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    Avital Ronell - Introduction

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    136 views17 pages

    Avital Ronell Introduction

    Uploaded by

    9244ekk
    Avital Ronell - Introduction

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    of 17
    DEVIANT PAYBACK: ‘THE AIMS OF VALERIE SOLANAS AVITAL RONELL In 1968 Jacques Deri brought out his patbreakng essay, “The Ends of Man? and Valerie Solas began camesly disributing SCUM Mae! In June of tat year she gunned down Andy “Wirkol ashe was speaking onthe telephone These events may sem ‘miles apart onthe cukaral shock charts, yet they are linkedin ways that urge ws to reflec on their ineucable contigs. Both Desa nd Solas ae iterened in the ims and Bnaiy of the concept “man Admitedly, that may be where thee improbable rendervous crus, somewhere on an extent corner of 1968, situated among the sessinatone of Marin Lather King, Je, Fed Hampton, and Bobby Kennedy, atthe moment they shared the best of a feverishly agitated Zeitgeist, This wa the moment in any case when “man” get «ing 2 politcal pounding, wae wp against the philosophical wall and seal losing ground. Derrida, concepually fied forthe jb, was pega ya rainy ein ag ns ‘amcerned withthe excess of man, which Solas, we could sy, ‘enacted. Where e exposed the Greck del of enn, she went for the jugular of referential man, basing trough layers of plilosophi ‘back; it was docked to srke the time of response o all shameless woranrhaing manifesto and their counterpans, the univeralizers. [No matter how you cit universal ~ whether common or commu ist ~ meant “man” Solanas wat tent on ending it and tightening the noose around the finite of man. [As concerns her relation to “The Ends of Man” we could say that Dervda cations against the unabating adherence to the fig ‘ure of man in contemporary philosophy hinting at dhe calamity of, ‘ranaing Dee ito man, centering everthing on ahropolgical ‘man ~ something that even existentialist such a Sartre, among ot cers, wee responsible for upholding, Valerie was Faing. From her henley 2,0, locked ward at Bellevue Hospital that summer of 1968, Slama takes 8 pothot at Sante. Comparing herself wo Jean Genet, whom she beives herself to top terms last of wrtey social comitment, she excaims: “Genet just reports, despite what Sarte and De Beanoi, two overated windbagy say about the existential impli ions of this work. I, the oter hand, mn a socal propagandis™ At Test we know tht there was a French track running in er head, and it wasnt chipping Each Pia Solanas herself through all sore of detours and grammatical erations, was bent on showing dough her wrkings and actions thatthe presume! unity of man was a dangerous Bsn. Sometimes she would escape the fictional layering, if she had forgoten, and ‘upset herself with real, purteulared men (ho themselves were 0 real as all ht). There were moments when she discimed the acronymication of her tide, refaing tht i¢ stood for “Soci for ‘Cuting Up Men” A mere “terry device” and bested addon, the sos on SCUM permite the te to pas ino other languages with nmin precision: Mani dr Geli sr Verde Miner (1969), Maisto dee Oram par Erin del Hore (1977), Manifto fr elimi de mas (1994), and whatever it ay to the same elect in Caeeh (1998). The only break inthe exterminating inflection ofthe presumplive tle oocrs in the French rendering: Unique sombre (1987). With the exception ofthe French, then, SSCUM, oF rather te extacsion, “Cuting Up,” hat been ansated ‘lund as extermination, annibilaton, eliniaaion, ‘One canot deny the pemiious soundtrack that Slanas EE steer ep n lay doin her ext ~ om every interpretable level there are indexes of rae, murderous intention, Bnalty and talc purpose. There was andtophobic noise at every tm, A the same te there is evidence of other sound track hat ran iterference with the dominant tones and semantic registers ofthe tex’s purponed meaning. There are orchestrated lippages, unstoppable fpsides, countermanding ‘order, matured conradctions, internal feakous and logical insur rections. Valerie steers dear of replicating masini topo and the simple call o arms with which we might associate oer historically outrage petitions, Instead, she inroduees static and interference to bear on every possible referential stronghold without, however los- ning her grip on the trouble siguers she has in her sights: Man, Father, State, Money. Modes met, offering no slid grounding for ‘he expression of outrage. Revolution i vel aimed by the insu cency of he sgl, the corruption of male marked