"Even today," Derrida said, "the notion of a structure lacking any center represents the unthinkable itself" ("Structure" 115) - this is chaos. We believe in the need for meaning as a basis for the "moral" choices we make; without the "transcendental signifier" we are alone with our own will, with no one to blame when the choices go wrong.
A student told me he wished we could all be blasted back to the Stone Age. He said he was just bored - but maybe he's searching for purpose in a generation being taught reality is found on MTV and survival is a game with only one winner per season. This student and others display a startling lack of connection to Foucault's "historical knowledge of struggles" (Foucault 129).
Jameson says Foucault's theory of "genealogy" makes a clear statement for a nonlinear history ("Postmodern" 269), but our modern cultural history is being deconstructed one episode at a time, giving the illusion of a linear, repeating history that restarts itself at the beginning of every new season. Jameson's "frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods" (270) has led to a reality-show mentality of relationship parodies and communities that last only until we vote someone else off the island to save ourselves.
Though Foucault argued the "endlessly repeated [definition of power as repression]" (134) is "wholly inadequate to the analysis" of power (135), I have to respectfully disagree. Merriam-Webster online defines repression as that which "[prevents] the natural or normal expression, activity or development." What we have right now is a generation repressed, seeking to deconstruct its own society "back to the Stone Age" - a generation to which chaos seems like a viable alternative.
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I wonder if the only way to escape the extraordinary amount of stimuli that our culture is constantly pelted with is to disconnect...To accept the chaos. Because with all of the contradicting voices crying out to be heard, each one louder than the next, where is there room for truth? With all of these so-called reality shows where human nature is shown at its most base, where is there room for anything substantial?
ReplyDeleteI agree, Emily - and I think that is what my student was getting at; he just didn't have the words to say it so eloquently. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteWe should watch Fight Club: " I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
ReplyDeleteMaybe I agree with the student's idealized image of the Stone Age to some degree. If that period is examined, it was devoid of both the problems and the benefits of any technology (with the possible exceptions of fire and the tentative models of the first wheels). It was a time when the simple reality of survival outweighed all other considerations. Family was indispensible. Roles were clear. Everyone was intrinsically valuable, and if you managed to live to adulthood, finding a job was no problem. Words were few and treasured, and no one questioned if they really had meaning. "Run! It's a pack of wild dogs!" was probably never analyzed for its contextual framework. Yes--now those were the good old days.
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