WHAT END DOES POST MODERNISM SERVE?

[fatrandy]

Hi! I'm actually in the same class as Syretta and I also have a question regarding Post Modernism. Simply: What end does post modernism serve? It cannot be to identify truth because post modernists are the fastest to point out the arbitrary nature of truth. It can not be to find meaning because of the same reasons as before. So what end does it serve to prove that reality, identity, meaning and truth are all relative to one's own social, cultural and environmental "training" or "construct". Once you deconstruct just about everything including your own upbringing and what you were brought up with it seems that all you are left with is a meaningless mess. Or perhaps the post modernists main point is to show that everything really has no meaning unless we put meaning to it? Anyways I was just wondering what other people thought and would really appreciate help on this. Thanks!

[KLO]

Or perhaps the post modernists main point is to show that everything really has no meaning unless we put meaning to it

That is exactly it. I think the postmodernists' aim is to make people understand that those big, amorphous ideals passed down through the ages are just ideals, not really meaningful in themselves. Human agency is what gives those ideas any meaning whatsoever.

[AbdoRinbo]

Or perhaps the post modernists main point is to show that everything really has no meaning unless we put meaning to it

That is exactly it. I think the postmodernists' aim is to make people understand that those big, amorphous ideals passed down through the ages are just ideals, not really meaningful in themselves. Human agency is what gives those ideas any meaning whatsoever.

In other words, postmodernism has no end. It's an interrogation that goes on forever----it has to. It tries to prompt change, but usually it just advocates a radical rethinking of everything. The term 'human agency' reminds me of Roland Bleiker. Bleiker says that actions such as political protest and legislation are entirely ineffective (they just mask the problem), the only way to get to the source of atrocities like racism and imperialism is to change the way we think about them. Oh, yeah, but if you ever tried to read Bleiker you probably wouldn't be able to catch that, he's a semantic nazi. So it goes . . .

:rolleyes: ;)

[EAP]

Filling the coffers of paper magnates and inflating the ego's of college undergraduates.

[PeterL]

In other words, postmodernism has no end.

Yes, postmodernism is completely pointless.

[Virgil]

Hi! I'm actually in the same class as Syretta and I also have a question regarding Post Modernism. Simply: What end does post modernism serve? It cannot be to identify truth because post modernists are the fastest to point out the arbitrary nature of truth. It can not be to find meaning because of the same reasons as before. So what end does it serve to prove that reality, identity, meaning and truth are all relative to one's own social, cultural and environmental "training" or "construct". Once you deconstruct just about everything including your own upbringing and what you were brought up with it seems that all you are left with is a meaningless mess. Or perhaps the post modernists main point is to show that everything really has no meaning unless we put meaning to it? Anyways I was just wondering what other people thought and would really appreciate help on this. Thanks!
Fatrandy and all the others who contributed to this thread above here - You are all absolutley right. Not only is it useless, but taken to its logical conclusion is nihilistic and detrimental to culture and society. You might all be interested in the debate that is going on in the thread titled "Language as Control".

[beer good]

Does the fact that there is no one purpose to something automatically render it useless? Does everything have to have an easily identifiable goal to be meaningful?

[PeterL]

Fatrandy and all the others who contributed to this thread above here - You are all absolutley right. Not only is it useless, but taken to its logical conclusion is nihilistic and detrimental to culture and society. You might all be interested in the debate that is going on in the thread titled "Language as Control".

Isn't it ironic that something that professes to be marxist, to some degree, is fundamentally nihilistic?

[PeterL]

Does the fact that there is no one purpose to something automatically render it useless? Does everything have to have an easily identifiable goal to be meaningful?

The apparent goal of postmodernism to to undercut everything.

[beer good]

So it does have a goal then? If so, how can it be pointless?

(And apparent to whom?)

[PeterL]

So it does have a goal then? If so, how can it be pointless?

(And apparent to whom?)

Ironicly again postmodernism also seeks to undercut itself, which may be the a point, if the goal is nihilism. It is apparent to me.

I will confess that I should have stated my assumption that I consider it pointless to attempt to defeat oneself.

[starrwriter]

Isn't it ironic that something that professes to be marxist, to some degree, is fundamentally nihilistic?
Isn't Marxism nihilistic? I always thought so since it never posits a meaning to life beyond the historical struggle to control materialistic factors. In that respect it's just as nihilistic as capitalist ideology, which believes that he who dies with the most wealth wins the game of life.

