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Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Cor Blimey Guvnor

Just had a long chat with one of the many astonishingly intelligent Rice undergraduates. He had questions about Realist Magic (already!): awesome, unbelievably good questions. Viz:

1)Would it be fair to say that the aesthetic nature of withdrawn objects is related to Derrida's notion of différance?

 2)When you describe a poem as located in the future, do you mean the written-poem-object or the performed-poem-object? (perhaps both?) For me it seems as if the word poem always waits (in the future) for you -the reader, so that when you arrive, you realize that you are waiting also -for something to arrive. Sometimes when a poem is read (by myself or another), it seems as if an impossible answer was given -materialized in the breath and vapor of the speaker, but immediately lost as soon as one awakes from the silence. All that remains is a memory of a memory of presence. I am hesitant to flatten these into equivalent aesthetics. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what you mean. I have been having difficulty with the temporality.

3)Do you believe that strategies are necessary for aesthetic sensitivity? I assume the development of an OOO is in some way a systemic response to rational-reductive-materialist-positivism. I don't know: I suppose the I just want to say that I'm not very happy with our current situation, materially and theoretically. Do systems matter? Is there a sense in desiring a rational system which encourages/allows the power and dynamism of the aesthetic realm? Or do you believe that these things are unfazed by scientism/reduction?

 One thing that comes to mind is an essay written by Novalis, "Christendom or Europe" in which he argues for a certain system which best allows the flourishing of beauty. Do you believe this is a sentiment of merit? Does Human participation matter? I also think of the different manifestations of infinity in William Blake's poetry. For there is an infinitude in each particular grain of sand, but the reductive abstract of infinity is a dead object which contains nothing in its generality. Is it not an imperative to produce systems which allow -if not encourage the former?

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