From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: 7-11@mail.ljudmila.org
Subject: performative happening somewhere else
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 22:21:02 -0500 (EST)




performative happening somewhere else


all my colors are garish - i'm ill again - slight fever - headache -
chills - forgive me - my dashes - i speed past celine - a realization -
there is no performative - the performative doesn't exist - material
refractions - that's all - wedding vows - everything - require concrete
embodiment - that's how it is - it's all physical states - the state-space
of the machine - things changing - state-space to state-space - surface
residue on the screen - ascii or otherwise - all sorts of things - words
continuing on another level - we've got to be careful here - among the
internal matrix of meaning of language and orienting of cognitive domains
- and transformations of material strata - i've always written about the
political economy of language - the necessity of the scream or demand or
cry of the wounded or orgasm or laughter - not necessarily in that order -
it's an economy that exfoliates and effuses within its own sememe - its
own space and own ontology - epistemologically it wanders like everything
else - but that space concretely presents the potential abundance of
material operations - it's not that i'm a materialist - in spite of my
sore throat and shivering - but that the material world carries on the
discredit of language - it's all a mix we pass for intelligence as if
writing and theory were an 'however' summarizing the abstract configura-
tion of the day - thought is internal/external - panoplies of tendrils
among laminanimal - can you imagine - it doesn't reside one way or another
- instigated by mental operations hardly to the discredit of the material
world - the performative is in the speaking or writing - my fingers on the
keys - my vocal cords and enunciations - literally a far cry - i can
hardly focus now - but the theory of performativity has to be radically
revised - i can assure you - the point it's missing is elsewhere - not
even peripheral - not even a 'somewhere else' - i'm hard put to hypothe-
size the bridges - mappings of all sorts - internal neural mappings to
external manipulations - all machinery - all electronics - is the lever -
my eyes are hurting - this goes on and on - the doctors can't do a thing -
they keep asking questions - sending me from one to another - keep filling
out forms -


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