my comment concerning resisting our assumptions arose out of a number
of observations I have made concerning my students that have received
some predictable as well as unpredictable responses among my peers --
My observations revolve around what appears to be their attitudes as
being that of resignation, or passivity. The fact that it might not
be that simple has stimulated me to try and explicate their
situation. If I do not, I expect that I will project upon them a
judgment premised on some readymade agenda. I wondered what this
situation would look like if I thought that it was not a product of
their failure to understand or act but perhaps rather ours to
comprehend. What if their attitude is a product of the very goals our
critique of modernism had set in which all standards,
criteria and conventions came to be viewed as hierarchies created by
institutions and therefore not based in any objective criteria. As
such, is their attitude an acknowledgment of the power of
institutions on one hand and on the other that to think
through or in accord with such systems constitutes for them a limit on
their freedom to act in accord with their desires, volition, or
experiences– no matter how limited and limiting these may be after all
they are their's. This re-enforces their general feeling that it is
no longer possible to contribute to historically or critically
grounded discourses and at best they need only satisfy themselves or
wow an audience. Subsequently it instills in us a fear that
in worst case scenario we get to the point where everything is the
same and we cannot differentiate between one act and another, one
artist and another, one issue and another. On the other hand, for the
moment it seems to offer them a certain freedom and that is critically
important – though seemingly aesthetically and conceptually narrow and
often to our minds conservative. The problem though is
we, those of us who beleive in activism and resistance tend to either
generalize or psychologize this condition – as if they we're in
jeopardy because they are playing out their freedom, while others have
been taught to act on a belief system in which it is in everyones
best interest to their own seek control and dominance over others,
this latter position these days more identified with the right then
left – in other words, is this sector of the present generation
vulnerable and is this a situation we did not, could not foresee,
because the myths that sustained us in our beliefs, did not allow for
it.