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‘Round About Fetishism With Louise J. Kaplan by Adolfo Fattori | ||
About the forms of
“writing” on
the body which you discuss at
length, and which are also, now, part of phenomena that go beyond
individual practice since they took a social dimension, it could be
possible – not forgetting the tradition of keeping diaries
– thinking
that maybe blogs, chat rooms and other phenomena related to the web
imply a writing on a now virtual body, shared, located on the web? Yes, that is an interesting idea about the social dimension given to the fetishism strategy by blogs, chat rooms and other phenomena related to the web. I disagree only insofar as I would not consider these writings as taking place on a “virtual, shared body,” since the web is exactly a non-alive thing without its own unpredictable vitalities - which, of course, is its attraction. Thus these writings, by virtue of avoiding the perils of direct human interaction, seem to embody the fourth principle of the fetishism strategy as I describe on page 14 of Culture of Fetishism, “… the more dangerous and unpredictable the threat of desire the more deadened or distanced from human experience the fetish object must be… when the full identity of the sexual object is alive, with all manner of threatening, dangerously unpredictable vitalities, the desire he or she arouses must be invested in an object that is knowable and predictable.”  |
 Also in this regards, how are the place, in your analysis, of the experiments of avant-garde performers like Stelarc or Orlan? Your question about Stelarc and Orlan, two different varieties of performance artist is also relevant to the first and fourth principles of the fetishism strategy. I begin with Orlan as her form of writing on the body is also a good example of the failure of the strategy - which is, in part, to enlist an erotic act to contain and regulate aggression and death. As I explain in my discussion of the film The Pillow Book2,“Only when the fetishism strategy can no longer sufficiently disguise or regulate the underlying shameful, frightening, forbidden and dangerously unpredictable impulses, fantasies and wishes does out right madness, rampage, violence, rape, body mutilation, incest and murder result.” Or, as translated on page 97 of Culture of Fetishism, “Quando la strategia feticista fallisce, queste pulsioni esplodono portando follia, violenza, stupro, mutilazioni, incesto e morte3. ” Orlan’s writing on her own skin, ostensibly in the name of self perfection and ideal beauty is actually obviously, all too obviously, a direct expression of the violence of body mutilation. In this regard it is also a failure of principle five of the fetishism strategy. On page 15, “… the death drive tints itself in erotic color.” As Derrida has said, “… this impression of erogenous colour draws a mask right on the skin4.” That audiences enjoy watching a woman have surgeons mutilate her face and body and that surgeons who are supposed to protect the vitalities of the human body, collaborate with these acts of body mutilation are other indications of the failure of the fetishistic strategy. | |
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3. When
fetishism strategy fails, these impulses erupt,
and madness, violence, rape, body mutilation, incest and murder result. (Ed. n.) | 4. Jacques
Derrida, Archive Fever. A Freudian Impression,
Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1996; Mal
d’archive, Paris, Galilée, 1995.
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