A-telos Auditing: Joan Retallack, The Reinvention of Truth (Belladonna, 2004)

A-telos Auditing: Joan Retallack, The Reinvention of Truth (Belladonna, 2004)

The idea that structures make certain things possible

which wouldn’t be possible in the absence of those

structures is a central assumption among

avant-garde artists as well as scientists.

Joan Retallack, “Interview” in Aerial #5.

—

Reality and Representation¹ / Counter factual² / a tension that does not have to be / So—reinvent:
/ distinction and definition / Truth = dance = poetry = genre = limn ³ / Anatomy Analogy Metaphor Metonym Synecdoche Trompe l’oeil / Because the world is full the images pour out of the other side / synapses / perceptions which are interpretations (mediations) / It seems every word has another word / Refractions—that the representation is never really the same from subject to subjects / There is
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¹ From the epigraph to The Reinvention of Truth quoting Dita Fröller’s New Old World Marvels. Dita is an out-of-body experience, an alter-ego like Genre Tallique—we know this because of the attribution in Retallack’s edited volume Gertrude Stein: Selections for the Millenium where Fröller is again cited, this time with the line The work asks us to invent new ways of reading (Stein, Gertrude. Selections for the Millennium. Edited by Joan Retallack. University of California Press, 2008. 3). The new invention is ecstatic, emblematized by the imprint releasing this pseudo-work of theory: Pre-Post-Eros Editions.
None of this “exists.” Retallack’s Mongrelisme pamphlet, which I have had the pleasure of corresponding with Joan about (including alter-egos) also features a pseudonymous publication from Pre-Post-Eros Editions, Glances: An Unwritten Book by Genre Tallique (JoanRe tallack). The first question emerges: what is being said when the source to establish or frame a work has to be artificed by the author wanting to quote it as by a subject other than the self (that someone else’s words were not satisfactory)? Writing about Retallack’s Afterimages in Leaving Lines of Gender, Ann Vickery picks up similar concerns: Traditionally, the Cartesian subject has engendered the self through a separation—even denial—of the Other, the external world, and even its own senses. By looking again, we can see fractures in the coherent objects we have built of the past. We might then see the past as not only reflecting our own (self-supporting) fantasies but as containing the fragments or shards of an Other. The self would subsequently be estranged in the resulting revelation of being constituted against a background of misrecognition and disorder. (Vickery, Ann. Leaving Lines of Gender. Wesleyan, 2000. 171.)

² Retallack, Joan. The Reinvention of Truth. Belladonna, 2004. 4. Reading at the Belladonna Series.
Partial Reading the next year at an MLA event. In a reading at the Segue Series in 2006, Retallack calls this work poetic investigation and refers to the piece as “The Phonemic Canon.” As is typical of a Retallack project, the fullness of the work is not visible without encountering the readings available (and unavailable). Mongrelisme, for instance, was left unfinished due to financial issues at Paradigm Press, after which Retallack has determined that, for her, the project is summated effectively there, though substantial additional material appears in later readings from the project, only adding to the work’s scope. One such instance in the reading here linked is the additional material quoted from Retallack’s alter-ego, as well as a more substantial deployment of her familiar stylistic polylinguistic play. This reading also scaffolds the “chyrons” in the Belladonna pamphlet in an idiosyncratic way, extensively framing them as etymological fragments, phonemic—akin to the phonemic exploration in the reading. Another reading, at The University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2009, describes the work as letteristic writing and wonders if truth changes with changes of genre. In this reading, she describes what I call here “chyrons” as neologistic language phrases. This reading (not the introduction), masks entirely the altar-ego, presented obliquely and with no hint of wit when read. However, this reading is also aligned with the Belladonna chaplet—this is “its [current] audiobook.” This reading revises the pamphlet, as with the opening of page 5, which is read differently as evidence that everything has some kind of effect doesn’t solve the problem of why not. By the time of this reading, the final two “Brownian summations” have dropped their nominative appellation, although “Brownian” appears still relevant to the textual operations.

