Jane Flax. Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West (1990)
[p. 217] "In Foucault's work the aesthetic is connected with subjectivity in his idea of replacing the technologies of self with the ideal of making one's own life a work of art. Yet paradoxically, despite his criticism of Derrida's mystification of writing, Foucault does not ask himself the question "What forms of life make such a notion possible?" about this own aesthetic ideal. Such a constant remaking of the self presupposes a socially isolated and individualistic view of the self. It precludes the possibility of enduring attachments or responsibilities to another in which the other can rely on one's stability and "continuity of being." [our emphasis. Why does Flax make this link between individualism and change of the self?]
Gaytri Chakravorty Spivak. The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (1990) ed. by Sarah Harasym.
p. 27 "The Post-modern Condition: The End of Politics?"
Questioning a text to get a companion
"Since we are not looking for a perfect analysis, but we are looking for the mark of vulnerability which makes a great text not an authority generating a perfect narrative, but our own companion, as it were, so we can share our own vulnerabilities with those texts and move. It seems to me that those are the places where we would begin to question."
p. 29 "The Post-modern Condition: The End of Politics?"
who you choose to address might connect to who you want to be
"It seems to me that what I was saying was not that you should consider all other subjects. I was saying that you might want to entertain the notion that you cannot consider all other subjects and that you should look at your own subjective investment in the narrative that is being produced. You see, that is something that I will continue to repeat, it is not an invitation to be benevolent towards others."
So back to Flax, who asks at the conclusion of her book [p. 236] "Does all knowledge necessarily inflict violence on things, ourselves and other persons?" with an answer: it does if you reduce aesthetic interactions to presuppositions of individualism.
And so for day 496
22.04.2008