The far seeps in even to the nearest. After all, we hardly know our own depths.
---Rebecca Solnit.
To exclude the strange, to make the strange familiar by naming it as the excluded. Maybe, as the kid says in Lord of the Flies, 'the beast was within'. Purity and danger, the old story. And the danger must be clear and present, externalized, contained, never admitted. The ritual of chaos is made part of the social and cosmic order.
Lawlines, like stones placed around a tree. How far back does this craziness go? The oriental: passive, feminine, irrational; the Jew, Woman, the leper, the mad, the poor as contamination, (un)timely reminders of our animality, degeneracy. How we need our barbarians! Would we be a 'we' without them? Is humanity only a negation and a staging of, the making a spectacle of, the sub-human?
fascinating story of the cagot .
2 comments:
"Is humanity only a negation and a staging of, the making a spectacle of, the sub-human?"
that's an interesting but depressing question. not that i have anything smart to say.
good morning b.hope it's a good one.
True, "only" is too depressing and probably wrong (there's obviously been a lot of beauty, spirituality etc.) but, but, i dunno, can't help think, anton, that if after so many thousands of years we're still so hooked to violence, to domination and hierarchies, there's something *fundamentally* wrong.
sorry to start the morning off on such a negative note.
'morning to you as well! :-)
b.
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