[Xmd5a]

> western mythos

There is almost nothing more Western than this kind of self-criticism: blaming oneself for not having imagined a wider range of possibilities. By the time this reflex reaches your shore, any criticism you might address to it has already been pre-assimilated into its canon. Worse: you may not even be heard, because the whole discourse is already busy talking about the voices it has supposedly suppressed.

That is the trick. It is often less interested in articulating what was actually suppressed than in endlessly reaffirming that something was suppressed. Self-criticism becomes a passion of the self: the subject punishes itself for not being the idealized Other, and in doing so expands its own range of motion.

Criticism becomes assimilation: it uproots you from the very world it claims to redeem. And the only way out of the double bind is to set off for distant shores, carrying the trial with you.