Search results
profound implications for his philosophy. The whole tenor of his prose had a musical aura about it. His works were composed rather than written – which, perhaps, explains his eloquence. Readers of Rousseau’s work in the original French have been struck by the rhythmical patterns. Rousseau’s prose reads as a melody: ‘just as in his musical compositions, in his prose Jean-Jacques knew how to quicken and retard tempo for the sake of emphasis’ (McDowell 1968: 19). This musical quality was not unintended. Through the melodious tone he wanted to prove a philosophical point
better or worse, can be read as a response to that experience. In the light of this admission, what then might a reader obtain from the eclectic mix of this work? I hope that the reader will obtain, firstly, an alternative paradigm with which to re-examine the Caribbean; secondly, a cross-disciplinary analytical tool – that of frontier study – that integrates and straddles the disciplines of history
authority and unmediated access to experience and events. When the ‘I’ is a Prime Minister, that authority is at one level assumed to be incontestable; at another, however, all politics involve the shaping of the truth to suit a particular agenda, and most readers therefore will approach such a narrative with a degree of scepticism. Ruler in Hiroona plays with this ambiguity in such a way as to
learn from his writings. Moreover, in addition to explicitly stating that he was writing for all subsequent generations (see above), Rousseau arguably wrote about issues that were as salient then as they are now. The issue that ‘power corrupts’ may serve as an illustration. Rulers have always sought absolute power (or as few restraints as possible), hence the nature of the problem of constitutionalism has stayed unaltered, although the political circumstances have changed. It is, of course, true that we – as readers – belong to different traditions, and all reading is
perceptive scholar: The picture of Jean-Jacques’s departure from and return to nature is a part of the moral fable of the Confessions as well as a complementary part of Rousseau’s system. With the account of his own life, Rousseau gives a persuasive image of human experience. Jean-Jacques may be too idiosyncratic and at times too unattractive to be an exemplary figure. Nevertheless, the description of his experience does transform the readers of the confessions by exposing them to a new way of looking at life. (Kelly 1987: 248) Perhaps so, however, the public perception
desire contradictories – virtue and soft sentiment, political society and the state of nature, philosophy and ignorance’ (Bloom 1987: 559). Rousseau was aware of this. As he wrote in Du Contrat social, ‘Please attentive reader, do not hasten to accuse me of contradiction. I cannot avoid a contradiction of words, because of the poverty of the language’ (III: 373). The limits of his language were not – to paraphrase Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (Wittgenstein 1984: 1) – the limits of his world. However, the question is whether there is a paradox in Rousseau’s writings
arguments – rather than assimilating them to my purposes, as is often the case with readings of these tendencies – that I filter this corpus through its own conceits, especially through the means of a personal narrative in the next chapter . (Those readers who are already very familiar with postcolonial perspectives and subaltern studies can, of course, skip the ensuing section and move to the one that
invite readers to agree, through their moral stance on apartheid, that the effects of territorialised ethnopolitics in Bosnia were similarly illegitimate and deleterious, might more sceptically question whether the separate histories of South African colonialism/apartheid and Balkan nationalism make this an inappropriate comparison, or might view ethnicised Othering in Bosnia as directly equivalent to Western prejudice against racialised minorities. 1 The mode of connection might do even more. The mode of connection might position apartheid in South
's discussion is also critical. He does not simply accept existing democratic practices or existing understandings of democratic principles but subjects both the practices and the principles to critical scrutiny. So far, so good. Still, there are many different ways to develop this sort of interpretive and critical analysis. Every inquiry has to bracket some questions in order to pursue others. It is important for the reader to know when a line of
… primarily means the mother – the place of repair and consolation, of feeding, of reassurance, that which resist separation(s).’ Nicole Fermon, Domesticating Passions. Rousseau, Woman, and Nation (Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1997), p. 4. For a more thorough treatment of the subject the reader may wish to consult: Paul Hoffman, ‘Le mythe de la femme dans la pensée de Jean-Jacques Rousseau’, in La femme dans la pensée des Lumières (Paris: Ophrys, 1977), pp. 359–446; Joel Schwartz, The sexual politics of JeanJacques Rousseau (Chicago: University of Chicago