James Oscar Jr., invited writer.

Rio Notes Notes While Resident at BSAG. February 2005

In the Resilience of Shadows and Future Species of the Possible

Narrative Rio de Janeiro - Summer: Roberta (.zip / 52k)

Biography

Rio Notes Notes While Resident at BSAG. February 2005
for Jean Luc Nancy


I
One day the gods retreated, that is to say from themself- from their shadow- the other presence- the double of them (the body of man) - hence no longer filling both that and the original - in this sense just keeping up with what was and that which always is and was in - not kept up with Divinity. One day the gods retreated , that is to say from themself- from their shadow (that is even further to say , from the resilience of their shadows) - the other presence- their corporeality in flesh- men- the god given absolution of presence.

II
Their retreat,(the end of pagan affinities and of the belief in multiple gods, was given over as a pretext for absolute domination by one singular presence and that, embodied in one man. His death for some was the end of corporeal divinity. Yet the sound of a drum on a sanctuary motions us back into those times as presences again embodied here ,and in Large.

III
The shadow would be filled by men and their god given flights to reproduce the sounds they must have made when the alliance was one of merely slight differences between men and divinity- the sounds they and we must have seen. Presences embodied as halos and hallowed ground* allowing for a complete terrestrial walking which became in the on and other stride - the complete ground met with the firmament. Man walking as though able to walk and catch the breath of the first firmament, of our very beginnings and genesis.

IV
The airs of disbelief of the such (the slight wind of the green leaf) - the airs which touched and turned in the affections of men turned red and white to defend territories beyond their control. The gods remained, they watched and nodded with disconcertation and spoke not through men anymore but through the Stills of belief that could be made on the terrestrial plane 'to prove' their existence. Tentar, tento , the latin for try and so close to a sense of temptation revealed as hope. The quick carnivalesque turn of a heated walk down a summer street- abandoning the gods - for the profanity of a quick relief.

V
Men found their gods in other motions- in grindings which produced sounds of the gods but not their times of absolutions ,yet their eroticism may have been an answer- in that it approximated what must have been these first steps- the first motions and motionings (to procreate) in the dark to approximate the twists and turns of the first firmament. And that everytime we made love, we simply started again- fresh- anew. We started like these first motionings toward the solicitude of always meeting- each and everytiime-you to me- me to you.

VI
The approximation of a king and queen in that first and final dance- the dance which started it all and ended its final instance. The queen - how she stroked as the king led and then released to be led- exchanging in their places to produce the grinds and groans of civilizations past and present. To crown anew themselves as well as not their subjects but those wished to do the dance- those who wished to follow them all the way till the end.

VII
Its final gasp was absolute- the exhaustion produced a likely heir of such an activity- art and fantasy-a blow of wind from another lair- art was the time and fantasy its wear. Fantasia- the dance of the colours- the dance met with a motion and sound as if the gods intervened- as if they had never infact gone.

VIII
The lie realized as such- here we were- one was left- met with the final apostrophe of a civilization which had given up such propriety- and impropriety - had given up the leaf- leaven as a grotesque turn of the leaf sown through and through - the blood lit leaves- and the man masquerading as though this were his task- to imitate the gods- to bring them into being. To cull them here- to know they have not gone... to isolate them , and their flesh (me and you) as continous(having never ended) as embodied in the dance - in the effervescence of the moment- glinting , gliding feeling the grotesque turn of universes and times turned for the better into a sort of oblique hope and not impossibility. Knowing the turn- seeing its scale- believing it as the time of trysts and turns revealed as possible- in a song, all in artifice turned real, at least for a moment...

IX
To lose yourself in this steaming test of time - to be cast in the test of time
Half a God- the jackal head.. ("the priest as head of jackal", Nancy) The flesh robust and sauntering for an even deeper avenue of time revealed all to you- and to the Other you meet each and every time. Half the God- the whole man- the absolution of doubt turned real time for delivering the head out of the anonymous dark face of the dark cape-

X
The Provisioning time of seeing the doubt come through the twist and tturn of times. The Still appearing as just that -as a still -reproduced as sounds culled here and there- sounds culled and spent as time, held from time to time- from time to time from time to time- the skipping to ,was the passing through to another side -that side of doubt as already said revealed as the swelling in ,and of hope. Hope's midwife- , a time to turn and reveal just you , that real face no longer seen or revealed as mask but a mask on the mask- the shadow of the shadow.

