Boards
Taking Liberties
This film scared me. I guess that's what it's supposed to do.
It raised a few complicated questions for me that people don't seem to be asking.
The whole film was based on the notion of individual rights. But do I have the right to reject the notion of identity compeletely - to disavow my own personhood and individuality? It's a paradox, because my right to ask these questions is founded in the logic of liberal individualism itself.
The ability to focus on the ambivalences which disrupt essentialist notions of identity is something I hold very dear. It allows us to see our emergent identities from a universal logical platform, from which we might also be able to view all other processes going on in the world under a common logic.
The whole identity card scheme concretises my identity from without - makes it non-negotiable and apparently self-evident, and this is why it makes me feel so uncomfortable. It's like the power relations within society assume control not just of my biometric characteristics, but also the very ways in which I am able to think about myself as a person.
The whole issue of human rights is supposed to be based on the notion of an open society in which we have a right to contest and question hegemonic ideas which are handed to us from above as apparently legitimate truths.
I literally can't escape from this paradox.
It's probably far too late at night for this kind of rumination isn't it?
Fuck Blair?
Anyone else seen this yet? Does everyone have these existential crises or is it just me?