice is at the end of each file.
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The PreText Conversations held a Re/In/View with Victor Vitanza, beginning September, 1997. The Guest Moderator is/was Steven Mailloux, UC-Irvine. File 3. |
Voidboy and Victor, As I read the discussion, I am drawn back to one of the most interesting passages in the book which I would like to quote at some length: "If Isocrates believed we are to follow the logos, to allow it to be our guide/hegemon, the logos tragicallled the German people and Heidegger astray. While Heidegger was following the logos as it revealed itself through Being (physis-neg), Heidegger's countryman Nietzsche had already turned his back on the Metaphysics of Being (see 1969, 45) and, instead, embraced an atttempt to revalue values, which Heidegger would have nothing to do with. And Why? Heidegger read Nietzsche as the last metaphysician (see 1191, 3:8; 1997, 217-18). Heidegger, however--to return to what I was saying earlier--is a negative extension of Nietzsche. Heidegger establishes a (negative) metaphysics, and, therefore, himself may very well be the last metaphysician. The last man. Whereas Nietzsche and his recent commentators desire perpetually to denegate Being and logos, Heidegger finally keeps Being in a state of negation (unified by exclusion). It can be argued, however, that there is no way to escape metaphysics, and I would agree. In this light, I would claim that Nietzsche is one of the very few, among a countertradition, of nonpositive affirmative metaphyisians, while Heidegger is a negative metaphyisician. (Negation, Subjectivity, and The History of Rhetoric, 204). Victor, in this wonderful passage, I see two contradictory claims which I am not sure what to make. In the first part, I hear/gehoren:-) "Heidegger remains within metaphyisics while Nietzsche doesn't. Heidegger is the last man, Nietzsche the Ubermensch?" In the second part, I hear, "We cannot escape metaphysics but we can try. Heidegger tries one way, but fails; Nietzsche tries another way, and though he is meant for doom, he fails and succeeds". My response is that the later seems more true that the former. And here is how I think it through: the general economy is not a state that can ever be achieved. In a (mis)paraphrase of Jean Luc-Nancy, the general economy implies a state of death where all things are indeed rendered equal. While I still live, I do seem to have/want boundaries, body, openings and closings (aporias and porias)--albeit I want these things to recognize the fluidity of these boundaries, bodies, openings and closing. More importantly, though, I want to recognize that these limited economies are always in a state of decay of becoming dead. The body is constantly shedding off its body etc. . . . To illustrate this in less(?) metaphorical terms: I am currently writing a dissertation on WAC. WAC interests me as a site because it is one of the most troubling spots for composition in its attempt to legitimize (negate?) itself. In other words, working with faculty to develop writing based pedagogies, WAC calls into question who can research and teach writing. In monetary terms, literally, who owns the study of writing. What I have found is that rhet/comp has often struggled for very real and material reasons of empowering a subordinated class of faculty (Miller's "women in the basement") to maintain its lose control over who can teach writing and how. Part of my argument has been to insist that composition accept this rotting away of its field as inevitable, that is, it must accept its own intersubjectivity and fluidity which makes it a non-permanent entity among a lot of non permanent entities. In other words, to play on Victor's phrasing in the first of the book, I want to see compsition as a becoming minor in much the same way that Victor wants to see the History of Rhetoric as a becoming minor. However, I will try to conclude here, though I now feel like I am running loose at the mouth. I don't necessarily see a "general economy" for the history of rhetoric, rather I see a becoming minor, where the "rotting" away of logos is occuring--and it is are duty to celebrate this rotting away--but has not and may not occur for a long time (and when it does, this will mean its death?!?). To return to the passage and the chapter in the book, I don't think we can identify a beginning and ending of logos, even a beginning and ending of logos' roman (mis)translation *ratio* or reason. To engage in a history is to engage in logos and, even, to engage in logos translated as reason. In other words, Isocrates can not be seen as the beginning as Heidegger, more importantly, can not be seen as an end(s). Rather, we are always at the beginning and at the ends of logos (or even identity), but never outside. Again, it is our role merely to celebrate the permeability and transience of what we consider logos for the day. Am I reading the obvious?, or Am I misreading the obvious Todd
> The French are in cultural decay, and their theoretics reflect the Wow, voidboy, that's some pretty gutsy generalizing. So are you saying that those darn french are sssssssslipping toward "bottom" more disgracefully than, say, "we-Americans"? Do you maybe see some distinctions, some differences among they-french? Or do they all, ahem, look jiiist alike to you? ;} I don't ever hear VV dismiss feminists as "essentialists who don't get it." Where in his work do you hear that? It would help me to have some kind of reference point. Because I hear him, in fact, saying over and over that he understands the importance of the move jarratt makes (strategic essentialism), but that he's planning to do something else, at least as important. I certainly don't hear him indicate that he thinks she doesn't GET IT. He seems to me to assume that she has made her move quite consciously, strategically, politically. And he notes that he understands why, given the historical context, she would make such a move.
