These are conversations I had many times over decades, often in my own head, so that while I have a lot of affinity for Muñoz’s thesis here, I also find myself wanting to push back in various places.
See, I am interested in your pushing back, because if I just wanted Muñoz by himself, I could read Muñoz by himself, but if I am reading Muñoz with you, I do want to know what you think.
Then there’s this tricky idea about the performativity of the past: “rather than being static and fixed, the past does things” (28).
The animation of the past is the part of that sentence that really attracts me, because on the one hand merely reperforming the past (or attempting to: it isn't possible; you know that, too many people who do great harm don't) gets you things like deep conservative nostalgia for the way things weren't and Muñoz's vision of straight time as uncritical reproduction of the present order, but on the other calling up the past and setting it loose in the present gets you things like A Canterbury Tale (1944)—
"There are more ways than one of getting close to your ancestors. Follow the old road and as you walk, think of them and of the old England. They climbed Chillingbourne Hill, just as you did. They sweated and paused for breath just as you did today. And when you see the bluebells in the spring and the wild thyme and the broom and the heather, you're only seeing what their eyes saw. You ford the same rivers, the same birds are singing. When you lie flat on your back and rest and watch the clouds sailing as I often do, you're so close to those other people that you can hear the thrumming of the hooves of their horses and the sound of the wheels on the road and their laughter and talk and the music of the instruments they carried. And when I turn the bend of the road where they too saw the towers of Canterbury, I feel I've only to turn my head to see them on the road behind me."
—where what I love most about this speech of Colpeper's is that it is not about renouncing the present moment for the past, it is about summoning up the past until it merges with the present. (I am going to continue talking at you about this movie, I am afraid; I think you would like it.) The fusion creates the future, which he has trouble envisioning and accepting in its own self, which is part of the story.
The “not-yet-conscious” is the most exciting idea for me, the concept that we can’t yet imagine the best version of ourselves because we are not yet able to perceive what that would be like.
It's something you can observe with people in so-to-speak real time, too, not just suggest as a societal abstract, which makes it an especially helpful model.
I can't remember—have you read Mark Fisher? He doesn't cite Muñoz that I remember, but this chapter is already edging into the territory of hauntology, so they might run interestingly beside one another, although Fisher is emphatically not about hope.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2022-03-02 07:54 am (UTC)See, I am interested in your pushing back, because if I just wanted Muñoz by himself, I could read Muñoz by himself, but if I am reading Muñoz with you, I do want to know what you think.
Then there’s this tricky idea about the performativity of the past: “rather than being static and fixed, the past does things” (28).
The animation of the past is the part of that sentence that really attracts me, because on the one hand merely reperforming the past (or attempting to: it isn't possible; you know that, too many people who do great harm don't) gets you things like deep conservative nostalgia for the way things weren't and Muñoz's vision of straight time as uncritical reproduction of the present order, but on the other calling up the past and setting it loose in the present gets you things like A Canterbury Tale (1944)—
"There are more ways than one of getting close to your ancestors. Follow the old road and as you walk, think of them and of the old England. They climbed Chillingbourne Hill, just as you did. They sweated and paused for breath just as you did today. And when you see the bluebells in the spring and the wild thyme and the broom and the heather, you're only seeing what their eyes saw. You ford the same rivers, the same birds are singing. When you lie flat on your back and rest and watch the clouds sailing as I often do, you're so close to those other people that you can hear the thrumming of the hooves of their horses and the sound of the wheels on the road and their laughter and talk and the music of the instruments they carried. And when I turn the bend of the road where they too saw the towers of Canterbury, I feel I've only to turn my head to see them on the road behind me."
—where what I love most about this speech of Colpeper's is that it is not about renouncing the present moment for the past, it is about summoning up the past until it merges with the present. (I am going to continue talking at you about this movie, I am afraid; I think you would like it.) The fusion creates the future, which he has trouble envisioning and accepting in its own self, which is part of the story.
The “not-yet-conscious” is the most exciting idea for me, the concept that we can’t yet imagine the best version of ourselves because we are not yet able to perceive what that would be like.
It's something you can observe with people in so-to-speak real time, too, not just suggest as a societal abstract, which makes it an especially helpful model.
I can't remember—have you read Mark Fisher? He doesn't cite Muñoz that I remember, but this chapter is already edging into the territory of hauntology, so they might run interestingly beside one another, although Fisher is emphatically not about hope.