XI
The slow inebriated time of enterings and leavings -of times revealed as Gross Concerts , spent together from time to time, spent together all the time.
Time for the hope's revelation, time for the Gods to return that had never left. Even still we explain , others ponder , (still others) some in their total agnostic fervour doubt the doubt and see the skinny of their existences weeping and feeding on stale bread left many years ago, gone bad- come back rejoice- the music so so clear...as are the colours brilliant.

XII
And those fantasizing of times spent together ,of times revealed as total presence- time's fufilling (horizoning) motion of the ligatures * spent heretofor times to join and separate- For at the range- at the limit line , a time of complete Recognition of time- of a limit spent, of a limit of doubt spent through touslings and turnings.

XIII
Illumination-Your face turns, you receive- you open your heart- (I pierce it with time and my life) that is the god given flesh of absolute turns -the double of them - hence no longer filling both that and the original - in this sense just keeping up with what was and that which always is - and was in - not kept up with Divinity.

XIV
It is a sort of hallowed glow- a reigning moment of imbued Otherness- a halo and ring , at once - that one can rise through and or use for celestial 'missions' - but yet there is always - and always has been a terrestrial fixation and adjustment of such realms- a sort of Sovereign halo - in everyday presence- what we refer to as what is left of the residues of the sacred.

XV
"What remains of their presence is what remains of all presence..." Jean Luc Nancy
So that there is this generality severed from its universal chain to specify and spin a unitary ring of various Concerns. - severed from its more general Universal truths- to specify and tell several stories - all acting unitary on this one string

XVI
"What remains of their presence is what remains of all presence when it absents itself." So that through a lack , we are all there . This is like the Carnavalesco (lone dancer/reveler) in a Carnaval who is ,in a sense an absence of an entire Carnaval, subsituting himself for an entire band- it is both an individuation removed from the collective fury and a moving in one satellite of many. (Bruno) We seem to only speak about it, when it is not there- as if the shadow (man) were more important - and pushing us to discuss and feel that other presence which should have been the one felt. This imago of the original sensation - its sentience does not become but is that moment of thought- a critical moment- almost like the call and response between a mortal and his Gods. So when it absents itself .(Now you miss me, you think of me- and realize love in a sense- a continual ride of pleasure )The remainder are those brief scraps of a realm removed from time and wavering in a constant spin-which stops-celestail bodies of time , gaseous phases of later (latent) disitinctions- and addresses you at various junctures- a geography of souls ,so to speak- dark times of the joyous ride with enemy and friend- the exchange of breath and mirth- the constant motioning to accept and see even greater the shadow which is right there next to you - which you see.


XVII
It is the time set aside to see. You see it. It is our continual exchange ( his lips , seem her lips) and series of sights melding hoping for something greater- for a greater moment or at least one (a series of one) ,extended in time.
Phantasmagoria.

XVIII
"What can be said about it , is what remains of it , when can no longer address it , speak for it, touch it " (Jean Luc Nancy) - the moment , extended in time, yet isolated as one incidence of a grandiloquence not to be spoken about nor even felt but just there- visceral /viscera.

XIX
"...except by way of custom or imitation ..." the boundless universe not given to , recedes in a grand repose (in a grandiloquence of repose)

XX
The absenting presence as shadow time- that left- sediment, remnant
"Can always say of it- its truth or its story (histoire)."

XXI
"The (same) presence which has retreated" The retreat as the shadow line
"Its retreat or desertion as the line that separates the story and the truth..."

