Poems I have written in the last day

Untitled

banal bodies

we have

severed ourselves

castrated, circumcised

mutilated mysteries

we come to grace

in un/dis-covering

flesh from foreground

Office

green lights

lavender skies

blood red brick

impulses of eyes

this is the

dream

dust

demon

machine

REVOLUTION

Resist

facile rhymes

with fist

I like poetry as a form of expression, particularly political, because it involves the reader explicitly. Because it doesn’t ascribe to pretensions of transparency clarity or explicitness, the writer writes with an eye to self, but the openness of meaning and interpretation. It uses particular markers to divulge itself as potentially anything (line breaks in particular, rhyme schemes which assemble meaning in new ways). Poetry breaks grammatical boundaries but also involves itself in interpretation. I feel that the category itself spans and slips so much, that the only way I feel comfortable defining it is through interpretation, and almost, the medium in which it is received. I also don’t think I like spoken poetry. I feel the greatest potential that comes from poems comes from written word, to view the assembly, and the intertextual features, the visible ‘frame’ of the poem as a text with multiple features, outlined by placement breaks or punctuation

Duncan

Post - postsomething

Plurality is collapsing on itself.

No, seriously.

http://txcommie.wordpress.com/2007/03/07/some-of-my-mail-after-i-debated-horowitz-on-laura-ingraham/

The tone of both David Horowitz, and the group Justice For All brilliantly forecloses debate by opening it; riding the coattails of multicultural plurality as a vehicle to undermine the progressive movements that otherwise used equal participation and justice as rhetorical tools.

Part of the problem with multicultural/plural/inclusive debates is their impossibility/self-negation. The views not included in a discussion that includes all views are those that question the framework of discussion, or the intrinsic good of inclusion. The framework ‘inclusion’ includes everything except any view that may ‘exclude.’ Because this determination cannot be made conclusively – what might silence other people? – the mask of equal inclusion creates silences around itself, silences prevented by the use of inclusion.

People, capital and culture transform discussions, which creates the other problem with inclusion for inclusion’s sake: prejudice pictures and power shape discussions to where, no matter how much any number of views receive equal treatment, people understand messages using filters which favor certain arguments. Also, certain groups have the means (money, fervor, brainwashing) that allow them to create more effective messages than other people. And, in a context where ‘all voices are heard’ people believe they have the capacity to make objective or rational decisions about the subjects of discussion and debate.

The upshot of all this is not just that certain (nominally conservative, definitely dangerous) perspectives should not be included in debate, because limiting out people from discussion/debate is not only impossible, but that there needs to be a progressive rhetoric that counters the use of inclusion/discussion rhetoric in fascist/conservative discourse. This potentially could come out of an alternative model for public discussions, but I don’t think should come out of the rhetoric of open discussion and inclusion itself. Not only will calling for exclusion of conservative/fascists put you on the wrong side of public opinion, it plays into the rhetoric of reasonability and prudence that animates much of American conservatism.

I think one strategy is to talk about messages as rhetoric, to address the persuasive value of certain statements as persuasion. Not: “This group calls for X, X is a bad idea” but rather to say “this group’s message won’t work, because of Y.” This is the ‘I statements…” post I made before. Messages labeled persuasive will be more persuasive (at least I think so [no pun intended]). Who knows. I just think that talking about inclusion had an important role in one historical situation, but that situation may not be the one in which we currently live.

Duncan

Some Rhetoric

First, ‘I statements’ and being behind the scenes – I’ve been fascinated by the treatment of presidential campaigns in particular in the media, where media stories focus not on reporting a message, but the creation of a message and the coverage of predicted outcomes of politician’s uses of media devices. (example is this article in the NYT about Elizabeth Edwards’ cancer) This also appears in political documents which talk about the way that ‘the American people’ will receive arguments, particularly prevalent in the painting by both major political parties of the other as extremist and marginalized. These rhetorical texts seem to be on some level, prior to actual political messages, that gives the audience a sense of being ‘behind the scenes,’ understanding more than a message, but also the way other people will perceive a message. I find these strategies effective, and here’s why. When an audience experiences a ‘typical’ rhetorical text, like a speech, they make judgments about each statement, passing some judgment about the truth, morality or usefulness of each argument. So: “America is at war” requires the audience to question their understanding of war, the condition of America today, etc… However “A majority of Americans today recognize that our country is at war” not only makes the same argument, but bypasses judgment by the audience of the claim – we already ‘know’ the claim is persuasive, which makes questioning of its truth more difficult, and transforms treatment of the claim by the audience a question of ethos – what do we think about the American people and their belief about war? So with political analysts talking about politicians choices (and the implications stemming from them, the question is of the analyst’s ethos rather than how audiences in general might actually treat a message.

