Tentacle Lecture 2 PDF

 TIMELINE OVERVIEW: When are we? 1606: The Buccaneers 2027: Acilde Argenis  “Côte de Fer” 2001: Argenis 1991: Nenuco, Ananí - Novel’s...

 TIMELINE OVERVIEW: When are we? 1606: The Buccaneers 2027: Acilde Argenis  “Côte de Fer” 2001: Argenis 1991: Nenuco, Ananí - Novel’s - Buccaneers led by Acilde“Giorgio” dystopian - Fired from the call-center Roque fish lone opening where he works due to failed - Taíno owners of survivor of a career as an artist shipwreck from the Playa Bo secretly - Acilde works as water await and tend the a maid for - Invited by wealthy neighbor, body of male Esther Escudero restauranteur, arts patron to - ”Roque’s Men”:“One- “envoy” retrieved join artists’ colony and eco- armed man,” from the hole in - Undergoes non- restoration project at Playa Engombe, “Little the reef surgical sex- Bo French Guy,” “the change (and - Acilde gradually Taíno” initiation as - Hosts: Linda Goldman and recognizes himself Omo Olokun) by Giorgio Menicucci - Slay abandoned in/as this figure, Eric Vitier - Other Artists: Malagueta cattle after “Osorio’s the “clone there (ex-baller, performance Devastations,” sell to whom he [2027 - Consensually artist), Elizabeth (rich kid French and English Acilde] imprisoned by video artist) smugglers maneuvered by President Said - Curator/Professor: Iván remote control.” Bona while he - Staff: Nenuco & Ananí - Argenis adopts name tries out his new - Takes the name “Côte de Fer”; “powers” - Argenis is stung by engraves in blood; “Giorgio sex with Roque  “THE GARDENER”: Taíno Erasure, Presence, & Power in Tentacle Ananí:  As with Afro-Caribbean Santéria, Taíno power The gifts would be accompanied by a card is not marginal, mythical, fanciful or past addressed to Princess Ananí and signed by his Excellency [President Balaguer], asking  The strongmen who manage to rule in the D.R. for her blessing. Her response was always the continue to court, appease, pay fealty to Taíno same: she’d tear the card and throw the royalty {“Princess Ananí” pieces in the latrine before ordering Nenuco to distribute everything among the neighbors  Ananí’s father was “disappeared” under … Trujillo: She didn’t accept the gifts because she believed Balaguer was complicit in her “who wanted to take his land and add them to those he father’s death, and she tore up the cards was giving the Jews whom he’d offered refuge during the because she didn’t want anything to do great war. In the end, something made Trujillo with letters; Ananí always said they were reconsider and he left them with a quarter of what they pure lies, trash. (74) had once had including Playa Bo.” (74)  Connection to Linda in 2001 story (privileged marine biologist, descended from Holocaust survivors) creating artist colony/marine sanctuary in Playa Bo with her husband Georgio (ANTI)COLONIAL EDUCATION: HOW (not to) READ A HISTORY BOOK “When she was little and it became compulsory to go to school, Ananí learned her letters and numbers. She loved to “Nenuco had look at the images of her ancestors in the illustrated history made it to books, hunting, sowing, fishing, and dancing the areito, eighth grade; though she knew what was written in those books wasn’t true. his parents had The books said there were fewer than six hundred Taínos by said that to 1531 and that, a little later, they had completely disappeared. deal with those Her family, descended from caciques [chiefs] and behíques who were [shamans], had survived, like many others in the Republic sleeping, you they’d stayed in contact with to marry their young people and enact their rituals. The books said nothing of the men from had to know the water, who came every so often to help them, nor of the what they were Spanish, who’d stolen power from the Arawaks to conquer the thinking.” (75) other tribes of the continent. Ananí had been taught never to speak of these things with anyone, and she had always complied with that order. She left school in fourth grade.”  To learn to read is immediately to learn of your supposed “disappearance”  Can images tell a different story?  How to look without seeing “primitive” life  How to (like the colonial history books) to say nothing … and retain power  Nenuco Enriquillo: Taíno cacique who led “Nenuco was born in Barahona, on the southern part of the island, where his 13-year uprising father, Ananí’s uncle, had gone on to marry a descendent of Enriquillo.” (75) against the “Fonso [the policeman] had never liked Nenuco. To his mind, Nenuco might have Spanish, 1519-33 been the owner of the land at Playa Bo but water was nobody’s property. In spite of Terra preta/ “Indian that, his supervisors had made it crystal clear that Nenuco had people in black earth”: hyper- government and Fonso couldn’t mess with him. Nenuco’s property had three fertile, anthropogenic parcels of land on the coast. They were