XXII
"Mythos as narrative of divine actions and passions...those which concern man and his fate..."
Myths reappeared as original stories- traded each and everyday for new ones- the hounding and rounding time of apparitions come full circle to appear as now even closer satellites of this community of lovers- all fighting for the same man, woman- all fighting for that original sound so so close to the departed gods...

XXIII
"Mythos is the saying about something, by which one can make a thing known ...,the situation...(Lascaux, Cave paintings) "It makes it more than known -it enunciates it and brings it full circle as a series of archetypes fed and fed upon each and everytime- The stories change but the motions are the same- it is all to bring back that old time.

XXIV
"Narration refers to knowledge about it..."
The narration is the demonstrative- the per silencium (towards Silence) hoping to jettison new hopes in a quiet and airy beginning and end-- the full flavoured feel of the sacred- of the time tested standard of love displayed as not just two but of a whole coummunity floating together .
Gods and the divine presence, attenuated (receded) , " story can no longer be simply true- more complex narrative as you can see comes into play- and thus the truth cannot simply be narrated..." Of course the pure narration would be the corruption of the time as it had been - set in a steed for you as you ride across mountain and mountain- stopping to bivouac in high up snow to only feel the heat - and yet the past and present ...

XXV
Absence of the presence , testifies to very much- the instance and to the "veracity" verifiability"Absence of the body of the Gods " (of divinity , embodied, corporeal) Absence of the true body to pronounce its truth (Jesus) nor the sacred wood"
Here through literal affiliation with the divine (its colours) , one can cull (into existence) its instance of its body , to pronounce something (words to a song here, repeated as exquisite mantra ) The speaking body here is present , in the dancer in the height of pronouncement of these words over and over,culling at least his or her own personal god into existence, through a body which desires* (more) - they exchange late into the night and feel the teeming rhythm of shared warmth (its feelings) ( his lips seem her lips ) .
The Gods lips , here and gone (Pomba Gira)

XXVI
So yes, thus what is what can be said of it, and here is given a body- of posture and rhymthmic cullation (like a whole planet - set of planets in synch). (Jamelao-Mangueira) "and le dit has becomes incoporeal, like a void"
- here critique of Social movements- shadow here , given the gift of light- weighed heavy as presence.

XVII
A weighed heavy , yet revoking sense of Time (the spurious rebounding of senses and sensibility- their gaseous emulsions)

XVIII
What can be said , the said , so it is said is only left in a void (in space /time) - yet there is this whole shadow of Time (homo sacer) , where there has never been a cessation in what is being said- in saying, in the so called departure of the Gods

XIX
In the always continuing ability to say and speak (one mind and universe) , there has been that interval - which is like a moment of sedition.
"These are the four forms of the incorporeal, that is the interval in which some bodies can be found, but which is never one body. " (JL Nancy)
"The interval is ever being opened up and divided. The said is no longer given , attached to the divine body, as prayer on its lips: it is detached from self; it becomes distended logos. "
(There are four forms...never one body... being opened up and divided...the said no longer -to the divine body , as prayer on its lips- detached- distended...logos.")

XX
Luzilandia -Imaginary Territories
People in their acquarius junctures go through the riposte and swell.
Swelling 'for a taste of the same screwed up- mistaken size'- hoping and feeling for a junctured horizon - for ligatures which join notions of which they are hoping to be blessed by tongue and crystal melded together for a truation (qaf) right through a mouth(from the top cage to the bottom departure) swelled open by the jaws of a shark (d'une requin) ,coming through the whole body from the beginning (bottom cavity) right through to the end (top)- sealing the opening, right after- traverse ,right through the stream of the liquid of this body.
Yes blessed by marmoreal floods and the white spume which courses within through to the other side-the body split open in half- the cavity cavern now showing the tendency you had on the left and on the right, showing and hoping to crack the skull in half (Shakespeare). Luzilandia is garnished with lime and horse hair (the braids of the equestrian) spreading the red dream shared by all-the blue crystal swill in both eyes like silver stars coming through as illumination- transport stellar- right through- seeing evinced bionic eyes- the whole body in its leviathan, slightly raised floating heavenly light white round bodies of gas surrounding it- blessing its acid mouth as though the cursory instances of a complete soothing-the rise-the sin double blessed-passing through the crowd- as though in a complete cortege(carnage) right through to the other side. Luzilandia blessed with green limes and deserted unmanned ghost ships. The marmoreal blessing of time -mystery of quintessence ,quintessential though strophes of white emulsion, white bodies which float-white times of sin-the emulsion and the blinding force of bonded gases.
Like a god at nigth in
Wanton time
Turnescent,
Azure
Bright, brittle!
Swarm of the golden bottom- white carriage turn,

