Addendum to Sexuality & Culture, volume 5, number 1 (Winter 2001)
Dick Butcher, Southeastern Oklahoma State University
READING (MY MIND)
Written, arranged, performed, mixed, and produced by Dr. Dick Butcher
For Gawaine-Ivan
Invitation
The notion of an invitation, to be invited to someone, to a space, to a condition, to observe an act, to participate. . . Invitation is ultimately based in joining, engaging, in being with another. So too invitation gestures to Berger's classic work Invitation to Sociology. One is reminded of the line offered in Michael Tolkin's The Rapture: " We have not been invited." It reminds us of the appropriateness of engagement, of desire to be with... Invitation indicates a receptive position, a gesture to one, from one who is already receptive.
A secret. . .
A forthcoming article offered by myself entitled: 8 and Thick: Interactive Ethnography in relation to published work by Chapkis, Charmaz, Ellis, Mykhalovsky, Olesen, Richardson, Sanders, & Woodman includes, at this moment of construction, 7 categories generated by response to the question " What is sociology?": 1. Elegance; 2. Transcendence of Self; 3. Endurance; 4. Representational and Expressive Expertize; 5. Invitations & Secrets; 6. Empathy; 7. Silence. The notion of the secret, whether information which has been revealed to absolutely no one else, but of which an individual is conscious, or whether the information is shared among or between a small number of people, the idea of the secret refers to privileged and intimate information. Sociology, as a process demonstrating and evidencing concern, the acceptance of an invitation to the realm of the secret or the hitherto unknown or obscured, is essential within the discipline of sociology.
Hideaway
The notion of hideaway is connected to the considerations of the secret: A secret hideaway. A spatial or physical location reserved for the enactment of that which is secret. In this regard hideaway gestures towards Simmel's notion of the state of aloneness being related to the collective and the position of the alone individual temporarily removed from the collective body. However hideaway is also connected to the following lyric, in that the matador is to be concealed, to ‘hide away’:
The matador whom you adore, is taunting, the cape, the drape, and the veil...
The matador as a symbol, a figure of strength, courage, a violator, a commander... The matador is the manipulator of the collective spectacle, and upon whom the collective projection may be cast. The matador is an interesting symbol in that the human comes in close proximity to the nonhuman, and could be understood as the human manipulation of nature. The matador is also a symbol of seduction in that he deliberately manipulates, taunts, invites in a way which is defiant, certain, powerful, an imbalance of power. He is adored and revered by his audience for that very position. Significantly the work of the matador is undertaken in broad daylight under the scrutiny of many. This may be understood as symbolic, an enactment within absolute consciousness. The cape as the notion of that which is encloaked, shrouded, the matador's cape is the tool by which the predictable relationship between human and nonhuman is encouraged. The drape, implicitly moves to the notion of the figure, the clothed to the unclothed, the seen, and the unseen. The veil, referring to to the marriage motif the bride, and so to the dance of the Seven veils, the eroticism of disclosure.
Where there's a will there's a way and the words of that I say. . .
This has to do with an author's certainty of content. The idea will be presented, that through the adversity of censorship, and unwillingness to be heard and seen, the integrity of the author persists, so that that which demands expression, is, will be, somehow, expressed.
As a map as a frame as reply as domain
The idea of a map is interesting in that it is a document which does not require a linear process of utilization for comprehension. The map provides instruction and clarification around position. The map may be read in any configuration; it need not even be read in any linear sense. A map provides considerations of a geography, topography, climate, terrain, distance, relationship between points. It becomes a particularly useful analogy with in the realm of Sociology.
A frame refers to Nochlin's work entitled The body in pieces: The fragment as a metaphor of modernity. Within this work Nochlin argues that, historically, artistic works which focused on the body were cropped to include the entire body. Changes in the sensibility of cropping have shifted to the present day condition wherein the figure, the body, is represented only partially. As such the body in pieces is the contemporary representation of the body within art. It is significant that the guillotine fragments the body. Similarly, dialogue is framed, partial, includes, leaves out... the notion of the complete is simply a social construction; everything is a fragment.
As reply moves to the notion of that words are utilized within a dialogue with in an exchange of individuals within the community of process.
As domain suggests that words create a reality that positions the self and the other within a continuity of sensibility that maybe symbolically understood as a " realm".
Walk right up and look right back. . .
Suggests independence and certainty of those who contest or critique hegemonic order.
See the golden ways that we can be.
Refers to the alchemical understanding that the gold is evidenced as the result of the alchemical process. Contemporary understandings of alchemy suggest that gold maybe understood metaphorically. The possibility of identity, a variety of possibility, the notion of the gold related to the process of Transcendence of Self.