eolonizatons of language. "No genuine vocal eveluon can be accomplished by the smal... The mal rebel is a fee” (54 ~ 5). Sil the revolution ary and rebel starts out and up as “mle” la terms of her sense of slippage, Valerie Solas runs wih the best of them. None of hese term tick, which is why she remains a chronic mises ‘What I mean by “se rans with the best of hem” is dat Solas, part of whore pain grows out ofa disturbed eationship to higher education, matches pris with thse who sate the father as primal enemy (Freud, tl), paternity as ion (Dera, ta) = eras part ofa performative effort (Buds, ta, capital Now as a traumatic hisorial outbreak (Goethe, Mars, Deleuze, eal), and 30 ‘on an s0 forth. She even installa theory of waking that matches up with some of Nancy’s appropriations of Bataile that tack the implications of deena. Though she notoriously packs syle in the mode of derangement, loading up on anger and furious rounds of ‘righteousness, Solas aluo carries theoretical ities to ther assigned limits. This was not necessarily her intention or with ~ to score theoretic poins ~ but longi her stubborn destin and injured denunciations, Valerie manages to pick ofthe eraial hemes sociated with the dominion of phallogoeetrism. Inerexingy, she mobilizes scence and pus technology on her side. (“The male ‘changes only when fored to do so by technology, when he har no choice” (65) Bven her struggle with authorship relecs a properly Foucauldian seugge withthe death ofa species: the autho, the low ‘ech writing apparatus that came up agains the reproductive panache of the Warhol machine: 1 would be unwarranted tur Valerie Solanas into a blindingly Incl caalogne of comtemporary therecal thought; at the sme time, however, it would be ignorant to disavow wt made ther guage, her appeal her compulsive effacement, burdened con- fusion, and Hegelian surge for recorition posible. Whether Solaas knowingly climbed inc the think ank withthe ret of them i immaterial She borrowed the language and flashed the enduring complies of urgent philosophical concems, She was “inscribed” and 2s such took to the margin of major philosophies or writers ‘los. She belongs with them, even f only impingsraggler and ‘wounded anomaly. The questions for us today might be: What made SS ee ara es i pomible for Valerie Slant o shoot off the way she i? Why it she rebounding and reuming nos in arguably the most masclinist imperai phate ofthe American world takeover? and, Where do we locate her — how and when docs she ative? Despite communitarian insinuations I might have made, at lent on the level of phittophial compicies or networks, Vee Solas was a loner. Ther is something poignantly American about the way she handled the selfacknowledged loser life with which she rat saddled. One thinks ofthe petitions and plaints ofthe solitary raters for whom missves and mises collapse into an indissociable, deadly mission. Lacking the elegance o curl legiimacy of sub- comandante Marcos, a Weatherman ora proponent ofthe ivilights ‘movement, the socalled Unabomer, David Koresh and Solan are ‘more vagabond, unmoored and alone wit heir inserptions, ering spare caster of more deinsationalied and depopulated “ever ‘Gonaries” Inthe cate of Valerie Solan her fnge existence wa part ofthe package deal of untimely impacts, aspects of wich drive fom Stonewall (1969) and other American invention of resistance. Valerie ‘was not meant o ave dps or spawn anew breed of revoluin- aries. She offered the uniquely American dead-end one wartiorrev- Javon spinning ont wn determined ais. She had no follower. She tives too late of too eal on every scene. Who need runveay Hothead Pata, the comic strip abian avenger, inthe sume of ‘8? Who cared about her target practice and rage against Great Art ‘when King and Bobby and Malem X were being saughtered ~ oF {or that mater, when women forthe frst ime were protesting the ‘Miss Ameria Pageant in Ate City? Neroming the focus consi crably, who in dhe Factory needed seriptwriter and editor when ‘Andy Wathol was improving and producing 90 edi, uncut, no ‘budget filmage? Moreover, Vlei, a creature ofthe theater, Wat se ing her dramatic investments obsleced by the technologies under ‘Warhol's contr. She wat never on ime o on target, yet someting keep secking points of contact, keep coming through Something alrays came through in a garbled sor of way. ‘When she was arrested for shooting Warhol and crc Maio Amayo she was decaed, with some confusion, a very important eins — she wat boltered by NOW and represented by radical feminist lawyer Rorynce Kennedy who called her “ne