102. TheDiva - Feb. 2, 1999 - 9:48 AM PT
Jaysus.

103. ChristiPeters - Feb. 2, 1999 - 9:50 AM PT
two plus two equals sunshine

104. Raskolnikov - Feb. 2, 1999 - 9:52 AM PT
I can't comment on po-mo literature, having read very little of it (my poli sci department introduced us to some of it, under the title "critical social science" - I dismissed it as unproductive and was surprised they bothered teaching it to us). But I believe I use some of the jargon and tools in looking at art. And I may be touching on po-mo tools when I ask what motivates someone like Charles Murray to attempt "Bell Curve" style research and bypass peer review.

105. bubbaette - Feb. 2, 1999 - 9:52 AM PT
Diva

My cognitive functioning, if not deceived by the chimera of post-McCarthian interpersonal transrelational experience, tell me that the response to your enquiry is in the alert ocular perception of the beholder.

106. elliot803 - Feb. 2, 1999 - 9:52 AM PT
Rask: Yes, I guess I've contributed to the derailing of a few threads in my time. I just thought this was a particularly egregious example.

107. Raskolnikov - Feb. 2, 1999 - 9:54 AM PT
Boba: where did I comment on credibility?

Yoda, in Return of the Jedi: "yes, your father he is".

108. TheDiva - Feb. 2, 1999 - 9:55 AM PT
Bubb

Got any more Cheez Doodles?

109. Raskolnikov - Feb. 2, 1999 - 9:56 AM PT
elliot: I don't think it was egregious, considering that the thread was going nowhere on any other topic, and we quickly left to the movies thread. However, it quickly is becoming egregious. I will stop debating Boba here.

110. TheDiva - Feb. 2, 1999 - 9:57 AM PT
Bobo

Look, any 12 year old can tell you that Obi Wan only meant that Vader had killed Luke's father in the *figurative* sense. Sheesh.

111. bubbaette - Feb. 2, 1999 - 10:00 AM PT
Diva

What, after all, is a CheezDoodle? A florescent orange concoction of air, corn mash and chemicals deep fat fried into a symbol of our society -- our hands brightly stained with the sins of our forefathers not the mention our foremothers -- an indelible orange stain of sin that has seeped into our very essence.

Bright, salty, and utterly devoid of value.

112. BobaFett - Feb. 2, 1999 - 10:07 AM PT


TheDiva:

"Look, any 12 year old can tell you that Obi Wan only meant that Vader had killed Luke's father in the *figurative* sense. Sheesh."

Yeah, that's the "spin" Obi Wan put on it. He told Luke, "So, in a way, what I told you about your father was true--from a certain perspective." Luke should have responed: "In a more important way, it was an outright lie."

I am sick of being lied to and will not buy Obi Wan's after-the-fact concoction. I want truth, not spin.


Rask:

I don't remember Yoda telling him. I remember Luke asking, and Yoda taking a nap. Then Luke goes outside and the ghost of the Lying Jedi Obi Wan tells him some more crap.

Even if Yoda *did* tell him, I say you can't trust anybody with a man's forearm up his ass.

113. TabouliJones - Feb. 2, 1999 - 10:14 AM PT

Okay, how about a discussion of the validity and/or value of one of Derrida's central ideas, namely his call to deconstructivism.

Basically, Derrida says that every text contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Every text contains a trace of all other texts and, ultimately, (and, I dunno, maybe therefore) every text ultimately signifies both everything and nothing at the same time. Consequently, Derrida *argues* that the only legitimate philosophical exercise is the endless deconstruction of extant texts -- the continual attempt to subvert the putative (and usually generally accepted) meaning of any given text.

Discuss amongst yourselves. And be nice, lest I get all veklempt and stuff.

114. TheDiva - Feb. 2, 1999 - 10:18 AM PT
Bobo

Kindly get a grip (God, I've ALWAYS wanted to use that phrase.)

You're Han's clone, not Luke himself. Sheesh.

115. ChristiPeters - Feb. 2, 1999 - 10:19 AM PT
Hey! Let's combine threads and deconstruct Clinton's testimony!









never mind

116. Raskolnikov - Feb. 2, 1999 - 10:26 AM PT
Tabouli: not sure how it follows that just because a text contains bits of other texts, that the only legitimate follow up is to deconstruct it.

For one thing, one of the definitional links pointed to earlier mentioned that Post-Modernism itself is not exempt from its own principles, so it seems to me post-modernists should logically just spend their time chewing on their own tails.

117. bubbaette - Feb. 2, 1999 - 10:31 AM PT
My little Cal Gal once tore apart a beaver lodge stick by stick and dug up all the mud joining the sticks together. Did she deconstruct the beaver lodge?

118. TheDiva - Feb. 2, 1999 - 10:36 AM PT
In her reality, she did. In your reality, she made a frickin' mess of the yard.

