In which Bhanu "excavated a space for [this] body" and I stuck my toe in.
Bhanu asked me to speak about “compacted”, I think, because of something I said to her recently in a late night email regarding some piece of language in her forthcoming Humanimal. The word I was referring to in terms of “the compacted” looks like a neologism, when in fact it is an old word originating in another tongue. And yet, I think it has fallen into sufficient disuse as to now be a kind of neologism. The inferred definition (consider definition as that which gives something shape by exacting form out of larger masses of shape), the look and feel of the word, yields a sense of the compressed over time, of that which is overlaid rapidly and lightly like in such structures as wings, and also that which is simultaneously exposed. The technical definition of this word and the biological system it enacts in its sentence sits at an angle to the actual context of the sentence, the words that make images there. It is, technically, a bit out of joint with the sentence which, instead of making it an unsuitable word choice—I think that was the what we were discussing in the email) rather creates the entire quality of movement of the sentence and the sentence’s image—not so much syntactically, but organically. This one word and this sentence are so important because it a gestative moment in the text supporting the central figure—or the central half-figure of a hybrid subject—in the book.
It was easy to speak of this word choice with Bhanu and use my words to refer to it—compacted, and by which I also meant impacted—but outside of that I froze. It is easy for me to plug my words and idea-clusters into B’s work like graphing live tissue from one organism into another. But outside of my body and on their own, these word-tissues shut down, disconnected from a larger living system.
And the body itself is what shuts me down entirely. A fear of the reductive, as in—there is nothing to “my ideas” of compacted/impacted because their mystery can be explained away by my direct lived experience. That is, a notion of the “compacted” comes from the definition that I have taken on in the physiological. Here are the parts of speech.
Age2, my toe swells up and turns red. I begin to limp. A doctor dismisses it an tells my mother I am looking for attention (How does a body look for attention aside from ego? This is question I want to explore later.) But I stop—walking, crawling, crouching, running, climbing, and sticking my toes in my mouth as toddler s are prone to do. I grow skinnier around all the extremities and the joints that move them puff up, become inflamed. I am host to an autonomic form of childhood arthritis. Or, I am host to my self, which happens to want to much on the cartilage cells. When the cartilage is eaten away, the body runs of scar tissue, knees ankles, hip and neck use it to pivot on—but scar tissue is less thick. It is corrugated and grows irregularly. It can be worn down by persistent movement over time into something smooth, but ultimately, functions as a fixative. It is the body preserving itself in the form left to it. And like with a fossil, all the best information is stored inside of hard structures in which one living part retains its definition by being replaced by another kind of organic matter. As a post-diagnosis child, I found new ways to move. I was carried—across backyards and parking lots, in high school and college—upstairs and through large dark indoor spaces. In SF, I am carried by a machine and so, one could say I have gained my independence. But at the cost of the social-construction of look away kind of etiquette (i.e. if it rolls and talks, it must be robot). My body, in an urban environment among strangers, ceases to engage others in movement (i.e. please move out of the curb cut so I can pass does not compute). But it does make me aware of other bodies disconnected from the overall body system.
And so for me, there is:
Compacted as the many layers within a structure maintaining their integrity, while also being inherently movable, portable
--to be physically moved by another person
--have this experience often enough and also infrequently enough that is jarring and familiar
Impacted as in one thing lodged or stuck with force into another.
--Not necessarily a foreign agent but a part of the body (including the mind) that becomes disjointed or skewed in such a fashion that it impedes itself but also articulates itself
-- as in to be tightly packed together, also—a contract or agreement
A body which functions as a question mark, curvature and uncertainty motored by a small wheel beneath
with symmetries being shoved inward
What has remained most mobile in me was thought and language. So much so that it becomes over run by the amount of logistical slack it has to take up i.e. how much time will it take me to cross this room or put on these socks. And if I sit in this chair, can I get out of it again? But while thought was bounded by physical experience—if not in content than at the cellular level, the way a plant or animal’s growth is tempered by its domain, language remains unbounded. There is always the potential to harness more and new energy from someone else’s language and that explains why I always prefer reading to writing. There is nothing much I want to express. I want mostly, intrinsically, in terms of what my body wants, to experience different options for movement and skimming left and right along a page made sensate by someone else is my biggest opportunity. Plot and action are such great facilitators of movement. Scenarios are limiting. Momentum comes out of variations of pressure, release, valves in the push pull of receiving sensation from other texts.
