Isobel Armstrong’s Material Imagination
Steven Connor I draw the phrase ‘material imagination’ from Gaston Bachelard, who uses it to describe two intersecting things: firstly, the ways in which the material world is imagined, not just by scientists and engineers, but by everyone, all the time: poets, children, footballers, cultural analysts, cabdrivers, medics and mad Hatters: the ‘material imagination’, then, as the way in which matter is imagined. In an age of conventional scepticism, in which the mind is always, as a Beckett character says, ‘on the alert against itself’, the prescribed move to make at this point is to doubt whether one can ever look steadily at anything other than one’s own conceptions or categories. But where do these conceptions and categories come from? For there is no way of imagining the nature of the material world which does not draw on and operate in terms of that material world, its spaces, substances, stresses, processes. Imagination is itself always prepossessed by the world that it attempts to imagine, made up, like the gingerbread-man enquiring into the question of his dough, of what it makes out. So the phrase ‘material imagination’ must signify the materiality of imagining as well as the imagination of the material. Isobel Armstrong’s work is a the most richly significant extension we have seen in recent decades of what might be called a Hegelian materialism of signification. Perhaps that work is, as a result, sometimes caught in the fix that Hegel bequeathed to us all, whereby one cannot imagine any kind of object except as dead and other to us, even as we also cannot help wanting to take that object into epistemological custody, making it our own, making it us, by flooding it with feeling and concept. We either leave the object out in the cold of our objectifying, or we kill it with the kindness of our identification. Wherever you look, whether within the recesses of the subject, or at the object, the same subject-object pingpong is always about to start up. And yet, Isobel has always been disinclined to let such predicaments bake into impasses. Indeed, the effort of her entire work has been to show the vitality of such predicaments, predicaments which are largely epistemological in Language as Living Form and political in Victorian Poetry. The problem which keeps generating and regenerating the ‘living form’ of nineteenth-century poetry is that of how to marry the self-forming contemplations of Hegel, in which the mind risks overwhelming its own world by taking itself as its own other, with Marx’s insistence on relationship. It is only when there is a relationship between the material act of mind represented by a poem and sets of material circumstances that relations can really exist, that time can be inhabited as well as merely unfolding, and that the poem can act and work (1982, 48-9). The most significant moments in Isobel’s virtuoso readings of nineteenth-century poetry are often those where a certain field of material possibility is isolated, rotated and worked. There is, for example, the moment in which she reflects on Hopkins’s use of the phrase ‘glassy peartree’, saying that ‘[t]he idea emerges through the particular physical nature of glass and one might say that the notion of transparency is given a soul because it is incarnate in the specific irreducible and particular qualities of glass’ (1982, 8). Or there are these reflections on the idea of an ‘air’ in Victorian Poetry: An air is a song and by association it is that which is breathed out, exhaled or expressed as breath, an expiration; and by further association it can be that which is breathed in, literally an ‘influence’, a flowing in, the air of the environment which sustains life; inspiration, a breathing in. All these meanings are present in the elegy, as perfume, breezes, breath or sighs, where they are figured as a responsive, finely organised feminine creativity, receptive to external influence, returning back to the world as music that has flowed in, an exhalation or breath of sound. (1993, 326) Another example would be the reading of a passage from Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound in Language as Living Form which concludes that Everything is moving through everything else and the kinship of exhalation and winds, rain and aerial dew, which are all offered as separate entities and actions, is such that forms and functions merge, reverse and exchange. With ‘it circles round’, ‘it’ is not merely either the original exhalation or the aerial dew but every element in the passage. Exhalation, winds, blooms, fruits, flowers, stems, leaves, dew, as a totality, a unity, circle round. The rapidity, the flux of syntax, the capacity of Shelley’s words to make things dematerialise into aery thinness, is extraordinary. (1982, 45) These