Critics Page
Genji Amino
n e a r
in our relationship,
i am the object / you are the subject
in our relationship,
i am the subject / you are the object
in our relationship,
i am the object / you are the subject
in our relationship,
i am the subject / you are the object1
Partly colored as near white.2 given over to an imaginary of interim, continuum, transition, progression. even as that which is lost in this extraction returns inexorably as the critical and aesthetic reserve of an irrecoverable revenance
of appeal
testament to
attune
and fracas of recognition
proportion
ablution
bleed maintenance at
the form would cut
relegation
monitor out in that space
garment
motif
The personification of what is borrowed by borrowed institutionality is a problem for personhood.3 this middle man is not a man. their minority not a quotient but a derivation of scalar incursion. a recursive measure drawing interiority out into its constitutive opening, where we observe the failure of public impressment to privatize an unseemly remainder
of the leased
poured
apses
shoaled to that
lacquer
of which one
timely stitch
grieves
the tide would seethe to
Disavowal’s sadder accompanist. identification’s refuse faded into the ground as its surface, shamed by admission and introjection. wan melancholy which will be mistaken for a bad desire for human exception, for whiteness, rather than its erratic, erotic discomplexion.4 the incorporation of loss, mouth to mouth. a literalization too transparent to perform. a depression in the language of representation, the glass in the glass closet of formal equivalence. call it abstract
of
attenuation
loss free again the reverb
of an attempt
i gather about me
like a ditch or tarmac
flagrant
beautifully painted out
like a colander
for these saps
these concepts
a bellows
But what language of surface and depth adequately expresses the incorporating effects of melancholy?5 a vision in perpetual view of development gives the lie to the implementation of speaking
from the inside. white. inside white.
white noise. white wind. snow. shades.6
Endnotes
- Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, audience / distant relative (1977)
- Leslie Bow, Partly Colored (2010)
- Frank Wilderson, Black Red and White (2010)
- Ann Cheng, The Melancholy of Race (2001)
- Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990)
- Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, EXILÉE (1980)