Circulation, Spivak, and The Skin of Cats

The following is a guest post by Stephen Squibb, blogger at the novel fugitive ethical.

1. Let's say there is a European staying in my apartment. Looking up from his work the other day, he asks what I am reading. I do that awkward combination of gestures and words that one does at someone who speaks mostly foreign languages, simultaneously muttering and pointing, Spivak, Scattered Speculations, etc. He replies earnestly and in broken English that it looks interesting, and goes back to work. Today, as I sit down to write this, he asks to borrow the essay when I am through. I say yes. I make no mention of its content, its difficulty, its eclecticism, indeed and honestly, how could I? He will simply understand it, or he will not, or, perhaps his encounter will defy reduction to something as simple as all that. It is not for me to speculate on his level of comfort with written English, much less with certain, hyper-syllabic theoretical vocabularies. Nor is it for me to apologize in advance for the peculiarity of the offering: he has shared with me his work, and I will share with him this essay. That, on some level, is all.

2. But on another level, it is not. This man is a graffiti artist; he works in images optimized for circulation, created, that is, with circulation in mind. If one were to speak of something like value in connection with his work, one would have to mention its reproducibility, its consistency and its ease and speed of recognition. These traits are paramount for graffiti. Whatever his response to Spivak, it is clear that she is working, in some sense, in an opposite direction. (Two nights ago he was up late into the night, scribbling his trademark "Chat" onto American dollar bills.)


3. Spivak is notorious for her style, which is often called eclectic, irresponsible, and difficult. Indeed, as I have picked up bits and pieces from this community over the past weeks, it has appeared that her style is precisely the issue here, the motivation for this symposium. Spivak’s name itself is inseparable from questions of style; no one is as difficult as Spivak, no one represents more the indulgences of a certain academic community better than she and perhaps "Butler." To engage Spivak is to engage not only her style, but style itself. The subaltern and strategic essentialism aside, Spivak’s own question of value is the question, Spivak-style (?).


4. No one is allowed to know my guest’s name. He operates under the pseudonym "Monsieur Chat." I am told that he is fairly well known in certain circles, and that there would be a great deal of money waiting for him if he ever went public, so to speak. This last is due to the fact that everybody knows his work, having recognized it all over the capital cities of Europe. Monsieur Chat as a name is inseparable from the work which is in turn inseparable from its circulation, which it owes to its simple consistency and ease of understanding. The only missing step, it would seem, is widespread knowledge of Monsieur Chat’s legal identity, so that he could be properly feted, fined, jailed, rewarded, or what have you.


5. All of this is to say that (pardon the pun) there is more than one way to skin a cat. And those questions of value, as "Spivak" so brilliantly demonstrates, are bound in chains of circulation, which can perhaps be broken in both directions.


6. Still, and following, I find myself wondering if we are doomed to these divine partialities, and whether this discomfort is my own failing, an inability, perhaps inevitable, to recognize a certain vulgarity in what I am using as the form of the whole (the whole of the form), which neither Spivak, nor my imaginary guest, are willing to fill. Is it, as it were, that circulation circulates too, and that the concept itself remains unthought? Or is it unthinkable?

Comments

[Adam Kotsko]

There's also more than one way to manger la chat -- gender, and in Butler's case, presumably also sexual practice, being at issue here as well.

[Squibb]

Adam-
I totally agree, I thimk its interesting the way that gender informs the pattern of circulation. How is it, for example, that certain kinds of noteriety are reserved for certain genders?

If Spivak were more prone to producing easily circulating ideas, if her breadth didn't seem to demand so much of the impossible from her audience, would her style be an issue? Would it even be hers?

[Adam Kotsko]

"Breadth" -- what a wonderful alternative to the question-begging "eclecticism."

[Squibb]

I know, right? God forbid someone should entice us to read more.

Its also been brought to my attention that the connection I'm proposing here may or may not exist. Out of respect for the hospitality you all have shown me, I offer a little elaboration:For me the question of Spivak’s style is intimately linked with her participation in a certain sort of notoriety, one that demands something simple and stupid for categorization purposes instead of substantive engagement with her genuinely sparkling ideas. This is nothing original on my part: that it’s the supermarket’s fault, not Spivak’s, that she is not content to sit on a shelf in her assigned aisle… SO everyone gets caught up on her style, because her ideas are too complex to circulate with the desired efficiency of something quick and scary sounding like 'deconstruction,' or a graffiti tag. There is a distance between 'Spivak' and the-would-be-general thrust of her work. She is not reducible to one sign, and, thus, her style has become her signature, circulating like a tag on the walls of academia. And that as a result, engagements with her take place around her, on her surface or her theoretical skin, and are about as deep as a painted, ahem, cat.

Mr Cat is a kind of opposite; an anonymous producer of identical instances of profound simplicity, pure circulation. Yet, because he is anonymous, he too opts out of a certain cycle or chain of representation and identity, his anonymity accomplishes something similar to Spivak's breadth. No one knows the him that appears everywhere, as a painted cat. She can only appear partially, as the question of style (and almost nowhere, in limited contexts, but sadly, with similar depth) There can be no act of true spectacular fidelity to either (good thing, right? I don’t know); they remain partialities, circulating instances of incompleteness in spite of their respective contexts. Unlike, say, Paris Hilton, or some of our more beloved thinkers who were all too willing to chain themselves to words of their own devising - as if Mr. Cat was his real name.

