Manchester University Press
5 ‘Life has no solution’
Abstract
Documenting issues 3–5 of Maintenant (including the signal events surrounding the notorious review of the 1914 Salon des Indépendants), this chapter develops further Nietzsche’s premise that language (as the chosen medium of Maintenant) is always metaphorical. The inherent property of language is that it is creative, and we are soberly reminded in the oscillation between actual and virtual that there is no ‘truth’ behind language or behind appearances, only further appearances. After Nietzsche reasoned that there is no being behind doing, the twentieth-century Deleuzian advance posits difference behind doing and, indeed, behind everything – ‘but behind difference there is nothing’. Introducing the machinisme philosophically of Deleuze and poetically of Cravan, the present proposition is that the performativity of Maintenant (text) and that of Cravan (body) are analogous. This signals emphasis on the interpretative process and in the reading of the body as ‘a thousandfold process’ – a performativity reconfigured for Cravan as conférencier. The position debated proposes that ‘to interpret is to have a body, and to be a perspective’, which conceptually underpins the boxing tour of the Balkans documented in this chapter, and the return to Paris caught in the portraiture of Modigliani.
Abstract
Documenting issues 3–5 of Maintenant (including the signal events surrounding the notorious review of the 1914 Salon des Indépendants), this chapter develops further Nietzsche’s premise that language (as the chosen medium of Maintenant) is always metaphorical. The inherent property of language is that it is creative, and we are soberly reminded in the oscillation between actual and virtual that there is no ‘truth’ behind language or behind appearances, only further appearances. After Nietzsche reasoned that there is no being behind doing, the twentieth-century Deleuzian advance posits difference behind doing and, indeed, behind everything – ‘but behind difference there is nothing’. Introducing the machinisme philosophically of Deleuze and poetically of Cravan, the present proposition is that the performativity of Maintenant (text) and that of Cravan (body) are analogous. This signals emphasis on the interpretative process and in the reading of the body as ‘a thousandfold process’ – a performativity reconfigured for Cravan as conférencier. The position debated proposes that ‘to interpret is to have a body, and to be a perspective’, which conceptually underpins the boxing tour of the Balkans documented in this chapter, and the return to Paris caught in the portraiture of Modigliani.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of illustrations viii
- Preface x
- List of abbreviations xvii
- Introduction 1
- 1 On the genealogy of Arthur Cravan 18
- 2 Enter Colossus 43
- 3 To be an American in Paris 70
- 4 ‘All words are lies’ 107
- 5 ‘Life has no solution’ 143
- 6 The vision of struggling movement 198
- 7 ‘Pure affect’ 222
- 8 Being as being, and nothing more 257
-
Being as being, and nothing more
- Conclusion 279
- Index 303
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of illustrations viii
- Preface x
- List of abbreviations xvii
- Introduction 1
- 1 On the genealogy of Arthur Cravan 18
- 2 Enter Colossus 43
- 3 To be an American in Paris 70
- 4 ‘All words are lies’ 107
- 5 ‘Life has no solution’ 143
- 6 The vision of struggling movement 198
- 7 ‘Pure affect’ 222
- 8 Being as being, and nothing more 257
-
Being as being, and nothing more
- Conclusion 279
- Index 303
