Jorge Ranz Clemente Commented [E1]: Jorge, this is a very well-written and well-

structured close reading of Valente’s theory of the act of creation. I

particularly like how carefully you take your reader through the steps of
Professors: Esther Peeren & Noa Rei your argument and in how much detail you analyze Valente’s opening
paragraph. You also explain complex theoretical concepts and their
relevance to Valente’s ideas in a very clear, concise manner.
Objects of Cultural Analysis
I’ve made some small comments in the margins below, but overall this
is a very good analysis!
13/01/2019
Grade: 8.5

An analysis of the act of creation in J. A. Valente’s “Cinco fragmentos para Antoni Tàpies”

As a poetry reader and writer, I am fascinated by what is at stake in the very act of
creation: how can we reach this act? What pushes us to create? What does it involve:
innovation, reorganization, perhaps destruction? How does it work? To what extent are we
able to control it, or it is something that occurs outside ofbehind consciousness? In this
regard, “Cinco fragmentos para Antoni Tàpies” (“Five fragments for Antoni Tàpies”) 1, a
poetic prose text by the Spanish poet José Ángel Valente (1929-2000) included in his book
Material Memoria (1979), provides an account of the act of creation that puts
forwarddepicts some intriguing arguments about these questions. Valente’s ideas aboutof
the act of creation, I think, are worth it to be analyzinged. Not only because of their scope
and originality, but also for the place they reserve for art in general, and poetry in
particular, within contemporary societies, whichthat Valentehe understands as primarily
dominated by a constant flux of information. Commented [E2]: Nice opening paragraph: it clearly lays out why
you feel the object is worth analyzing and what questions you feel it
illuminates.
Moreover, taking into account that the act of creation takes place not only in poetry
but also in many other fields, including artistic and non-artistic practices, I believe that the
analysis of this act occupies a strategic place not only in order to produce, but also to read
or explore culture phenomena in general. It gives us a way of understanding the work oin
“its own terms” (that is, oin the terms by which the work emerges in the act of creation), a
way of thinking in those terms, and, additionally, a way of seeing how those terms may
clash with other conceptual or logical regimes or discourses,; perhaps precisely by not
being part of the contemporary continuum of information that, at least to a certain extent,

1Since I have not found any English translations of these texts, all the translations in this paper are my
ownof my responsibility.

1
characterizes contemporary societies.

Moving on to my object, “Cinco fragmentos para Antoni Tàpies”, as the title

indicates, is divided into five fragments or parts. While the first two fragments display
Valente’s conception of the act of poetic creation, the three remaining ones are used to
analyze, under this same conception, the works of the Catalonian painter, sculptor and art
theorist Antoni Tàpies (1923-2012). Although I will take into account allthe five fragments,
I will focus my reading mainly oin the first paragraph due to its ability to condense the Commented [E3]: Paragraph or fragment? Or do you mean the
first paragraph of the first fragment?
complexities of Valente’s understanding of the act of creation. Then, bBy close reading the
first paragraph of this text, then, I will seek to clarify the main ideas of Valente regarding
the act of creation, and to unfold some of their implications.

However, before starting a slow reading of the text, I would like to give a general
account of its content. In the two first fragments of “Cinco fragmentos para Antoni Tàpies”,
Valente outlines his idea of the act of creation as an act of retraction or contraction.
Generally speaking, what he tries to capturedepict with this characterization is creation as
an act in which that whichwhat is primarily created is not the work of art itself, but an
empty space wherein creations can emerge. Thus conceptualized, the movement of creation
could be summarized as follows: first, the subject enters into a special state of mind (which
implies acceptance, intense attention and openness); secondly, while inand under this state,
the movement of creation continues by opening up an empty space inside the subject that
removes her/him from the social place she/he occupies; finally, inside this empty space is Commented [E4]: If you want to use truly gender neutral language
– which does not imply that there are only two genders – you can use
where the work of art can eventually emerge. Consequently, what is truly important in “them”/”their” etc, also in the singular.

order to create is the creation of this empty space or opening, of which the finishedended
work is just an after-effect. This idea contradictsis contrary to the general conception of
creation, which portrays it as an act of power. For Valente, “power and creation negate each Commented [E5]: It would have been good to refer here to some
sources on or examples of this general conception of creation.
other” (Valente 2006, p.387).

