subtext

‘People have no idea what reality is like. Or they’re in their own safe reality.” (Alvermann 2006, p. 23) The problem is that there is no real reality. “Myth exists, but one mus tguard against thinkingthat people believe in it: this is the trap of critical thinking that can only be exercised if it presupposes the naivete and stupidity of the masses” (Baudrillard 1994, p. 81). We are all functioning in our “own safe reality.” Even if that safe reality is tainted by cynicism or blind optimism. The touchstone texts these two young people have inculcated into their being play out in both of their adult lives. Simply because one has started to see a text differently than before, does not mean one has any more a sophisticated understanding of the text. It still falls into the turmoil of hermenutical interpretation. If we are written as texts by cultural texts, we are also writing ourselves inside/into the cultural texts. In the Holland et al. text referenced in the introduction, one chapter discusses how people who join Alcoholics Anonymous, adjust the story they tell over time to more fully fit the model of “the story” of the others in AA (specifically the “Book” of the founder). This phenomenon is reflected in the stories El and David tell about themselves. Their stories contain common tropes for the kind of lives they have begun writing for themselves. I am reminded of the Piagetian “Identity v. role diffusion,” where adolescents try on different roles provided by the adult world as they search for their own identity. Identity formation never ends, yet somewhere in the ever changing dance, I believe, there is a core (soul perhaps?) where all the parts we construct rotate. The writing/reading/revisioning/rereading all take part in a ongoing never ending recurssive simultaneous pulse that is us.