History’s Joke

The extraordinary diversification of thought existing in the world has traditionally been channeled through structured lines. That is, syllogisms and precepts that act as guides to “new” rivers of discourse. Though conceptions of the Foundation have varied throughout the centuries the death of the Foundation, and thus the de-struction of coherent channels, has only been publicly asserted as recently as the late 1800′s in Nietzsche’s famous dialogue in the Gay Science. That is not to say that the influence of the Foundation was at full force before Nietzsche’s exclamation–the hearts of men and women have always tended to rebel against God. And if you’d like to explore such histories you need only examine the Bible and zoom in on God’s own people, the Israelites, to find tales of those closest to God abandoning him for themselves.

Those who actively propagate the formation of revolutionary discourse trumpet the claim that freedom from superstitious tradition has enhanced their creative intellectual ability and is paramount in advancing human knowledge. No doubt this claim has some leverage, and perhaps one of the greatest assets of the so-called postmodern movement (also referred to as post structuralism, which consists of acts of deconstruction) is that it does provide greater space for marginalized entities; because of this some people view postmodernism as inherently subversive. And in one sense it is. Just as laughter calls into question the butt of the joke, so postmodernism questions the level of seriousness clutched at by various entities. The value of this is that grim old modes of thinking, represented pictorially by a stuffy old school master with a starched collar and well-used hickory stick, are no longer as intimidating. Rather entrenched idiocies of historical habit can now more easily be recognized for what they are–idiocies. Naturally the danger here is that the freedom of laughing at the old man can be and often is abused. History exists as something more than a collection of farcical outlandish anecdotes dreamed up by the hegemony, it has real wisdom and truth in it too. If you end up debunking everything that exists based off of the argument that its origins are suspect you wind up with nothing, and the value of having nothing is quite possibly less than the value of having the original suspect Substantive.

If you decide to go with nothing you can put in whatever you want, but curiously it is exactly that sort of action which a lot of the time is the main reason for doing away with the original suspect Substantive (i.e. it is suspect because the authors put in whatever they wanted). What are the correct adjectives for that? Exponential revisionism? Irony? Really it is kind of funny. Post structuralism is, then, the ultimate ideological joke, for it calls every identity into question. It is this questioning which provides the opportunity to create a new identity, which in turn is subject to being questioned. In the end nothing escapes interrogation. But how much substance do the questions really have, and is there ever a valid answer?