What derails me from my own language, as in compacted/impacted is not that it is too personal or autobiographical, but only the fear that it is. That in exploring it, I will be run into the obvious gutters of pleasure and pain
To write about pain or pleasure, so much emotional language is impacted in those concepts that they actually repel any real sensory communication. They impede the formation of words/language/books that can explore the liminality of sensation, of sensations still unnamed but intrinsic, not to humanness, but sentience I would say. Of the body, self and other bodies as interwoven and interchangeable subjects and objects that make any real movements through a substratum of sludgy impulse-habit, a snail’s progress, head-foot first, through a moment just before and just after a process of mineralization begins, a moment before and after bone mass that supports and connects organisms in a reader and across readers.
I am thinking toward a kind of sensation fieldwork in which the grid of circumstances and subjectivities around sensation are documented. To truly write inside one’s own sensate bubble going away from abstraction and invention and toward distillation and intensification which does not mean that writing on sensation would be expository or representational or solipsistic in the normal sense. Such writing would require the formation of a new language, just as experimental writing always does, but it would also mean a pivoting off of and a touching back to old tropes, fragments of and instances of familiar language because those instances of language, when used in the a certain context, are valuable for the kind of sensory charge that they have accrued over time.
This seems to me to be a way into writing about social work and activism and identity and gender and ability. To write about it through the body because one’s body is the site for all fieldwork. The body is not personal or owned. It is a sensate lens.
[ ]
The disabled body is the site of its own ghosting in that one is compacted/compounded in status and ability by ones limitations ands needs and all the personal, social or political work that goes into those concerns. Also compounded and compacted by the highly visible nature of one’s apparent efforts—the dragging leg will be read as effort, agony, or a blank in order to make it interpretable or appropriate. Meanwhile, the disabled body is cut of from the realization of its form’s function in the world “compact” comes from a pervasive physiological experience, my own. It also comes from the charge of its opposite, as in, my experience of being thus compacted there s my experience of being loose, floating, dis-integrated not so much in terms of my place in the world (because my mind; my views, my ideas, my social or familial connections can make that mesh) but in terms of my body’s relation to the world. Disability is less like being an Other in relation to a group but being an Other in relation to Self, to internalized group ability.
[ ]
I think of the other, more functional version of the word disable in our society. It means to stop the code, to break the chain of computation, to disable and allow for your own programming, a different kind of conveyance than what has been set up….To write new code at the most autonomic level and allow for greater of syncing across physical histories.
Compacted/impacted is also being completely contained while witnessing that container as one in a set of shifting exteriors to other containers.
I wanted to make a quick clarification. At the potluck on Wednesday, Thom mentioned that I was doing a project around disability using the questions that structure of Bhanu Kapil’s The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers. This is my personal angle, but in general, the project is meant to spark up some liveliness around Bhanu’s work as we await Humanimal (forthcoming from KSP in Winter 08).
Everyone is invited to participate, even if your interest is not disability. My aim was also to introduce the idea of interactive blog features in honor of KSP’s new web site. See what you make of it here: http://www.kelseyst.com/news/index.php/2008/07/13/your_vertical_answers/
I was going to add this to the agenda, but I wasn't sure about how that worked since I cannot attend the Sunday meeting. I thought it could live here for now and I will re-post it again later when there is a meeting I can go to.
In June, the Bay Area will be treated to year 27 of Superfest, the longest-running disability film festival in the world. This year, films from 60 international entries were narrowed down to a select few.
Last weekend, I attended the Dance Under Construction conference hosted by UCB’s Theater, Dance and Disability Studies Departments. Academics and artists from all over the country came to discuss how integrated dance and new explorations with differently abled bodies are reshaping the core aesthetics of performance arts and creating a fresh movement vocabulary. The Bay Area is at the heart of this, with AXIS Dance Company residing in Oakland and Dandelion Dance Theater in San Francisco.
Each year, since 1986, the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in conjunction with the San Francisco Arts Commission holds a juried exhibition of visual art made by blind or low vision artists. Gestural, kinesthetic and tactile process unfolds through sculpture, paintings and even photography.
Meanwhile, the Bay Area, home to the Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement in the 1970’s, today remains one of the most accessible cities for the disabled in terms of transit, policy and programming. The Bancroft maintains an impressive written and oral archive of the movement while UCB and SF State offer departments that figure prominently in the burgeoning academic discipline that is disability studies.
So, I suppose my question is—how does all this energy and innovation translate into the poetry community? In conventional literature, disability is shackled to outmoded tropes (the saccharine triumph stories and the throwbacks to telethon pity). It goes without saying that experimental poetry can do better—but what does such a poetics have to gain by examining and embracing disability studies? How can we have a dialogue around disability and poetics, not just at the political or social level, but at a generative level--one that begets new experiments in writing? To live with or study disability is to be constantly questioning form and constantly working toward formal innovation—whether that is through accessible architecture or the far reaches of cyber humanity. How can this be translated to syntax and the raw stuff of poetry?
