Comments on: From Coréennes

By: blindlibrarian

blindlibrarian — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:28:57 +0000

Thanks for the clarification – I’ve adjusted the wording. That’s hilarious about “Bruce Willises” – talk about time travel!

By: markertext

markertext — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:12:37 +0000

Maybe transcription courtesy of markertext would be more appropriate, rather than translation. I should probably make it more clear on the site, but for the record I’m pretty sure most of the translation on Immemory (from which this English version was transcribed) was by Brian Holmes. Although I did revert to the original for a few small things, like returning to “Levites with lunar skulls bustle like so many Cornailles” from the updated “…Bruce Willises” because that just seemed weird in a book originally written in the ’50s.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:45:12 +0000

In regards to the above Foucault citation, this passage should perhaps have been quoted first (take it or leave it, as you will):
“This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought – *our* thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography – breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our old-age distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) *et cetera*, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the start impossibility of thinking *that*.”

By: admin

admin — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:13:35 +0000

… the Chinese encyclopedia quoted by Borges, and the taxonomy it proposes, lead to a kind of thought without space, to words and categories that lack all life and place, but are rooted in a ceremonial space, overburdened with complex figures, with tangled paths, strange places, secret passages, and unexpected communications.
- Michel Foucault, The Order of Things [xix]

By: blindlibrarian

blindlibrarian — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 03:01:18 +0000

Some details on Coréennes from Melvyl:
Author: Marker, Chris, 1921-
Title: Coréennes / Chris Marker.
Publisher: [S.l.] : Aux Éditions du Seuil, 1959.
Description: 140 p. : ill. ; 20 x 25 cm.
Series: Court-Métrage ;1
Language: French
Subject: Marker, Chris, 1921-
Koreans — Portraits.
Korea (South) — Pictorial works.
Format: Book