[Matt]

Finally, a cat on Long Sunday. CR will be pleased.

I'm perplexed by the dangling comma in your title. [/pedant]

[Rich Puchalsky]

"For me the question of Spivak’s style is intimately linked with her participation in a certain sort of notoriety, one that demands something simple and stupid for categorization purposes instead of substantive engagement with her genuinely sparkling ideas."

Your post draws a link between attacks on style and the reason for this symposium. But the discussion leading to this symposium is readily available here. John Holbo was challenged to explain what the "Higher Eclectism" was; he suggested a reading of Butler on the grounds that someone else had suggested that he should examine Butler, and that he had studied her work enough to have an informed opinion; others disagreed and suggested Spivak. The categorization, and Butler/Spivak link, was not made by those who would in stereotyped fashion find 'deconstruction' to be scary sounding.

Which does not invalidate your idea, certainly.

[Jon]

"If Spivak were more prone to producing easily circulating ideas."

This raises an interesting series of questions.

Let's put it this way: it assumes that Spivak hasn't produced easily circulating ideas, but I'd disagree. The idea of "strategic essentialism," above all, has circulated far and wide. So also has her notion of the subaltern as a figure who cannot speak, who exists "at the absolute limit of the place where history is narrativized into logic."

But I think that Spivak (and of course she's not the only writer to be concerned about this) is worried about the ways in which such ideas circulate too easily, too freely torn from the text within which they originally functioned.

Perhaps that's one way to think about the manner in which she so consistently returns us to her text, either by self-referentially remarking upon the process of its production (as carlos notes) or by citing herself so often. Isn't she pointing to the ways in which these ideas emerge only from a protracted and far from transparent process of textual production?

As to Adam's comment about breadth: yes, absolutely. And doesn't that reveal some kind of double standard (that John's post also admitted). Spivak's writing isn't really so exceptionally odd. (And I urge everyone to check out Steven Shaviro's post on this issue.) It's odd least of all in its range of reference. But where (say) traditional humanism (oh, Auerbach for instance) shows "breadth," she is stigmatized for "eclecticism."

Meanwhile, though I had somewhat worried that this symposium would be dominated by tired debates for and against the thesis of "higher eclecticism," and am in that sense somewhat glad that John failed "to summon up the sort of disgruntlement" he felt was demanded of him, still the more I think about it the more I think that someone should come up with a strong defence of eclectism as a principle and mode of thought.

If necessary, as I hinted in the conversation from which the idea of this symposium emerged, and in agreement with Scott's comment that my hint deserved its own forum, perhaps I'll take it upon myself to come up with that defence.

[Adam Kotsko]

Pedantry works best when it is correct. A comma proceeding a concluding conjunction in a series is accepted English usage. (I myself prefer it.)

[s0metim3s]

I don't know, Jon. To consider eclecticism as a principle or mode of thought seems like a step back from the insights that it's possible to draw from "Scattered Speculations".

[CR]

Nice post. I, for one, would love to see some of M. le Chat's work. Another guest post? Or perhaps he'd like to post himself?

She is not reducible to one sign, and, thus, her style has become her signature.

Seems to me that this brings us right to the end of the "Subaltern" essay and the style / irreducible signature of Bhuvaneswari Bhaduri in death, no?

Let's put it this way: it assumes that Spivak hasn't produced easily circulating ideas, but I'd disagree. The idea of "strategic essentialism," above all, has circulated far and wide. So also has her notion of the subaltern as a figure who cannot speak, who exists "at the absolute limit of the place where history is narrativized into logic."

But I think that Spivak (and of course she's not the only writer to be concerned about this) is worried about the ways in which such ideas circulate too easily, too freely torn from the text within which they originally functioned.

In particular, there's a lot to be worried about when it comes to the circulation of "strategic essentialism," of course. But also, a lot to be worried about were it not to circulate as well.

"traditional humanism (oh, Auerbach for instance)

Oh, I'm not so sure I'd make this equation. Go read the last page or so of Mimesis again. Certainly something other than - perhaps the diametric opposite of - "traditional humanism."

[Matt]

Someone should really post on Spurs. Has there been a single worthy blog on Spurs, anywhere, yet?

Adam, wtf. Do you normally put commas at the end of all *your* titles?

[Jon]

First, let me clarify that I personally have removed the comma from the end of the title, taking it to be a typo. Steven may want it reinstated, but I should mention its removal to return sense to comments that otherwise may seem to lack it.

s0metime3s, do elaborate. Perhaps a defence of eclecticism will turn out to be some kind of wilfull thinking, but I personally may appreciate the opportunity to think that wilfullness through.

CR, agreed about the necessary ambivalence when it comes to the circulation of ideas. About Auerbach, I confess that it's a long time since I read him. But you get the gist.

