philosophical slapstick
while reading the phenomenal Pitch and Revelation: Reconfigurations of Reading, Poetry and Philosophy through the Work of Jay Wright i came across an intriguing citation that revealed to me a mode of practice and inquiry that i was unaware of: "performance philosophy." i felt a thrill, because the phrase seems to fit what i do (and what wright does), describing a validating context i thought i would not be able to access given my distance from academic framings.
but what really got me to sit up and take notice was the title of the article cited: "wittgenstein's slapstick." how could i resist?
i'm still processing both texts, but i recommend them if you're at all interested in what they embrace and synthesise. both can be downloaded and/or read from the links.
Jay--is this the text that contains Daniel Woody's essay on Jay Wright--"The Radical Performance of Getting Lost"????
ReplyDeleteWoody is our friend, and he had some contributor copies shipped here last summer because he was moving, and he sent me his essay on a Jay Wright play (I'm so flustered right now that I can't remember which anthology it'll appear in)--and, actually, at the time, I had intended to write about Woody's idea and Wright's play in conjunction with this book I was reading about "shoddy" which is/can be loads of discarded textiles re-purposed into "new" textile (but it can contain all the dreams, nightmares, germs, and histories of every random textile-association contained inside of it). It's rags, basically.
Anyway, I ran out of time/fell behind/got distracted, but here's the thread I was hoping to follow from an email I sent Woody:
after i read your chapter, i began reading a book about shoddy and have been thinking about your simultaneous multiple geographic spaces in the wright and conjuring a kind of overlap and impossible reuse of time/space and something something still thinking.
Anyway, read Woody's essay; he's brilliant.
I might try to do a giant synthesis/re-weaving of the Woody ideas, my feeling about Wright's comedy, and your semiotic thickness in performance!
giant synthesis! lol i'm basically using this platform to do a giant synthesis of you name it! i love how we bounce slowly off each other & ourselves. this is a great project!💚💚
DeleteJay mentions a different book, a monograph by Matthew Goulish and Will Daddario--but funnily enough, I *am* mentioned in an anecdote at the beginning of this book (that I read Jay Wright's work at a blissfully slow pace of a page per two days). But yes, Olivia, the book to which I contributed an essay is here: https://www.kenningeditions.com/shop/glimmerings-and-constellations-creative-and-critical-responses/
ReplyDeleteloving that we are all on similar wavelengths~~~i've just had my mind blown by Levi Bryant's essay on Barad's "Performative Ontology" https://www.semanticscholar.org/reader/41746046ac70192ef4728f0e12ce128e8ded0b7f
hey woody--good to know you're here! ha, i remember that anecdote from the text. it stuck with me because of my own practice lately of verying my reading speeds through various reading situations, & deliberately choosing to slow my pace through poetry, so it made me want to return to wright's poetry with a very deliberate slow pace. it's hard though, because i get carried away by enthusiasm!
Deletei have the book where your essay appears--kenning has been sending me gratis copies of all the wright plays & related books. i'm totally enamored of the plays, though again it's hard for me to avoid just careening through when i get excited about the worlds they make. one thing that fascinates me in particular is the recurrence of the sound/object of the bell. i'm surprised that none of the observations i've read of his works seem to comment on this, though it is present throughout. maybe i'll write something here about that!