> But what you miss. . .is that the body-without-organs *is* inscribed I'm not trying to speak for VV here, but I'd like to respond to this while we wait for his response. I think this question is operating on a different register than vv's text. That is, you're discussing the political scene after the big NO of sexual distinction...power does, yes, get distributed across genital-gender. Yes, yes, yes. And those who are gendered female are at a material disadvantage in all kinds of ways. How could we not want what feminisms that begin here want? "We" cannot not want it. But VV is saying no to that Big No. He's trying to begin elsewhere, not to dismiss the real material threat under which "real women" live but to shoot a line of flight from the logocentric structure itself. Anne Fausto-Sterling makes this move, too, in an empirical setting. To say that there are only two sexes is absurd. To say that there are only FIVE sexes is as absurd. Male and Female are linguistic categories--to say yes to Male or Female is already to have said no to a wild excess of sexual possibilisms. To say that there are two, that everyone is one or the Other, is already to have NO-ed in a big way. To have NO-ed the excessive swirl of sexes. VV wants to No that (big ol harry) No. I don't think his work in any way cancels out the work of feminists whose political strategies operate from within the sphere of *the* sexual difference. He's after another sensibility entirely--they're after a way to survive within an oppressive and skeeeeeery logocentric structure that has always already positioned us in important ways. That said, voidboy, I want to say that I really enjoyed your review of Negation, Subjectivity, and the History of Rhetoric. Loved it. Will use it. Thanks for it. I've said enuf. ddd
But I *am*, Victor. Ya' know? I like that Verb, Victor - to Be. I don't like the Negative, and too many seem so damn negative. Why are Continental philosophers so damn interested in Death when there is so much LIFE?
Ta DA! Helen, weaving placidly in the home of Menelaus. Pathetic Homer, pathetic Ulysees. Her cite/site/body/bodice was queen once, you know. Queen BE, reduced to spinning and weaving. I dream of a day when she can Spin and Weave with the power of that kairotic moment again. Egypt? Hell. India. Becoming dead? State of decay? No no no no no. No. Becoming alive, dammit. Becoming excess. We don't slowly die, we slowly live. I (we?) pray to *quickly* live. Bodies shed off bodies out of growth, not decay. Growth-decay are, of course, only mutually exclusive in the brains of philosophers. Women (who?) shed off bodies, called 'babies'. We were all from woman born (in spite of medico-techno-cyborg geeks who pretend differently; inspite of machines keeping coma victims alive so rapist-conceived children can live), and you can fragment all the selves you want, but you can only do that because a self give herself to yourself. Its all so wonderfully excessive, not (just) rotting. Celebrate the rotting, the decaying? Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. BUT. Quit being so morbid, dammit. It is the laughter I want to emphasize...we have enough pessimism to go around. We have trained ourselves to be pessimistic. Dance! Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying - the French are ssssssssssslippping toward the "bottom" far more disgracefully than "we-Americans". They think they had something, once, called a Revolution. The center of European culture, forever lost to blood and eventually capitulation (remember WW2? French were more damn interested in saving their own skins than fighting, in saving their damn Parisian architecture than taking on the Nazis. French Resistance? Ha! A few brave souls [god bless them] taking on the apathy of their country). "We-Americans" aren't sssssssslippping into decay. We are dancing and singing and tatooing and piercing and rocking and thrashing and skanking and skaaaing and slamming and shooting and gang banging and politically mucking and Disneying and Dowing and Dow Jonesing into decay, creating so much more out of it than the fucking world can possibly handle, culturally coopting and sucking in the rest of the damn world with us. I don't know. I read Victor reading Jarrat as simply participating on the same grounds he is trying to shift. And I read him reading that as problematic, though strategically interesting given the game she continues to play. Which is a problematic I am interested in understanding, in learning from, in growing into like a weed in the cracks and excessively disrupting, making chaos. I am as strategic as Jarratt is, since I read me reading Victor as trying to begin elsewhere for a strategic reading of his own. But his strategy is also different than mine, but one which is part of a bigger game I too am interested in playing. That is why I like his stuff so much, but don't quite play it the same way. Not all of us play drums, some of us play bagpipes and violin and bass (and, once, a long time ago, basoon!). Dance. Or sing. Or both. ______Why the History of Rhetoric, VVictor/ia? Me, I'm interested in the History of the Bible. Right now I'm interested in womyn's reconstruction of womyn's history of the Bible. How can they/we do that? aVoidBoy
""______Why the History of Rhetoric, VVictor/ia? aVoidBoy"" I second VoidBoy's question. (See, vv, I turned my first question into a second that now becomes the third you requested.) sm
