29 March 2010: "Every Day is An Alternative Carnival"

This post is about Mikhail Bakhtin. In particular, Carles confronts the heterogeneous forces in play in situations or scenarios that warrant the description "carnivalesque," which, as Bakhtin famously defined it in his magisterial work on Rabelais, is that which defies the hegemonic order through the modalities of humor or disruptive chaos, undermining seeming stable dichotomies and suspending the monologic discourse so that dialogic expression can reign. As Carles notes, "Such a crazy world. So many different rewards, treats, and distractions." The libidinal satisfactions that are tabooed under the dominant order are permitted full expression, and have their pleasurable quotient enhanced by their "difference." They operate in an alternative economy beyond or outside capital; attention may be paid to values other than efficiency and productivity; desire can speak with many voices that are otherwise repressed. This can be experienced as liberation, but as Carles warns, it can also manifest itself as corrosive confusion and neurosis:

so hard 2 know
what is happening
in this metaphorical alt carnival

Because of the labile nature of meaning under the pressure of desublimation, the carnivalesque is at once, as Carles notes, "An alt circus" and "a ‘goddamn shit show.’"

That apparent contradiction is not merely a product of the dialogic imaginary. It is also an indication of the tension between the carnivalesque order, which yearns for a timelessness, a permanent suspension of hierarchy, and the valve-like purposes of carnivals to vent off pent-up frustration with the ruling order, which regards the chaos as repugnant, as "sh_t". Freedom, liberation, appears to fall somewhere between these two stools. (Pun intended; c.f. Freud's discussion of the anal character in footnote 3 on page 52 of Civilization and Its Discontents. The carnivalesque can be considered as humankind "stooping" closer to its origin as a four-legged being with the full range of olfactory arousal at its psychic disposal. Hence Carles's use of the expletive "sh_t show," as in to show fecal matter as a means of exciting libidinous flows. A circus of the sort described is literally a sh_t show -- a revelation of repressed desire for the animal stench of excretory matter -- at the level of metapsychology.)

In short, heteroglossia dissolves the status quo, but only within established diachronic and synchronic boundaries, such that the ruling order can capitalize on the cathartic explosion of dissent and lawlessness to strengthen its regime when the carefully demarcated festival time-spaces become moribund.

Carles wants to interrogate the function of the carnivalesque and examine its true liberatory potential. He suggests that what seems like jouissance in the moment of its enactment may actually be an iteration of Spenglerian decline:

Round & Round we go
disoriented by the fast pace
everything happens in cycles
recycled trends, sounds, aesthetic, humans, air

The carnivalesque may prompt a despair and a craving for a stronger totalitarian force to restore the ruptured order. The cyclical nature of the traditional festival schedule may in post-postmodern times become something of a spiral, sending society ever further downward toward disintegrating anomie. Carles describes this neurosis in the midst of the would-be liberating saturnalia: "Don’t know where I’m going. Where I’m headed to. Which direction leads where. Standing in a conceptual forest, alone. Directionless. Need some1 to tell me ‘what’s cool’ so I can make sense of everything."

At the same time, the corollary of this observation is the way in which the carnivalesque engages the thantopic death instinct: the carnival "is a metaphor 4 how crazy life is," Carles points out. The devaluation of the life-giving drives of eros by their being granted free play within a circumscribed period only serves to strengthen the death drive, which receives no venting. Carles in a haunting incantatory passage captures this spirit of mounting destructive urges: "let go of all control // no longer in control."

As the death drive strengthens and the libidinous impulses devour themselves, the force behind social bonds melts away. Carles notes that the carnivalesque prompts a cosmic loneliness: "Just want to bond with some1 in this alt carnival. Really bond with some1. Feel not alone in this ‘mess’, experience a moment of clarity." But instead of clarity, there is only abjection, the "mess": "Sorta just wish I could stop this carnival ride and take time to enjoy my corn dog" -- a vulgar instantiation of the abject if ever there was one.