It’s a little known un-secret that back in grad school I enjoyed critical theory – and the broad strokes of philosophy – nearly as much as I did the literature it helped illuminate.
Today I couldn’t tell you any more than a meme’s worth of info about the differences between Foucault and Derrida, or whether French existentialism is or is not more understandable than British idealism. I dabbled, I did not swim in the deep waters.
But what I do remember, what sticks with me and helps me make sense of a world that so frequently appears inscrutable, is that sometimes what we think is really isn’t. Life is full of illusion – subject to whims and fancies and butterflies fluttering wings on the other side of the world.
Cause and effect. Interpretation. Reality. They only exist when we say they do, and even then only in fun house mirrors.
I could say the same about the romance of theory. (I loved it and have forgotten almost everything I ever knew.) And then there was this: But what I do remember, what sticks with me and helps me make sense of a world that so frequently appears inscrutable, is that sometimes what we think is really isn’t. Black-and-white absolutes make me uncomfortable and fiction and art and other gray-zone waters release that feeling. And I like the idea of feeling this way at the beginning of the year, when everywhere around me people are making resolutions and pronouncements and being very definite.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kim - sorry I missed your comment earlier. When the world around seems to be getting too cut-and-dried, I tend to think back to the great thinkers of the past, who seemed to have a little better perspective.
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