skip to main |
skip to sidebar
FiftyFive ~ # 37
Edward Said once wrote that stories are the means by which imperial ideology is enforced, where the "...power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism." And of course this "imperialism" runs through all sorts of ideas, for the word is loaded with images of domination and subordination, such as the image or idea of the patriarchal. But I think I am with Joseph Conrad who wrote, "I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace..." I am pondering this because I am re-reading The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera and it is unsettling to realise that in the seven narratives that make up the book, the laughter of the angels is the most disconcerting. Their idyllic vision and their desire to promote it is understandable, even desirable, but revealingly it cannot be tested since it conveniently lies in the future. But what does that future hold? Is it Conrad's peace or is it the constant struggle against conflicting imperial ideologies and then it comes to be true that the idyllic vision of one is another's fear. And it is this terrorism plays on, and I now have no idea why I am writing this, except that it occurs... and I am mulling Obama's first year and the hopes that came with his election, and I guess this song too, which some of us played:
Edward Said once wrote that stories are the means by which imperial ideology is enforced, where the "...power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism." And of course this "imperialism" runs through all sorts of ideas, for the word is loaded with images of domination and subordination, such as the image or idea of the patriarchal. But I think I am with Joseph Conrad who wrote, "I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace..." I am pondering this because I am re-reading The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera and it is unsettling to realise that in the seven narratives that make up the book, the laughter of the angels is the most disconcerting. Their idyllic vision and their desire to promote it is understandable, even desirable, but revealingly it cannot be tested since it conveniently lies in the future. But what does that future hold? Is it Conrad's peace or is it the constant struggle against conflicting imperial ideologies and then it comes to be true that the idyllic vision of one is another's fear. And it is this terrorism plays on, and I now have no idea why I am writing this, except that it occurs... and I am mulling Obama's first year and the hopes that came with his election, and I guess this song too, which some of us played: 
