Is the US locked in to postmodernism?

[sweetheart]

I had a very enlightening coversation with a post-humanist
recently, and found it very "zen" that this evolution does
not accept any longer the "essential self" that compells
humankind to compete in "metanarratives".

These "metanarratives" are things like "religion", "progress"
and "science", themselves legacies of modernism, something that the US is
incapable of distancing itself from as if modernism was made
permanent in the concreate foundation of the country's founding.

I figure some of y'all are much more educated on this
stuff than I, and i was wondering how you would explain
the evolution of modernism - posthumanism in the US.

Your thoughts?

[Warpy]

1. No, it's just another age of Robber Barons

in which the wealthy few think they can dispense with the industrious many and maintain their own precious world without the distraction of all those tacky people in shorts and t shirts with writing on them fucking up the scenery and looking for fast food. This has happened before in this country and will happen again if we don't manage to do something about it, foment another revolution and break them permanently.

The rise of aristocracy in an organized society is one of those inevitabilities that we have to work very hard to prevent. Had we been allowed to keep the protections of the New Deal, had Kennedy not lowered their taxes enough to give them enough play money to start buying the government back, we might not be in this fix. We'd be protectionist and with strong unions, the people would have a voice.

The present horror show is showing people that economics and politics are inextricable. There is no way to have democracy coexist with massive wealth concentration. There is no way to counteract massive wealth concentration without confiscatory taxation of some form, usually a combination of forms, that keep the wealth from accruing and concentrating quickly and prevent it from passing to the next generation in its entirety.

What is happening now is as old as Satan and as evil as the hell he resides in. We have been here before as a species, as a people and as a country. There is no need to dress it up in trendy buzzwords.

We know what we need to do. The only question is whether we have the will to do it.

[sweetheart]

2. Those trendy buzzwords

I often hear persons on DU complaining about metanarratives, like
"wouldn't we be better off without religion", yet the narrative is
deeply entrenched.

"wouldn't we be better off without the drive to "progress", yet the
narrative is deeply entrenched.

European countries are experiencing an ending of these narratives,
where organized religion is dying out, and so many others, so of
course post-humanism is largely a european evolution.

And it seems, sorry for the oblique language, that the nation states
founded during the period of "modernism" are permanently stuck there
until they have a "revolution and break them permanently".

It may be indeed the rule of force of a brutal aristocracy, but that
itself is couched in cultural memes or it would not have wings.

Evolving a new framework for out future world that will not self-destruct
is in all our interests, even with the fist fight you mention.

[Stanchetalarooni]

4. Robber Baron? You must be talking about my father-in-law.

Had a falling out with my father-in-law of 19 yrs. over a year ago. Mr. Teflon himself.
Swings right when the wind blows right.
Swings left when the wind blows left.
Like a chameleon.
Provides intense absolute unconditional positive regard as a means to his ends.
Just scratch the surface and he is dirty, dirty, dirty.
My poor wife.

[saltpoint]

3. sweetheart, I love your post here. I took a guilty sidetrip with it and

imagined you posing the question to George W. Bush. Or his father. Or his mother.

Or the millions of cement-brain people who stood in long lines in the rain to vote for him.

What a great question you ask us.

I think in some degree the United States is learning the hard way that it is part of the world community, descendant of other, much older, and much richer, world traditions, and that the only thing that truly distinguishes it from Bangladesh or Bolivia is the "quality of life," which to many U.S. citizens unfortuantely means that they have 2 or 3 shopping malls to pick from before buying material goods they don't really need in the first place. Or flipping through cable stations to finally choose COPS or a syndicated sitcom or right-wing drivel from FOX News.

Your question would have been met with welcome and intelligent attention from John Kennedy or Robert Kennedy or Al Gore or John Kerry or Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter, I believe. But many Americans don't like meta-anything. They elected Dubya because at first he seemed like one of them, that is, a "regular kind of guy you could have a beer with." Problem was, he was so regular that he was vacuous and the regular part turns out to be hokum at best or deceit at worst. He's an oil puppet, wholly prepared to bomb the piss out of entire nations to suck oil out of the ground. Not many "regular" U.S. citizens derive much benefit from his tax cuts for the very wealthy. If he's "regular," he's regular like a rattlesnake, and unfortunately this one is at-large in the backyard by the kids' swingset.

I wish I could tell you different, but religion in the United States has had a stormy reputation. You folks were wise to pile the fanatics onto boats and sail them away from your lands in prior times, but they had to go someplace, and they wound up HERE. Jim Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and countless other Christokooks clutter our airwaves and cable stations and news analyses with their heartless blather and for the most part their model is a descendant of those early fanatics who sailed from your lands to these lands. Gore Vidal, no slouch at world history, posits that the reason Christian fundamentalism is so strong is twofold: 1) the original climate for faith here as practiced by English immigrants was hyper-Calvinist/Puritan and 2) they "breed like chiggers," to use Gore's phrase.

There is in the U.S. a fierce and huge vein of anti-intellectualism, which in my opinion is the source of the resistance to any meta-narrative. There's a tendency to walk around in the 1950s with buttons that say "I Like Ike" and to vote against more thoughtful public servants like Adlai Stevenson. Gore suffered the same fate, losing West Virginia and his home state of Tennessee to an idiot like Bush. Gore is smart, and many anti-intellectual voters rejected him on that basis alone. John Kerry scared the bejesus out of many voters who found that he wasn't warm and cuddly and playful the way they imagined Bush to be.

And we don't ask much of our school students. We don't encourage them to read much, we don't encourage them toward critical thinking, we don't mind if they watch unmitigated shit on television, we don't enthusiastically support tax levies that would increase funding for the arts, and as a consequence we graduate too many 18-year olds who can't find their own state on a map. American schools are the laboratories for a national mediocrity.

The resistance to meta-narrative is likely more complex, and your question deserves broad attention, but I feel that some of the reasons for the resistance are in these veins of American life.

[Hutzpa]

114. Christokooks!!!! gotta love it...love it love it

Jim Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and countless other Christokooks clutter our airwaves and cable stations and news analyses with their heartless blather and for the most part their model is a descendant of those early fanatics who sailed from your lands to these lands.

:yourock:

[saltpoint]

116. HI to you, spokane, and while I'm late in saying so, a warm welcome

to DU.

Yep. I try to be affirming in most things, but I'm awfully tough on fundies and Republicans.

[bananas]

5. Where would a post-human work?

At the post-office.

[sweetheart]

11. very post-modern

Perhaps Peter, a postal post-modern, pre-picks prescient peppers!

[marions ghost]

14. LOL

"pre-picks..." LOL

[Zhade]

67. Soylent Green factory?

Well, okay, not work, exactly...

[marions ghost]

6. Not sure I understand your question

Is the US "locked into" postmodernism? Can u explain?

If I understand what you are saying, I take it that you accept that postmodernism is evolutionary (and therefore 'better'). I'm seeing it as more a simultaneous offshoot of modernism, rather than one giving way to the other. The old heirarchies are not going to fade that easily, or voluntarily relinquish power.

The US playing out of the postmodern idea may be different from Europe, but really I wouldn't say Europe is "ahead" in rejecting meta-narratives (progress, religion, science), at least not in the general population. Perhaps there is an erroneous idea in Europe that the US is chock full of religious fundamentalists when the truth is Americans worship the God of Money above all. (What country doesn't worship the God of Money--Tibet maybe?) The Boosh administration is hardly a picture of "modern progress" or the application of Christian principles.

Some days it seems we humans are all barely post-neanderthal.

[bloom]

7. That is an interesting question

And it may be that the people who are tired of being surrounded by postmodernist thought (whether they are calling it that or not) are the ones who want to leave.

It seems that there may be different people who rebel against it for different reasons. Like some religious people might hate it because they may see postmodern thought as being against religion from the beginning.

Others - like artists - might hate it because it can make art irrelevant - at least as far as the individual artist is concerned. The New York Times recently had an article about the role of the artist in much of what is considered to be the "top" art as the one who comes up with the concept and then others make it. People in China. Anyone. I don't see that as a positive thing. Or when the art world - including the consumers, critics, etc. that ultimately influence what is considered to be art at the moment think that the more cynicism the better.

I don't see feminism as part of postmodernism (as it was lumped in there on Wikipedia) in the same sense as being cynical or anti-having-morality - I think it's more post-postmodern or another form of post-humanism.

On Wikipedia - on "post-humanism"

...It mainly differentiates from classical humanism in that it restores the stature that had been made of humanity to one of many natural species. According to this claim, humans have no inherent rights to destroy nature or set themselves above it in ethical considerations a priori.

Human knowledge is also reduced to a less controlling position, previously seen as the defining aspect of the world. The limitations and fallibility of human intelligence are confessed, even though that doesn't mean abandoning the strong rational tradition of humanism.

Performance philosopher Shannon Bell argues that post-humanism attempts "to develop through enactment new understandings of the self and other, essence, consciousness, intelligence, reason, agency, intimacy, life, embodiment, identity and the body."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthumanism

That sounds like what I basically think. I guess I am a post-humanist and didn't know it. ;)

I've heard Rationalists make basically the same argument - but I don't know if they differ on other points. Your basic humanism seemed too human-centric for me - so it figures that it would transform itself into something else - what with what we know about global warming and globalism and such.

It's interesting if people across the pond are embracing this more than people here - but not surprising since it sounds like people over there have been on board with Kyoto, serious recycling, etc. for a bit longer than people here (of course people here have been subjected to all of the disinformation campaigns by Exxon, etc. - are they postmodernist? - they are certainly cynical).

According to the Wikipedia piece - in the US post-humanism is transhumanism - but the transhumanism page doesn't sound anything like the post-humanism description. One snip, "Transhumanist thinkers postulate that human beings will eventually be transformed into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman". And it uses Michael Jackson as an example of transhumanism (with his plastic surgery, skin-whitening and hyperbaric oxygen treatment - blurring gender and race...? ).

"Transhumanism has been described by a prominent sympathizer as the "movement that epitomizes the most daring, courageous, imaginative, and idealistic aspirations of humanity, while according to a prominent critic, it is the world's most dangerous idea."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism

It's possible that, as usual, in the US the concept - post-humanism - is screwed up. :shrug: From their description the US version of transhumanism sounds like some kind of whacked out postmodern vision.

[sweetheart]

12. Feminism is, IMO, post-humanist

I recognize that any "ism" is doomed to be a metanarrative, as it
embeds in it the mindstate of an essential self that is smarter than
nature, and why feminism is inherenly postmodern as of that.

But that said, to be truly feminine, is to accept that you are
not smarter than nature, to surrender that supperiority patriarchal
paradigm. Then any feminist would see the falsity of the essential
self that is smarter than nature, as a jabbering egowok. ;-)

So then i'd wager than many persons on DU who are feminists yet claim
to be humanists are actually post-humanist and don't know it.
You're dead on with that.

[bloom]

17. Transhumanism....

Seems like the opposite of post-humanism (and of feminism - or at least feminism as you and I seem to understand it).

I guess that that shows the fallibility of wikipedia to link post-humanism to that as if they are the same.

"This article concerns the European philosophical extension of humanism. The term posthumanism is also used as a synonym for transhumanism, especially in the United States."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthumanism

If they are saying that transhumanism (as described by them) is the American version of post-humanism (as I quoted from the post-humanist page) - and if THAT is becoming the American train of thought - then that is a scary thing, indeed.

It seems like that world-view would be perfectly in alignment with taking over the world. Where the European version that I quoted seems much more ANTI-transhumanism.


Do you have any thoughts on that?

(I realize that this is being surmised by the basis of what people have posted on wikipedia - but it seems to get to what your original question was - and that it may as revealing as anything.)

[alcibiades_mystery]

49. There is poststructuralist feminism (Judith Butler, for instance)

There is also Marxist feminism that opposes it, and other kinds of feminism that oppose postmodernism, etc.

[slybacon9]

128. also eco feminism

but im way too tired to go into it right now....

[marions ghost]

8. O sweetheart are u there?

This explains better than I can what I mean by implying that there are contradictions in seeing postmodernism as utopian.

From WIKIPEDIA: Is postmodernism itself a metanarrative?

"According to this view, post-structuralist thinkers like Lyotard criticise universal rules but postulate that postmodernity contains a universal skepticism toward metanarratives. Thus, the postmodern incredulity towards metanarratives could be said to be self-refuting. If we are skeptical of universal narratives such as "truth", "knowledge", "right", or "wrong", then there is no grounds for believing, the "truth", that metanarratives are being undermined.