[PeterL]

Isn't Marxism nihilistic? I always thought so since it never posits a meaning to life beyond the historical struggle to control materialistic factors. In that respect it's just as nihilistic as capitalist ideology, which believes that he who dies with the most wealth wins the game of life.

If that's how you define nihilism, then everything is nihilism. If marxism "never posits a meaning to life beyond the historical struggle to control materialistic factors", then it is not nihilistic.
from dictionary.com,
Nihilism
1A. " 1. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.
1B. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
2. Rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate all previous theories of morality or religious belief.
3. The belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement."

If one accepts those as valid definitions of nihilism, then postmodernism is nihilistic under definitions 2 and 3, but marxism is not nihilistic under any of those definitions.

[IrishCanadian]

Postmodernism, to me, has always seemed to be an artistic cop-out. Not to say that it is a bad one though. Some artistic mediums in the post-modern theory seem to be quite excelent to me, and do infact have distinctive purpose. I can't seem to find it in post modern poetry though. The poetry has always upset me because the beetnicks (and similar PM poets) are not nearly good enough to compose somthing as complex as a sonnet while getting across the main point or emotion. However, I do like post-modern music and some drama.
The rest seems to be art (lit) for its own sake. In this way it plays artistically with the art, not the subject. All puncta and no studium.
At least thats what i see in it ... so far.

[Virgil]

If that's how you define nihilism, then everything is nihilism. If marxism "never posits a meaning to life beyond the historical struggle to control materialistic factors", then it is not nihilistic.
from dictionary.com,
Nihilism
1A. " 1. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.
1B. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
2. Rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate all previous theories of morality or religious belief.
3. The belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement."

If one accepts those as valid definitions of nihilism, then postmodernism is nihilistic under definitions 2 and 3, but marxism is not nihilistic under any of those definitions.
Yes, I don't think Marxism is nihilistic, just bad economics. It's the post modern theory that if taken to its logical conclusion is nihilistic. I don't know if Marx would even agree with the post modernists if he were alive today. From what I remember, he seemed to disagree with the communists of his day too.

[PeterL]

Yes, I don't think Marxism is nihilistic, just bad economics. It's the post modern theory that if taken to its logical conclusion is nihilistic. I don't know if Marx would even agree with the post modernists if he were alive today. From what I remember, he seemed to disagree with the communists of his day too.

I agree with you about Karl. He probably wouldn't think much of the postmodeernists, they are elitists. But he might ally himself withem, because they accept some of his bad economics, or they claim to anyway.

[starrwriter]

from dictionary.com ...
Dictionary.com aside, nihilism to me is the belief that life is essentially meaningless -- grounded in nothingness. Marxist and capitalist ideologues try to invent a purpose in materialism, but they see no reality beyond their (phony) inventions.

[PeterL]

Dictionary.com aside, nihilism to me is the belief that life is essentially meaningless -- grounded in nothingness. Marxist and capitalist ideologues try to invent a purpose in materialism, but they see no reality beyond their (phony) inventions.

I don't disagree with that definition, but materialism is a philosophy. I am not a materialist, but I see validity in it. Your comment that certain idealogues "see no reality beyond their (phony) inventions" can easily be applied to all idealogues, that's what makes them idealogues.

[The Unnamable]

“Beckett: Yet I speak of an art turning from it in disgust, weary of puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road.
Duthuit: And preferring what?
Beckett: The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.”
From The Duthuit Dialogues

Yes, it has no use. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a value.

Besides, whose culture is it detrimental to, Virgil?

[blp]

“Beckett: Yet I speak of an art turning from it in disgust, weary of puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road.
Duthuit: And preferring what?
Beckett: The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.”
From The Duthuit Dialogues


This entire dialogue is one of my favourite passages of Beckett. No smiley is adequate to convey my pleasure.



Yes, it has no use. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a value. Or you could say, the fact that it doesn't have an immediately apparent use doesn't mean it doesn't have one at all.



Besides, whose culture is it detrimental to, Virgil? And which postmodernism are we talking about anyway? I'm surprised that this thread's gone this far without any attempt to define terms.