Second ‘pop-science –

Scientific certainty – science in general parlance and western rationality carries a mantle of absolute veracity, a standard of truth that cannot be surpassed. Good science is certain science, endlessly repeatable by however many people. This creates space for the strategy of doubt and mystification by industries which kill people – calling studies of harm or warming inconclusive or calling attention to dissenting opinions concerning the harm in question. People believe that studies should be absolutely conclusive to qualify as scientific evidence for a truth, because of the status science has as verification of our industrial civilization

Heartbeat – a bill in the Georgia senate would require providers of abortion to provide women seeking abortions a chance to listen to the heartbeat of a fetus before the abortion. This is the same pop-medicine pseudo science bullshit that we saw with the Terri Schaivo case- people make random conjecture about what life means and when it begins based on common parlance. I think the ‘heartbeat’ think (also seen here) comes from the (too numerous) medical entertainments where we see people being revived or being declared dead based on the machines which beep and show the line depicting heartbeat – the matter of life and death as it is most commonly seen in American public discourse looks and sounds like a heartbeat – it’s a visable and audible measure that transfers well over TV that becomes a stand in for realistic medical decisions (which shouldn’t be the subject of legislation, except to reserve space to make a decision for the agents directly involved, namely women seeking abortions)

Duncan

Theocratic Time

This was more interesting when I started writing it a few days ago...

The role of time and liberation in fundamentalist religious movements has parallels in many non-fundamentalist political movements. I think it’s important to understand fundamentalist religious movements as rhetorical strategies for mobilizing people for political action. All messages make sense to someone, and all people make some sense through messages: the only ‘reason’ or ‘logic’ that matters in politics is the one that motivates people to act. That’s why fundamentalist religious groups should be seen as more than the outgrowth of irrational extremism, and more so as the mobilization of people through a specific rhetorical strategy.

The first similarity between religious groups and other political groups concerns the definition and possibility of freedom/liberation/redemption. I see these terms as tied up in each other because they all concern some escape from or transcendence of regular forms of oppression. Marx’s argument that religion is the “opiate of the masses” is an argument about explicit/specific ideologies in bourgeois capitalism, but it has parallels to debates within other liberation/nonstate activists about the function of liberal reform as a salve or mask for state violence (or other forms of violence). Marx’s treatment of religion has parallels in the ways that the argument for paid women’s domestic can be seen as a false promise for freedom, and the mere amelioration and rationalization of worse wounds by capital. Religion is one expression of the cry of the oppressed, just as any other liberation movement is. It merely identifies different means and understandings of what liberation looks like to mobilize people to action. Also, this explains why looking at rhetorical strategies in religious movements is so important: because they are first and foremost political expressions, with implications for understanding loci of oppression, but also for (re)directing political energy, with a co-opting of transformative energy.

I think one of the more important rhetorical strategies fundamentalist religious groups use is a redefinition of time. How people consider time, and how much of it they think they have, determines their perceptions of the political tools available for them. I think there is a general sense of some limited amount of available time, because only when you consider time as constrained on some level is it possible to compare potential costs and rewards for commitment to a political strategy. The perception of a relatively small sacrifice met with a long, sustained reward motivates a commitment to pursue a life of religious doctrine when the stakes, the scene on which life occurs, changes.

I like this article http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,,1344082,00.html because it explains not just a relationship to truth but the means that support a relationship to truth – the political institutions required, what sense of self and reading… (it also expresses a great love for the activity of reading which I really appreciate). However, I think it is too a-historical in that it doesn’t look at how fundamentalists look at themselves through rhetoric about their roles and goals in the world – what is common about fundamentalisms that requires literalism? There seems to be a very particular sense of ultimate rewards, situated in a broad historical time period – rewards that come to matter for their position as part of a history that erases other occupations. Meaning is constructed around time, and the perception of purposefulness attached to that. All forms of fundamentalism seem to be attached to an erasure of individual selfhood in relation to a political messianic goal – this requires the artificial creation of tension between individual desire and collective responsibility. Theocracies talk about responsibility in personal terms – either as sin or as violating revolutionary ends. Individualization is linked to political expedience – the regulation of self under conditions of scarcity for the means of survival, detachment from land/history. These are the conditions also of oppression under capital, which is a driving force for fundamentalist backlash. A litteral, mechanical understanding of words makes the individual responsible for every meaning, leaving everything up to particular forms of emotional control.

