From One To The Other (2014/2015) |
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From One To The Other is a series of recordings made via Skype of volunteers reading descriptions of women sourced from the novels of Iris Murdoch. Contributors include readers who responded to callouts placed on on-line classified ad services and from locations including Moscow, Hong Kong, Canada, Liverpool and Paris. Originally presented in the form of a paper at the Iris Murdoch and Virtue Ethics: Philosophy and the Novel conference at Roma Tre University in February 2014, the reading employed the format of presentation at an academic conference as a conceptual constraint. Attempting to map as many descriptions of women characters randomly selected from the 26 novels of Iris Murdoch that I could recite aloud (in the 15 minutes commonly allotted to the reading of a paper at an academic conference), my starting point was a consideration of the author's writings on the relationship between virtue and form/lessness including her warnings on the dangers of imposing form.
The potential of the work of feminist thinkers, including Luce Irigaray, to offer conceptual frameworks through which to develop the reading, for example in From One To The Other, takes in her writing on the reciprocal activity of listening. The developed attentiveness required in Irigaray's descriptions of such a model/practice of communication is one that seems to resonate with Iris Murdoch's concept of attention; activities which both philosophers regard as ethical life practices.
The latter writes in her 1964 paper The Idea of Perfection: “I have used the word ‘attention’, which I borrow from Simone Weil, to express the idea of a just and loving gaze directed upon an individual reality. I believe this to be the characteristic and proper mark of the active moral agent”. [i] And in the example of learning Russian as a difficult and perhaps never fully achievable task: “My work is a progressive revelation of something which is independently of me. Attention is rewarded by knowledge of reality. Love of Russian leads me away from myself towards something alien to me, something that my consciousness cannot take over, swallow up, deny or make unreal”. [ii]
The activity of listening as described by Luce Irigaray demands similar attention and a de-centering of the self, necessitating listening "that does not exclude respect, especially for the other's experience, for the unique contribution he or she makes to culture beyond the transfer of information". This model of discourse is offered as "an opening to a field of communication, as a world of the creation and exchange of thought and culture in which no man or woman can become master or slave for fear of destroying the given objective." [iii] Echoes of Iris Murdoch's example of attention in learning a foreign language - as something that 'cannot be taken over, swallowed up, denied or made unreal' resonate in Luce Irigaray's model of listening which seeks to afford the other subject/an(other) individual reality: "the possibility of existing, of expressing your intention, your intentionality, without your calling out for it and even without asking, without overcoming, without annulling, without killing." [iv]
With huge thanks to Alexandra Ezberova, Alison Macintyre, Amanda Calow, Amy Minto, Andrea Golightly, Anne Roberts, Ariana Bamlett Preston, Candice Woods, Carolyn Bell, Emilie Hwang, Esme Duggleby, Ethel Maqueda, Gerrie Douglas Scott, Helen Williams, Joanne Land, Joanne Lee, Josie Sommer, Kate Briggs, Laura Wildman, Linda Chadd, Lindsay Balderson, Marie O'Keeffe, Marilyn Long, Marina Androsovitch, Merlyn Griffiths, Nicky Peacock, Nicola Parkin, Pru Kitching, Ruby Sommer, Steph Jefferies, Sue Downing, Susan Douglas-Scott, Teresa Maybery, Vera Souvorova and Ysabelle Cheung.
From One To The Other showed as part of Lass Struggle at FiLiA Conference, London, curated by Alison O’Neill, October 2017, Moving Image Margate, curated by Sally Childs, March 2016, Cartography for Girls, Crown Street Gallery, Darlington, November 2015, International Women's Day Event, Middlesbrough Town Hall, March 2015, and Archives and Afterlife, 7th International Conference on Iris Murdoch, Kingston University, September 2014.
[i] Murdoch, I. (1970) The Idea of Perfection in The Sovereignty of Good, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
[ii] Murdoch, I. (1970) The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts in The Sovereignty of Good, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
[iii] Irigaray, L. (1996) I Love To You: Sketch for a Felicity within History, trans. Alison Martin, New York: Routledge
[iv] Robinson, H. (2006) Reading Art, Reading Irigaray, London:I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd
The potential of the work of feminist thinkers, including Luce Irigaray, to offer conceptual frameworks through which to develop the reading, for example in From One To The Other, takes in her writing on the reciprocal activity of listening. The developed attentiveness required in Irigaray's descriptions of such a model/practice of communication is one that seems to resonate with Iris Murdoch's concept of attention; activities which both philosophers regard as ethical life practices.
The latter writes in her 1964 paper The Idea of Perfection: “I have used the word ‘attention’, which I borrow from Simone Weil, to express the idea of a just and loving gaze directed upon an individual reality. I believe this to be the characteristic and proper mark of the active moral agent”. [i] And in the example of learning Russian as a difficult and perhaps never fully achievable task: “My work is a progressive revelation of something which is independently of me. Attention is rewarded by knowledge of reality. Love of Russian leads me away from myself towards something alien to me, something that my consciousness cannot take over, swallow up, deny or make unreal”. [ii]
The activity of listening as described by Luce Irigaray demands similar attention and a de-centering of the self, necessitating listening "that does not exclude respect, especially for the other's experience, for the unique contribution he or she makes to culture beyond the transfer of information". This model of discourse is offered as "an opening to a field of communication, as a world of the creation and exchange of thought and culture in which no man or woman can become master or slave for fear of destroying the given objective." [iii] Echoes of Iris Murdoch's example of attention in learning a foreign language - as something that 'cannot be taken over, swallowed up, denied or made unreal' resonate in Luce Irigaray's model of listening which seeks to afford the other subject/an(other) individual reality: "the possibility of existing, of expressing your intention, your intentionality, without your calling out for it and even without asking, without overcoming, without annulling, without killing." [iv]
With huge thanks to Alexandra Ezberova, Alison Macintyre, Amanda Calow, Amy Minto, Andrea Golightly, Anne Roberts, Ariana Bamlett Preston, Candice Woods, Carolyn Bell, Emilie Hwang, Esme Duggleby, Ethel Maqueda, Gerrie Douglas Scott, Helen Williams, Joanne Land, Joanne Lee, Josie Sommer, Kate Briggs, Laura Wildman, Linda Chadd, Lindsay Balderson, Marie O'Keeffe, Marilyn Long, Marina Androsovitch, Merlyn Griffiths, Nicky Peacock, Nicola Parkin, Pru Kitching, Ruby Sommer, Steph Jefferies, Sue Downing, Susan Douglas-Scott, Teresa Maybery, Vera Souvorova and Ysabelle Cheung.
From One To The Other showed as part of Lass Struggle at FiLiA Conference, London, curated by Alison O’Neill, October 2017, Moving Image Margate, curated by Sally Childs, March 2016, Cartography for Girls, Crown Street Gallery, Darlington, November 2015, International Women's Day Event, Middlesbrough Town Hall, March 2015, and Archives and Afterlife, 7th International Conference on Iris Murdoch, Kingston University, September 2014.
[i] Murdoch, I. (1970) The Idea of Perfection in The Sovereignty of Good, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
[ii] Murdoch, I. (1970) The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts in The Sovereignty of Good, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
[iii] Irigaray, L. (1996) I Love To You: Sketch for a Felicity within History, trans. Alison Martin, New York: Routledge
[iv] Robinson, H. (2006) Reading Art, Reading Irigaray, London:I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd