Stirred Fluids, Bodies Unshaken

Abstract

Notes for Canto CXX (1956)

I have tried to write Paradise

Do not move Let the wind speak that is paradise.

Let the Gods forgive what I have made Let those I love try to forgive what I have made.

Ezra Pound (1956)

We can begin with an offer, a space, a structure – something that describes the exact image that we are collectively gazing at. Locating this point of origin is the key: the eye of the gaze, the gaze of the eye. Pinpointing the centre, the core, illuminates our understanding of what billows out from within it, expanding our knowledge of ‘it’ as ‘it’ expands, and, subsequently, looking forward to what it will/could/desires to become.

For the sake of argument, or perhaps more so, visualization, imagine an empty space. Let us say that it is a cube – the lines of which are clearly delineated, distinct, equidistant from one point to the next, not unlike, for sake of visualization, or argument, a black box and the contents of which are murky at best, things to be deciphered in the aftermath. (Recordings of flight? A theatre?) However, let us say that this black box is filled with fluid, not unlike a body, human or otherwise. This cube, this object/body begins to spin and the fluid spirals out slowly, pushing toward and pressing against the walls, carving out a calm centre. Before the walls blister and split open, let us sit with this image for the time being and earmark it for later, our eyes positioned carefully on the eye of this whirling dervish.

Notes

1 Canto LXXXIV was first discovered as scrawls on sheets of toilet paper from his time in a cage at the US Army Disciplinary Training Center in Pisa, Italy.

2 As a reference for the breadth and scope of Pound’s cultural references in The Cantos see ‘List of cultural references in the Cantos’ (2016) Wikipedia.

3 Special interest is paid to the potential correlation between Pound’s use of language(s) in his work and the in-between nature of his shifting expatriate identity.

4 Adopting a base-level notion with queerness defined as ‘outside of a conventional standpoint’. In this moment it is also worth acknowledging notions of performativity taken from the writings of Judith Butler, as well as ‘low theory’ from Jack (Judith) Halberstam for future reference.

5 These paired terms – ‘queerness’ and ‘otherness’, ‘abjection’ and ‘humiliation’ – could possibly be used interchangeably, albeit audaciously. This does not suggest a binary relationship between the two but of a considerable overlapping.

6 In this moment, it is worth noting the recurrence of the term ‘humiliation’ and that perhaps humiliation is an event, an experience, as well as a state of being. The same applies for the abject or the ‘cast off’. Humiliation can be seen as the prelude to abjection and abjection can be a performed state of being as well as a marker of identity.

7 I had the pleasure and honour of meeting Zhang Huan in mid-September 2015 in the suburbs of Shanghai, where Zhang showed us his 200-person strong studio complex. In this moment, I realized what he was referring to in the story of Yukong moving mountains.