<underfire> on compassion

[bracha L. Ettinger]

Hi again,

I don't know why Bush uses this word, perhaps because he wants to  
profit from its philosophical meaning and emotional weight and to  
exploit it to serve his political purposes. Why else?
For the choice of concepts, I am not looking for Bush's permission or  
for his interpretation. He also probably uses the word peace. So?

However, in this part of the world, most of the Israeli/Palestinian/ 
Jews/Arabs joint protests and joint manifestations and joint actions  
against the Israeli violence and joint action of bringing medical  
help to the Palestinians has to do with compassion (of the few, that  
get interconnected) that breeds responsibility. Compassion is not  
simply in the mind and it is surely not in the words; it is an  
affective-effective ethical working-through.
A very important actions toward peace happen here in small groups of  
care-full individuals who get connected across the borders. People  
work from pain, in com-passion. This is not what the American media  
talks about, it is too small to be talked about, but on the ground  
this is what matters. Now, are you saying that this arena is for  
discussing from political, economical, sociological and historical  
point of view, and that philosophy or psychoanalysis, or art, are  
some useless floating in the air when it comes down to what really  
matters? are you saying that only big scale operations count? Is  
compassion a nonsense or is it simply me who talks nonsense?

Bracha




On Nov 13, 2006, at 2:17 AM, Retort wrote:

> "...those...who might find this language too dense or  
> idiosyncratic..."  Whoever might that be?
>
> Actually, overhearing all this compassion-talk makes me want to  
> reach for my Nietzsche. Doesn't it worry any of you that compassion  
> is Bush's favorite emotion? It's almost as creepy as "tolerance".
>
> IB
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Nov 11, 2006, at 3:50 PM, bracha L. Ettinger wrote:
>
>
> Kate, Sarah, Ryan, Wolfgang, Mary, Allan, Jordan, dear friends,
>
> The originary event of peace is compassion.
> Peace is a fragile encounter-eventing, an ever re-co-created and co- 
> re-created fragile and fragilizing encounter-event, which I can  
> articulate only in terms of what I have named the matrixial  
> borderspace, a paradigm engendered from, with and within particular  
> epistemological parameters that I have developed and elaborated  
> during some 21 years of constant theoretical writing intertwined  
> with-in psychoanalytic practice and artistic practice. It wouldn't  
> be possible to present briefly how compassion and responsibility  
> meet in the matrixial sphere, but I will try to open at least an  
> entry, for those who would want to go on and do some reading  
> elsewhere. Through some kinds of aesthetical working-through (in  
> art for example) and ethical working-through (in psychoanalytical  
> healing for example), compassion gives birth to responsibility  
> while responsibility gives birth to compassion to the extent that  
> they are not thinkable apart. Though we can think and talk on  
> compassion and on responsibility, their combination is not a  
> thought but a practiced affective encounter-event that becomes a  
> point of view.
> The following is extracted from my recent essay called " Com- 
> passionate Co-response-ability, Initiation in Jointness and the  
> link x of Matrixial Virtuality" [in Gorge(l) (ed. S. Van Loo), The  
> Royal Museum of Antwerp]. I hope that those who are not familiar  
> with my writing, who might find this language too dense or  
> idiosyncratic, would simply read enter this post with their poetic  
> antenne, since during so many years of theorizing I had to find or  
> invent words that fit the parameters of what I named the matrixial  
> encounter-event, and what I can bring here is just a hint  
> concerning a whole field, in which the definition of some familiar  
> words change. ( You are invited to read my book The Matrixial  
> Borderspace, and perhaps the essay "Matrixial Trans- 
> subjectivity" [TCS, 23(2-3)], to have a glimpse at this paradigm).
>
> "The pole of compassion resonates with the miracle of non-life  
> coming into life in jointness, with the ethical value of wit(h) 
> nessing and the virtual strings of matrixial com-passion. "
> "Fascinance, compassion, awe and self-relinquishment participate in  
> the originary matrixial knowing of/with-in the m/Other and of/with- 
> in the Cosmos. Early empathy that arises in extreme psychic-mental  
> fragility and vulnerability leans on the matrixial tissue of com- 
> passionate co-response-ability. Response-ability, vulnerability,  
> fascinance, awe, compassion and self-relinquishment are forever  
> bound within matrixial nets composed of psychic-mental strings and  
> threads and working-through in metramorphosis.
> In a matrixial sphere, the bending of the aesthetical toward the  
> ethical and of the ethical toward the aesthetical is awakened by  
> artworking and healing that resonate the originary aesthetical com- 
> passion, co-response-ability and wit(h)nessing in and by which pre- 
> subjective primary compassion is already manifested. The pre- 
> subject's compassion and fascinance informs its own emergence with- 
> in a co-birthing (co-naissance) of trans-subjective entities— 
> composed of I(s) and non-I(s)—by way of affective and trans-sensed  
> knowledge. Trans-subjective co-response-ability, inaugurated by and  
> in the primordial matrixial encounter-event—where pre-maternal  
> hospitality, empathy and responsibility encounters prenatal pre- 
> mature response-ability, compassion and fascinance—and inaugurated  
> at the same time also by and in interconnectedness in self- 
> relinquishment and wit(h)nessing in awe, is the primary psycho- 
> aesthetical and psycho-ethical basis upon which creativity and  
> ethical potentiality can evolve all throughout life with-in new  
> matrixial clusters. " (Gorge(l), pp.11-13. )
>
> I just came back from a Arabs/Jews/Palestinians/Israelis peaceful  
> demonstration at the Erez Crossing Gate between Israel and Gaza.  
> There will be a demonstration in Tel Aviv on the 2 of December.
> Bracha
>
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