The affective experience of the aesthetic is certainly one of the most valuable experiences we can have. While I have been to the Johnson Museum before, I find that every visitation (just as in every reading of a text) allows other things to reveal themselves to me. Understanding the infinite meanings articulated in every artwork that we can never begin to encapsulate or master is one of the guiding principles of my own academic (and personal) work. What we can see within the work is constituted by the archive we carry within ourselves. Nonetheless, it was really amazing to be able to hear what other people saw within the works that I have so often passed my myself. Professor Schwarz illuminated the immense power of art using some familiar approaches from his classes (“always the text, always historicize”).
Author Archives: sel252
Democracy, and the Possibility of Justice
Democracy constitutes itself on its own fragility: opening itself up towards the infinite threat of destruction that begins from within. Indeed, the greatest destructive forces are opened up by its very protection of its greatest values. While this paradoxical movement of democracy has rendered it a question with which philosophy continually engages, it certainly applies more broadly to our own political period of increased polarization (i.e., we often value free speech until it begins to discord with our beliefs). Most of the questions polarizing us most stem from how we can attend to the responsibility to preserve our democracy (as in where we locate the possibility of a “corruption”, a “contamination”, a “disruption”). It is striking how easily forgettable this point becomes in periods of high polarization. All arguments are reversible (whether we buy into its opposite or not). Nonetheless, it was really quite valuable to revisit questions of political campaigning, the role of social media and fallacious advertisements, and issues of gerrymandering. I was left with a few questions (To what degree do discussions of political campaigning and electioneering reassert groups of minorities as monolithic?), this was definitely a valuable discussion.
Sprechgesang, or the liminal space between song and speech
Attending the Playlist of Life event was certainly interesting on account of the directions taken by the conversation. It is really fascinating to observe where we begin to find things as indissociable, as necessarily bound (as in Kanye and the question of politics/religion). The central question seemed to circle around the extent to which the political and ethical exert themselves over different aspects of the aesthetic. Is there anything outside this political question? Do we have a definitive moral/ethical imperative to talk about the political in all spaces? (I certainly have my own thoughts about these questions, especially coming from French and German theoretical traditions, but these are questions that are becoming unavoidable that I think we all have to ask ourselves.) While it is certain that we could have spent the time listing out our favorite music at this moment (i.e., The Velvet Underground, The Magnetic Fields, etc.) ad infinitum and that might have been more comfortable for us, I think we should be able to find a great deal of value in the topics discussed and the views discussed whether we agree with them or not. In exposing ourselves to views we don’t agree with as in this discussion/debate, I think we affirm our responsibility to attend to the views of others and to understand the meaning(s) of our own views. The most important and significant experiences, I think, expose us to what is unknown or uncomfortable, which is perhaps not to distant. It seems fitting, then, that music, the playlist of life, is always a matter of survival.
Not yet real
They experience the world from above.
It is as though none of the Tennenbaum children feel quite real, hovering above reality. This experience of their distance from reality exists both for the viewer and for the characters themselves. Their exceptionality has raised them and, in doing so, it has left them lonely, directionless, and empty. They live as specters in the shadows of their former successes. Their brilliance serves as a double bind: they struggle to live with their talents and they struggle to live without their talents. Even further, they are exhausted, despite their stagnation. Their unhappiness seems abyssal and leads only to further narcissism and inwardness, searching for meaning only to further enclose themselves. This film called to mind one of my favorite books, J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. Both works concern the search for meaning in the wake of exceptionality, the overwhelming desire to escape oneself and to discover something higher, the existential crises that arise from suffocating interiors that threaten to swallow us whole. Most importantly, these works constitute the opening of a possibility of something beyond this interior struggle for survival.
That and a memory that refuses to be forgotten
She has been here before.