XXI
The ring of stars, aligned*

XXII
"Body of the gods is what remains of the two ..." (line between truth and narration)
:"there it remains as its own absence"
"It remains there as the body painted, figured, narrated but there is no longer the body as the sacred?"
But yet is this illustration not the body as the sacred body

XXIII
"This sacred mixing of man with God (Minotaure) - man with animal, plant, lightning, rock " *
Separation between them is one of untwining, unclasping- the entaglement revealed but yet with another person half man/half god -his God with my man- non equivalence reigning as the contrarie grows to be an apotheosis, not just a gross set of jits strung along a live wire
***"The mingling that is thus unmingled is divided by the sharpest of ( sets of blades) : but the cut itself forever shows (body- testament of the break) shows the effects of the entanglement. Between the two, there is something that cannot be entangled.

XXIV
"Truth and narration are separated in such a manner that it is their separation that installs them as one and the other. without the separation, there would be neither truth nor narration: there would be the divine body."
The divide of two in one then- the cut as a growth and as originary sign of the two, one , two
"Narration deprived of ..truth...being deprived of the body present as its own enunciation- (this for above, before...) ,its own exposition "

XXV
Depravation of the body present (No body present) (but yet for us -there has never been a body, but instances embodied to prevent the fall of this empire of senses* ) is depravation of truth- truth receding? or rather actioning of truth, or rather the exquisite grace* usually associated with actionings of truth- with deliberation for and about truth - exquisite pursuits.
-pursuits, having their faltiness-
discovery as the internal logic of pursuit. The goal severed in time, sovereign, autonomous. Wandering as freedom of the spond. Discovery as the spore reduced. Just wandering.

XXVI
Deprivation of the body for its exposition as the deprivation of truth - see above - no should be rather , instances embodied - to avoid such problems- and hence truth, not receding (Western bias) Also bias: "It is in retreat, it cannot be figured, it cannot be narrrated."

XXVII
True that displaced and a remove/removes away from ...truth becomes what is truth
***"Surmounting this question: "Surmounting the question , and moreover being delivered from it, remains the vanishing point, the infinite perspective of what from now on will be called logos. "

XXVIII
"Narration (enunciaton) exhibits the figures: it is constituted as figurality in general, that is to say, the sketch of the contours of by which a body is distinguished and becomes body in the first place. But a sketch about which it is doubtful if the body that it outliines is real. (The narrative sketch reveals a manifestation of the body, regarding which it is not certain if it would be identical to a manifested body. Or rather, it is certain that it is not so: by figuring it, the narration declares it absent. It is the same sketch which God created itself as the head of the jackal, or the drops of resin on the side of a tree- and from which no is the figure. ? But this representation is devoid of self: the divine body is lacking in there." (Jean Luc Nancy)


XXIX
The perspective of truth thus regards this lack as the site of what it desires just as well, but whose lack it is devoted to revealing.By revealing the lack- the figure itself, the imitation, the representation, the allegory, the mythology, literature- it speaks the truth about it: that it is a lack, that it is false (error, illusion, lie, deceit)> In speaking this truth, it however speaks only half (madrepores) the ruth: it lacks presence beyond the figure , or within the figure itself. but the discourse of truth claims that this presence is beyond being. This discourse itself proceeds until this beyond, where it perishes in an excessive light, the dazzle in which every possible figure disappears"
Jean Luc Nancy
Divided from the lips- the lips on the lips of the Other
- the horizoning sun. as it rises with a Semblance of the such.
The time swelled, disproportioned.
The mix of sand and tar,
in the mouth of the living.
The dead chew on fresh roses- picked from the mandible mouth of the satirical bird.
Ash-form ,flyer.
Fly away soon!
Fly away soon!

