February 08, 2013

One needs to suffer in order to write, sing, paint or sculpt

My book begins with Artaud’s theatre of cruelty, and with Derrida’s eulogy for Deleuze, a eulogy that proposes there is something secret, something left unsaid, in Deleuze’s concept of immanence as it related to Artuad’s theatre of cruelty…. I did not approach the hermetic Deleuze from this perspective, but from a longer, less obvious path through a more archaic alliance between philosophy and spiritual ordeal, one that animates the stranger and more obscure moments in the history of post-Platonic speculation in figures such as Iamblichus, Eriugena, Cusa, Bruno, and Pico. It was the period of the Renaissance, in particular, that seemed to resonate in strange and uncanny ways with what Deleuze was trying to do as he affirmed the work of art, the process or activity of the art work, as some kind of necessary aspect of thought itself.
The importance of an irreducibly enigmatic dimension of images, signs, and symbols that one sees in someone like Bruno points to Deleuze’s own view of signs and concepts as both objectively indeterminate yet necessarily provocative for thought itself. Above all I was inspired by what I saw as the connection between a series of pre-modern philosophers who explicitly connected the possibility of knowledge, as such, to patterns and habits of transformation. Hence my emphasis on the meta-pragmatic.

Anarchism, the argument runs, works well in small tribal communities where everyone speaks to everyone else and knows everyone else, but when collectives reach a particular size this sort of communist form of relation can no longer function because there’s too much separation among the elements (people) that compose the collective.  We require a party or a state to manage social relations because of limitations communicative possibilities.  

It’s never fun to be insulted, but it has always seemed to me that grownups are supposed to keep their negative – and positive – feelings to themselves. (On a more elevated level, the Bhagavad Gita says that the self-possessed man or woman is untouched by the dualities of praise and blame, etc.)

5 Feb - kittu reddy @kitturd “Allow the Hindus to organize themselves and the Hindu-Muslim unity would take care of itself…sri aurobindo
17h - inpondy @PondyTweets @kitturd A disservice to Sri Aurobindo to quote him w/o giving time and context. Don't make him look like an RSS functionary!
16h - Savitri Era Party @SavitriEraParty - @PondyTweets @kitturd Looking at the timing and the context, it's a shame to see a prominent inmate of Ashram airing Sri Aurobindo's qoutes.  Hide conversation 
23h - RVAIDYA @rvaidya2000 - @BhaskarChat group of 80 students of diff colleges I interacted recently only 6 have heard about Aurobindo Ghosh- that is the level Dada!  Hide conversation 
5 Feb - Savitri Era Party @SavitriEraParty - @alok_bhatt [No institution that carries the name of Sri Aurobindo should be automatically assumed to represent him. –Govind Rajesh] http://finance.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/TheBecoming/message/4257 …  View conversation 

Though Artaud did not worship Krishna in any clear sense, he would fall in the first category if he did. And he would surely be fascinated by the fact that the word for “utterly distressed” in Sanskrit “artah”, after the sandhi, is pronounced as “ARTO”!! One needs to suffer, needs to be an arta, in order to write, sing, paint or sculpt in a manner that makes many hearts resonate and many eyes moist. -Arindam Chakrabarti (excerpt from a brochure on Artaud, 1997)

From SELF-Shelf

The phrase “Savitri Era” needs to be popularised for easy identity for all Sri Aurobindo and Divine Mother followers” and Jitendra, through his blog, has extended a helping hand. As for the socio-political matters, I am ploughing a lonely furrow with much trepidation. [TNM55] 8:21 am At Savitri Era, however, we keep moving, steadily, like the winning hare. [TNM55] 10:23 pm Reading the works of The Mother & Sri Aurobindo is a life long task and to discover their effect upon oneself is a unique endeavour. Sharing of ideas, of course, do help in identifying commonalities and inculcating a sense of solidarity and mutuality. How to translate our life's journey into an adventure in yoga, however, is the primary concern. [TNM55] 11:18 pm

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