(because I've spent the last four days intertwined with an aspect of this question in every manner of scenario as I've been studying postmodernism--Lyotard in my second floor bed on Wytham Street with Italians spoken in the background, Foucault at the Bodleian, seat #207, Lyotard at a cafe filled with professors and students bantering, Lyotard at the Bodleian, seat #402, Foucault at the busstop, Lyotard for eight hours straight, Lyotard tucked under my arm to keep him out of the rain, Foucault like chinese water torture spread out in timed intervals, just when I think I can't handle anymore, there Foucault is again tapping for my attention because I hadn't even read half of what'd been assigned yet).
Sorry, I digress, so to be more plain by asking what narrative you dwell in, I mean what story do you tell yourself or those around you of the way the world has unfolded, is unfolding, will unfold? As in, how do you make sense of your place in the complexity of life and the world (of postmodern life in the postmodern world)? (Please please post below, as I genuinely genuinely want to know because it is interesting, but also because I want to know your interior more thoroughly.)
To be yet more plain, when you look at your life, or your niche/passion/career, or the way you interact with people, the way you parent, the way you love, or the way of history, or humanity, in what way do you see it? Is it progressively stacking? Progressively unfolding? Does it have an overarching meaningfulness? Is it a speck amid chaos, nonlinear, without purpose, without meaning? Or are you one that tells yourself the narrative that the time for believing in purpose is past? Or are you free of even contemplating the world in this delineating way? Or are you indifferent altogether and ready to hop off this tiresome blog post (I won't at all hold it against you, as one should mostly listen to one's needs--argh, narrative!)?
I personally have dwelt (do dwell) in one particular story-telling narrative, for as long as I can remember, where I see the world's purpose (and by the world's I mean my purpose, but also the purpose of interaction, the purpose of literature/art, the purpose of education from kindergarten to oxford) to be the removal of ever more hindering layers, the removal of ever more blindspots and assumptions, to expand and push at the edges of intellect and emotional intelligence, and to move ever closer to some thorough version of brilliance for ever increasing numbers of humanity, whereby someday we might collectively stop acting and thinking on behalf of these blindspots, assumptions, and copious layers, and might once and for all act and think from some truer/less encumbered/more brilliant/softer/kinder part of ourselves.
In my narrative, the human world aims (through its art, philosophy, academia, and literature in particular; but even in its ecological mvmts, human rights developments, etc.) to arrive to its finest, its least held back, its most brilliant. I see it everywhere to the point that it is amazing that five weeks of heavy-petting of the pages of modernist novels and postmodernist theory books can undo a lifetime of surety when prodded by two genius professors: namely, that my narrative can be undone & I can step back (at least in moments) from my narrative and look at it and set it down. And even more I can admit that what to me has seemed very genius and brilliant on my part is actually something dealt with much more thoroughly millennia ago.
Some examples of narratives that humanity has told/ is telling itself: 1) the Christian narrative (certainly we could insert a Muslim narrative, and a Buddhist narrative, an atheist's narrative, etc. here as well) that seeks comfort and surety by assuring us that faith means that nothing permanently bad will happen to us because solid infinity awaits if we will only aim the gaze over the heads of those around us, up and out, heavenward; 2) the 'narrative of emancipation from ignorance and servitude thanks to knowledge' (Socrates, Plato, Kant, Hegel, (S.Brigette), etc.); 3) 'the Marxist narrative of emancipation from exploitation and alienation'; 4) 'the capitalist narrative of emancipation from poverty through technical and industrial development'; 5) the narrative I see in abundance in Whitefish/the liberal US is the abundance/mindfulness narrative--that angst and humanity's ancient sorrows and neuroses can be fixed if we are simply present with ourselves, our breathing, our blessings; 6) the postmodern scholarly narrative that there is no narrative, no unity, no cohesiveness, no objective that is universal except that, oops, now we are telling the narrative of no narratives; 7) the neo-religious narrative (modern Christian, yogi, new age, pscyhotherapy, otherwise)--that is almost precisely the same as narrative #1 except that it doesn't know it. (this is by no means meant to be comprehensive & the quotes above are from Lyotard).
