When people think "What can she miss about Zimbabwe?" They cynically imagine it has to do with my ability to dominate others there, or to do with some kind of financial thing, whatever. The answer does not lie in the big issues. Rather one's sense of belongingness is invoked by the quality and nature of the breezes, by the kinds of greetings you receive, which somehow "makes sense", by smells and tastes which reawaken older experiences, and confirm them. So, we have an unconscious sense of self-continuity which doesn't need to forced or justified by reference to "big issues".
It is true -- I see environment and environmental memory as forming for nature of the self in a way that is generally overlooked. There is a lot of injustice in such overlooking.
Let us start from a simple fact. Whoever, you are, others will not have the same experiences as you. Words on paper do not always invoke similar experiences and memories. In that case, for you (but not necessarily for others), they are dead. One finds in the text only what is already within oneself through direct knowledge. The mundane–wind, smell , taste, an emotional sense of the particularity of a place can be shared through words, but first they must be experienced.
To prove that there is a special dimension to this invocation of the five senses, one would have to prove that industrial modernism and its tropes invoke more objective language when communication is at its most effective. The basis for possessing a self in such a late society then becomes more “metaphysical” , paradoxically enough, since identity comes to be based on an abstract matrix of ideas much more than on the concrete nature of one's experiences.
No comments:
Post a Comment