Choose one from the following questions to write an essay (250-300 words). Cite texts to support your argument.
1)In his study of Rabelais, Bakhtin looked at 16th-century France as a site of competing languages and social groups. How does this have to do with Bakhtin's antipathy towards authoritarianism and his penchant for the folk culture and its emancipatory potential?
2)The word "grotesque" comes from the same Latin root as "grotto." Therefore, the many connotations of the grotto--earthiness, fertility, death--link to the various incarnations of the grotesque. Can you find these incarnations in Bakhtin's depiction of the carnivalized body? How? Explain.
3) The image of the Siamese twins is a recurring motif in CJ Chen's Revolt of Body and Soul (《魂魄暴亂》系列). The Siamese twins halppily killing one another, self-mutilating figures modelling on Chen himself, Chen as the executed and the executor, and so forth reveal that the seemingly oppositional relationship between Self and Other is in fact ambivalent. How do you interpret this Self-Other ambivalence in relation to the project of modernity? How do these grotesque images function as Chen's critique of the State Apparatus?
26 comments:
CJ Chen’s work: Revolt of Body and Soul can be divided into two periods. The earlier period of the works are based on historical images with computer editing, often display an ambivalent expression of agony and ecstasy at the same time while in the latter period, CJ Chen no longer used historical images as basis, the whole image is fictional, and the tone is rather melancholic.
In the earlier period of the series, Chen presents various forms of Chinese tortures and executions, and historical references like Chinese civil war, KMT’s purge of Communists, The Wu-Sir massacre and so forth. In a series of pictures, Chinese ancient torture is performed while a group of westerners are watching curiously without being disturbed, project the situation that in the process of Chinese’s modernity, the Chinese were forced to accept western civilization, be it technology or trading system, the Chinese were just like the ones being tortured or castrated in the images.
In the latter period of Chen’s work, Chen started to sort out the mental traumas that were caused through modernization. In this period, violence is no longer physical/visible yet spiritual/hidden. The state of apparatus is the power that is oppressing and torturing the human souls. Therefore, the images are not as radical as the previous works, they reveal a great despair and the innermost wounds.
In psychoanalysis, the movement of watching includes watching someone else as well as putting oneself in the images. Tortured/being tortured, peeking/being peeked and love/hatred is ambivalently co-existing simultaneously. CJ Chen once pointed out, while he was producing the images, he saw himself in his previous life and he related himself to the ones being tortured in the images. Siamese twins represent the ambivalence of self-other concept, pointing out the accomplice system through history. Through these images, the traumas caused by history or state of apparatus are being torn open, the pain is being experienced repeatedly to present the sorrowful history and the ugliness of state of apparatus truthfully.
Q2
Bakhtin says that carnivalized body is the core value of the culture of carnivals. Carnivalized body in some way shares the qualities of earthiness, fertility, and death with the connotations of grotto.
First, I want to discuss about earthiness. Here, earthiness has two meanings. One is being direct and straight. As Bakhtin mentions in the essay that sometimes when communicating with others, by using informal phrases or even dirty words, we feel a sense of intimacy. That is sharing thoughts without modifying them. The other is being vulgar. Certain parts of our body are regarded as unclean and inferior, such as the anus and reproductive organs. That's where it is grotesque. They are all parts of our body; however, they symbolize a lower status.
Second, carnivalized body is also seen as fertile. In one of the Rabelais's story, the image of the body is positive and attractive, presenting the concept of flourished, productive and fertile. It's a pop culture, existing only among the ordinary public people instead of middle class. Bakhtin turns the social formula upside down, viewing the most servile thing as one of the highest value; this kind of thinking to some extent gives people the chance to build up their image under a "civilized" world.
Death is another incarnation of grotesque. Ususally, our lower part of our body, such as reproductive organs and ass, are considered a lower status. On the other hand, compared to the sky, the earth is more important. The earth can refer to the grave yard for all kinds of lives, but also the origin of all kinds of lives. In other words, we are not dead, but in the process of being.
I think grotesque is a concept and an attitude to challenge the exited world and registration.
In CJ Chen’s Revolt of Body and Soul, the image of the Siamese twins represents Self-Other ambivalence related to modernity. It reveals that authority constructs what we called “Self” by repressing what we called “Other”. The development of modernity and civilization is accompanied with the consolidation of Self and the elimination of Other. The abjection of dirty or inferior things accomplishes the integrity or purity of this modern society. People construct “Self” by entering the symbolic order, obeying the Law of the Father. However, those who challenge the order will be regarded as “Other” or “Dirty” which should be rejected. However, the abjection of Other doesn’t mean complete elimination. The symbolic order seems to form a border, only keeping Other outside, and the ambivalence is that forming a border is to keep the threat away, while instead of eliminating Other, it becomes the eternal threat. The truth is that the existence of the Other keeps harassing the Self, arousing the sense of fear: fear for the collapse of the symbolic order and for the loose of self-cognition.