119. bubbaette - Feb. 2, 1999 - 10:40 AM PT
Deeve

Actually, she alleviated some problem flooding by not-so-politely suggesting that the beavers move on.

120. TheDiva - Feb. 2, 1999 - 10:48 AM PT
But in the beaver's reality, they were evicted. Am I catching on here?

121. TabouliJones - Feb. 2, 1999 - 10:52 AM PT

Rask:

Derrida's argument re. deconstructivism is incredibally dense in all senses of the word. I fear that I lack the erudition to paraphrase his argument in an intelligible and coherent fashion. Derrida seems to posit his mandate as a means of shedding the perceived burdens of Enlightenment ideologies. In particular, he puts forth deconstruction as a means of liberating ourselves from the many enervating prejudices and chauvinisms that have for so long dogged western culture. I guess Derrida's motto might be paraphrased as "I deconstruct therefore I am" or, more precisely, "I deconstruct therefore I can be all that I can be without submitting to the imprisonment of ideologies." I know, it is all baffling and near impossible to articulate but, fwiw, I think that is what Derrida is getting at.

As for your "chewing on their own tails" critique, I hear you. I fumbled with that one for a long time when I read Derrida. Derrida does, however, constantly insist that his text are meant to be deconstructed as well. Of course, this implies mind boggling regress but (I think) derrida has an answer to this problem. . . . More on that later.

PE, care to help me out here. How about telling us about Harold Bloom's characteriazation of postmodernism.

122. bubbaette - Feb. 2, 1999 - 10:53 AM PT
Diva

I think so, but I'm not really sure if deconstructed is the opposite of constructed. The beaver may have felt that its home was demolished and its family cast out by a pitiless hairy beast with sharp teeth.

123. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 2, 1999 - 11:01 AM PT
I've never read any Derrida, mostly because he's unreadable. However, I am ready to discuss (actually denounce and then debate) the following:

• DeMan et al.: "pure" literary deconstructionism
• Foucault & New Historicism (in history
• New Historicism (in lit crit)
• Stanley Fish
• "science studies"
• "critical race theory"

124. ChristiPeters - Feb. 2, 1999 - 11:11 AM PT
Pseudoerasmus -

How about "critical race theory".


BTW, what *is* "critical race theory"?

125. TabouliJones - Feb. 2, 1999 - 11:13 AM PT

PE,

I am familiar with the people and movements that you list in post #123 but, my knowledge of each is fragmentary. However, I would be very interested in what you have to say on any of these subjects. Why don't you start with Foucault, since I think Cellar might be open to rebutting (yes, a friendly pun) any denunciation you put forth.

Any commentary would be greatly entertaining to me. I am dedicating this day to goofing off at work. You see, I am baby-sitting my boss' cats and . . . well ... last night, one of the little bastards tried to sit on my face while I was sleeping. So, I figure my boss owes me a day or two idleness on my part.

FWIW, my position on postmodernism had been conditioned by Paul Ricoeur.

126. TabouliJones - Feb. 2, 1999 - 11:15 AM PT
Sorry for the typos. I will try to rid my posts of that annoyance.

127. FreeToChoose - Feb. 2, 1999 - 11:46 AM PT
Of course, from my reality, reading two women talking about CalGal's beavers is…well, distracting.

128. TheDiva - Feb. 2, 1999 - 11:49 AM PT
FTC

Stop blithering.

PE

FULMINATE! PLEASE! I CAN'T TAKE THE SUSPENSE!

129. bubbaette - Feb. 2, 1999 - 11:52 AM PT
FTC

Then give me a definition of "deconstruct". It's not in my Webster's.

130. ChristinO - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:10 PM PT
Well, again I find myself woefully undereducated. I have no true understanding of PostModernism. I don't grok. The only discussion about PoMo that I recall having is after seeing "Grosse Point Blank" with my mother. I thoroughly enjoyed it and thought it had a happy and satisfactory ending. She enjoyed it but thought the ending was sick and wrong since the girl ends up with a murderer.

I wonder if she sides with Peacham over MacHeath as well? If it's the same sort of thing (it appears so to me) then Brecht was arguing against Post Modernism. Although I tend to think he was simply arguing against emotionalism and sentimentality.

I've seen mentioned the fact that Post Modernism must ultimately defeat itself by insisting that there is no Truth. Does this mean that one is a Post Modernist except when one isn't thereby making one's self a Post Modernist at all times anyway?

If a brain had coils like an intestine I would most certainly have tied a knot in mine at this point.

131. TabouliJones - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:11 PM PT
Bubbaette:

"deconstruct" is Gino-speak for building; as in, "Hey, look at de construct I just built." Bedumpbump

But seriously, deconstruction is a philosohphical exercise in which you attempt to show how any given text contains within itself the seeds of its own subversion. That is, it is the attempt to show how every text contains within itself a whole raft of meaning that go beyond and ultimately contradict the putative (roughly speaking literal)meaning of the text. At least, that is the defintion that I have been able to glean from my fading memory of Derrida's incredibly abstruse philosophy.

