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A FRAGMENTED SELF CONCERNED WITH TOGETHERNESS
How to know if what one does is only important to oneself or if it would also have value for others - especially in the arts? Writing this thesis was very important to me. As with any other work of art, I would like it to be shared and in this way maybe find out if it can be valuable to others.
Read an excerpt (Introduction)
Download as pdf
Download accompanying text (a psychedelic walk)
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Introduction
All characters in my books, whether they are successful or not, are pushed into that
place where all the definitions about themselves become suspicious.
- Toni Morrison
The text you are about to read is a kind of membrane between the personal and the
political. It is a constant flipping between inside and outside, rationality and emotionality.
Its underlaying question is, if it is possible to find togetherness from the point of todays’
hyper-individuality. This question is partly triggered by experiences in discursive group
situations, mostly within the context of the arts. In such situations one often encounters a
lot of sincere and clever analysis of todays’ world and efforts to connect that information
to utopian dreaming, finding other sources of support and inevitably the question: how
to be together. But as soon as a gathering is over, usually everyone goes back to their
private life, governed by the fantasy of individuality.
The contradictory character of this text lays in its suspicion towards itself: Towards its
criticality and its emotionality. It wants to be personal, which would mean it was political,
but that point of departure could be deceiving, as the personal could maybe just be:
Private. This text would like to scream: „Privatisation is the all-devouring monster-pet of
capitalism!“ Ironically, it is written in a phase of private isolation, due to the Corona virus
measures during the months March - May 2020.
This text longs for a power that is not exercised hierarchically, but that is fostered on the
bottom, based on shared needs and shared precariousness. A power that can embrace
and carry the fragmentary state of todays’ reality, instead of using this state to remain in
control.
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Next to also pointing out that the thesis sometimes suffers from sloppiness, my mentor's feedback was quite positive:
This is a highly original thesis because of the diversity of the topics treated and the creative way of linking them. Roger presents the reader with a whirlwind of topics that are also the topics that keep him awake at night: the problem of the left, neoliberalism, narcissism, the absence of a collective sense, depression and art. The challenge of this thesis was to find a way to connect them all, to find the line that would prevent the reader from having the feeling of an inextricable knot. (...)
- Judith Wambacq
Thank you for helping me in that process Judith!