Well, it seems to me that temporality, and concepts of time lack substance
and so lack a meaningful relation to history.
don't you find? we say the historical this and historical that,
but i am acutely aware that these lack relationality because they lack
meaning or substance outside of the numerical values of time, the functions
of
counting...
to speak of the "historical" in meaningful ways is
crucial, of course:
I was thinking thaat as spatial entities, for example, time occupies the
body; where as time as temporal occupies the clock, or calendar, or
artifact that temporalizes time for the ever-useful shared social
reality...(insert sarcasm here(
i have been looking closely at Wittgenstein' Tractatus... hard to follow;
however, in my handy-dandy Wittgenstein For Beginners, Heaton and Groves
go to great lengths to describe the actual composition of writing the
logico philosphico whatever-oh - now this is bloody interesting:
Wittgenstein wrote during WW1, a crisis - i.e., turning, shifting, moving;
and wrote in the tongue of a crisis mode of thinking: no doubt afraid (he
was a kid) he turns to the comfort of logic to sanity, order in the chaos:
thus the writing is all propositional, because he didn't want to lose track
of what was taking place in his words: so, he surrendered to language and
turned away from needing to own the meanings of the sentences - i think
this is
fantastic. as a method for dealing with ideology and conceptual tricks
that so easily seduce;
could one write in "crisis," that is, not trauma but in movement, however
slowly it may be, and at the same time describe the movements through
theory, ideas, history, i mean, histpry of men up until 1980s; a crisis in
a crisis, embedded
shifts that are trapped really, caught in the other - like knowledge and
identity, as collapsed concepts, whoa. doesn't anything change? or is that
just ok? (ah yeeeep i remember when epistemology and ontology collapsed,
heh heh, heard a noise and thought yer nanna had fallen off the bidet
again... what a mess...)
I wonder if writing in the instant of writing can be a method for turning
away from what meanings might prewrite - if that makes sense...
i am trying to find a way to writing where the method of wording is a
language practice for tracing language as a movement distinct from thought
-
if historical materialism, and the time machine that is the leaking messy
human body, are spatially located, then it is possible to turn continuously
from one
to the other, without ever imposing temporal passages, ya?
for example,
in spatial language, i could relocate the same historical body writing
here, in this space of this moment of sudden GUILT i should be doing
something else...
and move to a memory-space which is actively being retrieved, i am thinking
now of k.d. lang, it is occurring as i write; i shook her hand, and scared
her publicist - but the point is, the space my body fills is both constant
and dispersed as i recall and move mentally to other temporal moments,
surfing my first wave - there time stood still: just as shaking k.d.'s hand
is a frozen moment, i can move from this space of writing and writing with
an active awareness of the writing; how many layers until i write so close
,
to the flesh of humanity that i draw blood ?
i am mired in this method of writing, because i think it is a way to write
that can express the historical character of identity, without temporally
dispersing it to "the past" -
that, too, is a crisis because the turning to the past is only done halfway,
so many get stuck in memory and nostalgia and pretend - but
the spatial body fills time, can be in time and in the past within that
same time, the mirrors facing the other - ultimately, what is missing is a
language
of identity that is humane - fleshy and not ashamed, hard or soft but not
hooked on endorphin rushes...
bah!!it is the hardest work, to work with ideas - mebbe that's why i seek
the body-context, because the body is a time machine that does not speak,
but if we could listen to it, and understand how we are spatiality related,
as an object that occupies a social existence and also fulfills a social
relation;, there may be a way to re-invest our sociality
with meaningful bodies of flesh and identities rather than meaningful ideas.
and now for my closing irony: i'm actually a hermit! a recluse!
a social clod! a loner. funny eh?
best regards
diane hodges
""""""""""""""""""""""" """""""""""""""""""""""""""""
When she walks,
the revolution's coming.
In her hips, there's revolution.
When she talks, I hear revolution.
In her kiss, I taste the revolution.
(by Kathleen Hanna: Riot Grrl)
******************************************
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia
faculty of graduate studies,
centre for the study of curriculum and instruction,
vancouver, british columbia, canada
email: dchodges who-is-at interchnage.ubc.ca