Besides, Ch Chen does use these grotesque images function as the critique of the State Apparatus. He puts himself as the executed and the executor, and it not only shows the self-introspection but also reveals the truth that the execution symbolizes a behavior of racial internecine struggle, a kind of Self-division and Self-insane. The truth is that the heterogeneous existence will threat and overthrow the Self’s steadiness, and Chen reveals that the implement of execution only comes from the inner fear and the anxiety of the State Apparatus; it eradicates those who hold’s views different from the Self. Besides, the image of the Siamese twins happily killing one another seems to transcend the fear into the creepy ecstasy. The image not only shows the violence of slaughtering but also represents the internalization of violence. The State Apparatus uses execution as an exclusionary way to maintain its own stability, and the facial ecstasy seems to criticize the insane of authority that kills people willfully. I do believe that this ecstasy highlights the oppressing and controlling from superior toward inferior, and it’s the critique of the State Apparatus.
The works in “Revolt of Body and Soul” which are created by CJ Chen, have a lot of history backgrounds. They are also full of sorrow, ambivalence, ecstasy, etc.
In CJ Chen’s work, the Siamese Twins keep emerging. The meaning of the Siamese Twins is to show the other side of people and the relations, to be exact, Self and Other. It’s a way to connect and carefully examine one’s inner multiple selfhood. And the Other is actually coexisting with us. Although the other is not you, when we look at other people, we are probably looking at ourselves. In other words, like a mirror. That’s why sometimes we would do something to keep others from ourselves. This is ambivalent. We avoid others by building a demarcation line while at the same moment we need others with us.
In all of CJ Chen’s works, he superimposes himself into every single picture as the executor, executed or the observer. It also helps us to fit in the situation that CJ Chen wants us to look at, which is neglected and not available to describe or unroll in the history, such as the modernization of Chinese culture.
『圖像中，陳界仁在背景左後方放置了「他自己」的影像，並且以旁觀者的姿態，與其他歷經現代化過程的中國人與西方人，一起目睹並參與此酷刑的執行場景。』 By doing this, he makes Chinese history into his own history. In other words, he also implicates that everyone always has the chance to be the three of them, no matter does evils or good deeds.
This self-other ambivalence in CJ Chen's Revolt of Body and Soul is a satire on modernization.
『透過照片之框架內外這些複雜的交錯目光，這幅照片所揭露的，不僅是中國最為古老的酷刑習俗－凌遲，而更是西方現代技術－攝影／觀看－介入中國所造成的極具諷刺力的歷史時刻。』
CJ Chen used Computer graphics to change the original pictures. He enlarged those pictures and copied the prisoner’s head to make those pictures more grotesque and terrible than the original pictures.
『無論這些歷史照片的真實場景是什麼，陳界仁都一再將自己複製，甚至以連體人的方式出現。在每一個歷史時刻加上自己的印記，就是要凸顯我群與他群間排除暴力的自我分裂與瘋狂，以及歷史時刻在我們身上銘刻的痕跡。』
He wanted to sharpen the viewers’ sense of the history because nowadays we gradually forget the pain history have brought us. We can see “punctums” in those pictures which stab us with the history, and awake our feeling of the trauma experience.
『《自殘圖》、《失聲圖》與《法治圖》中，陳界仁則將這些殘酷時刻中的施虐快感置換為中國現代化建國工程中的體制性宰制快感。也就是說，陳界仁開始面對中國現代化進程的排他系統，並且針對國家建構下體制性的暴力，以及族群自殘的歷史進行批判與詮釋。』
At that time, people were not allowed to express their opinion because government considered their opinion would cause rebellion. Therefore, people tended to gradually forgot the pain their had experienced in the historical event because nobody spoke out. Therefore, CJ Chen wanted to awake people. In these pictures, CJ Chen use bloody scene and dismemberment to criticize the State Apparatus for suppressing and slaughtering people unreasonably.
CJ Chen’s Siamese twins, in my interpretation, is creating the ambivalent feeling on purpose to prove that one cannot separate themselves from the chaotic and complicated feeling. Whether it is dealing with tragic events or just the fact, emotions can only be suppress but get rid of it; and the process of suppressing is present by the “happily killing one another” action. The complex sensations were built up from the outside force (images), which is demonstrated through the two Siamese twins that one side of it is the “positive feelings” such as happy, glad, or superior; the other side is the “negative feelings” such as pity, scare, or angry. While we feel both way, and yet our moral had been battling to tell us that it is bad to feel good and good to feel bad. This kind of struggling is what the happy stabling is about: our feelings are stabbing each other under our sense of normality, and they coexist inside one’s mind either consciously or subconsciously.