In order to fully understand what this is here impliesd, I will commence by

interpreting the first sentence of the text:

“Perhaps the supreme, the only radical exercise of art is an exercise of retraction” Commented [E6]: If you set a quote off from the text, it is not
necessary to use quotation marks, as it is already clear it is a quotation.
(Valente, 2006, p.387).

What does exactly does “retraction” mean for Valente? Taking into account what he

2
explains in his article “Poesía y exilio” (1993), translated as “Poetry and exile”, we can
trace and identify the source of its meaning within the doctrine of tzimtzum in Lurianic
Kabbalah, one of Valente’s main inspirations (Valente, 1993, p.16). 2 This doctrine departs Commented [E7]: Good footnote.

from the idea that the essence of Ein-Soft3 –infinite and extended without end, being and
occupying everything– leaves no space whatsoever for creation, for it is impossible to
imagine an area which is not already God, since this would constitute a limitation of His
Infinity. Consequently, within this doctrine, the divine act of creation is possible only
through “the entry of God into Himself,” that is, through an act of tzimtzum, whereby He
contracts Himself and so makes it possible for something that is not Ein-Soft to exist. In this
contraction, thus, before any emanation occurs, some part of the Godhead withdraws,
forming an empty vacuum for the creative processes to come into play (Scholem, 1974,
p.129). For what follows, it is important to notice that, within the Kabbalah, this contraction
does not entail the concentration of God’s power in a place, but, on the contrary, its
withdrawal from a place. Commented [E8]: Well-explained!

One remark should be madedone here. If the word ‘retraction’ in Valente’s text
refers originally to God’s contraction in Valente’s text, then, there is an implied analogy
between God and human beings is being madetaking place, at least in regards to creation.
GIn this case, and given the obvious differences between the two elements involved in this
relation, we should ask: what is the basis of thise analogy? And to what extent can we
understand God’s act of creation as being similar to the human act, and vice versa? In other
words, what would a ‘retraction’ mean under human conditions, which are not Ein-Soft? If Commented [E9]: The way you take your reader through the steps
of your argument in a detailed, precise manner works very well.
the act of creation is primarily defined as an exercise of retraction, this means that, in order
to create, we first have to enter into ourselves, like God, in a way that involves a
withdrawal of (at least) some part of us from that place. This withdrawal from a place
would form an empty vacuum where the creative process cwould come into play. But this
definition of the act of creation as retraction does not go far enough to present a graspable
2 The word tzimtzum comes from the Hebrew ‫ צמצום‬ṣimṣūm which can be translated as 'contraction',
'constriction' or 'condensation'. The world 'Lurianic' makes reference to the Kabbalistic doctrine of
Isaac Luria (1534-1572), a rabbi and Jewish mystic from the Galilee region of Ottoman Syria whothat is
commonly considered the father of contemporary Kabbalah.
3 The term Ein-Soft comes from the Hebrew: ‫סוף אין‬. ItThis was coined by the early kabbalists of

Provence and Spain to express the unknowable aspect of the Divine. It could be understood as God
prior to any self-manifestation in the production of any spiritual realm. Ein Sof may be also translated as
"unending", "(there is) no end", or infinity (Scholem, 1974, 88).

3
understanding of it. How can we humans enter into ourselves in such a way that extracts us
fromor the place? Is this process even possible?

I want to argue that In my opinion, oone way of interpreting this contraction in

human terms would be as a radical form of meditation or contemplation. According to
Luria’s doctrine, God’s act of creation is not a straightforward act of power, an act of pure
creation or a direct movement from His infinite potency to action. If creation, for God, is a
double activity of the emanating Ein-Soft following on tzimtzum, His act is firstly an act of
Self-limitation (Scholem, 1974, p.130). The process of creation, then, is here depicted as
suspended between two contradictory forces or impulses: the very infinite and pure potency
of God, and also a resistance to this potency that stops the direct movement to creation.
However, while in God´s caseterms these opposed forces are both the outcome of his
Infinite will, forin human beings this is not the case. This is the limit ofwhere the analogy
traced between God and us ends. What remains as similar, however, making the analogy
work after all, are these contradicted forces in the very essence of potency that we share
with Him.

