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Saturday, May 31, 2008

Sartre on the Family

Sartre maintains that the family is the key mediation between the individual and "the general movement of history" and yet is experienced by the child "as an absolute in the depth and opaqueness of childhood." Mom, Dad, brothers, sisters, and History Itself in the same house. Somehow I never noticed History. Though there was a set of encyclopedias. And stories of combat in World War II and the conditions of life during the Great Depression.

1 comment:

Patty McNally Doherty said...

That's because we had no history. No past - no old crotchety aunts or drunken uncles or cigarette smoking cousins. All there was was us and the future. Tomorrow, later, never before, or traditional.

We were trailblazers in the diminishment of family. We didn't use divorce, we used distance.