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2/2 Reflection

 1. At the risk of oversimplifying, one question that kept popping into my head: can ideology ever be good? Does reaching an "ideological status" necessarily mean we need to go back to the drawing board? Are we all doomed to "reify a narrow concept of culture and construct [our] own selective tradition of the best that has been thought and said (Sparks, p. 71)? Is it possible for society to exist without the process of constant theorizing (Hall, p. 44/45). Or will the need to go "beyond...in order to understand contemporary culture" always be a must (Sparks, 78)? In other words, will we ever get to rest??

2. In a similar vein, can texts - even if read differently/in opposition to - ever exist outside of ideology? I suppose I know the answer is no, and a new order would have a historical link to current power systems, but for some reason this feels sticky to me. Maybe I'm just overthinking this one. 


** I think my second question relates to Butler's "historicity of force." What Mao and Young say is "commenting on the conditions or limits of developing new and affirmative set of meanings of the word "queer," Butler points out that discourse...'has a history that not only precedes but conditions its contemporary usages, and that this history effectively decenters the presentist view of the subject as the exclusive origin or owner of what is said' (1993, 227). Therefore any recuperative efforts...may be constrained and compromised because of discourse's power to decenter or implicate the user" (2008, 2).


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