Will B
ModPo student
Posts: 19
|
Post by Will B on Jan 11, 2023 15:56:46 GMT -5
What I'm drawing from this is a distinction between ethos and theoretics, of Poetics and "poethics." A marriage of artistic ethos with imagination and play. A clarifying of the meaning of "fantasy" as a means of engagement rather than a means of escape. The "real" is not fixed but instead more prone to change than the imaginary, maybe. Reality suffers from representation while fantasy is a generator for reinvention. Art as a tool for keeping pace rather than a clutter of rules and definitions, or a clambering after history. Of course we are always wrestling with the irony that keeping pace and reading all of this puts us in a sedentary situation at our desks or pinned under a laptop on our beds... for the love of the game, I suppose. It's clear to me after these readings--especially this one---that Retallack relies on play (in formatting, in syntax) to counteract the trappings of academic and theoretic discourse, which is also part of the architecture here, no doubt. Interesting, Colin. Before I read your response, I thought of her work more as a merging of rather than a distinction between ethos and theoretics/poetics and poethics, but I'm now rethinking that. Thanks.
|
|
adef
ModPo student
Posts: 20
|
Post by adef on Jan 11, 2023 16:47:04 GMT -5
It was a really illuminating session, and I can now read this essay/extract as being in conversation with the realist literary movement and the modernist response to it. Some thoughts I formed during the zoom session: we're living at a time when there is no single trustworthy cultural authority, but many of our cultural authorities have proven / are proving untrustworthy. I realised that I have a yearning for a trustworthy cultural authority, but this yearning cannot be fulfilled in this era, and it's better, as I think Retallack is suggesting, that I accept that, lose any fear of this space we are in and just deal with it as the improperly regulated space it is. I think she may also be asserting herself in an experimental way as the only possible trustworthy cultural authority in our era. Due to time zones I only got to see the video this morning in the UK. Thanks Al for posting it so promptly. I like your comments about cultural authority Cat. It feels to me as though we are in the UK, and perhaps in the US as well, in a state of cultural reformulation: the old has served its purpose but the ' new has yet to be born '. The complex of instability is focussed around social media and reactions to them. The reformulation is not only personal but also political/social and Political. Old notions of democracy are stressed. Someone who understoood the need to reformulate in response to the stasis of totalitarianism ( as an extreme form of orthodoxy) was Hannah Arendt:as a refugee she understood displacement and exclusion which Retallack would call the state of being lost, confused and uncertain in a seascape unmoored from landmarks. Arendt's strategy was to 'unlearn' what we thought we knew, most famously through reformulating the archetypal understanding of evil of Adolf Eichman as banality. This reformulation is how for the moment I understand Retallack's getting close to 'reality' and away from 'formulaic suites of words'. Only then can a truly conversational way of thinking emerge and bring about 'radical transformation' to new forms of democratic relationships. Although I don't think that you could hold Arendt up as an examplar of playfulness, Retallack is important in reminding us that the poethics of art recall examples of unacknowledged cultural authority.
|
|
|
Post by mirandaj on Jan 11, 2023 16:53:37 GMT -5
I do agree with a lot of what JR says in this extract, particularly the parts about the importance of play (crucial and something I have thought about a lot in various contexts) and the complexities of the 'real.'
However one thing that is central to my approach to ethics is other people (or indeed other non-human beings), and ModPo has helped me realise that it's central to my approach to poetry too! Retallack seems uninterested in the effect of her poethics on the reader or the community as a whole, on the impact of her theories and ideas on others (even her 'dialogue' is actually only with herself). For me this makes this discussion more about aesthetics - what is the 'right' way to create or consider art - not (po)ethics, which would consider the impact of said art on those who create and experience it. Does art improve people's lives? Is it a good thing to do? Can some art harm the world?
I suppose she hints at this with her (rather snobbish in my opinion) dismissal of popular culture, but this is because of an alleged lack of 'imaginative engagement with material complexity' not because it causes any specific harm that she can name. Other than, that is, her principle that complexity is valuable in itself - but again (although I agree) this is an argument that is based here on art not people.