In this sense, this paradox of postmodernism is similar to the liar's paradox ("This statement is false."). Perhaps postmodernists, like Lyotard, are not offering us a utopian, teleological metanarrative, but in many respects their arguments are open to metanarrative interpretation. They place much emphasis on the irrational, though in doing so they apply the instruments of reason. Postmodernism is an anti-theory, but uses theoretical tools to make its case."

---------------------------------------------------------------

ATTEMPTING AN UNDERSTANDING OF OP'S QUESTIONS
Getting down to your fundamental questions (if I read u correctly)--you are asking:

1. Why is the US going backwards, or in other words, why is the US (apparently) not progressive in the European sense? Is it because we haven't caught up with postmodernist trends?

2. And so how do we (humanity) really progress beyond the pitfalls of modern metanarratives --ie. beyond political/cultural fabrications based on black & white simplifications and commonly-held (but often debatable) assumptions?

[sweetheart]

10. Hello i'm slow.. (garden work outside)

The person who enlightened me to post-humanism, was saying
very similar to that about postmodernism, and i said to her;
"That's all fine well and good when you have a
functioning 4th estate to esablish truth."

She said; "Truth is a metanarrative." By my frame of
thinking, i was speaking with the presumption of an essential self,
"myself", that had superior knowledge. This is the fallacy she said,
and why post-humanism is such a powerful evolution.

- - -

I myself am rather confused why postmodernism is not evolutionary
from modernism. In our conversation, she said the roots of
modernism come from the enlightenment in the 18th century.
I made the jump to thinking well, then any country formed
during that period would "cast" those views in to their national
identity (france, USA.. more so than britain).

But that is my own conjuration, that last bit there, and i was asking
if there is any sense in that?.. that's really my first question,
is do you see modernism as inherent to the US state, that the
culture lives by "myths" (metanarratives)... arguably strauss
has seen and engaged this very chord, the power of brainwashing
when a population is pre-framed.

If my thesis is correct, then the US has "not caught up with postmodernist trends"
as it is embedded a philosophy in the state that it cannot divorce.
But if there is no evolution in such trends, it is probably a nonsense point.

That second question, is beautifully crafted... I am very interested in
exposing these narratives and getting a better grasp of what exactly
a metanarrative is, and its pathology in the individual and collective mind.

[marions ghost]

33. thanx for explanation

yes I get where you are going with #2--"exposing these narratives..." as a way to think outside the boxes they represent. Makes sense. (Are all metanarratives considered pathological?) I do get the notion of the "power of brain-washing when a population is pre-framed (via metanarratives)."

But I'll have to ponder #1 further--the idea of "modernism as inherent to the US state" (and therefore that could be why it seems we are messed up today). It seems to me that at some point the enlightenment and then "modernism" affected all of the world in varying degrees. Don't we all live by such myths? I have lived in Australia for an extended period and did not find it radically different from the US re. metanarratives (you could perhaps argue that Australia had a similar history to the US but it does not seem to be in quite the sad state politically as we are now...though it could get there one day I suppose, if enough fear could be whipped up). And really I have to ask, is Tony Blair's England a big step forward in any evolutionary sense?

But I think what you're asking is--is there something about America re modernism that makes it more prone to brain-washing, rigid thinking, support of fascism, acceptance of corruption while emphasizing 'morality' etc?

[Ripley]

9. Some believe Superhumanism is coming.

Hi Sweetheart!

Hans Moravec (Began the Robotics School at Carnegie Mellon back in 1980's) and Ray Kurzweil, among others believe the Singularity is Near (merging of humans and AI).

Superhumanism

According to Hans Moravec, by 2040 robots will become as smart as we are. And then they'll displace us as the dominant form of life on Earth. But he isn't worried - the robots will love us.

Charles Platt

Hans Moravec reclines in his chair and places his palms against his chest. "Consider the human form," he says.

"It clearly isn't designed to be a scientist. Your mental capacity is extremely limited. You have to undergo all kinds of unnatural training to get your brain even half suited for this kind of work - and for that reason, it's hard work. You live just long enough to start figuring things out before your brain starts deteriorating. And then, you die."

He leans forward, and his eyes widen with enthusiasm. "But wouldn't it be great," he says, "if you could enhance your abilities via artificial intelligence, and extend your lifespan, and improve on the human condition?"



http://www.primitivism.com/superhumanism.htm

[tishaLA]

13. In a word, no.

First, postmodernism is a broad field of philosophical inquiry, so I disagree with your characterization of it (this evolution does
not accept any longer the "essential self" that compels
humankind to compete in "metanarratives"). Yes, postmodernists generally question the epistemologies and ontologies and have a skepticism for metanarratives, but postmodern thinkers generally do not consider it a temporal thing (i.e., we are not living in "postmodern times") or as evolutionary. Your friend seems to have embraced Lyotard's conceptions of "the postmodern condition," but that is only one of the many cacophonous voices in the field of inquiry and knowledge.

The answer to the questions in your penultimate paragraph, however, are actually disspiriting because our recent turn away from science and toward fundamentalist conceptions of religion echoes something Bruno Latour said years ago: We Have Never Been Modern.

[sweetheart]

15. If it is not "temporal or evolutionary" how do they see it?

Ok, so i searched "Lyotard's conceptions",

"Lyotard contends, is a shift in the very concept of reason. In postmodern reason there is no legitimate meta-language that would organize or provide a sense of totality or hierarchy in the scientific field; there is only a plurality of relative and local narratives or language games."

http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~gallaghr/Gall93.html

That puts all schools of knowledge on an equal par with the preacher on the steet,
doesn't it?

This is very high-temple talk, and it seems that if the masses were much more
aware of this stuff, they would be more empowered. But gosh the gap between
the temple and the street seems mighty far.

"WE have never been modern", Could we be modern?, or can only "i" be modern,
is that what you're pointing to? Nevertheless,

I'll get the book you recommend and digest it, thank you very much.

[tishaLA]

24. Well, sort of

postmodernism generally--and this is something Frederic Jameson wrote about in his seminal book Postmodernism; Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism--eschews distinctions between high and low culture. That isn't to say that high culture isn't still there and that fields of expertise are not to be respected, but that it is just as legitimate to do textual analysis of "low" culture like The Simpsons and film as it is to look toward Henry James, Melville, and Picasso. In fact, Jameson spends a large portion of his book analyzing Andy Warhol's Diamond Dust shoes and Van Gogh's famous painting of boots--each is a legitimate site of philosophical inquiry.

The discourse about postmodernism is indeed very "high temple," as you say, but that is true of almost all schools of philosophical thought. I utterly reject the contention in other posts that postmodern thought is racist, however, as many of the most important theorists of postmodernism write about postmodernism through the lens of postcolonialism (i.e., Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha). And, in fact, I have a full library of feminist postmodernist thinking--and these important voices embrace the dissolution of the modern Subject.

[librechik]

16. (because of inculturated modernist attittudes) people misunderstand pomo

it's not a destructive and purifying force, like modernist movements tend to be. Modernism is all about flushing the old, scrubbing the site, and bringing in the new!

Rather, when they call themselves deconstructionists, they merely mean they study the way cultures tend to build up, peak, and then fall away, leaving the ruins there for new cultures to grow upon, using bits and pieces of the old structures to cast new unstable structures for civilization.

People are afraid of being swept aside by each new trend: industrialism swept aside agrarianism which swept aside nomadism and so on. They fear postmodernism is poised to soullessly sweep them away as well. However, a true postmodernist would do everything in his or her power to preserve the remnants of the old, to bring it in to the interactions of the new, to refer to it constantly (if critically) as a foundation of our current philosophy. Any suggestion that the pomo movement is designed to gut your lives is pure propoganda from the old guard who want any new competitive bids to be strangled in the womb.

No one is capable of distancing themselves from the way history breathes and recirculates our existences. Postmodernism tries to understand how we can survive these forces as a society and as individuals, mostly by accepting realities, incorporating what is functional, not trying to enforce new created contexts, but introduce innovations as adaptive forms. Throwing aside the old established foundations to start new paradigms is done with an inclusive hand, not an excluding one.

In short as revealed in the subtexts of rightist propoganda, while they claim to hate us for killing babies, in fact they hate us POMO liberals because we wish to include all the other (native, ethnic) sources. Postmodernism reveals the racism of the elite society, and they can't tolerate that.

[sweetheart]

18. inclusiveness

"However, a true postmodernist would do everything in his or her power to preserve the remnants of the old, to bring it in to the interactions of the new, to refer to it constantly (if critically) as a foundation of our current philosophy."
Why is a true postmodernist endowed with this quality?


Then the neocons are wrongly labelled "postmodernists", by attempting a coup against
the roots of knowledge. You say "reveals the racism of the elite". How exactly?
I really feel you're on to something there, like you're skimming on a way to
intellectually expose them for their fraud, more frankly than i've ever felt
with labells of puritainism.

great post! :-)

[librechik]

19. exactly--Heidegger gave pomos a bad rap

me, I follow Levy-Strauss, not the Frankfort/Freud/Nazi school of cultural analysis--although they did have a huge hand in inventing the whole field of study, back in the late forties, as a linguistic means to critique cinema, among other things.

Nowadays the Jewish architect Libeskind is perhaps the most blazing example of the state of current postmodern thought.

[marions ghost]

21. pardon me

but WHO labels neocons "postmodernists" ? Aren't they the opposite?

[sweetheart]

22. see post 20

Hidden Stillness is golden.

It seems there are 2 postmodernismz,

1. is the actual comprehension of postmodernism
2. The faux-apparent comprehension of postmodernism as a metanarrative itself.

Embracing it as a metanarrative, then we ontologically replace
all our true sources with false sources, brittany spears did not copy
madonna, madonna never existed. Like HS said, the elites have used
faux-postmodernism as a lazy excuse to say there is no knowledge except "me",
and that is why it's a bougeouis power-grab.
".., what constitution? Haven't you heard about the unitary exexutive?

I feel so inspired by that post, it is very lucid and gives me great hope that
by lucid people truthtelling, that some great wellspring is unleashed, like
in the inquiry process itself only now, are we alive to be postmodern,
and as the thread ticks off in to archive, it will become part of a metanarrative.

Meta Meta Meta oh boy, n-meta, it seems almost mathematical.

[marions ghost]

23. so I see (I think)

you might say this is what black & white thinkers reduce postmodern theories to --ie. another 'us vs them' which they insist on winning?

So it is neocons themselves who use postmodernism to justify themselves? I'm not up on this but it seems twisted.

[tishaLA]

25. "Postmodernism" is frequently a catchphrase

used by people who have no fucking idea what they're talking about. They think that all irony is "postmodern," etc. It's as insufferable as hearing people say they are going to "deconstruct" the meaning of something when they have never read Writing and Difference.

[marions ghost]

34. Time for re-labelling?

if others have co-opted the term and twisted the meanings?

[Leopolds Ghost]

106. There is none other than faux-postmodernism; postmodernism is false.

As is the notion that morality is relative -- a convenient crutch for the cynicism of jaded, affluent liberals, many of whom have taken over the Democratic Party and yuppified it. Postmodernism is the reincarnation of mannerism, is the reincarnation of sophism and solipsism, not to mention materialism (in both the philosophical and theological sense).

Modernism is false, too, BTW. I agree with the person who said that modernism and postmodernism are coeval. They evolved together. To quote Daniel Lee in typical obscurantist, elitist, anti-intellectual postmodernist fashion: All choices in twos.

Fundamentalism, like all other essentially modern phenomena, has a strong postmodernist tradition, BTW. Anyone with any familiarity in the subject of comparaitve religion (which most pomos are not, since they are non-religious bobos, by-and-large) will recognize whereof I speak.

Fundamentalism as we know it today is an essentially modern/postmodern phenomenon. It would have been unthinkable to the ancients, especially the ones who wrote the bible. The entire premise of this discourse is false (presuming to imagine that Europeans are somewhere in a continuum of postmodern evolution away from the "metanarrative" of ethics and morality towards a brave new world in which there is no reason short of mercenary political practicality for calling oneself a "progressive", hence the rise of political consultants and "horse-race-obsessed" bloggers). Of course, since "progress" is a modern notion that has a different meaning for pomos, the whole concept of "progressive" is useless, especially considering that they have never been anything other than bourgeois coalitions of monkeywrenchers and accomodationist sansculottes standing in the face of every populist revolt in history.

[sweetheart]

109. yet it is operational social reality

You know, like when Max and the Chief put on the "cone of silence"
and neither one could hear anything the other said.

Post 95 says eloquently how it really is.

.. and in looking at it, rejecting it, perhaps as you do
with "really" getting the bible, causing europeans intellectual
trends to reject it utterly, but using a more secular allegory.

