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Is form always oppressive ?
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Children following norms for a public place (Denmark)
Adults following norms for a temporary place (Denmark)
Is any imposition of form, is any definition of place oppressive just because it is definite? Some argue that creating a grammar restricts something wilder that needs to be liberated so we can live more fully. Depending on the tradition the critic is working in, that wildness might be chaotic reality, or the body, desires, unlimited semiosis, and so on. Such claims are self-proclaimedly postmodern, but they follow the standard modern goal of the liberation of possibility from restriction. What differentiates them from more usual modernity is that what is being liberated is not a free creative or rational individual, but something conceived as prior to individuality. Such claims combine truths but suggest a falsehood. It is true that we are oppressed in many ways, and that the body, desire, social interaction, meaning should be liberated. It is true that in making any possibilities definite we operate within a condition that defies reduction to determinate form. But it is false that we could or should be liberated into living purely in an indeterminate condition.