Thursday, January 14, 2010

Pseudo-Autobiographical Animals

Derrida, in "The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)," writes:
Autobiography, the writing of the self as living, the trace of the living for itself, being for itself, being for itself, the auto-affection or auto-infection as memory or archive of the living would be an immunizing movement (a movement of safety, of salvage and salvation of the safe, the holy, the immune, the indemnified, of virginal and intact nudity), but an immunizing movement that is always threatened with becoming auto-immunizing, as is every autos, every ipseity, every automatic, automobile, autonomous, auto-referential movement. Nothing risks becoming more poisonous than an autobiography; poisonous for itself in the first place, auto-infectious for the presumed signatory who is so auto-affected.
CĂ©line:
"... [l]ife itself is a fiction, and biography is something we invent afterwards."
Professor VJ (circa 2006):
My point is: fiction itself is an unstable signifier. For example, what if you were to take "fiction" as your starting point, that is, you are born a blob of nothingness waiting to write yourself into being, which you then construct over the course of your life. In this case, the writer becomes an instrument that creates their own pseudo-autobiographical narrative through the writing process itself. It's pseudo-autobiographical because you make it up as you go along. This is the only way to tap into your unconscious (readiness) potential as you turn to your instincts to perform the narrative momentum you are creating for yourself. In this regard, writing becomes no less than surviving. But even if you get to the point where you are able to succcessfully write your story into being so that you can then simultaneously become what you are writing, who is to say that you yourself are the author? Is it really You? Or is it the "not-you"? My research suspects that it is the "not-you," that is, the Unconscious Player inside you who you have no control over and who you must become in order to write your story. If you are having difficulties tapping into or processing this "not-you" when you write, then you may be having difficulties locating your readiness-potential as an instinctive artist-medium trying to survive as a writer.

But then, if as I suggest above, "you are born a blob of nothingness waiting to write yourself into being," how do you differentiate between fiction and not-fiction, or is it all a big blur? In my experience, it's all about training yourself to play with your unconscious power to create, that is, to locate a space of creative action where you can live up to your potential as an artist-medium capable of using the writing instrument itself to prophesize your future tense.


Metadata: , , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home