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That Forced Unfamiliarity:Momentus HesitatioDylan Cree & Violetta SeraPublished online: 03 Dec 2010.

To cite this article: Dylan Cree & Violetta Sera (2000) That ForcedUnfamiliarity: Momentus Hesitatio, Parallax, 6:2, 123-131, DOI:10.1080/13534640050083855

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parallax, 2000, vol. 6, no. 2, 123–131

That Forced Unfamiliarity:Momentus Hesitatio

Dylan Cree and Violetta Sera

‘what’s satisfaction to me when it is atwar that I feel most alive – when my own

death is at risk’.George Bataille

‘When I hear the word culture I reach formy gun’.

Heinz Johst

Alas, an un� inching and sanctimoniousenterprise to de� ne the sphere of thatwhich has been deemed the probable (ofthe determinate). Who can deny thecultural as existent? As having a likely andgovernable trajectory? But is this lack of� inching a new phenomenon? – Perhapsa cultural phenomenon? At last an objectof study subject to scrutiny?

Yet to disregard the recognition ofculture as culture is the challenge setbefore us. As a project, study, or even adiscipline, does this not only maintain analready proclaimed shortage ofbeginning points? To be against the wallof ‘being-against’ is again to support aproliferation of the thing from which weproclaim distance. Invited to speakagainst cultural studies, we are broughtcloser in just this distance beyond thehorizon from which we had longed to nolonger be bothered – with the vulgar.Having been caught then, amidst apolemic, to stir.

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Cree: Apparently one can never fallsilent. A task is always at hand. In someinstances we trouble over many things,but in this instance it is principally withcultural studies and its steadiness, its verycalmness, the un� inching character it hasassumed in the backlashing tides ofpostmodernity. ‘Home-wreckers’, theseseekers of the disparate were once called– and still in some Department de Sociologietheir knell is still tolling – but for the mostpart now they possess a calmed, morecoherent, and cohesive demeanor. Thequest to unite the ‘di Ú ering passages ofcultural analysis’, although in my opinionwas always in need of a more tasteful andcolourful orri� ammme, has resulted in aquiet self-assurance – in what perhapscan only be designated, yes, as ‘culture’.A completed self-triumphing process –‘crook, hook and then nook’.

Sera: This appearance, however, it is anappearance? But is it too late in thecentury to any longer believe in suchsilences, in the absence of tasks, in thehandiness of the object made available?Thus arose the question of taste. Butwhat is this question? How does it bearin relation to this becalmed sphere madeby the student of culture? Would it befruitless to approach ‘being-against-cultural-studies’ by pointing to theugliness of the concepts of contemporarycriticism? Only if we decided to refrainfrom composition by the book:poeisis 5 bildung.

...has resulted in a quiet self-assurance –in what perhaps can only be designated,yes, as culture. That is, culturaltheorizing is more than just an authority– the word on supposed blurreddistinctions. No doubt ‘the integrative’occurs on the terrain of a suspicionripened within the sciences; however, todismiss cultural studies, to claim ithypocritical on the basis of the verypremise it has attempted to live by (thatis to challenge it as it challenged theparameter-conscious orthodoxy) – andthereby name it mere theory is tooverlook a more tremendous event andinvariably to disguise a wishfulness. The‘tremendous event’ we can get to later,rather it is this wishfulness that requiresour full attention.

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Sera: These recent historical accounts ofcultural studies from an organic-developmental-disciplinary standpointmay be taken as cases in the formationof the phenomena ‘cultural studies’.They unabashedly ask us to attend totheir autobiographies. But why attend?It’s all so very amusing, to listen to theirfaint longings and wishfulness.

Cree: Wishfulness essentially is this work,this toil, a dis� guring of an alreadyperceived and perhaps uncritically-somaiming. The invite or topic (polemic/agonistic) has put me under a spell. Thatbeing to undo a spell with yet anotherspell by way of a spell to ‘dispell’. A spellof a certain belief-structure invisioningthat phenomena of ‘the against’ has trueand distinct trace-lines, along with acertain wish that the theorists in questionhad not become – that their project hadnot become transparent – that it had notlost itself in its own methodological(internal) quarrels and confusion.

Sera: Yes. One culturalist says, ‘it isimportant, in the current situation ofcultural studies, not to remain trappedwithin those ways of thinking for whicha particular gender, sexual, or ethnicidentity is required in order to speak ona particular topic’. The circle of inclusionis to be widened. Of course such thinkerscan be nothing other than lost inside‘those ways of thinking’. The culturalthinker partakes of the identity ‘culturalthinker’, and demarcates an identi� abledomain for study! To attack this domainis to re-identify it, build upon it, andadvance its proliferation! Whatwishfulness!

