From Suzanne's Reading Yesterday

A question that was not asked because I did not think about it until waking up: In this notion of community, of remaking the social grammar, are we putting ourselves "into the world" (to use Michael Dumanis' phrasing) or are we putting ourselves elsewhere?
Email Post

Comments

Johannes said…
Francois,

Don't be such a lazy bum. Some of us don't know what you are referring to at all. Perhaps you could explain what you're talking about.

Johannes
8:40 AM
Sasha said…
To the nomad, the enfranchisement of community dialectics is imperious. To the Other, egocentric and wrong.
2:31 PM
François Luong said…
@ johannes: Basically, this notion of community was brought again, as well as its possibility for social change. And when Michael talks about "being in the world," I think he is referring to a form of marketing of the self.

My question is basically, when we are defining a community of poets and social change within that context, are we not killing this possibility by masturbating into self-righteousness.
2:40 PM
François Luong said…
@ Alex: Don't touch that haschisch again. Your American palate can't tolerate it.
2:41 PM
François Luong said…
@ johannes (again): This being of course related to the SFMOMA blog that was recently launched and engineered by Suzanne.
2:45 PM
Sasha said…
ah, I won't! I realize, it must seem sort of hazy; my line of thought wasn't so direct. I was thinking about Hegel's Logic: "the something itself... is the unity of reflection into which the opposition withdraws as into ground." It seems like you were positing a dialectic 'being in the world' whose opposite would be being alien, and 'being unelsewhere', which has a syllogistic association to 'being in the world' due to the affiliation of 'elsewhere', it's opposite, with 'the alien'. it seemed to me unelsewhere was problematic in its relation to the other, since as a community, one must have an other that is in fact alien. The alien aspect of the community which it is taking for granted must be accounted for and understood if a friendly relationship can be built with the other communities. Otherwise, if the community is simply "unelsewhere", it becomes agitative towards the other communities (and nomads) for the reasons I listed above. What then is the third thing - the something itself, or, the ground - that must be found over all, as unity of positive and negative. That's really what I'm searching for in this quandary. I think your revelation of 'marketing of the self' is important, of course, because of its involution. Perhaps I am predicating my ethics here too much on friendship with the other, in which case it is not important to reach out, as a community of poets, to other communities to integrate ideas, values, and share culture. Then again, perhaps that reaching out is the third thing - it is the avoidance of the self-righteous trap you are talking about.
9:18 PM
Post a Comment

Popular Posts