On the face of it, we might read a thread devoted to discussion about itself as a reflection of a narcissistic character present throughout the culture of which it is necessarily a part. The political discourse of society constantly runs the risk of re-valuing itself as over and above that to which the discourse purports to point, as methods of rhetoric replace methods of persuasion. And, indeed, the very system of persuasion cannot be self-critical without sowing the beginnings of this replacement. But so long as the persuasive discourse is not self-critical, it is not persuasion at all; it can only ever be coercion. The corrective that introduces itself as logic becomes rhetoric as soon as it is introduced; it is a medicine that simultaneously cures and poisons.
But if this thread is, in fact, a reflection of society in this way, it cannot remain so for very long, because we cannot withhold that same critical lens from ourselves that we subject to the rest of the world. And this critical lens will cause our discourse to collapse in on itself.
So what, then, is the significance of this thread? What could it possibly be? |
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