We like to think that no matter how complicated situations get, or no matter how many viewpoints or life circumstances we take account for, that somehow and in someway we can decide what is good or bad, and find out who or what is good or evil. We stand against war in Iraq or for it on the basis that persons, choices or actions can be absolutely evil or absolutely good.
Postmodernism and deconstruction tries to open up the spaces between extreme positions and binaries and to show that there is always room for "freeplay" and possibility, and that through this opening up of dialogue something good or productive or better will arise.
I like to think that that is possible and even desirable, but here is the disturbing thought. What if there really is no certainty in the world? No absolute moral code, no stable cross-cultural assurance of 'good' behaviour? It is beginning to seem that contingency or slippage or uncertainty is somehow fundamental to human existence...we can never be absolute about Saddam's "evil" or our own "good" because such positions themselves are based on a losing fight against the wobbly structure of certainties we have thrown up against the chaos that lies beyond.
What I think I am grappling with is the suspicion that one cannot say anything certain about the world at all.
::Edit:: Perhaps what I really meant to say was that no matter what, we cannot escape the text...Derrida was right..we are always and already slipping through the spaces between what we mean to say and what can be read...
On a lighter note, can I say how much my appreciation of Beethoven was improved by tonight's performance by the Ciompi quartet. I usually shy away from performances of canonical artists: Mozart and his ilk, but this was quite lovely. Not quite on the level of Brahms' German Requiem but then how much can you expect from a quartet seriously...
posted by WM @ 14:22
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