In order to revealsee the form that God’s retraction would take in the human act of
creation as a contemplation, I would like to dwell on the idea of potency, as divided into
two contradicted forces, by taking into account an analysis that the philosopher Giorgio
Agamben’s (1942) analysis made of the term potency in “What is the act of creation?”, a
chapter of his book Il fuoco e il racconto (The fire and the tale, 2016).

In thise aforementioned text, Agamben analyzes human potentiality by invoking the

Aristotelian notion of hexis, which is a way of understanding potency as habit, as the
possession of an ability, capacity or skill.4 The one who has a certain habit (potency in the
sense of hexis) is the one who can implement it or not (Agamben, 2016, p.38). Thereforen,
Agamben argues, potency is essentially defined by the possibility of not exercising it, as a
suppression of the act or, more accurately, a depriving presence of it. His conclusion is that
the very essence of potency is the relation within it between potency (active) and impotency

4 This can be explained throughLets take the example of playing the piano. According to
Agamben’sthis conception, to have the potency toof playing the piano would mean to have the skill of
doing it, withbeing this skill being the result of an habitual and, continued practice, not of any natural
gift. Potency is hence both habit and ability, given the interrelation of these two terms.

4
(negative), which does not mean an actual lack of potency, but rather, the potency of not
passing to the act.5 Agamben calls this impotency “inoperability”: that which results from
the deactivation of the movement from potency to act in human beings (Agamben, 2016,
p.46). What I contend, then, is that this conception already offers a way of interpreting the
tzimtzum of God in human terms: retraction would mean inaction, the inoperative part of
our potencies.

Once we have seen how does this retraction works in human beings, I would like to
grasp the form it takes in our lives as praxis, to understand what exactly does it entails. As I
have already explained, impotence as negative potentiality is what suspends the movement
to act. In doing so, it makes potency non-operative and exhibits it as such (Agamben, 2016,
44). Accordingly, from a phenomenological point of view, this inoperability –the movement
that turns the potency towards itself and exhibits it to us as such– can also be understood as
an act of contemplation, meditation or reflection. But if the kabalistic contraction from
whichere we departed is not the concentration of God’s power in a place, but Its withdrawal
from a place, human contemplation must be similarly seen as a kind of withdrawal of us
from our respective places.

Thus understood, contemplation is then more radical than mere concentration or

deep reflective thought: it is a suppression of ourselves in the act of being concentrated.6 To
withdraw from our place here would mean to recede from the field of social forces whereby
we occupy a specific role and in which our capacity of being functional agents in the
passing of the potency to act without obstacles is needed (for example, receding from the
role of 'mother' in a family, of 'worker' in an office, of 'heterosexual' in an heteropatriarcal
society, etc.). In this sense, the process we begin with the practice of contemplation is the
process of removing ourselves from these places by making inoperative our functions
(including all kind of functions: social, vital, political, etc.). Radical instances of this kind
of contemplation were the practices to which the mystic Spanish catholic poets, such as

5
Based on the previous example, this impotency would not mean lacking the habit or skill toof playing
the piano, but having the possibility of not playing it (while being perfectly able to).
6 In this sense, contemplation could be seen as the form of Christian prayer or meditation in which a

person seeks to pass beyond mental images and concepts to a direct experience of the divine. This is
one of the meanings listed in the DLE.RAE (The Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy) for
“Contemplation” entrance.

5
Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) or Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), subjected
themselves: active isolation, lack of food, lack of sleep, lack of sex, etc.7 Only under this
understanding of contemplation as deep retraction or concentration we can we open up a
void wherein creation can emerge.

Valente's text continues as follows:

"Creating is not an act of power (power and creation negate each other); it is an act
of acceptance or recognition" (Valente, 2006, p.387).

