puerto rico
anxiety. loss of familiar horizons. precarious ground of routine I constructed opening up to reveal the abyss underneath me. fear subsides like the tide going out. allowing for the unfamiliar. trying to scope out babes on the beach, while the madman next to me is deciding the fate of existence.
posted by Ernest Scribbler at 3/16/2005 10:27:00 AM
3 Comments:
Firstly, this whole line of thinking: "authentic-inauthentic" is a Heideggerian paradigm that applies universally to all Dasein, that is all human beings. The fact that we are thrown into certain historical and context-dependant roles that determine our comportment to the world and ourselves, must be overcome. and rather being 'one amongst many' the homogonized neutrality of modern identity, we must seize our existence authentically... I get that, but I think the point is not to affirm the roles that we are inevitably thrown into - the affirmation of the inevitable seems to me a desperate inversion of sour grapes, what Nietzsche might call 'resentiment'. The scandal of social existence and the violence of identity should not, in my opinion, be affirmed however creatively. The way I read Heidegger's authenticity (perhaps also violently, and a little too Nietzschean) is an overcoming of the very mechanism of identity. Why be Jewish, means why choose a limiting homogonizing collective consciousness as an integral part of the construction of my identity. To "be Jewish" means nothing more than to ally oneself with a collectivity rather than by those things that distinguish one. True creativity lies not in the levelling safety of the crowd, but in the deserted winds of solitary defiance. Defiance of all those organizing powers that seek to co-opt the individual into controllable and predictably manageable identities. What does one gain by identifying oneself as Jewish, or Black, or Latino, or American, or Muslim etc. except the comfortable grounding of identity and the exclusion of others. This and all identitarian constructions, in my view, are an indulgent hindrance to creativity, and are based in the fear of real solitude, the kind of loneliness only a god can feel. The point is to destroy the idolatry of identity and from the fragments to hammer out something radically singular. Yes, inevitably many of the fragments will retain images of the identities that once held you captive. But it is after they have been fractured beyond recognizability, when they no longer resemble what they once were (such that to even call it Jewish would be absurd)...
ES,
I can't use such big words, but I will say that I kind of like being Jewish. I like "allying myself with a collectivity." In my opinion (and it is a matter of taste), you place too high a premium on creativity (and individualism, etc.) - I have tried this, and it made me unhappy.
The "comfortable grounding of identity" is exactly that - comfortable - and I'll admit this is part of what one gains when one identifies as Jewish. But that's an argument for identifying as Jewish - it provides comfort. I assert that comfort has value on its own, while creativity doesn't always.
that bullshit is my poeticality, thank you very much. I happen to think those are very cool lines.
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