The suggestion of a theme has wafted along this corridor of scribblers, a mal-odour for sure, and we can't be sure if it is emanating from the Editor-in-Chief's office or from some 'crack' to be found elsewhere more interstitial and provisional. "She" doesn't have her offices on our floor anyway, plus nobody has seen her down at our lowly level for many years. Heavenly epiphanies are in short supply these days, but looking on the bright side this means we are equally spared most demonic visitations too, from the likes of Mr Magoo from Newswarp [or his goggled eyed offspring].
"Blame and Responsibility: how may we proceed in a post-Catholic era?" Our pythian viperette suggests as she respires the sulphurous fumes rising from out of the 'crack' between her legs. There is a theme to chew on, and I am bidding for a triangulated methodology since traditional ways of proceeding are clearly out in this so-called post-Catholic age. Triangulated, like a stool – to sit on? You call them "dangerous structures when applied to us": presumably because triangulations are intrinsically unstable, restless and always on the move, slide-rules slipping sideways, and prone to warfare with two's ganging up against one's, and frequent buddings like children "popping out from God knows where".
OK, but one can start with the basics. Triangulated means three sides, and for the purposes of this design methodology I would suggest that the sides are equal, meaning it is an isoceles triangle. But although they are equal, the three sides are not the same. I'll say that again. Although they are equal, the three sides are not the same. Each side is completely different being made from different stuff. One side is rational and analytic, which is good enough for precision except we might waste a lot of time debating what 'precision' precisely means, and precisely what 'stuff' is and so on. One side is raw energy and power, which is great for farting and 'bottom sniffing' and those kinds of things, except fights are always breaking out about the Constituted Authority and who is in charge. The last side is the stuff of dreams, and the many voices in our ('dialogic') ears, and it is sometimes good for therapy too, but there is no end to the proliferation, like "all these children appearing, popping out from God knows where".
Three equal but different sides: well, that is the ontology done (in case you were wondering). Now lets deal with the epistemiology, and I am glad to say this is also simple. All three sides work the same way, all being relatively permeable and relatively reflective. So a lot of mirroring goes, seeing things from one side in the other and so on, and put together that is what makes the whole thing work: with enough precision, enough energy, and enough dialogue.
Let's get on, I am getting bored! It all boils down to the 'subjective' anyway ('subjective' in inverted commas - like Joseph Roth said in his letter to his Feuilleton Editor and friend Benno).
Blame and Responsibility. Yesterday I went to the 'Picasso and Modern British Art' exhibition at Tate Britain, and there was a black and white half-size copy of 'Guernica' as you would expect. So it was clear that Franco was getting the blame in 1937. But then there was also the photograph of Picasso in a suit and tie in 1948 at an 'Intellectuals for Peace' conference in 1948 looking decidely uncomforable, as if he hadn't wiped his bottom that morning, and then I was less sure who was to blame and who was taking responsibility.
However, there were also some powerful drawings by Picasso of the Crucifixion which followed his 1930's visit to the Grünewald Isenheim Altarpiece, and these reminded me of WG Sebald's As the Snow on the Alps in After Nature (2002), exploring the same master:
"Always the same
gentleness, the same burden of grief,
the same irregularity of the eyes, veiled
and sliding sideways down into loneliness."
There are eight long verse sections in 'Max's' writing on Grünewald, and Pablo's series of designs (Minotaure, No 1 1933 – Tate Library and Archive 203220) based on the Grünewald Crucifixion are similar extensive explorations into a blame and responsibility which appears to be being withheld. See for yourself –