89 (Fall, 2004), pp. 74-80 Published by: New Art Publications Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40427679 . Accessed: 02/07/2013 05:53
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David Levi Straussand I got to know each other in the '80s, teachingat the JackKerouacSchool of inBoulder, drawn DisembodiedPoeticsat NaropaUniversity first Colorado,wherewe werepossibly together Inthose good old dayswhenGinsberg because neither of us is Buddhist. was still"aboveroomtemperature" such limpid azure caressing afternoons and rainbow (as TuliKupferberg says),Boulderexperienced poetics in on and on,falling weather thatpeople wouldcome infora week,thencanceltheir homeand linger flights love withthe wrongpeople and staying detailsare blurred; but I do recallespeup all night. Consequently, s compassionate inCambodia(from wherehe'djustcome),and and upsetting lecture on landmines ciallyLevi Odile & Odette. from his meditation on and episodes (perhapslifelong) photography memory, ongoing and LaterI spongedoffLeviin the MissionDistrict of San Francisco (wherehe'dworkedas a taxidriver studiedpoeticswithRobert a decade or so ago,whenwe bothended up inthe HudsonValley, Duncan)until baralmostneighbors hereinthe Shawangunk We'vecollaborated on interviews, readings, poetry bioregion. and a in to plant7,000 oak trees honorof JosephBeuys. Autonomedia, My publisher, beques tripto Ireland also published Levi's Between Dog and Wolfin1999. Our chiefcommonobsession- naturally about images-is the Hermetic touched on inthisconversation Marsilio Ficino and Paracelsus. As anti-authoritarthe Renaissance Giordano Tradition, Bruno, especially magi calls "theMagicof the MickTaussig(another ians,we'reboth fascinated by whatanthropologist neighbor) State."I don't knowifwe constitute a "school"yet,but all of us are convincedof the need forwhatI call "hermetic it WalterBenjamin), and Levicalls it "slowing Mick calls the "dialectical critique." image" (quoting downthe machine." Ineffect, is devoted to thisnew-buthislatestbook,Between theEyes(Aperture, 2003), ancient form of critique. Theday aftertheFourth ofJuly 2004, inan undisclosedsecure location somewherein theHudsonValley: Hakim Bey Your two most recentbooks, BetweenDog and Wolf:Essayson Artand Politics and the new one, BetweentheEyes: on and Politics,both Essays Photography use the word between.A couple of weeks ifthat was a ago I asked you half-jokingly it mustbe plan,and you said no. Butsurely thatyou'veused thiswordtwice significant intwo book titles. David Levi StraussYeah,it mustbe (laughter),but I hadn'tthoughtof it untilsomeone, Between body pointedit out. The first is translated from the French Dog and Wolf, to the phraseentrechienet loup, referring time at dusk when the lightdiminishes to the pointwhereone can'ttell whether the animalone sees is a dog or a wolf.I got it from a passage inPrisoner JeanGenet,from of Loveabout this"hour of metamorphoses, whenpeople halfhope,halffearthata dog willbecome a wolf." So I appliedthatto art and politics in the twilight of the millennium.And the second one, Between the in was used byMiguelRio Brancofirst Eyes, a longertitle- Entreos Olhos, O Deserto (Betweenthe Eyes,the Desert)- of a book of his photographic for which I triptychs wrote a parable.And I wrote a piece for anotherbook of hisphotographs underthe title "Beautyand the Beast,Right Between the Eyes," inwhichI talkedabout the pineal gland(betweenthe eyes) as the seat of the as a link and betweenthe visible soul,acting invisible world. to HB Is it a liminality that you'retrying or more of a dialectic? express, DLS A dialectic,always.I am alwaysconcernedwithwhathappensbetweenthings, When I put words and with the relation. as in Odile & Odette (an imagestogether, unpublishedbook of correspondencein that I've written wordsand mages,letters over many years to two women named Odile and Odette thatonlyexistin a phoI'm interested in the thirdimage tograph), and Gysincalled "the (or what Burroughs third thatis,whatwordsand mages mind"), formbetween them. In dealing with aesthetics and politics, whichis whatI am writingabout inthese two books of essays,I'm betweenthose concernedwiththe relation two realms. HB So it's not reallythis anthropological that's youon? spurring conceptof liminality DLS Not so much. It's what thingsdo in with each other,what hapconversation pens when you put one thing next to else happens.But anotherand something I I'mnot interested inresolving the relation. Arendt think of whatHannah mean,I always said about the relationbetween art and "The conflict betweenpoliticsand politics: art ... cannot and must not be solved." an attempt, a large-scale timethere's Every it has resulted to solve the relation, attempt indisaster. we're talking HB Is it "aestheticization" about? of the aestheticization DLS Yes,well,either the Third as under Reich)or politics(such the politicization of aesthetics (under haveled to Bothof thosetwo things Stalin).
