December 2007

To combat the "curse of knowledge" - the paradox of the inverse relation between knowledge/expertise and creativity/innovation - Cynthia Barton Rabe proposes the "zero-gravity thinker" to "keep creativity and innovation on track" (Janet Rae-Dupree, "Innovative Minds Don't Think Alike," The New York Times, 30 December 2007). In effect, her proposal offers a 'band-aid' approach barely touching this problemmatic paradox, leaving the affected dependent on an 'other' to re-ignite the creativity/innovation of the 'self'.

In contrast, hyphenation forces new perspective and continuous critical self-inspection and world-evaluation in a perpetual actualizing of self-potentiality. Why? Precisely because creativity/innovation is a subcategory of the potentiality inherent in hyphenation.

The issue here lies in modality of praxis determined by an ideology. Ideology is the determining factor. This ideology rests between that of the erstwhile doxa or that of the present doxa yet unaccounted for and yet to appropriate its own language...

It is time to cast out the doxa no longer applicable to this present. Why do we continue to speak with the borrowed language of antiquation? This debt is growing too deep...

And the salience of history is something Hungarian essayist and novelist Peter Nadas knows all too well. Contextualized by Post-Wall Germany and Post-Cold War Hungary, Nadas' language is one of hidden, slippery meanings exposing the rise of corruption and compromised morality in Hungarian society (Michael Kimmelman, "A Writer Who Always Sees History in the Present Tense," The New York Times, 1 November 2007). Indeed, Nadas witnessed a history where peaceful co-existence during the Cold War compromised morals and words were deceptive betrayals of their supposed meaning. For his country, the West symbolized broken promises.

Nadas found a way to communicate in a reality where "meaning slips around in the shadow of words, hissing through the gaps in their definitions" and where "Hungary tried a socialist-capitalism that was like squaring a circle" resulting in a "culture of corruption" (ibid).

For him, the repurcussions of this reality is the new generation of Hungarian writers with "no interest in morality" and who "don't get involved in big ideas" (ibid).

The history Nadas writes of is part of the general European trend to "worry history", according to Kimmelman. Interestingly, Kimmelman breaks down different modalities to history:

1) Spain is attempting to erase history - its government is attempting to erase all physical signs of Franco;

2) Poland does not want to be accountable for its past;

3) the United States are amnesiacs; and

4) Hungarians can not forget their past, resulting in a "dangerous nationalism"

Indeed, the Budapest uprising of 1956, while a failed revolution, succeeded in spreading a profound national suspicion of foreigners, especially of the West.

No wonder Kimmelman describes Nadas as a "world-weary Eastern European intellectual"...

Interestingly, a nation older than Hungary and one that would be justified if 'world-weary' is anything but and rather, is donning new eyes towards a revisionist history. If the actions of the "Newest Mandarins" are any indication, China is taking a shrewd turn in taking nods from Western thought and philosophies "as measures to check the totalizing tendencies of their state" (Annping Chin, "The Newest Mandarins," The New York Times Magazine, 16 December 2007).

Rather than bringing in a "zero-gravity thinker", and rather than worry the stains of their history, the "Newest Mandarins" are studying the classics in dialogue with Western thought. From Habermas, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, and Arendt to Schmitt and Strauss, they are truly "learning to think" and experience what Confucius described as freedom and what they called a "perfect freedom":

"I was able to follow what my heart desired without overstepping the moral bounds."

Although some scholars relegate this new "fever of national learning" to a "political event...to celebrate national pride" that will not last, the Chinese students' experiencing freedom of thinking and freedom to Western thought is a monumental step against the "curse of knowledge" on one end and a compromised morality and corruption of society on the other end. In effect, they are in a position of hyphenation where potentiality is an actualizing reality and creativity/innovation is a lived physicality...