of the mos important spokeswomen ofthe feminist movement” Tr-Grace Atkinson, the New York Chapter president of NOW, sid at dhe cure appearance ‘hat Solanas was the frst outstanding chazpion of women's rights” Her then kindof hoyfiend, Mark Motherfucker, member of Up Aust he Wal, Mote Fer, staged sce heater, “happening” on ‘hr behalf, eying t rally ome troops. Bu, to return othe por tim: ing that appeared o define her, when Vili Solanas was secuenced in the summer of 1969 to thee year in jl dhe news was reported eep inthe emote pages of the Naw rk Tine in an ari dat appeared adjacent to noice addesed oct residents concerning a change in the summer garbage collection, The werd was headin ing eter news. "This may seem a sorry and sd fat for the woman declared by Norman Maile tobe “the Robespiere of feiniam."* I was no less a disapponument for Me. Washo, who saw his near Paragon te (ent ter ‘estnaion minitaied by world event. Seeing themselves this reduced and compressed, both Andy and Valerie were in the dumps that summer Sl, de garbage pe is where we wanted to land itis the pace fom which Solas was signaling, culurally rummaging, the imposible place of an iremisable ate Aer al, ne mea ing of acu" throws us nt garage and we do not want to lee 2 sense ofthe excremental ite 1 which Solas rents points and from which she speaks ‘Solan afr scum” and esis dhe acronym that otis sucha degrade tide ~ she loates her pathos and insight in SCUM, in what i ess than minor or marginal, but fantions as the residue for absolute jection. There isl tbe mauer of he tas and prob- lem of translating the de, riding the sigs that rive continue to promote evn “man” by means ofthe mnie, Iris owing to the teundations that we are confonted withthe tiles unreadabity Ibecatt even if we were to accede othe aconymic status of the ie ~ derpite the fact that marks of abbeviaon, perio, are missing lier cach ler ~ “cating up” though linking Solas 19 Lorena ‘Boblit,” Houishespolsemically and cannot be controlled solely by the miliic tar, “Casing wp” no doubt conjures eastrative gle, insinating carving up, moreellting men. Yet is aso opens other semantic posites of which Valerie was fond: laughter, montage, ‘ting, Ax Haron as argued, Solanas was engagedin a write’ war of technologies, banging out her though on an obsolescing rype ‘writes, Ae sintit~ she began her doctoral work tthe Univesity ‘oF Minnesota, where she iteme at an animal Iaboratory ~ she was imereted in splicing, suturing, mutation, sectioning, experimental seconfgurng All this ges to show that when Vlei Slanas makes her target of opportunity “man” he i already something els, an othe to man, cut up ferent. 1 fc, Solanas states dat dhe principal mood or dfn characternicof SCUM ie inser What she meane by thi dec ration is tha the mutation for which she agitate ie already taking place: the collaboration of «biological imperative and echnoxient- ie knowledge has made the disappearance of the dasa unity of rman ineviable. SCUM sinates the bystander, the cheeading qu hat rie to promote the acceleration of an already hiorial cventualy unfolding in slomo, SCUM is kind of receptor st: has recived he news of man's demise ae ses itself up ata broad «ast ystem, signaling fom the fre ofan enormous transmtation. Solmas puncustes her tranemisions with laughter, breaking up toalies, busting established social systems with the dirupive laugh that she calls SCUM Mavjéso'* Behoing the lagh of the Medusa, she not so much (or only) potes herself atthe agent of| man's demise, but winesses the workings of an autoimmunitary spparans hat is responsible forthe ctminaion of man. Men are their own worst and st enemict from the atart hey have placed Uhemseves beyond the pleasure principe, prope by the death worldview. lastead of affirming ile or the bia, biclogy and all dhe risnomered §f sienees are onthe se of death or in support of i aurasapping corporations. Men have maneuvered scence to act at accomplice 1 everything that undersines ein it abundance. They are the action heroes of death machines, punpng roa and burping ‘off dhe helpless, impoverished — as well asthe strong and capable “Man ba strapped himself into an autoimmne laboratory wherein everything constructed tus against him. He the aor of is wn decline. Just asthe Faure will not need men vo proceate ~ sperm ‘banks and text tubes can do the job the present doesn't requ sty ‘one to further deve hci demise. Men lve by autodestruct riggers ‘of which Solana can ofr ile more than an attestation: “The male ‘ike death ic excites him sexually and, already dead inside, he ‘wantsto