And the point of deconstruction??? Derrida would say that the point is to demonstrate (and also revel in) the irremedial errance of Being -- the continual defering and originary differance of all concrete meaning. Which is, of course, mystifying but, hey, that's the way the guy theorizes. I tried unpacking Derrida's theory in earlier posts and may try again later.

Frankly, like everybody else, I'm just in hear making plans for Nigel . . . urr, I mean, I'm waiting for PE to chime in with his thoughts.

132. ChristinO - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:16 PM PT
TJ,

I loved that song. Do you remember the artist?

133. TabouliJones - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:18 PM PT
My God. Once again, sorry for all the typos. I swear, I'm working on this problem.

134. TabouliJones - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:20 PM PT
Christin,

I believe it was XTC who was responsible for that song.

135. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:23 PM PT
I was under the impression that I would be responding to provocations in this thread. So far I've seen none. And I generally need to be inimically provoked in order to pontificate at length. I'm certainly not going to lead a discussion for folks who haven't read DeMan or Foucault or Stanley Fish. It's too much work to explain what they said and why I object to it.

I'll just cite a bibliography of basic readings of "applied" post-modernism:

Paul de Man, "Allegories of Reading"

Michel Foucault, "The History of Insanity" and "To Oversee and to Punish: the Birth of the Prison" (?) [Surveiller et punir: la Naissance de la prison]

Kimberley Crenshaw et al., ed. "Critical Race Theory"

Stanley Fish, "There's No Such Thing as Free Speech"

For a synoptic example of the postmodernist attack on science (and the abuse of Kuhn), see the idiotic article "Rhetoric", by Stanley Fish, in Frank Letricchia and Thomas McLaughlin, ed., "Critical Terms for Literary Study". This volume also contains an exposition of "indeterminacy" by the even more idiotic Gerald Graff, which serves as a dummy's redaction of the sophisticated but ultimately empty posturings of Paul de Man.

136. bubbaette - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:24 PM PT
Tabouli

So my dog cannot deconstruct a beaver lodge, but termites or woodborers could if the beavers built the lodge with infested wood?

137. TheDiva - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:31 PM PT
What a killjoy.

138. TabouliJones - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:31 PM PT

No. Derrida would say that all wood is infested and can't help but be infested. Further, Derrida would say that it is irrelevant to talk about the beaver (or for that matter the dog) as if it were the ultimate builder responsible for the existence of the beaver lodge.

I have no idea what Derrida is smoking but,fwiw, apparently he has the reputation of being a total stud muffin.

139. bubbaette - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:37 PM PT
Tabouli

It sounds to me like ramblings after too many beers and bong hits, too.

140. ChristinO - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:45 PM PT
PE,

I've nettled you in the past and I'm sure I will do so in future, but on the subject of PostModernism I hold no opinion whatsoever and therefore cannot oblige. I might someday read the references you've listed at which point I'll be more than happy to provoke you, but until that time I must settle for being tiresome.

All apologies, guy.

141. TabouliJones - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:46 PM PT

PE:

What do you think of Foucault's assertion that the concept of insanity is an artificial construct that has been conditioned by the hegemony of DesCartes' cogito? Or, his companion assertion, that there is a certain "logic" to insanity that contemporary society would be wise to articualte and heed? Of course, Foucault's idea is counterintuitive and highly controversial but, do you think it has any merit whatsoever?

I appeal to your avuncular side.

I am fairly competent when it comes to grasping abstruse concepts and at piecing together the outlines of theory from picemeal assertions. So don't feel a need to offer a course in remedial postmodernism. Just spew forth your venom. Perhaps, others will join the discussion. i will do my best but, I offer no promises.

142. ChristiPeters - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:46 PM PT
Hmmm.... Deconstructing Postmodernism - the discussion that wasn't.

143. TabouliJones - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:47 PM PT
oops that's "... articulate and heed."

144. ChristiPeters - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:51 PM PT
oops, crosspost

Looks like TabouliJones is going to make this a discussion about more than just "what the heck is postmodernism" (with the help of PE, I hope)

(That's what I get for trying to Fray from the test floor. I think this is a 386/33)

TTFN

(or at least until I get back to my office)

145. pellenilsson - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:57 PM PT
Pseudoerasmus Message #135

I gather from the above msg that you are something of a moderator for this thread. Let me say then that the phrase "Deconstructing post-modernism", while impressive egghead-wise, is singularly uninformative, obscure and opaque. Very few people know much about deconstructivism or post-modernism, and those who do generally don't agree about much. It's like multiplying a small number with another small one. The result is smaller than any of them.