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majorcatastrophes. HB Yes. DLS So I always want to work between. in relaI thought about it recently Actually about in Immediatism tion to yourwriting to find a wayout of mediatedexperitrying ence. It struck me thatthat'swhat mediaRobinBlaseralways tion means:"between." used to say you needn't be afraidof the just between things. gods, because they're intermediaries; theygo between. They're HB Well some do, such as Mercury/ of the gods. the messenger and Iris, Hermes, the The angelfigures among gods are mesthe ones who meet and mediators, sengers face to face and go up with humanity reportback to Olympusor to heaven.But by speaking about a relation between media and politics,you'reactuallytalking about a relationshipbetween-betweenbetween. DLS How do you mean? HB Well,I mean politicsis also media,in a afterall. At least sense; it'srepresentation, we like to believe that. So you've got a whichis politics, betweenon the one hand, and a betweenon the otherhand,whichis media, and you now have to mediate between two betweens. This is kind of
that'swhat I'll DLS That's not a nutshell, to lifetrying of the rest my spend probably do! HB Of course,that's project," your"60-year as Ed Sanderssays. DLS Andthe onlyway I can do it,the only usefulway,is to look at specificexamples them thembytaking to understand and try apart to see how they work.Partof the is to stayinthe approachinbeingrelational to get aroundit. dialecticand nottry fora synHB Inthiscase we'renot looking thesis. DLS No. Again,I don't knowwhether you the aesthetiwould call that a synthesisof cizationof politicsor the politicization aesthetics.But it'softentalkedabout that
way. HB But this total-separation concept also kindof bothersme. How are you goingto make sure that art and politicsdon't mix? so muchsensinow,whenthere's Especially relation. at this tivity pointed I'mnot saying DLS Of coursetheymix. they what to understand don't mix. I'm trying happenswhentheydo. HB Well,forexample,you brought up my in whichI proposed essay on immediatism, even view of thisrelation a militant where, aesthetic of the before politics question complicated. of the to freeourselves DLS You're rightthat we're not talking arose,we wouldtry two unadulter- mediating about two distinct qualities of media as much as purities, ated entities. possible by direct physical contact in some them want to HB We don't between,for example,artistsand people reify than allowinggalleries likeart,rather who dreadful way. themas soon as we name and museumsto alwaysbe the mediators. DLS Butwe reify Butwould it makefora different as soon as as soon as we voice them, them, approach we put them in relation.The language to your "between" if we could say that there's a philosophical makesus do it. problemwithmedia we can discuss HB In a nutshellthen, how would you thatwe haveto solve before with the its relation two these between the relation political? In other express of media?Or do we have a critique betweens? words,
unless neutral do we lookat itas something it'sdeliberately politicized? DLS Well, I'm not sure whatchoice you're me there.Yes,thereis a critiqueof giving of media media.Andyes,thereare theories I need ButI don'tthink and representation. to "solve the philosophicalproblemwith media" in order to observe and address I'm not a formalist. theirpoliticaleffects. a the media,I am primarily Whenexamining with what's I deal happhenomenologistpening. the Pain HB Susan Sontag'sbook Regarding of Othersdeals withalmostthe same subject as Betweenthe Eyesand came out at about the same time. I thinkit'sprobably fairto say she got more criticalresponse thanyoudid. of a thouDLS [laughter) Yeah,bya factor sand or so. HB Haveyou been intouchwithher? But DLS No, I don'tknowher, unfortunately. when her book came out, I read it very closely and taught it and discussed it. I she writes very always read everything closely. Her early books of essays made I do possible. of thethings Theyhad a many on me. But it was tremendousinfluence coincidentalthat these two books came out at the same timeand deal witha lot of the same subjectsand the same questions. HB Well, maybe not such a coincidence, withwhichthe "shock" giventhe intensity of the image is screwedin and wound up now. right has definitely DLS The phenomenon grown and accelerated, and the pressure to respond has increased.As you know,I've about the Abu and writing been lecturing Ghraibimages,and I was verypleased to see Sontag'spiece on themappear in The TimesMagazine.No one but her New York