Like a god at nigth in
Wanton time
Turnescent
Azure
Bright, brittle!
Swarm of the golden bottom- white carriage turn.
Rio De Janeiro, February 2005
James Oscar copyright 2005
Afterword-
"She gave him a faint, pointed smile of recognition. A needle seemed too stitch a spirit on her lips. Red wine for thread. White skin for fabric. Blackest hair for veil or net. All these- the glimmering shadow of a star in a glass of wine, the net of whiteness and blackness like the painted apparition of a ghostly storm- were substitutes for another presence as ifthey were all carnval fabric, as if they were all animate costume saturated by hte wine of memory, the strangest sacrament of jealousy and love that binds one to involuntary divinity, plagued humanity , with which one wrestles across the years...." Wilson Harris, Carnival
"Se couronner avant de s’egarer. Au jour convenu, l’ordre harominieux distribue le sang felon.
Les brumes s’abregent. " Rene Char ,Moulin Premier.

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In the Resilience of Shadows and Future Species of the Possible
by James Oscar

"He was not afraid of it because he already felt at one with that unknown and enormous thing which was to come, and he was growing together with it without protest, in a strange unison, numb with resigned awe, recognizing his future self in those colossal exuberances, those fantastic tumours which were maturing before his inward tuned sight. One of his eyes would then slightly squint the outside, as if leaving for another dimension." Bruno Schulz

"Came the yellow days of winter, filled with boredom. The rust-colored earth was covered with a threadbare, meager tablecloth of snow full of holes...crows blackening with their insistent crowing the musty yellow streaks of light..." Bruno Schulz
"What remains of our beauty , our future species, the specimen of a present and future contemplation...The whole is juncture jumped over as though in a fire- sport.The rwhole ings of fire-thier series. "

Traveling within the context of a highly and necessarily politicized world (accelerated in the sense of one nation consolidating its power of Empire and others either complicit or without any real agenda of dissent) , one is led to ponder at various juncture and crossroads what and where exactly a futures species might be or lie.

At once present but yet rooted in the inveteracy of some past, one hopes to see looks, glimpses of a possible future and direction, at the very least, its gaze- that of the future and even present species. In a recent request by a collegue for information , I was sent information on an exhibition, of traveling films that will pass through South America. The invitation was laden with a kind of rhetoric which seems unchanged from past times and or approaches in politics and art. The purpose as explained was to ‘undermine ideology’. This scared the hell out of me not just cause of its possibly being exactly the opposite of what it says, but infac being a conservative cloak ,but moreover because of its refusal to move forward in such a singular movement proposed.

I often wonder the collusion and shadows that get involved in such undertakings where the undermining of ideology is to take place. Is there not a very capricious moment of a ‘rage for ideals’ be it during social political fervour (in social movements) or in their contemporary counterpart and equivalent music scenes. Fanatacism and iconoclasm not as grace (Che, Jim Morrisson) but rather as a set of ideals raged for with the tempestousness of acceleration and sped up deliberation not allowing for even the same passing through the icons and or social scenes might have actaully gone through ,not the grace, but rather through a rage for those ideals.

German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder questioned the future and its route taken in his commentary on urban guerillas in his brilliant film, Third Generation where the shadow cast by the industrialists remains the shadow assumed by the ‘utopian revolutionaries’. Seemingly progressive movements falter to the simplistic and suggestive (foregoing grace and bantering the resilience), what is considered ‘popular’ and may often fail to show a forward movement ,the basic gaze in his/ her moment of basic contemplation, ecstasy and or despair- the mid gaze between movement’s contemplation and its fulfillment.

Not in the imposition of what the time will bring. Is the grace and resilience not just , at least in its very beginnings , in the simplicity of the turn of a gaze of the individual ‘touching on history’ or even as just said in that slightest of motions that revolutions find nascence,yes the cry, but in its initial thought and harkening.