I'm rambling on about this (& sorry for the slightly edgy tone on some of the above) because unfortunately I still believe in my narrative (and apparently I am still untangling myself from Lyotard and Foucault). In my narrative if we notice that we are operating under layers and heavy assumptions it counts for a whole lot more than being oblivious to those layers and assumptions, or even outright denying that they are removable ideologies. So I ask you to consider your narrative, I suppose, in the hope that the world will be a slightly less opaque place if we take on this exercise together. Though I am fairly sure that this goal, and my narrative, of making the world less opaque, is as impossible and implausible as any other unifying goal for something so vastly complex and non-unifiable as life and humanity.
Perhaps even more than all I've just said, my point is to clear up the reason that my face gets a bit cloudy and I sigh when people around me speak of their narratives like they are real. Imagine then the beautiful humility I felt today when my professor's face clouded over a bit and he sighed because before him was someone (me) who spoke of her (my) narrative unknowingly as if it were a real force in the world whilst defending part of my paper. I love that Oxford makes me acknowledge my blindspots with a rigor and swiftness that I've heard many people say (another narrative, no doubt) can only be accomplished with an intimate relationship where you are plainly mirrored for what you are and what you aren't by another who won't look away. (Turns out, like all narratives, that this is untrue, we can be mirrored by a vast number of things beyond partnership.)
I hope that all of you who read this post will find that if we acknowledge these stories we operate in, and try to look at them together, we can be even greater/more thorough friends than we are now when we silently disagree, or moodily cloud over, or judge, or fawn over, or avoid certain subjects, or talk about the surface oscillations of our lives like the weather or how pretty the Bodleian is, etc. How cool would it be if we could use some of the postmodern scholarly methods in our relationships--thorough and as free of assumption as possible, with neither party believing there will ever be a right way, just a multitude of ways to find interesting as speculation. I won't assume you are going for a humanity filled with Socratic minds if you won't assume I'm going for a life that will lead me to surety.
you got me with the title. meyer-briggs testing came up at Women Writing for a Change and with it a discussion of the 'perceiver' v the 'judger' arcehtypes. i'm not saying i buy into that sort of thing, but i recognize that i am most content when things are planned and all my questions answered (surety). in other words i am a J. Duz is a P (at least travelwise)- likes to leave all his options open. each of us fairly strongly rooted in our type. that created quite a bit of tension during our trip last spring. i wish i had had that bit of understanding last spring bc i think it would have been easier to nod and choose to step outside the narrative and see it as a life pattern rather than just plain stubbornness on both our parts.
ReplyDeleteand that is what i believe about narrative. hold whatever story you need in your heart. don't bully me into dropping my own narrative and adopting yours (not you, sabine, but generic you). that just make me dig in deeper. encourage me to step outside that from time to time and to objectively see how other people operate from their own story that is different from mine. how that works or doesnt for them.
mary's narrative = rational objective science chica w/ a healthy dose of woo woo spirituality
i spent a lot of time mulling these questions you raise over. a lot of time way before you asked the questions. in fact ever since an evening spent together at the side of a lake with you and other dear friends and i was transported within and safe to contemplate ... i hope you know what i mean to say without saying more. i saw then very vividly how we all exist in our own bubble of reality, in our own projections of ourselves outwardly. those bubbles bob and dance and collide and touch, but they are never identical. in other words, our worldview, our vision, our narratives are projections of our own minds. those minds, of course, have been, to a degree colonized already in utero probably, but certainly ex utero by grand recits, narratives of legitimations -- in which we mis/recognize ourselves. they hail us (althusser calls this interpellation), speak to our angst and needs for ... narrative, linearity, etc. now i just threw out some lacanian, lyotarded, and althusserian stuff. but i don't mean to show off my very limited knowledge of these dudes' theories.
