OK. I wish I had more time to process this than I do at the moment (in between bites of lunch and a trek to the library), but let me contribute a couple thoughts.
I'm really, really torn by this. I totally grok the postmodern perspective on this, and particularly your critique of authenticity. I guess where I'd differ is that while authenticity is absolutely, 100% a construct/projection of the self/beholder/etc., I'd argue that the concept is more contingent than "fictional." That is, cultural value and interpretation (including one's construction of themselves and the people that they "know" or think they "know") is not a free-for-all of signifiers bouncing around in some atomic blizzard of meaning/lessness. Sorry, it's just not.
Context matters. Societies, from the most basic interaction of two individuals/beings in whatever corporeal state, to the functioning of the human race, only work because at some point we (individually, collectively; it varies) decide that those other beings matter, that we believe in them somehow, i.e., that they are "real". Again, I get the postmodern take (note the quotation marks on "real"!). What I mean by "real" is a willing acceptance of the argument that things actually exist, and exist in a physical, social world (I almost only said "social," but talked myself into "physical" in light of climate change, peak oil, economic downturns, etc. We can't pomo ourselves out of all that when it all hits the fan, and we're living AU crack!fic where we scavenge for bits of wood, potable water, and the odd small mammal to cook.).
Now, this "real" may not exactly be (and probably isn't) anyone else's "real." And that's OK. Heath Ledger's suicide shouldn't matter the same to everyone. But I believed that "Heath Ledger" was "real," at some point past the celebrity shell. Not "authentic" as in teh Heath, but "real," as in someone who once was a sentient social being bouncing around for the last 28 years.
I guess what I'm getting at is that if it's all fiction and signifiers anyway, then WTF does anything matter? Yes, we project fantasies onto ourselves and other people all the time (psst...you're soaking in it). Yes, we can never really "know" people, even those we're closest to. Yes, we'll all die alone, dust to dust, yada. Yes, but.
Along the way, I hope we can forge (doubled meaning intentional; gods, I feel like it's 1991 again, and I'm writing a "clever" bit of pomo textual analysis for my grad seminar) relationships that matter to us, and that, in those relationships, we can accept contingent, inauthentic yet deeply meaningful connections to an always-already (de)constructed "real," rather than see everything as merely "text."
Slight side note: it's been very interesting for me (as a media scholar) to observe how much the "aca" in "acafen" has tended to come from literary studies and (sorry) high cultural theory. I was trained in bits and pieces of these (including the usual range of French Guys (both dead and alive), but also in historiography and critical cultural studies, so I come from a slightly different parapet in the great Ivory Towers.
no subject
OK. I wish I had more time to process this than I do at the moment (in between bites of lunch and a trek to the library), but let me contribute a couple thoughts.
I'm really, really torn by this. I totally grok the postmodern perspective on this, and particularly your critique of authenticity. I guess where I'd differ is that while authenticity is absolutely, 100% a construct/projection of the self/beholder/etc., I'd argue that the concept is more contingent than "fictional." That is, cultural value and interpretation (including one's construction of themselves and the people that they "know" or think they "know") is not a free-for-all of signifiers bouncing around in some atomic blizzard of meaning/lessness. Sorry, it's just not.
Context matters. Societies, from the most basic interaction of two individuals/beings in whatever corporeal state, to the functioning of the human race, only work because at some point we (individually, collectively; it varies) decide that those other beings matter, that we believe in them somehow, i.e., that they are "real". Again, I get the postmodern take (note the quotation marks on "real"!). What I mean by "real" is a willing acceptance of the argument that things actually exist, and exist in a physical, social world (I almost only said "social," but talked myself into "physical" in light of climate change, peak oil, economic downturns, etc. We can't pomo ourselves out of all that when it all hits the fan, and we're living AU crack!fic where we scavenge for bits of wood, potable water, and the odd small mammal to cook.).
Now, this "real" may not exactly be (and probably isn't) anyone else's "real." And that's OK. Heath Ledger's suicide shouldn't matter the same to everyone. But I believed that "Heath Ledger" was "real," at some point past the celebrity shell. Not "authentic" as in teh Heath, but "real," as in someone who once was a sentient social being bouncing around for the last 28 years.
I guess what I'm getting at is that if it's all fiction and signifiers anyway, then WTF does anything matter? Yes, we project fantasies onto ourselves and other people all the time (psst...you're soaking in it). Yes, we can never really "know" people, even those we're closest to. Yes, we'll all die alone, dust to dust, yada. Yes, but.
Along the way, I hope we can forge (doubled meaning intentional; gods, I feel like it's 1991 again, and I'm writing a "clever" bit of pomo textual analysis for my grad seminar) relationships that matter to us, and that, in those relationships, we can accept contingent, inauthentic yet deeply meaningful connections to an always-already (de)constructed "real," rather than see everything as merely "text."
Slight side note: it's been very interesting for me (as a media scholar) to observe how much the "aca" in "acafen" has tended to come from literary studies and (sorry) high cultural theory. I was trained in bits and pieces of these (including the usual range of French Guys (both dead and alive), but also in historiography and critical cultural studies, so I come from a slightly different parapet in the great Ivory Towers.