Intense Autobiography (syllabus)

Visual Poetics

Intense Autobiography

Thom Donovan

wildhorsesoffire [at] gmail [dot] com

I want to write the vector of self, the intense autobiography that is also a philosophy of the body.

--Bhanu Kapil

Course description

In this course we will look at various forms of autobiographical writing in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. I am qualifying this series of texts as “intense” in order to distinguish them from more traditional forms of autobiographical writing, where one typically encounters the writer struggling to give a narrative account of the life they have led, moral conflicts they have faced, and to accurately portray the history of their “person” or “self” within a larger society. The modes of confession found in much Greek and Christian writing offer precedents for these more traditional forms of autobiography. In much of the writing we will look at, notions of person/self are replaced by an exploration of the human being as it is conditioned by modern disciplines (medicine, biology, statistics). They also produce an examination of “life” (bios) through a registration of collective experience as it is mediated by economic, legal, and political struggle. Intensity may imply that life is a series of thresholds through which one passes—“phase states,” to use a term from contemporary physics—whence identity remains in a more or less constant state of flux, contingent on organic transformation. It may also imply conditions of movement, desire, and metabolic change within an interpersonal field. Much of the writing, as you will see, explores aesthetic forms as an extension of experiences that challenge our ability to represent them (because they are horrific, subtle, traumatic, or withdrawn from our capacity to perceive them). They also explore how notions of  “person” or “self” are fabricated through aesthetic experience.

Required texts

Numerous texts will be made available to you via PDFs and urls.

The following are the textbooks you must purchase or borrow for this class. I recommend you purchase books online via Bookfinder or Small Press Distribution. You may also feel free to use the public library and the library at SVA.

Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz (Bookfinder)

Bhanu Kapil’s Incubation: a Space for Monsters (SPD; Bookfinder)

William Burroughs’ The Soft Machine (Bookfinder or library)

CA Conrad’s A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon (Bookfinder)

David Wojnarowicz’s Close to the Knives (Bookfinder or library)

Bruce Boone’s A Century of Clouds (Bookfinder or SPD)

Robert Gluck’s Margery Kempe (Bookfinder)

Ronaldo Wilson’s Poem of the Black Object (SPD) 

Schedule

January 10

Introductions.

Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, in class recitation.

Homework:

PDFs of Michel Foucault texts, “Right of Death and Power Over Life” and “On the Genealogy of Ethics: Overview of Work in Progress” (from The Foucault Reader)

Excepts from Augustine’s and Rousseau’s Confessions

Further reading:

Michel de Montaigne’s Essays.

Recommended exercise:

Produce a reflection on one of the following quotations, from Foucault’s “Right of Death and Power Over Life” and “On the Genealogy of Ethics: Overview of Work in Progress”

“For millennia, man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additional capacity for a political existence. Modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being into question.” (pg. 265)

“I would like to say exactly the contrary: we should not have to refer the creative activity of somebody to the kind of relation he has to himself, but should relate the kind of relation one has to oneself to a creative activity.” (pg. 351)

17

Foucault’s “Right of Death and Power Over Life” and “On the Genealogy of Ethics: Overview of Work in Progress”

Homework:

Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz

Further reading:

Giorgio Agamben’s Remnants of Auschwitz

Georges Perec’s “W”: The Memory of Childhood

Robert Antelme’s The Human Race

24

Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz

Homework:

Bhanu Kapil’s Incubation: a Space for Monsters with excerpts from Jalal Toufic’s Vampires [2^nd Edition] (PDF)

Further reading:

Bhanu Kapil’s Humanimal

Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guattari’s “Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal” section from A Thousand Plateaus

31

Bhanu Kapil’s Incubation: a Space for Monsters

Skype “visit” with Kapil (7:30-8:45)

Homework:

William Burroughs’ The Soft Machine

February 7

William Burroughs’ The Soft Machine

Homework:

Hannah Weiner’s The Fast (PDF) and excerpts from Clairvoyant Journals manuscript

Further reading:

Bernadette Mayer’s Studying Hunger and Studying Hunger Journals

Carolee Schneemann’s Imaging Her Erotics

Hannah Weiner’s Open House

Vito Acconci’s Language to Cover a Page

Vito Acconci’s and Bernadette Mayer’s 0 to Nine magazine

14

Hannah Weiner’s The Fast and Clairvoyant Journals

Homework:

CA Conrad’s A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon

Further reading:

Charles Bernstein’s “Experiments” at the Electronic Poetry Center.

21

CA Conrad’s A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon

Homework: David Wojnarowicz’s Close to the Knives and excerpt from Kevin Killian’s Argento Series (PDF)

Further reading:

Gregg Bordowitz’s The AIDS Crisis is Ridiculous and General Idea Imagevirus

Deborah B Gould’s Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT-UP’s Fight Against AIDS

Douglas Crimp’s AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism

ACT-UP Oral History Project

28 midterms due

David Wojnarowicz’s Close to the Knives and excerpt from Kevin Killian’s Argento Series (PDF)

Homework: Robert Gluck’s “Long Note on New Narrative” and Dodie Bellamy’s “Low Culture” essays from Biting the Error (PDF) with Bellamy’s Cunt-Ups (PDF)

Further reading:

Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative (ed. Burger, Gluck, Roy, Scott)

Dodie Bellamy’s The Letters of Mina Harker

Kaplan Harris’ “The Small Press Traffic School of Dissimulation”

Interview with Dodie Bellamy conducted by Julia Bloch

Kathy Acker’s My Mother: Demonology

March 7

Robert Gluck’s “Long Note on New Narrative” and Dodie Bellamy’s “Low Culture” essays from Biting the Error (PDF) with Bellamy’s Cunt-Ups (PDF)

Homework:

Bruce Boone’s A Century of Clouds and Frank O’Hara’s “Having a Coke with You”

            Further reading:
            Bruce Boone's My Walk With Bob 
            Dana Ward's This Can't Be Life
            Michel de Montaigne's "On Friendship"
            Tyrone Williams' Pink Tie

21

Bruce Boone’s A Century of Clouds and Frank O’Hara’s “Having a Coke with You”

Homework:

Amber Di Pietra’s and Denise Leto’s Waveform (PDF), excerpts from Jordan Scott’s Blert (PDF), and excerpts from Beauty is a Verb: the New Poetry of Disability (PDF)

Further reading:

Somatic Engagement (ed. Petra Kuppers)

Tobin Siebers’ Disability Theory

Michael Davidson’s Concerto for the Left Hand

The Collected Writings of Larry Eigner, Volumes 1-4

Eleni Stecopoulos’ Armies of Compassion

Robert Kocik’s Overcoming Fitness
David Buuck at Small Press Traffic

28

Amber Di Pietra’s and Denise Leto’s Wavelength (PDF), excerpts from Jordan Scott’s Blert (PDF), and excerpts from Beauty is a Verb: the New Poetry of Disability (PDF)

Homework:

Robert Gluck’s Margery Kempe

Further reading:

Bhanu Kapil’s The Vertical Integration of Strangers

Brandon Brown’s The Poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus

Douglas Huebler’s Secrets

April 4 Visit from Brandon Brown

Robert Gluck’s Margery Kempe

Homework:

Ronaldo Wilson’s Poem of the Black Object

Further reading:

Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Karl Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts
Fred Moten’s In the Break and Hughson’s Tavern

Adrienne Piper’s OUT OF ORDER, OUT OF SIGHT: Selected Writings in Meta-Art and Art Criticism 1967–1992, volumes 1 and 2

11 final work due

Ronaldo Wilson’s Poem of the Black Object

Presentation of final work