[Hidden Stillness]

20. A Selfish Dismissal of Others, Masking as "Philosophy"

"Postmodernism" is self-absorption masking as philosophy, corporate advertising techniques masking as persuasion or, worse yet, psychology, and came straight from the media consultants of the '80s, telling you there was no previous world; all we want are brand names. Authentic Buddhism does not believe that you reduce yourself to "nothing" when you reach Nirvana--one of the biggest mistaken notions--yet the Westerners who never read an authentic text give us the "corporate media version," complete with "individual winners" being rich and privileged, not a class system that guarantees it by shutting us out; "losers" who "choose" to be poor, not a dead-end economic system that will not help them with programs; and silly lectures about "giving others your power" whenever you try to refer to the injustices of society. This plays right into the hands of the rich, capitalist class that has so destroyed our political system and replaced it with themselves, who don't want their class's crimes referred to, exactly because they are guilty. Undeserving stupid people like Bush are not unfairly privileged, so that they win no matter how worthless, drunken and bailed-out they are--no, really there is "no background" to anything anywhere; we all just persevere with our own personality traits.

"Postmodernism" is exactly like "framing": people who refuse to study and learn about an actual issue, then pretend to "encompass the All" by controlling the very wellsprings of emotional responnse and thought-associations themselves--oh, how glorious! How superior to us mere human who have to plod along step by step. They pretend they have reached the very core of understood reality itself, wiser than all others, we who have to think individual thoughts one at a time. They are so isolated in their commercial advertising mind-set of endless present, endless sales pitches, that they have lost the capacity to think of the great span of the past and future, but have contracted to "slogans" and social game-playing. They tell you "there is no self," then you have to wonder, "Then why are you arguing with me, trying to impose your opinion and get rid of mine." Oh, to be so rich and privileged that you never even bump up against an impediment to yourself. The world only works when you try to accept the multiplicity of others, forming a larger whole, working together.

[sweetheart]

64. Thank you for this post

I have not replied to you, your name begs no reply, but i am totally touched
by your piece... it is really moving, kind of ecstatically beautiful indeed.
I've emailed this whole thread to my lecturer friend at a university in
london. I think the thread is better than any philosphy book for the
collision of speakers and the truthfulness and complexity of the challenges.
Single authors are never so comprehensive.

I really love this:

"This plays right into the hands of the rich, capitalist class that has so destroyed our political system and replaced it with themselves, who don't want their class's crimes referred to, exactly because they are guilty. Undeserving stupid people..

there is "no background" to anything anywhere;"

The comment's relationship to postmodernism is irrelevant, it is a spot-on observation,
lucid and very much appreciated, thank you.

[jokerman93]

89. Nice post!

Please write a longer essay sometime. So much essential stuff here.

Great thread!

K&R

[Hissyspit]

121. Thank you for completely misrepresenting complex issues.

And over-generalizing.

[Skidmore]

26. There is a reason I never majored in

philosophy. Over the years, I had forgotten why. Now I remember.

[marions ghost]

35. There's a reason why

I never majored in Economics...I got a D in it. The professor said I was way too philosophical :)
(True)

[Hoping4Change]

27. .

.

[brentspeak]

28. Urgghh. Is that 20th century French philosophy?

Keep me away from all pretentious modern-day philosophy. Especially pretentious modern-day French philosophy! "Post-modernism", "textual analysis", "structuralism", "demiotics"...go away!

I only want to deal with Aristotle and Plato.

[Odin2005]

29. Postmodernism = crazies who reject the notion of truth.

As a scietist, and therefore a person who searches for truth, the fact that people beleive such garbage is frightening.

I myself am a transhumanist and an technogaianist ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technogaianism ), both which get me the ire of DUers who are against genetic engineering, GM crops, etc.

[Hissyspit]

122. Thanks for completely misrepresenting complex issues.

And over-generalizing.

[Nikki Stone 1]

30. Someone on this thread mentioned the Nazi/postmodern connection

I am looking at the source readings in postmodern thought right now (for various classes) and I am convinced that postmodernism is a philosophy (or intellectual lens) that encourages a climate for fascism by making it impossible for intellectuals to be sure of anything. Eeverything is relative, equally legitimate (or illegitimate). This way, intellectuals are stymied, prevented from uniting for any social or political purpose as they did with Marxism in the 20th century. Intellectuals are then neutralized, neutered.

Trust me, the corporations know all about metanarratives: they create them. As does our current government. Remember, the Bush administration official whose famous quote accused liberals of being in the "reality based community." This official said, point blank, "we create reality."

I'd like to know more about the Nazi connection to postmodernism as I think that would be very instructive.

[Odin2005]

32. Bingo, it's a tool of the corporatists.

The Neo-Liberals blathering about the "End of Ideology" are spreading a postmodernist message.

[Nikki Stone 1]

36. I think so. Is there any documentation of the connection?

??

[rman]

100. Nitzche/nihilism, perhaps

Even though it looks like Nitzche himself was not a nihilist, it also looks like the Nazis used him to promote nihilism.

[marions ghost]

37. Where

did you get this idea? "Neo-liberals" spreading 'postmodernism' ... like it's some kind of infectious disease? Whatever you might think about it, yea or nay, it's really not this Level Red danger to society.

[sweetheart]

38. Its good that we talk about it, to clear up those bugbears

I am very chuffed at some of the contributions in this thread,
if some downthread read upthread, they'd be better armed for
what they're not talking about. ;-)

I think part of the problem, is that there "IS" a social phenomenon
that is exploited by corporatists, "there is no truth", and to say
that it has no relationship with ideology is not entirely true,
and we are cheated of the ability to discuss the facile phenomenon.

You're asking for terms upthread, and i havene't read that yet,
perhaps you're suggesting similarly.

[Nikki Stone 1]

39. Ah, sweetheart, I dare ya!

In plain English (as opposed to Foucaultese or Derridaese or Lacanese, etc.) explain what a postmodern world view actually is. For example: What does a postmodernist believe about truth? Does it exist? not? is it even important as a concept? Is it only one concept among many?

Go to town, sweetie, and pontificate to your heart's content, provided that it's in everyday English (as much as possible, at any rate.)

I dare ya!

Nikki

[sweetheart]

41. not me sweetie

trishla is pretty good, yes? She and other writers up, wrote
it better than i can, and better than you know i can, hence
the dig, i get it.

My point, is rather, that we need to know and discuss this
topic, as it is highly relevent to us taking back our public
common from the neofreakers.... and i'm not embarassed to be
ignorant. I need a better langage for framing this issue of
cultural ignorance, the 10000 channels of TV syndrome of cynical
(now endicted!! ) rovaian malaise.

But as you ask, here's a go...

I define postmodernism as a worldview without pre-conception. If there is
no preconception, truth is relative to a moment, and a geography, even
if that geography is the set of all of the rooms in which the internet
terminals of the contributors and readers to this thread preside. Without preconception,
knowledge is not describable under any heirarchy of frames, nor is it a concept,
nor is truth a concept, rather something present in this moment.

That aside, we need a better name for the facil cultural phenomenon
that Hidden Stillness eloquently describes, whether or not "postmodernism"
is an accurate word for the philosophy, it is the bastardized child then,
"neo-postmodernism"

[Nikki Stone 1]

42. A title that contradicts the actual post: post modern? or post-post-modern

That being said, the idea of a world without preconception basically translates into "the empirical world as it is, without human cognition interpreting it."

Of course, since all human knowledge is a product of human cognition interacting with empirical reality, we are, as I said in a previous post, stymied as intellectuals. We can't even posit anything as existing, even our own thinking process (as Descartes did). All "knowledge" becomes suspect, ends up in quote marks. Even science.

So I have three questions.

1. Isn't the idea of "a world without preconception" basically a mental construct, and should we reject even that formulation as entirely suspect as a figment of the human brain?

2. Whose interest does it serve that intellectuals and other fine brains are stymied and prevented from asserting any kind of knowledge, assuming that it is all a product of preconception/human cognition?


3. Should a postmodernist take an antibiotic?

[sweetheart]

44. If it is a mental construct, yes

1. If it is a mental construct, yes; if it is a world without preconception, no.
How will you know? You'll know because truth is with you in this moment.

2. I think i started this thread to discuss and explore
a random walk on a subject i'm fascinated-by today. And as
we are exploring, the temple-school is near-offended to be
labelled with their colloquial label. I really am not planning
to discuss philosphy in abstract, but in application, where
the rubber meets the culture... where bush can put forward
any truth and it can't be challenged, because "everyone has an opinion."

3. In this moment, a postmodernist might realize that an antibiotic
was the right thing to do, and they might rationalize it with a load of
meta-narrative, and that may all lead to a empirical decision. Why
that empirical action transpired, is forever a mystery of life.

[Nikki Stone 1]

51. If human knowledge is a mental construct, then

My knowledge (or even belief) that there is a world without preconception then is a mental construct. No if about it. Even your answer betrays human knowledge as the problem:

"if it is a world without preconception, no.
How will you know? You'll know because truth is with you in this moment."

(I assume you mean, "if there is a world without preconception".)

The problem is that any world without preconception--ie empirical reality--I would have no way of knowing outside my own cognition. Yes, it may exist right next to me. Whatever it is. But I have no way of experiencing it, knowing it, without my brain structures (that organize it) and my personal and social experience (which give it meaning.) But I never really know it at all. I only know the construction my socialized brain makes of it. So I have no real way of truly knowing whether or not it exists.

That's the conundrum.

It's like that old koan, if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? A physicist might argue that the question of "sound" is perceptual but that the tree falling does indeed create a sound wave that can be measured without a human ear actually having to hear anything. I can measure the soundwave with a computer program and have that information transferred to me at another location. I don't have to be there to hear the sound to know that the sound wave exists. Of course, it the computer program is a product of my own compromised human knowledge and my visualand cognitive perception of a sine wave is also compromised knowledge, part of human cognition and part of a paradigm, then I can't even trust the wave I see in front of me.



Now, for question #2

I asked you who benefits by keeping intellectuals mired in a philosophical conundrum, and in a state where they cannot really claim to know anything? If postmodernism had remained in the discipline of philosophy and had left the attempt at developing knowledge systems alone, it would be an intellectual exercise to be enjoyed over a glass of old cognac, provided one had tenure. However, Derrida, Foucault and their ilk have permeated many fields, including empirical ones. And postmodernist concepts have indeed extended out beyond the ivory tower to the more rough and tumble world of politics. So the question "whose good does postmodernism serve" is not unimportant. It's actually crucial.

Here is your answer:

"2. I think i started this thread to discuss and explore
a random walk on a subject i'm fascinated-by today. And as
we are exploring, the temple-school is near-offended to be
labelled with their colloquial label. I really am not planning
to discuss philosphy in abstract, but in application, where
the rubber meets the culture... where bush can put forward
any truth and it can't be challenged, because "everyone has an o"

I'll take a stab at responding to this response.

First, I don't know if it is possible to "explore a random walk on a subject" like postmodernism. The question in your OP implies many things and you're going to get a lot of responses, serious ones. Being prepared for those questions might be helpful.

You also say, "I really am not planning to discuss philosphy in abstract, but in application, where the rubber meets the culture... where bush can put forward any truth and it can't be challenged, because "everyone has an o"

This is exactly the point. Your view of Bush implies that postmodernism values all opinions equally. That there is no reality, but just a lot of equal opinions. That particular view of postmodernism has direct political consequences. And my question, "Whose good does it serve" is actually in your complaint to me: it clearly serves the interests of Bush and any "decider" or dictator wannabe that gets into high office. This is precisely the reason I distrust much of postmodern thought, at least in the applications I have seen. (Provided that postmodern has a definition at all.) Postmodernism seems to excuse all sins and lead us on the road to fascism.

Finally, the #3 question about the antibiotic was not frivolous: if the postmodern view is that all opinions are equally valid, all knowledge suspect, and all approaches to a problem feasible, then I could just get Pat Robertson to pray over my upper respiratory infection and not bother with the antibiotics. For a someone who has no way of categorizing or evaluating different types of human knowledge, one approach is as good as any other. I could either get Augmentin or have someone screaming to Jesus over my head and it would all result in the same thing.

[tishaLA]

56. Re: your assertion that

"the postmodern view is that all opinions are equally valid": where do you get this? Which postmodernist has ever said this? It reads like a parody of postmodernism that has absolutely no roots in the thing itself.

And again, I wonder, as I did in another post, how Derrida and Foucault make their ways into discussions about postmodernism. One is a practitioner of deconstruction; the other a poststructuralist. Neither is a philosopher of postmodernism and neither has written about postmodernity.