In other hand, these grotesque images are there in favor of the State Apparatus idea. This is brought through the ironic series of incident or facts that CJ Chen uses. For example, the contrast of how Chinese people kill each other to please the outsider from the land, or the cruel images of the way ancient China executes a person. CJ Chen use the idea of internalization to explain this; so much blood and pain that we got to the point accept any form of authority to “guide” us out of the sorrow --- even that means generating more sorrow on others, and in one of those after math time it reflect back to us because of moral. Before that actually happen in…let’s said, few hundred years later that people dare to say it is wrong, it will be blind following the long road of blood and tears with incarnation of violence.
Rabelais and His World is Bakhtin’s doctoral dissertation. In it, Bakhtin compliments on the freedom and rebellious spirit in folk culture and expound on carnival and the theory of carnivalization. He chose Rabelais because they both lived in the era of cultural transformation.
Carnival in medieval Europe was a countervailing power that againsted official ideology and elite culture; it represented as centrifugal force. In Renaissance, the idea of carnival plays an important role in cultural transformation, it symbolize the diversity, non-central, and hubbub in the society. Because Bakhtin has a strong political inclination, his idea about carnival has a distinct social significance and political overtones. Stalin’s cultural tyranny just like the feudal theology and official ideology in the medieval time, so Bakhtin criticizes him by allegory, the way that was used in the medieval time and Renaissane.
Carnival in Renaissane was a product created by folk culture. It showed the compliments toward life and death, and the promotion of natural life. Bakhtin had found out the vibrant creativity in folk cultures. He was interested about the foul language, so he carefully analyzed the words Rabelais had used. And he thought only that kind of words could precisely describe the changes in life.
The dialect and slang people used in the public square had helped to create Rabelais’ carnial world; he used French dialect to write his book Pantagruel. The revolutionary language Rabelais used had uncoverd the hubbub of the society. Like him, Bakhtin believed dialects had high value because they could be a new and powerful power to subvert the authority.
49702038 Connie
Bakhtin explains the carnivalized body is a celebration of the cycle of life. The carnivalized body is a laughable figure of profound ambivalence: its positive meaning is linked to birth and renewal and its negative meaning is linked to death and decay.
First, when it comes to earthiness, we think of dirty and foul. Once people become familiar, conversation involves dirty words; in the other words, filthy language makes people closer. Besides, in carnival, curse and ribald language accompanies with praise. Intermixture of curse and praise just like death and life, death and life are the ambivalent image.
Bakhtin uses monks as an example, in carnival square, monks are invited to Feast, ridiculing with dung and urine to degrade and cursed in joyful atmosphere. In the story Gargantua and Pantagruel, Gargantua’s urine irrigates French and Italy. From above examples, the narrator put curse and bless, urine and fertility together to connect high and low and reveal the circle. Urine and dung is the symbol of foul; however, it’s a great source to nurture all the things on earth.
Thirdly, as we eat we are eaten. To be more specific, we live by eating food coming from land then our excretion release what we eat back to land, one day we die, be decomposed by land.
The connotations of the grotto are like a circle of nature; however, the process of civilization, we abjure them. Therefore, Bakhtin highlight and force us face.
49702048 Dalia
In CJ Chen’s work, Siamese twins interprets the main idea of self-other ambivalence. First, as we see the image of Siamese twins they torture and fight to each other; it represents that inside our mind we have accepted what society called “normal” and “abnormal”. For the part of Self, we absorb concepts and core value that authority constructed and recognized to be so-called “normal” in the modern society. As for Other, it’s what the society considers to be “abnormal”. However, the Other are not totally eliminated by the Self. The other are just excluded by the authority(self) in the society.
In CJ Chen’s work of Revolt of Body and soul, by using the technique of photo, CJ Chen put himself in the historic photos that reveals the cruel and inhuman torture that once happened in pass. CJ Chen put himself in the picture as a executor, the executed and an audience. By doing this, it seems that himself was one of these people living and experiencing in that period. In other words, as if he participated and watched the execution in person. In his series of grotesque images, it reveals not only the cruelness of execution but also as a satire on modernization. Take《去勢圖》for example, the people in the picture become a strong contrast in picture as we see foreigners were well dressed and seemed very civilization, on the opposite, the executed were naked and in pain. It’s very ironic that the foreigners came from so-called “civilization” but they viewed those inhuman execution as an interesting thing. In addition, the western countries interfered in China’s internal affair that forced China to become modernization much faster. The picture of castration is a symbol that China’s main stream was taken away little by little by the western culture.
2. Carnival is the production of folk culture that presents life, death and regeneration. With exaggerated images, the carnivalized body is connected with earthiness, fertility and death which are the connotations of the grotto.