Joseph Conte in 'Unending Design - The Forms of Postmodern Poetry' posits two types of postmodernism, one a reaction against modernism, seeking to return to pre-modernist artistic conventions (e.g. the classical architecture of Quinlan Terry, or perhaps the work of young American novelists like Dale Peck and Jonathan Franzen who repudiate the experiments of modernism) and the other accepting modernism, but repudiating some of its certainties. I can't say more about the second because I'm barely sure what it is - I've tried to figure it out and I've started a thread on it as it pertains specifically to literature. As far as I can tell, the boundaries are pretty blurred or nebulous, which may be part of the point. Conte's (excellent) book cites objectivist poets such as Louis Zukofsky writing as early as the thirties as postmodernists. Other writers I'm fairly sure fit the bill include Pynchon, Kathy Acker and John Ashbery, but I'm never entirely sure why.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Modern: Of, or pertaining to the present.
Post- (prefix): After in time or order.

Hence Post-modern: After the present. In the future in other words.

So post-modernism hasn't happened yet. It might have a meaning after all; it just hasn't got one yet. When it does happen, will somebody please let me know and I will comment further upon it - except by then it won't be post-modern at all but post-past.



Facetious: Treating serious subjects with deliberately inappropriate humour; Flippant.

[PeterL]

Modern: Of, or pertaining to the present.
Post- (prefix): After in time or order.

Hence Post-modern: After the present. In the future in other words.

So post-modernism hasn't happened yet. It might have a meaning after all; it just hasn't got one yet. When it does happen, will somebody please let me know and I will comment further upon it - except by then it won't be post-modern at all but post-past.


Facetious: Treating serious subjects with deliberately inappropriate humour; Flippant.

Agreed. I briefly thought of started a movement toward 'pretermodernism'.

[BSturdy]

Humannature, Mananimal

[Virgil]

“Beckett: Yet I speak of an art turning from it in disgust, weary of puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road.
Duthuit: And preferring what?
Beckett: The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.”
From The Duthuit Dialogues

Yes, it has no use. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a value.

Besides, whose culture is it detrimental to, Virgil?
I apologize if I was interpreted to mean either of two things:
(a) post modern art (fiction, poetry, music etc.) - the artist has the perogative to create whatever theme and vision he so chooses; we the responder to the art can make our personal judgements and evaluations.
(b) post modern theory as a philosophic endeavor - this is a credible philosophic line of thought, and if philosphers, God bless their hearts, find value to this, they should keep debating and discussing it.

As I've made clear elsewhere, I have a problem with it's application to understanding literature and art in general. Somewhere on another thread someone who shall be left unnamable (please excuse me; I've been wanting to use that pun for a long time ;) ) asked if all interpretations of a work were correct and if some interpretations were wrong. He answered his own question by saying some interpretations could be wrong; not all interpretations are correct. Yes, I agreed. The application of post modern criticism is by its own definition a projection of ideology into a text. I think that that leads to a poor understanding of a work. I was also asked somewhere, why am I offended by post modernism. I'm not offended by post modernism the theory per se, but I am offended by critics of any stripe who redefine the work as they want to see it.

[jinshui-yue]

i agree!!
what is that? that is what.

[blp]

But, Virgil, as I think a few people may have already said...postmodern criticism isn't about projecting ideology onto a text - especially not by its own definition. Its own definition, to the extent that the efforts of so many different critics and theorists can be reduced to one defining principle anyway, which is really dubious, is that all texts are already ideological.

**Face turns blue.**

[PeterL]

But, Virgil, as I think a few people may have already said...postmodern criticism isn't about projecting ideology onto a text - especially not by its own definition. Its own definition, to the extent that the efforts of so many different critics and theorists can be reduced to one defining principle anyway, which is really dubious, is that all texts are already ideological.

**Face turns blue.**

Au contraire, postmodern critics impose their idealogy on a text. That isn't necessarily bad, if it is done well, but too often it means that someone will use a text as a vehicle for pushing idealogy that is not in the text, claiming that it is in the text. Which brings up semiotics as applied to interpretation. In semiotic theory every sememe implies all other sememes, thus a text implies the rest of the world. The question when interpreting a text is whether one is interpreting the text or a text that is implied by the original text. It can be amusing to interpret a text in a way that is barely connected with the original text, but it isn't useful, but there are literary works that demand interpretation and in which the author didn't give a clear indication of meaning. One example that comes to mind in Coleridge's "Kubla Khan". I wrote an interpretation of it last Fall in which the poem is basically about sexual intercourse - the second stanza describes the act, the third stanza reflects on it and is a plan to write a poem about it, and the first stanza sets the scene. That poem is sometimes interpreted as a discussion of poetic creation and sometimes as a dream of unconnected images. I don't know which interpretation is correct, i.e., what Coleridge intended, but I can see validity in each of those interpretations, but I think that my interpretation fits the text better. I did not impose meaning on the poem, I extracted meaning from the poem. A postmodern critic would be more likely to impose meaning on the poem.