I see projects around disability and poetics as being endlessly expansive, rather than reductive (the way that some efforts to name and highlight identity groups in the arts or social sciences can be). People with disabilities are not easily lumped together; even those who have the same kind of impairment differ widely from one another. And it is a time-based category. You may have been disabled at one time in your life and you will most certainly, to some degree, become disabled in the future. One can easily make voyages out of dialogue about disability and poetics into notions about the phenomenology of embodiment. When I say embodiment as an extension of disability, I mean also multi-faceted investigations of body, space and community and I think of works by Eleni Stecopoulos (Autoimmunity), Robert Kocik and Eric Greenleaf who recently presented together at The Poetry Center.
Mostly, I would love to see all this happening in practice rather than theory—the theory will follow from that. For instance, poets working with disabled dancers in local troupes or texts that are reframed through a disability perspective. (I may do a project in which I ask some of Bhanu Kapil’s questions from Vertical Interrogation of Strangers as I work wit teen girls at the annual Juvenile Arthritis retreat.)
I need more ideas and more feedback. Please comment with any suggested reading, projects, persons to interviews, groups to form, etc etc. What will an investigation of disability and poetics look like? Strange, asymmetrical, twitchy and enlivening, I hope.
For those of you in the Bay Area:
As part of the Nonsite Collective's "Poetics of Disablement" curriculum, Bhanu Kapil will facilitate a discussion around a short selection from Elizabeth Grosz's *Chaos, Territory, Art,* attached as a pdf below.
Saturday September 20, at 3 pm
935 Natoma,
between 10th and 11th,
and between Mission and Howard
Close to Van Ness and Market (Muni)
or Civic Center BART
*For information regarding wheelchair accessibility, please contact rob[dot]halpern[at]gmail[dot]com.
About her approach, Bhanu writes: << I've been reading Elizabeth Grosz on sensation and futurity: "There is an involuted and oblique relation between the energies of sexual selection...the attraction to and possible attainment of sexual (though not necessarily copulative) partners -- human and otherwise -- and the forces and energies of artistic production and consumption" (from *Chaos, Territory, Art*). That the intensity felt in a body is part of what allows it to extend into a territory or cross between domains - - acts of pleasure, acts of sexual selection, as analogous to the process of making transgressive works of art. Not sure. Am thinking about immigrant bodies, refugee bodies, bodies made hybrid by divergence on a continuum from prosaic (the South-Asian grad student) to traumatic. Have been thinking about numbness, about hyper-vigilance, about what happens to the flow of "energies of sexual selection" in a body that's at the limit of possible sensations. This as depending too on class status. On how desirability is worked out in the port of arrival. My question, then, for writers/artists working through a poetics of disablement -- towards hybrid works, in particular -- is there any language we can think through together, about the experience of hybridity/fusion in the body -- and how might this affect our transgressive relationships to the space of the book, the territory of document, our ability to attain the kind of couplings/intensifications/resonant physical gestures that further the limit of what a book is? I feel as if there is another kind of book I am only beginning to imagine. What about you? I didn't meet you yet. Other aims: I'd like to ask Amber Di Pietra to say more about the hybrid body as "compacted." >>
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I prepared the following notes as part of my introduction to Thom Donovan’s talk, “Allegories of Disablement,” on July 23, 2008, which took place over a potluck dinner last nite, with 18 people in attendance. I’m posting these notes here for comment and elaboration as they might contribute to a description for a new Nonsite working group / curriculum.
As I mentioned last nite, it’s been exciting to see this discussion around “poetics and disability” emerge, not only because of the obvious value of its content, but also because it illustrates how the provisional and still fledgling framework of the collective really can enable a self-organized curriculum to take shape organically. Following the various threads of the discussion has been like watching an amphibious discourse emerge from the marsh, as it imagines its own terms, problems and questions without recourse to sanctioned coordinates of knowledge to measure the success of its becoming.
Amber DiPietra began the discussion by pitching an inquiry in a post dated 5/04/08, responding to a call for agenda items for the Nonsite meeting that month, and this was quickly followed by posts by Eleni Stecoupolos, Patrick Durgin and Robert Kocik (excerpts of which appear below). This immediately suggested the sort of traction necessary to sustain some generative work around Poetics and Disablement. Thom’s talk last nite no doubt extended this, pointing toward areas for further research, collaboration and event planning. (The text of Thom’s talk will be forthcoming here).
I’m wondering if the following notes can contribute to the process of generating a description for such a curriculum, which will require some collaborative writing. Please respond with ideas/suggestions as to how we might amend this proposal, as well as any thoughts about how such a project might take shape: reading groups, events, discussions.
