chris kraus should most certainly be invited to participate in the doubt2.org project. i would love to see her write a doubt manifesto. although to be honest, reading ‘i love dick’ is turning out to be far more unsettling than i expected. and it’s entirely possible that something as humble, and misguided, as our little investigation would not be interesting to her at all.
‘i love dick’ is certainly a brave work, but terribly claustrophobic. it is a text that is dripping with doubt – both the good kind, and the stultifying kind. kraus laments the failure of a film project with a stinging, begrudging acceptance. this gets me thinking about the relationship between doubt and failure – there’s a big one for the doubters on doubt2 to chew on — any thoughts dear reader? use of the comments box is mandatory upon reading this post.
perhaps its a chicken and egg situation? which comes first, the doubt or the failure?
i need a reading group. can we please form a doubt reading group in 2007?
“Who’s Chirs Kraus?” she screamed. “She’s no one! She’s Sylvere Lotringer’s wife! She’s his ‘Plus-One’!” No matter how many films she made or books she edited, she’d always keep being seen as no one by anyone who mattered so long as she was living with Sylvere.
“It’s not my fault!” Sylvere yelled back.
But she remembered all the times they’d worked together when her name had been omitted, how equivocal Sylvere’d been, how reluctant to offend anyone who paid them. She remembered the abortions, all the holidays she’d been told to leave the house so Sylvere could be alone with his daughter. In ten years, she’d erased herself (116-117).
ephemera | 26-Dec-06 at 7:35 pm | Permalink
1. ouch! i can feel the utter desperation even in that little paragraph …
2. on one hand : yes! i love the idea of a doubt reading group, on the other i like the efficiency of one doubter reading a book and reporting on it for the benefit of the others … but is that just because i am a lazy fuck?
3. yes yes yes! the relationship between doubt and failure is an interesting one because of course one engenders and reinforces the other – but in terms of the experiment (which is the golden thread connecting art and science) doubt and failure form an important part of the methodology, and experiments are meaningless without them … it is when doubt rears its cute little head in an area we had previously, after extensive experimentation, cordoned off as certain, that we are overcome with fear and lethargy
annap | 27-Dec-06 at 8:23 am | Permalink
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annap | 27-Dec-06 at 8:30 am | Permalink
‘one doubter reading a book and reporting on it for the benefit of the others’ is one way of defining collaborative research i guess. and is probably more efficient… but i still find the idea of a doubt reading group (which moves slowly enough to accommodate workloads) very attractive, and concentrating a few brains onto one text could be… very …. interesting and fun (in a nerdy way).
well put about the importance of doubt and failure. what’s interesting about ‘i love dick’ is that the failure of the film results in the presence of doubt in another aspect of chris’s (the character) life. there’s a displacement there – the doubt just doesn’t pop up at the site of failure.
typing with bandaids | 05-Jan-07 at 10:57 am | Permalink
I’m still struggling to define failure…
I tend to want to do it on my own terms – and then smother it in lubricant.
ap | 22-Jan-07 at 4:20 pm | Permalink
hm defining failure. my sense of it is that failure, at least as it is depicted or implied in ‘i love dick’, is something only defined when it is upon you, or perhaps when you hear it rattling its chains in the night.