Art of the Hive

“I may wish to reconstitute my ‘self’ as if it were there all along, a tacit eho with acumen from the very start; but to do so would be to deny the various forms of rapture and subjection that formed the condition of my emergence as an individuated being and that continue to haunt my adult sense of self with whatever anxiety and longing I may now feel.  Individuation is an accomplishment, not a presupposition, and certainly no guarantee.

…If I am struggling for autonomy, do I not need to be struggling for something else as well, a conception of myself as invariably in community, impressed upon by others, impinging upon them as well, and in ways that are not fully in my control or clearly predictable?” ~ Judith Butler, “Violence, Mourning, Politics,” Precarious Life

“When we lose certain people, or when we are dispossessed from a place, or a community, we may simply feel that we are undergoing something temporary, that mourning will be over and some restoration of prior order will be achieved.  But maybe when we undergo what we do, something about who we are is revealed, something that delineates the ties we have to others, that shows us that these ties constitute what we are, ties or bonds that compose us.  It is not as if an ‘I’ exists independently over here and then simply loses a ‘you’ over there, especially if the attachment to ‘you’ is part of what composes who ‘I’ am.  If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself.  Who ‘am’ I, without you?  When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do.  On one level, I think I have lost ‘you’ only to discover that ‘I’ have gone missing as well.” ~ Juidth Butler, “Violence, Mourning, Politics,” Precarious Life

“Perhaps, rather, one mourns when one accepts that by the loss one undergoes one will be changed, possibly for ever.  Perhaps mourning has to do with agreeing to undergo a transformation (perhaps one should say submitting to a transformation) the full result of which one cannot know in advance.  There is losing, as we know, but there is also the transformative effect of loss, and this latter cannot be charted or planned.  One can try to choose it, but it may be that this experience of transformation deconstitutes choice at some level.  I do not think, for instance, that one can invoke the Protestant ethic when it comes to loss.  One cannot say, ‘Oh, I’ll go through loss this way, and that will be the result, and I’ll apply myself to the task, and I’ll endeavor to achieve the resolution of grief that is before me.’  I think one is hit by waves, and that one starts out the day with an aim, a project, a plan, and finds oneself foiled.  One finds oneself fallen.  One is exhausted but does not know why.  Something larger than one’s own deliberate plan, one’s own project, one’s own knowing and choosing.”

“To say that we might want to think about memory and forgetting differently is in fact to ask that we start seeing alternatives to the inevitable and seeming organic models we use for marking progress and achievement; it also asks us to notice how and whether change has happened: How do we see change?  How do we recognize it? Can we be aware of change without saying that change has ended everything (the death of…) or that change has meant nothing (plus ca change…)? Can we recognize the new without discarding the old?  Can we hold on to multiple frameworks of time and transformation at once?” ~ Judith Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure

“I discovered that making things meant leaving evidence of life behind when I moved on. Making things was like leaving historical records of my existence behind when I left the room, or building, or neighborhood, the state and possibly the earth… as in mortality, as in death.  When I was a kid I discovered that making an object, whether it was a drawing or a story, meant something that spoke even if I was silent.  As an adult, I realize if I make something and leave it in public for any period of time, I can create an environment where that object or writing acts as a magnet and draws others with a similar frame of reference out of silence or invisibility.  Or that object or piece of writing can give comfort me as well as others. To place an object or writing that contains what is invisible because of legislation or social taboo into an environment outside myself makes me feel not alone; it keeps me company by virtue of its existence…

What I am trying to say here is that all of my life I’ve made things that are fragmented mirrors of what I perceive to be the world.  As far as I am concerned the fact that in 1990 the human body is still a taboo subject is unbelievably ridiculous.  What exactly is so frightening about the human body?” ~ David Wojnarowicz, Close to the Knives