partly fertile black earth, where his “dark earth” soils made family grew plaintains, cassava, squash, and avocados, and partly red dirt and reef by intermixture of with an abundance of almond trees, sea grapes, and coconut trees. In fact, the real pottery, charcoal, and owner of the land was Ananí …” (71) bones. Found in “The first thing he did when he got to Playa Bo was plant flowers in the front of the Amazon basin; house, red, yellow, and white blooms that grew with the health and beauty of descended from as everything Nenuco planted in the earth. He didn’t speak directly, only through early as 450BCE Mama Guama [Ananí’s mother], and only about the garden, which he slowly Political challenge brought to life all around the house." of indigenous “water protectors”  Speaking, courting through care of the land – BIOSEMIOTICS (think Standing Rock resistance to  “GARDENING” as best available Western translation/role of Dakota Access Indigenous ecosystem management, neither agriculture nor Pipeline) wilderness TAINO SEXUALITY / cosmology “Even amidst the dryness of the beach, the garden blossomed in the shade of the almond trees, roses, bromeliads, dwarf palms, and ferns, which Nenuco brought from the gardens he tended so beautifully in the houses and hotels where he found work. When she was ready to be in love, Ananí gave him a clay potiza in the shape of a heart, from whose breasts emerged a penis as symbol of their union: they would cease being male and female to become one single beating orgasm.” “[D]uring an opening at the Chavón Archeology Museum, Argenis had found [Linda and Giorgio] admiring a Taino pot; the heart shaped piece with a phallic growth emerging between two breasts was the inspiration for a lot of jokes at school… ‘A very sophisticated notion of sexuality, no?’ he’d said, repeating one of Professor Hernan’s phrases. ‘I would have made a bigger penis,’ Georgio said.” (35)  Also, in this novel, an ICON of a transsexual transformation, in which the female body can birth a male one; desire & becoming in the novel’s vein of metamorphosis – a figure for fertility/love/sexuality whose sex is not permanently decided or decidable? (A corollary in Western 1990’s avant-garde art: Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 2, being discussed in the artist colony as Argenis’s personality splits … “Iván explained that the cremaster is the muscle that lifts and lowers the testicles and responds to changes in temperature; the narrative thread that runs through all five films in the cycle is the process of sexual differentiation in the embryo. In Cremaster 2, the organism resists differentiation, resulting in a drama that, according to Iván, plays out like a surreal western while creating a poetic biography of the American killer Gary Gilmore” (62).  MODERN TAINO COSMOLOGY, cont. “Beyond their love and their children, what united them was taking care of the Great Lord, Playa Bo, where the most precious and sacred creature on the island dwelled, the portal to the land of the beginning, through which the men of the water would come, the big heads, whenever they were needed.” (75)  Meaningful GRAMMATICAL AMBIGUITIES between person (who) + place (where), as well as between human / animal / thing / god “Great Lord” = “Playa Bo” where the most precious creature [anemone] dwelled Does “portal to the land of the beginning” refer back to “the sacred creature” [anemone] or to the hole in the reef, both vaginal/birth-canal like openings “through which the men of the water would come”  4 WAYS OF LOOKING AT PLAYA BO & its “CONSERVATION” Linda & her Father (Jewish Taíno custodians of Playa Bo, partially Poor local fishers: expropriated by Trujillo’s action refugees, beneficiaries of “The pool formed by the reefs Trujillo’s land re-allocation “What united [Ananí + Nenuco] was taking care of on Playa Bo was full of animal “[Linda’s] father, Saul Goldman, [had] the Great Lord, Playa Bo, where the most precious life because, unlike the others, arrived on the island as a young boy fleeing and sacred creature on the island dwelled, the it had a madman with a concentration camps and had made his portal to the land of the beginning, through which shotgun who wouldn’t let fortune from scratch with a dairy … Linda the men of the water would come, the big heads, anyone near” came home with the idea of starting a whenever they were needed.” (75) “Nanuco was a real bastard, foundation to protect the coral reefs in Sosúa “Nenuco would sleep on the beach with a shotgun with more fish in his waters and, later, the entire island. Her father said on his shoulder to protect the nest from the boys than he or his family could no, that it would mean risking the who hoped to sneak in to fish at first light; their possibly eat or sell” (70) livelihoods of the local fisherman, who had hooks and harpoons could hurt the envoy, as families just like he did. Linda tried to fragile as an embryo in the water.” (76) explain, in a language that was perhaps too scientific, that we were headed toward the Santeria Priestess of complete extermination of all our marine “If you’re seeing this, it means everything’s gone life. ‘Extermination is a strong word, you well,” said the ghost [hologram of Esther], smiling shouldn’t use it when talking about and calm. “Eric initiated you and now you know animals,’ the old man said.” (37) that you are Omo Olokun: the one who knows what lies at the bottom of the sea … use the powers you have begun to discover for the good of humanity. Save the sea” (83). 