[Nikki Stone 1]

58. OK: Define postmodernism. (And I'm serious in my request)

I have YET to see a definition that makes any sense. Define postmodernism, describe it, give some examples. Prove me wrong.

All people seem to be able to tell me today is what postmodernism is not--and they disagree on that!

So, go for it. I am really serious here. It would be nice to clear this damned thing up.

:)

[tishaLA]

48. Well, it's entirely possible

To explain postmodernism without "Foucaultese or Derridaese or Lacanese"? Why? Because Foucault was a poststructuralist, not a postmodernist and there's a difference, as anyone who has read poststructuralist and postmodernist philosophy should know. Derrida practiced deconstruction and never, ever mentioned postmodernism in his work. And Lacan, of course, was a structuralist whose arguments have frequently been appropriated by poststructuralists and postmodernists.

And, of course, the Nazi claims were also made against deconstruction, especially after de Man's death and the discovery of his writings in Le Soir. There's a whole volume about the "controversy," but it has nothing--yet again--do do with postmodernism. It does, however, have a great deal to do with deconstruction and how we read.

[alcibiades_mystery]

54. LOL

Exactly.

[Nikki Stone 1]

59. Well then do it! You're on. (And I'm serious)

Define what it is.

(I should create a prize for this one.)

And, if you think that postmodernism and poststructuralism are still not merged enough in academia to be indistinct, then school me on the differences.

I am actually serious about this.

[tishaLA]

62. For the distinction between postmodernism and

poststructuralism, I'd direct you to Judith Butler's chapter in Feminists Theorize the Political (Butler and Joan W. Scott, eds.); it's called "Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of 'Postmodernism.'" As you can well imagine, the argument is intricate and I would do a disservice if I were to try to give a shorthand explanation of it, but it comes down to the Foucauldian underpinnings of poststructuralism. As Butler correctly argues, the poststructuralist position, with which she aligns herself, is about power and its vicissitudes. As Butler writes, "power pervades the very conceptual apparatus that seeks to negotiate (poststructuralism's) terms, including the subject position of the critic; and further, that this implication of the terms of criticism in the field of power is not the advent of the nihilistic relativism incapable of furnishing norms, but, rather, the very precondition of politically engaged critique. (...) (T)he task is to interrogate what the theoretical move that establishes foundations authorizes and what precisely it excludes of forecloses." It also emerges from a different strain of thought (namely, structuralist discourses like psychoanalysis, linguistics, etc) and works as to investigate, from a philosophical perspective, the assumptions of each of these discourses. Seminal texts: Foucault's Discipline and Punish; Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus.

BTW, I don't apologize for the specialized vocabulary here; it is a specialized field of knowledge and something I teach. We may critique modernist conceptions of mastery, but that doesn't mean we don't have specialized knowledge.

Postmodernism shares poststructuralism's critique of the Modern subject, but it arrives at that critique differently. But I think it is impossible to "define" postmodernism, just as it is impossible to "define" any field of philosophy; it pretends we can give a unitary answer to a complex collectivity known by the same sign (to borrow a thoroughly structuralist trope). Postmodernism, generally speaking, critiques metanarratives and the universalizing, transcendent ethos characteristic of Cartesian and post-Cartesian thought--the death of the modernist cogito. It believes in particularities instead of universals; it contests the division between high and low culture; it looks toward fractures in temporality, epistemology, and ontology instead of the modernist insistence on linear knowledge and the modernist myth of progress. It loves the simulacra and disregards das Ding as a Kantian mythos. It is a an aesthetic sensibility in art, music, and architecture as well as a philosophical school. Seminal texts: Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition; Jameson, Postmodernism; Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (for its Hegelian critique).

But then, these are things people who actually read poststructuralist and postmodernist thought should already know.

[alcibiades_mystery]

68. No apologies for the specialized vocabulary

I completely agree.

You rarely see these calls when people are studying advanced physics, but they scream for so-called "plain English" when attacking people like Derrida who was 1) working with advanced philosophy and, more importantly, 2) attempting to perform in his writing the deconstruction of signifying systems.

No one expects to pick up an advanced physics textbook and "get it" all immediately without a background in physics, but people expect to pick up Derrida without background in philosophy and "get it" right away. No, it's difficult, and necessarily so, because the concepts are difficult, the terminology is specific to a discipline, and Derrida is attempt to "communicate a tremor" (as he says in Signature Event Context within those disciplinary concepts and terminologies. Of course it's not easy. He's taking on the very sedimented notions of signification itself, within signification. That is, in plain English, he has to challenge meaning from within the system of meaning, and make language do something else. And they're damn right it's a political project. I'm glad I had the patience and good teachers to study it.

That said, Foucault is a remakably lucid writer, if a bit baroque in style, and anyone who says he isn't hasn't read much Foucault. What's the point of Discipline and Punish? "Visibility is a trap." Wow! That was hard! :eyes:

[Nikki Stone 1]

76. I would like Alcibiades_mystery and marion's ghost to look at this, too

Thank you for being kind enough to answer my question. You and I actually see pretty similarly here, although I have some critiques. But others on this thread see things very differently, and I invite them to come here and look at this.

I'll start by trying to translate some of this for my feeble brain. You tell me if I understand it.

1. Re: Foucauldian underpinnings of poststructuralism

Foucault is at the base of poststructuralism. Mkay

Quote:

As Butler writes, "power pervades the very conceptual apparatus that seeks to negotiate (poststructuralism's) terms, including the subject position of the critic;


* The whole jist of Foucault's theory and all the terms he uses revolve around power. This focus on power includes even the power of the person writing the article, book or journal.

"...and further, that this implication of the terms of criticism in the field of power is not the advent of the nihilistic relativism incapable of furnishing norms, but, rather, the very precondition of politically engaged critique. (...)"


* A Foucault-inspired approach, focusing on the power relations behind knowledge, doesn't lead us to a complete relativism that destroys any sense of standards. This approach actually is crucial if we're going to address the politics behind knowledge, theories, etc.




"...(T)he task is to interrogate what the theoretical move that establishes foundations authorizes and what precisely it excludes of forecloses."



* Our job as theorists is to find out what the new theoretical paradigm allows and what it doesn't allow.


Now this is interesting. The "theoretical move" (paradigm shift) actually establishes the foundations of the new paradigm . This means that the new foundations, like those of a building, have boundaries, limits and certain shapes, if you will, that can come from it. So the new paradigm is like a car frame that only certain kinds of cars can be built on. The frame could produce a Toyota Camry, a Lexus, even a small SUV, but not a Ford Aerostar. Seems simple.

But my question is, how can Butler even evaluate what this theoretical framework can hold or produce without that evaluation ALSO being politically compromised? Even the idea of the paradigm/theoretical shift/"frame"--the foundation that can allow or not allow-- is itself a construct, and one motivated by certain considerations of power within the academy. How does Bulter know that the theoretical limits she is perceiving are not politically motivated in her own perception?


Moving on to your comments:


"It also emerges from a different strain of thought (namely, structuralist discourses like psychoanalysis, linguistics, etc) and works as to investigate, from a philosophical perspective, the assumptions of each of these discourses. Seminal texts: Foucault's Discipline and Punish; Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus."

While I thank you for the references, I always wonder at these areas and how differently they have evolved. Freud, Lacan and Kristeva were certainly important to critical theory, but I can't speak for modern psychoanalysis; like many fields, the study of the human psyche has moved on from Freud, and Freud's own shortcomings (including his failure with Anna O who was, in fact, a victim of sexual abuse) have been explored and many of his ideas have been debunked. The linguistics you mention moved on from structuralism with Noam Chomsky in the early 1960s with "Aspects of the Theory of Syntax". There is still structuralist inspiration in certain areas of linguistics, but much of linguistics has now been married to the research of human cognition (psycholinguistics) and neurology. The linguistics precursor to post-structuralism was primarily Saussure, and he is the one most often referenced by critical theorists talking about linguistics, even though Saussure's work is a century old and much has happened since. Also, Saussure's great insight into the arbitrariness of the signifier/signified relationship (referring to sound material (morphs) and real world concept) has been inappropriately applied in cultural theory. But that's another story....


Now for post modernism:


" Postmodernism shares poststructuralism's critique of the Modern subject, but it arrives at that critique differently."

*OK, now I have just been lambasted by Alcibiades (on this very thread) for seeing links between poststructuralism (Foucault) and postmodernism. Alcibiades, if you're reading this, understand my confusion. The two terms and schools of thought HAVE been joined, confused, possibly conflated--and it's not my doing. Heh. :D


"But I think it is impossible to "define" postmodernism, just as it is impossible to "define" any field of philosophy;"

*Actually, I have seen pretty decent definitions of logical positivism, for example. My feeble brain can usually get the jist of a school of thought. But postmodernism is just so diffuse that I can't get the jist. And even professors with Yale PhD's--critical theorists I know personally--can't describe, define or otherwise delineate it. Some take a stab at it, some just say it's undefinable and move on. It reminds me most of religion in this way. It's like my Catholic nuns and priests who couldn't explain how the Trinity worked and just moved on to the next thing.

"..it pretends we can give a unitary answer to a complex collectivity known by the same sign (to borrow a thoroughly structuralist trope). "

*But language CAN do this. A complex collectivity can be delineated, even if all the little portions of it don't exactly interconnect or even if they contradict each other. If I ask, what is Christianity (which is a pretty large signifier) there are certain things that it takes for most people to be identified as Christian or to identify themselves as Christian. One may be personal/family identification, one may be a belief (however vague) in Jesus as having existed, as having been a spiritual teacher, as having been somehow divine (and even Christians differ on what this could mean), as acknowledging the New Testament (though this also varies greatly)--and so on. You see what I mean here?

Maybe the better question is what does a postmodernist believe? Or what beliefs is s/he associated with? Who are their heros? Who are their boogeymen/devils? What do they believe about the state of truth? Of humanity?

"Postmodernism, generally speaking, critiques metanarratives and the universalizing, transcendent ethos characteristic of Cartesian and post-Cartesian thought--the death of the modernist cogito."


***There's a lot here. The metanarrative thing is what the OP glommed onto. The idea is that societies (or powerful people in these societies) build metanarratives and the groups lives by them. Postmodernism came out of Germany, yes? If so, that is very interesting, because the Germans were doing nothing but building the metanarrative of Germany and German nationalism in the 19th century. Germany was not officially united until the mid 1800s (1870s I believe). German unification involved more than politico-geographical unification--it involved creating the idea of "Germanness" to unite the people of all these disparate areas. Scholars like Herder and musicians like Wagner (among many others) were trying to discover the "German national soul" and create a metanarrative for Germany that would allow for a common, single, unifying national identity. Wagner's Ring reads like a new German mythology in this context. Of course, this metanarrative of Germany got taken up by the Third Reich and we saw what happened then.

But it makes sense to me that critiquing metanarratives would be a 20th century concern since the creation of these narratives had been the work of the century before. Interesting.


"It believes in particularities instead of universals;"

And this is what many people have problems with. This does indeed seem like the slippery slope to standardless relativism, like the kind Judith Butler references. How much of this belief is politically motivated (the prevention of another Third Reich) and how much is directed at science?

"it contests the division between high and low culture;"

Yes. No problem here. Marion's Ghost asked me where I got the high culture/low culture thing. Here it is.

"it looks toward fractures in temporality, epistemology, and ontology instead of the modernist insistence on linear knowledge and the modernist myth of progress."


*Yes. And this is where I have political concerns. Progress as a metanarrative, ok, no problem there. But the rejection of linear/logical knowledge in favor of this fractured way of knowing? This seems to connect to the multiplicity of perspectives in poststructuralism.

"It loves the simulacra and disregards das Ding as a Kantian mythos."

Can someone go into this in more depth?

"It is a an aesthetic sensibility in art, music, and architecture as well as a philosophical school."


Yes. Got that.

"Seminal texts: Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition; Jameson, Postmodernism; Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (for its Hegelian critique)."

Thank you.