You're reading my mind. . .
Oh, you're reading my mind...
Come a little closer, you're reading my mind...
The idea of reading one's mind occurs literally through the documentation of ideas evidenced in imagination and set to paper. Also, the idea of ‘mind reading’ is related to the idea of telepathy; telepathy as the condition of communication without sensate processes being undertaken to transmit or communicate said ideas. Come close as colloquial words related to sexualities...
The art of the state is the state of the art;
Refers to the situation of the ruling class controlling that which is produced. Art as a ‘production’ is related to the idea of means of production as controlled by the ruling class. That which is utilized as the vehicle of expression (language), as Butler suggests, not only allows expression, but restricts, makes possible, that which is expressed. The tools with which one expresses, allow the very expression, and yet, limit and define that which may be conceptualized and expressed.
The body in pieces
This takes up Nochlin's notion of the body as a partial representation within modern art. However, it is significant that the guillotine fragments the body; the punitive response of the state is to fragment that which is unacceptable, unintelligible, incomprehensible, threatening...
energic releases. . .
Energic releases gestures to the enactment of the body within the world, energically. Participation in life, experience, is ultimately the expenditure of energy. In this sense we may understand behavior as the enactment of archetypes, as Jung pointed out, excited points of energy. . . It also refers to the notion of the culmination of sexual excitement, as well as the enervating and energizing response to de Sade's work, a " release ", released in the sense of publication.
The head and heart. . . some great divide. . .
The head and heart, the psyche soma split, the notion that the mind and the body are two distinct and separate realms as opposed to the notion that the mind and the body or the head and heart, of various aspects to a single unified entity may be understood as extreme positions on a polarity of a continuum. Woodman has produced a number of works addressing the psyches, split the split between the head and heart. Significantly, hegemonic powers, government, in France late 1700's, utilizes the guillotine has a method of social control, but significantly of the method of social control is to literally a separate the head and heart the mind and the body. The fragmentation of the guillotine is the separation of head and heart.
Invading, persuading, delighted, excited, compelling and telling a story. . .
de Sade may be understood as an invader, a violator into the realm of the power structure, persuading his readers to adopt his position, positioning himself through his literature of possibility and through the articulation of such possibility those very possibilities become evidence to others, and as such, may be recognized as a type of persuasion.
Certainly the response to the works, the published works, delight and excite the readers, and further there is a sense of being compelled, drawn to these ads work in a similar way that the shadow, and archetypes evidence within Jungian analytical psychology, is both frightening and enticing. Telling a story, is not only in the event which occurs through the viewing of film, but through the reading of literature, a fiction, and further 120 Days of Sodom, significant work published by de Sade, includes a character " the storyteller". Richardson’s CAP criteria is significantly related to ‘story-telling’.
And meet me on some distant shore
This lyric refers to a concretization of the position of de Sade, that is, positioned on the divide of land and sea. We find that the distant shore is the location of the radical, the critical, removed from the collective.
Hegemonic. . . so demonic. . .
The position of the work, the view of the work, from the position of the hegemonic structures is viewed as demonic. Conversely, the hegemonic as demonic as viewed from an external position.
Close your eyes. . . imagine. . . dream a scene. . .
This has to do with Mead's notion of minding and the trying out of possibilities within the mind prior to the enactment of the selection of a particular course of action. de Sade's declaration that it is " only a play " also refers to Goffman's notion of keys and keying. The reader may understand de Sade's invitation as inviting into the realm of possibility.
Consider this. . . so numinous. . .
This refers to the notion of awe, the emotional and physical and intellectual and psychic response to the observation and experience of the divine. The numinous experience is indeed the event to which the human psyche aspires, the process towards the acquisition of the event or indeed the spontaneous and unexpected experience of the event. . . Indeed, de Sade’s work is, to some, numinous, in terms of its power and possibility. . .
Identity, some kind of strange hyperbole. . .
Identity refers to the work of Judith Butler and the notion that gender occurs through performance. Here de Sade provides the reader with possibilities of identity through the performance of gender possibilities. Integrity refers to de Sade's tenacious and relentless continued position despite the incremental process sees of silencing engaged by the government through the institutional restrictions in through which to de Sade finds himself. Some kind of strange hyperbole recognizes that the characters or readers of to Sade's work recognized the hyperbolic quality of the Sade's writing and reduces de Sade from the monstrous transgressor as his usual understood, to an individual who simply documents the extreme possibility. Even de Sade himself appears to understand his own literary works as a fiction. . .