On (severe) Pain (dialog between Sandy Baldwin and Alan Sondheim)
In relation to pain: Inexpressibility occurs because of the difficulty of
expressing interior states that might not have a clearcut symptomology (as
thirst does, for example) - and also because severe pain derails speech and
On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Maria Damon wrote:
Is there then (I'm sort of assuming the answer is yes, but asking anyway in
order to make it part of the fabric of the conversation) a way in which
lamentation is also critique as well as community self-constitution, as in
Lamentations?
Maria, I
For me the lament is a kind of collective catharsis, as the mourning
itself. I has been in Palestine several times and see and listened to
the collective mourning of the women when some of their relatives or
friends are killed or buried, a kind of powerful roaring, not the
claiming not the
I wish I was there to witness it...
I think collective catharsis could be the very foundation of the political
community of citizens.
On Oct 4, 2012, at 1:51 PM, Ana Valdés wrote:
For me the lament is a kind of collective catharsis, as the mourning
itself. I has been in Palestine several
which Lamentations are you refering to?
(not Martha Graham's Lamentation?)
Book of Lamentations in English
All Sandy and I are/were on about, I think, is the silence and the
obdurate that occurs in relaton to severe pain; I'm thinking for example
of my mother shortly before her death,
While aware of some of the lamentations explored by artists such as Martha
Graham (who is not my favorite although I have a great respect for her) -- what
I am working towards is a connection with the older, before now, before any
specific time, lamentation. My dancer actually took me to
Yes, when I mentioned Lamentations, I meant the Hebrew Bible. Old.
Grieving for ones city, ones polis, ones people. Also, it seems that
this is *not* where you were going, Monika, a sense of grief over ones
own possible complicity, real or imagined... remorse.
On 10/4/12 5:55 PM, Monika Weiss
yes, if I understood you correctly Maria, you say that I am not trying to work
with grief over ones own complicity or remorse. I am more invested in the
notion and symbolic power as well as real experience of communal grief -- this
is what oppressive systems fear most -- the symbolic power of
I think mourning and lament are related to the ceremonies of the
death. When I did my research as anthropologist I travelled to Mexico
and did a fieldwork in Yucatan, the old Maya empire. Their funerary
pyramids, specially in Palenque, were very similar to the Egyptian
pyramids. Many scenes
mourning, lament, are acts, they're intended, they're cultural
expressions - as long as one can mourn...
but what happens when mourning, lament, end, not through desire
but because the unspeakable becomes manifest - i think this is
where celan comes in for example, or the spaces in jabes'
The nearest I was from a massgrave was Jenin, 2002, people were eerie
silent around the hole wich was Palestine's ground zero. Under the
hole were dismembered people, restaurantes blown in pieces, ashes,
bones, lonely shoes.
I wrote some texts from there, http://www.this.is/jenin
In the total
Ana, thank you for this and for the site. I've spent some time with it; as
with Monika's work, it's overwhelming.
I have never had these experiences; I've been shot at, but from a
distance. My own grief is sourceless in a sense, and selfish.
I do understand about the silence. And the
From a text I wrote about my current ongoing this year project Shrouds.
Do cities remember? Maps of cities are flat, yet their histories contain
vertical strata of events. Where in the topography and consciousness of a city
can we locate its memory? Maps of the Polish city Zielona Góra depict
Control Anita Berber Sebastian Droste
99[[]][[
999 control sequences
http://www.alansondheim.org/AnitaDroste.mp4 thinking
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