geza roheim, magic and schizophrenia

"the schizophrenic is a sexy cyborg."

chris kraus, i love dick 

"35…’the schizophrenic reacts violently when any attempt is made to influence him. this is so because a lack of ego boundaries make it impossible for him to set limits of identification.’ (roheim)"

chris kraus, i love dick 

"the body of the schizophrenic is a kind of egg. it is a catatonic body."

gilles deleuze, chaosophy. i feel it. 

"15. no one, and schizophrenics least of all who do it best, can live in this heightened state of reflexive receptivity forever. because this empathy’s involuntary, there’s terror here. loss of control, a seepage. becoming someone else or worse: becoming nothing but the vibratory field between two people."

chris kraus, i love dick 

"17. because identifying so completely with someone else can only happen by abandoning yourself, the schizophrenic panics and retreats abruptly from these connections. connect and cut. connecticut. schizophrenics reach beyond the parameters of language into the realm of pure coincidence. freed from signifying logic, time spreads out in all directions…schizophrenia is metaphysics-brut. the schizophrenic leaves the body, transcends himself, herself, outside any system of belief. freedom equals panic because without belief there is no language. when you’ve lost yourself to empathy, a total shutdown is the only way back in. and when does empathy turn into dissolution?"

chris kraus, i love dick 

"13. schizophrenics have a gift for locking into other people’s minds. direct current flows without any spoken language…schizophrenics aren’t sunk into themselves. associatively, they’re hyperactive…and schizophrenics are the most generous of scholars because they’re emotionally right there, they don’t just formulate, observe. they’re willing to become the situated person’s expectations. ‘the schizophrenic has lightening access to you,’ felix continued. ‘he internalizes all the links between you, makes them part of his subjective system.’ this is empathy to the highest power: the schizophrenic turns into a seer, then enacts that vision through his or her becoming. but when does empathy turn into dissolution?"

chris kraus, i love dick 

after 2 years, 3 breakups, and and several false starts, i finally finished “i love dick”

emily left it behind for me that weekend i stayed in her apartment (may 28-30, 2010) and i didn’t read it. i bought it last summer and couldn’t read it, at least not all of it. i read it. i didn’t know—truly—that there would be hannah wilke and schizophrenia at the end. i’m ready to talk about it now. 

"the schizophrenia of female writing is more pervasive. it doesn’t stop. it’s sense-surround. and because the schizophrenia state remains a CONSTANT within the condition of being female in this culture (and as any woman writing hard enough soon comes to recognize) female writing (re) presents a more generous nimble state of schizophrenia. it’s devious, and also more inclusive. if schizophrenia is the state that you’re consigned to live in — if you are fated to remain within a universe that’s ALL FEELING ALL THE TIME, you have to make it large. therefore, female writing is extremely intellectual. it is conceptual, but never programmatic."

chris kraus, “continuity” (via feminaissance)