Hmm.

Ruminating on some ideas. At the doctoral colloquium tonight we were focusing on literature reviews and the problem came up on what makes a novice different from an expert. I think it's about being part of a community and understanding what the community thinks is important and being able to communicate clearly around that, which makes me think about this blog I've been reading which deals with lots of issues of gender and sexuality. You aren't queer because you like to sleep with people of the same biological sex, but rather because you've constructed an identity of being queer. In the end you are still a flailing individual with lots of contradictory impulses, passions, problems, strengths and weaknesses, and that doesn't change. Loving someone isn't the thing either, and no matter what some people say who you love is pretty much something you have no real control over, so that's almost a separate issue. But the fact is that you need to construct a home for yourself, and you need a community, which is a home too. When I look back on stuff like the Eulenberg Affair and all that it seems clear you are your identity, not your impulses.

Which leads to the question of power. Kant said that we don't live in an enlightened age, but rather in an age of enlightenment. That means you are free to choose. You don't have to worry about terror. You can construct your own identity separate from coercive authority. It's way too much to ask for some kind of golden, transcendent age, but it is enough to be free and live without fear. And of course, to freely associate and make a home for yourself.

Hmm.