mortar and pestle

The mortar and pestle are displaced eroticism, sexuality by proxy.

Their combinatory power is both alchemical and reproductive.

The etymological background of the constituent terms supports this notion. Pestle derives from the classical Latin term “pistillum,” meaning “pounder,” connoting the aggressive action of a phallic member. Its complimentary counterpart, the mortar, refers to “moratorium,” or the “receptacle for pounding.”

Together, they do not collapse sexual difference, (the way Man Ray’s photographic image of the fedora in Minotaure contraposes the progressive swelling of the cap, with a final folding in on itself, creating a labial laceration above the rim) but accentuate sexual difference by an effectively symbolic function. The pestle penetrates the mortar with the objective of synthesizing at least two disparate elements, giving birth to a third element from out of their transubstantiation.

The sperm inseminates the egg.

The mortar and pestle are the utility of apothecary. By displacing the magic act of coitus, which is necessarily connected with the motion of the cosmos, upon two mutually dependent products (one passive and one active), the alchemical potential of sexual exchange becomes realized outside of the human body as medicinal. As such, the mortar and pestle are also a set of objects through which desire and libidinal energy are sublimated into a form of production that replaces the regulatory outlet for libidinal impulses.

Their combination realizes the antidotal possibilities of eroticism.

Independently of one another, their aesthetic value remains the same, phallic and vaginal, however their use-value is rendered impotent. The mortar becomes a reservoir, whereas the pestle remains silent, unless, by way of masturbation, it animates the heart of Venus and becomes a pleasurable “pounder.”

soap

In a film from 1986 entitled “Bashoo”, Iranian director Beauzai depicts the journey of a dark clandestine child, displaced from the southern regions of Iran as a result of the war with Iraq, across the country into the distant villages of predominately fair skinned northern Iranians.

Upon his arrival, apart from being terrorized by the local groups of rat-faced Iranian farm children, he is welcomed by a concerned-country-cattle-cooking woman who attempts, desperately, to wash him of his naturally dark skin with a bar of soap. His skin color worries the woman about the peril of sin.

Soap rids us of our immorality.
Soap is the super-ego of hygienic supplies.
Soap is repression.

It is the temptress that seduces taboo.

This is made apparent in its most explicit form, when acknowledging its use as a physical censor for transgressive language. A punitive measure applied by the common house-wife against the non-complacent child. The soap is shoved into the mouth for extended periods of time. In such an instance, however, soap mediates morality not by a positive sensation bubbling from the fictitious dissolution (washing away) of guilt, but establishes the limitations of guilt itself, by manipulating the memory of the child's misfortune in relation to a disagreeable impression.

The oral drive (and therefore the ethos of our existence) is dominated by the Mother.

Vis-à-vis the breast. Vis-à-vis the soap.

Soap, therefore dissolves the internal dissatisfaction stemming originally from the boundaries blurred by the morality of our mothers, the accumulation of dirt, and the bastardization of black.

It is the alchemical ingredient which makes water white and holy, the ritualistic application of which, confuses our notions of interiority (sin/idealism) and exteriority (soil/materialism).

stapler

The stapler binds.

It gathers.
It silences.

It is a primitive implement of the archive.

Its power is use-value functional, unless corrupted by perversities relating to genital entrapment, pre-pubescent attempts at acts of sadism or masochism (generally performed in front of other pre-pubescent spectators), latent discoveries in office cubicles associating the accidental puncturing of one finger with the possibility of fucking the secretary upon the managers desk, (as fantasized through office pornography starting in the early seventies, often with a stapler in the periphery of the filmic frame), and artistic modes of expression.

Traditionally the stapler gathers information.

It does not organize it, it entrenches it firmly in its already established mode of organization.

The will to preserve the organization of each set, is materialized through the staple itself, which participates in an intimate relationship with the mechanical support (the body) of the stapler, requiring a certain amount of labor on the part of agency that, again, derives its power from a trajectory initially rooted in the will to preserve the organization of knowledge.

Following the advent of electric staplers, the labor required to manifest this will was substituted with the autonomy of an electronic stapler body. The stapler therefore became the implement by which the will of the subject is granted power independently of action.

The coalescence of intentionality and movement.

This same phenomenon can be observed (on a larger scale industrially) in the genealogy of pencil sharpeners, bottle openers, egg-beaters, and other electro-domestic products that are second-order extensions of more primitive products.