[s0metim3s]

Perhaps a defence of eclecticism will turn out to be some kind of wilfull thinking, but I personally may appreciate the opportunity to think that wilfullness through.

Well, let me put it like this: if there is a certain wilfullness to eclecticism, its explanation and force resides in the obstinacy and irreducibility (the cut and relation) of difference (of geopolitics, of labours, and so on) - not of will.

Which is to say, I very much doubt that the opportunities given to think eclecticism through are a matter of will, various sovereign contracts notwithstanding.

pps. A couple of weeks or so ago, In Other Words was sitting on the loungeroom floor. Our cat was taking flying jumps at it, and onto it, pawing under it and turning pages. For a moment, I seriously considered sitting the cat at the keyboard to write a contribution to the symposium.

[squibb]

Jon- I agree that the subaltern and strategic essentialism have circulated fairly widely, but two things I think that are worth expanding on: one, whether the question of style as its been posed here is on or of the same order as those ideas, (now we are speculating wildly, to be sure, but that we always were) and second, and in reverse, what would it mean for an idea like ‘a figure who cannot speak, who exists "at the absolute limit of the place where history is narrativized into logic,” to circulate at all? Clearly there is a great deal of distance between being narrativized into logic, and the simple story of circulation, (right?) but what does that mean for the idea or concept itself, when its behavior on the circuit seems to come into conflict with (the negative work of) its content? In another, even more, how is it put, Romantic idiom, we might say “What is the fate of the subaltern that circulates?” Is it just another idea? Or does circulation demand something more from us here, in the case of the subaltern? What is the protracted process for an idea like this?

Strategic Essentialism, too, seems an idea incapable of being thought separate from its reception, given that it has something to say about itself in this regard. I know presently I have to resist the urge to get strategically essential about my comma, whose status is now totally in doubt, even in my own mind – methinks it went from typo to style choice the minute somebody commented on it.

Speaking of style, defenses and the like, do we think that style is a matter of correctness? Like ‘the elements of style,’ something to be gotten right? Or is it rather one’s preferred set of uncorrections? Is the charge that Spivak has no style, in this sense? Or has too much, and this is what we mean by ‘eclectic?’ The proponents of the HE thesis, from what I can tell, seem more concerned with Spivak’s insights defying certain categorization, refusing to surrender their place within the whole, for a place on the tilt-a-whirl of ideas, blah said it best:

“Is one of the problems with critiquing Spivak that there is no summarizable core to her work? Or is it that when you do try to boil it down, her work appears rather more bland and uninteresting than the performance might suggest. If so, that would explain the emphasis on her tone, style, etc. If it is just performance art, then the only thing to discuss is the performance.”

Nietzsche’s literary decadence is not a goal to aspire too, in my mind, but I am probably wrong.

[northanger]

Monsieur Le Chat (i was curious)

[gg]

Um, this is supposed to be a blog for leftist theory, more or less, right? I hate to be ignorant, but there's a war on. If I hear one more agonizing description of looking at people across an apartment or the use of irony to oppose capitalism (irony doesn't stop bullets) I think I'll throw up. This is the most masturbatory site on the internet. Even Chabert is better. Avanti!

[cc]

"(irony doesn't stop bullets)" - lol! little nugget of pure sincerity, so informative, made me laugh out loud. esp. as the post above anticipates it.

still, the cliché blogzeit hath spoken (ls must be doing something right, then).

[Matt]

Fwiw, I wholeheartedly second Jon's recommendation, for Shaviro's post. It makes what seems to me an essential point (no pun intended), namely, that any meaningful engagement with Spivak might require a basic good faith, and willingness to grant the possibility that her breadth of reference and citation is borne of some necessity, and also truth. Derrida's remarks on the various sorts of non-readers come to mind, as always...not least of all in perusing those recent, horrendous threads on Crooked Timber...

(Not that it's germane in the slightest, other than having some vaguely sensational potential, I suppose, for impatient readers...but, truth be told, the suggestion to read Spivak had very little to do with Holbo, really, and even less to do with Mr. Puchalsky, I'm quite sure.

That said, Rich has a point. One should not rest content to merely play the sensational, predictable "cards," as they say, and leave it at that. Thankfully, it would indeed seem that nobody posting here is so contented. At some point one has to wonder about those apparently intent on fixing such intent, and little else, but that is another, even less interesting matter.)

re: the 'question of style(s)', I would also second A's reservations, about the benefits of any study that would seek to establish "eclecticism as a principle or mode of thought"...for reasons that I suppose are rather obvious. But, it sounds like Jon may have something other than this in mind? (In which case, and regarding 'irony' as well, naturally enough, Blanchot's 'The Gaze of Orpheus' and again, Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles would undoubtedly form - for me anyway - rather crucial points of reference.)

[incipit]

"Let's say there is a European staying in my apartment. .....He replies earnestly and in broken English".

Just to remind you that Ireland and Britain are in Europe.

[squibb]

incipit- oh right. thanks. I totally forgot that Ireland and Britain's being in Europe means that no European speaks broken english, earnestly or otherwise.