[tishaLA]

96. There's really too much here to respond to

and I'd probably do better to do this off the thread because I fear I am taking up space here that could better be used for more properly political discussions. I'd suggest that you re-read what I cited from Butler *and* read the Butler piece itself; I think you still haven't grasped it, primarily because I think you are reading it with a preconception about what you think it says or is supposed to say. A quick quotation from Deleuze might clarify it--and alcibiades_mystery has already been outed as a Deleuzian (which is to say a Spinozan or a Liebnitzian):

No theory can develop without eventually encountering a wall, and practice is necessary for piercing this wall. For example, your (he is speaking with Foucault) work began in the theoretical analysis of the context of confinement, specifically with respect to the psychiatric asylum within a capitalist society in the nineteenth century. Then you became aware of the necessity for confined individuals to speak for themselves, to create a relay (it's possible, on the contrary, that your function was already that of a relay in relation to them); and this group is found in prisons -- these individuals are imprisoned. It was on this basis that You organized the information group for prisons (G.I.P.), the object being to create conditions that permit the prisoners themselves to speak. (...) This was not an application; nor was it a project for initiating reforms or an enquiry in the traditional sense. The emphasis was altogether different: a system of relays within a larger sphere, within a multiplicity of parts that are both theoretical and practical. A theorising intellectual, for us, is no longer a subject, a representing or representative consciousness. Those who act and struggle are no longer represented, either by a group or a union that appropriates the right to stand as their conscience. Who speaks and acts? It is always a multiplicity, even within the person who speaks and acts. All of us are "groupuscules." Read the Whole Thing Here

That said, let me go over a few points quickly: about the idea of linear narratives....linear narratives and narratives about progress are things that we impose onto something to make sense of them. "Linear" narratives and narratives of progress are only true through retroactive signification and only have meaning because the narrative structure itself has made a series of events, quite possibly unrelated to one another, has made them cohere.

I am totally unclear where you get this fascination with Germany and its overarching power over postmodernism or poststructuralism. There aren't many Germans involved in this at all--Niklas Luhman does system theory, but I am not sure how it relates to pomo or poststructuralist debates (I am woefully ignorant of it). Certainly postmodernist thought does not have its roots in Germany. And, I should be clear, that this is just not right: "societies (or powerful people in these societies) build metanarratives and the groups lives by them." To say "societies" and "powerful people in societies" is to say radically discontinuous things; the first is more accurate and the second less so. Similarly, I'd disagree with the contention that "groups live by" the metanarratives, but that the narratives become so ingrained in the ethos of the community that they are naturalized as Truth.

You also reference the Third Reich when you confront the quotation about particularities vs. universals. I am not sure why, though. Many feminist writers (even second wave feminist writers) have written about the "politics of location." The war is not on science--although postmodernism, loosely defined, has helped feminist scientists perform critiques of the scientific project, just as it has allowed African-American scientists to make specific claims about the epistemological implications of research. But I believe we generally see the emphasis on particularity as a movement away from claims of transcendent subjectivity and, once again, metanarratives. To think about it from an historical standpoint for a second: we know that the national narrative concerns the movement from theocracy to Enlightenment to Revolution, etc. But feminist historian/historiographers will tell you to look away from the universalizing claims of the metanarrative and toward the particular found in women's diaries, in letters to sisters and lovers, etc.

I'd also say that if I led you to believe that Foucault is "at the base" of poststructuralism, I was insufficiently clear. I think the concern with power is an important element in the poststructuralist argument; Foucault is an exemplar of this but NOT the foundation of it. Very poor word choice on my part. My friend alcibiades_mystery can jump in to rescue me from myself at this point.

Finally, one of the reasons you don't get a satisfying answer to the question "what is postmodernism?" is because postmodernism critiques foundational claims. It would be patently absurd to have a critique of foundationalism that itself is foundational. It's sort of like having an anarchist convention: an utterly absurd idea. What we can say, though, is that those who theorize it share some beliefs

[alcibiades_mystery]

53. They believe radically different things

Foucault's understanding of truth is not the same as Derrida's, and neither's is much like Lacan's at all.

[Nikki Stone 1]

60. They are different to be sure, but all create instability which

seems to be all the rage at the university. Finer points seem to get lost.

If you're a good explainer, I'll read your explanation. Really, this is a genuine request.

[alcibiades_mystery]

66. First, you have to explain what you mean by "create instability"

It's a curious notion, to be sure.

[sweetheart]

70. Ok ,you guys, don't bullshit me

If one of ya knows something, please, out with it, the
anticipation is killing the audience. :-)

I'm honestly hoping you really smart persons realize how much
you've been sold out by misteaching and obscurity... so please
"clarity" and less personal egos talking.

10000% of du's particpants are lurkers, uneducated people who
would be very grateful for an honest teaching from someone who
obviously knows whatever contribution. That's kinda what i'm
hoping in this thread... people know a LLLOOOTT here, and
it needs to move downmarket in to the mianstream, in to
popular cultre or we'll all die like dodos...

[Nikki Stone 1]

78. Well teach away! Everyone's entitled to an opinion, yes?

:)

[sweetheart]

103. yes

I've got some reading to catch up in this thead, so
i've got a coupla questions though, running.

I thought wrongly that the temple could discuss this
in more common language, and rather instead, its become
an initiate discussion... all the while the mob has set
fire around the base of the tower.. as by popular understanding,
it does look like postmodernism is a very different thing.

Reconciling the misunderstanding of postmodernism with
postmodernism reminds me of Baudrillard and this passage
and the allegory of the borges fable:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0472065211/ref=sib_dp_pt/104-3374738-1483149#reader-page

The next page too, ..

"...It is no longer anything but operational. In fact, it is no longer
really the real, because no imaginary envolops it anymore. It is
hypperrreal, produced from a radiating synthesis of combinatory models
in a hyperspace without atmosphere."

This operational hypperreal is the same thing people are complaining
about on DU as "postmodern"

[Nikki Stone 1]

77. I've invited you to another posting on this thread, but I'll explain here

Derrida creates instability lingustically and conceptually by undermining binaries at the base of philosophical reasoning. In Plato's Pharmacy, he makes it very clear that "pharmakon" is both a good thing and bad thing, a blessing and a curse, with no way of creating a single meaning, a single binary. Derrida also, in practical terms, destablizes the reader (at least he did me!) by rejecting language as a transparent vehicle for meaning, and instead he makes the reader wrestle with language to force the reader to be aware of its presence. One could say he destablizes the philosophical tradition and the tradition of writing.

Foucault, in challenging the motivations behind knowledge and creating the notion of discourses, destablizes our certainty of knowing anything outside the discourses of our time. Said jumps on this notion in Orientalism, and basically makes the claim that the West doesn't know the Orient at all, only its own discourse about the Orient.


That's what I meant. So fire away. :)

[alcibiades_mystery]

85. Sounds about right

What's the problem?

[marions ghost]

40. well this topic is more

relevant re the political situation than I thought. Yeah bugbears is right. Back when I was in school postmodernism etc was something chewed on by philosophy/literature/art scholars in dusty academic offices, but apparently it has now become negatively politicized and is out there in the mainstream as some kind of radical 'neo-liberal' (whatever that is) cult--scary people who want to take "truth" away from others (LOL)--eh? Interesting...I've learned something here

To B cont. Suggest to perhaps throw out some of your deeper Q relating to history and politics sometime in GD politics where they wont sink quite as quickly. :)

[Nikki Stone 1]

43. Ideas have social and political consequences, marions ghost

Nothing is pure. Postmodernists should know that. They should celebrate the mixing of high and low culture, of the abstruse world of academe and the more rough and tumble world of DU General Discussion.

And speaking of high and low, remember this?

" "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Very postmodern. Reality is what certain people (elites) make it. People of a more scientific bent are just documenters, not finders of truth.

That quote has always seemed ripe for a Greek tragedy.

[marions ghost]

45. whats this high and low?

of course I celebrate the mixing of high and low culture, for what that's worth. But of course. Why do you imply I think otherwise? :shrug: I don't get you on that.

Re that "We're an empire now..." quote (from Strauss? is it?) --yes very Greek tragdy, but NOT "postmodern." NO, not postmodern at all. I did study it way back in school.

Of course ideas have social and political consequences. But I think from reading this thread that many people do not understand the meaning of postmodernism, pure, impure, or otherwise.

[Nikki Stone 1]

47. It's from an "unnamed administration official" inspired by Strauss

And it is very much a postmodernist perspective. It results from the view that there is no real reality--reality is a human construct. It is a rather brutal application of the idea, no doubt, but postmodernism is its parent.

And as far as people misunderstanding postmodernism, it is really no wonder. So far, no one post on this thread has really defined it well. That is not the fault of the posters but of the theoreticians who seem to have great difficulty defining the term itself. There are entire books and dissertations written trying to express the term, and these works betray a real lack of unity in conceptualization. There are professors I know with PhD's from Yale who can't get out any kind of coherent definition even in class seminars with graduate students. Mostly, academics talk AROUND the term, assuming that everyone is understanding the term in the same fuzzy way they understand it.

If the average Joe doesn't understand what postmodernism is, it's not because the average Joe is stupid. It's because the academic establishment has not and cannot properly explain it.

[marions ghost]

50. seems to me that

"unnamed administration official" and his ilk have co-opted 'postmodernism' to justify their fascist beliefs. No way that the basis of postmodernism is fascist. What a wild distortion--WHERE are you getting this idea from? WHO puts this out? Seriously I wouldn't mind reading any sources on that. It does not jive with my understanding of postmodern whatsoever. Nah, postmodernism is not the parent of Straussian thinking--but Machiavelli is.

Why would the fact that the average Joe hasn't got a clue about postmodernism mean that he is stupid? Did I say or imply that? I don't have a clue about nuclear physics, but I am not stupid. So because the average person can't wrap their head around the complexities of the whole postmodern thing, it is because it has not been "adequately explained?" Is this something that NEEDS to be explained to the average Joe? Do I NEED to have nuclear physics explained to me? I've gotten along fine without it so far. Or is the postmodernist "threat" something that can be used to convince the average Joe that intellectuals like Gore and Kerry are evil and he needs to vote for Bushco?

A lot of topics that seem "fuzzy" are batted around by theoreticians and not explained in concrete terms all the time. So? Does everything that is evolving have to be instantly fixed in stone so we can all know precisely what it is and what it is not? Most big picture concepts do not fit into multiple choice questions.

[Nikki Stone 1]

57. Ideas all end up being co-opted in the end

But something intrinsic to the idea allows it to be co-opted in a particular way. If one believes in a quest for a single truth, be it through empirical science or a religion like Christianity, one could not claim to be "creating reality" but, rather, reflecting the true reality that exists. (Everyone else would be incorrect in their theorizing, have the wrong data, or (in the case of religion) following the devil.)

For this official to be claiming to create reality with such assurance and in such certain opposition to science (the measuring of reality mentioned in the quote), the official had to be working from an established paradigm. Political flunkies don't pull this stuff out of their noses. It had to come from a conceptual paradigm that is "out there". And postmodernism, in its multiplicity of realities, its affirmation of fragmentation and multifaceted perspectives, is the only popular paradigm "out there" that fits the APB.

However, I am interested in what your perspective on postmodernism is from what you read years ago. I would ask you to keep in mind, though, that academic scholarship moves on, and that new theory may have toppled some of the tenents you were taught. It often happens that way. Nonetheless, it would be really instructive to hear what you were taught.


Now, in regard to the stupid average Joe issue and academic clarity:


You did say this in your post previous to mine:

"But I think from reading this thread that many people do not understand the meaning of postmodernism, pure, impure, or otherwise. "

My response to you about the average Joe was directed at this. The fault is not with the average Joe but with the academy. The term "postmodernism" is thrown around by lots of humanities types, including journalists, many of whom were taught about postmodernism, who read Foucault or Derrida or Said in literature class. But because the academy cannot adequately explain to college students what they mean by postmodernism, the college graduates are not totally clear either, and pass these ideas on to the public according to their own (possibly incomplete) understandings. (Very postmodern, this. :))

The comparison you make to nuclear physics is not really apt here. In my day to day life, I will not have to make a decision as to whether or not a certain subatomic particle really exists or not. The only physics I might care about concerns nuclear power or nuclear weapons, and for this, I can go to books or websites on line. Physicists are pretty clear about the state of their theories (at least to grad students), and usually know what their theories predict and what their uncertainties are. Physics teachers and popular writers on physics can make it very clear to the average Joe what current theories predict about certain types of nuclear power or what a mini-nuke's result might be.

Postmodern scholars, on the other hand, can't even tell us what it means to be postmodern! They have a conglomeration of views, perspectives, and beliefs from different fields, and can't seem to come to an agreement on a definition, let alone a tenent. They use a language that is guaranteed to be confusing to a neophyte.

Yet, postmodernism is actually more important in many ways to the average Joe than is nuclear physics. Postmodernism influences the thinking patterns of the teachers in schools, the politicians running the country, the journalists reporting events, etc. If one of the most identifiable landmarks of postmodernism is its acknowledgement of multiple perspectives and a rejection of the concept of objectivity, then this leads (simplistically, but it still leads) to a belief that all opinions are equally valid. This can give the average Joe a false sense of expertise, that he has the right to an opinion on anything, without studying the issue, without experience. And where does Joe get his opinions? From his neighbors, from his political leaders, from his preacher, etc.