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could get that kindof coverage. She said what needed to be said and did it in a way that entered the discourse,that didn't sit out on the edge of it.That was fantastic. HB What would you say the differencebetween her project and yours mightbe? DLS I'm sorry,I have a visceral response to "having a project." I've never had a project. I don't want a project. I'm a I don't have a programto fulfill. writer, HB Ifyou take that word away, it's like saying I don't have an attitude,or an approach. DLS Okay. But if you look at those two specific books, my book is a collection of essays writtenover a longer period of time, trying to look at how images work in public in specific instances, beginning with two photojournalists who worked in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 70s and early '80s, and ending with 9/11 and the bombing of Afghanistan. Regardingthe Pain of Others is a book-length essay examining the changes in the way images of atrocity and war are received since Sontags groundbreaking work On Photographywas published 25 years ago. The books are very in many ways, but they did get reviewed together different in several places, because they both address certain fundamental questions about how images work and how their effects have changed over time. They were also drawn together by John Bergers introductionto Between the Eyes, in which he says my book is about "the pain of the world." HB Do you get the feeling that a lot of people are resistant to the idea of analyzing the link between mages and politics? In other words, is there a kind of vast unconsciousness about this out there? DLS Yes. HB And would you say that also includes intellectuals and artiststo a certain extent? DLS To some extent it does. There is definitelya part of the doctrinaire Left that is very suspicious of approaches that deal with the relation between aesthetics and politics, and thinksthat what artists and writersdo is a politically lesser order of work,and is not reliable. HB This goes back to Marxist-Leninistorthodoxy, I think. The psychic remnants thereof, on the Left. One wonders how anyone whose brain isn'tcompletely pickled can go on that way in the face of,for example, a phenomenon thinking like Silvio Berlusconi, who I know you think is a key symptom or figurein this strange complex of image-politics. DLS Berlusconi really interests me because people have started talking about his rule as "totalitarian democracy," where he's elected but there are no brakes on his authority. And he's able to do this because he has nearly complete control of the public imaginary, by owning almost all media outlets in Italy.So it's a populist, still nominally democratic approach that recognizes that ifyou control the fantasy life of the people (the phantasms), there are virtuallyno limits to what you can do. And all of the democratic antibodies against totalitarianism- freedom of the press, livelydissent, the rule of law, an informedpublic- go away,are out of the picture. It hasn't really happened here in the U.S. yet, since it'snot preciselythe same people, but I thinkthat's probably the next step. I mean, I don't know what will happen under PresidentSchwarzenegger,but ... HB (laughter) Right.State and media under one umbrella. Well, there are those I suppose who would say that there's only about a halfa degree of separation between media and politics here now.
