9 September 2014

In search of censorship in the library of swastikas



Original Bellmer blurring?


The white triangle.


Instead of "bingo," we get bananas.
The hunt continues...

'The taste for collecting', suggests Maurice Rheims, 'is like a game played with utter passion'. For the child, collecting represents the most rudimentary way to exercise control over the outer world: by laying things out, grouping them, handling them. The active phase of collecting seems to occur between the ages of seven and twelve, during the period of latency prior to puberty. With the onset of puberty, the collecting impulse tends to disappear, though occasionally it resurfaces after a very short interval. Later on, it is men in their forties who seem most prone to the passion. In short, a correlation with sexuality can generally be demonstrated, so that the activity of collecting may be seen as a powerful mechanism of compensation during critical phases in a person's sexual development. Invariably it runs counter to active genital sexuality, though it should not be seen as a pure and simple substitute thereof, but rather a regression to the anal stage, manifested in such behaviour patterns as accumulation, ordering, aggressive retention and so forth. The practice of collecting is not equivalent to a sexual practice, in so far as it does not seek to still a desire (as does fetishism). None the less, it can bring about a reactive satisfaction that is every bit as intense. In which case, the object in question should undoubtedly be seen as a 'loved object'. As Rheims observes, 'The passion for an object leads to its being construed as God's special handiwork: the collector of porcelain eggs will imagine that God never made a more beautiful nor rarer form, and that He created it purely for the delight of porcelain egg collectors ...'. Such enthusiasts will insist that they are 'crazy about this object', and without exception, even in circumstances where no fetishistic perversion is involved, they will maintain about their collection an aura of the clandestine, of confinement, secrecy and dissimulation, all of which give rise to the unmistakable impression of a guilty relationship. The boundless passion invested in the game is what lends this regressive behaviour its sublimity, and reinforces the opinion that an individual who is not some sort of collector can only be a cretin or hopelessly subhuman.
—Jean Baudrillard, The System of Collecting

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