Duncan

Sontag, some ethics

What do we expect from moral responsiveness when we describe the callousness of our response to photographs of horror? Nietzsche said that pity was the emotion of the weak, who react to events to which they have no connection and no power to change. Photographs capture a moment, preferably a moment with an event or action – the best news photos capture dynamism or its aftermath. At the same time, photographs are always of death, in that they refer (if we believe their veracity) to an event that has already occurred, and cannot be changed. Their power is also their disarming, in that the event, to which we know occurred, we also know to be past. The event always seems to tell the story, coinciding with the erasure of context. The moral callousness issue is a product of the photo’s seduction: we presume we see the moral story in its complete form, and that the event IS, providing the prerequisites for moral responsiveness. The context of images –displayed in an entertainment frame, competing with other stories (fictional, or no) that may be more appealing, and also in a context of continual image making, and the continual state of inaction that provides. There are a lot of wars, in a lot of places, and we don’t have access to all of them.

Every ethical calculus requires a consideration of what type of agent we perceive ourselves to be. This includes questions of what means of control and intervention we perceive ourselves to have, as well as consideration of the ‘goods’ we seek to protect. Lastly, the ethical decision includes consideration of more than outcome, achievement of goods, but also a question of whether we are satisfied with the calculus we entered into, the way we make decisions even if we fail in achieving our goals. The metaphor of the global village explains the way the call of callousness positions us in relation to suffering others. Not only to images appear near, we think of ourselves as physically near, but in a facile way. There is a sense of potency assumed, or implicitly hoped for. We wish to be able to intervene, to step in from a distance. The goods seem to be ‘avoidance of wanton human suffering’ – which is the only kind that can appear in photographs, which capture a moment and the fear of momentary decisions, preferably transition points in people’s lives. Two examples: “napalm girl” and the ‘execution of a viet cong soldier’ from the Vietnam war – in the pictures we see unnecessary suffering, but in both the context changes their meaning (the girl was immediately treated, the soldier was a man who just killed a small sum of the executioners colleagues). The last part: we really want to think we are moral, and that we can help in immediate ways – the outrage expressed at inaction serves as distancing and the creation of a moral calculus that the speaker finds acceptable, regardless of its usefulness.

Duncan

I can't account for this post entirely

Because we have faith in photographs as verification of reality, our understanding and appreciation of other events changes to the point that we require more photographs. Pictures, and stability through a lens on paper (or screen) provides irrefutable evidence for many people of an event’s reality. Photos become the means and currency of verifying events between people. Truth acquires a sense of stability and referentiality – we can come back to the picture, it won’t change, it still tells the same story we wish it to, over and over again. Reality becomes transfixed by its own gaze. At the same time, the lives led outside the camera move, strangely, much quicker than photographs themselves. We don’t believe in the reality of an event until our understanding of that event operates in the same terms as the photograph – stable, unchanging, perhaps rewind-able and manipulate-able. Generally, people wish to believe their lives happened, and so the cycle restarts with the desire to verify with photographs. Pictures take the place of memory, not in the sense that we don’t remember, but rather organic memory is insufficient to verify anything about experience. And so, we become ever more record-prone – transference prone.

Perhaps this is because we relate to the world with a series of medals and achievements that construct us as beings. An image culture sets up a situation in which we see ourselves as being seen by others. We share ourselves in brief tangential relationships in which people move in different direction quickly. The currency of relationships lies in being able to paint yourself with ever more grandiose terms. The lack of any specific cultural background, or perhaps shared backgrounds of placelessness between people, creates a situation where identity comes from communication of shared events between people. Conversations between people proceed with questions of doing: coming back from spring break, people have consistently asked me what I did over the week, the assumption being I should judge my life in terms of the nature of the events it includes. We have to be entertained by our lives. The events people ask about are provocations and moments of excitement: we look for some heightened state of emotional intensity for its own sake, because it validates the time we spend and makes sure we know we are doing something; just like news organizations look for blood because blood makes an event creating news. People as agents create meaning on an otherwise blank world (a blank that in reality contains the things that just don’t happen to change between units of time: eating, sleeping). Event-ness requires an exception to something foregrounded as un-doing. Maybe we should reconfigure the whole thing. Living breathing sleeping shitting is something DONE on the world because they verify and constitute your existence in the world – they are space occupying events, they make up you. Loving killing jumping traveling photographing are now considered LIVING (that is to say inevitable, indistinguishable events) because they have no intrinsic content except to occupy what we see as empty space in our lives and form the preconditions for understanding ourselves.

