{"id":28907,"date":"2021-05-05T12:48:44","date_gmt":"2021-05-05T10:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/?p=28907"},"modified":"2021-05-10T14:41:14","modified_gmt":"2021-05-10T12:41:14","slug":"bezmetic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/bezmetic\/","title":{"rendered":"Bezmetic"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"project":[353,795],"project_type":[743],"class_list":["post-28907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","project-online-publications","project-untranslatable","project_type-themes"],"acf":{"bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","custom_color_css_variable":"","content_type":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content_img","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Bild(er)","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":6,"img_gallery":false,"img":[28910],"img_gallery_format":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"Bezmetic<\/em> is moving, and it\u2019s dizzying. The word denotes neither a lunatic nor a mad person, but someone who moves around in a dazzling way. Not running around without purpose, either, yet a bezmetic manifests an unquiet disorder in its pursuit. Bezmetic is a drunkenness of sorts, one that is only perceived as such and pointed out by others. \u00bbWhy are you spinning around like a bezmetic?\u00ab would be the most common phrasing.\r\n\r\nBezmetic itself is a rather unusual word in Romanian, proving difficult to pin down. Its provenance has been sub-ject to debates, with both its use and formation shifting between its Slavic inflections \u2013 a trait of the Balkan region \u2013 and such modulations in our otherwise Latin language. From the Slavic root bez<\/em>\u016d<\/em>\r\n\r\nmatok<\/em>\u016d<\/em>, it suggests a beehive wandering around without a queen (matca<\/em>), whereas the Latin hypothesis derives it from amphisbeticus<\/em>, as \u00bbquarrelsome\u00ab or litigious. And then, it could be neither. Common parlance blends everything and adds more, making bezmetic noisy, dazzled, dazzling, dizzying, and incomprehensible. \u00bbOut of the perimeter\u00ab or habits, perhaps. Human and non-human at once.\r\n\r\nThe reader might well wonder what makes then such a confusing word a subject of attention. And subject it is, rather than an object, as bezmetic resists proper translation by being primarily a visual and bodily manifestation, a dynamo spreading and weaving other connections on its way. And thus, instead of looking at the word itself, we might need to look at something else.\r\n\r\nIn our abundant folklore, unspoken ties that bind humans to magic \u2013 of an utmost organic nature \u2013 permeate words and speech. The \u00bbmistresses of the wind\/ladies of the earth and mist\u00ab are, perhaps, renowned for such unruly forces. Similar to naiads, young nymphs, the iele<\/em> are \u00bbmysterious beings\u00ab who can without any warning punish or make fun of those with the audacity to ignore their unwritten boundaries. In local mythologies, they can make one from human to un-human (pe dat<\/em>\u0103<\/em> \u00eel fac din om neom<\/em>) \u2013 an \u00bbillness\u00ab often causing aimless wandering and temporary loss of speech. Some male ethnologists have cast them as ensnaringly young girls or \u00bbshe-devils,\u00ab often binding young men. But in stories, the iele are neither good nor evil. Rather, their lost items are endowed with healing powers, and they tend to seek revenge only when provoked.\r\n\r\nLanguage \u2026 still the most draconian of instruments through which we subjugate the ineffable and the sensible, giving it a place, a form, a naming \u2013 making it fit an order. Not being able to speak it out or see it out, in order to place a place or name a name, can then be seen as a manner of resisting ruling structures; just as wielding the words high up in fictions (as if by magic) can unhitch them from their prior meaning.\r\n\r\nSomehow, bezmetic seems to elude the \u00bbrational\u00ab order and the empire of reason, which haven\u2019t proved so reasonable anyway. It is precisely reason that has imposed violent and restrictive normalcies on what individuals should be, measuring and ordering us around. Out of this, we can sense that bezmetic was pointed at those refusing normative behavior \u2013 sexuality and gender included \u2013 as if \u00bbthey don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doing,\u00ab as if they are failing an order. It shares this trait from the old Slavic words, bezokij<\/em> \u2013 someone lacking a clear vision; and bezaku<\/em>, the improper, or disorderly, as lack of conduct.\r\n\r\nWorth mentioning is that until the nineteenth century, the prefix bez- circulated as a word in itself, meaning something that shouldn\u2019t be counted; and then got paired with dezmetic<\/em> \u2013 to come to one\u2019s senses. But bezmetic stands most closely to bezna<\/em> (the darkness or pitch black), the abyss of the vast marine space or the celestial one, the unknown universes resting in the corners of our eyes. Although bezmetic touches upon blind spots, it is only as a temporary state, carrying the promise of arriving at a shore. Yet, like magical thinking, it\u2019s not back to consciousness, but into it. And just like the \u00bborder\u00ab the wandering beehive returns to, it\u2019s never the same, even if we idealize it as such. Neither is the \u00bborder\u00ab to which a person returns.