Tuesday, May 06, 2008

post midnight notions








"In this election, persuasion isn’t important. Social identity is everything. Demography is king."

- D. Brooks, here


See also: David Foster Wallace, American Usage essay, specifically re: "YOU would say that."


Phenomenon: I don't hear you, I see who you are, and predict what you may happen to believe, deep down; my own response to this mishmash is replicative of how I identify, relate to, and pigeonhole you.

Question: Is this new?

Answer: (tentatively) It can't be, can it? Isn't that part of what 12 Angry Men is about? Isn't that part of what (for the last 20-30-40 years) the argument about difference is about? Is there something fundamentally different about niche-driven fragmentation now that the means of controlling one's input of what kind of world we live in comes with a remote control? Or is it kind of quixotic to think, pace Brooks, that the old demarcations of a town or city were incapable or at least less capable of keeping the various identity-defined subgroups from coming into contact with and influencing each other?

Redescribed phenomenon: I don't hear you, I don't see you, but when I imagine you (and my faculties for doing so are severely constrained seeing as I neither hear nor see nor meet you, except in grocery stores) what you are is transparently intelligible to me and what you believe follows the script I have inherited, regardless of who I am or you are or the circumstances of my inheritance really are.

Answer: Hmmmmmmmmmmm. But so when does the redescription verge on being so precious and self-explanatory as to cast doubt on the upshot of the redescription compared to the description it would seek to supplant?

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