Duncan

Habits and Terrorism

I think the role of habit and politics determines the effectiveness of a variety of rhetorical terms. I think that by habit, I mean the practices that people accustom themselves to doing every day, the things caught up in the means of sustaining themselves in the world, the preconditions for daily life. These could be mental habits: the things we have to do to feel ready to ‘face the world’ or physical consumptive habits: what and where do I have to buy in order to (socially, physically, mentally) make it through the day. Because habits are tied so closely to the feelings of our basic humanity, questioning them can throw identity into question. Habits can also be presuppositions about choices we will have, presuppositions that determine which and what type of relationships we will pursue. Once we become invested in particular (types) of relationships, disrupting the choices that found them troubles our sense of self. So, the most effective way to convince someone a course of action is good is to just start that course of action. Our sense of choice and self emerge organically around this.

I think this makes certain governmental functions more effective than others. The executive branch, when it just decides to do something (invade, weaken environmental protections), it not only forecloses debate, but makes the most persuasive argument possible for a course of action, which is action. That’s why creating rhetorical and legal hurdles to executive action is so important: because the power to just DO matters so much.

I think habit defines the contours of debate about the choice to have an abortion, because heterosexual people have entered relationships around the notion of a right to privacy, and all it entails, including the right to an abortion. I don’t think that this means that we will never see legal restrictions on the right to abortion: I think it just raises the stakes. The force of habit makes the restructuring of relationships even more violent, and makes the pursuit of illegal, dangerous abortions more likely. I think it creates a rhetorical resource for those seeking to protect the rights of choice, as many heterosexual people think of their sexual relationships in terms of the choice of an abortion, and throwing those relationships into doubt threatens a great deal about their personal identity.

I also think that this shapes the nature of the discourse around ‘terrorism’ as a term. Its clear that under a strict definition, many of the policies that the United States has engaged in, and continues to pursue, should be labeled terrorist acts. However, the term ‘terrorist’ as a tool for mobilizing public outrage and resistance towards those acts in the US will remain ineffective because it questions the habits of political identity and consumption at the core of American identity. Cheap oil matters a lot to American self-identity. Terroristic actions taken in pursuit of cheap oil can be justified to the public because it preserves habits of consumption and movement fundamental to our identity. The term ‘terrorist’ carries no universal implications for people’s psyche; it is a term that matters for people when mobilized against (people/regimes/ideologies) that question American habits of thought and consumption.

Duncan

Have any of you used the @ sign as an anarchy symbol?

In Need of Repair

How often do social machines break? Can couplings come loose, bearings break, hoses unhook, circuits cease to circulate? And if so, does the machine continue to exist? I need to sort out how much I am invested in the social machines to which I currently attach; to find out the conditions for making new decisions and directions in my life. I know that I am invested in certain things: school (in particular), interpersonal relationships, family ties, etc. I also know that these things are a result of other machines investing in me: my parents, my friends, debaters, other social machines which like me as a productive cog. Because of these interconnections which pivot and move through me, I feel a loss of agency over my means of existence. Even beyond this, I don’t feel comfortable approaching decisions outside of the framework of funding and consultation with my parents, and my use of a certain type of education (most prominent examples of a larger number of habitual tools for negotiating my world). In many ways I don’t feel (or encounter any substinative examples of) a sense of breakdown in these social machines. I’m finding it hard to make decisions outside the frameworks already established in my life by these social apparatuses.