Earthiness refers to the human body in a direct way. In Bakhtin’s opinion, this open body image is the basis of communication between self and others. Being founded upon exaggeration of mouth, belly and genitals, the “living actuality” of bodily life “provides a way of experiencing and understanding human existence which frees consciousness from the grip of religious and cosmic fears” (226). Though accompanied with dirty phrases and words, earthiness symbolizes vitality.
Carnivalized body is also related to fertility which is a process that Bakhtin turns the positions upside down. The meanings of lower part of body and land are the richest, because a land is the place not only devouring life (grave) but breeding life (soil). In “Pantagruel,” for instance, the author mentions that “after Abel’s killing the earth absorbed his blood and became fertile” (228). Even the part in the lowest status has the highest value. Moreover, fertility, the procreation, is closely connected with food images, growth, and birth.
It is the triumph of life over death. The victorious carnivalized body can receive the defeated world and be renewed. Bakhtin thinks that in Rabelais’ statement, bleeding, dismembering, death and curse which mean transformation and regeneration are praised. Death is never such a completion in the folktale. As in the “Iliad,” “even if it appears at the end of the story, it is followed by the funeral banquet…The end contains the potentialities of the new beginning, just as death leads to a new birth” (230). It’s never finished and completed. To sum up, Bakhtin’s depiction of the carnivalized body brings us a different view.
Q1
First of all, we have to know the meaning of “carnival.” Carnival comes from the folk culture, and it prefers to let those who do not come from the higher class to speak in public loudly. He expects the conversation from common people would become the main stream to beat the rigid authority in 16th century, and let the position and order get converse.
Bakhtin lived in the age of Starlin which was dominantly ruled by socialism; therefore, he looked forward something liberal and inspiring to free his mind. Rabelais lived in the same situation as Bakhtin’s. Both of them were born in an era which was about to change, early period of Renaissance and Russian Revolution. Though their characters and backgrounds were kind of different, their aspects and experiences toward the “transforming of culture” were almost the same.
Both of them trust that “Folk culture” is the core for culture transforming. Only when it grows strong, it will become the main power to lead the “old culture” to pass through its own “transforming, so Bakhtin would enjoy in the carnival to reveal his ideas about the society. He became the leader of the common people in his era to popularize the behavior of carnival.
The word “grotesque’ itself comes from the same Latin root as “grotto”. Therefore, many connotation of the grotto- earthiness, fertility, death- link to the various incarnation of the grotesque. In the following, I will find these incarnations in Bakhtin’s depiction of the carnivalized body.
When it comes to the earthiness, I think it more emphasizes on the visual impact.
During the cultural development, there are many codes of ethic and taboo in the society to restrict or oppress human’s physical desire; therefore, when people see the hyperbolically grotesque body, we would easily regard it as earthiness. However, Bakhtin used these images to exalt physical desire and to challenge the traditional culture and the authority
Besides, Bakhtin thinks “the grotesque body is a body in the act of becoming. It is never finished, never completed; it is continually built, created, and builds and creates another body” (233). By convexities and orifices, man can overcome the confines between bodies and the world. After the intersection, the renewed body will be born from the death of the older one. That is to say, death is not the end but leads to a new birth. As far as I am concerned, the death image of the carnivalized body does not only mean death but also “birth”.
The basic principle of the grotesque body is debasement. “All that is sacred and exalted is rethought on the level of the material bodily stratum or else combined and mixed with its images” (239). It is a kind of downward movement, the up stratum which controls spirit and soul is replaced by the down stratum which controls reproduction and excretion because Bakhtin believes the down stratum has more relationship with the earth which does not only devour life(grave) but breeding (soil). To be short, the debasement of the body shows the admiration for fertility of body.
CJ Chen’s photo-images of horror have had great impact not just on Taiwanese audiences but on Western viewers as well in recent years. This series of works depicting cruel torture and violence, which has been exhibited internationally, has attracted interest in the West. CJ Chen has explained the purposes of his work Revolt of Body and Soul are twofold. The first half of the series presents historical photographs taken between 1900 and 1950 and it’s all about China’s politics. We can see the Chinese penal history, the late Qing Dynasty tortures and activities between KMT and Communists in the series. The second half fictionalizes the state of affairs this internalized violence has produced.
Looking at how Chen has modified his photo-images, we immediately notice ironies and critiques. Genealogy of the Self is the beginning of Revolt of Body and Soul. In Genealogy of the Self, Chen uses a photograph of lingchi that Georges Bataille reproduced in Tears of Eros. We can see Siamese twins in the photo, and Chen put himself in the back of left side as an onlooker. Being Castrated continues the theme of the Western gaze which presented in Genealogy of Self. In Being Castrated, compared with the prisoner, the foreigners in neat suits revealed strong irony. Although the prisoner was being castrated, he didn’t show any fear on his face; on the contrary, he was full of excitement. The scene of this photo looks like all the people including viewers are viewing a show and it’s very ironic. The Western gaze that Chen presents in Genealogy of Self and Being Castrated is what, in some sense, caused the split and castrated condition of modern China. And what Chen really wants to show is the real history hidden under the wound. He also wants public to think more about China’s real position under the wave of westernize.
