oh...just me: November 2004 Archives

"...post that stuff about disconnection, rootlessness, and interpersonal/social marginalization and how it works to give cohesion and purpose to the in-group members who need community to understand their own sense of self but also for the outgroup members who live in the interpersonal margins....

For example, if the Judeo-Christian-Buddhist-Muslim death myth is all about
being reuinted with "loved ones" or entering a paradise with others good enough to get into heaven or Valhalla (or wherever the goody two shoes go who kissed God's ass), or returning to earth in another life or form, then why would anyone who has no real connections to others and who lives mainly alone in a life that has become almost unbearable want an afterlife? I would think that those who find life painful at best and unbearable at worst would want what
they "experienced" in the moments of pre-birth, pre-conception, and pre-
consciousness. I would think they would want to feel, see, hear, and experience
nothing. The idea of being insensate (experiencing nothingness) need not
inspire dread if one takes into consideration the day-to-day world of human
contact which creates and exacerbates in the rootless and alienated the "sturm
and drang" inherent in the social acts of cultural navigation and negotiation."

Balibar again. :-) He's both totally depressing and marvelously inspirational:

"But when, by a structural necessity, the criteria of distinction and triage become violently discriminatoryÖÖ[devastating description of injustice]Ö..We must set the idea of a ëcommunity of citizensí back into motion, in such a way that it should be the result of the contribution of all those who are present and active in the social spaceî (emphasis mine, 2004:50).

I was looking for another link to What the Bleep and I found a link to a review board that looks pretty interesting: OFFOFFOFFfilm. We'll see if they vet my comment through or not. :-)

Much more entertaining and artsy than "What the Bleep", but with a generally complementary message. Many humorous moments. Overall though, it made me feel sad. Not that that's so hard to accomplish these days. :-( Taking the "long view" hasn't made any tangible difference in my day-to-day life.

Oh well. Wah Wah. Dinner was yummy and the company good.

(Switching back and forth between Balibar and mullets has complicated my intellectual experience this afternoon.)

Labeled one of the "extremes," Balibar marks the boundaries of possible identity- construction:

"...she has gone to her desk before daybreak, a habit begun as a way to give form to her suddenly nebulous days. Sleepless with the unknown, scenes from her marriage unreeling like a nightmare movie in her head, she needed a defense to stave off the creep of her misery."

~ a novel of Sylvia Plath by Kate Moses.

"The inside and the outside world function as highly open Systems that have intense transactional relationships. The self, as a highly contextual phenomenon, is bound to cultural and institutional constraints. Dominance relations are not only present in the outside world but, by the intensive transactions between the two, organize also the inside world . . . the possible array of imaginal positions becomes not only organized but also restricted by the process of institutionalization . . . some positions are strongly developed, whereas others are suppressed or even disassociated."

~ Mikhail Bakhtin. Applied in this review of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. The first paragraph sums up how I'm feeling:

A friend just nudged me to look up an old favorite quote:

"The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens."

In my currently labile mood, Rilke speaks volumes.

Haven't been able to access my site for t he past 36 hours or so. Finally this morning it went through - a problem with my ISP, apparently, but I had friends teasing me about the FBI confiscating my hard drive. I could only wish to be so influential a target! :-)