[gallery] I have just learned, more than two months late, that Barbara Reynolds has died at the age of 100. May she now rest in peace — she rested little enough in her extraordinarily productive life.
I first met Barbara in 1984 at Wheaton College, where I was a new professor and she a frequent visitor to the Wade Center. She was deeply involved in understanding and promoting the Wade authors, especially, of course, Dorothy Sayers; but she also was willing to give talks for the English department whenever she came to campus. Some of these were quite serious and academic, usually on either Sayers or Dante, though once she gave an impenetrably dense and technical account of the teaching of Italian in British universities; but she also cultivated a distinctive and curious role as a comical after-dinner speaker — our “court jester,” as Beatrice Batson, her friend and the chair of the English department, would say. The chief thing I remember about these talks, of which I heard several over the years, was how funny Barbara herself thought they were. She could hardly get through them for giggling.
On that first occasion I sat next to another speaker at that conference, the distinguished poet and critic Donald Davie, who had met Barbara when they both taught at Cambridge twenty years earlier. “I can scarcely believe what I’m hearing,” he whispered to me. “She would never give a talk like this in England.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment, and then shook his head. “We’ve been on committees together from time to time. She’s a formidable woman.” Another pause. “In fact, she’s terrifying.”
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Hubert Saget, advertising poster for Leica, 1930. Printed for Optician Koch, Zürich, Switzerland. Via WestLicht
This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisable, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life. It is and it was always foolish and self-destructive to lead a Dada life because a Dada life will include by definition pranks, buffoonery, masking, deranged senses, intoxication, sabotage, taboo breaking, playing childish and/or dangerous games, waking up dead gods, and not taking education seriously. On the other hand, the accidental production of novel objects results occasionally from the practice of Dada. During times of crisis like wars and plagues, some of these objects can be truly novel because they sabotage prevailing sentiments. At other times, Dada objects are merely interesting, by virtue of an added layer of irony, an extra punch line, or a new twist to an already-consecrated object. In such times Dada objects amuse everybody, and since these objects are (mostly) made collectively, they are a strong community bond. Amusement (of oneself and others) and the making of art communities are the goals of Dada. Dada is a priori against everything, including goals and itself, but this creative negation is very amusing and is meant to be shared. For one whole century, Dada has delighted in uncovering and using contradictions, paradoxes, and negations, the most important of which are: 1. most people read signs, Dadas make signs, and 2. most people are scared of scary faces, Dada makes scary faces.
[gallery] robertogreco:
ethel-baraona:>> So long as the realm of necessity remains a social dream, dreaming will remain a social necessity. The spectacle is the bad dream of modem society in chains, expressing nothing more than its wish for sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of that sleep.
> — Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
> Photo: A comparison between the original Life Magazine image and The Society of Spectacle book cover. Source, e-flux conversations
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Even if there were borders to my empathy, those borders would most certainly extend into South Carolina. Several of my African ancestors entered this continent through the slave market in Charleston. Their unpaid toil brought wealth to America via Carolina plantations. I am descended from those who survived racial oppression as they built this nation: My 4th great grandfather, who stood on an auction block in South Carolina refusing to be sold without his wife and newborn baby; that newborn baby, my 3rd great grandmother, enslaved for 27 years on a plantation in Rembert, SC where she prayed daily for her children to see freedom; her husband, my 3rd great grandfather, an enslaved plowboy on the same plantation who founded a church on the eve of the Civil War that stands to this day; their son, my great-great grandfather, the one they called “Free Baby” because he was their first child born free, all in South Carolina.You see, I know my history and my heritage. The Confederacy is neither the only legacy of the south nor an admirable one. The southern heritage I embrace is the legacy of a people unbowed by racial oppression. It includes towering figures of the Civil Rights Movement like Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers and Ella Baker. It includes the many people who rarely make the history books but without whom there is no movement. It includes pillars of the community like Rev. Clementa Pinckney and Emmanuel AME Church.
I remain ambivalent about marriage as the centerpiece of the struggle for LGBT rights, not in the least because, for all the reasons I mention above, it remains a restrictive and selective civil institution. Why, for example, shouldn’t a single person be able to sponsor the legal immigration of his best friend or an adult caring for an elderly person in her home receive the same tax benefits as a married couple?