Aug 24, 2009
Luc Sante’s Brain
As expressed by one essay, “Grownups.” Sante writes on everything from Asterix to dope fiends to rockabilly bands, so we must limit ourselves. He is phenomenal at demonstrating—not just here but in all his work—that the supposedly objective political, ethical, and aesthetic institutions that define the limits of our thought and action are no more stable than our fragile individual self-conceptions. These institutions are subject to and driven by the same sorts of whimsical passions as drive scientific exploration and love affairs: human passions. Sante used to think, he says here, that the passions and commitments of his father’s generation were coherent enough to be meaningfully rebelled against. Now see that they were never more logical or cohesive than his own. No one’s system is much better than anyone else’s. No one has absolute authority. There are no grownups, is one lesson of “Grownups.” Everything’s made up of people instead.