Voidboy, Thanks for the response. I certainly hear Nietzsche's affirmation of life and his critique of philosophies and religions of death. I definately have no problem to saying yes to life. Yet, I am not sure that matters of death, rotting, and decaying are not wholy inappropriate here either. Let me rephrase this a little. I read Victor's book as an attempt to move us from a limited to a general economy in terms of the histories of rhetoric, the history of logos, and the history of subjectivity by reading, as you mentioned in your review, Gorgias and the Sophistic tradition against Isocrates and Heidegger. And here I see this movement as a denegation of boundaries and identities. In terms of opening up the history of rhetoric and a logo(helleno)centric tradition, the movement towards a general economy is one of breaking open boundaries. In terms of opening up subjectivities, the movement is one of breaking open identities, a movement towards Deleuze's Body without Organ/ization. My assertion is that there is never a boundaryless object or an identyless subject, excepting possibly in death. There is only a movement towards these positions, that is, a movement towards the general economy. They are a becoming and not a being. Now, it strikes me that as we live, we are also dying. The two cannot necessarily be separated. Thus, Nietzsche's affirmation (as I see it) celebrating the transformations that we undertake as we are living/dying. his in part means celebrating the rotting away. This is in terms of the subject. In terms of an object, like the metaphysical tradition--an here I go back to Victor's quote on Heidegger--we can never completely escape the restricted economy of metaphysics (Derrida makes absolute claims about the fact that there are no absolutes). Instead, we can only constantly break it open in a becoming minor sort of way. Anyway, I will end here. todd
S&M and VB, There are lots of rather commonplace answers to your question, right? One being that the history of rhetoric is the history of snivelizing, civicizing space. And therefore what a wonderful opportunity then to use The History as an index to 'see' how what goes for snivelization got 'marked' off in terms of topoi, loci, ... conceptual starting places. which can determine pretty much every damned thing. Or it's the history of the development of human consciousness cum unconsciousness (ideology). I will skip what I have to say about that approach to answering the question. ... I selected rhetoric or rhetoric selected me or both cross-selected or I am genetically predisposed--if you wish to think--because I am SICILIAN. Both sides of my family (grandparents) come from ... not the Greek side of the island, but the Arabic (western) side. If Plato had gone back, in later trips, farther West of what was the Greek west to visit Dion, ... if he had gone farther West to my family's side of the Island, we would have not thrown him in jail for a while to scare him, but would have busted his kneecaps, sent him east in a box, and would have had him thrown into Aetna, so that he might return to the surface in a revised form. (BTW, that is not to be taken as an analogy for how to w/rite histories or schizzories!) Perhaps Plato would have spewed out of the cap and flowed that next time in a smooth instead of a striated space. But in my particular incompossible world Plato did not go far West, and I had to respond to disires for a far other History that could have been. I selected rhetoric or rhetoric selected me or both because of the word 'rhetoric.' When I first took a position at UTA, I was in an office of the former Professor of Latin. He would drop by(e) occasionally and tell me that my office used to be his office. And he would ask me what I did. And I would say ... 'I do Rhetoric.' He would look at me strangely--he did this every time without changing anything--... he would look at me and start sounding off Greek and Latin terms and finally say ' "Rhetoric" etymologically is linked to the word for Rats, Rats, Rats ...' which would echo down the corridor, down the elevators, and, I'm sure, down to hell. For most people on the floor, this was all very unnerving; I just thought it was funny as could be, and I would answer, 'yea, you got that one right!' And he would say, 'you're telling me!?' And leave ... until next time. My good friend and rhetorical love Jane Sutton tells me that if we look at the folk etymology of the word 'Rhetoric,' we can see that one form of the root signifies ... flowwwwwwing. Now, I am sure that we are going to get a 1001 posts on my reference to this point, from people with their Greek Lexicon in hand, but please don't bother unless you have something interesting to add to what Jane says. So S&M and VB, I figured that being very desirous of the flow of things, I could see, when reading The History of Rhetoric, how those damn Greeks, but especially Romans, were nuts for attempting to control the flow of things (water, vino, armies, travellers to and fro, customs, etc.), to control them, that is, in striated space. Little did they learn from Aetna and similar pimples on the surface of the land. Little did they learn about the return of the repressed. But more importantly, little did they learn about the surface, how a volcanoh is a topological geological structure turning everything to the surface...to the smooth surface. I love all things that flow .)