Re: <nettime> Gender and You

[Dick Turner <gita@ping.ca>]

I haven't read the particular works mentioned in this exchange, so my
comment pertains to 'Alan Sonheim as Alan Sondheim' in the exchange:

At 1:21 PM -0400 10/8/06, Alan Sondheim wrote:
>If you did read the Nikuko work you'd know it's not enforcing the
>repre- sentation of any given culture; it's working out of the Kojiki.
>I was waiting for you to say this - from your viewpoint - and I still
>feel essentialist - any representation of the Other is always already
>damned.

Alan clearly seems to believe that the work of representation
starts and ends at the intentions of the author, as if acts of
representation do not originate from and circulate in an already
conflicted social zone where existing relations of power, among
other factors, determine ("set limits to, exert pressures on") the
meaning and the multiplicity of readings (including Kali's) that
can be brought to the text. His defense proves Kali's critique that
his practice is a) un-self-reflexive at the point of encoding, and
b) insufficiently problematized at the point of decoding, hence his
defensiveness when he's questioned and critiqued. Both deficiencies
are precisely rooted in the privileged position that Alan Sondheim
occupies in the real world as Alan Sondheim.

Dick Turner
(a.k.a gita hashemi)







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