de” (60). And, though “the elimination of any male” seen tobe “a righteous and good at this “mor isue wil eventually be rendered academic by the fact that the male is gradually eliminating Insel. In addon to engaging the time honored and asia wars sand raceriots, men are more and more either becoming fags orate obliterating themselves trough drugs. The female, whether she kes ‘tor no, will venuly tke complete charge if for no other reason than that she will ave to ~ the male, for praia purposes, won't xi” (6)." This how Solana ships a moral beat snd land safely. ‘According to an aggravated logic we coud even say that she i still pleasing men, I death excites hm sexually, and she el for it, she s ‘emping for man's deste, responding tothe ibiinal demand ofthe ‘other, proposing herself ~ as she infact does ~ asa ster of merey." Kis alight to cll for an end to man because his history depends ‘pon such an end, has abvays sought it out a8 the very possibilty of the history of man, There ino history without the end in sight ‘without final sendoff and apocalyptic revelation ofthe esence of man, ln a sense Vlei ako rejecs this end and rejcs men because ofthe habia indulgence of violent endings. I thsi imaginable, she calls for an end tal ends: he want everlasting ie, the opin of nnisory ~ kind of pastor posthisiory for which the proper wwe of technocence could be organized at the cause. Science, ‘unmanned or programmed by man’ sucesor, would turn away fom iss to kil, extend fe and being, heep things going inten orally. Science could il ine and establish a whoa. Oe ofthe limit that Solana rail agua is man’s temporal predicament, clocked and quicken by the maseulinist abuses of ehnoscence. IF this account of her temporal anxiety seems confused, thay cause iis. Nonetheless, i allows Solamas to make salient joins and io provoke Nicaacheanexplasions of sora. One of her insues concerns positioning herself without reproducing the warzone that has been demarcated at the propery of man. How can you launch war agunat war? How could you possibly take on the ecard enemy without entering the war machine dat defines him as an opposble entity? Polis, which comes fom flo, ssl part ofthe war cry and always involves an auack. There as tobe a ‘way to situate dhe diatribe without aling ito the wap of polemics, without perpetrating the very assault agains which you stand or pro- ‘moting the war tterace. This lemma is something that Valerie faces, She ties o ed it down to the cor. Kit not of her wn mak ing. but has become a problem from the et o, from dhe moment she was inserted ito the pallogncenic crash ofthe Knguisi grid Valerie vigorously has nowhere to g, which what keeps her wheel sping ~ once the manager ofthe Hotel Earle off Washington ‘Square Park broke into ber room and saw ber friouly hammering ‘out text on her typewriter, in an wnstoppable trance, spinning her wheels, going nowhere” Fdch Kier che German technotheo- ‘in reminds ws hat the Remington typetiercoemerged with the rile ~ a raion that Valeri unconscious hung on to. We wil et to the question af whom she was siming at — dhe problem of adress ~ momentarily. Frnt Tee compelled to adress the dicate topic of an inde fensble text, of an event hat occurs in tem ofits own chronic mis firing. but that nettles bears grave consequences, anling itll whe searing the random addressee, responding nehtaly opr smal ses of injury alienating and magnetizing atone. He text does alla It ant, it goes off delirious ts dexination in a sen sive target area swollen with historical psn, With Valeri, some- thing goes of, something happens eventhough her words appear have Been fed for so long with silencer The nonplace tht she occupies ~ whether on the historical page ori the Factory, at home ‘or on the sucets ~ i the pce rom which Solinas delivers her wounding insights. Wounded and wounding, she comes out shoot ing unsnapping all manner of discursive safety nets and cultra up ports dat have alowed valence wo be absorbed. She as remove the patauchal shock absorbers, taken away the soporics tha push ‘women nto poses ofan aceping spor. Dismantling symbolic secu tity eyes that keep wp the pach, Valve Solas pees through othe el wth sere highly carted psycho inten ses, Before ene becomes overly confident about aetng he ut rages develpmen ines of paycotc aberration is iporant to note dha prychoss speaks, hat it fen catches re from a spark inh el iti fueled and fanned and remains useing bese, a ronnded uterine, isnot mel or oly demented Tam nt per suaded that we have before us nly a pychoc teat. But it does ise tout of the