Re: Deleuze and narrative theory

Hi Ruth and other interested people on the list,

I am glad you read D&D&G in a dyslexic way. So do I, often crushing my
confidence. There is a lot to comprehend so I don't even want to try, nor do I
really care if I understand "correctly" in the academic sense of the word. I
recently read- I have nothing to admit, by D. He writes the least
educated seem to have least difficulty with his works, for they skip
what they don't understand and relate the rest to their experience.
That's really my way too. I don't understand so I let it wash over me
and get onto the next bit I relate to. For my writings D&G are a
monstrous muse.

How I proceeded with a counter writing to the mainstream press on HIV/AIDS was
very eclectic or a sort of collage effect, for my honours thesis. I would read
Bakhtin, Lacan, Kristeva, Irrigaray, Foucault, Derrida, D&G, to name some of
the "big names" and articles by Simon Watney, Douglas Crimp and many others. I
would then take a piece of particularly nasty journalism and blast it to
smithereens, like a terrorist with a bomb in the eyes of the press. In
another section I wrote a fiction like story about a student, called John,
worrying over understanding Hegel and Schellings aesthetics and had the devil
appear and bring back H and S's ghosts so the two could argue out their
aesthetics with the student John as an audience. The demon would make
post-structuralist objections every so often. The demon then sends H & S on
their way and they make love into the dawn. I tried to link  S & H
to the media stories on HIV/AIDS. The story, and the whole thesis,
could be better written, but the attempt was such fun to write. The
layout of the thesis was different too. Instead of being a scholarly
desertation it was presented in a magazine format, using desktop
publishing technologies, with hand traced or photocopied pictures,
most obscene and pornographic, short articles, poetry and a normal
academic apparatus of footnotes and bibliography. I was influenced by
punk fanzines, in this, also.

I don't think this is a question of being non-violent in the face of
metaphysical violence. In fact, I always felt I was inflicting a type of
violence, albeit, strategically worked out rather then pure random violence. I
even think non-violent protests are an extreme violence. (Politics is war
waged by other means, to be dyslectic)

Editing a magazine for injecting drug users, Users News, was similar
in approach but very different again to the above since it had to have a
popular appeal for drug users. Here, since I already had a critique of how the
mainstream  media treated junkies and drug users I attempted to give junkies a
voice, and succeeded, in some sort of way. This project was begun by me
writing some pieces which attacked the way drug users were treated,
discriminated against and put down, but in a positive way that sought to make
this a political issue. Human rights for drug users, the politics also
circulating in HIV/AIDS such as ACTUP and whatever else I could find, including
drawing humorous cartoons. This again, was a counter journalism to the
mainstream media's moralizing approaches. (I could send anyone
inerested a few copies, if that helps.) This then sets the tone, so to
speak, and encouraged drug users to start writing in a way that
didn't follow what they are meant to say to a drug counselor, or
judge, for example, rather what what they really experienced in their
lives; the good the bad and the ugly, but in a way that made the
people to be, stronger, since the people were missing (ala the time
image book) when I first started this project. I tried not to practice
censorship, but I did offer to copy edit anything any user wrote so
they did not appear stupid but as OK writers or if they couldn't write
or read, I offered to tape  and transcribe it. I wanted the
magazine to be talked about as well as read so it didn't matter that
much if you could not read graphic marks on a page. I also went into
jails and taught writing, (even to one person who couldn't read or
write) on a few occasions (too few, for lack of funds and time.) From
that a magazine for users grew and became more and more read.

I think this relates to your interests in performance, as I wanted both to be
performative. I think writing can be that. Writing can be open in this sense,
I suspect (read still don't have a clue). If you look at ATP BwO the question
becomes, not what a body is but what a body can do. It can dance, it can
write, it can dance and write in the streets as a performative political
protest against oppression. There is no limit to what a body can
do. Hence the strategy of control- the  organizing of a body into
organs, to discipline the body so it does not dance, to call it flesh
and blood and nothing else. To attempt to kill the real body.
SILENCE=DEATH was a powerful slogan countering the ravings of the big
media repeating over and over, AIDS=DEATH.

On dancing, I have invented or put together an etymology of the word gay (as
in homosexual) which links it to dancing or the wild dances the Celtic priests
and priestesses of the goddess Cybele performed to celebrate orgiastic mind
blowing sex. (I am working from memory, so may be wrong with names.) From this
group of goddess worshippers with their galliard dancing the word gai
came up in old French to mean prostitutes and homosexuals. From there
to the english gay. Since the Classical Roman's were really down on
the sexual practices of the Celts, there is another historical link,
especially the connection of latin with french. The Roman
civilization didn't approve of the way celtic men slept with men and
women slept with women, and the communism of women instead of a
patriarchal (Roman) order where women belonged to men. (Conjugal
heterosexuality is not the only way to breed.) Also, from old french,
gaol (spelling of jail) is a gay hole or a hole for locking up women
and men who broke the law of patriarchy. Do what you like with this,
I don't claim any ownership.

I hope this isn't too off topic... but given the nature of D&G it should still
be spot on....

Actually, I still don't really know what free indirect discourse is,
despite it being said this is what I am writing.

best wishes,

Chris Jones.


On Tue, 15 Aug 2000, you wrote:
> Hi Chris,
> 
> i wouldn't place that much confidence in my suggestions!-there is so much to
> understand in D and D and G that, more often than not, my thoughts really
> don't touch their complexity.my readings are dyslexic readings and thus,
> quite often, i find i have read the concept the wrong way round. annoying
> but it has its uses for invention!  
> 
> the brute stupidity of the HIV media hype also made me angry and, relatedly,
> have spent some time thinking about the performative utterances of writing
> 'away' from these kinds of closure. do you really think that there can be a
> more open writing? would it not enact epsitemic violences specific to its
> own kind of politics? D's truth of the relative seems to me the best way to
> go but he makes it quite clear that this no way touches the problem of good
> and bad.
> 
> this said, my politics are ones which do want to break open a specific set
> of habitual patterns and, hopefully, invent a word ot two that describes
> things differently so would like to hear more about the specific strategies
> of your 'different way of writing' if you have the time, that is. 
> 
> best wishes
> Ruth.C
> 
>