Perhaps this has to do with my writing about time and prediction earlier. There is no reason to believe we have a future (or that we should know how to make sense of it if we do). However I continue to engage the world with certain presuppositions about my ability to move and access certain things in the world, and in many cases those presuppositions are actually necessary preconditions to doing something. Example: how should I get from Athens, Georgia to Olympia, Washington? The answer I have comes to buying access to some form of private transportation: plane, car, bus, etc… I presuppose I have access to those things, and I don’t really know how to get there without them. There are probably more examples. I feel that the way I express my desire to live as a satisfied and ethical human being is constrained by the habits in thinking I’ve picked up in life. That is why I think my (upcoming) decision on where to go to college matters so much, because I feel that it concerns the social tools I will have available, physically and mentally, as I go through later life. Do I exist as who I am only because I am a social machine who (in/out)puts only in particular forms? Or could I survive a breakdown in the various means by which I am attached to the world around me?

Duncan

Document this

The foundation for sovereign-state-governmentality lies at the juncture between text and document. A text consists of transferable assemblages of words and letters which form a message while a document is a specific, historical and authoritative text codified into a meaning carrying object. The meaning of a document cannot be reduced to the text, but also meaning carried by the relationship people, other texts and governments have to the physical object itself.

The difference between the two is rhetorical, whereby a series of ceremonies and physical arrangements transform particular texts into documents, and not others. Government in the state form works because it removes from consideration competing allegiances towards the administration of basic life functions; states must be univocal to efficiently administer populations of the size and scale of nationalities. Uniformity garners efficiency, and textual codes allow for mutual intelligibility and fungibility, promoting some degree of uniformity. However, the possibility of arbitrary amendment or transformation of a text undermines whatever efficiency garnered by the usefulness of texts. Thus, state administration requires a unique space of authority for a sense of univocality and unidirectional reference to create efficient administration. IN order for only one voice to be heard, one text must maintain authority, that text transforms into a document (a bill, a declaration, a constitution).

Government concerning documents allows for the administration of a particular sphere of human existence, which other forms of media cannot. Stability is needed for the administration of foodstuffs (planting requires planning, and planning implies the ability to predict into the future), or of capital projects (transportation systems, other capital investments make sense in an environment that allows for prediction of future needs). Other media forms may be poorly suited for achieving the goals of a nation state in these areas – imagine ‘open source’ contracting for road building that allowed for editing by anyone anywhere, or filmed constitution. The internet, digital media remain only texts because verification of origins and source is impossible, reduced only to manipulable bits and bytes. Film as a media form lacks the fungibility of texts. Textual symbols move between contexts and retain meaning in a way film does not. Film has a unique, singular referent, which is a subject filmed at a particular time in a particular place. The connection of events from one frame to another seems wholly impossible to recreate – intervening variables make perfect transference impossible. Film, or rather video may have genres which allow for transferable meaning, but generally remains a media concerned with one place at one time. A document must refer to one event/situation as the exclusive source of authority, but must also be able to refer to other events and situations in the application of the document’s meaning.

So, what does it take to make a text a document? There must be a performance that codifies originality and the uniqueness of the text. One form of mooting challenges to textual authority comes by distinguishing one text from another by affixing it with a seal, a code, a signature – something that distinguishes it from another. This distinguishing mark, then is co-productive with other narratives of authority established through argument, rhetoric or force. The signature of the President gives particular texts weight because of the nature of the presidency, but the President also must sign texts to be considered a president. Generally this also coincides with a physical locating of the text in particular halls of power, making all other texts that copy a document ‘reproductions of’ rather than documents with any intrinsic authority themselves. The publication of documents creates value around an original text, as a quality unique only to one copy of a text, an exclusivity that confers authority.

I originally thought of this in terms of foundational texts of the US Government, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Evidence of a process of documentation in the Declaration is everywhere. The agency of people in relation to their government appears as the ability to “alter or to abolish,” “institute,” or “laying foundations.” This transformation of government into a concrete forms parallels the transformation of texts into concrete documents: authority for government is conferred by physical and specific texts, which can be changed or destroyed, but authority moves from one central, particular text to other organizing principles of governance. The whole layout of the document confers a sense of legitimacy onto the text, giving it power as a governmental document, rather than a political text. The listing of grievances, reference to representation and natural rights, appeals to inalienable human nature: all these do the work of documentizing the text. The signers must distinguish themselves from joint publishers of a political tract as governmental authorities, and the bulk of the text does this work.