steady pyc of women, a treat under which mos fu ive and aginst whose eos endurance we conte xommous mounts of energy. Unless onc i able wo perfor the Freudian Sling, proteiveslipining, many of we minrze, ‘vied crete spend ourselves saving off he pressures of soca peychosaton, But even inthe land of socal derangement Valerie Solana got travel th blind ly and sieswets of grand feint mapping. I is not though ug and Bt show no toler for 2 gis derngemen On the canary, some (pes of accepted derangement a hard won, We ave ought for every inch of incl corboration and forth sympa housing proj that sheer our ngith, Crain denser Decome woman. Suengeing her sure inuneplore dom of ullering, hey encourage er dev col lps ing ns. Vlei however, poor Valerie efits the res tige and licen of stern or any ofthe neighboring nero lees that mig be desc in fein precncs She is wo Dora, no ‘Ana O, no Mase von Osh bear noe ofthe ney cai, delice, bint Sash of symptoms with whch dank to he work ‘of outstanding Feminist doris, a new form of dsidence and social isrupion could be wied. Our Valerie, by contrast, was a psycho. Bch-dykey angry, poor and fucked up: who could ak for more? ‘Well, 1968 was certainly not the best moment fr Valerie Slams 10 make her appearance. Ther is no doub that she fel forlorn around the Factory gis, painflypiting her butch androgyny again the lnyperfemininty that Warhol favored." She was one lane dy in the heady glamor days of Candy Daring and Vivo, way before the queria gis, Lesbian Avengers, Queer Naton, etal, and routine ‘outings got going, So way before So, Valerie Solna's text speaks eventhough it mimes at times delusional frenzy — or rather it goes to the place where dee sion andthe real catastrophicly meet, where no amount of realty testing could bring it down to safer ground. There is nothing com Sorin here except forthe fact that she became the tamaiter forthe ‘unspeakable, caling for an end that wa, in fc, already pretrbed, inherent wo the concept of man. In some ways though, without dhe tenn and restraint, she showed the tendencies ofa gil Nictache. He, too, had hi typewriter ~ dhe frat pilorpher o use the ham mer. He was known for “piloophising wih 2 hammer” although in the sente perhaps nether of a ypewriter nor of piano, however sich these instruments of his thought were always at hand. He was the frst to have gi students and he called Lou Salomé the father of| his thought ~ she is credited with having inseminated hs ear withthe ‘ought of the cera return. Niche, on several ocatons and in many ways, was not or no longer a man” Reeling the words a tic once wrote, he prodaimed, ‘Tm nota man, I'm dynamic” [Not only the gunpowder traces Solanas to Nicusche. Nor ‘only the staring intensities oftheir atacks or the way they shoved Gods compte on ther backs, heir crim of higher education, oF their stuined solitude and fragile bodies that make of thee gate _rahers fogive companions. Selanas, ven though she goes forthe {jugular ofan enc she calls “man has already It hm slip by to the cent dat mani becoming, euated and fading. She doesnot go the dreion specially of the Nitchean ranshuman, the Cho ‘meu, hough Niece himself eaves room for Solana’ mations to the extent that Ohemanch i nt a herman, na 2 superman oF vermin ait has ofen been translated; rahe, eves the Geld of becoming wide open to Feminine implant. Nicasche, ke al of us, is cver man, The Dem arguably more Fine than mase line, acording to dhe terms hess up, but that remains oe seen.” ‘Valerie can be seen aa mutant Nicuchean in anor way ss wel and this pertains othe tisevakaing machine that sitches ‘on when she ges ler her prey. Kaus out dat she man whose climination she advocies has never at sich been a man; he eannat be pinned down at all ies wo an essence. Valerie's man, as we sw in the quotaion above, steadily obliterates essen and defining duriterisies by means of an unavoidable feminization” ~ all men are becoming fag, she obnervesinecasny ~ and also by means of the chemical promis: digs ar sapending, reconfiguring, down dosing the essence of man, There's more ~ of less, depending on Who's asking. Men ~ dis is where she locates them — are really ‘women. Thats their problem: dhn's our problem. Well, et me ance this statement. When man isnot woman, he is shit: he has ‘made ofthe work a “ship” (4)- Maybe more nuance i in ode, ‘hovgh God knows Valerie rarely mance her declarative sentences. Drawing om science to steady her sin, Slams etablahes the male from te star as an incomplete female” a misied “biological ac

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