‘Undermining’ as quoted above sounds so dark and so close to the melee of terrorism being practiced on both sides (both the government and the terrorists in all countries) , whose apparent directions have become more and more known. Where else is the shadow? What remains of our beauty , our future species, the specimen of a present and future contemplation. Future species must necessarily confront and make good with their relationship to what has become in our society, the ‘rage for ideals’.

These rages and velocity necessarily underpin contemporary culture , politics and the general sentiment across accelerated industrial societies. When someone talks about ’ undermining ideology’ , I of course understand the bent (vis a vis the rest of the shit we are dealt daily in a shiny format) and even perhaps the thrust wished for but as ‘undermining’ seems to so much be rooted in a deconstruction and not a reconstruction, it seems so dark.

Not a simple darkness without light but not even its juncture or bridge, one to another. Where precisely is the re- rooting of the Ideal (Nietzsche) , the Idea, the pre notional moment of the dances which constitute the groundings for future species.

And of course still there in the gray, concomitant with what is at the apex of these dark movements. What shadows move , lurk and perhaps even find their reprise in these dark corners. Without a gathering, without a ‘preposterous’ sense of what we need - the voices which dissent (and call /think of a future species ) may hardly come together but rather remain gross cacophonies screaming to each other in halls or corridors divided by very thick elegantly padded and cushioned white on white walls. It is even scarier when the undermining assumes such a cloak and it is done in such an elegant and stylized atmosphere- Matthew Barney has captured this imagination, beyond belief. Dissent is certainly a first movement. Poetics, the recovery of beauty or rather the particular marked - the inscribing of those dark corners and their apex/ bridge with the peacock * , so to speak - dance is another, its reprise and direction.

I
New revolutions:
Not totally in the resilience of the shadows but rather in the embers which come and reform the shadows , continuously repositioning them,reconstituting them , replacing them, positing them as correspondences and possible real forms of present likenesses. Positing this strength , as in a shadow (the shadow containing past and future fossil- ‘ necessarily beyond itself’) , and as in the purpose to contravene with the shadow- that is ,‘in its resilience’.

II
The resonance is not so much before and after , but in its 'midness', in its present- living in the present- the shadow , bereft, stepping in and out - realizing ‘its’ darkness* but ultimately seeing in its embers which can continuously reconstitute it at various moments and junctures.

III
These are parts of the radiations, the crowns or thorns* and roses they do impose yet do not impose to others, just in the representation, not in its suggestion. The reality is of a resonance which is both before and after- and the resilience (the root of the future)- which is in its moment, Sovereign life.

IV
How much do we live in time, how much do we let the wonder of the present (instance) carry us. To be able to just say to the other as though with a breath of mirth ,I love you. And to hear back, I love you too. The exchange, the reprisal of the shadow met with another, the opening and at times frightening gaze which starts it all.
Postscript(To Clarify Points I-IV)

Shadows
"And so we have degrees or gradations of shadow, well-phrased by the seventeenth-century Quaker, Isaac Pennington:

‘All Truth is a Shadow except the last. But every Truth is Substance in its own place, though it be but a Shadow in another place. And the Shadow is a true Shadow, as the Substance is a true Substance.’

