{"id":118,"date":"2009-02-04T01:16:08","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T06:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=118"},"modified":"2009-02-04T01:34:08","modified_gmt":"2009-02-04T06:34:08","slug":"calisthenics-of-perception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=118","title":{"rendered":"Calisthenics of Perception"},"content":{"rendered":"

In The Crying of Lot 49,<\/em> toward the end Oedipa lays out four choices to try to make sense what is going on around her.\u00a0 <\/span>She has stumbled upon real Tristero, a vast underground network; she has hallucinated \u201cit\u201d; she is the victim of a plot to deceive her; or she is insane.\u00a0 <\/span>When she considers the first option, she equates with the reality of Tristero \u201ca real alternative to the exitlessness, to the absence of surprise to life, that harrows the head of everybody American you know, and you too, sweetie\u201d.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s interesting that she does not equate hallucinations with insanity here, and jkathrynfulton<\/span><\/a>\u2019s point about Oedipa\u2019s perception divided into perhaps real or perhaps dreamed events highlights the inability or unwillingness on the parts of both Oedipa and the narrator to clearly differentiate between the two for the reader.<\/p>\n

But of course, just at the climax of a traditional detective story when the \u201ccrime\u201d and \u201ccriminal\u201d are about to be revealed and explained, the novel ends.\u00a0 <\/span>We never do get an answer from the story about which of the four options it was.\u00a0 <\/span>In Holquist\u2019s exploration of The Voyeur<\/em>, he points out that the detective story clich\u00e9 of the power of the rational mind to conquer all is reversed, and that the reader becomes a detective only to discover the cipher zero of the poster title, which parallels the crying of lot 49 \u2013 something unheard, unfinished, which the reader must perform.\u00a0 <\/span>The solution lies not in the book, but \u201cin the experience of the reader himself” (151).\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cIt is not a story – it is a process,\u201d Holquist asserts (153), and this process of \u201cstrangeness\u201d (155) is a \u201ckind of calisthenics of perception”\u00a0(153).\u00a0 <\/span>This wording recalls Jameson\u2019s exhortation for the experience of art to alter our outdated \u201cperceptual habits\u201d so that we are able to comprehend the global capitalist reality (80).<\/p>\n

However I am still unclear on exactly the crime or mystery that is to be solved here.\u00a0 <\/span>Holquist references “cosmic detectives, who wish to solve the crime of their own existence” (154) and says that in metaphysical detective stories it is life rather than death that is to be solved.\u00a0 <\/span>Jameson cites a \u201cbreakdown of temporality\u201d and breakdown in relationships between signifiers creating an overwhelming sensation of the signifier in isolation (73).\u00a0 <\/span>This description of the signifier in isolation echoes the Word that Oedipa can never quite get a grasp on, as well as her hallucinatory states.\u00a0 <\/span>Failure of communication is a recurring theme in The Crying of <\/em><\/span>Lot<\/span><\/em> 49<\/span><\/em>, but I was never sure what exactly is trying to be communicated.<\/p>\n

When I was talking to my friend about Jameson, my friend retorted that he personally had no void to be dramatized, no gap in perception.\u00a0 <\/span>I reflected that I didn\u2019t either \u2013 that I knew of.\u00a0 <\/span>And how could people living in the postmodern age ever know anything else to compare our lived experience to?\u00a0 <\/span>Even the seemingly idyllic past can supposedly never be accessed in the postmodern age as anything but simalcra, so is this comparison just a straw man?\u00a0 <\/span>Or is Jameson outdated and my friend now fully evolved into a perceiving being, plugged into his internet feed?\u00a0 <\/span>To what extent does the \u201cviolence to our flabby habits of perception\u201d (156) exacted by the experience of postmodern art depend on the subject having perceptions formed in the modernist age?<\/p>\n

If the problem is the overwhelming sensation of the isolated signifier, the description of that experience is reminiscent of medieval religious experiences, so does that sensation qualify as the new<\/em> violence without that the violence within of the new art is supposed to protect us from? Jameson implies that this evolution of perception is part of a long historical process of humanity evolving to comprehend the changing world.\u00a0 <\/span>So why is this a problem now?\u00a0 <\/span>Why do we have to do something about it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The Crying of Lot 49, toward the end Oedipa lays out four choices to try to make sense what is going on around her.\u00a0 She has stumbled upon real Tristero, a vast underground network; she has hallucinated \u201cit\u201d; she is the victim of a plot to deceive her; or she is insane.\u00a0 When she … Continue reading Calisthenics of Perception<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[15,35,29,34],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pynchon","tag-jameson","tag-reality","tag-signifier","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}