Word
In preparation for the session 'Word'
- Watch lecture 3 of Laurie Anderson's Norton Lecture Series (video and/or link above).
- Read the short texts below, and the PDF enclosed and respond.
'When we study the science of breath the first thing we notice is that breath is audible; it is a word in itself, for what we call a word is only a more pronounced utterance of breath fashioned by the mouth and tongue. In the capacity of the mouth breath becomes voice, and therefore the
original condition of a word is breath. If we said 'first was the breath', it would be the same as saying, 'In the beginning was the word'. (Mysticism of Music, Sound and Word, Hazrat Khan)
original condition of a word is breath. If we said 'first was the breath', it would be the same as saying, 'In the beginning was the word'. (Mysticism of Music, Sound and Word, Hazrat Khan)
Breathe.
Derrida uses the word - souffle - to describe running out of breath— a low murmuring or blowing sound heard through a stethoscope.
With a tiny accent it becomes soufflé—whisked egg whites that rise and exhale in the heat.
In a conversation with Helene Cixous, Derrida writes:
"I master nothing, I submit to the oracles. This risk is the condition of my creative energy and of my discoveries. It can happen that I run out of breath [souffle], that something loses steam [s'essouffle]. I saw myself clearly in your incredible text on Artaud, La parole soufflé, in this
bivalence of the souffle, a word whispered given by someone else, and a word stolen, whisked away."
And in the notes, translated by Ashley Thompson - Souffler means to breathe, to whisper, including when one whispers a secret, but also to steal, such that the expression la parole souffle can mean either to whisper or to tell (someone) the word (the secret word, the forgotten word) or to take or steal the word. (Walker, Breathe Wind Into Me, Video and text, 2019)
Derrida uses the word - souffle - to describe running out of breath— a low murmuring or blowing sound heard through a stethoscope.
With a tiny accent it becomes soufflé—whisked egg whites that rise and exhale in the heat.
In a conversation with Helene Cixous, Derrida writes:
"I master nothing, I submit to the oracles. This risk is the condition of my creative energy and of my discoveries. It can happen that I run out of breath [souffle], that something loses steam [s'essouffle]. I saw myself clearly in your incredible text on Artaud, La parole soufflé, in this
bivalence of the souffle, a word whispered given by someone else, and a word stolen, whisked away."
And in the notes, translated by Ashley Thompson - Souffler means to breathe, to whisper, including when one whispers a secret, but also to steal, such that the expression la parole souffle can mean either to whisper or to tell (someone) the word (the secret word, the forgotten word) or to take or steal the word. (Walker, Breathe Wind Into Me, Video and text, 2019)
A feminist ethnography does not fall into an easily definable set of methodological practices (Schrock, 2013), however it can be characterised as a generator of knowledge of ‘another’s life world by using the self… as an instrument of knowing’ (Ortner, 1995, p.178), or as ‘documenting lived experience as it is impacted by gender, race, class, sexuality, and other aspects of participants' lives’ (Craven and Davis, 2013, p.1). The work of Hélène Cixous exemplifies this, she has written extensively about writing as a practice in and of itself, about the play of language, of words upon words, of the unconscious, and how writing produces a sense of the self as other. Her work is also about writing as a place of entry into the self and a departure, death.
"Sometimes people ask me “Why aren’t you clear?” and I always feel puzzled, or hurt, when that happens, thinking “God, I do the best I can! It’s not like I’m being deliberately unclear! I’m really trying to be clear!” But, you know, there is the tyranny of clarity and all these analyses of why clarity is politically correct. However, I like layered meanings, and I like to write a sentence in such a way that – by the time you get to the end of it – it has at some level questioned itself. There are ways of blocking the closure of a sentence, or of a whole piece, so that it becomes hard to fix its meanings. I like that, and I am committed politically and epistemologically to stylistic work that makes it relatively harder to fix the bottom line." (Haraway, 2004: 333)
Please write yourself into 500 words. Focus on sounding the breathe as a starting point for your text.
cixous.pdf |