Ramble ramble ramble…

Duncan

The Party Lines of Thinking

I wanted to address the degree to which I think sovereign political process has a stranglehold on political thought in general. this appears most distinctly for me when talking about left/right debates in general, as well as talking about feminist movements. We believe ourselves to be participating in politics that operates according to A (as in one) decision. The operation of government, particularly television government (working at even faster rates, with clearer results) creates a myth of social progress as on/off, yea/nay, veto/override. Maybe the frustration with the feeling of hopelessness comes from our expectations – we’re pre-empted from the start because a particular kind of change dominates our perception of reality. The hegemony of speed and efficiency rumble forth as the modes of knowing change. The means to affect change that occurs with such speed structures other relationships to the government structure issuing whatever orders.

Government forms its own genre of social change. Genre refers to consistant patterns of rhetoric that audiences and speakers of rhetoric refer to in the creation of meaning. Genres ‘work’ because they form a shorthand for communication: one statement implies another, implies another, easing communication, under the pressure of other needs. The power of this genre of social change rhetoric capitalizes on the function of genre as a reference to the speed of ideas – how fast they can move to create meaning.

Aside from the hegemony of speed, the grip of a governmental rubric affects perceptions of the unity of political movements. Feminists do not share a political platform or party, but the approval of one feminist of a political position allows for the spin of that as ratification of the position for feminists in general – i.e. Feminists for Life, who challenge the ability to mobilize feminists around pro-choice issues. Feminism looks more like participation in a party platform or an identity category rather than a political stance. What does it take to be a feminist? Can you believe in women’s liberation but not be a feminist? The identity marker for theory and humans ‘feminist’ may mystify political organization or conflate issues that need not be conflated. The response I get when I tell people I am a Women’s Studies minor is that “feminists go to far.” Well, which feminists, and what do they have to do anything? The conflation of feminist theories behind the structure of a party or monolithic body of thought allows for some degree of political organization, but also a platform for attack or disqualification of all thought concerning liberation behind the same convergence of thought.

Duncan

written yesterday - tradition

Where and when can we find the traditional? Just like we should banish from all use the term ‘natural’ we should banish ‘traditional.’ I mean this in the sense of liberation studies of all forms, not merely in the recourse to tradition in the production of hegemonic norms. Traditional roles never were and our understanding of how other people understand ideal status for women or people in general often remains mystified as a form of arbitrary production. Seeing ourselves being seen, transgressing as a political act is a tenuous one, linked more or less to our understanding of social repression. I don’t mean that we should abolish liberation through practice of transforming ourselves, but rather we should abolish the idea of line drawing implied by the notion of transgression, when often the label ‘subversive’ creates the space sub-verted itself. A different way to systemically think of liberation could be through reference to specific object of a subversive act, or the acts relationship to fulfillment of human experience that we may or may not determine to be good.

Duncan

Tone deaf

I feel a sense of muteness, of being tuned/toned/turned down by my surroundings. I don’t want to be transformed by the daily unrelent of predetermined acceptable terms for engaging myself: I am also tired of being told I am not happy with my life. Both feelings concern the way in which I mentally perceive the conditions under which I engage the world. I feel as if I should be have to interpret the things that happen as part of my life on their own terms, with out the impetus to transform "hysterical misery into everyday unhappiness" if the opportunity requires it. Sometimes embracing hysterical misery is important to understanding the conditions of existence and experience. Revolution, more than anything, concerns how we perceive the meaning of change: an end, or a means. Reform as part of institutional change doesn’t imply that revolution is necessary, the only problem arises when we allow reformism to dominate the understanding of what change means. The same applies to life on the whole: existence looses meaning when we allow acceptance of the status quo to dominate our understanding of what it means to be happy.

Duncan

Post not about disaffectedness

Is calling someone beautiful dehumanizing? It seems to de-center their worth from any intrinsic value they have, re-orienting their value to their inclusion in a group of qualities, features, people culturally condoned to be beautiful. Considering someone beautiful, and valuing them for it removes the issue of difference, their mark on desire, and focuses on their participation in a social system of valuation. It almost seems to value an affirmation of the viewer’s social status more so than anything about the person complimented. To be associated with someone beautiful, almost by definition, confers status and privilege (of some kind or another). “you’re beautiful” requires reference to how someone will be perceived by others, or at least how the speaker came to be conditioned to have this response. Both of these prioritize the experience of the speaker/spoken to in relation to social norms, rather than any specific human, interpersonal connection.

Duncan