I'm sitting here typing my mid-term paper on the Modern Middle East, a history course steeped heavily in poststructuralism, and Foucault, I can't help but feel it in my room. Why am I here now? I have been reading and typing for two days. I am sitting here writing, typing, reading, for what? So that one day I will be someone who is paid to think. Burry yourself in the thoughts and the text of Microsoft Word, as that will be the glue that binds you together the language of discourse for the day.
These are my thoughts as I sit here in my room which is a mess, books and notebooks and papers all over. Computer always on. Bed unmade, shoes displaced. Lamp lit because of the gloomy day. And me sitting amid all this. That is poststructuralism. Without it I have no meaning. My room is a system, and everything in it has a word, and is an equation and I'm the variable. The only thing tying us is language to describe.
No single element in this system has a meaning aside from structural relations to one another. To my computer I am the user, as far as my bed is concerned about me, I just sleep on it, to my chair, I just sit on it, to my shoes they only know me as feet because I wear them, to my lamp I am just something that receives light. The meaning of me changes constantly. Without these I would have no meaning. Likewise, history would have no meaning. Armenia would have no meaning without its relations to its neighbors.
There is a language for each process and thing. The meaning of me was different at 7:00 am when I was on my bed so was the language. The meaning of Armenia was different in 900 A.D. The meaning of me is different now at 4:00 pm as I am typing this on my chair. The meaning of Armenia is different now in 2005 A.D. Me and Armenia are in an eternal tango in a subject object relationship.
Everywhere Sartre's existentialism discovered freedom, Foucault found unconscious forces and logical structures. Everywhere history speaks of change and freedom, it is merely a shifting of language of power relations. In my room everything has meaning only in relation to each other, including me. Without these relationships I am a blur.
These are my thoughts as I sit here in my room which is a mess, books and notebooks and papers all over. Computer always on. Bed unmade, shoes displaced. Lamp lit because of the gloomy day. And me sitting amid all this. That is poststructuralism. Without it I have no meaning. My room is a system, and everything in it has a word, and is an equation and I'm the variable. The only thing tying us is language to describe.
No single element in this system has a meaning aside from structural relations to one another. To my computer I am the user, as far as my bed is concerned about me, I just sleep on it, to my chair, I just sit on it, to my shoes they only know me as feet because I wear them, to my lamp I am just something that receives light. The meaning of me changes constantly. Without these I would have no meaning. Likewise, history would have no meaning. Armenia would have no meaning without its relations to its neighbors.
There is a language for each process and thing. The meaning of me was different at 7:00 am when I was on my bed so was the language. The meaning of Armenia was different in 900 A.D. The meaning of me is different now at 4:00 pm as I am typing this on my chair. The meaning of Armenia is different now in 2005 A.D. Me and Armenia are in an eternal tango in a subject object relationship.
Everywhere Sartre's existentialism discovered freedom, Foucault found unconscious forces and logical structures. Everywhere history speaks of change and freedom, it is merely a shifting of language of power relations. In my room everything has meaning only in relation to each other, including me. Without these relationships I am a blur.
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