[blp]

With all due respect, PeterL, and interesting as your material sounds, nothing in it has anything to do with proving your point. All you do is state it at the beginning and then reiterate it at the end.

[PeterL]

With all due respect, PeterL, and interesting as your material sounds, nothing in it has anything to do with proving your point. All you do is state it at the beginning and then reiterate it at the end.

And gave an example.

I just realized that you probably aren't acquainted with semiotics, the study of signs and the interpretation of signs. Everything would make more sense if you were acquainted with that study.

[blp]

I know enough to understand your example, but I don't see how it backs up your argument. You seem to be talking about a kind of game of interpreting texts to say things they manifestly didn't mean. If that acknowledgement is being made, it's hardly going to make the interpretation stick. It's also a somewhat localised example that doesn't prove that anything like all postmodern critics are doing this.

[PeterL]

I know enough to understand your example, but I don't see how it backs up your argument. You seem to be talking about a kind of game of interpreting texts to say things they manifestly didn't mean. If that acknowledgement is being made, it's hardly going to make the interpretation stick. It's also a somewhat localised example that doesn't prove that anything like all postmodern critics are doing this.

I didn't and wouldn't suggest that all of any kind of critic does any one thing in particular. Rather than me trying to explain the full range, I would suggest that you read "The Limits of Interpretation" by Umberto Eco. Postmodernist critics often do play "a kind of game of interpreting texts to say things they manifestly didn't mean." There are works that are open to a wide range of interpretation, but for most works the range is very limited. To try another example, when I heard a Marxist interpretation of Aphra Behn's "Oroonko", I laughed, because that wasn't what she was writing, the critic was imposing his opinion on the text.

[bhekti]

In my opinion, Postmodern is a situation. When a person is about to say something (of the past, of the future, of the present, of anything) to someone else, and suddenly that person say "...aw, forget about it" and he is responded by an "..mm" and then there is silence, that is how the situation called postmodern is like.

[blp]

...aw, forget about it" and he is responded by an "..mm" and then there is silence, that is how the situation called postmodern is like.

A lot of my own writing's like that.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

I tried to post a blank post, to signify silence. But that's too minimalist for this forum. You'll just have to imagine it.

Start now.













And end here.

[Virgil]

I didn't and wouldn't suggest that all of any kind of critic does any one thing in particular. Rather than me trying to explain the full range, I would suggest that you read "The Limits of Interpretation" by Umberto Eco. Postmodernist critics often do play "a kind of game of interpreting texts to say things they manifestly didn't mean." There are works that are open to a wide range of interpretation, but for most works the range is very limited. To try another example, when I heard a Marxist interpretation of Aphra Behn's "Oroonko", I laughed, because that wasn't what she was writing, the critic was imposing his opinion on the text.
This has been my experince in grad school completely. Yes they do. Postmodernist critics impose meaning to a text, rather than derive meaning from a text. I'll have to check out the Umberto Ecco book, or is it an essay? And I've said it before (to those not aware, you might find the Language as Control thread interesting), surprise-surprise, what the critics always find is a reflection of their ideology.

[The Unnamable]

Postmodernist critics impose meaning to a text, rather than derive meaning from a text.
We all impose or construct rather than derive meaning. I assume the reason that you think that meaning is somehow set within a text is because you see meaning as pre-linguistic. Meaning is not something which the author wills, some wordless act which is then fixed for all time in a set of material signs called the text.

Your view that meaning is like the kernel of a nut and that ‘objective’ critics help reveal that meaning is as permeated with ideological assumptions as any other. You are claiming, in effect, that your own reading is free from all political contamination and that others’ readings are ideological.

