20.3.05
IMPERIALISM AND HERMENEUTICS
"Take for example, hermeneutics, the science or art of interpretation. It is generally agreed that the founding father of hermeneutics was the German philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher. What is not so widely know is that Schleiermacher's interest in the art of interpretation was provoked when he was invited to translate a book entitled An account of the English Colony in New South Wales, which records the author's encounter with Australian Aboriginal peoples. Schleiermacher was concerned about how we could undestand the beliefs of this people even though they seemed desperately alien to us. It was from a colonial encounter that the art of interpretation was born" (Terry Eagleton, After Theory).
*
FEUERBACH ON POETRY
1. "The Christians were able to create poetry only at the point where they practically negated Christian theology and worshiped the female principle as the divine principle. As artists and poets, the Christians found themselves in contradiction to the essence of the religion as they conceived it and as it constituted the object of their consciousness. Petrarch regretted, from the point of view of religion, the poems in which he had deified his Laura".
2. "Time is the source of poetry. A glimpse into the past is an incision in the heart that opens the poetic vein. Past time is always beautiful time; it shines in the moonlight of memory; it is idealized because it is now only an object of imagination. The oldest history is everywhere poetry, and the first songs or a race sing only of times and people that are no more" , op. cit, p. 282).
* From "Preliminary Theses on the Reform of Philosophy (1842)" and "Fragments concerning the characteristics of my Philosophical Development", diaries 1834-1836 in The Fiery Brook: Selected Writings of Ludwig Feuerbach.
"Take for example, hermeneutics, the science or art of interpretation. It is generally agreed that the founding father of hermeneutics was the German philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher. What is not so widely know is that Schleiermacher's interest in the art of interpretation was provoked when he was invited to translate a book entitled An account of the English Colony in New South Wales, which records the author's encounter with Australian Aboriginal peoples. Schleiermacher was concerned about how we could undestand the beliefs of this people even though they seemed desperately alien to us. It was from a colonial encounter that the art of interpretation was born" (Terry Eagleton, After Theory).
*
FEUERBACH ON POETRY
1. "The Christians were able to create poetry only at the point where they practically negated Christian theology and worshiped the female principle as the divine principle. As artists and poets, the Christians found themselves in contradiction to the essence of the religion as they conceived it and as it constituted the object of their consciousness. Petrarch regretted, from the point of view of religion, the poems in which he had deified his Laura".
2. "Time is the source of poetry. A glimpse into the past is an incision in the heart that opens the poetic vein. Past time is always beautiful time; it shines in the moonlight of memory; it is idealized because it is now only an object of imagination. The oldest history is everywhere poetry, and the first songs or a race sing only of times and people that are no more" , op. cit, p. 282).
* From "Preliminary Theses on the Reform of Philosophy (1842)" and "Fragments concerning the characteristics of my Philosophical Development", diaries 1834-1836 in The Fiery Brook: Selected Writings of Ludwig Feuerbach.
14.3.05
HYBRID
Postmodernism’s key notion, maybe the notion that sustains most postmodernism’s quackery. Through the illusion of hybridism contradiction is obscured, turn commodity. Not able to recognize and accept the other in its complete otherness, we turn it into hybrid, i.e., half me, similar to Us. (Not Other). Not Either/Or but always proper. That is, property. Not completely stranger. ‘Mixed’. In denial of otherness we constructed ‘hybrid’. We have naturalized the ‘hybrid’ category so much, that the mere mention of this category as purely cultural, artificial, contextualized (in imperialistic epistemology) seems a ‘menace’, an evil return to ‘Nationalism’ or ‘Pure’. Using the ‘hybrid’ category we have remained Hegelian. We arrive to syntheses. (Isn’t that wonderful, daddy?) We prevent radical dialectics to take place. ‘Hybrid’ has taken control of cultural industries, such as music were fusion has become institutionalized. Such happens also in the arts and writing communities, where being ‘hybrid’ is the key to enter. In the same way, ‘activism’ is replacing ‘revolution’, ‘hybrid’ replaced ‘contradiction’—and denies the real relationship with One and the Other. Otherness. Hybrid is sameness. Hybrid tends to become Happy Hybrid. That’s why the hybrid category plays so well in ‘postmodern’ discourse. A capitalistic notion to kill rupture. No negation anymore! Let settle down with hybridism, ok? Don’t even talk about resistance. But resistance is what really takes place where hybridism is now used. Resistance doesn’t mean borders or ‘essences’ are not transgressed. To the contrary. It means participants enter into a strong relationship. A magnetic field where attraction and repellence both take place. Resistance is all about magnetism. And the hybrid category is all about denying resistance.
Postmodernism’s key notion, maybe the notion that sustains most postmodernism’s quackery. Through the illusion of hybridism contradiction is obscured, turn commodity. Not able to recognize and accept the other in its complete otherness, we turn it into hybrid, i.e., half me, similar to Us. (Not Other). Not Either/Or but always proper. That is, property. Not completely stranger. ‘Mixed’. In denial of otherness we constructed ‘hybrid’. We have naturalized the ‘hybrid’ category so much, that the mere mention of this category as purely cultural, artificial, contextualized (in imperialistic epistemology) seems a ‘menace’, an evil return to ‘Nationalism’ or ‘Pure’. Using the ‘hybrid’ category we have remained Hegelian. We arrive to syntheses. (Isn’t that wonderful, daddy?) We prevent radical dialectics to take place. ‘Hybrid’ has taken control of cultural industries, such as music were fusion has become institutionalized. Such happens also in the arts and writing communities, where being ‘hybrid’ is the key to enter. In the same way, ‘activism’ is replacing ‘revolution’, ‘hybrid’ replaced ‘contradiction’—and denies the real relationship with One and the Other. Otherness. Hybrid is sameness. Hybrid tends to become Happy Hybrid. That’s why the hybrid category plays so well in ‘postmodern’ discourse. A capitalistic notion to kill rupture. No negation anymore! Let settle down with hybridism, ok? Don’t even talk about resistance. But resistance is what really takes place where hybridism is now used. Resistance doesn’t mean borders or ‘essences’ are not transgressed. To the contrary. It means participants enter into a strong relationship. A magnetic field where attraction and repellence both take place. Resistance is all about magnetism. And the hybrid category is all about denying resistance.