Now then, Sir, if you would care to address the issue in Plain English - and your mastery of both subjects will certainly allow you to do just that - I'm sure you'll get some interesting contributions.

146. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 2, 1999 - 12:58 PM PT
The simplest way to get a handle on what "deconstruction" meant originally is to read DeMan's very illuminating illustration from "Allegories of Reading".

DeMan quotes the very last stanza of Yeats's "Among School Children":

     O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
     Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
     O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
     How can we know the dancer from the dance?

DeMan asks, what if we were take the last line literally rather than rhetorically as one would usually do? Then he reinterprets the whole poem twice, first as though the line contained a rhetorical question, the second as though it contained a literal question. He argues that this procedure produces two radically different interpretations of the poem, one in conflict with the other: "This hint should suffice to suggest that two entirely coherent but entirely incompatible readings can be made to hinge on one line, whose grammatical structure is devoid of ambiguity, but whose rhetorical mode turns the mood as well as the mode of the entire poem upside down. Neither can we say...that the poem simply has two meanings side by side. The two readings have to engage each other in direct confrontation, for the one reading is precisely the error denounced by the other and has to be undone by it. Nor we can we in any way make a valid decision as to which of the readings can be given priority over the othe; none can exist in the other's absence... On the other hand, the authority of the meaning engendered by the grammatical structure is fully obscured by the duplicity of a figure that cries out for the differentiation that it conceals". Thus, the poem "deconstructs", and the moment of deconstruction, the moment of "aporia", the focal point of "textual indeterminacy of mea

147. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:00 PM PT
Thus, the poem "deconstructs", and the moment of deconstruction, the moment of "aporia", the focal point of "textual indeterminacy of meaning" is the last line of the poem.

Now, the idea that a poem or any literary text can produce genial ambiguities is an old one and no big deal. But this isn't what DeMan is saying. He is alleging some sort of epic conflict within the text between the "figural" and the "metafigural". The poem thus becomes a commentary on its own inability to convey meaning.

148. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:02 PM PT
Which is a very very small idea carried to absurdity.

There is even in that volume a short textual explication of some joke from "All in the Family", some quip uttered by Archie Bunker. I might quote it just to show how preposterous it can get.

Tabouli Jones: later.

149. pellenilsson - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:03 PM PT
Pseudoerasmus

OK. Now explain how to apply this to post-modernism.

150. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:11 PM PT
Most of the book "Allegories of Reading" is devoted to applying this basic kernel of deconstructionist analysis to a variety of texts, primarily from Rilke, Rousseau, Proust, and Nietzsche. But despite all the elaborate explications and sometimes incomprehensible verbiage, the final word is always the same: the text deconstructs itself.

151. TheDiva - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:16 PM PT
IOW, a euphemism for pretentious and windy intellectual posturing towards no real purpose.

152. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:18 PM PT
Pellenillsson: "Post-modernism" is just an umbrella term for a variety of theories and critical practises which share a flavour -- a flavour of radical debunking...something. But not everything which radically debunks can be called post-modernist. Frankly, I have no idea how to define PM and don't intend to.

TabouliJones: Actually, I don't mind the History of Insanity or Surveillance & Punishment. His really pernicious books, the ones that touch on science, are the Archaeology of Knowledge and the Order of Things (L'ordre des choes), the latter being about classification and taxonomy.

153. TabouliJones - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:20 PM PT
To add to PE's useful example of deconstruction:

DeMan is an acolyte of Derrida and the latter would argue that the inability to convey concrete meaning, as evinced in "Among School Children", is characteristic of every text in existence. Derrida argues that the idea of meaning is a non-starter, since it is impossible for any text whatsoever to cohere into a fixed, or concrete, meaning that is capable of withstanding deconstruction.

Also, note how PE placed the term "aporia" within quotation marks. Derrida maintains that it is ultimately useless to talk about moments of aporia. Why? He argues, in his book Aporias, that the term aporia is misleading because it implies that the reader is able to judge or interpret a given text according to a preordained question that is itself capable of withstanding deconstruction. That is, a question is a textually built "thing" and is, therefore, unable to convey a single concrete meaning that we can use to mediate interpretation -- i.e. Derrida says there is no such thing as a truly useful question.

If PE pretends that Derrida is SeaSailor in the religion thread, I am certain that he will demonstrate that, in this regard, Derrida is full of bunk.

154. ChristinO - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:22 PM PT
I still don't understand how the two readings are incompatible much less in total opposition to one another. To suggests such argues for a literalism so absolute as to be absurd. Or possibly I have misinterpreted what the two readings would be.

155. ChristinO - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:25 PM PT
What I wonder is why Derrida bothered to write.

156. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:25 PM PT
Deconstructionism soon took on a much wider meaning than was found in DeMan (and Derrida), for whom it was basically a textual and rhetorical phenomenon. Today, the word is basically used to mean any debunking of accepted notions, especially through the discernment of power relations in the formation of those notions.

Outside the "classical" deconstructionism of DeMan, if "post-modernism" has a common denominator, I'd say it asserts radical epistemological uncertainty & relativism in all our knowledge and interprets claims to objective knowledge as merely "social construction" that benefits those in power.

157. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:28 PM PT
Christino (Message #154)

No, you're right and DeMan is full of shit. All deconstructionists make ambiguities of language to be much much more portentous and significant than they are.

158. TabouliJones - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:30 PM PT
Paul Ricoeur has a useful term: "the hermeneutics of suspicion". I believe this term accurately encapsulates what postmodernism is generally all about.

159. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:30 PM PT
OK, I must run. But before I go: the original "deconstructionists" were formalists -- they cared only about the rhetorical analysis of texts. Then came the New Historicists who approrpriated the textual methods of the decons and applied them to history seen from Marxist, feminist, Freudian, gay, and Afrocentric points of view.

160. cllrdr - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:35 PM PT
Interesting that Pseudo's read DeMan. And you're doing a very useful job of laying out the basics, Tabouli. But I think you're going to far. Derrida isn't writing the same thing over and over agsin. Moreover, taking a text apart isn't a goal -- it's a process. Deconstruction is its own reward. Derrida is, on occasion, a fairly sharp literary critic. "Writing and Difference" (University of Chicago Press, 1978) has first-rate essays on Artaud and Jabes. "La Dissemination" (University of Chicago Press, 1981) features a tour de force on a fragment by Mallarme. "The Post Card" (University of Chicago Press, 1987) is nominally about freudian psychoanalysis. In fact it's a first rate novel. I'm in the process of reading "The Politics of Friendship" (Verso, 1997) at the moment. Too soon to tell what he's up to yet.

Derrida's never struck me as a stud muffin. But like all froggie intellects of his generation, he's asharp dresser. I will never forget seeing Lacan lecture in new York back in 1975. He was wearing the most impeccable suit I've ever seen on a human. And what rhetorical command, and theatrical style. Nonetheless, he was full of shit.

161. cllrdr - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:41 PM PT
Thanks for setting up the intro for my last post, Pseudo.

One thing that must be kept in mind -- these guys weren't operating in concert as some sort of cabal. Barthes had little to say about Derrida and distrusted Lacan. Derrida wrote scathingly about Lacan in "The Post Card" and in many inverviews. Barthes was deeply closeted, and would have been horrified to hear what Foucault was up to at The Slot. Baudrillard thinks they've all missed the point. The only problem is he can't figure the point out himself. Not that he's complaining.

162. TabouliJones - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:46 PM PT
Cellar,

Actually, I was just trying to get the conversation started. I have many problems with Derrida. However, I also think that there is much value to his thinking; particularly in his widely ignored concepts of dissemination and play. I must scoot but, I will try to post more on this flip side of Derrida tomorrow.

Re. Foucault. There is a great photograph of him in the sixties. He is seen arm in arm with a companion and laughing his ass off as the two of them make mocking gestures behind an oblivious and earnestly pamphletering Jean Paul Sartre. Photos like that make it hard not to root for Foucault's theories.

163. cllrdr - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:52 PM PT
Lol on Foucault vs. Sartre, Tabouli!

Required reading :"Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography" by David M. Halperin (Oxford University pres, 1995)

164. TabouliJones - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:54 PM PT
Cellar:

P.S. -- He is not a postmodernist. But your reference to Lacan made me think of one of his buddies, another froggie intellect: Louis Althusser. I know little about his Marxism but, I just finished his alternately frightening and illuminating memoir "The Future Lasts Forever". Just curious, have you had a chance to read it.

Oh yeah, I have yet to see your response to jacob W's Slate article on Kazan in the e-mail to the editors section.

165. TabouliJones - Feb. 2, 1999 - 1:58 PM PT
oops:

My last -- extremely garbled/rhetorically dysfunctional -- post may have implied that Lacan is not a postmodernist. What I meant to say was that Althusser is not a postmodernist.

166. cllrdr - Feb. 2, 1999 - 3:01 PM PT
No, he was just a murderer. The O.J. Simpson of La belle France.

167. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 2, 1999 - 3:24 PM PT
I think it's stupendously ironic that Cellardweller, one incapable of reading well, should be reading Derrida, one incapable of writing well. Moreover, I think Cellardweller is the last person on earth whose characterisations of Derrida or anybody else we should take seriously.

168. cllrdr - Feb. 2, 1999 - 4:19 PM PT
Nice to se you in such a cheerful mood, Pseudo.

169. darkviolet - Feb. 2, 1999 - 9:52 PM PT

Pseudoerasmus -

Also, I'm trying to think of an appropriate way to thank you for all the questions you brought to mind today! I can't imagine what I should say.