³ ibid. 2.

also allusion (not illusion): a saffron anecdote ⁴ and a moment yellow ⁵ / Allusions are mediated representations of the reality of the text—they are not all truth / what it teaches poles against what it makes you want ⁶ / turn the page / 2 lines / if it’s self evident that everything has some kind of effect / does this create the opposite of why not ⁷ / WHYNOT is a Juster Space in the mind, fabulist manifest image of the word-game, the children’s book which concretized the syncretic moment between Representation and Reality / Two notes: this is remarkably readable Genre Tallique and Politics of Responsibility is the consequence of our instability of memory ⁸/ Turn the page—autobiographical intrusion (and you’ve only glanced across the spread, having done no turning) where I was excuse me sir in my mind until last week—but not really—and [think] of myself as a [REDACTION] [NOW] ⁹ the representation there is my identity / The invention of my truth through my identity / why mention this now ¹⁰ / Same page: the conflict between narration and composition that does not feature narration—last night I fall asleep in The Public World/Syntactically Impermanence and see Retallack’s name in a footnote. Scalapino’s essay is called “The Cannon” and Retallack assumes the word relates back to the “canon” and not the percussive bristles of masculine critical theory which has long overlooked both the pragmatic of its own construction (and what it refuses as what it thus contains, ironically) and the essentialisms of sociological context in the material text (earlier in the day, I am re-visiting dreadful back and forth between two male Language Writers about race and Vanessa Place), so the almost-oneiric memory is about misreading and the actual viability of the mistaken reading. / Scalapino: At a reception following the reading, a student engaging one, says, “It seems to me your work is like Gertrude Stein.” The man, one’s reading partner, immediately inserts himself and says, “Gertrude Stein. Certainly not! Gertrude Stein is the human mind—she [oneself] is merely human nature. [Reading of] one dying of AIDS!” he scoffs. “Her writing is human nature, not the human mind,” he instructs the student. ¹¹ / vent there¹² chyrons run over these stanzas IN MEDIATION where definitions vaporize into atmosphere: what instruments are needed to calculate the viscosity of this plenum ¹³ / how to broach a bloated strategy ¹⁴ / Answer: the reinvention of texts— / Queer space—against science and its cruel mandates, such as the obliteration of panpsychism, a scientific theory celebrated by CAConrad in Resurrect Extinct Vibration—I thought I was a woman, but someone called me a man—everything vibrates, everything¹⁴

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⁴ ibid.
⁵ Hejinian, Lyn. My Life. Burning Deck, 1980. 5.
⁶ Truth, 4.
⁷ ibid. 5.
⁸ ibid. 5.
⁹ ibid., 6.
¹⁰ ibid.
¹¹ Scalapino, Leslie. The Public World/Syntactically Impermanence. Wesleyan, 1999. 15.
¹² Truth., 8
¹³ ibid., 8.
¹⁴ ibid.

“makes” and so everything “labors.” Panpsychical Retallack sequence: Why assume trees and people are controlled by genes and rivers aren’t ¹⁵ / it all adds up ¹⁶ / this may not be fun but it’s true ¹⁷ / && [my truth] this may be fun but it’s true

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¹⁵ ibid.
¹⁶ ibid. 10.
¹⁷ ibid. 8.

Thom Eichelberger-Young (T E-Y) is an artist and mental health caregiver raised in the Carolinas and now living in Missouri. Their art explores issues of poetics, gender, perception, war, and violence through research and documentary practices. In 2021, they founded Blue Bag Press, which focuses on women's poetry from Appalachia (present and past), and they will begin a PhD in English this fall at SUNY Buffalo. Their first book is BESPOKE (published by Saint Andrews in 2019). New work is available in the catalog to Blowing Rock Art & History Museum's Ars Poetica exhibit, In Parentheses, and forthcoming in Mantis and Bombay Gin. "A-telos Auditing: Joan Retallack's The Reinvention of Truth" is part of a larger, hybrid work called Ointment Weather. A previous excerpt from the project appears in issue 2 of theengine(idling (March 2024).