In what sense is not the act of creation not an act of power? What is the meaning of 'power'
in this sentence, so that it contrasts with acceptance and recognition? I contend that 'power'
is working here, at the same time, in at least two interlocking fields: one referring to a
personal capacity (personal field); and the other referring, to a field of human practices
(social, political, economical, etc.). In the first sense, 'power' should be understood as pure
potency without any remains of inoperability, as a blind and immediate impulse from
potency to act without any resistance. It follows that, thus understood, power has nothing to
do with creation, which necessarily involves the double step of retraction and emanation,
resistance and inspiration, potency and impotence. If the act of creation worked without the
resistance of the first contraction, the products of creative acts would become mere
execution or operability (that is, mere functionality), and the act of creation would be
entirely exhausted and resolved in its performance. Contrary to this, Valente's idea of
creation arises as an act of resistance to sheer functionality, embodied in a practice of
contemplation that aims to make human deeds inoperative.

This prompts us to consider the second sense or interpretation of 'power' that works
together with the former one. Valente, commenting the text I am dealing with from his
article “Poesía y exilio” (“Poetry and exile”, 1993), wrote that “the creative act involves an Commented [E10]: This is not clear: are you referring to
something from “Poetry and exile” he quotes in the text you are
exile movement, a retraction, a distance and, in human practice, a withdrawal from honors analyzing? Or to a comment in “Poetry and exile” on the text you are
analyzing?
and the impure territory of power” (Valente, 1993, p.16); theis latter is understood as the
space in which the exercise of power is given, building that space in the same process. In
7
These religious practices do not exclude other –perhaps more secular or more contemporary–
exercises, such as the use of drugs. As I said, these are nevertheless radical examples, from which we
should not conclude neither that they are necessary to creatinge the creative void nor sufficient (it is
perfectly possible to one can perfectly take different drugs or deprive oneselfherself offrom food
without reaching this state).

6
order to grasp what the function of creation would be in contemporary societies according
to this account, it is still important to stress this aspect a little further. I will try to do so by Commented [E11]: Don’t say that you are “trying” or
“attempting” to do something – this makes you sound uncertain of
briefly examining thea Foucaldian understanding of power. your own argument. Just say you will do it.

According to Foucault, in any given society “there are manifold relations of power
which permeate, characterize and constitute the social body” (Foucault, 1980, p.93). In a
society like ours –oin the way from being a 'disciplinary society' to a 'control society', as I
will explain shortlyoon –, these relations of power, which can compriseound institutional
power but are not exhausted by it, cannot work without the production, accumulation,
circulation, and functioning of different kinds of discourses (juridical, medical,
psychological, etc.). Theose discourses, which compete or cooperate in order to gain
control over the production and perpetuation of the truths by which we live, are endowed
with a potent political effect: they institutionalize, professionalize, and reward their
acceptance and pursuit. As I said, in a society like ours, power cannot be exercised without
them, without a certain economy of discourses of truth. According to Foucault, the relation
of power, truth and right is organized in a specific fashion in our societies that is
characterized by: on the one hand, people being forced to produce the truth of power our
society demands; and, on the other, people being subjected to that truth (Foucault, 1980,
p.93-94). What is the role of poetry (or of creation in general) within this frame? Given
Valente's conceptualization of the act of creation, we can conclude that creation practices
like poetry are not immersed –and do not seek to operate functionally– within the constant
production and competition of discourses of truth. It is in this sense that they could be
claimed to be the opposite of power. But whathow does this not being immersed in the
production of truths look like?

Following Deleuze, I contend that it is by making inoperative the communicative

and informational functions (in the case of poetry, of language) that it opens them up to a Commented [E12]: What does “it” refer to here? The act of
creation?
new possible use (Deleuze, 2006, p.320). Valente said in 1995 in an interview: “what
dominates and manages the world in which we live [are] two great elements that have an
autonomous functioning, in which the properly human does not matter. These two elements
are information, that is, media companies, and capital" (Valente, 1995). According to
Deleuze, by 'information' we should understand a set of imperatives, slogans, directions, or
"oder-words" transmitted and propagated by communication (Deleuze, 2006, p.320); a way

7
of saying what you are supposed to believe. This, Deleuze concludes, is the same as saying
that information is a system of control (Deleuze, 2006, p.321): it is the way in which we are
subjected to the discourses of truth in a 'control society' like the one in which we live now.

