There is no such thing as the universal. There is only the particular.
Claims to universality need not be evaluated for truth or falsity. They serve rhetorical ends. To claim universality is to claim superiority. It is a mark of empire.
In the academy, we’ve been in an age characterized by ‘after,’ by lateness. We have asked, what’s past the post? I respond: oppositionality. We are no longer after. We are against.
6 May 2008 at 3:52 pm
I am not sure I see how oppositionality is past the post. It would seem like being “against” would just be a return to Hobbes, to be pre the post.
6 May 2008 at 5:13 pm
Right, the early modern is post-post-modern. We early modernists are way ahead of our time.
7 May 2008 at 11:14 am
In addition, would not such an absolute oppositionality result in just another form of universality?
7 May 2008 at 2:42 pm
Our oppositionality is always and everywhere relative.