Monday, June 09, 2008

Spaces: What's In "Between" and "Beyond"?

The forceful concept of "betweens" brought to mind the writings of Homi Bhabha, the Chester D. Tripp Professor of Humanities at the University of Chicago. Allow me to quote from the introduction to The Location of Culture (1994),

It is the trope of our times to locate the question of culture in the realm of the beyond. At the century's edge, we are less exercised by annihilation - the death of the author - or epiphany - the birth of the 'subject'. Our existence today is marked by a tenebrous sense of survival, living on the borderlines of the 'present', for which there seems to be no proper name other than the current and controversial shiftiness of the prefix 'post': postmodernism, postcolonialism, postfeminism....

The 'beyond' is neither a new horizon, nor a leaving behind of the past.... Beginnings and endings may be the sustaining myths of the middle years; but in the fin de siècle, we find ourselves in the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion. For there is a sense of disorientation, a disturbance of direction, in the 'beyond': an exploratory, restless movement caught so well in the French rendition of the words au-delà - here and there, on all sides, fort/da, hither and thither, back and forth.'

The move away from the singularities of 'class' or 'gender' as primary conceptual and organizational categories, has resulted in an awareness of the subject positions - of race, gender, generation, institutional location, geopolitical locale, sexual orientation - that inhabit any claim to identity in the modern world. What is theoretically innovative, and politically crucial, is the need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences.

These 'in-between' spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood - singular or communal - that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself.
It is in the emergence of the interstices - the overlap and displacement of domains of difference - that the intersubjective and collective experiences of nationness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated. How are subjects formed 'in-between', or in excess of, the sum of the I parts' of difference (usually intoned as race/class/gender, etc.)? How do strategies of representation or empowerment come to be formulated in the competing claims of communities where, despite shared histories of deprivation and discrimination, the exchange of values, meanings and priorities may not always be collaborative and dialogical, but may be profoundly antagonistic, conflictual and even incommensurable?

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"What is theoretically innovative, and politically crucial, is the need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences."

Yes, this is exactly what I think is needed, and this,

"These 'in-between' spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood - singular or communal - that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself.
It is in the emergence of the interstices - the overlap and displacement of domains of difference - that the intersubjective and collective experiences of nationness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated."

Is how it is to be done.

(Of course after he makes this statement, he raises a number of important how-to questions and I don't want to ignore those.)

I think what I on the hopeful lookout for is the emergence of these interstices, these in-betweens, interfaces and zones of negotiation.

It's not a matter of lashing out at each other for not being "flowing" and "becoming" enough in this or that comment we might make. Or attempting to spur each other on into joyous vibrant flowing and becoming (which probably manifests, to the extent it can manifest in a blog as a token of impotence and shallowness); or conforming in agreement or agreeableness.

--Yusef

5:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for your prompt reaction, Yusef.

Your write,

I think what I on the hopeful lookout for is the emergence of these interstices, these in-betweens, interfaces and zones of negotiation.

YES. I would welcome your further reflections on this.

It's not a matter of lashing out at each other for not being "flowing" and "becoming" enough in this or that comment we might make. Or attempting to spur each other on into joyous vibrant flowing and becoming (which probably manifests, to the extent it can manifest in a blog as a token of impotence and shallowness); or conforming in agreement or agreeableness.

NO, of course not. It's never been a personal issue for me.

Let's explore together. This is what this has always been about, and always will be.

Orla

5:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I didn't take it personally, either.

But I would like to by and by present you with my interpretation of what was going on there. I think there is an interesting tension between what you were saying in "overcoming of unreason, parts I and II" and some of your other posts, e.g. "from square boxes to fluid plasmas," which gives an appearance of contradictory demands on yourself, others, and perhaps on thought (but perhaps you can show why its not contradictory, or how,if it is contradictory, that doesn't matter to what you are trying to accomplish.)

--Yusef

6:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks again, Yusef.

You write,

But I would like to by and by present you with my interpretation of what was going on there. I think there is an interesting tension between what you were saying in "overcoming of unreason, parts I and II" and some of your other posts, e.g. "from square boxes to fluid plasmas," which gives an appearance of contradictory demands on yourself, others, and perhaps on thought.

You may very well be right that there are "contradictory demands" etc. But that is really what I think we should move "Beyond" (or should that be "Between"? :-))

What is really creative is the "interesting tension" you mention. Isn't this what we should be elaborating upon?

Yusef, precisely BECAUSE we approach thinking let's say: a bit differently, is there ground for creative flows and becomings.

Your reflections and contradictions and oppositions and manifestations are immensely inspiring.

We don't need any meetings of minds, rather we should aspire to the dialectics of thought.

Orla

6:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You are using metaphors in "from square boxes to fluid plasmas" and perhaps you could elaborate on that a bit.

Is a square box a metaphor for rationality? If not rationality, then what?

In that post, you list some mental operations, e.g. isolating, stopping and freezing-- are these "unreason"? How so?

--Yusef

6:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yusef, as I wrote in my post we usually treat philosophy as the history of it and then look at a series of "system-builders" who each have their closed vocabularies of thinking. Then another guy comes along and present his system that replaces the former, etc.

What I was trying to say was that we ought to open up - from boxes to plasmas - or to put it differently - replace succession with coexistence, or maybe deterritorializing philosophy.

That's why I find Deleuze's philosophizing as the wind so appealing.

Even if we try to freeze or isolate concepts like rationaloity and totality they always "leak" and slip away.

The painter does not paint on an empty canvas, and neither does the writer write on a blank page, but the canvas and page is always so covered with preexisting, preestablished cliches that it is first necessary to erase, to clean, to flatten, even to shred, so as to let in a breath of air from the chaos that brings us the vision.

(What Is Philosophy, p. 204)

- and the philosopher? He is "the concept's friend; he is potentiality of the concept."

Orla

1:03 PM  
Blogger Christoffer said...

Orla wrote "This is what this has always been about, and always will be."



Orla, how can you possibly know what this blog will be in the future? And more arrogantly, claiming to know what it has _always_ been.

In my oppinion, you using language in a careless way. Dangerously close to nihilism.

10:25 AM  

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