170. pellenilsson - Feb. 2, 1999 - 11:49 PM PT
Pseudoerasmus Message #152

You say that you do not intend to define postmodernism. I think it can be done, although in a very general and basic way which will not be news to current contributors, but there may be others, less erudite, lurking out there.

PM is a reaction to the ‘modern project', which some say started with Francis Bacon. Others want to connect it with the Enlightenment or with the French Revolution. Its main characteristics are rationalism, scientific methods and explanations, functionalism and, in the later phases, social engineering. The modern project has dominated the 20th century. The reaction to it takes many forms, for example the so called postmodern architecture where functionalism has been abondoned for a more eclectic and playful form language. Another example is certain aspects of New Age where the ambition is to put the occult (earth lines, pattern on wheat fields) on par with science.

Personally I think that PM is best described as ‘irrationalism'.

171. Seguine - Feb. 3, 1999 - 6:52 AM PT
"Paul Ricoeur has a useful term: "the hermeneutics of suspicion". I
believe this term accurately encapsulates what postmodernism is
generally all about."

Haha! Just right.

172. ChristiPeters - Feb. 3, 1999 - 7:14 AM PT
Hmmm... Having waded through all the posts so far (ruining a perfectly good pair of hip-waders in the process, I might add), I believe I will accept Diva's definition of Postmodernism:

"IOW, a euphemism for pretentious and windy intellectual posturing towards no real purpose."

So now I bid this thread adieu and hie myself off to the nearest sporting goods store to buy another pair of waders. (I want to have all my equipment ready for my next opportunity to go fly-fishing. Ahhhh...Trout!)

173. cllrdr - Feb. 3, 1999 - 7:21 AM PT
But pretentious windiness is its own reward, Christi. Without it the Fray would not exist.

174. TabouliJones - Feb. 3, 1999 - 7:52 AM PT
Pellenilsson,

Actually, I think that PE went a long way towards formulating a definition of postmodernism when he described it as a movement involving the "radical debunking" of prevailing notions "especially through the discernment of power relations in the formation of those notions." Paul Ricoeur's phrase "hermeneutics of suspicion" is particularly apt in this regard. Ricoeur describes this strain of interpretation as one which a)intuits some sort of debilitating "Will to Power" at work in all human discourse and b)strives to demonstrate how this "Will to Power" insinuates itself in prevailing (read hegemonic)notions and ideologies. The point of such "suspicious" interpretation is ostensibly twofold. First, it is meant to demonstrate that prevailing ideologies entrench what might be *rhetorically* (and roughly)described as a law of diminishing returns or entropy in our arenas of discourse. Second, it presumably works to subvert the iniquitous stratification of power and influence that is assumed to be the natural attendant of hegemonic ideologies.

Also, I think that you are correct when you imply that it is helpful to regard postmodernism as a reaction against the so called "cult of rationality" that many posit as the overbearing heart of Enlightenment/Modernist/Imperialist/Western ideology. Thus, as you suggest, "irrationalism" could be posited as a blanket term for describing postmodernism.

However, I also think that Cellar is correct when he points out that not all postmodernists have been cut from the same cloth. Any general definition is bound to mislead people from the many nuances that separate one postmodernist from another. Foucault, for example, offers a subtle interpretation of the concept of "will to power" that might render it difficult to sqeeze him into the definition that I offer above. Although, I am confident that my definitio

175. ChristiPeters - Feb. 3, 1999 - 7:56 AM PT
cllrdr Message #173 - but all *my* windiness is utterly UNpretentious. Honest!







(ok, so I peeked back in here - sue me)

176. TabouliJones - Feb. 3, 1999 - 7:58 AM PT

continued . . .

However, I also think that Cellar is correct when he points out that not all postmodernists have been cut from the same cloth. Any general definition is bound to mislead people from the many nuances that separate one postmodernist from another. Foucault, for example, offers a subtle interpretation of the concept of "will to power" that might render it difficult to sqeeze him into the definition that I offer above. Although, I am confident that my definition accurately reflects the basic project of postmodernists in general, Foucault included.

More importantly, Cellar is correct when he points out that postmodernism should not be dismissed as a simple debunking for debunking's sake. By definition, postmodernism is a subversive doctrine but, it does have an attendant constructive side -- which I will try to discuss later.

177. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 3, 1999 - 9:00 AM PT
"I also think that Cellar is correct when he points out that not all postmodernists have been cut from the same cloth. Any general definition is bound to mislead people from the many nuances that separate one postmodernist from another."

I wonder if people realise that the decadent scholastic dispute over "how many angels could dance on a pinhead" is _not_ a canard or an urban legend. Indeed, Nicholas of Autrecourt argued for an infinite number; Augustinus Niphus, for one; and Lorenzo della Valle, the alleged critic of decadent scholasticism, managed to argue for zero.

