Email dialogue from October 2000.
FIELD I’ve been thinking about
your note re: Chain and I came up with something, one or two things
really: NON-CONSUMER FICTIONS as a sort of play on “consumer
fictions” and also as a commentary on the state of the art
which is all geared toward consumer categories of genre . . .
so that this could invite both cultural critique as well as genre/consumer
art critique . . . I guess the same trope could also work, though
less gracefully with POLITICAL FICTIONS—to be artless and
direct about it. I understand you both want to torque it somehow,
and I agree, the “field” of possibility should be wide
open and invite multiple interpretations.
SPAHR this sounds great! are there
any people in particular you are thinking about? that sometimes
helps when doing the write up for the next issue. i like looking
at consumer. $. etc. we haven’t done much of that. and it
is ripe for re-evaluation. cd this be a $ issue? is that too trite?
i don’t mean that literally. but a critique of capital (globalism,
etc.) issue.
F Yes, exactly—there’s something
about $ and genre which seem to be the same thing, but since you’ve
already done a cross-genre issue, it seems we could come at $
from the point of view of the genre of FICTION which, as well
all know, is the big $ genre. . . . So is there a way of approaching
“fiction” as consumerist fetish—as that kind of
“genred” space which reinscribes certain norms—and
then start to look for where that falls apart—to search out
the outer limit of this “country”—find the illegal
immigrants, unaccounted workers, those that trespass just enough
to raise the invisible to the level of awareness . .
. I guess I’m thinking of people like Fanny Howe and Leslie
Scalapino, who inscribe “narrative” back into poetics—and
of course the “new Sentence” sort of thinking and even
certain kinds of polemical “narratives” like Kamau Braithwaite’s—places
where “FICTION” sets up house within other “genred”
spaces out of necessity—(because it wouldn’t be allowed
into the Big House on its terms). Then of course writers like
Renee Gladman and Bhanu Kapil Rider, Brenda Coultas, people who
tell “stories” in completely alternative form. Form
is still the biggest indicator of genre (in my opinion) and there’s
something in that which could be related to $ as well. So . .
. I’m thinking to explore the fiction of “fiction”—getting
at how the consumer industry of publishing conveniently inscribes
a set of invisible parameters for the sake of consumer convenience—do
we think that upsetting the comfortable bourgeois space of the
“novel” or the now popular “short story collection”
is also about form and hybridization, multi-culturalism, etc.
S i thought i wd try to keep talking
about this. my one worry on next issue: i don’t want to do
another hybrid genres issues under another name. just b/c that
is turning into our default of sorts. it isn’t a bad default.
but i want to keep pushing at what is expected of us. i like the
idea of capital as a topic. my worry is that people will write
too much about $. like it will be too literal. is there another
term that we can use to draw it all together. some other ideas
to just throw out: a drama issue (like thalia suggested). cd be
called dialogue but that might be too hokey—but this feels
expansive to me b/c it isn’t a “theme” but a “form”
and one we haven’t done before and one that cd be interesting
to open up—(worry: cd janet work with it? we might need to
refine it a little).
F I thought your worries were interesting,
Juliana, and I think avoiding just generalized hybridity is valid
. . . if it couldn’t be framed more as a critique, I too
am not that interested. I think you should continue to discuss
what you’re interested in doing and if it’s something
like “dialogue” which activates the theater world, I
would love to join on. I think the “dialogues” idea
is a good one because it not only beckons theatricality, but forms
of philosophy, and new media. I’d be all for working on that.
Otherwise, the money or “currency” idea could also be
great, but it’s more of a subject theme, rather than a form,
and this I don’t think you’ve done . . . ? But it could
be cool . . . it’s more along the GRANTA lines, though. Originally,
I thought of it as a critique of the form of fiction, but that
ends up back perhaps in that soup of hybridity.
S Should we try to keep thinking about
dialogues? This seems like there are a lot of ways to go with
it. We cd get some good drama stuff from Thalia. We cd try and
get some culture stuff—like dialogues across cultures (if
we can get anything that isn’t too retarded with this idea).