“The idea that there are non-political forms of criticism is simply a myth which furthers certain political uses of literature all the more effectively. The difference between a ‘political’ and a ‘non-political’ criticism is just the difference between the prime minister and the monarch: the latter furthers certain political ends by pretending not to, while the former makes no bones about it. The difference between a conventional critic who speaks of ‘the chaos of experience’ in Conrad or Woolf, and the feminist critic who examines those writers’ images of gender, is not a distinction between ‘non-political’ and ‘political’ criticism. It is a distinction between different forms of politics – between those who subscribe to the doctrine that history, society and human reality as a whole are fragmentary, arbitrary and directionless, and those who have other interests which imply alternative views about the way the world is.

The feminist critic is not studying representations of gender simply because she believes that this will further her political ends. She also believes that gender and sexuality are central themes in literature and other sorts of discourse, and that any critical account which suppresses them is seriously defective. Similarly, the socialist critic does not see literature in terms of ideology or class-struggle because these happen to be his or her political interests, arbitrarily projected onto literary works. He or she holds that such matters are the very stuff of history, and that in so far as literature is an historical phenomenon, they are the very stuff of literature too. What would be strange would be if the feminist or socialist critic thought analyzing such questions of gender or class was merely a matter of academic interest – merely a question of achieving a more satisfyingly complete account of literature. For why should it be worth doing this? Liberal humanist critics are not merely out for a more complete account of literature: they wish to discuss literature in ways which will deepen, enrich and extend our lives. Socialist and feminist critics are quite at one with them on this: it is just that they wish to point out that such deepening and enriching entails the transformation of a society divided by class and gender. They would like the liberal humanist to draw the full implications of his or her position. If the liberal humanist disagrees, then this is a political argument, not an argument about whether one is ‘using’ literature or not.” Terry Eagleton

[The Unnamable]

As I've made clear elsewhere, I have a problem with it's application to understanding literature and art in general.
And this is the aspect of your approach I find most problematic. You’ve certainly made clear that you do have a problem with it but nowhere have you justified that through logical argument. I do not know why you cannot see that your own reading practices are no less the product of ideology than any other.



Somewhere on another thread someone who shall be left unnamable (please excuse me; I've been wanting to use that pun for a long time ;) ) asked if all interpretations of a work were correct and if some interpretations were wrong. He answered his own question by saying some interpretations could be wrong; not all interpretations are correct. Yes, I agreed.
I still think that some interpretations are worthless – ‘uninformed and ignorant’ I said. But that doesn’t mean that I think that some interpretations are political and others objective.



The application of post modern criticism is by its own definition a projection of ideology into a text.
Where is your evidence for this?


I think that that leads to a poor understanding of a work.
If ideological readings lead to poor understanding, then your own readings must be included. Your own approach is ideological.


I was also asked somewhere, why am I offended by post modernism. I'm not offended by post modernism the theory per se, but I am offended by critics of any stripe who redefine the work as they want to see it.
Isn’t that what we all do, ultimately? It just isn’t possible to make a complete distinction between ‘what the text means’ and ‘what it means to me’. There surely isn’t one, pure and uncontaminated meaning of Hamlet that exists independently from all the thoughts we’ve ever had about it.

[The Unnamable]

Au contraire, postmodern critics impose their idealogy on a text. That isn't necessarily bad, if it is done well, but too often it means that someone will use a text as a vehicle for pushing idealogy that is not in the text, claiming that it is in the text.
Please explain to me what is in a text. Your position supposes that some people know what is in a text while others merely force their own meanings into it.


Which brings up semiotics as applied to interpretation. In semiotic theory every sememe implies all other sememes, thus a text implies the rest of the world. The question when interpreting a text is whether one is interpreting the text or a text that is implied by the original text. It can be amusing to interpret a text in a way that is barely connected with the original text, but it isn't useful,
What do you mean by ‘useful’? What, for that matter, is the use of Literature? Perhaps that question and the more basic one of ‘What is Literature?’ deserves a thread by itself.


but there are literary works that demand interpretation and in which the author didn't give a clear indication of meaning. One example that comes to mind in Coleridge's "Kubla Khan". I wrote an interpretation of it last Fall in which the poem is basically about sexual intercourse - the second stanza describes the act, the third stanza reflects on it and is a plan to write a poem about it, and the first stanza sets the scene. That poem is sometimes interpreted as a discussion of poetic creation and sometimes as a dream of unconnected images. I don't know which interpretation is correct, i.e., what Coleridge intended, but I can see validity in each of those interpretations, but I think that my interpretation fits the text better. I did not impose meaning on the poem, I extracted meaning from the poem.
How can you say that? If it’s true then the ‘meaning’ of sexual intercourse must already have been in the text, otherwise how can you extract something that isn’t there?