The invitation to go to the o Ú ensive, torebuke and with few stylistic barriersdischarge a battery of ... as we havestated, already ... conceals no less aninvitation to do more cultural studies. Tocontinue the enterprise essentially ofwhat has been � nitized as culture.Perhaps to be against cultural studies isto be against a polemic ... if such adistancing or recoil is a possibility. For asculture – as the culture – the condition andontological plain, it generates the typesof questions that are asked. Yes themetatheoretics of meta-theoretics, onemight suggest, requires a more strickenedconscience. ‘The wishfulness’, you mightwonder, is formed by a rather sanitizedor liberal-academic-clean-behind-the-ears-yearning-for-freedom that thetheoretician makes an escape. He � eesfrom what has never been asked moreoften and yet still the academic remainsdeaf to the meaning of the question. Tosuspend and to call for a halt may havenever been the apparent object of a studyand yet is the ordering principle for allthose that squint proudly over timedstudiousness to make product, to maketheory, to toil in the continual askingafter the logic of the sayable and thatpoetic glimpsing of the unsayable.

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Cree: But this wishfulness causes us tolose sight of the aforementioned‘tremendous event’. Perhaps this isunconsciously by design – to not facewhat no one knows, in essence, whatcan’t be fought.

... whither disregard? Whither a way? Isit not already too late to becomenegligent in our attendence? Must we notparticipate in the glorious advance of theGeisteswissenschaften simply through ourbeing here today?

– Nietzsche

Everybody knows that the ability toaccept criticism and contradiction is asign of high culture. Some actuallyrealize that higher human beings desireand provoke contradiction to receivesome hint about their own injustices ofwhich they are as yet unaware. But theability to contradict, the attainment of agood conscience when one feels hostileto what is accustomed, traditional, andhallowed – that’s still more excellent andconstitutes what is really great, new, andamazing in our culture; this is the step ofsteps of the liberated spirit: Who knowsthat?

– Nietzsche

If a recitation of Nietzsche’s madman’sword could be undertaken, we wouldpresent it, in period costume, with fullextravaganza. Perhaps it is our fate tocontemplate just this task. For we cannotconduct it in any seriousness; thereforewe shall perform it, as we must.

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Perhaps Cultural Studies sucks at the teat of La Sociella?—But surely the study of thesocial is in the eunuch phase, thus we can’t confuse sociology for mamma. We mustmake certain to distinguish, for heaven’s sake, the sociologist from the student ofculture. The former’s warm feeling is not so derived and obviously centred at thebreastplate—the feeding frenzy of the student culture is too sloppy for this re� nedcreature. (Nonetheless, the sociologist, hovering above this udder-sucker, not tomention wily to the opportunity of his own advancement, regards the existence of‘‘Cultural Studies’’ as bene� cial as that for its own milking.) In the meanwhileSociology is comforted by that boring, but not unchallengeable, abstraction thatkeeps all v-neckers prideful of their discipline and focus. —Yes, the totality of thescience of the possible—speci� cally: the social space/the human realm/‘‘the order’’and its meaning in �ux.

The latter a term that is not just mechanism: it indicates a systemic criticality, a willingness to seethings as other and too, it cautiously suggests the rascal sociologist’s excitement about dynamic,dialectic, change, and heck, even con�ict.

With that said, that the scholar of the social has indeed crafted a craftymethodology—in fact ‘‘one’’ for all reasons, one might consider that sociology’sbeginnings may not be as exalted as its current highmindedness suggests. No doubt,like cultural studies and most sacred enterprises, concealed beneath the cloakingexterior of its present glory is a pudenda origo. But the profession of sociology and thatembarrassingly di Ý cult and just plain embarrassing subject of origins is not our focus.Instead our trajectory is toward, in the � ne scholarly tradition of snorfeling out‘‘sources’’ and ‘‘conditions,’’ giving proper name to the aforesaid body or being ofwarmth—if in fact we can dwell within the tropes of being, body, teat, udder andother such utterables. But perhaps the dwelling is not ours: we could easily present� ne examples from our favourite British publisher, the most excellent Routledge.Instead, we turn to another nursery.

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Baba: Will you tell me a story, Mamma?

Mamma: It’s time you went to sleep.

Baba: Could you leave the light on sothat historical materialism won’t eat me?