Deleuze coined this term, ‘control society’, in order to distinguish it from the one of
'disciplinary societies' of Foucault. However, he described it as an evolving form of the
disciplinary societyones that no longer needs enclosed structures to operate (such as the
family, the school, the work, the hospital, etc.) to operate, but only a constant profusion of
information that inserts us in a sophisticated network of entailed systems (Delueze, 1992, Commented [E13]: Entangled?

p.3). Following Foucault, in the disciplinary societies of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries,
individuals never ceased to passing from one enclosed environment to another, each having
its own laws. InUnder these environments, they were trained (educated) to conform under
predictable and strict methods of control. This constant incorporation and conformation of
rules that was achieved, in part, by the treat of surveillance and its subsequent punishment
for departing from the rules, which made individuals subject themselves. In contrast with
this, in 'control societies' the governing of populations is not supposed not to be limited to
such enclosed spaces but rather to be freed up to operate in open systems and networks.
Deleuze used to explain this by thean example of a highway (although a more
contemporary example would be the Internet), which, in contrast to other enclosed
environments, is not a place of confinement, but one in which, in it, the means of control
are nevertheless multiplied:; “I am notr saying this is the only aim of highways, but people
travel infinitely and ‘"freely’" (...) while being perfectly controlled. That is our future.”
(Deleuze, 2006, p.322). In these societies, while freedom seems to be increased, the control
of our activities actually expands. Power is thus no longer (or not primarily) exercised by
an incessant and disciplinary production of knowledge and the necessity of places of
confinement but by a controlled territory of information (Deleuze, 2006, p.322). Formatted: Font color: Auto

Taking this into account, the act of creation emerges as an act of resistance to the
paradigm of information through which power is exercised in our societies. In this sense,
when Valente says that “power and creation negate each other” (Valente, 2006, p.387), he is
also implying that creation, understood in his terms, is not an instrument of information.
The aesthetics of retraction thus appear as a response from poetic language to the politics of
information (Valente, 1995). His text continues as follows:

8
 “Creatione carries the sign of femininity. It is not an act of penetration into matter,
but a passion to be penetrated by it”. (Valente, 2006, 387)

If, as we have seen, the act of creation involves a withdrawal from ourselves and from a
world codified by social discourses, what, is then, is this vacuum formed by our removal
fromof the place in order to create? And what is the material of creation? What is this
matter that, according to Valente, penetrates us in the act of creation? In a space where all
the social codifications over matter are supposedly erased, what remains can only be raw
perceptions without objects (which require at least some degree of codification).The only
material for creation that we have in this momentary, fleeting space created by retraction is
then pure experience, not clarified or codified by prior knowledge. StillHowever, as Valente
remarks in “Conocimiento y Comunicación” (“Knowledge and Communication”, 1971), a
text in which he opposes the idea of poetry as a means to the knowledge of reality to the
idea as poetry as mere communication, although there is no previous knowledge in the act
of creation, the creative process does have the capacity to produce knowledge (Valente,
1971). ThisWhich means that experience is re-codified in the very process of creation,
producing an alternative knowledge of our reality. The act of creation, then, canould be
thought of then as a catalyzer of matter that recodifies experience.

So far, all the termswords that have been employed by Valente to define the act of
creation refer to a passive attitude on the part of the creator. To create here has nothing to
do with exercising power; it is an act of recognition, acceptation, retraction, and a passion
to be penetrated by matter. Paradoxically, tThen, the creative act only becomes
paradoxically active when the subject becomes “patient”; the act of creation is generated in
a passive synthesis. However, tThis does not mean that creation is an unconscious act,
although it is not fully conscious either. As Valente wrote, when the poet is embroiled in the
complex synthesis of the experience, the latter is superior to the person who
experiencesplays it and, therefore, exceeds partly exceeds their the consciousness of her
(Valente, 1971). To create is primarily a passion, and it is in a patient position that the
creator becomes active and conquers her potency to create within an act of creation that
consists, as we saw on the beginning, ion a contemplation of that potency, always divided
into activity and passivity (inoperability). When the word 'power' is invoked within this

9
context, it should not be understood in terms of possession or action, but rather as referring
to the creator's sensibility, to her capacitybility to be affected. In this regardat sense,
Deleuze wrote: "Force, however, is not what acts but, as Leibniz and Nietzsche knew, what
perceives and experiences" (Deleuze, 1994, p.130). The only activity that can be performed
and developed under this conception of the creative act is that of sensibility or attention.

