Introduction: Theorizing Historical Processes in Modern Societies

Abstract

The thing about naïveté is its hermetic tendency. One imagines having graduated out of it, but imagination proves only its own potentials. It is of course good to be held to account by the question that circulates through so much of our belletristic literatures (as in, for instance, Edward St Aubyn's Bad News): How can one think one's way out of a problem, when the problem is the way one thinks? Yet an extra layer of diagnosis need not result in anything beyond itself. I can easily glimpse the chiaroscuro of another mind and thus know of the limits of my knowledge of its furnishings without knowing what they (the limits or the furnishings) are, or even whether the clarity is meant to be hidden by, more than hide, the dimness. But is inner presentation/apprehension of one's own self-portrait any more diamantine, any less naive, in its “obviousness”? And if it should be, at any moment, where/what are the reliably timely markers? When, therefore, I experience increasingly complex realities – layer upon layer, cut and recut and repackaged – without commensurate increases in production of value, am I experiencing a mind-blindness?– An out-take from “After Fin de partie”

Citation

Dahms, H.F. and Hazelrigg, L. (2012), "Introduction: Theorizing Historical Processes in Modern Societies", Dahms, H.F. and Hazelrigg, L. (Ed.) Theorizing Modern Society as a Dynamic Process (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Vol. 30), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. xiii-xxvii. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0278-1204(2012)0000030005