I spent the last 12 years of my life in Kew Forest. I watched the school go through changes in administration, in security, in lunch, in senior walls (class of 2006!). But what I've also been part of is an amazing experience I will not forget. I've found friendships that hopefully will continue throughout college. I've gone on school trips that have been unforgettable. I have memories that cannot be erased with time (no matter how hard I may want them to be). I've learned life lessons the hard way. I've learned who my real friends are in times of crises. I've wished for it to all disappear. I've wished for it to never go away.
There were trips on which we got in trouble, trips on which we were taped into our rooms, trips on which we learned a little something about someone we never knew, trips on which we bonded. There were parties of all kinds. There were nights of sanity and insanity, of good and bad, of friendships. There were days that I wished never had happened. There was days that I wished could last forever. There were days of both.
But through it all, there were friendships. I love you all and I will miss you guys so much.
2 comments:
Woooo! Much Love
Jeeze, I'm leaving in 6 days...this is crazy!
Michel Foucault rejected the label of postmodernism explicitly in interviews but is seen by many to advocate a form of critique that is "postmodern" as it breaks with the utopian and transcendental nature of "modern" critique by calling universal norms of the Enlightenment into question. Giddens (1990) rejects this characterisation of modern critique by pointing out that a critique of Enlightenment universals were central philosophers of the modern period, most notably Nietzsche. What counts as "postmodern" is a stake in political struggles where the method of critique is at stake. The recuring themes of these rebates are between essentialism and anti-foundationalism, universalism and relativism, where modernism is seen to represent the former and postmodernism the latter. This is why theorists as diverse as Nietzsche, Lacan, Foucault, Derrida and Butler have been labelled "postmodern". Not because they formed an intellectual grouping at any one historical time but because they are seen by their critics to reject the possibility of universal, normative and ethical judgmenets.
A sophistocated rendition of this debate can be found between Seyla Benhabib (1995) and Judith Butler (1995) in relation to feminist politics. Benhabib argues that postmodern critique comprises three main elements: an anti-foundationalist conception of the subject and identity, the death of History (and notions of teleology and progress), and the death of Metaphysicas defined as the search for objective Truth - which can all have strong and weak variations. Benhabib argues against these positions as she holds that they undermine the bases from which feminist politics can be founded as strong versions of postmodernism remove the possibility for agency, sense of self-hood, and the appropriation of women’s history in the name of an emancipated future. The denial of normative ideals removes the possibility for utopia, central for ethical thinking and democratic action.
Butler responds to Benhabib by arguing that her use of "postmodernism" is an expression of a wider paranoia over anti-foundationalist philosophy, in particular, poststructuralism.
“A number of positions are ascribed to postmodernism - Discourse is all there is, as if discourse were some kind of monistic stuff out of which all things are composed; the subject is dead, I can never say “I” again; there is no reality, only representation. These characterizations are variously imputed to postmodernism or poststructuralism, which are conflated with each other and sometimes conflated with deconstruction, and understood as an indiscriminate assemblage of French feminism, deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Foucauldian analysis, Rorty’s conversationalism, and cultural studies ... In reality, these movements are opposed: Lacanian psychoanalysis in France positions itself officially against poststructuralism, that Foucauldian rarely relate to Derridideans ... Lyotard champions the term, but he cannot be made into the example of what all the rest of the purported postmodernists are doing. Lyotard’s work is, for instance, seriously at odds with that of Derrida”
Butler uses this debate over the definition of "postmodernism" to demonstrate how philosophy is implicated in power relationships. She defends poststructuralist critique by arguing that the critique of the subject is not the end but the beginning of analysis as the questioning of accepted "universal" and "objective" norms is the first task of enquiry.
The debates continue.
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