It's not a question of standing against or in favour of : The 'general discourse'and general values are here and it 's no use living above it. My question was and is : What place is given to the individual ( and his / her expression) within the general lot ? the subject is given a recognized part in our world. What about the individual?
Secondly Can there be an inter-individual economy ? ( communication, help, education )A Communication between individuals to experience the other and her/his individuality,as contemporaneous beings.
The Wall , as you mentioned the movie or the album could be interpreted as an opus dealing with the place of the individual in time, family, society and school ( In the Flesh ).
Everyone of us as individuals ( not subjects) needs some harbour to express oneself and exist, some rest . I won't go as far as seclusion from the community . Yet, A plot for the individual expression is necessary ( e.g the act of writing).
As a teenager I once wished I were alone in the world. Now I am in terrible need of communication with individuals but often from a distance or through a medium. I don't really know what has changed but I certainly know I am ambivalent in this issue. Maybe you remember a text (a short story) I wrote:
http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/po...1620-list.html
I don't wish to be alone in the world. Neither ivory tower nor any romantic asylum. Just a place for expression disengaged from general contingent purposes.
Perhaps a community could also be based upon inter-individual connections.
Le nouveau roman movement in the 60's was an attempt to express singularities by debunking language as an exhaustive mean ( synesthesia, body language, poetic of the prose ( Todorov)).
The search for the individual's expression and recognition is detected in many writings and yet never openly claimed.
It is those spots of singularity I'm looking for and praising. But again don't misunderstand me, I don't believe in any 'fool on the hill' solution.
Alain
Last edited by CHOMAT; 30-Dec-2009 at 10:54.
Can we say singularity is self-centred? There is more individuality in the so-called civilzed world. In addition, it can be complacency. But again individuality can be poverty because as a huamn being we are more social than individual. Whatever, there is inter-dependency because there is no plurality without singularity and singularity loses its meaning if there was no plurality. We can say bad is good because through bad I know what good is. I need a dichotomy to give both an identity and meaning. How else can I make meaning? As you have noticed this thread is singular in register.
Last edited by Dr. Jamshid Ibrahim; 03-Jul-2007 at 21:32.
There is individualism and complacency. Is it worth mentioning it? We are social animals I won't contradict established truths. Dichotomies and the principle of opposition are necessary.it's undoubtful I won't turn my back on old Saussure .
However the claim for the individual is paradoxically not individualism and indeed the opposite of complacency: Individualism might stem from the fact that we don't experience the other as an individual . Complacency might come from the lack of genuine individual expression.
Writing in its poetic stratum should herald the individual to other individuals.
Another question How can I make no meaning? There are so many ways of getting around (or faking to do so) the principle of opposition ( Oxymoron). This game of pretence is an instance for the individual expression. Lying is so necessary to express one's truths.
A musical analogy :Binary rythms 2/4 are so flourishing when turned into 6/8 . The Irish trad music makes a fun of binary rythms when standing on the borderline between binary and ternary structures.
We ca put the two extremes on a continuum of descending or ascending scale. I often fluctuate although the singularity end is closer to my nature. But I genuinely believe in ambivalence and double-binds. Sometimes I am a liar. The door is open.
You are a saucerful of nuances. Thank you
Let's come in, step over the threshold . Sometimes We are us.
Alain