tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post4877044310965646766..comments2023-10-30T12:26:15.822+01:00Comments on Research as a Second Language: NatalityThomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-6586225665708224212014-03-23T22:02:24.412+01:002014-03-23T22:02:24.412+01:00I dug a few things out of my dissertation chapter ...I dug a few things out of my dissertation chapter on Doris Lessing, quotations from Arendt's "Origins of Totalitarianism":<br /><br />"with each new birth, a new beginning is born into the world, a new world has potentially come into being"<br /><br />"The laws hedge in each new beginning and at the same time assure its freedom of movement, the potentiality of something entirely new and unpredictable; the boundaries of positive laws are for the political existence of man what memory is for his historical existence: they guarantee the pre-existence of a common world, the reality of some continuity which transcends the individual life span of each generation, absorbs all new origins and is nourished by them."<br /><br />And, from later in my dissertation but earlier in Arendt:<br /><br />"The dark background of mere givenness, the background formed by our unchangeable and unique nature, breaks into the political scene as the alien which in its all too obvious difference reminds us of the limitations of human activity—which are identical with the limitations of human equality. The reason why highly developed political communities [...] so often insist on ethnic homogeneity is that they hope to eliminate as far as possible those natural and always present differences and differentiations which by themselves arouse dumb hatred, mistrust and discrimination because they indicate all too clearly those spheres where man cannot act and change at will, i.e., the limitations of the human artifice."Andrew Shieldshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com