Archive Fever

Something I wrote back in 2005. Still struggling with the paralysis.

We are always attempting to find a way out of that 'originary darkness.' The claim is always that we are learning from the mistakes of the past and that the dominant paradigm we embrace is somehow 'forward' thinking. We speak of the past as something we can learn from. It's either a mistake not to be repeated or an achievement to be honored. And yet we forget that every movement in this discipline of thinking is one cycle built upon another, mistake upon mistake or achievement upon achievement. It really does depend upon your interpretation. For instance, I posit that philosophy in America has always been pretty much a bastardization. Not philosophy. Not really. Rather, while continental (European) thought operates as impetus, pretext, or guide, American 'philosophy' functions as accomplice. It's either adversarial thought assimilated by a system or thought created by said system in the form of state propaganda. To be fair to American thought, philosophy has been cheaply utilized by other states in times gone by. It's just that never has philosophical discourse ever been so overwhelmed and ultimately silenced in this modern age. The task of thinking requires a response to September 11, 2001. One could say that this has occurred everywhere except in the United States. In the United States, all discourse has acted as reaction rather than thought. There has been no 'moving beyond.' The impulse has been a Messianic urge to make the world safe for democracy and in all actuality Capitalism. We regard Capitalism as a permeating structure in the same vein as structures of the unconscious, the church, history, and language. The philosophical task from the 1960's through the 1990's was to break into small camps and argue the weight and impact of these various structures. The complaint being of course that these varying camps were all theory and no praxis, that the only thing being glorified was process. Brief language was paid to beginnings, real beginnings that is. When utilized, the language was utilized to say, "We're all acted upon, so while we try to think our way out this box, we may as well play." Unfortunately, such playfulness is no match for a fundamentalist movement's will-to-power or a state's Messianic urge. So, I beg to ask the question of "where do we go from here?" I would say we go to the beginning. When I say 'the beginning', I'm speaking of the real beginning . . . the source. I'm speaking of sex. I'm speaking of woman. Of course the mainstream response would be that this approach cheapens the discourse. I won't even get into this, mainly because mainstream thought is by nature sexphobic and hostile to woman. And my personal rationalization is that I've always been driven by my fascination with society's and my own conception of femininity. I'm a photographer of 'beautiful' women. My art screams that I do more, say more. The hovering beauty with nothing to say isn't enough. If there was to be a catchphrase for this, it would be: " . . . because beauty has something to say." Then, of course, there is the personal motto I list on my web portfolio: "I'm the writer who became a photographer to better tell a story." I peruse a lengthy list of my journals (some I'll be utilizing here) and it saddens me to say there hasn't been much written since the first half of 1992. September 11, 2001 and the following 3 1/2 years paralyzed me more than I'd like to admit. The last 3 1/2 years have been about a clueless, ineffectual praxis. So, here we go, to the beginning. It is, after all, what Martin Heidegger writes: "Perhaps philosophy shows most forcibly and persistently how much Man is a beginner. Philosiphizing means nothing other than being a beginner."