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I DLS But there still is some difference. mean, we saw the Abu Ghraib images because of SeymourHersh and the New and because Dan Rathersaid he Yorker, he was wasn'tgoingto hold offanymore, goingto put themout there.IfDan Rather was directly owned by the Bush team, I don't think those imageswould have ever come to TV. HB Sure,you can have ten or six or three ninety corporations controlling eighty, percent of the media but you can nevercontrol it all. And I'm not even talking about the blessed Internet here- you can't control printanymoreeither.Sooner or later somethingwould have surfaced. But it doesn't really matter if a few thousand people know something if the billions isn'tnecdon't.So maybecensorship really essary. DLS Ifa fewthousandknowit and it never comes up intothisstratum of publicmedia, thenit'snotgoingto havea publiceffect. HB You're sayingit could have a secret effect? on Bill DLS Yes. I just saw an interview with Frank a PR a named Luntz, Moyers guy I he calls himself a and mean, "pollster guy. butthisguyis communications consultant," snake oil and lakefront proppure hokum: erty.He's the one who came up withthe
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of name "ClearSkies"forBush's dismantling and called the environmental protections, to makeit sound estate tax the "deathtax," unfair. And he's the one who said no Bush should give any speech about Iraq official As a consequence, 9/11. without mentioning stillthink a highpercentageof Americans Iraq had something to do with 9/11. Incredible.But Luntz knows how these about somework.He's now talking things because "free time called the agenda," thing one issuewith25he foundout the number women is that they don't to-40-year-old have enoughfreetime.What he does with words,others in his line of workdo with me. These people interest images. those people, bythe way, HB Do you think and Debord?Aretheyupall readMcLuhan to-date about theory, these kinds of people? Or do theyall do it in theirsleep somehow? DLS I thinkthere are probablydifferent butthisguyLuntzmakesa bigshow styles, His polls tell him of beinganti-intellectual. so ifyou want thatmostpeople are stupid, to speak to "most people," you need to speak stupid. Propaganda or PR is like is the that matters Capital- the onlything an old-fashioned This is probably numbers. for and artists notion,but I blame writers some of the success of thiskindof "public of and the resultant relations" degradation the language-fornot beinggood enough, these hackscontrolwords and for letting and images.And some of our best writers workforthese people, making and artists propaganda. because withthat, HB I havea realproblem have can't when there'sno revolution, you When art in the service of a revolution. ifyoupreor capitalism there's onlyCapital, thenyoucan onlyhaveartinthe service fer, of capitalism-or else, art thatfails.Those thisisterare the onlyoptions.So, ina way, can'tbe that artists it means also but rible, se. blamedforthissituation per DLS I can blamethem.My positionon this the one thatyoujustarticfrom is different roominthe public there's ulated.I stillthink stilla public There's forchange. imagination the of the end after spectacle, imagination has been successful and thisadministration its use of words it through in manipulating and images.This has to be resistedand Bushand his keepersare increasing fought. and I say reduce inthe world, the suffering Ifit'spossibleto do that first. the suffering I choose that. without a revolution, to some even more specific HB Turning cases, some people whom we know in Critical Art Ensemble are currentlyin troublewiththe FBI for a suspected bio-
left to right: Abovefrom LeonGolub, on linen, II,1981, acrylic Interrogation oftheartist. 120x 168". Courtesy Firdos 9,2003. Square, Baghdad, April Atright, from left to right: Hooded figure on boxfrom AbuGhraib. NickUt,1972, SouthVietnamese forces follow after terrified children after a SouthVietnamese planeaccidentally itsflaming dropped napalmon itsowntroops APPhoto/Nick Ut. and civilians. invideostill William Ubufigure, from Shadow Kentridges animated 35mm film, Procession, 1999, videoand DVDtransfer. oftheartist and Marian Courtesy New York. GoodmanGallery, on wallinSadrCity, Baghdad, Painting artist SalahEdineSallat, 2004. byIraqi
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terrorism charge.That has to do with an betweenart and poliattemptedinterface tics thatSteve Kurtz and the CAE are very to deal with. Andas we speak, muchtrying who is also our publisher, Autonomedia, is being ordered to turn CAE's publisher, overcorrespondence and otherdocuments Thenanothercase would to the grand jury. artistPaul Chan and be our mutualfriend, his associates in the groupcalled Voices in the the Wilderness who wentto Iraqbefore now free and are medicine, war, away gave I believe,the facinga major chargefrom, Treasury Department for violating the The politicalmageis notgoingto embargo. be directlyaddressed in either of these cases, but the indirectimplicationsare ifyou look in yourcrystal there.I wonder, fora ball,do you see a