ReplyDeleteso, to come back to my musings, i believe that we all live in inflated bubbles of who we project to be in a context that we perceive as external to us. but we desperately long for intertextuality of our narratives and pretend that there is some overarching story in which we can find comfort from the sense of alienation and nausee of loss. this notwithstanding, i still hope and yearn for commonality and a joined denominators among humans -- aside from the sense of separation that we all share.
i feel that your hope for refinement of human rapports, shedding blindspots, and overall believe in a greater good for humanity is touching. i do share your optimism.
an overarching meaningfulness, if there is any, i see in the life-affirming, positive vibrations that we can generate from within by manipulating our thoughts. in other words, our bubble/ aura is then charged with "positive" energy that then reverberates outwardly. lyotard, foucault, etc are now rolling over in their graves in disgust.
and yes, noticing that you operate under layers of assumptions is a definite plus. some dude called this "effective historical consciousness," i e the ability to see ourselves as subscribers of the hegemonic discourse du jour. that type of consciousness would come in handy when we are about to nuke other nations or colonize their minds, souls, and natural resources.
anyway, an overarching menaingfulness is a narratable form for me does not exist -- but i keep thinking.
sabine, i just went on rambling about this and i will send it off to you unedited. just stream of consciousness. i have a lot more to stay. thanks for lifting me out of my occasional sense of stultifying boredom. and love to you and naya, gerda
For me the deepest question is, What is my story. What things and beliefs and actions and histories make up this image I have of myself or that I put forward in the world as if defining me. That I really BELIEVE define me. And then to let that go. And let it go. And let it go. Because that story, whatever it is, whatever form it takes, has become its own entity, which constantly wants to be confirmed, and so selects and silences the things that do and don't. What you refer to as blinders. So, to release this story that taints everything I see and do, is the most important of all. But it's so impossible, because the ego just gets wrapped up in the new story and replaces 'I've done this, I've judged, I've overcome this and that' with 'I've released this. I see such and such more clearly.' Etc. It's just a new hat on the same brain. So that I almost didn't comment on this (out loud, to you) because it would just fortify this newest identity and put more words in my mind when I'm striving for fewer.
ReplyDeleteI do think we, or at least almost all of us, probably have to own it all before it becomes uninteresting to us. To understand our motivations and our perceived separateness and to name it all and then, if we want -- if we decide all these words and names and judgements aren't so useful after all -- to let it go.
Thanks for a fun post.
hmm...words, words, words. and brilliant words at that. educated words with the depth of literary minds to deduct the great question of the I. a metaphor for my narrative that comes to mind is a bit of a chameleon. an openness to learn and listen and become one with that which is around me. a desire for understanding, observing, sometimes objecting with disbelief or lack of understanding, fear, insecurity, a scurrying of emotions that come from that place that we all have. whether it's the christian narrative, the yogi, the scholar, the optimist, the skeptic, there is truth in each person's version of narrative and my own, well, i suppose it is a reflection of all i've observed, like the chameleon that blends with it's environment in order to survive. joseph campbell's narrative resonates with me when he speaks of all mythologies representing our commonalities, connection and being ONE. and being small in the universal sense of things. i believe in LOVE and the narrative lent to us from Dr. Seuss, "a Speck is a Person, no matter how small."
ReplyDeletexo
thanks mary, gerda, linda, and jen for being so willingly forthcoming on a topic not so easy to approach, since to answer is to reveal one's embedding, and to answer is to confine oneself to words that can never convey your depths of lack of embedding. but that is the point, for me, anyhow, in interaction--not to get rid of the embedding or point fingers at it or defend it like a mother bear, but just to be able to reveal it, vulnerably, even if only briefly. to show each other what we are (even if only for a moment, even if we change the next). i think narratives are exasperating when shared in any other way. but i think they are sweet, quaint, compelling, intriguing when we are brave enough to indicate that they are not us, they are not solid, they are just ideas we lean on to make sense of this very complex thing of being a human, and of course we need something to lean on, to be held by, there is nothing at all wrong with that. but it is also nice to notice from time to time that one is leaning, and to admit it unguardedly to one's friends, no?
ReplyDeletethank you, sabine