passages have in common the fact that they are reading poems which are themselves at these moments reading aspects of the material world, the world of nonhuman objects, substances, organisms, and processes, dew, air, transpiration, evaporation and, in the process, perhaps also trying to become these objects. In the last quotation, Isobel’s argument is that Shelley can do anything, because the mind of his poem makes everything over into itself. At this point in her argument, she is instancing Marx’s critique of Hegel, that, in the latter’s philosophy, ‘Man cannot create himself in terms of a meaningful and evolving relation with externality; he can only create himself anew as an entity of thought’. (1982, 43) But, in evoking Shelley’s dematerialising power, Isobel seems also to limit or partly to revoke it: if there is evaporation, coalescence, there is also work in Shelley’s writing, if only the work of dissimulating work. Isobel’s own working out of the process whereby work is dissimulated in Shelley’s poem restores the sense of an encounter, a striving, a resistance, an abrasion, a transforming, a surpassing. At moments like these, Isobel is borrowing a poem’s encounter with material objects or processes to release and disclose the nature of the poem as a worked object for her. All of this might come down, as is suggested at the opening of Language as
Aquarium
Nabarun Bhattacharya Useful…Useless Colin Wilson, the philosopher (and author of The Outsider), often wondered about asking Samuel Beckett whether life was really and altogether so meaningless? But Beckett was such a polite and down-to-earth person that, when they met, Wilson could not ask his question. However, the thought remained with him. Later, he had the opportunity to meet Eugene Ionesco. And when Wilson asked him the same question, it was raining. Ionesco looked outside and, half-jokingly but with a serious detachment said, “Look, it is raining out there. Does that have any meaning?” In this cosy, limitless, undivided third world of soil and wind, goats and humans—everyone knows what rain means. Though I do not have enough data, perhaps Rhinoceros could also be placed in that category. ——————————– A Play for Thought Recently a play was enacted by workers and labourers of the Mujnai Tea Estate in the Dooars at Siliguri’s Srijan Utsav. A simple plot and subject: death by malnutrition of a little girl in the tea garden. Such things we see all the time. The props and performance were also quite ‘crude’ by regular theatrical standards. What more can one expect from the kuli-kamins of the garden? Anyway, the girl dies after a bout of shrill, insistent coughing. Everyone goes to cremate her. Now this is what is worth narrating. The play is over. But the labourer women won’t stop crying their hearts out. Keening and crying go on and on. No break. No respite. Will this incident make us think? Do we have the competence to think even? —————————————— He Who Has No Refuge Somewhere the progressives, with clinical precision, are slitting open some necks. And then some progressives, as is their wont, are surely slitting apples and cakes too. There are, of course, quite a sizable number of progressives whose incredible ability to masticate with a purpose will shame our most qualified bovine friends. With all these you have tremendously progressive enterprises and undertakings: how the Cockatoo’s perch may have evolved from the Mughal period, along with the photographs of some droopy-eyed Cockatoo on mystifying perches; a day of intense debate on whether mass urinals, that resembled the parliament, were to be constructed opposite metro stations; a post-prandial short seminar on whether globalization means the monopoly of the US dollar or the rise of the Russian Mafiosi and the Romanian whores—all these busy activities give us direction for new avenues of thought. This is the real Pragati Maidan—the one in Dilli is totally fake. Those who merely gape at nature’s ravages on the Discovery Channel may be perennially awed by the certainty of such enterprises. But unfortunately, the mass—paanch-public, is indifferent to this brimming arrangement of progress. The new and improved versions of conscious, rational, scientific, correct, unmistakably almighty programmes are not making people particularly eager. That the Tata Sumos and the Opel Astras of the world are naturally loutish we know, but since when did the dilapidated bicycles, rickshaws, tempos, autos and number 11 become so immature and irresponsible? Whoever is giving them such a long rope, eh? Do they not know that such unctuous, ingratiating behaviour borders on good manners? Some among the readers would be familiar with that well known incident at Jadavpur University when during a soiree, the late Sagar Sen had just begun, “Venom, I have drunk with full