To concludeIn order to finish, I would like to close read the last sentences of
Valente's paragraph and to restate some of the points that I have already made. In doing so I
will like to remark that this account is relevant not only in order to create but also to read or
analyze art in general, sincefor that it provides us with a way of relating to the works of art
oin “their own terms”, that is, by attending to the conditions underin which it can emerges
during the creative process. The text continues as followsfollows:

"Creating is generating a state of availability, in which the first created thing is the void, an
empty space. Because the only thing that the artist creates is the space of creation. And in
the space of creation there is nothing (so that something can be created in it). The creation
of nothingness is the absolute principle of all creation."(Valente, 2006, 387)

I have described this state of availability and unfolded some of its implications by depicting
it as a state of radical contemplation, understood as a withdrawal of creators from their
respective places. In other words, contemplation would be a suppression of the self in the
act of being concentrated by which a person seeks to pass beyond mental images and
concepts to a direct experience of the material world. As I have tried to explained, this
removal from our place refers to the field of forces whereby we occupy a specific role and
in which our capacity of being agents in the passing of the potency to act without obstacles
is needed. It is in this passive state of availability where, due to the removal of ourselves
from our social place, an empty space is created, being, as we now see, the first and most
important thing of the act of creation.

But what isdoes Valente referring to by 'nothing'? For Valente, 'nothing' does not
equal an absolute lack or void because, in the empty space of creation, discourses may fade
but matter always remains. What I contend is that we should interpret Valente's
‘nothingness’ precisely as this raw, not culturally codified matter.

As happens with the act of tzimtzum in the Lurianic doctrine of Divine Creation,

10
Valente's act of human creation is not a one- way journey to created things but a never-
ending process of retraction and emanation, inspiration and resistance, decodification and
recodification. In this sense, in the open up space of creation contradictory forces are at
working: where some forces render this space to us as pure experience without possible
terms to describe it, at the same time, other forces pushes us to find the words for
describing, to come back to some codification. In this continuous passage from the one to
the another, we recodify the experience not in the same terms, or constrained by the same
rules or conditions of possibility we had before our entrance into this movement. Therefore,
every opened empty space of creation is a place with its own conditions of possibility, with
its own logic, its own rules, and its own codifications of reality. These new conditions, rules
or, in other words, grammars that constitute the different structures of the spaces of creation
are maybe the only thing that the artist creates. Only from here a creative work can emerge.
But the work itself is, in Valente’s view, always a secondary or an after-effect of the
process.

References:

Agamben, Giorgio. El fuego y el relato. Sexto Piso, 2016.

Ángeles, García. "José Ángel Valente considera que los escritores españoles están
comprados." El País, 1995.

Deleuze, Gilles "Postscript on the Societies of Control". The MIT Press vol.59, 1992, pp.3-
7

Deleuze, Gilles. Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995. Semiotext(e),
2006

Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. What is philosophy. Columbia University Press, 1994.

Foucault, Michel, and Gordon, Colin. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other
Writings, 1972-1977. Pantheon Books, 1980.

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Real Academia Española. Diccionario De La Lengua Española. 23ª ed., Real Academia
Española, 2014.

Scholem, Gershom Gerhard. Kabbalah. Keter Publishing House, 1974.

Valente, José Ángel, and Andrés Sánchez Robayna. Obras Completas I Poesía y Prosa.
Círculo De Lectores Galaxia Gutenberg, 2006.

Valente, José Ángel. "Luis Cernuda y la poesía de la meditación." La Colmena: Revista de

la Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, no. 35, 2002, pp. 8-17.

Valente, José Ángel. "Conocimiento y comunicación." Las palabras de la tribu, 1971, pp.
3-10.

Valente, José Ángel. "Poesía y exilio." Vuelta, no. 203, 1999, pp. 15-18.

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