Cointelpro [acronym series of FBI counterintelligence programs isolate and defame designedto neutralize, toward the arts,espepoliticaldissidents] if re-elected (or,I guess we cially Theyget shouldsay, elected)? its goingto be and I think DLS Absolutely, muchmorewidespreadifthe Bushteam is actuallyelected and givena mandatethis ifAshcroft time.Definitely staysin placehe's barelyleashed now.It also depends so muchon how successful theyare at demoas they did artistsand nizingdissidents, the culturewars of '89 and writers during '90. Atthatpointitwas mostly on the basis But of sex panicsand fearof miscegenation. it I think under the coverof "anti-terrorism," has the potential to be a much larger is the new antiassault. Anti-terrorism Communism. HB People are saying that even the a military Democratswill have to institute inorderto keep a presdraft byspringtime ence inAfghanistan and Iraqand go on with And have inmind. whatever else theymight so thereis this potentialfora CointelproVietnam-Nixon horrorshow again- under however. the Democrats, DLS I can possiblyimagine the Democrats
an doing it,but it'shardforme to imagine back elected Bush administration bringing the draft. HBOh? DLS Itjustseemstacticallytacticians? suchgreat HB You meanthey're of controlling DLS Theyhave been interms images. HB Well,they'velost the spinby now,to a extent. certain still50-50 inthe polls.Butthey DLS They're know that if middle-classkids startbeing have a verybig killedin battleagain,they'll problem. stretched HB No, but the point is, they're reserves, they're already, they're calling them sending people back insteadof giving ... timeoff. Ifyou're DLS So, justhiremoremercenaries. thousanddollarsa paying people a hundred and backhome yearin Iraqand Afghanistan in Marylandor South Carolinathey earn seven dollarsan hour, you can get as many bodies as you want. And it all worksso muchbetter: military you have a privatized well withthe private thatworks companies overthere.You thatare running everything as don't have to reportdeaths and injuries casualties.Iftheyget caughtdoing military law can't touch something illegal,military them. I don't know whytheywould even Itwould be of bringing backthe draft. think that I can't imagine such a tacticalmistake themdoingit. HB Well,only time will tell. Do you think the scandal over Abu Ghraibthat you've is been lecturing on, showingimagesfrom, of on the a loss of for part spin responsible of the universe? the masters The release of those DLS Oh, absolutely. breach. torture imageswas an extraordinary had controlled The Bush administration the first during public images so skillfully Private the warfrom of Lynch Saving year to the FallingSaddam to the Top Gun speech to Saddam'scapture- buttheywere blindsided by the Abu Ghraib mages.
Karl Rovesuggested Bushstrategist Principal that the consequences of these mages thatitwouldtakedecades for wereso great them.But it'stoo from the U.S. to recover if it will be to tell enough to stop . early Bush.And too muchcan happen between now and the election to make everyone forgetwhat came before.I keep coming back to this:AI Qaeda needs thisadminisintheir So theymustdo everything tration. in place powerto keep thisadministration and to get them elected in November (or allow them to suspend the election, as Andthe wayto planning). they're apparently is another strike do that, unfortunately, close to November. HB Justnot close enough to killNumber One. the haveto do itwithout DLS They'd hitting it occurred Actually, leadership. Republican at the to me thatthe mosteffective protest ifyou in New convention York, Republican could organizeit,would be a total evacuawhere tion-a kindof anti-Bush Rapture, the and people just disappeared, into an came eerily empty Republicans no no subway workers, city- no cab drivers, hookers strike. HB It'sthe old dreamof the general their own DLS Yes! Republicanscarrying them! bags!No one to feedor water off HB Ifyou could actually pull the general strikeyou wouldn'thave to because the consciousness shift would have already the problem That'sunfortunately occurred. to much ofthegeneral with the myth strike, on a continue But let's eternal regret. my more Utopian level. You and I are both that and we know inhermeticism interested is the science to a largeextenthermeticism GiordanoBrunosaid in his book of images. on magicthat it was easierto controlmillionsof people at a timethrough imagery He was thinking one person. thanto control Ifyou translate of love spells inthisregard. thatintomodernparlance, say it you might is easier to influencea million people
