If structuralism deprived us of spontaneity by
robbing us of the unrestrained freedom to self-creation and limiting us to
deterministic boundaries of the world and language, it might also demonstrate
the intricacies Terry Eagleton points out in After Theory (2003): “If cultures are contingent, they can always
be changed; but they cannot be changed as a whole, and the reasons we have for
changing them are also contingent” (59).
If possible coordinates defining who we are can be
understood in terms of the faculty of intellect, overrationalization can be
detrimental to spontaneity as well, as Romantics and, prior to them, Hamlet
realized, according to Eagleton (63). One wonders whether Eagleton’s meditation
is a reminder about the wholeness of a human being within which rationality and
instincts, imagination and theorizing, playfulness and orderliness, spontaneity
and rigor, carefreeness and systematicity are among the false
opposites that are compatible and complementary, rather than exclusionary.
Eagleton: “Or, to translate the sentiment into part of what lurks behind the
anti-theory case: If we raise questions about the foundations of our way of
life, in the sense of thinking too much about barbarism on which our
civilization is founded, we might fail to do the things that all good citizens
should spontaneously do” (63).
If so, one speculates whether the ethics of
spontaneity has become our second nature. If so, one is prone to further
inquire if it, once recognized as such, simultaneously ceases to be one. One
would like to know if such adoption of acquired characteristics can,
nevertheless, be a channel for resistance against analogy and/or sweeping
generalizations, thereby sustaining necessary distinctiveness and distance from
and among other, seemingly similar instances of first, second, and whatever
natures.
Q: Who the fuck are you to say what is and what is
not!
A: Who cares!
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