Episode 67 Imperative blessings

Photo by Keita Senoh

When did you learn that the earth travels round the sun and not the other way round? And when you talk to yourself, which one of the dialoguing characters is you? Language generates multiple selves, and each self comes with its own built in worldview. Is it superstitious to think of selves that are wiser than us, that are protective, that wish to bless us? Perhaps it’s reckless not to.

The story I discuss in this episode is called ‘Go’. It’s just been published in the Running Wild Anthology of Stories, vol 5.

I learned about imperatives in Omotic languages from reading work by Alexandra Aikhenvald. (See reference list below.)

And the discussion of postmodernism is based on the following quote from Madan Sarup’s book, Identity, culture and the postmodern world:

‘Copernicus, Darwin, Marx and Freud have all, in their different ways, decentred the human subject. By “decentering”, I mean that individual consciousness can no longer be seen as the origin of meaning, knowledge and action.’ (Sarup, 1996, p. 46)

References

Aikhenvald, A. (2010). Imperatives and commands. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sarup, M. (1996). Identity, culture and the postmodern world. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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