Comments on: Nice cup of tea

By: Pum

Pum — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:54:56 +0000

Hi laura – I’ve finally got round to looking at your online adventures.It makes alot more sense now i’ve been initiated into internet protocol- this is the picture that intrigued me – because I love a puzzle too – especially visual ones – From my scant reading of Lacan , and our fragments of discussions – including what you were saying this morning in class to us about your research being essentially asking a question about why your mother has so many pairs of shoes !!!! – I am wondering – Have you not done something remarkable in this photo – a wee bit akin to taking a picture of a specktor – yes have you taken a picture of object(a) – and therefor a photograph of the elusive “desire” that you were speaking of ? I can’t read spanish so this is probably what you were discussing – but what pixilated me ,was who is looking at what I the viewer see what you see but I also see the not-you looking at the shoe the shoe holds centre stage but you look at the shoe throw the camera – and this coupled with the reflections and layers caught in the glass makes for a very ingenius piece of camera work – just stunning multivalent image . I’m seriously tempted to read more Lacan . bye bye .pum

By: Laura Gonzalez

Laura Gonzalez — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:11:13 +0000

I really like that fact that you called it a mystery. That is what seduction is, most of the time! I share some of your disregard for postmodern literature (especially Irigaray, although definitely nor Kristeva!) but I think that Postmodernism has been greatly misrepresented. It is a way of thinking, of creating a more fluid knowledge and I think Sokal missed that point. He even said Lacan’s mathematics were wrong. Where? What mathematics? It’s kind of not mathematics and that is the point, surely!

Your mentions of Adorno and Cortazar are aboslutely right. Do you remember chapter 73 from Rayuela? It starts with a mystery too… See the quote below. Besos from Glasgow and say hello to my beloved Barcelona, who always treats me so well.

In one of his books Morelli talks about a Neapolitan who spend years sitting in the doorway of his house looking at a screw on the ground. At night he would pick it up and put it under his mattress. The screw was at first a laugh, a jest, a communal irritation, a neighborhood council, a mark of civil duties unfulfilled, finally a shrugging of shoulders, peace, the screw was peace, no one could go along the street without looking out of the corner of his eye at the screw and feeling that it was peace. The fellow drop dead of a stroke and the screw disappeared as soon as the neighbors got there. One of them has it; perhaps he takes it out secretly and looks at it, puts it away again and goes off to the factory feeling something that he does not understand, an obscure reproval. He only calms down when he takes out the screw and looks at it, stays looking at it until he hears footsteps and has to put it away quickly. Morelli thought that the screw must have been something else, a god or something like that. Too easy a solution. Perhaps the error was in accepting the fact that the object was a screw simply because it was shaped like a screw. Picasso takes a toy car and turns it into the chin of a baboon. The Neapolitan was most likely an idiot, but he also might have been the inventor of a world. From the screw to an eye, from an eye to a star…

By: Sera

Sera — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:54:57 +0000

You look pretty nice on that pic, that is for sure. Let me say so, before beginning a very little,
a tiny discussion on the mystery suggested.

Well, I am not a lacanian nor have I never read Lacan and rarely PostModernist guys that nature. I
am convinced -or nearly- that that sort of thing -that sort of texts- are mainly literature, many
times in the bad sense. I still remember Irigaray (or was it Kristeva?) stating, wondering: Einstein’s equation
E=mc2, is it sexuated? It would be hard to find such another example of the nonsense of a bigger
part of PostModern Thories and writings. Impossible not to remember here Sokal’ s joke, that
demolished -at least for a while- PostM theories. I think, in some way, PostModernists haven’ t
recovered yet.

But returning to the mystery of your nice photo….We could recall Cortazar’ s Las Babas del Diablo
or Antonionis Blow Up. We could enlarge it or open the angle and discover things which are essencial
on the mystery’ s explanation. On why the photo (it is) is fascinating and talking and insinuating.
We could study the combination of elements or objects showed in order to get to a conclusion.

I dont know. Perhaps I am talking nonsense, but I I think the mistery…there is no mystery. The
pic is beautiful, smart. It touches our spinal cord, as Nabokov’ s would say. But why? We should
get close to Aesthetic Theory to reach a conclusion, a satisfyng one, I guess.

Besazos from Barcelona,