>= and I love most of all seeing logoi flow wherever they want to go. Because they will eventually go where they desire to go and go and go. Anywave. I selected rhetoric or rhetoric selected me or both because I read Kafka when I was in High School. I think that I mention this point in the opening section of the bookless. I selected rhetoric or rhetoric selected me or both because I heard Ornette Coleman do some weird rat shit on his plastic sax in the Village when I was studying jass orchestration at the east-coast Berkelee. I selected rhetoric when the original Edward Kennedy Ellington mss. were opened up for me to blink and wink at. I learned more about w/riting from my music composition and improvisation teachers than my writing teachers. Perhaps it was all the time that I spent reading and winking at _Mad_ comics. Or perhaps it was the unnerving time when I was at a comedy club and was picked out of the audience as the Editor of _Mad_ magazine, who I used to look like. And then forced on stage to act or say something like Alfred E. Newman. Or perhaps it has something to do with the memory--I think it's an aboriginal memory--of my mother drinking two or more glasses of red wine while breast feeding me. But I think that it has more to do with my penchant for wanting to wink at all things flowing. (Boys and Girrrls, will David and Marshall have a ball with that juxtaposition!) I like decadent French things. I am bored with decadent American things. But I most like the fact that the French are able to read our writers and make something of them that we can't. The French are inventive with American Things. I desire rherotics with exuberance. And The History of Rhetoric has done everything to cover up and deflect that exuberance. The History of Rhetoric, when I read it, desires OverFlowing. Desires an Xplosion. I am only the Rhetorics ... rherotics ... that take hold of me. Everytime I langauge I hope to be linked to chance. When I read histories of rherotics, I hope to be linked to chance. While knowing that with every chance occurence, some striated mind will fix what I say with their hermeneutical readings of suspicion. ... i gotta go teach. but i promise you this: next summer i am going to sicily, to the eastern side, to aetna. ...when i take the bus up ... i will walk some ... when i get as close to the top of the pimple, i will put your question to the mountain, "why am I, Victorrio, in transference with The History of Rhetoric? I ask because 'they' want to know." and if i get back, i will post you the answer. that's the best that i can do right now, because i don't know and really am not interested in why i do what i desire in relation to w/riting histories of rherotorics. I un/just do Rhetoric. Call it rat shit, if you would. v
VV and Others: Before I ask my question, I must (re)begin by saying YES to Victor's book. My question grows out of my YES, so let me digress and elaborate on it a little. Though they are forever disappearing over the horizon (into Aetna?) without me, I would love to catch up with and join the Society of the Friends of the Text--VV, Gorgias, Favorinus, Ovid, Dionysus, J. Butler and most all of the "thick"-theorying French VV cites, all the sophistical, schizoid, sovereign poets of pastiche in their nomadic drag-race of becOMing cyborg-animal, join them in some anonymous, self-annihilated, Blakean atopos of the pagus (Sun Ra: "Space is the Place") where a general economy misrules and excessive signs/feelings flow freely in a continuous howling celebration of the (style that unmakes) the Third Man. But as much as I want to do this, I worry. I worry that this flight away from the polis/police (Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, Vergil, Heidegger, Hitler, etc), this flight away from the "fascist" litigants whose species genus analytics and deadly diaresis demand authentic determinant identities, substantial arguments, and assertions that "execute" exactly their author's intentions/plans/desires and perpetuate the restricted economy of eutopos/topos and master/slave, this flight away from all that is mostly an act of negation. I worry that I am simply negating the negators, and thus I must negate this first impulse, negate this negation. But then that negation will of course require negating, and then so will that one, negations of negations of negations until they begin to ripple perhaps into . . . negotiations of a sort . . . negotiations that I can ONLY HOPE will have been ultimately a lavishing of Changefulness upon itself and thus an all-encompassing affirmation, a YES, a barbaric-nomadic "Yep" sounded from the rooftops of the world, dressed in the full revolutionary garb(age?) of the anti-soldier. My hope, however, that this is how my experience will have been is uncertain, because I don't think I really understand the future anterior. And this leads to my question: VV says somewhere that the future anterior is the tense that heals. I would love to learn more about what that means. Does it mean that my slippage (above) from negation to negotiation to affirmation is somehow inevitable, somehow inherent in the flows of time/desire/langauge. I realize I need to resist fully determinate meanings for these terms and concepts, but a few more curative riffs from VV around this melody/malady would be greatly appreciated. How is it that the future anterior heals? Does it have anything to do with that much neglected discourse-mode (Bain wasn't into it) called prophesy? Is this perhaps why "mad" Blake, who was so interested in freeing/cleansing/healing the body, always insisted on being called a prophet? Thanks in advance for taking this up. TR
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