178. cllrdr - Feb. 3, 1999 - 9:11 AM PT
Aha! We've found the PoMo culprit at last!

Nicholas de Autrecourt.

179. TabouliJones - Feb. 3, 1999 - 9:22 AM PT
Re. 177

PE,

True enough. Pomo thinking is rightly denigrated as a decadent school of thought that endlessly reiterates its basic premises and ongoing worries without ever fully demonstrating its utility as a means of negotiating real life issues. That said, there is some utility (however negligible) to postmodernism and, in this regard, an examination of its many nuances *may* not be an entirely fruitless task.

180. loopy76 - Feb. 3, 1999 - 12:04 PM PT
Postmodernism is really little more than a bunch of modernists kicking around and looking for "something new."

Although modernism was indeed a reaction against what might be termed "enlightenment modes of thinking"--rationalism, etc.--modernism ran into a whole bunch of unforseen problems. Even worse than that, modernism's hell-bent drive to schematize everything managed to unsettle a whole bunch of well-placed principles in the process.

For example, Darwin, in propounding that man was the modern product of millions of years of evolution, used then-modern scientific techniques which led to a relatively wholesale scientific usurpation of the age-old myth that man was personally created by God. Rather than being led to believe we were somehow special products of God's love, we were urged to see ourselves as little more than complicated animals. Never mind the fact that belief in God, along with all of its moralities and socially-stabilizing details, were central prerequisites to the enlightenment view that man was a rational creation (which, from an enlightenment point-of-view, was a technological "device," a place from which to begin...), a number of systematizers of Darwinism decided to try and "universalize" his discoveries and mold them into all kinds of social philosophies.

Freud likewise showed us that we wern't really rational at all, but merely slaves to unconscious drives. Although this discovery, like Darwin's, was a scientific fact, a number of people--Norman O. Brown is a good example, Erich Fromm another--have tried to use principles of psychoanalysis to understandd society in general, not merely the individual. Of course, that line of thinking ran smack into a wall, just like social Darwinism has.

Then came another modernist, Nietschze, who decided that we needed to completely obliterate all existing belief systems in order to find a new set of them. He thought something new

181. ChristiPeters - Feb. 3, 1999 - 2:39 PM PT
"True enough. Pomo thinking is rightly denigrated as a decadent school of thought that endlessly reiterates its basic premises and ongoing worries without ever fully demonstrating its utility as a means of negotiating real life issues."

Whew!

Did you say that all in one breath!?

&:o)

182. chloel - Feb. 3, 1999 - 3:22 PM PT
In a narrative mood (dependent on a theory of agency long wholly exploded): Several famous (in the sense popularized by Lacan) postmodernists have checkered pasts involving at least one Big Lie. One was recently discovered as having been a Nazi; Christa Wolf informed for the secret police. As *a* reaction to rationalizations, or spy work, or guilt, their theories about truth not existing, or being what the reader makes of it, make more sense (given the t.o.a.l.w.e.) than they do standing alone.

183. cllrdr - Feb. 3, 1999 - 4:31 PM PT
Derrida is a Jew,

Barthes was gay -- and for many years closeted.

And Foucault, who was into fist-fucking, died of AIDS.

184. chloel - Feb. 3, 1999 - 4:44 PM PT
Did the deconstructionist argument that truth doesn't really exist coincide in history, more or less, with not having to lie all the time any more?

... I optimistically think the lies are less vital now than they were sixty years ago.

185. Pseudoerasmus - Feb. 3, 1999 - 5:02 PM PT
Derrida, a Jew, certainly employed his capacity for heroic casuistry when it was revealed the latter wrote for a Nazi paper in Belgium!

186. RyckNelson - Feb. 3, 1999 - 6:20 PM PT
Prevailing modernistic influences with regards to prehistoric deconstructing previously undefined postmoderistic complexities would be a modestly over-rated empiricism.

Don't you think?

187. cllrdr - Feb. 3, 1999 - 9:08 PM PT
Certainly you're aware of the Jewish Wagnerians, Pseudo.

And wasn't DeMan's Nazism a "youthful indiscretion"?

Over in the "Racism" thread they hand you your head on a platter for saying someone is a racist, so don't you go around calling DeMan a Nazi so lightly. Harumpf!

188. copans - Feb. 4, 1999 - 8:30 AM PT
Re Barthes:
I'm old enough that Derrida was never mentioned as I studied Old English and Icelandic in grad school. We did read Barthes for fun, and I seldom see him held up for scorn.

Could someone give me an overview/evaluation of his career and contributions now that it can be summarized? Am I wrong in thinking that PoMo critics tend to treat him more benignly?