I wonder if perhaps this is because I tend towards a consequentialist ethics myself - I generally believe that ethics should be about impact not intention. Retallack does mention this earlier in the Poethical Wager (before this extract) - but she simply says the future is unknowable so there's no point in 'try(ing) for what we think is best.' Which personally I think is a bit of a cop out.
|
|
adef
ModPo student
Posts: 20
|
Post by adef on Jan 11, 2023 17:09:57 GMT -5
It was a really illuminating session, and I can now read this essay/extract as being in conversation with the realist literary movement and the modernist response to it. Some thoughts I formed during the zoom session: we're living at a time when there is no single trustworthy cultural authority, but many of our cultural authorities have proven / are proving untrustworthy. I realised that I have a yearning for a trustworthy cultural authority, but this yearning cannot be fulfilled in this era, and it's better, as I think Retallack is suggesting, that I accept that, lose any fear of this space we are in and just deal with it as the improperly regulated space it is. I think she may also be asserting herself in an experimental way as the only possible trustworthy cultural authority in our era. Due to time zones I only got to see the video this morning in the UK. Thanks Al for posting it so promptly. I like your comments about cultural authority Cat. It feels to me as though we are in the UK, and perhaps in the US as well, in a state of cultural reformulation: the old has served its purpose but the ' new has yet to be born '. The complex of instability is focussed around social media and reactions to them. The reformulation is not only personal but also political/social and Political. Old notions of democracy are stressed. Someone who understoood the need to reformulate in response to the stasis of totalitarianism ( as an extreme form of orthodoxy) was Hannah Arendt:as a refugee she understood displacement and exclusion which Retallack would call the state of being lost, confused and uncertain in a seascape unmoored from landmarks. Arendt's strategy was to 'unlearn' what we thought we knew, most famously through reformulating the archetypal understanding of evil of Adolf Eichman as banality. This reformulation is how for the moment I understand Retallack's getting close to 'reality' and away from 'formulaic suites of words'. Only then can a truly conversational way of thinking emerge and bring about 'radical transformation' to new forms of democratic relationships, 'to make live and conscious history in common'. Although I don't think that you could hold Arendt up as an examplar of playfulness, Retallack is important in reminding us that the poethics of art recall examples of unacknowledged cultural authority.
|
|
|
Post by cat mccredie on Jan 12, 2023 5:50:04 GMT -5
It was a really illuminating session, and I can now read this essay/extract as being in conversation with the realist literary movement and the modernist response to it. Some thoughts I formed during the zoom session: we're living at a time when there is no single trustworthy cultural authority, but many of our cultural authorities have proven / are proving untrustworthy. I realised that I have a yearning for a trustworthy cultural authority, but this yearning cannot be fulfilled in this era, and it's better, as I think Retallack is suggesting, that I accept that, lose any fear of this space we are in and just deal with it as the improperly regulated space it is. I think she may also be asserting herself in an experimental way as the only possible trustworthy cultural authority in our era. Due to time zones I only got to see the video this morning in the UK. Thanks Al for posting it so promptly. I like your comments about cultural authority Cat. It feels to me as though we are in the UK, and perhaps in the US as well, in a state of cultural reformulation: the old has served its purpose but the ' new has yet to be born '. The complex of instability is focussed around social media and reactions to them. The reformulation is not only personal but also political/social and Political. Old notions of democracy are stressed. Someone who understoood the need to reformulate in response to the stasis of totalitarianism ( as an extreme form of orthodoxy) was Hannah Arendt:as a refugee she understood displacement and exclusion which Retallack would call the state of being lost, confused and uncertain in a seascape unmoored from landmarks. Arendt's strategy was to 'unlearn' what we thought we knew, most famously through reformulating the archetypal understanding of evil of Adolf Eichman as banality. This reformulation is how for the moment I understand Retallack's getting close to 'reality' and away from 'formulaic suites of words'. Only then can a truly conversational way of thinking emerge and bring about 'radical transformation' to new forms of democratic relationships. Although I don't think that you could hold Arendt up as an examplar of playfulness, Retallack is important in reminding us that the poethics of art recall examples of unacknowledged cultural authority. Adef, thank you for this response. I'm in Australia, and was really thinking about something Gaagudju Elder Bill Neidjie said, which is quite well known here: 'The white man's law is always changing, but Aboriginal Law never changes, and is valid for all people.' So here it's not so much that the old has served its purpose but that old and new co-exist extremely awkwardly at best. I think your example of Arendt reformulating the concept of evil is spot on as it illuminates this vital need to escape conditioned responses and see things afresh.
