I think I agree. Not sure about the mathematics, but I think Bellmer is
dealing with almost the same absenting as Lederer. Sandy
>>> Alan Sondheim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 09/04/06 3:24 PM >>>
One thing I wonder re: below, to the extent I understand it, and
without
of course having read Bellmer - how much of 'this' comes into play in
general; again I go back to The Absent Body - how we, in order to
survive
and comprehend, ignore large parts of our body sensations/psyche in
everyday activities. Does all this come to play in 'just looking'?
Perhaps
one reason mathematics has attraction for some is its relationship
_not_
to the body, not even to the _not body,_ nor to superego, such as it
might
be, etc. etc. - but a relation solely of internal consistencies?
- Alan, musing probably wrongly here
On Sun, 3 Sep 2006, Charles Baldwin wrote:
> I am reading _Little Anatomy of the Physical Unconscious or The
Antomy
> of the Image_ by Hans Bellmer. This is the English translation of
his
> only text, relating more or less to his artistic practice. I read it
> quickly before, now more slowly. It is a skeleton key to cyberspace.
> Bellmer begins:
>
> "I believe that the various modes of expression: postures, gestures,
> actions, sounds, words, the creation of graphics or object... all
result
> from the same set of psycho-physiological mechanisms and obey the
same
> law of birth. The basic expression, one that has no preconceived
> objective, is a reflex. To what need, to what physical impulse does
it
> respond?
>
> For example, among all the various reflexes provoked by a toothache,
> let us examine the violent contraction of the muscles of the hand
and
> fingers, a contraction so intense it compels the fingernails to
pierce
> the skin. This clenched fist is an artificial focal point of
excitation,
> a virtual 'tooth' that creates a diversion by directing the flow of
> blood and nerve impulses away from the actual center of pain to
lessen
> it. The toothache is thus divided in half at the hand's expense. The
> visible expression that results is its 'logical pathos.'
>
> Ought we to conlcude from this that the most violent as well as the
> most imperceptivle reflexive bodily change - whether occuring in the
> face, a limb, the tongue, or a muscle - would be simply explicable as
a
> propensity to confuse and bisect a pain through the creation of a
> virtual center of excitement? This can be regarded as a certainty,
which
> thereby compels us to imagine the desired continuity of our
expressive
> life in the form of a series of deliberate transports leading from
the
> malaise to its image. Expression with its pleasure component is a
> displaced pain and a deliverance."
>
> Now, in describing these virtual centers of excitement - we might
say,
> nodes or links, intensities in the net - Bellmer invokes a mapping
(or
> raster) of "perceptually mobile interoceptive diagrams." He
emphasizes
> the oddness or perversity of these diagrams. They are built around
the
> permissable and forbidden, around superimpositions and
representations,
> in short, by -jectivities and coding process leading to amalgams such
as
> Bellmer's famous doll or the "sex-armpit" he uses as an example in
this
> book. The process is two-fold: introjection of the dangerous object,
> then projection onto perception (and onto organs of perception; "the
> image of sex having slid over the eye"). We do not see images of the
> virtual but we see with the virtual. The body images seen are images
of
> my body. "I see" means "I see with myself." This virtualization and
> mapping occurs at all sites of experience, where the superhuman
quality
> of perception through part objects results from the projected body,
e.g.
> "the power to see with one's hand," as the mouse/hand crosses the
screen
> is like the toothache Bellmer begins with.
>
> Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel describes Bellmer's art (and so his theory
of
> the image) as "a universe submitted to the total abolitions of the
> limits between the objects and even between their molecules, a
universe
> which has become totally malleable ('Anything can be done')." We
should
> apply this description to the cool neutrality of the digital.
Elsewhere
> she adds: "In the universe I am describing, the world has been
engulged
> in a gigantic grinding machine (the digestive tract) and has been
> reduced to homogeneous excremental particles. Then all is
equivalent.
> The distinction between 'before' and 'after' has disappeared, as,
too,
> of course, has history."
>
> Bellmer's model for analyzing the image and the physical unconscious
is
> linguistic. He invokes palindromes, where reversibility is the
mechanism
> of pleasure rather than meaning. He intends this as the correlate of
the
> image-amalgam (e.g. "sex-armpit") as virtual center of excitement.
> Physical reflex disappears into the image; in fact, the image is the
> absence of the reflex, and its virtuality and excitement are built
on
> this absence. The image is cleansed of the body but just this makes
the
> entire image a sexual hieroglyph. We are dealing with a perverse
> mechanism, in Chasseguet-Smirgel's terms, where the image seen only
> confirms the machine that we inhabit. Here, the binding and
totalizing
> effect of symbolic processes becomes the source of value. The
parallel,
> I think, is the continuous stream of ascii characters as an end in
> itself, or the fetishization of algorithmic processing in digital
> poetry.
>
> I finished the first chapter. I'll read the next one later and
comment
> more (where there's additional discussion, I think, of language -
> specifically anagrams - and I'll consider this in relation to
> Baudrillard's symbolic exchange theory).
>
> Sandy
>
>
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