189. TabouliJones - Feb. 4, 1999 - 8:47 AM PT
Copans:

FWIW here are the two things that I know about Barthes. First, I believe that he was one of the first critics to proclaim "the death of the author". That is, he argued that it is wrong to say that any book is written per se by its "author". According to him, every text is the product of inter-textual forces that are independant of the author's intentions and acts of writing. Second, he was one of the first to use literary techniques to interpret "pop" phenomena such as magazine ads -- see. his collection "Mythologies".

190. marjoribanks - Feb. 4, 1999 - 8:57 AM PT
The Barthes book on photography , 'Camera Lucida', manages to be completely irritating and charming at the same time.

191. TabouliJones - Feb. 4, 1999 - 9:01 AM PT
As for an evaluation of Barthes' standing or the validity of his work, I'm afraid that I can't help you. I read "Mythologies" about six years ago before I had been exposed to any serious literary criticism. I do remember that the book was highly enjoyable. Barthes also wrote in a vivid and deliberately outlandish fashion; employing all kinds of figurative devices in a way similar to Nietzsche. For this reason, he is very often quoted for rhetorical purposes.

192. cllrdr - Feb. 4, 1999 - 9:26 AM PT
Read "S/Z," his analysis of a Balzac novella. I think it's Bathes' masterpiece. "Camera Lucida" is wildly overrated. Barthes' interest in photography stems from his fear of cinema. He wrote about stills from Eisenstein films rather than the films themselves, for example. Very odd. "A Lover's Discourse," "The Pleasure of the Text," and "Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes" are also good fun. There's a bio by Jean-Louis Calvert that I haven't yet read. Philippe Sollers slimeshim in his *a clef* novel "Women" ( a real piece of crap)Barthes can also be seen playing William Mackpeace Thackery in "The Bronte Sisters" by Andre Techine-- who Barthes kept for many, many years. In Techine's "J'embrasse Pas," Philippe Noiret plays a character based on Barthes. D.A. Miller's "Bringing Out Roland Barthes" -- which the University of California Press has packaged with Barthes unfinished novel, "Incidents," is first rate.

193. copans - Feb. 4, 1999 - 12:21 PM PT
Cellar/Tj/MajB:
I am right in remembering a certain playfulness in Barthes. Did that remain to the end? Is there any chance he indulged in self-parody, because it seemed to me he used to border on it?

194. cllrdr - Feb. 4, 1999 - 2:57 PM PT
Naw.

He was just a smartass queen.

195. TabouliJones - Feb. 5, 1999 - 6:32 AM PT
Cellar,

A couple of days ago you recommended "Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography" by David M. Halperin; which set my memory in motion. About four years ago I attended a seminar in which the presenter argued against a best selling book that basically accused Foucault of being a murderer for his behaviour in the San Francisco bathhouses. The presenter passionately debunked this theory. Do you recall the controversy? Do you recall the book in issue? Any recommended reading wrt the controversy?

196. cllrdr - Feb. 5, 1999 - 6:51 AM PT
The book is "The Passion of Michel Foucault" by James Miller (Simon & Schuster, 1993) It was the subject of a debate published in the Winter 1993 issue (#97) of "Salmagundi" -- well worth looking-up. Foucault loved The Slot.



So did Randy Shilts.

197. TabouliJones - Feb. 5, 1999 - 7:03 AM PT
Cellar,

Thanks for the recommendation. The debate sounds interesting, so I think that I will definitely get a hold of these readings.

Speaking of Randy Shilts, did you ever see the Canadian movie "Zero Patience"? It was advertised as a "musical about AIDS", if you can believe that. Apparently the movie examined the "patient zero" hypothesis popularized by Shilts. I remember that the movie was acclaimed when it first came out, although (for obvious reasons) it tanked commercially. I missed it when it came out, but I have placed it alongside the plethora of movies on my must see list.

198. cllrdr - Feb. 5, 1999 - 7:09 AM PT
I wrote a piece about it for "Film Comment." John Greyson, the writer-director, is a fabulous character. He's made a number of teriffic films and videos -- many of which involve PoMo figuresof note.

199. Msivorytower - Feb. 5, 1999 - 7:22 AM PT

"Also, I think that you are correct when you imply that it is helpful to regard postmodernism as a reaction against the so called "cult of rationality" that many posit as the overbearing heart of Enlightenment/Modernist/Imperialist/Western ideology. Thus, as you suggest, "irrationalism" could be posited as a blanket term for describing postmodernism."

This really does capture what I think of as the postmodernist mindset. A total rejection of the rational view of the world.

This has suddenly turned into a very lovely conversation, thanks to PE, TabouliJ, and Cllrdr.

200. cllrdr - Feb. 5, 1999 - 7:52 AM PT
Merci, Ms.

"More Than Zero" my piece on "Zero Patience" -- can be found in the November-December 1993 issue of "Film Comment," Volume 29, Number 6.

back
next

home