What in the hell …

(Desk on a platform rolls creaking to center stage. Our protagonist scratches his head, self-comparisons vaciliating in lockstep with volatile highly caffeinated moods - Schelling, constantly starting over in attempt to work out the same set of problems and conducting this self-education in public, or a muzak tape loop? He settles for an embarassing snippet of song lyrics from many years prior, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones: ‘Busting toasts I’m the best, and I’m a mess. I know I’m not neither. I thought my highs were giant sized, I know now that’s not so. I lay my cards on the table while I’m still able, I guess I really don’t know how to party’. As the narrative threatens to collapse under its own inertia, he chews his lip and types period close parentheses.)


One use occurred to me today for the aesthetic theory/German romanticism/anti-foundationalism stuff that’s recently come back to haunt me. Namely, by recognizing the fictional- or invented-ness of our views and techniques, one can perhaps move past the point which Thiago has criticized, the move made by Foucault, Chomsky and others of saying “I don’t know, don’t look to me for answers” in the hopes to not become a leader. If one takes all positions as relativized and revisable, one need be less afraid of having one’s views being taken for gospel by others. Instead, one can say “well, here’s what I think” and a conversation can be had about organizational/organizing models, goals, techniques, strategies, practices, what have you. To my mind a void in this conversational arena can be nearly as self-serving and unhelpful as fixing only one approach. Of course, one could argue that these are not conversations that can be productively had between ‘thinkers’ and the book-buying ‘public’, but perhaps there could be a way in which the conversation at that level could be had which would contribute to (starting) conversations on these matters at more micro- and effective levels.