knowledge,” when an elfish student yelled from the back: “Fie on you Sagar! Never such words.” On that note, let us remind the fatuous ones, “Paanchu, never such words.” ———————————————– What news from Seattle and Prague? That was really funny. The Vietnam War was at its peak. In response to the call of the US administration, in a secret and important meeting, a swarm of Nobel-Prize winning scientists got together. Only Linus Pauling, that saint of peace, was not invited. After going through all kinds of ‘classified documents’ the Nobel laureates came to the conclusion that the US military would easily win the Vietnam War. Of course such a prophecy by these wise busybodies was proven wrong. On the other hand, who could tell that the so-called red bastion in erstwhile Soviet Union and other East European nations would give way so easily like a structure erected upon bogus building materials? But then we have the Fukuyamas and Fergussons who know for sure that the game is over. Khel Khatam, Paisa Hajam baba. But are there some minor doubts, here and there? Prague and Seattle, and now Greece? Who will show the light of day to the asinine wise? We are waiting. ——————————- Language: A Craftsman’s Wonder Every year, as the winter is about to decamp, there is a yearly ritual with the Bangla language. Ritual means repetition. The same numbers. Similar platitudes. Same knowledgeable mastication. One feels like eloping with the winter. But what can one do? This is Bengal’s fate—talking precocious bunkum. But within this relentless flat and tedious buffoonery, I came across a hitherto unknown poet Arvind Chaturvedi, who has written this Bangla collection of poetry. The name itself is delicious: “I Speak Bangla after some Arrack.” (Ami Bangla Kheye Bangla Boli). I am sure many will welcome Arvind with open arms. The poems are good. With lots of bones. Strong jaws. Not iced kulfis in the sun. Recently I have been noticing a pocket-sized virus. A few thousand Indians trying to mock-show novels in English. Aim: Booker or some such heavyweight prize. These are nice folks. Merely looking for some quick fame. That is a normal human tendency. Globalization is helping them too. If you have to be close to the sahibs, you better be Tom, Dick or Harry—who does not know that? The sweet arriviste Bengalis are very much here too. We will call this virus the Rajmohan virus. Nice and sweet, eh? Fortunately, those who have mashi-pishis, who sup with muri-phuloori, use gamchhas, suddenly smile at the corners of their lips and lose themselves to distant drums, are still writing in Bangla. Writing and will
Accidental Insights Into Reading
Manash Bhattacharjee The new Seminar issue, ‘A Country of Our Own’ (April 2012), became an interesting prospect when I saw Nauman Naqvi’s name among the contributors. I started reading his essay the night I got the issue, but other matters intervened and I kept it for later. The next day I took the issue with me to read on my way to JNU. I opened the Nauman essay and began to read earnestly. Before I began to read, I vaguely remembered Nauman mentioning in the beginning a “repetitive writer” named Intizar, but I had turned the first page which I had already read, and was eager to go on from the second. I read about Nauman’s summer holidays in his native village in Barabanki where he was joined by Pakistani cousins. He mentioned how as children they were invariably divided into Pakistani and Hindustani groups and teams in discussions and games involving the partitioned countries. A few “Indian cousins” would support Pakistan in the cricket and hockey matches to not only stamp their displeasure against Indian Muslims being discriminated against but also from a fear of Islam being under threat in India. When it came to hockey matches, the same cousins would desire that Zafar Iqbal and Mohd. Shahid score goals for India, but that Pakistan win in the end. Nauman slowly realised, in his gradual visits to Pakistan, there being more to Partition than the Hindu–Muslim divide. When he visited Pakistan after the Sikh riots, Nauman found Muslims having relinquished Hindustani for Punjabi, with a majoritarian refrain against the migrant Urdu speakers. Nauman then recollects how his own family was divided between the two nation-states during Partition and how the matter was more complex than children’s games. Nauman pauses to see how even those games as children were coloured in turn by what happened during Partition. With interesting tales about the difficulties of visas to Pakistan, Nauman ends by pointing to the ridiculous problems thrown up by the nation and seriously questioning its legitimacy. I finished reading the essay, glad to know much more about Nauman’s life, and felt a little more enriched. But the moment my eyes drifted towards the next essay, I read: ‘A Secret South-Asian Meta-utopia’ by Nauman Naqvi. Needless to say, I was flabbergasted. I turned back the pages to find out whose essay I had been passing off in my head as Nauman’s. The essay titled ‘Family Chronicles’ bore the name Jamal Kidwai. I had met Jamal at a party once, and knew he was from Aman Trust. But I had never read him before. I had never read even Nauman before, though I had heard his video lecture on ‘A Muslim Meditation on Violence’. Nauman, I knew, was from Karachi. So how could I have glossed over the fact that the account I was reading was of an “Indian” Muslim? How could such an error happen? Anyway, an error is simply an error, and all I had to do was re-structure my rational sensibilities, acknowledge the Jamal story as Jamal’s, forget the associations I had made of the story with Nauman, and move ahead to read Nauman’s piece with a better hold on error-prone possibilities. I did read Nauman’s piece finally. I did not, finally, take the rational line of editing out the writing titled ‘Family Chronicles’ from the associations I had developed from it with Nauman Naqvi. In other words, I did not hold my error of reading as an error of judgement or an error of ethics. I found my error simply circumstantial and not burdened by the discourse of truth or truth-reading. I was not reading into any truth; I was reading a narrative signed by a person whose name I merely misplaced. But does that misplacement amount to an aesthetic or ethical crime regarding the author and the author’s name/signature? To my understanding, it is not, because the author, alive or dead, is a singular register only because his name is NOT another name. Nauman is NOT Jamal. At least that part of the error was, willy-nilly, “rectified”. I couldn’t do much about it, but I still wanted to read Jamal’s story with Nauman’s presence in it, as if it was Nauman’s story. And I looked for reasons about why it is possible to do so and take this erroneous reading further. I wanted to see where an error-prone road could take me. Is there anything as a wrong road in a journey where the destination wasn’t chosen in the first place? How to read the signposts then? I decided to go ahead. Does it really matter, in the first place, if Nauman is from Karachi and Jamal from Delhi or Lucknow? The narrator of ‘Family Chronicles’ was moving in and out of India and Pakistan, having family members in both the countries, and it didn’t matter whether he was an Indian moving in and out of Pakistan or a Pakistani moving in and out of India. Jamal’s story is obviously capable of being told in reverse (with slightly different anecdotes) by a Pakistani. The story of Partition was a mix-up of lives and habitats, of lives and histories getting in the way of each other, of memories getting in the way of each other. In this scenario, why couldn’t Jamal’s story be Nauman’s and vice-versa? Jamal’s story accidentally got misread as Nauman’s, but the rational error also gained a larger perspective, as a larger and more complex sensibility got added in the process of thinking about reading, the author’s name/signature, and the relationship between the two. The context being Partition, Jamal and Nauman are two names of Partition, partitioned names, moving in and out of two countries like a name halved into two slices of history. How much did Nauman find himself in Jamal’s story? Maybe he did find a few things, if not in common, in a familiar un-commonness. After all, Jamal was Nauman’s other half, the half who lived in India and visited Pakistan. Maybe
Fairly Directly to Death
Prasanta Chakravarty Stanley Cavell’s magisterial memoir Little Did I Know, Excerpts from Memory (Stanford University Press, 2010) begins by telling us that his will be a story of the detours on the human path to death: “…accidents avoided or embraced, strangers taken to heart or neglected, talents imposed or transfigured, malice insufficiently imposed, love inadequately acknowledged.” These he has authorization to speak of. In a way it is a story of embracing a certain blindness—like the agnostic philosopher and musicologist Vladimir Jankelevitch who would not listen to German music or mention German philosophy. It is like keeping one’s eyes closed and moving through a familiar room in order to imagine what it would be like to be blind so that one is able to tiptoe back and forth between remembering and forgetting. Forgetting and acceptance does not mean that the disagreements with the alleyways of life are now agreed with: it means finding a further life—in the practice of philosophy. Philosophy then, is often an abstraction of autobiography. So, Cavell reminds us, how Wittgenstein would habitually think and share ordinary language, not advance theses in philosophy. Philosophy, like autobiography must be for everyone and no one—as