1610 [Argenis]/ the Buccaneers “Osorio’s devastations”: “In 1606, Governor Osorio had ordered the depopulation of the island’s northern coast to avoid the illegal trade with English, French, and Dutch smugglers. After they were emptied, several towns—among them Puerto Plata, where Sosúa was now— became a refuge for French and English castaways and runaway slaves... They joined forces to survive, hunting the abandoned cattle … to produce leather and smoked meats, which they traded with the smugglers who still made stops on the coasts.” “They’re in Playa Bo. The Menicuccis’ beach is almost unrecognizable, the sea full of shoals, fish swimming in circles in the hundreds, some a meter long that could be pulled from the water by hand. A galleon with its sails furled is anchored a short distance from the coast” (68) Once in power, Said [Bona] had declared himself a socialist, signing a bunch of treaties with the Latin American Bolivarian alliance, which was pursuing its dream of Great Columbia in each of its totalitarian member states. He imprisoned all the corrupt ex-government bureaucrats with real charges, and used false charges against the leaders of the opposition. He expropriated companies and properties, celebrating his first anniversary in power by changing his party’s colors from purple and yellow to read and black, in honor of Legbá, Elegguá, the African deity who ruled his destiny, Lord of the Four Paths and messenger of the gods, and declaring Dominican voodoo and all its mysteries as the official religion. But now Said Bona was in a tight spot. After he agreed to warehouse Venezuelan biological weapons in Ocoa, the 2024 seaquake had done away with the base where they’d been kept and dispersed their contents into the Caribbean sea. Entire species had vanished in a matter of weeks. The environmental crisis had spread to the Atlantic. … Acilde intuited that the task they wanted him to take on had something to do with the disaster, which had made Esther Escudero cry during her morning prayers. It was because of that disaster that oceanographers and doctors were streaming into the country and the Caribbean was a dark and putrid stew.  UPDATE. “ ‘Esther Escudero was my Because of the discreet and uspecific way in which Esther had referred to his sister, you little faggot,” he powers, he understood that there was no need to reveal the window to the past that said, closing his fist. He was had opened in his mind, nor the clone there whom he maneuvered by remote making Acilde nervous, control. So far, this was his only power, and he wanted to test the reality of the past with his voice like he’d reached with the anemone he’d once thought of selling for mere cents. “I need Balaguer’s and his face like a quiet and private place, because these are the Days of Remembering, in which I Malcolm X. … ‘I swor to will recover the memory of my past lives and of my mission,” said Acilde, using her, that no matter what the ceremonious language of those who had pulled him from the waters in 1991 happened we would give and awakening the president’s curiousity for the first time. you whatever you needed to They came to an agreement: Acilde would go to jail for a few months to calm realize your mission.’” (82) down the followers of Esther who were asking for his head Acilde rested for most of the day now that the man he’d started to become in Sosúa had started to move at his command. He learned many things about that time and its people and what was expected of him. A month after he’d arrived, Nenucao had already shared with him all he knew: the portal with the anemones, the name of all the animals in the pool in both Spanish and Taíno, recipes for cooking them, the purpose and origin of all the herbs in the yard, and the nature of the other world that Acilde was from. Acilde let Nenuco fantasize because, if he realized the other world was a prison cell in 2027, he would have put a bullet in his brain.  “Argenis woke up with the first shot. With a Argenis / GOYA / Cow’s Blood feeling of dismay and excitement, he sat up, watching how the cattle fell to the bullets “ ‘Do you remember your name?’ Roque asks. Engombe was pumping, at close range, into their Argenis doesn’t dare utter a word: he makes a heads. Those that were still alive, stupid and superhuman effort to focus on what Elizabeth is heavy, ran in circles... Engombe and Roque saying now at the table. She complained that if Goya worked on the dead cattle quickly and with was modern, then Velázquez was too. precision, slashing from the throat to the anus While Ananí brings in the coffee pot, Roque and then from one leg to another. When all the the bearded man tells Argenis he is the only survivor cattle had been opened up, they began to peel the of a shipwreck…While Elizabeth puts on a skins, with the help of Argenis, who took notes Morcheeba CD out on the terrace, Roque shows him with a piece of charcoal and a piece of fabric the modest equipment they use to cure the skins he’d unrolled on the floor of his workshop. With from the cattle they hunt inland. While Malagueta his vision clouded with the hot smell of blood, digs between his teeth with a wooden toothpick, which was beginning to clot in a faraway pasture, Argenis gets a nose full of urine, smoke, and flesh in he reached for the Cadmium Red, squeezing the that other place. What the fuck is this? Unlike tube of Winsor & Newton straight onto the brush dreams, with their weird transitions and time portals like toothpaste.” (69) and stuff like that, the story that’s unfolding inside him is coherent and linear.” (56) “The first seven [prints] hang on the wall with rough nails. Lacking ink, Argenis uses cow’s blood, running from the slaughtering with a bucket and applying it immediately, before it can coagulate.” Argenis / GOYA / Cow’s Blood When they closed the curtains, the living room went dark. Iván turned on the projector and there on the wall was print number sixty-six from Los Caprichos. ‘In this series of engravings – besides fusing techniques – Goya presents a subjective satire that cannot be tied to any single reading, destabilizing the sociopolitical paradigms of his time with characters and situations that oscillate between the locally eccentric and the universally mythological.’ A twisted, androgynous body held a flying broomstick above his head, obscuring the more feminine figure behind him, who also held onto the broomstick and sprouted bat wings to facilitate the ride. With Iván still talking in the background, Argenis again closed his eyes. He feels the sun on his skin of that other morning opening up to him. (57) ARGENIS SEXUALITY: Childhood trauma (67) Machismo intact (93) HOW TO BE CONTEMPORARY … “[At the] School of Design at Altos de Chavón, it was a different story. His fluency with perspective and proportion wasn’t worth a dime. His classmates were rich kids with Macs and digital cameras who talked about Fluxus, video art, video action, and contemporary art. They had Hello Kitty backpacks and talked in English and French; it was impossible to tell if they were queer. … He was sure his Renaissance virgins and archangels would dazzle them … [But] the next day, during the first art history class, Professor Herman decided to begin with what had happened in the last ten years, the nineties. Marina Abromoviç, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Santiago Serra, Damien Hirst, Piplotti Rist. She explained everything very well, including the price of the works … Argenis’s blood sugar tanked. He had to excuse himself, walking with blurry eyes to the mini-mart. Where the hell had he been? He felt poor, ignorant, and, above all else, confused. The works he had seen, even if sometimes they’d been made not by the artist but by a toy factory in China, belonged in form and vitality to their time, just as the works of Velázquez and Goya had belonged to theirs. He remembered the squalid cafeteria where he’d spent hours as an alienated young man, listening to painters with black teeth share the secrets of Leonardo, Rembrandt, and Dürer. What utter bullshit.” (29)  ACILDE (2027)  A man (consensually) held in prison by Said Bona, current President of the DR  Reborn through the aperture in the reef at Playa Bo in 1991 to Taíno custodians of the land (Ananí, Nenuco & Family)  Becomes “Giorgio Menicucci” at the end of ”Update” chapter, buying fake ID  First name “Giorgio” – after synth/disco “electro-genius” Giorgio Moroder – last name after Acilde’s vanished Italian father  I.e, the Giorgio who, by 2021, is the wealthy restauranteur founding the eco- artist colony with his wife, Linda. “[Giorgio Menicuccis had] arrived in 1991, an Italian from Switzerland, without a dime to his name. His talents had helped him get a job as a chef in the kitchen of an all-inclusive hotel called Playa Dorada. Soon he had his own artisanal pizzeria in Cabarete, the Caribbean capital of water sports, where he’d met Linda, back then a rich girl windsurfing champion…going through an I-hate-being- rich phase” (37).