I happen to think that fascism results when people cease to think about issues, when they cease to tie cause and effect. When they are capable of believing the impossible (or at very least the highly improbable) because they have no basis on which to evaluate opinions.

What happens when we discover something is amiss? We try to convince others with arguments. Arguments depend on logic, on the idea of objective truth. Postmodernism shakes these foundations--sometimes for laudable reasons, sometimes not. But, in the end, it leaves people without a shared reality, but a multiplicity of realities and possible realities. And without a way to convince others on any shared ground. It takes away our ability to fight oppression even as it bears down on us.

[marions ghost]

71. can you

cite any reference that links the conceptual paradigms of the Straussian 'unnamed official' ( a neocon) with postmodernism? I can't find any.

Physics being a hard science may be easier to explain in concrete terms, but I still argue that Joe and I don't need to know a whole lot about it.

So Joe has a "false sense of expertise" therefore he relies on his neighbors, leaders, preachers. Doesn't Joe have a right to get his opinions from those people? It seems far-fetched to blame Joe's myopia and "false sense of expertise" on postmodernist influences. How about corporate-owned journalists, exploitative politicians, controlling fundy preachers?

A 'multiplicity of realities' may require a multiplicity of approaches. But there is still common ground. If you can show me a reference to something that explains why I as a liberal should be taking up the banner against postmodernism, go ahead. It makes no sense to me.

[alcibiades_mystery]

73. Oh, you'll find some crazy stuff attempting a connection

Mostly through Kojeve, the Hegelian scholar with whom Strauss was friends. Never mind that Foucault spnt most of his life attempting to undermine Kojeve's reading of Hegel. That's all something we call "details" and don't like to talk about, and never mind that Kojeve was an out-and-out Bolshevik, and Strauss an analyst of natural right. Again, details, details...

:eyes:

[marions ghost]

74. so what do you think

of the idea that postmodernism supports neocon (or fascist thinking?) I thought neocon was a reaction to postmodern challenges. I don't see postmodern ideas as a solution to the perils of modernism necessarily either, although there seem to be some useful concepts there. Is postmodernism really all that big a factor in what is playing out politically in the US right now? Perhaps it's there in a certain cynicism it promotes...but I just don't see it as a big part of the corruption.

[alcibiades_mystery]

84. There is no need to fear or hope

As I understand it, is a name given to an analysis of contemporary societies, by people like Frederic Jameson and Jean-Francois Lyotard. Both were writing about "postmodernism" in the late-1970's and (Jameson particularly) 1980's. Both laid out a number of observations about the structual changes in social practices, and these have been hashed out perhaps too many times since then (the nostalgia mode, end of the individual style in art, pastiche, "end" of grand narratives, etc., etc.). Jameson has since made significant amendments to the postmodernism thesis, particularly in A Singular Modernity. In general, I take the term to be a periodizing concept rather than a description of a set of "ideas." As a periodizing concept, I think it is pretty accurate, although perhaps it named a period that we are already coming out of. To say that we have entered into a new period is not to say that the forms of the older period disappear utterly. Rather, within a confisguration of forces, the new forms are predominant. One easy symptom of postmodernity is currency as a measure of value. Once currency is off the gold standard (1973?), it is a sign tnat no longer refers outside itself. Now clearly, the sign was always arbitrary (thoroughly modern Francois deSaussure argues as much, but so does Gottlieb Frege, really), but now the sign is more than abitrary: it's meaning is established only through its relations to other signs. It no longer points outside itself. The difference is one between metaphor and metonymy. That the same thing seems to happen nin the famous linguistic turn indicates that a broader shift is afoot. Now, mind you, Jameson is a Marxist, and he was critiquing the situation of postmodernism. Lyotard was more hopeful. I tend to side with Deleuze on these matters. In his wonderful little "periodizing" essay Postscript on Control Societies, Deleuze says the following, and I think he's right on:

We are in a generalized crisis in relation to all the environments of enclosure--prison, hospital, factory, school, family. The family is an "interior," in crisis like all other interiors--scholarly, professional, etc. The administrations in charge never cease announcing supposedly necessary reforms: to reform schools, to reform industries, hospitals, the armed forces, prisons. But everyone knows that these institutions are finished, whatever the length of their expiration periods. It's only a matter of administering their last rites and of keeping people employed until the installation of the new forces knocking at the door. These are the societies of control, which are in the process of replacing disciplinary societies. "Control" is the name Burroughs proposes as a term for the new monster, one that Foucault recognizes as our immediate future. Paul Virilio also is continually analyzing the ultrarapid forms of free-floating control that replaced the old disciplines operating in the time frame of a closed system. There is no need to invoke the extraordinary pharmaceutical productions, the molecular engineering, the genetic manipulations, although these are slated to enter the new process. There is no need to ask which is the toughest regime, for it's within each of them that liberating and enslaving forces confront one another. For example, in the crisis of the hospital as environment of enclosure, neighborhood clinics, hospices, and day care could at first express new freedom, but they could participate as well in mechanisms of control that are equal to the harshest of confinements. There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons.

[Nikki Stone 1]

81. But you said postmodernism is not related to Foucault

So let's take him out of your remark.

This leaves us with the idea that Strauss was friends with Kojeve, a Hegelian scholar. That's nice. But that doesn't have anything to do with what I recognized as a postmodern perspective in that quote by the White House official. I explain my perspective (which actually isn't an ignorant one) on the answer to Marions ghost. You can read it there.

For the record, if you do follow Foucault, and believe that there are discourses that we get stuck in, regardless of our best intentions, then it's no surprise that neocons--many of whom are Ivy League trained--should be stuck in the discourse of postmodernism. It is also not a surprise that an academic should also be stuck there, despite his surface allegiances.

[alcibiades_mystery]

87. It no surprise either that people should be stuck in the

discourse of truth, oui?

[Nikki Stone 1]

92. Gottcha!

:)

Now I'm gonna go have coffee with my dad, who is far more important than any philosophers.

[alcibiades_mystery]

93. Cheers

:shrug:

[bloom]

91. neocons, etc.

From an essay someone downthread recommended on postmodern ethics:

"Americans prefer the charge of being called bad philosophers to being model inmates of a gulag even when the sign over the entrance claims it to be utopia. More abstractly, the point is that any human being's deepest moral dedications are a matter of personal, performative knowledge rather than a matter of following principles."

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Sparta/6997/rorty.html

------------

I think that there is something to the idea that the neocons - many of whom considered themselves to be leftists at some point in their lives - were able to subvert the idea of created reality and combine Postmodern thought (which allows for a good bit of cynicism) with Machiavellianism - which allowed them to draft their diabolical plots.

THEY aren't interested in religion or ethics or any sort of idealism - they are interested in creating the reality that works best for them - the rest of the world be damned. (But I can see them using anti-Postmodernism and rallying the religious troops against anything remotely anti-religious).

I can see where for some people - postmodernism is the epitome of freedom and they may think - liberalism - but I think it's what has led to libertarianism (and selfishness). The concept that any imposition on some people's freedoms - even when those impositions safeguard the freedom of others - is just the kind of thing that can lead to abuse.

As another quote from the article asserts:

"American culture is mere entertainment and Americans have no principles beyond (private/capitalist) self-indulgence."

I would like to think that that is not the truth - but that does seem to be the vision of our country that is beamed into our homes and the rest of the world via TV. And for a lot of people - what they see becomes their reality.

[tishaLA]

97. And Kojeve taught Lacan

Who promoted a return to Freud. Therefore, Freud was a Nazi!

These associative links are just--you'll forgive me for saying so--silly. It's like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but with Leo Strauss at the end of the tether.

[alcibiades_mystery]

98. It's Six Degrees of Jean Hyppolite

;-)

[Nikki Stone 1]

80. There's actually a post on this thread that I'd love for you to read

I put your handle on it.

Re: the quote from the White House official. The very fact that those opposed to the White House are the "reality based community" is a reference to modernism: reality, science, measurability. This official acted as if reality/science/measurability was old news. The very idea that reality doesn't really exist except in fragmented perspectives--this comes from postmodernism.

Now, did this political windbag cite any references? No. But if I make an argument that we should all love one another the way God loves us, I don't need to cite a New Testament reference for people familiar with Chritianity to identify this as a Christian concept with Christian phraseology. And don't say, "Well it could be Budda" because the very syntax of the phrase echos the New Testament syntax, and in a Western context, it would most certainly be identified that way.

[alcibiades_mystery]

86. So who was he citing?

Macchiavelli?

The notion that one creates reality through force is not new.

[rman]

102. postmodernism: "there's no truth" - neocon: "there's no morality"

Maybe i misunderstand your question, but perhaps this is close enough:

"Those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right, the right of the superior to rule over the inferior." - Leo Strauss.

[tishaLA]

108. Could you tell me where any postmodernist says

"There is no truth" because that again sounds like an undergrad's almost parodic attempt to "understand" postmodern philosophy? (BTW, Flaubert, a modernist, actually did say "there is no truth, only perception," but that doesn't have anything to do with anything). Postmodernist philosophy is generally suspicious of the notion of Truth--capital T, universalizing/totalizing Truth--in favor of local truths. But that has nothing to do with the binary formulation you quote from Strauss.

[Hissyspit]

124. Yup. This thread is full of over-simplification, over-generalization

misrepresentation and ignorance about the concepts associated with the term post-modern.

[sweetheart]

131. Funnily though...

I think the thread answers the original question as "yes", doesn't it.

"Is the US locked in to postmodernism?"

Hidden Silence describes how the US is locked in to postmodernism pragmatically,
and tishaLA describes how it is embraced intellectually, and, as someone pointed out,
that only since the bush presdency have we truly been postmodern, and now on DU we
deconstruct the media.

[Leopolds Ghost]

125. You say "the basis of postmodernism is not fascist": what does it mean?

It seems to have no "significance" from a postmodern perspective and therefore from an anti-postmodernist ethos such as my own. Anti-postmodernist and anti-modernist and anti-both viewpoints must, in my opinion, incorporate a charitable elucidation of the currently fashionable (post)modern discourse and the fruits of said discourse, especially inherently self-contradictory blanket statements about the relation of postmodernism as a concept/signifier to various elements/metanarratives of modernist thought such as "fascism". Even if you do not accept the notion that postmodernism flows from and is intrinsic to modernism in much the same way as Derrida's binary oppositions, you have to admit that such blanket comparisons as "postomodernism is not fascist" suffer from the fundamental fallacy of self-referentiality due to the nature of what postmodernists, by and large, believe about the definition and meaning of terms such as "fascist".

[marions ghost]

130. OK

I'm responding to those who suggest that some kind of neo-facism arises from postmodernism. How is that? I have always seen postmodernism as putting out challenges to rigid, hierarchical thinking. But I do see it as arising from modernism as u say, "flows from and is intrinsic to modernism ..." I agree with that.

I'm not pro- or anti- anything re modernism/postmodernism. I don't make value judgments about it all. You seem to have made up your mind that postmodernist concepts are somehow bad. That's what I am trying to sincerely understand. I don't see it that way at all, based on my limited reading of it (only aware of a few of the big names and basically what they postulate) through literature and art studies. I couldn't possibly promote Pomo as particularly "good" either. But then how is it "bad? or linked with fascism?" You seem to be anti-postmodernism based on grounds other than some kind of link to fascism. So how are you anti?

So how is it (got any refs?) that people seem to be making this whole debate into a negative, us-vs-them political thing? I actually find that kind of funny. It just doesn't seem that restrictive a concept.
Seems to me it has been used to denigrate liberals more than anything. Maybe the problem is that it can be used either way.

What's your background with it? Philosophy, politics/history, literature or art/cultural studies? (I can't think of any other disciplines that deal with it directly).

[alcibiades_mystery]

52. Propoganda of the French right wing to associate pomo w/ Nazism

Primarily, Alain Renaut and Luc Ferry and their cohort.

The notion that people like Foucault or Deleuze have any connection to Nazism is ludicrous. Th more insidious accusations come against Derrida, because he draws so much from Heidegger and because he defended paul de man, but these too are spurious and - might I say so - downright silly. the key works of this type are Renaut and Ferry's Why we are Not Neitzscheans and of course Victor Farias Heidegger et le Nazism. There's no doubt that Heidegger had a strong liking for what Nazism was doing in Germany in the early 30's, and this is even refleced in some of his concepts (particulrly the dangerous portrayal of das Man); it is also clear that his "pomo" "followers" (there are no pomo followers, by definition) took on his philosophical project on precisely this question; this is particularly true of Derrida.