Emerson in his notebooks or Wordsworth in The Preludes allude to us. This attitude, this discriminating posture, would seem pretentious to those who write out of a sense of a history of oppression. Not enough representative of culture or race or sex, it would seem. What then is Cavell doing as a Jew? His Jewishness—always marked a tinge sharper in America, in growing up in the East side of Atlanta and then in Sacramento, in his obligations to Semitic purity, his explorations of the subtle biases in European philosophical tradition, are not matters of cultural identity, he tells us, but “identities compacted in my existence.” As he thinks about identities and scruples of purity he simultaneously wonders about his sedation and isolated concentration of lights in the midst of a complicated recent heart procedure, and speculates, might we not all be headed for exciting interplanetary travel? And yet Cavell humbly underlines that his words can be at best excerpts from an American academic’s life—alternating between the common and the singular. In a book peppered with dazzling encounters with some of the sharpest minds of the 20th century, two men stand out. One is the philosopher J.L. Austin. And the other, Cavell’s father: “We see our fathers naked. We men,” Cavell would confide, as he painstakingly details his old man’s ruthless melancholia and acutely vulnerable Jewish relationship to a new country and what he has bequeathed to the junior—dispassion and attachment in equal measure. A bereft and incoherent professor, unsure in things he ought to be an authority on, as we espy quite early. But beneath the raw murmurings and unbridgeable rancor also lie a subtle bond of empathy, like when the unschooled, pawnshop-owner father takes the son to a manufacturer of academic robes when Cavell prepares to defend his doctoral dissertation. It was a private ceremony and the rigorous philosopher, from a distance, wonders about the requirement of such ceremonies in our lives: “Ceremony in human existence is no more measurable by its utility, though philosophers seem to sometime argue otherwise, than the possession of language is, or living in common; you might as well argue the utility of possessing a human body.” And once, when Cavell asked his mother why she ended up marrying his father, she replied, “He is a serious man.” Her silences, Cavell tells us, when not terrifying, were often golden. At its profoundest, this journey of a book is about silences and postponement and the price we willingly, knowingly pay for these decisions. It is a mad world, my masters! And it is these that have always driven Cavell to his readings. The kaleidoscope of subject positions and the inexhaustible joy in trying to relate to those take Cavell to intellectual inquiries. He wonders about Thoreau acquiring wood for his new cabin by destroying the old shack and recalls a particular passage from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. ‘our investigation seems only to destroy everything important,’ but insists that he is ‘destroying nothing but houses of cards.’ But if the world remains, as it is, pointlessly, what counts as defense against another’s moods? Between these bouts of inwardness, Cavell narrates some exuberant and universal teenage moments too—his awkward awe and sleeplessness at spying a local beauty, naked in a local performance rehearsal, his brave 1935 apple-green Oldsmobile coupe, high school bowling matchups—sometimes played for money, his music band and music album collection that he so treasured and then let go. There is this hilarious anecdote about his own precociousness as a kid as his teachers tested him on skipping him to the second grade a year earlier. After the teachers finished testing Cavell with a string of questions and making him do things with blocks, he shot back: “You have asked me a lot of questions. Now I am going to ask you a question. What is the difference between a hill and a pill?” To his bemused teachers who had no clue whatsoever, after a brief pause, Cavell coolly informed—“A hill goes up and pill goes down.” When he came out, he told his mother that his question was not good enough since a hill could both go up and down. There is a sense that this precociousness, and a keen sense of it, was both a source of pride and perpetual misery to him and to his close ones. While in the hospital after a road accident he felt like Proust’s narrator describing his stages of awakenings! Are accidents, unlike events, disproportionate to causal causes, of threads forever lost? But then he wonders whether accidents, encounters, excuses and misses could at all happen after cell phones. O yes, they could indeed, “what if the cell phone melts or a goat eats it.” Things will continue to happen comically, at unripe times, in the wrong tempo. It is in