|
|
|
Post by siobhan on Jan 12, 2023 11:51:06 GMT -5
I think JR is challenging us to live artfully. Living is an art form. Life is complex and we (meaning society) have thought of nature as simple and rational. "our sense of the "essential" simplicity and rationality of all things." But in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries, with the concept of the "constituting observer," these ideas of the simplicity and rationality of nature are outdated. We have found that nature and the universe are very complex indeed and very chaotic. There is an "urgency of connecting with our sensory environment" in order to be truly living. And creativity which can also be playing needs to be sustained from childhood into adulthood to find the nourishment and pleasure of life. Poethics, "an exploration of art's significance as, not just about, a form of living in the real world. That as is not a simile; it's an ethos." Ethos meaning (according to Oxford Enlish Dictionary), "the characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its beliefs and aspirations" I am very curious about Po-ethos and post-ethos. i google each and could not find anything by way of definitions or explanations. That's all I got.
|
|
|
Post by jimlynch on Jan 16, 2023 0:48:57 GMT -5
Joan Retallack – difficult poet? Or is poetry difficult? For that matter, is “Literature” itself difficult? Generally speaking, great works of Literature and Art can bring us pleasure but they are just as likely to challenge us, to unsettle us, to bring us uncomfortable truths – not unlike life itself, even humdrum every-daily life. With the advent of printing, the creation of universities, the proliferation of writers and artists, and furthermore the discoveries in psychology and physics of Freud and Einstein, and the relatively new technologies of film, sound recording, television, and the computer, we certainly live in a complicated and complex world. And more people are aware of this than ever before. (I would add philosophers of all ages, the more recent theoreticians of literary theory, the discovery and exploration of LSD and other psychedelic substances, Heisenberg, Godel, Mandelbrot, John C. Lilly, Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan and (esp relevant to Retallack) John Cage, just to name a few more thinkers who have added to our understanding of the world – and of course the availability of the world's great religious and philosophical texts. And this doesn't even begin to include the traditions of the rest of the world outside my own limited knowledge of the “West”.)
Retallack's poetry may present many challenges to its readers, but then that's the point of it – an intensive exercise in language and thinking. As an essayist and pedagogical thinker, her writing is both explorative and concise, and may provide many avenues of perspective into her poetical work. So what is “poethics”? Well, if ethos concerns “how to live”, and if poiesis/poetics means to create, to make, to do – then maybe one definition of poethics would be the title of Retallack's book of poems How To Do Things With Words. That is, to examine how we live, what we believe, think and value, by examining our language, the medium in which we understand our selves, our thoughts, our beliefs. To understand all the ins and outs, the subtleties and illusions, origins and developments of our vocabularies. And to confront the sources of our knowledge as well, whether religious texts or Shakespeare or Noah Webster. Both their reliability and their fallibility. The “wager” for Retallack refers back to Pascal – why NOT bet on the existence of God – nothing to lose if wrong and everything to gain. A safe (in so far as safety exists) bet, common (as far as common exists) sense (as far as....). Further, wage is related to pledge – to wed, to promise. To make a commitment, and I would say in Retallack's case, that risky commitment is to one of understanding and conversation, of exploration and (dare I say it) love. And it's common sense too – why wouldn't one try to make the world a better place for all of us to live in, and to live in together, valuing the health and freedom of every aspect of life on earth? And to essay/assay is to analyze, to test, to make an experimental effort – and to be relentless in your effort, to drive ahead in it, to lead, to act, to do. To do – and here we are back to poetry.
One of Retallack's major themes is that of the limits of our understanding, and that instead of trying to transcend these limits in an abstract or metaphysical sense (for example Kerouac's curative for fear in the Buddhist/Catholic notion that we are already “safe in heaven dead”), we should both attempt to recognize and explore these limits and their possible causes – as for instance our language, our vehicle of understanding. And also the limitations of our physical brain – as she says (or quotes/samples?) in “The Ventriloquist's Dilemma”: “We weren't designed / to perceive most of what surrounds us or to fully / understand the rest.” In exploring the notion of alterity - the notion of “the other” whether it be a stone, a tree, a dog, a shark, a god, a stranger or a friend, and our relations to it – she rejects the strategy of analogy, of the pathetic fallacy: “These things cannot be known by merely examining our own minds.” This quote is from the beginning of her essay “What is Experimental Poetry & Why Do We Need It?” - and later in the same essay she discusses John Cage's rejection of analogy where we “imitate nature's appearance (always saturated with our desires)” and proposal to “adopt her manner of operation”. And here is where the study of natural science, mathematics, physics, and other similar subjects and the merging of these disciplines in our self-education (for there is no other) with poetry and the humanities might bring about new perspectives of understanding, new possibilities for the solution of problems and opening up our “geometries of attention” and ways and methods of seeing the world. Here also is where her notion of reciprocal alterity comes into play – by recognizing the “rights” of the “other”, the independent existence of the “other” - and by investigating each side of any binary opposition (not picking sides), by being open-minded and open ended. And here too “D. W. Winnicott's theories of play as the imaginative activity that constructs a meaningful reality in conversation with the world as one finds it” (The Poethical Wager, p7) You know, like every minute you spent in early childhood before you were taught (or firmly believed) anything. When the spiders were your friends.
