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Hi Robert,<div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>That's a really intriguing quote from Ethics of Luxury, but I'm not quite sure how to interpret it - can you offer a little more context for those of us who don't have a copy of the book on hand just yet?</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Randolph postulates community as a common illusion </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">produced by the exercise of imagination in ways that involve trust and a </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">shared ethics:</div></blockquote><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>I'd be particularly interested to know with what sort of tone or valence she (and you) are using the word "illusion" here, and in what way this illusion is thought to influence actions and realities. </div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Personally I love Winnicott, especially for his notions of transitional objects and transitional space - what I take from his ideas is specifically that the "transitional" occupies a middle zone between imagination and reality, a way for the two modes to meet and transform one another. </div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>(For anyone here who isn't yet a Winnicott fan, the classic "transitional object" is something like a child's blankie - a real thing infused with the imaginary presence of another, for instance the child's mother. The blankie works for the child -- it feels comforting, it can be thrown away and retrieved, played with, and ignored -- precisely because both its real and imaginary properties operate together).</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>This implies that transitional spaces (for instance, art or play) are pathways by which imagination (illusion?) can have an influence on, can matter, in the real world (and vice versa). Or to put it differently, it's one way of thinking about how imagination can be political.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>- Sal</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><br><div><div>On Jan 18, 2008, at 11:30 PM, R Labossiere wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I've just had the great pleasure of working on a book that tackles the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">difficult question of ethics and creative production and would like to quote<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">a part of it (below) that I believe is particularly relevant to this thread.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">The book, as I proofed it so many times, struck me as so pertinent not just<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">to the visual arts but particularly to our new media milieu. Jeanne<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Randolph, the author, is an artist and psychiatrist. Informed by object<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">relations theory, Winnicott in particular, she conceptualizes the positions<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">of creators and artists in terms of ethics, while tackling the ornery<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">reality that our positions are fundamentally 'tainted,' by the reality of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">superabundance -<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>luxury. Randolph postulates community as a common illusion<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">produced by the exercise of imagination in ways that involve trust and a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">shared ethics:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Randolph:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">"I continue the make-believe of a group of basically imaginative people, a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">group formed on the basis of shared illusion of the experience of ethical<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">imagining (or, if this is really a new idea, a group formed on the basis of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">the hypothesis that there is such a practice of ethical imagining).</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">It would be our joy, whenever given the impetus primum non nocere [from the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">hypocratic oath: before all else, do no harm], it would not be contradictory<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">to suppose that in our enclave of luxury:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">We would converse gladly;</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">We would delight in curiosity;</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Certainly we would abhor objectification of any person anywhere;<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>this would<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">include abhorrence of reacting to another person as a mere function of our<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">own agenda;</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Each of us would maintain equanimity about holding individual or group<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">power;</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">We would never enforce judgments on the possible, to remove obstacles to<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">playfulness;</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">If we witnessed someone(s) who rarely had the opportunity to participate in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">situations like ours, our saddened response would include reconsideration of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">the relevance of their situation to our enclave of luxury;</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">After many conversations we might even come to believe that the illusory<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">experience we had conjured -- ethical imagining -- keeps us together even<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">while we are dispersed ... working in separate enclaves of luxury."</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">- excerpted from Ethics of Luxury: materialism and imagination by Jeanne<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Randolph<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://nt2.nshosts.com/yyzartistsoutletorg/books.asp?language=en">https://nt2.nshosts.com/yyzartistsoutletorg/books.asp?language=en</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Robert Labossiere</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="http://www.readingart.ca">http://www.readingart.ca</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="http://www.robertlabossiere.com">http://www.robertlabossiere.com</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div></blockquote></div></div><br><br><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Sal Randolph</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">salrandolph [at[ gmail [dot] com</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="http://salrandolph.com">http://salrandolph.com</a></div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span> </div><br></body></html>