Mamma: Did you wash your handsafter pottie?

Baba: Tell me more of the � ctive self,Mamma.

Mamma: Well, little Baba, let’s put it incontext. For, as you know, the � ctive selfis a wonderful thing, especially within therealm of the ethnographic. But, pardonme, that was last night’s story. Rathertoday, my little one, we’ll situate the� ctive self within the ...

Baba: ... How about the � ctive as culturalstudies itself ?

Mamma: Good Baba, good topic indeed,you’re learning. Where to start? Wellthen, the best place to start is with thatfeeling of being left out, or, moretechnically put, excluded. What is itBaba?

Baba: Can I have another suckle beforecontinuing?

Mamma: Oh my son, you’re worse thanthe sociologists I used to nurse! But,Baba, your question has nonetheless putme on the spot. All the magic of mystorytelling, why if I were to reveal it,then I would lose my hold on you.

Baba: But Mamma, I will never straybecause I always want to be includedwithin and sheltered by the warmth thatradiates from home.

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Mamma: Now Baba, you’re trying tode� ne things again. That, if anything,e Ú aces the project of the student ofculture.

Baba: But Mamma, I’m caught up in thesense of doing it from the inside in orderto transform, from within, the certaintyof everyday experiences. There is thisvery e Ú ort made when we see thedisplacement of aboriginal peoples ...

Mamma: ... But Baba, you must becertain about your own standing vis-a-visthe Other.

Baba: I’m tired.

Mamma: But Baba, I haven’t evenstarted telling you tonight’s story!

Baba: I’m too tired. Let’s cuddle instead.

Mamma: Baba, remember what I saidabout your own standing.

Baba: Mamma!

Mamma: Once upon a time there was alittle boy named Rhomi. He was a willfullittle boy and he always wanted to showthe other boys how much explanatorypower was within his reserve ofconsciousness. One day, on his wayhome from the candy store (it was aSaturday, so he was not at l’ecole that day)he ran into a group of bullies from thehigher grades. They wanted his candyand, in order to achieve their ends, wereprepared to in� ict violence upon Rhomi.Rhomi drew upon his reserve ofconsciousness. First, he said that theother boys must treat him as an end inhimself. The boys laughed. Second, he

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said that it was in their own interests todesist from causing him any harm. Theylaughed again. Third, he said that hewould show them how to acquire theirown candy without � nancialexpenditure. They still laughed, took hiscandy, and ran into the dark woods.Rhomi continued home with a black eye.

Baba: [asleep]

[Next Morning]

Papa: Have I told you, Baba, of the, forlack of a better expression, for we stillspeak narratively, tremendous event .

Baba: Oh Papa, don’t you love thecritique?

Papa: The tremendous event is that theconcept of authority becomestransparent as hoax, as mere instrumentinstigating polemic and trajectory, orgoal, or sense of a discipline – an internalcoiling and tension. Hence the set-up andgame of the reactive. The Hegelianfacade, to sound very much likeNietzsche, becomes spiritualized. – Yes,a triumphant self-reckoning, little Baba.

Baba: But I thought cultural studies livedto liberate the academy and in a mostjoyful and unabashed way celebrate ourdi Ú erences – to never cease the processof asking questions, that those were it’shonest and true intentions.

Mamma: Perhaps you have said more,more of what Papa said, more of thetremendous event than you realize. Butenough talk on what you and I will neverout-think. Come nestle unto ...

Cree: Albeit oversimpli� ed but such anexchange is not particular to culturalstudies.

Sera: Indeed, no. And perhaps that iscultural studies’ great triumph, its owntremendous event – that it is a memberof the great dialogue of the communities.

Cree: At any rate, there comes a pointwhen boredom grips – when the topicgoes � at – when it’s too transparent ascommentary on commentary or torepeatedly tell one another what we aredoing or to make more concept ofconcept. – All a modern-day bedsicknessa la the old-time confessional. But really,I suppose, what other kind of � ction isthere?

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Dylan Cree’s most recent � lm suite,following Perversions: four little deaths, isVulgar: incomplete n’yet whole. Along withVioletta Sera, he is co-Director of theInstitution for Abortive Techniques inMetatheoretics in Vancouver, Canada.Their collaborate research essays inEnglish include Punching out Spaniardswithout Appeal to the Originary Text (1991)and Tropes, Popes, and Cantaloupes (1994),published in Amsterdam by Feider-Mullen, and Pornology (1998). Their book,If We Kill Derrida, is forthcoming fromSemiotext(e).

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