It is clear from the unease and disquiet in her eyes that she is terrified. Adelaide’s terror of the “to come” derives from a knowledge: the certainty of an incalculable encounter that is coming. She tried to evade her past and this encounter, living her life in deferral. She has carried with her a knowledge of the tethered as one of the tethered: each self has an other to which they are bound. They live only in separation, the one buried beneath the other, until Adelaide’s return to Santa Cruz. At the encounter with the other and the self, one must die, neither can live with the other: only one has the possibility of survival. Peele attempts to undermine what we conceive of as natural, given, authentic, or organic. Adelaide, as one of the tethered, adapted to the world above ground, moving from the silence of aphasia and learning to speak. To Peele, we can learn ourselves otherwise and there is a certain demand for vigilance within ourselves. The question, then, is why America. Perhaps the most obvious response is the false narratives of progress we place our unyielding faith in. We believe in a teleological end, a grand movement towards absolute knowledge and improvement which is all but mythological. History, if anything, an affirmation of placements and displacements of racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, etc. We believe ourselves to be the one above while we ourselves be acting as the one below. Peele’s film speaks most to our responsibility to the other which begins with the most uncanny other: the one which has the greatest proximity to us of which we know nothing, who deposits a memory in Us that refuses to be forgotten.
The promise of memories to come
What does it mean to support another as they experience an event which is for us without referent? What does it mean to bear witness to affects which are irreducible to any signifiable or representable system? What sort of responsibility comes with this fidelity to the other?
These fundamental questions about our relation to others pronounce that we are always already concerned about the conditions of possibility for the survival of the other. This possibility of care is the very possibility that grounds us in the world, that in being produced by others allows us to produce ourselves. Addressing the other is a matter governed, above all else, by material fragility and temporal finitude. In other words, our relation to others is marked by the threat of losing them in their absolute singularity. Every relation pronounces the possibility of a mourning to come. While this is an ostensibly melancholy notion, it is a profoundly freeing notion precisely because in recognizing the possibility of the loss of the other, we are able to more fully embrace the being of the other- to recognize the love which marks our relation to the other, to recognize the part of them within ourselves.
Inhaling the blustery October air, the ochre leaves trailing my every step, I was inundated by fragmented visions of memory: the desolate halls, the infinite expanse of white, the oscillating green of the monitor that I had convinced myself would be endless, and, most of all, the pallid face of my grandfather whose gaze breathed out in blank exhaustion. In these scenes of ineffable pain, I witness myself as the witness. I am not myself nor am I any other- I watch as though on a spectral plane, feeling just as powerless as I had been then having to say goodbye. Sighing at the threat of tears, I gazed at the vast expanse of people around me. I wasn’t alone. I was surrounded by survivors and witnesses, by strength and hope, by remembrance and celebration. Suddenly, I began to remember who my grandfather was and not the diagnosis which would ultimately take his life- his kindness, his warmth, his dedication to others, his knowledge, and the measureless importance he had and continues to have in my life along with the realization that I will always carry his memory with me- he will always be here. Having the opportunity to participate in this gathering, to speak with survivors, to support those who are fighting cancer as well as those who are still experiencing the effects of cancer in their everyday lives was unspeakably important for me. There is nothing more extraordinary than the infinite love and care that one community can contain.
The Coming Community
Where does the constitution of a community begin? Or rather, how does the constitution of a community happen? Is it always already given: does being human always imply being with the Other? Or does membership exist in the nexus of becoming with the potentiality to be or not be, something that demands investment?
From Freudian psychoanalysis to Agambenian biopolitics, the question of the community is a question of the singularity, care, commitment, and responsibility. To be a part of a community is to affirm and promise the other, to pronounce a certain fidelity to the other.
Reflecting on the Rose Café, I am reminded of these central questions of community beyond the realm of the theoretical and within the space of the actual. Amidst the ceaseless pace of classes, coursework, and extracurriculars, it is unbelievably easy to lose yourself and others in the immeasurable demands of the university. Yet, the event was an important reminder of the diverse community we are a part of as students of Cornell living in Ithaca. Such an opportunity enabled me to engage with brilliant and accomplished people and to appreciate all that being a student at Cornell has given me. These deceptively commonplace encounters were laden with meaning and always seemed to arc towards the possibilities of the future. Despite our vastly different backgrounds ranging from architecture to conservation, Rose House Fellows were willing to invest their time in affirming my hopes and dreams and in telling me about some of their own. In creating this space, the Fellows reminded us of the worth and power of our voices. The experience reminded me of the importance of listening and the responsibility we have to make sure the voices of others can be heard. It seems like no coincidence, then, that many people will point out that gorge, in French, means throat, and that Ithaca is a place of homecoming. In Ithaca, there is a home for us, a community to support us, and a place to be heard. And in the very same place, we have the power to make others feel more at home, to welcome them into a community, and to listen to their voices.