I found it interesting when de Certeau mentions how every day practices are sometimes to be considered a silent production, such as reading. He states, "the drift across the page, the metamorphosis of the text effected by the wandering eyes of the reader, the improvisation and expectation of meanings inferred from a few words, leaps over written spaces in an ephemeral dance...the reader cannot protect himself against the erosion of time...he forgets himself and he forgets what he has read..." (xxi).
This can easily be related to many activities that we are constantly taking part of, such as watching television, cooking, cleaning, talking with friends, discussing controversial topics, etc - almost everything we seem to do seems to be so incredibly far away from our actual self, everything we do seems to be a "silent production". We lose ourselves and we are unable to protect ourselves as we move through the motions, oftentimes also forgetting ourselves.
De Certeau is leering away from individualism in this text and more towards users vs consumers - I think that I can still enjoy individual things just by them being produced for mass amounts of people, as well as counter culture productions. Can you find individual enjoyment in things that are mass produced, or do you retroactively realize that you enjoyed them because they were meant to be enjoyed?
Emily, I think this concept of our everyday lives as silent productions is very important. This reminds me of a film I just watched in another class. In the film, the dead spend a week in limbo before entering their afterlife. During this time, they watch a silent film (a replay) of their life. Then they must choose one memory from the film to take with them into the next stage and consequently live in this memory forever. It got me thinking about everyday life, and how much of my life is spent as a live performance of silent cinema.
ReplyDeleteWhich film is this Helen? Sounds interesting...
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