"Mimesis pt. 2" or "Wanna Play Shadow?"

There is so much to respond to this week that I haven’t a clue where to start. Starting at the beginning would seem the right place, albeit as the young lady at the bar assured me of honey-garlic wings late last week, quite “typical”. Since then I’ve had a sour spot for “typical” and I’d rather start and possibly touch on the theoretical essays through a discussion of the Kafka pieces.

So what do we have here in Kafka’s A Report to the Academy? We have, in the most basic of understandings, void of any interpretation and concerned merely with plot for the moment, a story about an ape that learns to be human through mimicry. The vehicle that drives the story is that this a report commissioned by the unidentified “academy”, so it is formal, requires thought, and is thus presupposed that the author, in this case an ape, is capable of intelligible thought and cohesive argument.

Beyond that, after reading (admittedly only fragments of) Taussig, and (all of) Benjamin and Caillois, we have a story that delves into and attempts to set out the congruency of mimicry, becoming, and being. Kafka’s ape tells us that he learns to become a man out of his want of freedom. It is an act of self-preservation, but it in turn becomes irreversible. He has mimicked so well the habits and movements of man that he has become more of a man than his physical form of ape. In Caillois, “Mimicry could then accurately be defined as an incantation frozen at its high point and that has caught the sorcerer in his own trap,” this is exactly what has happened to Rotpeter. He has been consumed by what he has “set out to achieve”

Rotpeter says in his report to the academy that, “When I come home late at night from banquets, from scientific receptions, from social gatherings, there sits waiting for me a half-trained little chimpanzee and I take comfort from her as apes do. By day I cannot bear to see her; for she has the insane look of the bewildered half-broken animal in her eye; no one else sees it, but I do, and I cannot bear it.” Whether it is “comfort” of a sexual kind or “comfort” in some verbal or physical-san-sexual form the result of the interaction between Rotpeter and the semi-feral chimpanzee is compelling. It’s compelling because the chimpanzee is left damaged, wild, mad after only an evening with Rotpeter. Something in Rotpeter is animal still, it might simply be his form, but when in contact with that which is his natural (the chimpanzee) the “wild” is left damaged. Why? What is Kafka tapping into?

If we start talking about Darwinian evolution I guess we could ask the question, what is it that we have lost in our achievement to become what we are? Maybe there is something in Rotpeter we can look at? There is obviously a sense of loss there; it’s as if Rotpeter is coming to terms with his being robbed of one freedom (his natural state before capture) and the freedom he has earned through mimicry. They are not the same kinds of freedom and require different modes of being. Rotpeter clings to his freedom by becoming and maintaining his posture as a spectacle, a man. Caillois writes something that might shed some light on Rotpeter’s not being able to bear the “insane look of the bewildered half-broken animal”. Caillois writes of mimicry, “These expression all bring to light one single process: depersonalization through assimilation into space,” sounds like high school all over again. Possibly it’s the depersonalization, or rather the deapeification through assimilating himself into humanity that’s giving Rotpeter a case of the mean reds. But what then does that say about humanity? We position ourselves at the top of the food chain, but where do we stand outside of our own biases?

Oh how I despise the forthcoming phrase now for all the times that I’ve used it, and how easily it’s bashed about like some badminton birdie in university papers and discussions held on the patio of Blueberry Hill, but nevertheless the juxtaposition of Caillois and Kafka’s ape is very simulating. The idea that Rotpeter had to adapt to survive versus the idea set forth in Caillois that “…if mimicry is in each case a defense mechanism, it far exceeds its goal: it is ‘hypertelic.’ (far exceeding a goal, I guess) He therefore concludes that this is an infraconscious activity, pursuing a strictly aesthetic, decorative goal: “this is elegant, this is beautiful”.” But that can be contested, although Rotpeter is a poor character to draw a plausible argument against mimicry simply being for aesthetic purposes (what with Rotpeter being A) an talking ape and B) not being real and all) it makes for interesting conversation to say that mimicry has only become aesthetic now, while back in the day it was integral to survival, in the grand scale of evolution that is to say. But, yea, of course we're excluding the mimicry that is so evidently present in children. I'm too dumb to get into that now.

Ummm... What else... Rotpeter, the ape’s name which is derived from the name initially given to him upon his brutal capture wherein two gunshots were inflicted upon him, is interesting if we look at what it might mean. I really don’t want to get into it though, Thackeray is spitting at me at the idea of finding symbolism or anything that would warrant analysis through names. So... Moving on...

As for The Wish to Be a Red Indian, who hasn’t! It’s interesting and reminds me of, for some reason, of Sylvia Plath’s poem Arial. I suppose it would be because of the obvious inclusion of horses in both, but I suspect it’s got something more to do with the speed and changing. Both in Plath’s poem and in the Kafka microfiction there’s a morphing taking place; in Plath’s the horse and rider turn into light moving at, well the speed of light, in Kafka’s it's a kind of slow halt to a place, quite and bleak. What this says about mimicry is interesting but it’s very much dependant upon how you take the resting place at the end of Kafka's microfiction. If like me you take the heath as bleak, the end result of mimicry and the subsequent transformation is bleak. But if you take it as comforting and peaceful, well, yea.

My brain is soup. Toodles.

"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” or “Random Psychological Evaluation for Professors”

I read Borges last year in my Creative Writing class, but not this particular piece. I read Borges and I. He’s pretty insane. I actually want to google “Encyclopaedia of Tlön” just to make sure. To make sure of what? I don’t know… I guess to make sure it wasn’t real because that is just too creepy. I mean, I know it’s fiction, but just the way it’s told, the way we’re eased into it gave me shivers. Had he continued in the same vein, without breaking the barrier between reality and magic realism, if he had just walked that line then I might’ve been climbing the walls right now.