That a shadow is necessarily cast by a substance tells us not only about space and light, but also about temporality. The substance is assumed to exist before the shadow. And the last truth will be no shadow. Yet there is a contradiction here. In the world of optics we can say that the substance precedes the shadow. But what is the Truth that has the power to convert substance into shadow? It is a new substance, of which the old substance appears now as mere shadow. That is, the old substance provides a form or outline - figura - which is then filled in, to such a degree of detail or 'reality' that that which made the shadow now appears insubstantial. This is the conceptual device of pre-figuration, also known as foreshadowing. In the development of the idea of figura - the figure of prolepsis - we witness a remarkably distorted (disfigured) analogy between figura and veritas, and shadow and substance. Figura precedes the truth: but how can the shadow take temporal precedence over the substance that causes it? The mediating term appears to be praemonstratio, by which we are moved from a classical and atemporal polarity of figura-veritas - through the optical pair of substance-shadow - to the Christian, historical polarity of typology: shadow-truth, promise-fulfillment. Erich Auerbach, in "Figura," translates praemonstrationes as 'foreshadowings' without pausing to consider the offence to optics and physics in that word. 'Prefigurings' would be conceptually no better: what is the difference between a prefigure and a figure? The Greek plays quite physically with typos and antitypos, within a logic of causation and succession. When typos enters Latin as figura or even as umbra, that logic is transgressed. " Charles Lock, The University of Copenhagen originally in Literary Research/Recherche Littéraire no. 29 Spring-Summer 1998 p 15-26 "


Future Species of the Possible
The Other Side of the Kingdom : Restitution, Contemplation, Action and Gathering (Dreaming Me and You in the World)

Restitution:
‘The identity of any individual or human community actualizes itself as a process through three main ektases:[14] temporalization, or a subjective procedure whereby an individual or a collective consciousness negotiates the norms for its duration as being, as well as those of things in the world; (VY Mudimbe)
Contemplation:
reflection, or the incredible assumption of a reflecting consciousness present in, and separated from, a consciousness reflected on (VY Mudimbe)

Action and Gathering- (Dreaming Me and You in the World):
(Breton)
ly, the last ektasis, being-for-others, during which the self conflictually apprehends itself outside of itself as an object for others. (VY Mudimbe)

These experiences of a consciousness, standing out of itself in order to grasp and comprehend its always fluctuating identity, show well the impossibility of reducing anyone, any human culture, to an immobile essence. More importantly, living, acting and believing in a world in which there is always a history - and there are already other people preceding me - whatever I do, as Sartre would have said, my upsurge in a world where I am not alone: métis, because of my very identity, which can only be a continuous project towards a transcendence; métis, also, by being there and evolving in a space - simultaneously real and constructed - already circumscribed and colonized by others' history, even when these predecessors or contemporaries of mine are my people
I am a métis in the very consciousness of conceiving and apprehending my freedom as both lack and need actualizing itself simultaneously as a negative and positive praxis that is, a negative, purposeful activity because it signifies in what it is the negation of a given; positive, since it is an opening in what is coming.

Then, strictly speaking, who is not a métis? How can any culture claim the purity of an absolute and uncontaminated identity, a pure essence, if, by analogically extending the paradox of an impossible stable identity of the I to a We-subject, we accept that a pure culture-island will become a corpse-culture?’

(‘Tales of Faith is about the strange constructed place I chose in inhabit so that I could think about the unthinkable: how well the predicament of Sartre’s pessimism in ‘Hell is other people’, meets the supreme beauty of ‘I am an Other’. The two positions are inseparable in this space, in which identities are always mixtures facing each other as competitive projects aimed as, to use Schlegel’s language, an impossible ars combinatoria - I mean a universal and definitive ‘logical chemistry’.

Future Species of the Possible
"He was not afraid of it because he already felt at one with that unknown and enormous thing which was to come, and he was growing together with it without protest, in a strange unison, numb with resigned awe, recognizing his future self in those colossal exuberances, those fantastic tumours which were maturing before his inward tuned sight. One of his eyes would then slightly squint the outside, as if leaving for another dimension." Bruno Schulz

"Came the yellow days of winter, filled with boredom. The rust-colored earth was covered with a threadbare, meager tablecloth of snow full of holes...crows blackening with their insistent crowing the musty yellow streaks of light..." Bruno Schulz
The Two Christs of Time (The Shadow ,its Resilence and the Likeness)
"Exiled from the same kingdom, here we are like two rival brothers,draped in a renunciating pride, having superbly rejected our heritage so as to not have to share it. But see as this beautiful heritage becomes the haunted lieu where are assasinated all the way until shadows of the Family or the Tribe, following the two slices of our nevertheless unique being." Kateb Yacine

"Exiled from the same kingdom, here we are like two rival brothers,draped in the..."
And standing in the midst then of this double inheritance we no longer shared, for having given it up- altogether , we were now to be two bastards of a common world- common in the now that we shared, common now in that the Kingdon relinquished , we could move in true unison. Sharing and draping what we had previously had but ultimately giving it up not so much for the common concern but for the convenience , it would afford , now more likely we would live in an open world,
not one shed with the haunting eyes which pursued in great measure our every move, now as it were we were free and could react without consequence - but was this not what you had wanted all along?

