affective archives: to kvetch or not
i don't want to be the class kvetcher; i want to be the classy chick who knows how to set up her theoretical frame and build a rigorous scaffolding of words that make meaning and matter. I love Jose Munoz's "rigor-mortis" in his essay "Ephemera at Evidence". We talked about this essay in relation to Ann Cvetkovich's An Archive of Feelings in KK's course on Monday. We also talked about Afrofuturism: I wonder what a productive conversation would look like between these seemingly dichotomous discursive terrains.
We started talking about AC's theoretical frame, and I don't know if we answered the questions. She firmly places her study within the larger bodies of knowledge on Trauma studies and in particular all the work written on the Holocaust. T and I wondered about U.S. racial histories and collective violence of slavery, its history to studying trauma as a collective and lived experience.
Some of the questions we posed to the class for discussion:
Tasneem Siddiqui and Deborah Alkamano
February 11, 2008
AMSTUDIES 552
Discussion Questions
How do we talk about whiteness and racial formation/constructions within An Archive of Feelings? How does Cvetkovich archive the intersectional?
We want to tease out some of the ways in which she sets up her historical framework. She contextualizes her readings and understanding of trauma through the lens of the Holocaust? How does this create a problematic in terms of U.S. histories and identities? Does AC equalize traumas: what does that eclipse and what does that encompass?
AC uses Freud’s death drive and pleasure principle to examine butch femme cultures. AC tries to take trauma out of the pathology paradigm. Trauma is a product of modernity and Avery Gordon “ghost of modernity”—Trauma is fleeting and intangible. How does her project take up these issues in ways that are productive?
How does she archive feelings? How does her argument congeal (does it?) around varying kinds of cultural objects? Does the privileging of affect make for an effective counter-public?
Our colleague, Anjali Nath, thought AF did not provide a way to talk about materiality or social movements/justice. What do you think?
Or, as Professor Keeling asked us, “what does the critical insight that there is no outside to Capital bring to an engagement with subcultures”?
_________________________________________
February 25th after class thoughts:
My favorite chapter was chapter three and apparently that is the one chapter that seems to be the most problematic in terms of argument and execution. I guess the Michigan context kind of piqued my interest. Also how does one heal from repetition. I heard about Repetitive Eye therapy and it is not to take too dangerous of a (serious and deadening) turn/tone to follow how one finds ways out of the labryinth of doom and gloom and numbness. How does one feel (again)? find feelings and not smash people and places?
as i said in class, i think this book is wonderful esp in terms of methodology and a myriad of textured readings of varying kinds of cultural objects that one can and cannot touch. I see her talk about race in relation to black and brown bodies and analyze class/trash as something in relation to white bodies. These readings render a limitation to her insights into Boys Don't Cry and Bastard out of Carolina since AC does NOT talk about whiteness, racial formation, and/or white privilege.
In her ACT UP oral history chapter (six?), she lets the lesbian participants create a very romantic picture of their work in the New York chapter. Only white liberals/"progressives" get all psyched to do CD/civil disobedience. Going to jail is something that a person w/ power and privilege can create/see as an option or as a radical act of disobedience. Others (POC) would have more fear to come under the arm of the state--risk life and limb. That part reminded me of anti-war activists who wanted to do CD for its own sake or who focused too much on which media would 'cover' the protest. if media were not there, god forbid, we would not be getting any play, any attention, and therefore our actions made no sense.
btw, i love this book even though, on a third read, i see its many issues. i still would love to write something that encompasses activist praxis, oral histories, affect, and personal memories. I think she set out a very ambitious project that borders on recording the ineffable and the untouchable. how brave. sentimental music. violins for sure. or clashes of civility: just keep livin': Le Tigre
class, crass, trash, smash: What's Touchy and Who feels?
nayj
We started talking about AC's theoretical frame, and I don't know if we answered the questions. She firmly places her study within the larger bodies of knowledge on Trauma studies and in particular all the work written on the Holocaust. T and I wondered about U.S. racial histories and collective violence of slavery, its history to studying trauma as a collective and lived experience.
Some of the questions we posed to the class for discussion:
Tasneem Siddiqui and Deborah Alkamano
February 11, 2008
AMSTUDIES 552
Discussion Questions
How do we talk about whiteness and racial formation/constructions within An Archive of Feelings? How does Cvetkovich archive the intersectional?
We want to tease out some of the ways in which she sets up her historical framework. She contextualizes her readings and understanding of trauma through the lens of the Holocaust? How does this create a problematic in terms of U.S. histories and identities? Does AC equalize traumas: what does that eclipse and what does that encompass?
AC uses Freud’s death drive and pleasure principle to examine butch femme cultures. AC tries to take trauma out of the pathology paradigm. Trauma is a product of modernity and Avery Gordon “ghost of modernity”—Trauma is fleeting and intangible. How does her project take up these issues in ways that are productive?
How does she archive feelings? How does her argument congeal (does it?) around varying kinds of cultural objects? Does the privileging of affect make for an effective counter-public?
Our colleague, Anjali Nath, thought AF did not provide a way to talk about materiality or social movements/justice. What do you think?
Or, as Professor Keeling asked us, “what does the critical insight that there is no outside to Capital bring to an engagement with subcultures”?
_________________________________________
February 25th after class thoughts:
My favorite chapter was chapter three and apparently that is the one chapter that seems to be the most problematic in terms of argument and execution. I guess the Michigan context kind of piqued my interest. Also how does one heal from repetition. I heard about Repetitive Eye therapy and it is not to take too dangerous of a (serious and deadening) turn/tone to follow how one finds ways out of the labryinth of doom and gloom and numbness. How does one feel (again)? find feelings and not smash people and places?
as i said in class, i think this book is wonderful esp in terms of methodology and a myriad of textured readings of varying kinds of cultural objects that one can and cannot touch. I see her talk about race in relation to black and brown bodies and analyze class/trash as something in relation to white bodies. These readings render a limitation to her insights into Boys Don't Cry and Bastard out of Carolina since AC does NOT talk about whiteness, racial formation, and/or white privilege.
In her ACT UP oral history chapter (six?), she lets the lesbian participants create a very romantic picture of their work in the New York chapter. Only white liberals/"progressives" get all psyched to do CD/civil disobedience. Going to jail is something that a person w/ power and privilege can create/see as an option or as a radical act of disobedience. Others (POC) would have more fear to come under the arm of the state--risk life and limb. That part reminded me of anti-war activists who wanted to do CD for its own sake or who focused too much on which media would 'cover' the protest. if media were not there, god forbid, we would not be getting any play, any attention, and therefore our actions made no sense.
btw, i love this book even though, on a third read, i see its many issues. i still would love to write something that encompasses activist praxis, oral histories, affect, and personal memories. I think she set out a very ambitious project that borders on recording the ineffable and the untouchable. how brave. sentimental music. violins for sure. or clashes of civility: just keep livin': Le Tigre
class, crass, trash, smash: What's Touchy and Who feels?
nayj
posted by DangerousDerrida at Monday, February 25, 2008
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