Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

chapter 19
Some Closing Comments
Education is often, and paradoxically, alienating. In learning more, we often
encounter ideas that challenge our assumed truths. Questioning those
truths can be difficult because we are often forced to examine their sources,
which might be very personal—our parents, other family members, friends,
respected teachers, or religious leaders. We don’t want to believe they led
us astray. Even if we don’t credit someone else for guiding us to a worldview,
we still don’t like learning that ours might be fl awed. After all, nothing
is more precious to our sense of self than the way we view the world.
While having our view challenged is difficult, at least modernity offers us
respite in knowing that we will replace it with something more accurate.
Our feeling of alienation need only be temporary, therefore, for we can rest
in knowing that something outdated is being replaced by something newer
and better; progress is afoot.
Cultural theory and postmodernism seem to offer us no such comfort.
In contending that our individuality, social norms, and moral codes are discursive
constructs, cultural theory challenges our existing worldview, then
seemingly fails to provide us with a solid alternative. Its offer of “constant
questioning and continual revision” provides little solace to someone accustomed
to believing in the existence of hard-and-fast truths, even if they
remain elusive and undiscovered. 1 So, whereas the alienation accompanying
modern enlightenment is fl eeting, the estrangement experienced in the
transition from a modernist to a postmodernist perspective seems more permanent;
frankly, that can seem kind of depressing.
In the introduction we suggested that Neo’s troubling discovery in The
Matrix that his real world was not what he thought it was offers a cinematic