Individual or not?

I was intrigued by the idea of “You Are Here.” We touched on it in a previous class but I wanted to explore it relation to imagined communities. If everyone is a “shifter” or non-signified then communities are made up of masses (class notes 9/14). As Benveniste says, utilizing “this”, “here”, and “now” organizes spacial and temporal relationships around the subject. It defines where the individual is at a certain point. So if the individual is non-specific and cannot be nailed down how can relationships be formed with it?

There is an ongoing battle to fight back--to regain individual-ness even in the face of crushing opposition. The creation of sub-nationalism is proof of this (3). Why can’t the woman reading her newspaper NOT be considering it a joint experience with millions of other people but, in fact, a special circumstance where only she is existing in that moment and turning that exact page and snickering at that exact headline because it reminds her for something funny in her life? Maybe the horizontal comradeship (7) we imagine is more fractured? Out of many community members who exactly are willing to die for the populace? I wanted to question the religious aspects of our discussion but sometimes religion isn’t enough. Places of worship’s attendance are drastically lower than it was fifty years ago. It is a harder battle to prove that a true (American) community exists because where is our middle ground? We don’t sit down together to read the newpapers—we have internet, Blackberrys, and Kindles. We don’t watch the Super Bowl together. The numbers says only one in ten views it and many don’t view it live. By rewinding or fast-forwarding live televisions we are creating our own syllabus for watching. The Super Bowl you see may be thematically and chronologically different than anyone else’s on the planet. Simultaneity doesn’t exist (24). Maybe the future predicted in Snow Crash won’t come to be. America’s biggest export is our media so, assumedly, we’d be the forefront of a Metaverse. Who says we are looking for a way to join together? Who says the community isn’t just individuals with very specific special and temporal relationships with each other?

Nick White