Claustrophobia 2
Rather than write a comment on the original posting (see Wednesday November 30, 2005 "Claustrophobia"), I thought I'd do a follow up as a post.
I feel like I'm repeating myself a lot. Not just in what I'm saying but in the physical paths that I'm taking these days. Hopefully, it's foundation-building like barre work and not just repetitive strain...
I was back at the City Bakery Cafe again. I went through their routine (now familiar after just one previous visit). I still don't really like the taste of the coffee or how loud the owner-guy is but it's conveniently located in relation to my destination and because of my lack of familiarity with Kitchener, at least I know where to find it when I need it...I haven't tried their bagels yet which seem to be their specialty.
It was a Wednesday and I read D&G again. I was right about their interest in werewolves and vampires so I'm kind of creeped out by what they're writing right now and hoping it will end soon. (I do have the option of skipping to another chapter – after all, they gave the reader permission to do so…but for some reason, I haven’t). While I really like the potential implied by their concept of becoming animal, it seems to be turning towards a view of "bordering" as necessarily horrific. Or what seems horrific to me. I know I can’t accept it a certain level. The book, then, becomes even more interesting and successful as a process that’s working on me and affecting me (deeply?). I keep wriggling around trying to counter their argument. I’m thinking about the beauty and intelligence of rats (we have a pet rat) and I’m thinking about having read Donna Haraway’s The Companion Species Manifesto last winter…and the interesting things that she had to say about working with her dogs and reaching some kind of union with them that D&G argue is impossible with pets. D&G are completely dismissive and disparaging of relationships between humans and their pets – citing them as “sentimental Oedipal animals” (240).
I do like what they have to say about becoming-animal as outsider and as a disruptive force. I like pack and anomaly, I just don’t know if I can go any further with it. Does the resisting reader get to hang onto their wits (albeit at some cost)? Do DQ and others get to experience something important that I really never will experience?
posted by Anne @ 7:40 AM
3 Comments:
You ask interesting questions about identity. I wonder, myself about being in the wrong place at times, led by reading. I've felt, at times, endangered as well - always when I feel I'm being forced to go along with another person's, or institutional, way of thinking. The force always happens after there has been some consent. That's, if I recall, the code of vampirism! (duh, dunh, duh)
I need to read this D&G book (D&G always makes me think "Dolce and Gabbana"...which reminds me of Sprockets, and then I picture these two Glam Skinhead bobsy twins who walk their shiny black Great Dane and all wear black with red accessories like they've perfected something and need to parade it at Trout Lake for my benefit) ...to be able to talk about it here, but, it strikes me that these guys are pretty humourless. I don't mean they lack whimsy - I mean it sounds like that generalization about sentimentality, pulling out a
Freudian theory, puts psychoanalytic classification on the natural world, the world of creatures, which is telling about their own intellectual vulnerabilities and snobbishness. I am interested in what they have to say about werewolves and the like, but I already want to eat that section and shit it out like those crow's wings Cookie flung up in the air and devoured today.
I learned from reading one of my student's projects that you have to do something about 500 times in order for your brain to create what's called a "motor program". I guess this is what they mean by "muscle memory". I imagine in yoga practice and other highly sophisticated activites, it's internalized in a much more fundamental way and at a foundational level. So I guess the quality of your experience depends on the quality of what you repeat.
P.S. I always think of Dolce and Gabbana too and D&G are glam skinhead bobbsy twins of the theory world...they do though have legit. credentials in psychoanalysis. Check out this link for their unofficial "trading card". It would be quite fitting for them to have D& G handbags...eh?
http://www.theorycards.org.uk/card16.htm
I guess unlearning has the same principle. A good approach I've been told about practicing something is to be in a "beginner mind" every time you go to do it (guitar, meditation, drawing etc) because the beginner has strong will and desire and no habits yet.
Now ~ to check out that trading card....
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