A postmodern critic would be more likely to impose meaning on the poem.
That’s precisely what you’ve just done, surely? – You are choosing one meaning over another. You can’t have it both ways – either there is an objective meaning in the text or the text is a linguistic construct capable of generating many meanings. You speak of what Coleridge ‘intended’ as if that would give us access to the ‘actual’ meaning. Yet if readers don’t bring their own meanings to the text, then any meaning that is not one that was fixed there by the author would have had to have been generated elsewhere. Unless Coleridge ‘meant’ sexual intercourse, your meaning has been constructed, not extracted.

[PeterL]

Please explain to me what is in a text. Your position supposes that some people know what is in a text while others merely force their own meanings into it.

Language, any language, contains a set of signs with commonly agreed upon meanings. A text contains a collection of such signs arranged by the author in a meaningful way. A reader reads the text and usually understands what was written. Some people will read the text and consider the signs to mean things that are other than the commonly agreed upon meanings.



What do you mean by ‘useful’? What, for that matter, is the use of Literature? Perhaps that question and the more basic one of ‘What is Literature?’ deserves a thread by itself.


I mean useful in understanding a text according to the commonly agreed upon meanings of the sings in the text.



How can you say that? If it’s true then the ‘meaning’ of sexual intercourse must already have been in the text, otherwise how can you extract something that isn’t there?


Correct, my interpretation was of what the text says.



That’s precisely what you’ve just done, surely? – You are choosing one meaning over another. You can’t have it both ways – either there is an objective meaning in the text or the text is a linguistic construct capable of generating many meanings. You speak of what Coleridge ‘intended’ as if that would give us access to the ‘actual’ meaning. Yet if readers don’t bring their own meanings to the text, then any meaning that is not one that was fixed there by the author would have had to have been generated elsewhere. Unless Coleridge ‘meant’ sexual intercourse, your meaning has been constructed, not extracted.

I agree. I am of the opinion that Coleridge wrote a deliberately obscured poem about sexual intercourse. By using figurative language and allusions he made the poem obscure. I didn't impose meaning on it, I read what was there and saw figurative language that had been interpreted differently by others. The author is essential to any text. If the author writes something and readers understand it as meaning something else, then the author didn't make it clear and/or the readers were flawed. Readers must bring their knowledge of language and of the world when they read anything.

[PeterL]

This has been my experince in grad school completely. Yes they do. Postmodernist critics impose meaning to a text, rather than derive meaning from a text. I'll have to check out the Umberto Eco book, or is it an essay? And I've said it before (to those not aware, you might find the Language as Control thread interesting), surprise-surprise, what the critics always find is a reflection of their ideology.

The Limits of Interpretation is a book. I have to reread it, too.

[The Unnamable]

Language, any language, contains a set of signs with commonly agreed upon meanings. A text contains a collection of such signs arranged by the author in a meaningful way. A reader reads the text and usually understands what was written. Some people will read the text and consider the signs to mean things that are other than the commonly agreed upon meanings.
I agree up to a point but the key thing to remember is that those ‘agreed upon’ meanings are not forever fixed (otherwise how do you explain the fact that within the same language the meanings of some words change over time?). Why those changes occur is what’s interesting.


I mean useful in understanding a text according to the commonly agreed upon meanings of the sings in the text.
What are these ‘commonly agreed upon meanings’? Who has agreed upon them? Why have they done so? Again, you are not remembering that meanings change.


I agree. I am of the opinion that Coleridge wrote a deliberately obscured poem about sexual intercourse.
So all other readings of this poem up to the moment when you articulated this interpretation are actually ignorant of the text’s ‘real’ meaning? Yours is the definitive meaning (i.e. according to what Coleridge actually thought). What happened to all the ‘commonly agreed’ meanings that existed before your meaning?


By using figurative language and allusions he made the poem obscure. I didn't impose meaning on it, I read what was there and saw figurative language that had been interpreted differently by others.
Why did they interpret them differently? Is there no relevance in the fact that you are reading the poem over two hundred years after he wrote it (and therefore you both occupy very different linguistic worlds)? Perhaps this poem by Billy Collins might be interesting:

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.