\r\n\r\nAnd now that we are about to get back to the hive<\/em>, we\u2019re confronted with more threads. Could this be an artificial connection: \u00bbis the word used only for the honeybees, or is it used regardless of anything else?\u00ab As it turns out, the word\u2019s main use does concern honeybees, as in everyday speech its transfer to \u00bbsomething else,\u00ab concerns mainly people. This transmutation holds little to no surprise. Honeybees have lived a long life as sociopolitical animals among humans. The bees became a utopic repository for community, collective care, and labor \u2013 the ultimate worker working \u00bbnot for one alone, but for all its fellows.\u00ab So strong is this image that, when an eighteenth-century philosopher dared to suggest that bees are as vice-addled as humans, his book was publicly burned. Even our tech-infused language uses terms like hive-mind for horizontally built software or models of distributed intelligence, and swarm for the technicalities of algorithms. As through the looking glass, bezmetic appears as a knowledge \u00bbout of stupular thought,\u00ab an immersion into something that silently resists such structures.\r\n\r\nIf we are to thus envision arches from one to another, being bezmetic can be a practice in (dis)order, one of many ties that can bind, since it holds a galvanizing force. Bezmetic wanderings are both pre- and unsettling. They cast away the \u00bbrational\u00ab order not by opposing it, but by just not \u00bbseeing\u00ab it. As temporary states, they are able to make space, bodily and affectively, collectively as well, for other perimeters; and do so from a vulnerable place, where knowing and not-knowing are not hierarchical delimitations."},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_footnotes","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Fu\u00dfnoten","bgcolor":"","footnotes_list_hide_numbers":true,"footnotes":[{"footnote":"Andrei Oi\u0219teanu: Motive \u0219i Semnifica\u021bii Mito-Simbolice \u00een Cultura Rom\u00e2neasc\u0103<\/em>, Bucharest 1989, pp. 201\u201302."},{"footnote":"Andreea Bargan: \u00bbThe Probable Old Germanic Origin of Romanian Iele (evil) fairies,\u00ab in: Messages, Sages and Ages<\/em>, 2 (2), 2015. DOI: 10.1515\/msas-2015-0007"},{"footnote":"Sergiu Drincu: \u00bbPrefixe Rom\u00e2ne\u0219ti de Provenien\u021b\u0103 Slav\u0103 (2)\u00ab in Philologica Banatica<\/em>, Vol. 2, Timi\u0219oara 2014, pp. 80\u201381."},{"footnote":"See Bezna<\/em> as a tool for speculative thinking and Alina Popa and Florin Flueras \u00bbThe Second Body\u00ab (the peripheral body and thinking with the unknown). Available online at http:\/\/bezzzna.blogspot.com\/2013\/06\/bezna-4.html<\/a> (accessed November 17, 2020)."},{"footnote":"Drincu, p. 82 (see note 3)."},{"footnote":"Mariana Silva: \u00bbThe Insect Wing of the Museum of Social Forms,\u00ab in: Matter Fictions<\/em>, Berlin 2017, pp. 101\u201302. Silva notes that from Aristoteles to Karl Marx, or recent anthropology studies, honeybees have been domesticated into \u00bbnatural\u00ab models of order and collectivity serving varied regimes, including the constitutional monarchy or liberal democracy. The \u00bboutrageous\u00ab book Fable of the Bees<\/em> was written by Bernard Mandevill."},{"footnote":"I would like to thank Flaviu Rogojan for drawing my attention to bezmetic\u2019s erratic meanings."}]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","acfe_flexible_layout_title":"Text","bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"

Edith L\u00e1z\u00e1r<\/strong> is an art writer and (unprofessional) fashion theorist based in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.vShe has a background in art history and is a dropout academic in the field of philosophy. Her research and wanderings focus on fictions, aesthetic politics, speculative design, and the sociopolitical threads of fashion. She is the cofounder and part of the curatorial collective Aici Acolo and she was a design\/fashion theory fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2019. Her soft spots are science fiction, eerie words, secondhand clothes, and mangoes.<\/p>"}],"intro_preview_headline":"Edith L\u00e1z\u00e1r","intro_preview_txt":"","intro_preview_img":28908,"post_id_old":"","post_author":null,"post_subtitle":"Edith L\u00e1z\u00e1r","post_preview_img_hide_on_single":true,"post_txt_old":"","post_pdf":null,"post_copyright":"ccl_default","translated_post":false,"translations":null,"post_copyright_individual":"","post_related_posts":[28428,28481,29219],"related_posts_post":[7027]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28907\/revisions"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person\/7027"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29219"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28481"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project?post=28907"},{"taxonomy":"project_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project_type?post=28907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}