As in, the opposite of deja vu, it’s the feeling that something has never happened before. I was just reading Stuart Hall’s introduction to Questions of Cultural Identity when I got the feeling. The introductory chapter is actually rather central to my thesis because it’s here that Hall outlines his thinking on identification versus identity and I use his definition quite a lot. It’s been a few months since I’ve actually had to read the essay. I’ve just now read it again and I got the distinct feeling that I’d never read it before. There were entire parts that I didn’t remember at all. In fact, I may actually understand it better now. I must say, the critical distance afforded by time is helpful in getting the most out of a meaty essay, especially when the first time around I had to read that meaty essay on the quick because my proposal was due the next week. This is just like when I re-read Elizabeth Povinelli’s “Radical Worlds: The Anthropology of Incommensurability and Inconceivability” and could actually appreciate what it was saying.
Anyway, that is all. Please return to your regular lives.