New ways and methods of seeing the world – always new, radical, breaking the trance (or Bourdieu's “Habitus”) we all get lost in when we are in our “comfort zone,” when we stop questioning and exploring and playing with what we think is certain. Certainty, like truth, is always provisional, contingent, good perhaps for a stepping stone but not for a pillow. And here too is where we can return to the poetry: looking at language used in new, experimental ways can break our trance, both the trance of our imbedded grammars and the trance of our limited sight; can give us the opportunity to play in the mud, to get dirty in negative capabilty, to NOT understand and be happier for it, because with NOT understanding begins our ability to understand all over again and in a different way, again and again. And we can also learn something about the intricacies of our language, how it can curb and shape and even control our thoughts, and how others can use it to manipulate our feelings and desires without our even knowing it. Most important of all in Retallack's poetry (and prose) is her sense of humor, even when deadly serious. And this too comes from the sense of play, and the commitment to make our smiles less “determined”, more spontaneous, even when humor gives way to terror or grief – as there is always hope (the triad of terror, humor and hope is created by “the constancy of the unexpected” - the experimental. PW, P.4) and tomorrow. And poetry as a long term project? Well, project means to throw forward, and with duration and time so much more can be let in, so many more possibilities and opportunities of communication and renewal, of questions instead of answers. Northrup Frye remind us in his study on Blake that apocalypse (Gk: revelation) involves “a world no longer perceived but continually created.” (Fearful Symmetry, P.44) Isn't the poetic project which depends upon the readers to complete or rather to compliment and add meaning to the text, isn't that Paradise, where creation is continual, and created together or toGather? Gather in the sense of collectivity, to bring together the writer and the reader. Gathering Paradise indeed.
I think that John Lilly is in the same territory of the provisional as Joan Retallack when he says in Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer: “In the province of the mind what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits. These limits are to be found experimentally and experientially. When so found these limits turn out to be further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind there are no limits.” But I'll let the poet speak for herself: “The chaotic interconnectedness of all things, the dynamic pattern-bounded indeterminacy in which we find ourselves, in which we must somehow find/make patterns among contingencies not intelligently designed for our convenience alone, leads to the pragmatic necessity of ingenious experimentation as wager on the possibility of a viable, even pleasurable future together in this world with all those others.” (“What is Exp Poetry & Why Do We Need It?”) The key word here, to my mind, being “pleasurable.”
- Jim Lynch
|
|
|
Post by Lou Nelson on Jan 16, 2023 14:03:19 GMT -5
I was delighted to discover a pdf of The Poethical Wager online, here: monoskop.org/File:Retallack_Joan_The_Poethical_Wager.pdfIt is totally interesting to read her Introduction in which she mentions SO MANY philosophers and her assessments of their work in relation to her endeavours. I'd noted the lack of Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler in Western Civ (at least the parts I was exposed to on Penn Sound - and not that I'm familiar with the work of either one) and was impressed with how deftly JR defined the things she took from Kristeva's work, and what she did not. I'm now very excited to read on. Here's a quote to whet your appetite: "Noticing becomes art when, as contextualizing project, it reconfigures the geometry of attention, drawing one into conversation with what would otherwise remain silent in the figure-ground patters of history. The legibility of these projects can remain poor for decades. Stein opined that it takes forty years for aesthetic innovation to sink in, much less become intelligible. What is the work of human culture but to make fresh sense and meaning of the reconfiguring matter at the historical-contemporary interaction we call the present?" [The Poethical Wager, Introduction, Page 10]
|
|