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Transgression, subversion Transgression, subversion

Transgression, subversion - PowerPoint Presentation

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Transgression, subversion - PPT Presentation

Remember and fear to transgress Milton Paradise Lost VI1 It aint no sin if you crack a few laws now and then just so long as you dont break any Mae West The Piglet lived in a very grand house in the middle of a beechtree and the beechtree was in the middle o ID: 557788

law transgression sacred subversion transgression law subversion sacred men trespassers power containment world knowledge modern tree evil order bataille

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Slide1

Transgression, subversion

Remember, and fear to transgress” (Milton,

Paradise Lost

, VI.1)

“It ain’t no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just so long as you don’t break any” (Mae West)Slide2

Slide3

The Piglet lived in a very grand house in the middle of a beech-tree, and the beech-tree was in the middle of the forest...Next to his house was a piece of broken board which had: "TRESPASSERS W" on it. When Christopher Robin asked the Piglet what it meant, he said it was his grandfather's name, and had been in the family for a long time. Christopher Robin said you couldn't be called Trespassers W, and Piglet said yes, you could, because his grandfather was, and it was short for Trespassers Will, which was short for Trespassers William. And his grandfather had had two names in case he lost one--Trespassers after an uncle, and William after Trespassers.Slide4

anthropological perspective

Transgression in mythology, religion, politics

Pet theme of theory (Bataille, Deleuze, Kristeva)

Satan; Prometheus

Oedipus, Niobe

Man is circumsrcibed, curtailed, restricted

Greek idea of

sophrosyne

(lack of excess)

Curiosity: Pandora’s ‘box’ or

jarSlide5

anthropological perspective

Freud: to live in civilisation is to be unhappy

‘Four

legs good,

two

legs bad

No

animal shall wear clothes

.

No

animal shall sleep in a bed

.

vs

the Law in

The Island of Dr MoreauSlide6

the law in The Island of Dr. Moreau

“It is a man. He must learn the Law

.”

 “Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men? “Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men? “Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not Men? “Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men? “Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?”Slide7

law and desire

desire itself is not transgressive – it is generated by the law

Romeo and Juliet; Tristran and Yseult

love feeds on prohibition (myth of passion vs marriage) Slide8

complicity of law and desire

“The law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression” (Rom 4.15

)

(

nullum crimen sine legen

)

Georges

Bataille

: „a profound complicity of law and the violation of laws”

„a taboo is there in order to be violated”; Slide9

the

Biblical story

of the Fall

Rüdiger Safranski:

A gonosz avagy a szabadság drámája

(

Evil or the Drama of Freedom

)

Tree of knowledge (knowledge of good and evil

):

like the sign ‘Ignore this sign’

It is ‘evil’ to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil

(Hegel: the Garden of Eden was the gargen of animals)Slide10

complicity of law and transgression

transgression „suspends the law without subverting it” (Bataille)

Transgression reinforces the law Slide11

anthropology of transgression

Archaic societies: overregulated

Leviticus 11.5: “the rock hyrax, because it chews the cud but does not have cloven hooves, is unclean to you”

Modern societies: new forms of prohibitions, strict regimes (dieting) Slide12

The anthropology of transgression (Roger Caillois: Man and the Sacred

)

(1) Sacred and profane: the basic division

ʻsacred’ (

sacer

; Hebrew

khadosh

, Greek

temenos

– ʻcut off’, ʻseparate’

(2) Every transgression is total and catastrophic (all elements of the world interrelated by magic)

(3) Rules maintain the world - but they cannot renew it → feasts Slide13

feast

„The gods took pity on the human race, born to suffer as it was

, and

gave it relief in the form of religious festivals to serve as

periods of rest from its labours. They gave us as fellow

revellers the

Muses, with Apollo their leader, and Dionysus, so that

men might

restore their way of life by sharing feasts with gods.” (Plato

:

