we were talking about-the madness that comes from insecurity, impossibility of knowing for sure, the fear of not being able to control something - this is the irrational part of the market. the precarity of the market, the impossibility of full control, on the other hand-the soviet state was an example of an absolute control that brought the same state of precarity. people didn't know when and how the state will punish them. and this state of fear brought them into the state of madness. can we say that violence produces madness? or madness is produced by the violence? or/and madness produces violence?
hysteria in my family was probably the possibility to locate the madness and name it a madness. this was a tool to keep a search for the truth. in Aristotle's sense to go through the cleansing. 'catharsis'. can we combine cantharsis and brechtian not didactic but rather alienating elements?
yes i think we can. it depends on what we mean by brechtian alienation effects.... i think if we mean by this an effort to reveal how the structure is working in the body and mind, combined with a means of creating critical distance... i don't see why this needs to be profoundly didactic. catharsis in the aristotelian sense is however complicated by creating critical distance.... i wonder tho, if the "distance" is really needed... or how and where it can itself be more weird and complicated.. providing something like, if not a pure naturalist... catharsis..... i am thinking at the moment of the Foucault text that i read... does that really provide catharsis in the usual sense (like in say a tv contemporary police drama -- which is indeed very geared towards catharsis... the bad people are thru a complicated process, in the end brought to justice [for the most part]...and in that dramatization... there is a feeling of pressure and release, of tension and resolution...)? or does it provide more levels then simply a pure emotionalist release/satisfaction/resolution that we can feel 'seated' with.... isn't what we are doing more in the space of ambivalence and precariousness per se...
ReplyDeleteand i think this is a good thing...
it doesn't deprive us or the audience of catharsis but it doesn't make it the final or Great drive neccesarily...
it becomes about examing both affect and the Reason of the state....
yesssssss! i absolutely agree with you. you gave a very good example of sentimental realistic catharsis and the Foucault scene, where i really get emotional. it is a good comparison!
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