Anyone we know who cd help with philosophy? Renee Gladman is one
person that comes to my mind. Also: might be interesting to have
people doing some dialogues for us. We cd think about commissioning
some b/t people who might otherwise never talk to each other.
Like people working in radically different genres. Or with very
different ideas. The only thing I wd want to avoid, but I think
we can: dialogue as nice, neat conversation. like we need to get
some work that is against dialogue. and not too much work that
says dialogue can save the world. and we need some screaming.
or something. i don’t know. i just don’t want to end
up in a place where we are saying hybridity (not of genre but
of culture) can save everything; if we all just sat down and talked . . .
also: collaboration as form of dialogue.
OSMAN Yes, I love the “dialogue”
topic idea. It’s a specific form (unlike the Granta theme
idea) that could go in many great directions. Please excuse me
while I die from exhaustion.
F I think the dialogues idea, too, has
a ton of potential—it’s got all the artistic and social
relevance. I also agree that some sort of furry moral is not the
end we should be imagining, but rather a hard-hitting sort of
thing, the difficulty of dialogue, even. Maybe it’s just
being at Brown, but I feel our country has lost all sense that
things Matter, or that being committed to something, or having
a real opinion is a Good thing. The Dialogic idea sounds solid—and
already sort of grant friendly—esp if you’re into using
people who are “known” for being polemicists of some
sort—pairing them into fruitful discussions—perhaps
on TABOO topics—or topics which get REPRESSED AND RETURNED
TO sort of in that freud/lacanian way . . . This week I’ve
been thinking a lot about this notion of the TELEVISION TABOO
and how TV seems to absorb the DIALOGUE from other public forums
and sanitize and contextualize it through the use of “commercials”
which frame it in the safety of consumer ideology which surpasses
the “content” of whatever happens between commercials.
This notion of BETWEEN COMMERCIALS then becomes the question too,
how can we ask questions that aren’t geared toward CELEBRITY
but actually ask people to risk their own consistency or little
habits of mind. . . . I like the idea of pairing interesting thinkers
with a third text or construct which they approach from different
points of view, and perhaps different discourses so that vocabulary
and discourse/metastructures of thought are also foregrounded—efforts
to combine, for example, how an economist and a filmmaker, or
a philosopher and a ecologist might approach some third term/text.
But this might be harder to get people to do . . . .I wonder if
there’s a way to start the dialogues so that they evolve
in interesting and organic ways—I’m thinking that the
subject overall might be enticing enough for really interesting
thinkers/writers to WANT to address—subjects which are not
usually approached, or approached only tenderly—like an open-ended
question: what’s the SINGLE MOST MEANINGFUL THING YOU’D
LIKE TO SEE CHANGED or something, and then let the discussions
build from that kind of place . . . Or, like I mentioned on the
phone to Jena: the issue could focus on each person’s ONE
BEST IDEA for changing the world . . . etc. Anyway, dreaming,
really, the possibility to speak about what’s maybe not “practical”
in the realpolitik sense, but dreamable . . . now that sounds
too namby-pamby. . . . I just think there’s so much
drivel and mealymouthed stuff out there—it would be great
to make a book which is really ballsy and impractical in its OUT-spokenness.
More like the WTO demonstrations and less like the “transfer
of power” politics where everyone is “owned” by
someone else anyway and so can’t really feel free to speak
up.
VICUÑA don alejandro a Quiche
Mayan elder came to speak to new yorkers last year. it seems people
wanted to hear about the so called Mayan prophecies: “the
destruction of the world” by 2012, as some interpret or translate
them. (in other words, they wanted instructions to save their
necks) instead don alejandro said: how can we interpret prophecies?
i am here to recruit you: we, the indians have to watch tv in
order to see animals. the earth is sick. i am here to ask you
to influence your own government. this is how you will help us
and the world.
