Today I think this postcolonial stuff, subaltern studies and all, is just splitting hairs to the nth degree. Tomorrow I may think differently, who knows? But today, post-structuralism is a pain is a method for madness. And it's a way to cope with guilt. There is no way to write ourselves out of guilt but we write anyway because that's all we can do. Must....attempt...communicate, share your guilt or die. All the arguments I've read say the same thing in different ways, without even recognizing that that is what they say. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
My existence renders me personally responsible for how I react to genocide, to persecution and discrimination. I am complicit because I am related to you, dearly departed oppressed and voiceless one. I can talk about you. I can write about you. I can even conjure you up and talk to you in my imagination, my books, my academic arguments. But I cannot rescue or re-create you. I cannot relate to you. You cannot tell me when I'm wrong about you. It's like talking behind your back, you know. You died. I survive and must carry your memory on my back like a tortoise carries its home. And honour it in some way, although you are no longer around to perceive that honour and when I honour it of course I'm just honouring myself by showing everyone what a great person I am, loving your ashes so. You're my shell. Remembering you, or at least pretending to, protects me from guilt, you know? Since we can't talk to each other, I have to find a way for your absence to complete me. I'm sorry, man, it's the best I can do. You died. I have to survive.
So that's it, huh? Not going to rise from the ashes and kick me or anything? No? Tomorrow, maybe.
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