Laws

654)Slide14

Feast and transgression

Creation

~

transgression

Chronos and Rhea: incest

“there is no order that is not founded on crime” (Carlos Fuentes:

Terra Nostra

)

Feast: ritualised return to chaos and creation

Such transgression is also sacred Slide15

The ‘economy’ of trangression

violating the rational logic of economy, of exchange based on eqiuvalence, give and take

Non-productive expenditure: gift,

sacrifice

POTLATCH: excessive giving away of precious objects, gifts; humiliating the recipient

spectacular destruction of wealth

rivalry, fight for prestige; economy before money and market Slide16

Gift ~ Christian agape

The miracle of the fish

For if we possess something that does not diminish through being given

awa

y, then, as long as we fail to give of it to others, we do not possess it the way we ought to possess it.”

(

St Augustine:

De Doctrina Christiana

)

Agape

: irrational, absurd, unmotivated giving - waste Slide17

Transgression in modern society

„any act of expressive behaviour which inverts, contradicts, abrogates, or in some fashion presents an alternative to commonly held cultural codes, values and norms, be they linguistic, literary or artistic, religious, social and political” (Barbara Babcock, qtd. in Jonathan Stallybrass and Allon White.

The Politics and poetics of Transgression, 1986

)Slide18

Experience of transgression

mixture of pleasure and anguish: joy of doing sg illicit

but also an anguish, anxiety about being in the wrong (sin, guilt)

(Susan Rubin Suleiman:

Subversive Intent

)Slide19

secular world

Michel Foucault

: „Profanation in a world which no longer recognizes any positive meaning in the sacred

is this not more or less what we may call transgression? In that zone which our culture affords for our gestures and speech, transgression prescribes … a way of recomposing the empty form of the sacred, its absence, through which it becomes all the more scintillating” („Preface to Transgression”) Slide20

Transgression in modern society

(1) No transcendence, no beyond, no sacred (but the place/site of the sacred is reproduced)

(

2) politics

and morality rather

than religion; prohibitions set up by power, law

(

3) subversion rather than transgressionSlide21

transgression – subversion

showing that prohibitions are not ʻnatural’ → can be transgressed

(Nietzsche’s critique of morality:

The Genealogy of Morals

)

If transgression subverts, it is less in terms of immediate undermining or immediate gain, than in terms of the dangerous knowledge it brings with it, or produces, or which is produced in and by its containment in the cultural sphere.” (Jonathan Dollimore) Slide22

the subversion/containment controversy

“Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual.”

(Franz Kafka:

The Zürau

Aphorisms

) Slide23

the subversion/containment controversy 2

the impossibility of genuine transgression

(

1) who will transgress or subvert?

(the agent of transgression)

Foucault: power is not just prohibitive but productive: the subject is the product of power

the place of resistance becomes problematic: if I am the product of power, how real is my resistance or act of transgression?

mental illness as ‘resistance’: refusal of the subject position Slide24

Transgression/containment

Orwell:

Nineteen Eighty-Four

O’Brien’s book (

indictment

of the Party)

Georges

Balandier

: „The supreme ruse of power is to allow itself to be contested

ritually

in order to consolidate itself more effectively” Slide25

the subversion/containment controversy 3

Transgression as the ruse of power

Marcelin Pleynet

:

"

In

our time, no more transgression, no more subversion”, only

‘a

parody of

transgression’,

a parody of subversion, a simulacrum.”

Jonathan Dollimore

:

"

Resistance

from the margins seems to be doomed to replicate internally the strategies, structures, and even the values of the dominant.” Slide26

Transgression/containment/4

Transgression institutionalised, inflated

Mainstraim culture incorporates, defuses transgression

Umberto Eco: “in a world of everlasting transgression, nothing remains comic or carnivalesque, nothing can any longer become an object of parody, if not transgression itself” Slide27

the paradox

of law and transgression

culture founded on the impossibility of doing/saying everything

Yet: there is nothing that cannot be done or said