The agilant concern of a seizure of holy brotherhood for the measure of non siblings , growing and measured with now a median between,on that ,measured not our acions but our total freedom...

And groping at some bastioned doubleness as if its veering were truant marks of defiance - as if the authority came and went , and hoping that in the range of the whole comings and goings there would be some sort of median, even unitary , where one could reach and at the very least rest for a brief brief while...

James Oscar copyright 2005

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Biography

James Oscar, social philosopher and poet offers two brief essays concerning Carnival and contemporary society. He uses an old philosophical form to express these ideas: the aphorism.The pieces were written and reworked while he was resident at Baixo Santo da Alta Gloria in Rio De Janeiro, February 2005.

James Oscar has been trained as a philosopher, literary theoretician,and writer of fiction/poetry by prominent writers such as Yves Bonnefoy (considered the most important and influential French poet since World War II) and Edouard Glissant (one of the greatest contemporary writers of Universality according to Jacques Cellard ,Le Monde).

His first collection of poetry will appear in the fall of 2005. His first collection of essays will appear simultaneously. He is currently at work on a work of fiction surrounding ancient ideas of Infinity and a major philosophical work concerning what he calls the ‘Shadow of Time’. This work will cover notions of time , temporality ,and human agency within the context of contemporary migrationary movement. He will discuss the work of such thinkers as Heidegger, Giorgio Agamben , Antonio Negri and the likes of much older thinkers such as Giordano Bruno. This work seeks to look at notions of time after Heidegger’s epic work Being and Time, within our contemporary commons.
He is a self taught amateur photographer whose work is influenced by the likes of such contemporaries as Miguel Rio Branco and older photographers such as Atget. He is also very interested in the ethnographical work of Chris Marker and the recently passed Jean Rouch. He is translator of the work of Michel Leiris (Le Miroir de Tauromachie) and J Marcel Monnerot (Poesie Moderne et le Sacre).

He was born in French Canada of West Indian parents in 1970.

Detailed Description of Essays:
The first essay offered is a rewriting of an essay by the French philosopher Jean Luc Nancy called Between Two (Entre Deux). Here , it is rewritten within the context of a very loos notion of Carnival. Carnival as more than a manifestation of an event that takes place once a year but as a general grammar of contemporary relation, the masks we exchange daily,our harkening to be close and in a constant sense of transfusion with divinity.

The second essay, In the Resilience of Shadows, takes the notion of a shadow not as a secondary reality but part and parcel of the first- in a constant relation and bout with the very thing it from which it emits. In Afro Brazilian religions, a personal relationship to a divinity is assumed and developped. It is a sort of radiation of plumes and set of embers (brilliancy) one seeks to understand and come to terms with. It becomes an interesting angle with which to lok at questions of virtuality and reality. The realm of this reckoning seems almost like superb realm of an advanced (yet spoken of as primitive) relationship to notions of ‘plasticity ‘ and ‘artifice’ . "In 2004, I took almost 1000 photographs of the Rio De Janeiro Carnival, as an unexperienced and amateur photographer. The result were a set of photos I attribute to my constant need to interrogate and understand what in our society has become a "rage for ideals"- in all facets of society, in such arenas as fashion and politics. My photos and this essay try to come to terms with what a contemporary approach to questions of beauty and ‘ideals’ might be. For this , I use the metaphor of a shadow which is can be both the time and other term of beauty (removed) but which ultimately offers us a repose, "the gaze which contemplates" and allows us to breathe over and above the "rage".

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