Zoran Roško: My first reading of the "Kathy Acker" text was rather naive (it was my first encounter with Doom Patrols, without reading the introduction first). I thought that YOU were ACTUAL lover of Kathy Acker, and that possibility seemed exciting and sort of sad to me (considering what happened to "two of you guys" and Kathy herself ). Only on the second thought, and especially after the conversation with Goran, the translator (who translated the text, to my surprise, as she-gendered) I recognized the undecidabilty of what is going on. Mybe I was just projecting myself into the text too much (in a way I "recognized" myself in a story, in an old fashioned reader's way). Now, what is that telling us? Who is that "being" in me that is doing an "identification", and unconciously wanting it? Just my ego? Kaja Silverman is talking about "idealization from a distance" and about constitutive role of identification with an (idealized) image for the making of ourselves and for the enjoyment. Mark Pesce said that giving a meaning to something is a MAGICAL act - so, can we find any magical-voyeuristic power in anything without that notorius being aka "ego" ( be it an illusion or not)? Maybe an ego is not so bad an invention after all! Maybe an ego is just the last stand of magic (and magical terror, of course) in a nonmagical age! In that case, question is - Who or What in us, or through us, is needing that magic, and for whose agenda is that magic lobbying for? Shuld we pay attention to what is that "being" telling us, should we belive our desires, or is it just something that we have to "overcome" and surpass with "better", cleverer reading of ourselves? Besides, have you ever met Kathy?
4.11 An extraordinary person and a great writer. Kathy Acker (1947-1997). Robert Croma took this photo of the legendary social critic in 1986. Image reprinted under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
I will start answering this question backwards—yes, I knew Kathy Acker pretty well. She was an extraordinary person, I think, as well as a great writer; somebody who meant a lot to me and who taught me a lot. There is a chapter in Stranded in the Jungle which is my personal response to her death. The chapter which bears Acker's name in Doom Patrols is "autobiographical" in the sense that I am talking on some level about my own emotions; but I am also trying to channel these emotions through Acker's texts and the texts that she was already channelling and transforming. Which, I would say, is my way of projecting myself into the text—not (I hope) by idealizing and appropriating the text to my own ego-needs, but rather, to the contrary, by trying to discover what it is in "my own" inner experience that is already in a real sense impersonal or transpersonal. I'd even say that this is what is most uncanny and powerful about those moments which we classify as "aesthetic": that, far from reflecting us back to ourselves, they make us realize how much of ourselves really isn't our own, how much otherness already pervades us. Zoran Roško: Are you familiar with the work of such "radical" thinkers as Hakim Bey, John Zerzan, Robert Cheatham ( from Perforations), Critical Art Ensemble, Avital Ronell, Robert Anton Wilson, Terence McKenna? Are there any authors that you think we MUST read ( besides Thomas Carl Wall, who is really wonderful )? Tom Wall is a friend of mine, his work is great, and I am glad that you know about it and like it. Otherwise, I have read most of the people you mention, with varying degrees of interest and enjoyment, but none of Reality Hackers : Appendices : Participants
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