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through their erotic subconscious to buy a product than it is to make one person fall in love with you personally. So this insight seems to be really a potent one. And it led loan Couliano to say that modern PR and agitprop and advertising- in fact almost all modern media- are in this sense only an extension of hermeticism. However, you might say that's black magic. There should be white magic too, by which people can defend themselves against this kind of thing. Do you think that people should study ancient hermeticismin order to arrive at a defense against the onslaught of imageryin the modern world? How would you do that? DLS Coulianos book Eros and Magic in the Renaissance is a good place to start.In addition to the historyand analysis, it is also a sort of handbook of possible resistance to media manipulations through knowledge of its techniques and sources. One of the reasons that Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 is having such an effect and is actually reaching so many people is that Moore has figuredout how to use the same techniques that the other side is using in order to get different content in there. He's realized that, often, the way that the media organs work, content doesn't really matter. Because its formal presentation is the focus and the obsession, you can get in all kinds of content that you wouldn't imagine possible. HB It'sthe old McLuhan "the medium is the message" insight.But tryingto subvert the power of the media by entering into its power might be a self-defeating,or even a suicidal tactic. DLS It can be. Its treacherous ground. I thinkin all of this work,it mattersto have a good heart. HB A good heart, yes, but what about the trance state? There is a trance state we enter as connected to the media, not a selfinduced trance for spiritual self-development, but trance for the purposes of control. So the point is to break it. DLS To break it or be able to emerge from it,undamaged or at least alive. To be able to continue working.I'm a firmbeliever in the value of gettingyour hands dirty(my grandfatherwas a blacksmithand my fatherwas a mechanic). The best way to learn about how images work is to open them up, take them apart, and move them around. Put them next to one another and to texts to see how they change. Examine them closely,over time. HB You seem to be proposing a liberation fromthe mage throughthe image. In other words, to master the science of mages by mastering the science of mages, not by some iconoclastic technique of eliminating
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Leftto right: George W. Bush,"Mission Accomplished" speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln,May 1,2003. Unidentifiedcheerleader.
the images. DLS That's the direction that I tend to go. Both because I take such pleasure in mages- I love mages so much that t would be hard for me to give them up- but also because in my experience, abstinence doesn't work. HB What about the idea of the media fast, of temporaryabstinence? DLS Oh, I think that's fine on a personal level. HB Clear your brain. This idea comes from Gert Lovink, who I think coined the term "media fast."I've always thought it mightbe a good way to start.Take a week or two off, especially electronic media. All of them, if possible. But what about other strategies? DLS I think for me it gets down to basic questions. What kinds of words and images are you making,and what effects are they having? Are you speaking truth to power and makingit harderfor Control, or are you being complicitous and adding to the confusion? A big part of this for me is that I really stand against the whole idea that came up on the Left in the 70s and '80s that we could counter what you've called the "empire of the image" by turningagainst the aesthetic and embracing the anti-aesthetic. I consider that to have been a grievous tactical error.As you've said, "The blind panopticon of Capital remains, after all, most vulnerable in the realm of 'magic'the manipulation of mages to control events, hermetic action at a distance.'" It's proven more and more every day that that it's mages that are makimages matter,
ing the political changes that we see happening around us possible. Focusing on what those images are and how they work and how they can be changed to work otherwise is not a side issue anymore, it's a to separate "real polinecessity. And trying tics" from "mere aesthetics" is a mistake. It matters what we imagine to be possible. Change can only happen if we imagine Reino said that "The task things differently. of Magic consists in comparing things to one another," and that's also the work of criticism.I told you I've been readingquite a good book, Rhetoric and Poetics in that argues that rhetoricactually Antiquity, came out of poetics, not the other way around, which has been thought to be the case (or that the two are distinct and unrelated). The author, JeffreyWalker, talks about the art of argument and persuasion suitable for deliberation, debate, discussion and decision in the public sphere as being opposed to the mere exercise of formal eloquence, the "epideictic," which is just adapted for display or showing off set orations. I think it's an important distinction. But he's saying that the persuasion of rhetoricreallyemerges fromout of poetics, which deals with aesthetic pleasure. The reason that mages work politically is that we take pleasure in them. Denying that is self-defeating.Basically, I refuse to choose between rhetoric and poetics, or politics and aesthetics. HB Between: where we started, and will end. 0
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