And actually, that’s what I was thinking as I was coming to the midway point of this brilliant piece of fiction. I thought about Marcus, I thought about how he teaches this, maybe not year in, year out, but quite frequently. I started to think that if I were in his position and if this text continues in this manner, I think I may possibly have been driven mad.

That’s a lot of maybes and mays.

I suppose that comes with the territory of this piece. It talks about doubling, and spontaneous copying… fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.. this story is just wonderful in so many ways. All the details of the secret society… the details of the Tlön. I can’t help but wonder what it is, if it is a copy, a copy of?

I’m starting to wonder about this course? Are we to talk about the fiction, the piece themselves, or the ideas of sampling, plagiarism, and appropriation in the text?

"Theory of Art" or "Plato, you tease."

Saturday afternoon and I'm reading Plato. Yea, I'm nerding it up.

I guess I better off by stating the following: The only two books that I got my money out of from York were both from first year classes.

The first was my psychology text book, there's so much interesting bullshit in there, as well as fun terminology that you can sling at your friends when they're being complete assholes such as, "You're such a passive-aggressive" and "That's transference, man."

The second “that was money well spent” book was my copy of The Republic of Plato. There's something comforting about reading The Republic for me. You always know that Socrates has the answers. Or rather, will ask the leading questions so you can get to the answers of the questions he postulates. Plato, I heart u heavily.

I hadn’t in my studies of Plato ever gotten to book ten, but I will surely go over it in detail when I get the chance for it deals with a subject very close to me. I write. Half of my double major is English, the other Creative Writing. I have days when ask myself the questions “Why the hell do I write these stories?” and I didn’t know that they were addressed in The Republic. I love this line, “So the poet too, as artist, will be beautifully ill-informed about the subjects of his poetry.” Yep. That’s me, y0.

What I didn’t expect was Marcus’ response, as well some others in class, that Plato is against poetry in his creation of a Platonic society. I can see how what Plato writes might seem almost anti-poetry, but we have to remember one major paradox: Plato creates his entire “manual” for the platonic society in a way that it cannot be done without utilizing poetry. Look at the allegory of the cave, look at the descriptions of… well… anything Plato has Socrates discuss.

I find it interesting that this text is included in the course pack because I have always been interested in the Plato’s use of Socrates in The Republic. For those of you that didn’t know, Plato takes Socrates as his heroine/mouthpiece and has him discuss various subjects in the Republic. In the section we had to read for class the subject at hand is Art. Throughout the entirety of the text we have Plato writing a very complex version of slash/fan fiction. How interesting is that?

Umm… What else. The main questions that come out of the read we were assigned from The Republic are “What is Art?” and “What is Art in relation to the object it depicts?” What does Plato give us? A shit load that can be broken down into:

"Art is removed thrice from form. Art is the ghost of the real."

That’s what he said to me anyway and if we go back to the Cave… (*collective groan from the readership* Yes, the Cave has been beaten to death, I know, but bear with me.) if we go back to the Cave and we draw parallel between the shadows on the wall and art as ghosts of the real, what purpose then does Art serve? Doesn’t Art then become the catalyst for our own exploration and discovery of the real? Art then cannot be useless, art can be revelatory, it can be inspiring, but more often than not, sadly, it can be disposable.

The Atrocity Exhibition

Let's try to keep this elegant and see how long it'll last.

Well, starting off, after the first chapter I was completely lost. The narrative style is unfamiliar to me and seems to ask a lot of the reader. Maybe I'm dense, maybe my brain is still in summer hibernation, but I couldn't pull myself into this book.

The most interesting parts of the book, I found, were the comments provided by Ballard at the end of each chapter. While I realize that this is a book about how the human condition, the way we live and interact with our environment that is now covered in this thick lacquer of consumerism and the repetition of images selected by the media, I just could not get this book. All the references to Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Ralph Nader (to wit, I must mention I had a dream about thanks to the Atrocity Exhibition. Thanks J.G.) and JFK seem to be lost on me. They really have no resonance and I kind of shrugged them off with a "Meh."

The one public personality that did resonate though was the section entitled "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Regan" I suppose it's the fact that he's dead, and the idea of throwing his corpse into an automobile crash simulator is some what stimulating. But beyond that inadequate and superficial reading, I really don't know what to make of this novel.One final point, in terms of copying and copies, I think this novel reads somewhat, in some places, like slash-fiction. While it's true this piece of fiction is an exploration of the human condition in terms of our relation to celebrities and people in the media, it's interesting to note that The Atrocity Exhibition has that subversive slant that takes stabs at celebs, while at the same time trying to make sense of their personal tragedies.

Questions/Concerns

Is there a narrative in this piece? That sounds like a seriously lacking-upstairs kind of question, but what I mean is: is there a narrative that goes through the entire text? If there is it went completely over my head.

In the earlier chapters Ballard mentioned "automatic writing" I'm familiar with this and can't help but wonder what percentage of The Atrocity Exhibition was written in this matter.

While the inside jacket of the novel describes the novel as: "a disturbing book." I wonder what effect it has on those in my generation. Are we all apathetic or is it just me? I realize the magnitude and horror of Nagasaki and Hiroshima as mentioned in the Atrocity Exhibition, but only if I think past the images of mushroom clouds. But is that just because of the repetitive images or is it about the temporal distance from my place in history? But the images of Naw'lins... to me they are just images. Just like Hiroshima, I have to really really think about the horror of the situation to actually feel something. That makes me a shitty global citizen, doesn’t it?

I guess that's what I get from growing many layers of thick, calloused, dead skin to prevent comments and rejections from publishers who say my work is shit from hitting a nerve.