aliza’s quotes i emailed myself last night.

"in some sense, as I respond to this other’s pain, as I touch her cheek, I come to feel that which I cannot know. It is the ungraspability of her pain, in the face of the thereness of my own, that throws me into disbelief. But it is not her pain that I disbelieve. I believe in it, more and more. I am captured by the intensity of this belief. Rather it is my pain that becomes uncertain. I realise that, my pain — it seems so there — is unliveable to others, thrown as they are into a different bodily world. The ungraspability of her pain calls me back to my body, even when it is not in pain, to feel it, to explore its surfaces, to inhabit it. In other words, the ungraspability of my own pain is brought to the surface by the ungraspability of the pain of others. Such a response to her pain is not simply a return to the self (how do I feel given that I don’t know how she feels?): this is not a radical egoism. Rather, in the face of the otherness of my own pain, I am undone, before her, and for her.

The sociality of pain - the ‘contingent attachment’ of being with others - requires an ethics, an ethics that begins with your pain, and moves towards you, getting close enough to touch you, perhaps even close enough to feel the sweat that may be the trace of your pain on the surface of your body. Insofar as an ethics of pain begins here, with how you come to surface, then the ethical demand is that I must act about that which I cannot know, rather than act insofar as I know. I am moved by what does not belong to me. If I acted on her behalf only insofar as I knew how she felt, then I would act only insofar as I would appropriate her pain as my pain, that is, appropriate that which I cannot feel. To return to my introduction to this chapter, it is the very assumption that we know how the other feels, which would allow us to transform their pain into our sadness."

Sara Ahmed,The Cultural Politics of Emotion (via negationparty)

"Trauma impels people both to withdraw from close relationships and to seek them desperately. The profound disruption in basic trust, the common feelings of shame, guilt, and inferiority, and the need to avoid reminders of the trauma that might be found in social life, all foster withdrawal from close relationships. But the terror of the traumatic event intensifies the need for protective attachments. The traumatized person therefore frequently alternates between isolation and anxious clinging to others. […] It results in the formation of intense, unstable relationships that fluctuate between extremes."

Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery (via psychologicalsnippets)

since i like my trauma aestheticized i usually read literary trauma theory, not clinical trauma theory. this, however. when i told couples therapist #2 that it was impossible to live talking about kids one minute and how we were going to break up the next her eyes lit up and she said “that’s real. that’s relationship trauma.” of course, this was the same therapist who asked me to compare my boyfriend to my exes, while he was sitting next to me. i refused, obviously. what kind of an asshole do you think i am? seriously. 

(asymptoticgiantbranch)

tracey emin, only god knows i’m good, 2009 

“we all know you’re very, very good” said the woman who introduced tracey that magical time. 

beyond biopolitics: the governance of life and death

i think una chung said something tonight, in her interpretation of foucault, about how sometimes you have to give up the ethical position, or even the commitment to the ethical position, in order to find the ethical position. 

wait, actually i think i already did this

if you told me at any time in my life that i would be using the words “safe place for my feelings” or “sharing”…. but the thing about being able to tell someone something gently and have them pick up on it and act on it is real, no matter how new age-y the language is. fuck him for refusing to get things because he didn’t want to get them, he just wanted his way. that’s just mean and i would never do that to someone i purported to be in love with or even to care about at all. 

"the male’s aggression against the other is about his own lack; and this failed attempt to control the female/other parallels the artist’s attempt to control his audience."

amelia jones, body art: performing the subject

jenny holzer, from the living series, 1980-1982 

"i mistrust those who call themselves our friends, and insist constantly on peace and good will and bonds of trust. why should we trust anyone’s ‘peace’ and ‘good will’? it is usually the most insufferable chauvinist who invokes ‘goodness’ in the behavior of others, insisting that he does not want you to be as inhuman and cruel as himself; he loves you too much."

roxanne dunbar-ortiz, “what is to be done?,” originally printed in no more fun and games #1 (via negationparty)