In nowadays society, people depreciate other to achieve their own success. Penalty, exclusion and elimination are intensively used to consolidate authority. We hide the things that we think they are abnormal and then create the world so call normal world. However, Chen reveals the Real by using his grotesque works which give us not only visual impacts but also expose the history that we try to hide. Through his work, we can see the violence in the State Apparatus. Like The Siamese twins, the happy facial appearance and the crucial behavior create an ambivalent situation and it reveals the early KMT centralized coercion. 現代國家追求「國家性」的意志力，必然包含建立民族歷史的國家機器暴力，以及遺忘民族過去的意志。Ironically, any civilized societies are built on excluding others and the process was rationalized; however, CJ Chen uses his personal trauma and experiences, which actually represent prevailing social condition, for depicting the history events that we try to cover up. We always stay in somewhere which keeps ourselves safe; however, the safety of the stable sense of identity blocks us out of the truth. By those grotesque bodies and unrealistic expressing, we can enter the sensory experience of symbols. Only abandoned our identity and consciousness the we can empathize with Other.
In my interpretation of CJ Chen’s Siamese twins, I see the ambivalent truth of history and society. Our understanding of the past has been “constructed” by the State Apparatus through the process of modernization. In the photo, the figures of history are not of a whole; the human bodies are all severed into pieces. The severed history figures can be seen as a book with a few pages torn out of it; we’ll never get the “complete” story. What if the two individuals on the left are actually figures of critical importance and because they are decapitated we never learn their true identities? Isn’t that the same as history being distorted or erased?
The Siamese twins creates the oppressor-repressor relationship that ambivalent the artwork as the Self-Other rivalry is on one individual. The symbolical Self is formed by obeying the Law, and those who challenge the Law are seen as Other. While the Self wants to eliminate the Other, it does not easily do so as it is an eternal threat. As in a civil war, the Siamese twins do not share the same mind but they do share the same body. The attempt to commit homicide is almost equal to attempting suicide. CJ Chen’s critique of the state apparatus is shown from it as well. The way authority uses force in this photo is an act of abjection. To cleanse what is considered to be bad, termination is the quickest method, but, with the use of the Siamese twins, the suffering, or even death, of oneself may come along with it.
CJ Chen’s Revolt of Body and Soul does represent a kind of thought that people who define themselves as the executed actually are the executors, and vice versa. Where I put emphasis on about CJ Chen’s work are the grotesque images between the Western and the Eastern. For example, there are several people, including the Western and the Eastern, standing there in《去勢圖》, taking a picture around the Chinese executed with a unusual, peaceful facial expression. Ironically, there are also two Chinese modeling on Chen himself who are executed, standing there, pretending as nothing happened. To me, the picture implies that the executors are not only the inflictors to be blamed; on the other hand, the observers around should also be blamed to be inflictors. The Self-Other ambivalence of the picture has been totally shown.
In fact, there are still a series of pictures like《去勢圖》, representing the similar idea that we do have many Self-Other ambivalence exist in society. When Asian people try to pursue the so-called “modernization”, actually, at the same, they are the people who are eliminating themselves’ culture, too. Just like the Chinese characters in the picture, subjectivation disappears, and what to replace it is the so-called “modernization”. The two Chinese executed stand still, even with the foreigners, taking pictures together. Even though they are executed by others, they are put into the picture, as observers, looking at the Chinese in the middle of the picture to be castrated.
『這個將頭轉向背景，雙手執著被斬斷的頭顱，斜斜地望向我們，形成了一個死亡符號（momento mori），以一種過去式的姿態，提出了一個難以解決的有關殺戮與死亡的問題，一個屬於「寫實」場域的問題：是誰殺的？如何進行？為什麼會發生？後來呢？誰該負責任？』We are bombarded with such questions. However, have people ever realized that perhaps they are all the executors to those executed, because most of them are just like the characters in CJ Chen’s works, pursuing the “modernization”, disregarding things or people related a lot to them, even do not mention them. This is what I think of these grotesque images function as Chen's critique of the State Apparatus.
Q3.
CJ Chen’s series works of “Revolt of Body and Soul” have two different styles, and the later images were no longer use the past historical photos as basic ground, but came from his illusive images, comparing to the works in early period. We can see the Siamese twins were presented by Chen in his images for many times. With the self-murdered or self-mutilated behavior of the Siamese twins, Chen let the characters of the executed and the executor existing in the same physical body. This body becomes a medium for the subject and the object. In other words, the Siamese twins exist the ambivalence of Self-Other; moreover it has two psychological thinking patterns in a grotesque physical body, and it is longing for self-separation.
