EXPERIMENTAL SEMINAR AT THE COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS, UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW
(spring semester 2016)
The main idea of this seminar is to redefine the Agamben's concept of "forma di vita" (originally used to render the singularity of the Franciscan order among other forms of monasticism) in such a way as to consider eroticism as a source of forms of life. Medieval codifications of love in East and West (from al-hubb al-udhri till Andreas Capellanus) may be considered as secular ways of giving form to life. Yet at the same time this explains the surprising closeness and interpenetration between concepts of human and divine love in mystical traditions (from Sufism to Teresa of Avila as a living figure and as a sculpture by Bernini...). In Eastern tradition, the step between love and anachoresis is very close at hand in the story of Majnoon and Layla. The correspondence between the "stages of love" and the steps on the tariqah of mystics is exact.
The topic of this seminar, evidently taken from my long-term project of Eroticism of Trace, is at the same time a way to treat the matter more broadly, exploring many elements that cannot enter this book without spoiling its cohesion. During the seminar, we will explore both the medieval and the modern significance of eroticism, including the traumatic moment of clash against the new cultural order of productivity and efficiency. I want to read both D. Juan (or rather Don Giovanni in the final elaboration that Mozart gave to this figure) and 120 days of Sodoma in these terms - as anti-erotic manifestos of the new era. In Sade, the medieval form of life must be replaced by the modern vision of discipline (recently explored in depth by Sloterdijk).
Recapitulating, what I'm interested in is the question of "form", shaping life. Eroticism is an elaboration built up on the "data" of the body, the given of the human condition marked with sexuality. Difficulty and limitation creates a field of potential solutions, and a Wille zur Form that tends to transgress and contradict the "data" of the body. There is an old problem to which I might return, to treat it beyond its naive dimension: the "truth" of feeling in the codified poetry, such as that of the troubadours - or that of Ibn Zaydun. Naively we suppose the contradiction between form and spontaneity. Yet perhaps form is spontaneity. There is no "truth" of amorous feelings outside the code.
In the Western line of cultural development, this is also a process leading to the constitution of the modern subject. In the Letters of the Portuguese Nun, the text I've read before on more than one occasion, the individuation of the subject is possible only inside the basic "situation of love" - that of being abandoned. Barthes has written largely on this topic. But I've commented on this crucial a move of dissociation also at the light of Blumenberg's essay, the Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer - an important circumstance here: this text, as we know today, has been written by a man, a mere Zuschauer of the "feminine" condition of abandonment. Barthes commented on this aspect, accentuating immobility of the abandoned subject, "package deposited in a corner". The female figure of a nun immobilized in her convent is a perfect exemplification of this existential condition. Yet I'm tempted to go one step further, establishing a comparative perspective. In the classical erotic culture of the Arabs, it's the male subject who is in love, and love is conceived dynamically, as a search, an itinerary, not as immobilization. The Western tradition, since the dawn of modernity, establishes the foundational love situation in a static and feminine perspective. There is something analogous, as far as I know, in Japan. Does it bring about further implications? For the first thing, I notice the early modern breakthrough that splits the Western tradition in two. There is a watershed between the medieval love, a form of life conceived as a quest and lived in a male gendered perspective, and the modern love, a post-Sadean discipline conceived as static, receptive and feminine. In sum, there are two ways of eroticism; both lead to radical individualization (even the Sadean Justine is a radically individualized subject, individualized through her traumatic bodily experience of imposed discipline). These two ways are unequally distributed throughout cultural history, forming distinct threads of tradition, distinct paradigms of subjectivity.
Contrary to my habit of stressing the newest in humanities, this seminar is based on classical texts, even such as Denis de Rougemont's Love in the western world. I notice how many times the topic has been presented in the perspective of a "civilization" - a term that has practically fallen out of use or acquired very specific, not always intellectually pleasant connotations. I've been tempted to return to it in the perspective of eroticism; I've once written on my private definition of Arabness (to be an Arab is to love in an Arabian way). I wonder how far this statement might be seen as controversial today, yet I believe it could have some solid heuristic value in many medieval contexts, in al-Andalus and beyond. Also, the Arabian way has obviously gained a lot of complexities and internal contradictions throughout the history, including the colonial one - there is no space to speak about it here. Enough to say that, as a pendant to L'amour et l'Occident, there is also L'amour dans les pays musulmans by Fatéma Mernissi... But on the other hand - how far does it make sense to say: to be a Westerner is to love in a Western way? Yet the concept of Western civilization reappears in those texts I'm reading, as if the West had been really defined by the troubadours - and by the further process of redefining, reshaping, re-elaborating its own form of civilized loving. Even if this is not the way we do love in the West, there is a traceable line of transformations and ruptures that has led us throughout cultural history to what we are now.
But again, the productivity of eroticism is even more than this. I intend to interrogate as well its importance in the transmission of culture. This is the politically incorrect question that Steiner puts quite boldly in the Lessons of Masters, thinking about Socrates, and beyond. Shaping the concept of Erros, Agata Bielik-Robson goes in a different direction, and I'm quite tempted to accompany her. There is for sure an erotic, and vitalistic, power of doubt, seduction and misleading that opens what I call a "field of potentiality", re-establishes the Desert of creation.
And this is how, at the end, I'm back on my own via negativa, re-conducted to my own concept of Eroticism of Trace.