Needless to say, most of the people in general and on this thread have never read the thinkers generally called "pomo," nor examined their works in any detail, but rather spout nonsense they picked up somewhere about how they're supposed to think postmodernism relates to their own personal feelings about stuff. You won't get much here, in other words.

[Nikki Stone 1]

61. Foucault has been described as right wing

Which may be relative to French politics, as in not Marxist.

[alcibiades_mystery]

65. That's absolute nonsense

Anyone who describes Foucault as right wing is an imbecile. Even in France, his work with the Groupe d'Information sur les Prisons would disqualify him, but of course, one need not even go that far. Foucault is considered one of the key philosophers associated with the May 68 movement, and those who attacked Foucault throughout his life WERE the French right wing. Now, Foucault also got into it from time to time with the Althusserians and the other structuralist Marxists, but that's internal to the Left.

[Nikki Stone 1]

82. So you're saying that some academic theorists are imbeciles. :)

Not that I have a problem with that, mind you.

But I can tell you that certain Marxists theorists do not like him at all. Ahmad in particular has issues with Foucault.

Of course, one usually refers to people who disagree with one's metanarrative as imbeciles, yes?

:)

[alcibiades_mystery]

88. Whatever issues the Marxists may have had with Foucault

And yes, they had many, I'd really like to se them calling him right wing. You made the claim. Now show me.

You might start by explaining the specific critiques of Foucault's work provided by "some Marxists."

[tishaLA]

69. Foucault, right wing?

LOL. That's the most absurd thing I have ever heard. It's almost as bad as saying "postmodernism believes that all opinions are equally valid."

Jesus, how can people spout off about stuff they don't know about? Foucault opposed the French Marxists, sure, because he believed in a different kind of political engagement more rooted in what Deleuze described as "assemblages"--the kind of thing Genet wrote about in Prisoner of Love and the kind of thing we saw in the US with the advent of ACT-UP: people come together to accomplish a particular act of resistance (i.e., for prison reform, for the Palestinians) instead of relying upon a static version of Truth (i.e., base-superstructure)

[alcibiades_mystery]

72. Fellow Deleuzian here

:hi:

Although Deleuze, of course, would be sick that anyone would consider him or herself a Deleuzian. It's just a manner of speaking, yeah?

"The truth is that sexuality is everywhere: the way a bureacrat fondles his records, a judge administers justice, a businessman causes money to circulate; the way the bourgeoisie fuck the proletariat; and so on. And there is no need to resort to metaphors, any more than for the libido to go by way of metamorphosis. Hitler got the fascists sexually aroused. Flags, nations, armies, banks get a lot of people aroused." (Anti-Oedipus, 292)...

:rofl:

(Although, to be fair, reads more like Guattari's style. Like the line in the little book Guattari wrote with Toni Negri: "Communism has to be about more than the redistribution of property. Who wants all this shit?"

[Nikki Stone 1]

83. Thanks for your explanation.

Appreciate your time.

[Hoping4Change]

31. I think you would find Richard Rorty very illuminating.

The editors of the Southern Humanities Review gave an award to the following article about Post Modern ethics. It touches upon the points you have raised.


"We know that pragmatists and postmodernists do not believe that any one paradigm can claim to possess the truth (or be the truth instead of an interpretation) and are consequently labeled relativists and accused of being fair weather patriots for all causes. But this assumes that our pragmatist is lounging around outside any and all paradigms. And we know that this is epistemologically nonsensical, for it would preclude any language and consequently any judgment. As Rorty and Kuhn and Foucault and Wittgenstein and so many other contemporary philosophers have endlessly told us, you cannot speak unless you speak in a specific language; there is simply no way to escape involvement in some concrete community. Once involved in a paradigm, we can respond to its demand for unconditional and exclusive commitment to its focal point or goals. For example, as scientists we can be unconditionally committed to the discovery of truth about the nature of empirical experience without the slightest regard for religion or politics. Conversely, our commitment to justice in political discourse cannot be collapsed into a derivative effect of religion or (economic) science without a consequent loss. We see the effect of this in what was Yugoslavia today. Only the fanatic or lunatic refuses to leave one paradigm for another. The person who denies the legitimacy of a religious vocabulary to render meaning from human existence does so only by insisting on translating things into the vocabulary offered by his preferred paradigm. Such people invert the order of using paradigms to interpret experience. They insist that the model is somehow more fundamental than the experience it seeks to interpret. If we believe in the autonomy of paradigm communities, we recognize this for what it is: an act of superstition, personal failure, and potential violence. We do not want to live among such people, even when they promise to make us holy and righteous."


An excerpt from




http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Sparta/6997/rorty.html

[Nikki Stone 1]

46. This statement occurs within a postmodern paradigm

And eventually that paradigm will change too.

That being said, some paradigms give us more than others for particular purposes. If I am sick with an incurable disease, I want the scientists to look for a cure and the religious to give me comfort with prayers and assurances of a divine presence. I would never want the preachers in the lab and the scientists fluffing my pillow and clicking rosary beads. In some ways, both are necessary. But I would NEVER confuse the function of the two. My observation is that postmodernism does, putting all paradigms in the same pot, giving them equal weight and equal value regardless of function.

The attack on science (and the scientific method) as just another superstitious paradigm seems to be a way of stifling investigation into the empirical, which can bring us right back into superstition.

As for the Southern Humanities Review, they should take a closer look at what the function of the humanities has become.

[Karenina]

55. The U.S. is locked into

(most present company excepted)

WILLFUL IGNORANCE
Stone stupidity
Self-centeredness
Myopia
Greed and instant gratification
Self-destructiveness
Obesity (in more ways than 17)
Mis-education
Denial

and being "entertained" to DEATH.

[bemildred]

63. I am "uneducated" about this stuff, I think.

But I would like to point out that the question seems to incorporate a "progress" metanarrative in itself, as in progress from "modernism" to "post-modernism" or "post-humanism", which one assumes is a successor to "humanism".

I do think there is a good deal to be said for finishing the job of demolishing humans' delusions of central position in the universal scheme of things, it would no doubt improve our chances for perpetuating our genes into the distant future, for example, as it would lead to a much more realistic and prudent relation to ecological issues. On the other hand it does seem a formidable task, and one is not likely to be thanked for ones efforts.

There is nothing surprising in itself that there should be cultural differences between Europe and N. America, after all they have had quite different histories. For example, whether it is true or not, it at least makes sense that Americans' casual attitude towards bombing the shit out of people overseas is related to the fact that we've never had the shit bombed out of us. The perpetrators of 9/11 took a pretty good stab at puncturing that balloon, but it doesn't really measure up to Dresden or Tokyo.

The epistemological question is difficult, people always want the think they know things in some absolute sort of way. But, the truth is that all knowledge is representation, so if you have a certain kind of sensory system and a certain kind of mind, that will define what you are able to know and how your able to know (i.e. represent) it. Hence one may infer that all knowledge is relative and limited, valid only as a representation made with certain limited means. Which leads me at least to two propositions which I think are "true":

1.) We need to dispense with the idea that our knowing has universal qualities, knowledge must always be kept in it's proper context, which includes the means of representation used, among other things, like scale and duration.

2.) We would all function just as well, and a lot less violently, if we abandoned vast swathes of what we think we know, or at least reduced them to the status of amusements and pastimes, ego-food, which is what they really are. This ties in, in a way, with the illusion or central position which I mentioned, we overvalue ourselves, and so overvalue our thoughts. When you attack my thoughts, you attack my perfection, and hence you attack me. Which leads me to my sig line.

[Nikki Stone 1]

90. Actually, you sound better informed than most, and more logical

I loved this, BTW:

"2.) We would all function just as well, and a lot less violently, if we abandoned vast swathes of what we think we know, or at least reduced them to the status of amusements and pastimes, ego-food, which is what they really are. This ties in, in a way, with the illusion or central position which I mentioned, we overvalue ourselves, and so overvalue our thoughts. When you attack my thoughts, you attack my perfection, and hence you attack me. Which leads me to my sig line."

[bemildred]

94. I'm quite well read, and interested.

I've read bits of Derrida and De Man and Said and some other fellows, and I have been wrestling with epistemology for quite a long time now. But I've never approached the subject in an orderly fashion, and I think most philosophers get much too wrapped up in their own verbiage and the need to build a monument to themselves, a "system". The epistemology problem is like trying to nail a chunk of Jello(tm) to a brick wall. There is a bootstrap problem in knowing how you know things. I mean how do you know that you know how you know? And so on. That is why "faith-based" approaches are so attractive, you cut the gordian knot, no further need to explain. The only real rational solution seems to be to unask the question, leave it partially undefined, an unexamined premise. In formal logic one says that not all grammatical strings can be assigned a truth value. If you can't do it in formal logic, there is no reason to think it's going to work in English. And, after all, if we cannot know, then it makes little sense to be blathering about it, eh? So take it somewhat for granted. Then you can get back to evaluating the relative satisfaction and utility that you get from what you think you know, and make adjustments when and as necessary, without making such a fuss about some fictional certainty or universality of what you think you know.
:-)

[Blue_Tires]

75. ttt

i'll try to digest some of the ideas in this thread later

[mmonk]

79. Just cycling the Dark Ages back through.

[Hidden Stillness]

95. "It's the New Way, Not the Old Way!"

As Humpty Dumpty said to Alice in Wonderland, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean." Whatever arcane things postmodernism might have meant originally, to those first philosophers who were trying to invent it, once it got into the real world, commercialized, politicized, used for a purpose and not just studied, then it became a different thing, and in modern America, controlled by corporate advertising/propaganda, it becomes a means to an end. Once it has changed and the changed thing is what is influencing us, then you are not even really discussing the original thing anymore. It seems to me that the thing that is really influencing (destroying) us is the version of this thought that comes from corporate media consultants. The living reality of the "postmodern" mindset that is inflicted on us, is a corporate media that has substituted its own commercial productions for our culture, its endless presentation of visual image for what was once our hands-on reality and lived experience, its uniformly conformed behavior for what was once actual acceptance by society. Most of what we have contact with in our modern world is not even reality--people, events, etc.--but media images we sit and look at, mute. The threat is when they flip these things around to mean--and serve--anything they want, and you don't even know things are being thus distorted, and not just presented plainly.

I realized several years ago just how cut off these "postmodern" "thinkers" are, when, some 6 or 7 years ago, something like that, I started hearing about a "postmodern" play that somebody was writing about Yoko Ono (in Toronto, possibly). I was thinking--great, what an incredible life she has lived, I hoped it would try to understand her, get some perceptiveness about her perspective, the artiness and the tragedy, etc. When it came out and I was reading and hearing about it, it had nothing to do with Yoko Ono at all; it was not even a biography. The whole play was some kind of a self-absorbed "muse" of the playwright on culture, and modern Asian women, and overdone visuals, and I don't know what-all mess, but it was "about" the writer, not the supposed subject. If all life is merely an intellectual image, then the world is like a cult--it is whatever I say it is, and we are all cut off from direct experience that we can rely on as each one's own touchstone. Scary.

There was a book from the '70s, maybe even the '60s, called "Future Shock," about this kind of thing; a rootless culture that changes so fast, with fads and trends and endlessly new things you can't even adjust to before the next one comes along, that it induces a kind of dislocation and anxiety that we actually now have. Public use of airwaves, etc., becomes merely a "sophisticated," "fun and colorful" means of brutally enforced propaganda, and a killing off of dissenting opinion, not by crushing it, as before, but by laughing at it and seeming bored, annoyed, and just too cool for it. It all means whatever the corporate capitalist tells you it means. "Taxes are bad," "commercial fees are good--they need to do it"; Clinton was immoral for smoking marijuana, "didn't inhale"--hah!, Rush Limbaugh was ACCUSED of "doctor shopping" but luckily, lawyers dispensed with the "government's" (not "the People's") main claim, and Fat Boy had nothing to do with it. Every drug or diet referred to on TV is "popular," everything old is bad and needs to be "modernized" (like Social Security!), Democrats "are complaining again" when they fight, or "have no ideas" when they don't fight, yet Republicans "bravely even defy their own Party" when they fight, and "show wonderful loyalty and stick together--which is what we should do" when they don't fight. "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean."

The global corporate empire tells us "globalization is good, and furthermore, it is natural, and you can't do anything about it," as if all the world were just singing about it all, and global corporate domination is the same as "the world coming together," when really, no one else thinks of these corporations as "global," as if they are "universal and featureless." They think of them as the American imperialist, coming from this concrete location, to destroy and replace their culture. The current-media version of "postmodern" propaganda is an attempt to disguise fascist, archconservative/neoconservative, big business propaganda, as the most bland and ordinary thing in the world; the fun "all the world's a store" we all live and shop in. Covered in fairy dust, as if nothing else ever existed, and if it did they would tell us about it, and anyway, all that old politics stuff is so boring...The fun media that sells us all the fun stuff keeps telling us so, so it must be so...

