My fifty-second October has come around. Before I immerse myself in musings on the self, I feel compelled to mention that I have picked up again on readings and books that address the postmodern condition. Can I talk, therefore, about the self as an authentic, foundational entity? Or must I be a shifting sand of multiple selves?
I find most aspects of postmodern cultural analysis quite interesting. It's very theory laden and has a fond penchant for verbosity and academic discourse that often results in opacity. Deliberately so, I think. It's very hard to pin down, define or argue with, because many theorists in this tradition emphasize (surely privilege - ed.) its shifting, playful, self-referential, decentring nature. It is a curious hotch-potch (surely, multi-valenced plurality - ed) of ideas and extrapolation, some of which are eminently sensible. Others are banal, illogical, trivial, silly and contrary to common human experience. Of course, there is no such thing as the latter, so I am foolish in raising it.
By virtue of being a white, middle class male in a Western democracy I instantly dissolve, deconstruct, today's short text. Actually, it deconstructs itself. My liberal education and former situation within a professional class betrays my bias. My setting of the rational as a standard invites its opposite, the irrational, to set up contradictions internally. And anyway, since none of these words have a real fixed meaning, and might arbitrarily be assigned to anything, then nothing I say can mean anything concrete.
If only any of that were true.
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