CJ Chen wants to accuse and protest against the system, or so-called the State apparatus, and the histories that he had experienced were in the same situation, comparing to the Siamese twins in his images. In the past histories, the State apparatus was a system of self-abandonment, and the relationships between the State and its citizens were just like the Siamese twins. Through putting himself on the characters of the executed and the executor at the same time, Chen himself or the viewers can have the experience of watching self from other’s point of view. Chen’s images play the role of mirror, he presenting the crucial truth of past histories through the grotesque images, and the action of seeing makes the viewers become part of the accomplices.
The State’s education makes us blind by histories, experiences, or visions, and that’s what shows in Chen’s images. For example, in the image of “恍惚相” there are two men with blank facial expressions holding a headless God. In this image, the two men seemed to have a religion or belief, but actually they just followed a non-sense as the truth. Every Chen’s images have the grotesque sides, and those grotesque images can fitly present the ironic truth of the past histories.
Modernity is just like a process of men being castrated. It means the value of self-subject has been lost by the external challenges. Since the world is improved, people have had a better life than before. Most of them tend to chase the trend to fit in with the images of the words like “fashion”, “popular” and so on. However, people are getting less and less distinctive. With some general existing standards, everybody follows the rules and lose their original feelings with their own thoughts, gradually accepting it as normality.
In this case, people may struggle with the society all the time, for there would have some conflicts within it. For instance, memory does have something to discuss about. Basically, the memory is connected with the reality, but the reality is always full of lies and oblivions. Therefore, indeed, everyone lies to himself or herself and others. It depends on how the results will work to take effect. I think it can be seem as an apparent case in nowadays and we can start to think what the core it has.
Take CJ Chen’s work as example, he shares his painful experiences with an overflowing way. The first reaction after watching the picture is uncomfortable, disgusting, or afraid to look twice. They are all negative responses, invisibly bringing unhappy memories hidden in mind. The pictures keep sending strong messages, making readers annoying. In the process of facing it, you can face yourself in an ugly way and find some truths been missed for a long time.
By breaking the camouflage, CJ Chen wants to notice us that something important can’t be forgot, especially it is the stress of everyone’s unique experience and characteristic. Knowing the purpose, we can make a reasonable connection between his intention and the motif he keeping using. The Siamese twins can be interpreted as two self of a body; one is bright while the other is dark, just like the relation of Self and Other. It straightly puts the fact that we are multiple and complex. Furthermore, the weird face expressions and the exposed figures will reverberate. With its impact, it can seem as the State Apparatus to influence people, stimulating them thinking again and facing without concealing.
Q2
The word "grotesque" comes from the same Latin root as "grotto;" therefore, the many connotations of the grotto--earthiness, fertility, death--link to the various incarnations of the grotesque. “The grotesque exaggeration of mouth, belly and genitals affirm the physical body as open to the world.” (226) Bakhtin thinks these orifices help us listen to the voice of the others, especially the laughing people of folk culture. “This perception, founded upon the ‘living actuality’ of bodily life, provides a way of experiencing and understanding human existence which frees consciousness from the grip of religious and cosmic fears.” (226) The material bodily lower stratum seems to be earthy; on the other hand, it symbolizes vitality for it returns to life.
The grotesque devouring body is sometimes related to fertility. Take the act of birth for example. The body here goes out beyond the body’s confines: “the gaping mouth, the protruding eyes, sweat, trembling, suffocation, the swollen face.” (232) “The grotesque body is a body in the act of becoming. It is never finished, never completed; it is continually built, created, and builds and creates another body.” (233) Bakhtin emphasizes the replacement of the higher by the lower level and folk culture opposes sterile eternity by pregnant, so in “the fertile womb” (242) the authority at that time is declining.
“The image of the grotesque body also expresses the defeat of time and death.” (226) People are afraid of cosmic terror until people find that they can conquer terror by laughter. These grotesque bodies, such as “eating, drinking, defecation, and other elimination (sweating, blowing of the nose, sneezing), as well as copulation, pregnancy, dismemberment, swallowing up by another body,” (234) are performed on the body and the outer world. That Bakhtin exaggerates the importance of the grotesque body helps us reconsider the relationship between self and others.