**
Poetics of Disablement: Notes//July 23, 2008
“My sense of community began to take on the limitations of real bodies.” --Bruce Boone, from *Century of Clouds*
It’s always the body that promises our relations, while severely limiting them. The body is always a limit: promising communion, while disabling that communion in advance. And if the body is the horizon of what can be said and experienced, the life of any community is always constrained by the lived realities of whatever bodies comprise it.
How do we live those limits differently? How do we talk about those bodies and perform those realities in such a way so as not to reiterate those limits and their corresponding social constraints, but rather to trans-form them?
My longing to relate and to be related to runs thru all of yr bodies, if only because I want you to care for me: in opening my self and my body to care, I imagine making myself “patient.” As the inverse of an over-valued, able-bodied agency, “patiency” becomes agency’s complement, which is anything but a submission to passivity.
The patient overturns our understanding of the passive, by becoming able otherwise.
De-activating our ability to behave instrumentally for socially over-coded ends, discharging our function as meaningful agents, we might take leave of that submission by yielding to the promise of unanticipated care (an idea inspired by Robert Kocik). In other words, rather than submitting to our disciplined training to expect hostility, we might become patients, whose unexpected receptivity to a disabled social ecology moves one toward doing what can’t be done within any given field of pre-coded possibles. This is the power of our im-potence in a situation that detrimentally determines our abilities, whose limits are given in advance.
"Ability" and "disability" are already compromised terms. Nevertheless, they inform and impact the shape of our thought, which materializes thru restricted forms, and whatever resistance to those forms. These are constraints that have become our consciousness of ABLENESS: able-bodiness, fitness, ecological success. And yet, these constraints — limitations on our ability to move, think and speak — disable us in the name of ability itself: the rule bound terms of social selection which are anything but natural. So what would it look like, as both social and aesthetic practice, to “overcome fitness” (Robert Kocik’s term) — together with the over-valuation of so-called able-bodied agency. What would it look like in practice, to affirm that we still don’t even know what a body can do? How do we explore the relation between poetics and the exceptional capacities, aptitudes, and senses that every body potentiates and acquires when charged to overcome the so-called fitness for life that underwrites normative social ecologies. How might artistic practice, as it converges with social practice more generally, potentiate the undoing of biopower that has hard-wired dead language (“disability”) to the body?
--RH
What follows are some excerpts from the the discussion on poetics and disability as it has emerged thus far:
Amber Di Pietra:
“In conventional literature, disability is shackled to outmoded tropes (the saccharine triumph stories and the throwbacks to telethon pity). It goes without saying that experimental poetry can do better—but what does such a poetics have to gain by examining and embracing disability studies? How can we have a dialogue around disability and poetics, not just at the political or social level, but at a generative level--one that begets new experiments in writing? To live with or study disability is to be constantly questioning form and constantly working toward formal innovation—whether that is through accessible architecture or the far reaches of cyber humanity. How can this be translated to syntax and the raw stuff of poetry?"
From Eleni Stecopoulos
"It seems to me there’s little consciousness of the difference of bodies, in terms of disability, and sensitivity, and illness, and conditions—-and how these differences can be both subject to, as well as transform, factors like access and form. Access, movement, form, symmetry are seen as transparent; anything that might diverge from the assumed forms gets rendered as invisible. It’s the aesthetics that, perhaps most tragically, are invisible—-what aesthetic challenges and innovation arise from conditions. We will all become disabled at some point. Constraints lead to rather than impede aesthetics. That’s not to say that art is a symptom or a product of the condition, but it does mean that conditions and aesthetics are sympathetic and this sympathy generates experiments and evolutions and revisions and reconfigurations."
From Patrick Durgin:
"I think it's important for 'crip culture' and the rest of 'us' to witness that the issues that many radical modernist poets work through are sophisticated renderings of issues at the heart of disability studies. In other words, disability culture needs to historicize itself with a wider lens.
Physical impairment is not reductive. It is reductive, though, to define 'impairment' on the basis of existing notions of the physical, especially since the going model of disability is the 'social' model, and there is already a vocal minority within disability studies and the DRM concerned with notions of the psyche. Hence, 'psycho-social' disability is a timely way to call for definitions of "embodiment" and subsequently 'impairment.' In short, the focus on physical impairment has become reductive."
From Robert Kocik:
“If you’re looking at your hand, it’s hard to reach for an object. Without reaching for an object, it’s hard to know where your hand actually is. If you have to look at your hand as you reach for an object, you’re still disabled.”
“I think disability is shared because ability is so extremely unexplored that we have no reference. (The alien uniting all humanity as one—our own risen humanity!) Ability viewed as some ‘norm’ is certainly necrotic.”
“The predicament of poetics engaged with disability theory: how to not cause further harm. If our bodies and our works are not experienced as epiphenomena of the unmade (assuming the inverse), living and working is unaesthetic and terminal. Impractical is the norm. I’m considering calling the norm eternal disability.”