"Grandiosity is of course a term itself rich with theoretical inflection, much of it derived from psychoanalysis keyed to object-relations, where it is largely a term of disapprobation. Grandiosity marks the infant’s delusional sense that the world is, and should be, co-terminus with its wishes: marks, that is, a position that in the more normative registers of “development” must be abandoned. We, on the other hand, are lovers of Whitman—and are also, in our loves, people who have passionately, stubbornly resisted the notion that we cannot, with the force of our desire, remake the world as we wish it to be. So we incline to think grandiosity more kindly. It names for us a quality of abundance, of an achieved amplitude on the scene of self-relation, that is willing to risk a lot on behalf of the revised constellation of possibilities such an orientation can bring into relief. Grandiosity is a willingness to risk, first, not being critical, at least not in the modes we’ve come to know. It marks a detachment from irony or camp, as well as the various exteriorities of “critique,” as modes understood to be exhaustive or exclusive. And it names too, in ways the Kleinians would be quick to recognize, an openness to the kinds of wounding that might follow from grandiosity’s perhaps inevitable disappointments—or, we might say, from its collisions with intractability in its many guises."
From Peter Coviello and Elizabeth Freeman’s ”Never the Usual Terms: A Song for 21st Century Occupations,” in the latest issue of Periscope. (via lazz)
2 Apr 2013 / Reblogged from lazz with 10 notes / feminist narcissism let's see what happens if i do this thing dreamers generosity brutal frivolity weird rigor price tags elaborate conceptuals
a few people have been kind enough to ask me about the taylor swift show and i have told them. for 15 minutes. i’m not trying to be excruciating, so i’ll only say: this was one of the two most memorable performances of the concert, partly because i never cared about “you’re not sorry” until i saw it. taylor swift is more sophisticated with facial expressions than almost any performer i’ve ever seen. her monologue delivery is so on point and this is exactly the right song to smile to. her feminist fucking around keeps getting more impeccable. whatever she’s doing is even better than we think it is. it might even be a tad better than she thinks it is. which is a thoroughly charming feat for someone with so much self-regard.
31 Mar 2013 / 10 notes / feminist art feminist narcissism
Stills from Intercourse with… by Hannah Wilke, 1976
In this haunting performance, Wilke conflates the private and the public as autobiographical theater. The audience “eavesdrops” on a series of phone messages intended for Wilke, recorded from her answering machine. This voice-over litany of messages becomes an intimate if one-sided narrative of Wilke’s life, a diary of personal and professional relationships — family, lovers, friends, colleagues — that is oddly elegiac. Wilke strips to reveal that her body is covered with the names of the individuals we have heard speaking; she then methodically removes the names until all traces have disappeared.
“Since 1960, I have been concerned with the creation of a formal imagery that is specifically female, a new language that fuses mind and body into erotic objects that are namable and at the same time quite abstract. Its content has always related to my own body and feelings, reflecting pleasure as well as pain, the ambiguity and complexity of emotions. Human gestures, multi-layered metaphysical symbols below the gut level translated into an art close to laughter, making love, shaking hands … Eating fortune cookies instead of signing them, chewing gum into androgynous objects … Delicate definitions …Rearranging the touch of sensuality with a residual magic made from laundry lint or latex loosely laid out like love vulnerably exposed … continually exposing myself to whatever situation occurs … gamboling as well as gambling.”
New Yorkers, remember to join us tomorrow at 7 PM at BookCourt to discuss Mary MacLane: her celebration, her abuse, and what it means even now to be a woman writing openly about herself. The night will be hosted by Emily Gould. Also: wine.
come hear us talk about what it means even now to be a woman writing openly about herself. (i just met marc’s mom for the first time and told her that maybe she wouldn’t want to read my tumblr. at least not in front of me.)
mary maclane is more amazing than i thought she could be. she is obsessed with steak and lingerie and kissing the pages of her own autobiographical work.
“…but there are ways and ways of doing things.” A+.
19 Mar 2013 / Reblogged from melvillehouse with 44 notes / feminist narcissism tumblr poetics weird rigor feminist art
“So many of us now are both the photographers and the stars of our own lives, the narrators and the heroes. The romantic tendency, mistaken often for “narcissism” or “famewhoring,” is enabled by new story-making tools, or what we’re forced to call “social media.” All this we know. The question is whether we believe our own lives”— http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/transparency-is-the-new-truth (via nathanjurgenson)
i suppose it is a romantic tendency.
16 Mar 2013 / Reblogged from sylvides with 178 notes / dreamers feminist narcissism internet erotics
"i often meet people who do not like me or each other. it doesn’t always matter."
from renata adler’s speedboat. this interview is amazing. renata adler is kind of who i always wanted to be when i grew up.
16 Mar 2013 / 8 notes / feminist narcissism
"It’s impossible to overstate how much reviewers hated MacLane and how deeply they held her in contempt, citing her “vulgarity” and calling her book “a revelation of self which is not interesting or sympathetic.” Their insistence on calling her “boring” quickly begins to seem absurd: if she was so boring, why were they so obsessed? Critics also insisted that she was doing the world a disservice by getting attention that they (disingenuously) declared ought to be granted to presumably worthier writers: “Think of the hundreds of poor lonesome girls working away at the making of literature who cannot get their literature printed and published.” When asked to explain MacLane’s popularity, they mostly just threw up their hands in befuddlement: “People go wild over young girls writing slush about themselves,” the author of a MacLane parody “explained” in 1902."
Intrigued? Next Wednesday, Kara Jesella and Normandy Sherwood and I discuss Mary MacLane at BookCourt. Come! (via emilygould)
13 Mar 2013 / Reblogged from mariecalloway with 31 notes / feminist narcissism feminist boredom
8 Mar 2013 / Reblogged from elanormcinerney with 18 notes / feminist art feminist narcissism
