'Bourgeois?'

A classic case of the problem I here investigate is class and status. e.g we might habitually deride and contest 'bourgeois' values, status, taste and class while nevertheless -if we are honest - craving and yearning to become or remain or surpass that most central, secure and empowering middle ground of society. In this respect -and many others I suspect - we all constantly live our contradictions.

Site?

But perhaps what's most useful about our experiments thus far is that we probably CANNOT use antitheses in order to illuminate the self (as we might well have thought we could). What it suggests is that the dialectical model is inadequate for considering something that is not ontological or ontologise-able. Or to put it another way perhaps, that the self is not a 'thesis' to which there can be an antithesis, it is not a 'site' to which thee can be an opposite. Maybe this leads us to Yin and Yan, so let's go there next.

myths?

Here, things are getting messy, but that's OK, thought experiments, like artist's studios and hard working desks are allowed to get messy on the way to finding a new organisation.

What's messy about the previous post is that the self has a self -for a start - and it 'uses that self' for comfort etc. It would just as easy to say that the self is that very comfort. i.e. that the self is really a comfortable denial of its antithesis and its complexity, that it pragmatically 'gets by' on a set of presumptions and assumptions that are neither knowledge nor truth but convenient and manageable, 'myths' perhaps?

Presumptions

So, the antithesis experiment shows up at least the fact that the self cannot presume or assume as much about itself as it would like. If it feels discomforted by confrontation with its presumed antithesis then why should it utilise its 'self' (or thesis) as a comforting site or assurance and positionality?

Antithesis experiment

If I were to consider a self that was the antithesis of myself I suspect it could help me honestly consider myself, in a way that, without this exercise I could not honestly see.

For example, the antithesis of myself should be (politically) Thatcherite, (as an artist) Saatchi-ite, then racist, spiteful, vengeful, dishonest etc. Then I could assume that the opposite of myself would be gay, or black or a woman (as I am none of these).

But the immediate problems thrown up by such considerations are that many of these categorisations do not sit comfortably with my sense of myself blurring or debating the boundaries of these things, as a growing, thinking, becoming and challenging self.

Hmmm, even further, we can see that the exercise produces all these 'things' as ontologies -in which I also do not believe ( my PhD revolved around doubt about Things).

Ying-Yang

I guess Contraself would have to acknowledge the ancient, eastern Ying-Yang (Yin-Yan)theory of balance and reciprocity too, but I'll come back to this once I've developed some more basic or profane thoughts on the matter.