Bubbles, Powell and Marx
Posted By Claire on November 30, 2009
“I knew before that God gives life to men, and desires them to live; but now I know far more. I know that God does not desire men to live apart from each other, and therefore has not revealed to them what is needful for each of them to live by himself. He wishes them to live together united, and therefore has revealed to them that they are needful to each other’s happiness.” – Leo Tolstoy, What Men Live By
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In Powell pretending to study. I was reading friends’ blogs today and it made me sad. My life has split right down the middle yet again. Should I just lay that entire former part of my life – ICA and all that goes with it – to rest? I’m tired of letting people go, but I’m even more tired of fighting for them. And I’ve never been one for gradual or messy break-ups/goodbyes – give me a clean break if nothing else and I’ll be gone.
I’m planning a donut-making party for next quarter. We’ll see how that works out.
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I’ve been studying Marx, Althusser and Foucault, among other authors, for my theory class this quarter, and interestingly, all three of them saw reality/society as being split into two levels – on the bottom is what they called the base, episteme, or the covert, the hidden forces that are driving society,and above it is the superstructure(Marx) or imaginary(Althusser) or discourses(Foucault). They all seemed to sense or believe that there is something illusory or deceptive about this reality that we’re living in, and so they came up with various complex hypotheses of societal existence to explain this. Interesting, because of course this reality we’re living in is illusory, there is something flawed at the base of our system and, like Neo, most sensitive people in the world can feel that “there’s something wrong with the world” – they just don’t know what it is.
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