Maranda Russell

Poetry – Modernity

You've now been
baptized
circumcized
sterilized
traumatized
hypnotized
actualized
monetized
computerized
privatized
subsidized
economized
commercialized

marandarussell

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22 responses to “Poetry – Modernity”

  6. Powerful in many respects, though I’m curious about your listing “baptized” as first here. Baptism certainly reaches long back before modernity, and I would argue that it roots one’s personal identity in something that entirely transcends, and calls one to resist being mastered by, the industrial-technological-etc. context of most of these words. In this sense, one could see it as nearly the opposite of or alternative to most of the rest. (And many Jews would say something similar about circumcision in its religious meaning).

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    • It is kind of a merging of the past to present I suppose. A lot of people are still baptized and circumcised, even in today’s modern culture. It is the “start” to life that many still receive (especially in the western modern world), so it seemed a good way to start it off.

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      • Ah ok, yeah that makes good sense from the perspective of “starting.” Personally I would then read the rest of the list as kind of a betrayal of the beginning rather than a consistent continuation of it. Much art is conducive to different interpretations after all!

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