The incarnations of grotesque in fact exist as a very big part in Bakhtin's depiction of the carnivalized body. First of all, human excreta are mentioned. In the article 大眾文化的狂歡節, it is said that “髒物和污穢的糞尿形象是曖昧和雙重的，「它們製造下賤，製造毀滅，同時又孕育新生，再創生命。它們既是祝福，又是羞辱。死亡，死的悸動與生的顫抖，生命的誕生緊密相連。同時，這些形象又總是同笑話相連在一起。」” Indeed, human excreta are often thought of as very dirty and filthy things. Therefore, these things that are despised by people are seen as the grotesque. Nevertheless, people overlook that the dirty we excrete is actually what we “happily acquire” from the Earth, and the excreta will ultimately go back to the Earth and produce fertility for the growth of our food. As a result, it is an example of the depiction of one of the incarnations of the grotesque in carnivalized body.
Secondly, sexual intercourse, pregnancy, and generative organs are also mentioned as a grotesque. In Christianity, these are seen as the indecent and obscene that should not be shown and talked about in public. In the text, it is talked about—肉體的形象一掃基督教神學所抹上的罪惡與下賤的黑影，在拉伯雷的狂歡節世界中赤身裸體，堂而皇之地邁入廣場中央狂舞。這是一個散發著蓬勃生機和無限魅力的積極的形象，充滿青春活力，令人遐想。. The artist is so ingenious in making such thing that is despised by the upper class expose to the public. In this way, the grotesque is converted and considered normal or even the one worthy of celebration. Indeed, sex and things connected with it are saintly because these are ways for people to be connected to the world (as it is mentioned in the article) and ways of producing the new. Without them, the world would not be productive! In according to sexual intercourse, other things the body holes function, such as eating and excreting, are also the ways we can link up to the world. Through these things that are considered grotesque, our bodies are permanently-renewing bodies via entering each other (between the world and our bodies).
In sum, the carnivalized body are the grotesque of the body part or body functioning people distain but are converted by the author of the article. These are explained to be the important for they are the connection and the production. Through them, we are now living in the world and acquire much happiness.
Q1
In Bakhtin’s theory of carnival, he thinks that the carnival in medieval times and Renaissance is a sound of the anti-culture and folk culture that celebrates body, sense organs and desire. His idea about carnival is from the medieval folk festival in Rabelais’ Pantagruel and Gargantua.
Rabelais wrote Pantagruel and Gargantua in the dialect of French and colloquial language. However, in the Renaissance, there was a conflict between the dialect and Latin, the official language and which Catholicism used. Bakhtin mentions that the boundary line between official culture and folk culture develops along the dividing line between Latin and the dialect. It means that the contrast and conflict of languages reflects the conflict between social groups, official culture and folk culture. Also Rabelais wrote vulgar, barbarous description about body in Pantagruel and Gargantua, such as generative organs and mouth.
For Bakhtin, the use of the dialect in literature shows new social power and represents folk culture. The dialect is the language that people used in the public. It is the language of life. The dialect rejects Latin, which represents the authoritative culture for Latin is the medium of the medieval official world. The invasion of the dialect to Latin shows the destruction of authority. Bakhtin used the carnival which subverts the theological authority and official ideology and shows freedom to resist Stalinism which is also authoritarianism.
In CJ Chen’s Revolt of Body and Soul, the image of Siamese twins represented that the Self-other ambivalence to the modernity. In 《本生圖》, CJ Chen as a spectator to watch the person who was tortured with western people and Chinese people, that is, CJ Chen as modern people, gazing the process of torturing, becoming one of the executor; at the same time, he also became the executed. The ambivalent emotions that CJ Chen want to express is to reveal truth of history which is very deep underneath the surface of the scar of history. In 《去勢圖》, it is very grotesque that CJ Chen put himself on the right side and left side with his image of different ages. The composition of the picture is like a wound which was lifted. It is very ironic that many western people who symbolize as civilization, watching the brutal and original torture. Therefore, those images which represents CJ Chen’s critic of the Chinese modernization. “依照陳界仁的詮釋，中國被迫接受西方介入的現代化過程，如同凌遲或去勢。透過科技，中國的主體位置一點一點的被剝削。”(73) In those pictures, the executed as an object of being seen is like Chinese people was exploited. Besides, he also represents the historical picture by modern technology. He recreates those absurd historical pictures though modern technique to criticize those “image of history” that people regard as real. The function of these grotesque images which express CJ Chen’s ambivalent emotions and feelings toward his self- experiences and those images also make people to receive the suffering of facing the real truth of history, and at the same while, some infatuation of those suffering
To show the audience what has been hidden in Taiwan history, CJ Chen put his images in
《A Picture of Rebellion 1947-1998》. In《Self Destruction》, Chen played the victim; however
he placed another photo which he was in a different age to the former one as a third person.
During the change of subjective position and objective position, there is no difference between
the viewer and who is be watched. At the same time, the viewer takes part in the memory of
history, and evokes tramatic experience through this process. The third person position which Chen
played represents a modern perspective seeing a historical moment.
Chen reminds the audience about a history which has been forgot, he revealed the fact Chinese were
forced to be westernized. Joyce C. H. Liu had mentioned what this western gaze stands for in her essay.