(spring semester 2016)
The main idea of this seminar is to redefine the Agamben's concept of "forma di vita" (originally used to render the singularity of the Franciscan order among other forms of monasticism) in such a way as to consider eroticism as a source of forms of life. Medieval codifications of love in East and West (from al-hubb al-udhri till Andreas Capellanus) may be considered as secular ways of giving form to life. Yet at the same time this explains the surprising closeness and interpenetration between concepts of human and divine love in mystical traditions (from Sufism to Teresa of Avila as a living figure and as a sculpture by Bernini...). In Eastern tradition, the step between love and anachoresis is very close at hand in the story of Majnoon and Layla. The correspondence between the "stages of love" and the steps on the tariqah of mystics is exact.
The topic of this seminar, evidently taken from my long-term project of Eroticism of Trace, is at the same time a way to treat the matter more broadly, exploring many elements that cannot enter this book without spoiling its cohesion. During the seminar, we will explore both the medieval and the modern significance of eroticism, including the traumatic moment of clash against the new cultural order of productivity and efficiency. I want to read both D. Juan (or rather Don Giovanni in the final elaboration that Mozart gave to this figure) and 120 days of Sodoma in these terms - as anti-erotic manifestos of the new era. In Sade, the medieval form of life must be replaced by the modern vision of discipline (recently explored in depth by Sloterdijk).
Recapitulating, what I'm interested in is the question of "form", shaping life. Eroticism is an elaboration built up on the "data" of the body, the given of the human condition marked with sexuality. Difficulty and limitation creates a field of potential solutions, and a Wille zur Form that tends to transgress and contradict the "data" of the body. There is an old problem to which I might return, to treat it beyond its naive dimension: the "truth" of feeling in the codified poetry, such as that of the troubadours - or that of Ibn Zaydun. Naively we suppose the contradiction between form and spontaneity. Yet perhaps form is spontaneity. There is no "truth" of amorous feelings outside the code.
In the Western line of cultural development, this is also a process leading to the constitution of the modern subject. In the Letters of the Portuguese Nun, the text I've read before on more than one occasion, the individuation of the subject is possible only inside the basic "situation of love" - that of being abandoned. Barthes has written largely on this topic. But I've commented on this crucial a move of dissociation also at the light of Blumenberg's essay, the Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer - an important circumstance here: this text, as we know today, has been written by a man, a mere Zuschauer of the "feminine" condition of abandonment. Barthes commented on this aspect, accentuating immobility of the abandoned subject, "package deposited in a corner". The female figure of a nun immobilized in her convent is a perfect exemplification of this existential condition. Yet I'm tempted to go one step further, establishing a comparative perspective. In the classical erotic culture of the Arabs, it's the male subject who is in love, and love is conceived dynamically, as a search, an itinerary, not as immobilization. The Western tradition, since the dawn of modernity, establishes the foundational love situation in a static and feminine perspective. There is something analogous, as far as I know, in Japan. Does it bring about further implications? For the first thing, I notice the early modern breakthrough that splits the Western tradition in two. There is a watershed between the medieval love, a form of life conceived as a quest and lived in a male gendered perspective, and the modern love, a post-Sadean discipline conceived as static, receptive and feminine. In sum, there are two ways of eroticism; both lead to radical individualization (even the Sadean Justine is a radically individualized subject, individualized through her traumatic bodily experience of imposed discipline). These two ways are unequally distributed throughout cultural history, forming distinct threads of tradition, distinct paradigms of subjectivity.
Contrary to my habit of stressing the newest in humanities, this seminar is based on classical texts, even such as Denis de Rougemont's Love in the western world. I notice how many times the topic has been presented in the perspective of a "civilization" - a term that has practically fallen out of use or acquired very specific, not always intellectually pleasant connotations. I've been tempted to return to it in the perspective of eroticism; I've once written on my private definition of Arabness (to be an Arab is to love in an Arabian way). I wonder how far this statement might be seen as controversial today, yet I believe it could have some solid heuristic value in many medieval contexts, in al-Andalus and beyond. Also, the Arabian way has obviously gained a lot of complexities and internal contradictions throughout the history, including the colonial one - there is no space to speak about it here. Enough to say that, as a pendant to L'amour et l'Occident, there is also L'amour dans les pays musulmans by Fatéma Mernissi... But on the other hand - how far does it make sense to say: to be a Westerner is to love in a Western way? Yet the concept of Western civilization reappears in those texts I'm reading, as if the West had been really defined by the troubadours - and by the further process of redefining, reshaping, re-elaborating its own form of civilized loving. Even if this is not the way we do love in the West, there is a traceable line of transformations and ruptures that has led us throughout cultural history to what we are now.
But again, the productivity of eroticism is even more than this. I intend to interrogate as well its importance in the transmission of culture. This is the politically incorrect question that Steiner puts quite boldly in the Lessons of Masters, thinking about Socrates, and beyond. Shaping the concept of Erros, Agata Bielik-Robson goes in a different direction, and I'm quite tempted to accompany her. There is for sure an erotic, and vitalistic, power of doubt, seduction and misleading that opens what I call a "field of potentiality", re-establishes the Desert of creation.
And this is how, at the end, I'm back on my own via negativa, re-conducted to my own concept of Eroticism of Trace.
