"To be modern -- is this not really to know that one cannot begin again?" (Roland Barthes).
There are those thinkers who believe that none of us are truly modern -- that for our entire lives we live only our past, playing out the same events with the same consequences again and again. Whatever mistakes we've made in our past, whatever victories we claim as our own, these events will endure in the shaping of our consciousness as surely as an album reproduces its recordings.
In light of this view, what do you think Barthes means? That is to say, what does it mean to say that one is "modern" and "cannot begin again"?
[For those of you who hate head-scratchers, I promise something amusing tomorrow.]
There are those thinkers who believe that none of us are truly modern -- that for our entire lives we live only our past, playing out the same events with the same consequences again and again. Whatever mistakes we've made in our past, whatever victories we claim as our own, these events will endure in the shaping of our consciousness as surely as an album reproduces its recordings.
In light of this view, what do you think Barthes means? That is to say, what does it mean to say that one is "modern" and "cannot begin again"?
[For those of you who hate head-scratchers, I promise something amusing tomorrow.]
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
rachel:
that, my friend, you will never know... *muahahahaha* 
rachel:
hahahahaha!!! 