[sweetheart]

107. The most eloquent explanation for turning off your TV set...

... i've ever heard in my life.


"The living reality of the "postmodern" mindset that is inflicted on us, is a corporate media that has substituted its own commercial productions for our culture, its endless presentation of visual image for what was once our hands-on reality and lived experience, its uniformly conformed behavior for what was once actual acceptance by society. Most of what we have contact with in our modern world is not even reality--people, events, etc.--but media images we sit and look at, mute. The threat is when they flip these things around to mean--and serve--anything they want, and you don't even know things are being thus distorted, and not just presented plainly."

Your passage has me in tears... wow.

brilliant... lucid...

thank you

[bloom]

99. Maybe the question should be

"Is the US locked in to libertarianism?"


And then - one could see that there are people who embrace it who are literalistic fundamentalists (like my brother) and there are people who embrace it who are porn addicts and people who embrace it as atheists. (That it isn't just a liberal phenomena IOW). But in any case - the people don't want anyone suggesting that they should believe anything that they don't want to believe or telling them that they should consider any morality that they don't want to consider.

Consider the results:

Poll question: If you had to choose ("one")

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=757189

And with this poll - quite a few where offended that they could not choose themselves:

Poll question: The Question - Who has the Answers?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=214&topic_id=64063


One problem with Postmodernism - as we can see from this thread - is it can be like discussing what art is. And when some people start arguing about Jameson and Jean-Francois Lyotard, Kojeve and Foucault - it is no more instructive to the rest of us than if some of were to argue whether Eva Hesse or Meret Oppenheimer, Jasper Johns or Mark Rothco - expressed Postmodernism the best.

Postmodernism isn't something that just got going in the 70's or 80's though - that's one thing that's for darn sure.

It was at least manifested with the presentation of a urinal as art in 1913. (And I think that Freud, Einstein and many others played their roles as well.)

In December 2004, Duchamp's Fountain (the urinal) was voted the most influential artwork of the 20th century by 500 of the most powerful people in the British art world."

http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=a47dgcp5n8hsm?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Marcel+Duchamp&curtab=2222_1&sbid=lc08a&linktext=Marcel%0ADuchamp

But think about art for a minute. This is something that everyone should be able to visualize. Esp. what critics considered to be the most important art of the 20th century. A urinal. (And it's not the designer of the urinal who gets the credit - it's the person who said it was art - his art, even).

And many people are familiar with Piss Christ, for example.

At the start of the 20th century - people would have still been thinking of Monet and Manet and the premier examples of what art is. Of course - many "regular" people would so still today. So what does that say? And what sort of things do most people buy for their homes? There are many art collectors - who are interested in postmodern art - but it couldn't be more than about 10% of the population - probably more like 1 or 2%, at best.

But what do people spend their money on? - if porn were art - then that is what - that and "collector" prints - Thomas Kinkade et.al. that have no value AFAIC. Movies of all sorts, and TV have become the "art" of today for a lot of people.

What the art critics say /what the art world says and defines as art probably has no more relevance to what people think about what art is than what Jameson Lyotard say about Postmodernism. And while they may be on the cutting edge of ideas - it doesn't answer "Is the US locked in to Postmodernism?"

I enjoy the challenges presented by the likes of Pinter and Beckett, Yoko Ono and others. I think that many postmodern creators have enriched our culture - for those who consider them. And artists and urinals (and probably philosophers) have affected people more than they know. But what is next?


P.S.

For this poll - Nature won hands down. (So maybe people are moving to "Post-Humanism" :shrug: )

Poll question: Worship options - Nature/Abstract God/Mankind ?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x63008

[alcibiades_mystery]

104. Both Jameson and Lyotard were doing cultural analyses

So it doesn't really matter whether most people know what they said or even agree with it, any more than it would matter whether most people understood Max Weber or Talcott Parsons. It's also not really relevant to their arguments whether most people prefer Michelangelo to Roy Lichtenstein, or, in Jameson's famous example, Van Gogh's peasant shoes to Warhol's Diamond Dust Shoes. In both cases, these pieces of art would be used as examples to illustrate a shift in cultural perspective and in cultural conditions. That is, the society that produced Peasant Shoes was structurally different than the one that produced Diamond Dust Shoes; its mode of perception was different; it's mode of dealing with objects was different; its mode of subjectivity was different.

I also agree with you that traces of what was later identified as "postmodernism" could be found in some modernist art, particularly Duchamp's Fountain. Jameson's point is not that these forms are entirely new, but that they begin to dominate and emerge in various different fields of activity (which is why Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late-Capitalism is organized as it is, hitting architecture, film, economics, the sentence, etc.).

I think Jameson would be the first to agree that "what the art critics say /what the art world says and defines as art probably has no more relevance to what people think about what art is than what Jameson Lyotard say about Postmodernism." His argument would be that what people think about art has to do with changing practices and cultural conditions. What people (including art critics) think about art has much more to do, for example, with the shift from factory to service economies (the infamous shift from product to process) than what is printed in the snooty art journals. What people think about literature has much more to do with the various speeds installed by globalization and the emergence of film than with the lofty proclamations of the New York Review of Books, etc.

So, neither Jameson nor Lyotard would be saying "Here's what everyone thinks about x," but rather : here are the cultural conditions that we encounter, here's how they differ from previous conditions, and here's what these transformed conditions actually produce, in thought and in various fields of activity.

Finally, for those beating up on so-called postmodernism here, Jameson himself was doing very much the same thing and with several of the same arguments.

[bloom]

118. Ok thanks

That makes sense.

[sweetheart]

129. I like this deconstruction

The synergy is indeed the same question, the same political labelling and abuse of a term.

[rman]

101. Not sure about "locked in", but a culture of nihilism

sure makes it a heck of lot easier for the rulers to get away with their crimes and deception.

[sweetheart]

105. Would you really describe american culture as nihilist?

Honestly, as a lover of rock and roll muisic,
I don't see nihilism in good rock, rather a universal joy.

If rock and roll is even part of american culture, then the culture
must be nihilist just somewhere else, and on another channel elsewhere
is the brahma loca.

[bloom]

110. I noticed this on the New York Times today

OP-ED COLUMNIST
From Freedom to Authority
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: May 14, 2006

"In the political world, we're seeing a conservatism that emphasizes freedom give way to a conservatism that emphasizes authority."

------------

I don't have "Times Select" and I think that Brooks is a neocon doofus, anyway - but it seems relevant to the conversation - Brooks saying that conservatism now emphasizes authority - instead of freedom.

I think that conservatism always did emphasize authority. I wonder what "freedom" he thought they were emphasizing before. Of course maybe it was just the "lie" of freedom that they were emphasizing before - like the "lie" that we were bringing "Freedom" to Iraq. Or does he mean the "lie" that Americans are "Free" - now we know we're not ? :shrug:

[JCMach1]

111. One of my first DU posts in 2001 was How * was the first Post-Modern Pres

and I stand by that statement today.

Post-modernism is not a bad thing. It's simply taking everything that was true about the world and applying it to language, the arts, perhaps even everything.

What we have is an illiterate culture who cannot deal with it! This includes some Dems in Washington who just don't get it!

Deconstruction is the literacy skill for a post-modern world. That's what DU was based upon. Countless people <de>construct the news every day here. Without this 'new' literacy skills people are no more than slaves to the media-- to bright little images floating by in the tube...

[bloom]

112. It is funny how postmodern is used

as an insult against us. I was googling and these quotes came up....



"democraticunderground is a prime example of why the Democratic Party is swirling in ... A postmodern form of nepotist, populist Caesarism, more probably. ..."

"Otherwise take your snarky postmodern bullshit the fuck BACK to DU and ..."

"I see you're repeating the mantra from democraticunderground. ... Calling the current "power" reality (in any form) is very postmodern, and ultimately will ..."

"The left's biggest lie is that we "can all get along" in a postmodern, post-Christian, secular, multicultural, morally relativist society...."

"In one atrocity, Osama bin Laden may have accomplished what a generation of conservative writers have failed to do: convince mainstream liberals of the illogic and nihilism of the powerful postmodern left."

[marions ghost]

113. OK I see

so NOW 'postmodern' has become a bad word associated with DU and everything hardcore liberal. LOL. Yeah--that is really hilarious.

"The powerful postmodern left" ... (who don't drink wine and don't eat Freedom Fries either...)

OK so I guess we'll just have to wear "postmodern" proudly.

thanx for posting

[bloom]

115. It makes me think about what I'm doing

in a whole new way. Hey! I'm just making postmodern art! :D

"The post-modern artist is "reflexive" in that he/she is self-aware and consciously involved in a process of thinking about him/herself and society in a deconstructive manner, "demasking" pretensions, becoming aware of his/her cultural self in history, and accelerating the process of self-consciousness."

From: What is Art .... ?
.... What is an Artist ?

http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/artartists/modpostmod.html


:bounce:

[bloom]

117. Deconstructive Postmodernism vs. Constructive Postmodernism

So someone has divided this up. Probably seeing the division - such has been discussed here. It sounds like the Constructive Postmodernism is more like the Post-Humanism that started this discussion (at least from what I can tell) - and that it should be Constructive Postmodernism that is the American version of European Post-Humanism - and NOT Transhumanism (as Wikipedia said)- which sounds like it is going off to glorify science and man's power on earth.

Deconstructive postmodernism is seen perhaps as anti-modern in that it seems to destroy or eliminate the ingredients that are believed necessary for a worldview, such as God, self, purpose, meaning, a real world, and truth. (This point of view, though, that we need a worldview comprised of notions of God, self, purpose, etc, is itself a modernist one.)

Deconstructive postmodern thought is seen by some as nihilistic, (i.e. the view that all values are baseless, that nothing is knowable or can be communicated, and that life itself is meaningless).

Constructive postmodernism does not reject Modernism, but seeks to revise its premises and traditional concepts. Like deconstructive postmodernism, it attempts to erase all boundaries, to undermine legitimacy, and to dislodge the logic of the modernist state. Constructive postmodernism claims to offer a new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious intuitions. It rejects not science as such, but only that scientific approach in which only the data of the modern natural sciences are allowed to contribute to the construction of our worldview.

Constructive postmodernism desires a return to premodern notions of divinely wrought reality, of cosmic meaning, and an enchanted nature. It also wishes to include an acceptance of nonsensory perception.

Constructive postmodernism seeks to recover truths and values from various forms of premodern thought and practice. Constructive postmodernism wants to replace modernism and modernity, which it sees as threatening the very survival of life on the planet.

http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/artartists/modpostmod.html

[Hidden Stillness]

119. They are Against the Pre-Corporate Past

Deconstructive postmodernism is "anti-modern"? I've never heard that one before; typical Wikipedia incoherence. If anything, they are against the past--or at least, they are against any past that was not created by professionals.

[bloom]

120. That particular part

was from a college class - that put together information about Modernism and Postmodernism.

(The wikipedia reference was to the Post-humanist (European version) that said the American version of Post-Humanism is Transhumanism - which makes NO sense at ALL.)


I think it could make sense to think of Modernism and the Enlightenment as being something which was essentially Old School - and that Postmodernism (as someone suggested) the things that challenge that - which could include feminism, multiculturalism and various other isms.

I can see where - if THAT was what one thought of as Postmodernism - that is would be completely compatible with liberalism. At the same time - I can also see where Postmodernism could have become the scapegoat for everything that is wrong with the world - esp. to some people.

I rather like the idea of Deconstructed Postmodernism - like it's for people who are still in the process of Deconstructing. And Contructed Postmodernism - for the people who are ready to move on to a new integrated set of ideas (or meta-narratives, whatever) that incorporate feminism, multiculturalism, ecology, etc. into the mainstream system of values.

[sweetheart]

132. The idea of deconstruction

If deconstruction is to take something back to its roots, does that
automaticlly mean that the meaning has been destroyed... I wonder
if the word "construction and deconstruction" is getting charged
as "constructive" and "not constructive".

[Hissyspit]

123. Thank you for adding nuance and understanding to complex issues.

And not over-generalizing.

[Swamp Rat]

126. "Post-humanism" - A philosophy/belief system exhorted by neocon

alien lizards.

Their basic credo = get rid of humans.

[rucky]

127. I don't know any of that terminology, but...

it seems we have turned our back on the natural world, and have lost touch with what it means to be human.