"This play of the gaze imparts irony to the picture: the gaze of the people within the frame
absorbed by the execution, the gaze of the camera/the West and the apparatus of the power
system involved, and the contrasting gaze of the modern onlooker which highlights the temporal
uniqueness of the execution, the moment in which Chinese modernity is about to begin."
Chen's art work is not only about examining the time of the first western invasion, there was also
about tramas Martial Law period. People felt painful about the intensive relationship beteen the two
sides of the Taiwan Strait and social exclusion which was brought up by the apparatus.
29602029 Joanne
I think the ambivalence of the Self-Other is all around us. A rigid way of thinking and moving can be impute to the history and the industrial and commercial society. We cannot live cut off from “society,” in order to that we have to go along with the other side. Sometimes we’ll have some contradictions in our mind, just like the image of the Siamese twins: we are cut into two parts by ourselves, but they (two parts) still link together. Those two parts are opposite, but they actually are the same (Siamese twins) at the same time. For example: we are not glad to forgive those murderers, violent commits…etc, but our society has a supreme regulation which all of us have to observe. CJ Chen's works can truthfully give us a reflection of modern people's psychology; we can found the realistic consciousness in these re-creation photos. It’s really cruel, ironic and honest, that’s the real “modern society.”
CJ Chen’s work also gave several examinations of the topic (the State Apparatus) from different angles. I think the most important thing which he wanted to express is the disaffection of rules and regulations.
In the work of CJ Chen, he used Siamese twins to present Self-Other ambivalence, and the Siamese twins are always trying to hurt each other. I think the following paragraph from the study can explain why he used this ambivalence image.
『主體處於被殖民者、社會底層階級或是性別劣勢的位置，而欣羨殖民主、上層階級或是性別優勢的位置，便將所有屬於「美」、「良善」、「優秀」都連結到此對象的屬性之上，例如膚色，服飾，語言，腔調，姿態，而積極仿效攀爬，將此對象之屬性內治，從外而內改變自己，並且要求自我袪除不屬於此範疇之屬性。此自我刓除的動作嚴厲而決對，如同父親的懲罰。』
That is, before we become the role which we want to be, we have to delete the inferior part of ourselves, and this way is a kind of self-injured. Moreover, the project of modernity is a way of becoming different; we use brute method to cancel the bad part.
Q3
In CJ Chen’s Revolt of Body and Soul, we seem to see the ambivalent and loose boundary between Self and Other. The reason why we always differentiate the boundary of Self and Other and discriminate the positions of centre and margin is because there’s an authoritative ideological language─ the Law of the Father, dominating and constructing us. The value system of the Law of the Father is always built and reared not only on depriving us of the free will but also on repressing the Other, who are deviant from the Father’s single norms. And in order to enter the world (the symbolic order) as a subject and a Self, we have to adhere to the Law of the Father. In other words, we become a subject (Self) by subjugating our subjectivities, following the Law of the Father, which includes the abjection of the Other. And this kind of “subjugation” and “abjection” can be seen in other kinds of mainstream authorities such as the State Apparatus and Modernization. (The process of modernization is also a kind of a castrating process, eliminating every individuality’s subjectivity and stigmatizing the deviant as barbarian or underdevelopment.) In this way, it seems that we define and justify ourselves as Self by denying and debasing the former “self” of us which we regard as the Other, for before we are subjugated, we are just like the deviation, the Other. Thus, the abjection of the Other is also an abjection of part of Self, and the boundary of Self and Other seems to be ambivalent and even absurd. And here, the images of the Siamese twins modeling on himself is just exposing this ambivalent relationship. The abjection of Self to Other is just like the self-mutilation between the Siamese twins, who are actually each other and symbiotic on each other.
Besides, the device that Chen changes both the executed and the executor with the images of himself is a kind of ritual of introspecting and re-relating his position and relationship with the collective historical trauma. It is a way for him to draw himself back into the historical spots and to recall his missing sensitivity, both in perception and in emotion. And this device of replacing images not only decoupling the objects of the authority but also returns the abjected minority groups into the place of articulation. He wants us not to focus on the objects of the executed and the executors, not to fall into the event, but to see the trauma itself. That’s because what he wants to criticize is not one particular event or party but the whole series of historical trauma caused by the State Apparatus’ internecine struggles of Chinese in its process of modernization. In his pictures, we see a grotesque image which juxtaposes the self- mutilating and ecstasy. And I think such grotesque juxtaposition is to mock at the State Apparatus that when it strives to oppress and to eliminate the Other to consolidate its authority, it is also mutilating the Self, and that only leads to reveal more ambivalence and instability of itself. And the device of modeling on Chen himself is to criticize that the authority’s intention to exclude such violent ecstasy and to protect itself from being involved with it.
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