The author is essential to any text. If the author writes something and readers understand it as meaning something else, then the author didn't make it clear and/or the readers were flawed.
You have a view of language as something utterly transparent, as if the world just exists and we describe it with words. I suggest you read the ‘Language as Power’ thread. It contains a lot of what could be repeated here. Roland Barthes famously declared ‘The Death of the Author’ and while this has not become a universally accepted position, it does profoundly challenge the idea of literary creation to which you subscribe.


Readers must bring their knowledge of language and of the world when they read anything.
What knowledge of language? What knowledge of the world?

[blp]

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.


Hey, give the author credit, even if it's yourself. This is great.

[The Unnamable]

Hey, give the author credit, even if it's yourself. This is great.
I did put the author – Billy Collins. If I could write like that, I’d be elsewhere. ;)

[blp]

Weird, don't know how I missed that. Just looking for it at the end or under the title I guess.

[rachel]

I tried to post a blank post, to signify silence. But that's too minimalist for this forum you'll just have to imagine it."


I get the sense you wrote this was an attitude of contempt. I have seen a lot of that on different threads by different people. I just don't understand why a person joins a forum and having read the creator's rules and such and agrees to them then makes comments continually in a sort of complaint against it. It seems so unkind somehow.
If I am wrong please accept my deepest apology. It just seems like it.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

I get the sense you wrote this was an attitude of contempt. I have seen a lot of that on different threads by different people. I just don't understand why a person joins a forum and having read the creator's rules and such and agrees to them then makes comments continually in a sort of complaint against it. It seems so unkind somehow.
If I am wrong please accept my deepest apology. It just seems like it.

Not a bit of it. If you read the post above mine, you will see the context in which I wrote that. I actually did try and post silence and it was refused - apparently, there is a minimum word count, a fact that I only discovered at that moment. Logically, this feature is there to stop people accidently clicking on the wrong button and to prevent others from ruining threads by filling them with blank posts.

I can assure you that I intended no contempt to anyone. The post was a joke, light relief, nothing more, and in keeping with the theme of the thread. I have been fascinated by the discussion in here. I think you have been guilty of the very crime of "imposing your opinion on the text" that is being so thoroughly discussed here.

I am afraid that I will refuse to be serious 100% of the time, however much like contempt you find my little jests. If you look at the posts I have made, you will see that there are many serious, lengthy arguments and many jokes. I prefer it that way.

I reserve my contempt for future use if you criticise me unjustly like that again. ;)

[rachel]

excuse me,
I didn't say you DID do this, thus I was not imposing anything, I asked politely if that was true, because of the tone of some of your postings. I also apologized in advance if I was wrong.

[litlearner]

Post modernism is a way of viewing the world that, as so many of you pointed out, denies all truths and certainties--including Marxism. Quoting from Terry Eagleton, "Truth is the product of interpretation, facts are constructs of discourse, objectivity is just whatever questionable interpretation of things has currently seized power, and the human subject is just as much a fiction as the reality he or she contemplates, a diffuse, self-divided entity without any fixed nature or essence." It is nihilistic and it is scary but very exciting in many ways. It frees us from thousands of years of built up notions and allows us, to think about life from all different angles, not extremist positions. It allows the views of all the world's cultures to be considered and most of all is a reflection of our current world, although most of us are unaware of it. It is more than I can say in a post.
I studied it in school but really had no clue what it meant until I started reading Haruki Murakami's works. It opened a whole new world of reading for me and now I can reread a lot of books I had put aside because I had no clue what the authors were saying.
What end does it serve? What end did Romanticism or Modernism serve? I guess its just a way to give words to what people feel about life.

[The Unnamable]

litlearner,
I enjoyed reading that and agree with most of it. I am, however, less optimistic than you are or perhaps want to be.

It frees us from thousands of years of built up notions and allows us, to think about life from all different angles, not extremist positions. It allows the views of all the world's cultures to be considered and most of all is a reflection of our current world, although most of us are unaware of it.
My worry is that the only competing discourses that can become sufficiently powerful to effect genuine change are those that are so powerful already. They ‘contain’ defiant and unruly discourses and prevent any thinking that might challenge their dominance.

[litlearner]

Soothsayer,
I still have a long ways to go to grasp the finer points of the Post modernist POV, if indeed I ever will. Let me explain that I've just become certified as a secondary school English teacher and in that context I find the movement compelling for its ability to foster independent critical thinking and a more open dialogue among my students--something that has been sorely lacking, according to my education professors and something I believe vital to the democratic process. What I hope to relate to my students is the Post modern idea that no one, especially myself, has a monopoly on the truth and that each individual must construct his or her own personal identity. How this plays out on a larger stage is beyond me. You are perceptive however when you refer to my optimism or idealism on the issue.

"Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a
blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive.
Friend, look to 't."
Hamlet 2.2.

[The Unnamable]

I've just become certified as a secondary school English teacher and in that context I find the movement compelling for its ability to foster independent critical thinking and a more open dialogue among my students--something that has been sorely lacking, according to my education professors and something I believe vital to the democratic process. What I hope to relate to my students is the Post modern idea that no one, especially myself, has a monopoly on the truth and that each individual must construct his or her own personal identity.

‘Soothsayer’ is just my little jape.

I hope you don’t think I was sneering at your idealism. You do all you can, mate –it’s a thankless task but if we didn’t try our best, who will? There’s a book you might find interesting (if you don’t know it already), which looks at how to transform the teaching of English through critical theory – “Critical Theory and the English Teacher: Transforming the Subject (Teaching Secondary English S.)” by Nick Peim. I can’t say that I used it that much but I did find it very interesting. I think Hamlet was one of the reasons why I didn’t apply it much. I don’t really want to discuss representations of women in Hamlet. I want to talk about him.

I also think too much of my energy had already been used up pointing out that “there’s still somebody talking at the back.” I’ve often considered that as the title for my autobiography. :)

[blp]

Well, I'm still not seeing postmodernism being adequately defined here - a difficult task, granted, given that so much of it seems to be about a multiplicity of interpretations. I think there are probably many postmodernisms. But, litlearner, I think to say it's nihilistic is inaccurate. A great deal of it's about more, not less. In as much as it's opposed to modernism, it's partly opposed to a reductive, purist strain in modernism as well as to its triumphalism and utopian sense of mission. This is not to say that modernism is nihilist in theory either, but in striving to an end point, it may be in practice. It ends up as a state of absolute austerity, very Soviet in its self policing - witness Robbe-Grillet railing in 'Towards a New Novel' against metaphor. Postmodernism's reaction to this seems to me to be to say, fine, we can have this kind of thing, in fact, it definitely matters, but only as something to play with because, after all, let's be realistic, 'Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?' is a great line and to suggest that Robbe-Grillet is better just because he won't use metaphors is basically pretty stupid, phillistine and destructive. In a sense it's pointing out that modernism, like Marxism, gets stuck in just the kind of quasi-theological certainty it meant to decry.

[The Unnamable]

Well, I'm still not seeing postmodernism being adequately defined here - a difficult task, granted, given that so much of it seems to be about a multiplicity of interpretations.
My, my, you don’t ask for much. The original post only asked ‘what end does it serve’?
Lyotard defined postmodernism as ‘incredulity towards metanarratives.’ Does that help? :brow:


I think there are probably many postmodernisms.
Yes, and it depends which postmodernism you mean. The word was used in the 1930s but its most up to date sense began with Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition, first published in 1979.

One thing I remember making me smile (darkly, need I add?), was when he argued (The Differend) that conflict between two contradistinctive ideological positions cannot be resolved without injustice to one side or the other.

You might find something of hope in Lyotard and he certainly isn’t nihilistic. Part of his theory reminds me of what you said in support of Derrida and Deconstruction. He favoured artistic dissent and argued that breaking the rules (and the subsequent formation of new rules, I suppose) is essential if cultures are not to become complacent and, eventually, despotic. He champions the avant-garde cause, the same cause that was perhaps tellingly despised by both Hitler and Stalin. The Nazis denounced modern art as decadent and Stalin ousted the Russian Formalists and many others, ‘replacing them’ with Socialist Realism. There is a very blatant example of how the ruling powers determine what should be considered truth. And it is this claim to truth that Lyotard associates with terror and not just in Nazi or Stalinist politics. He insists on the importance of questioning all assumptions and undermining all certainties. Mind you, I’m glad he’s a theorist and not an aircraft engineer if he thinks like that. :lol:

[The Unnamable]

Modern: Of, or pertaining to the present.
Post- (prefix): After in time or order.

Hence Post-modern: After the present. In the future in other words.
Perhaps it’s consistent with the spirit of postmodernism but this is interesting in the context of asking what is language.

In terms like modern history, modern languages or even modern music, 'modern' doesn’t mean “Of, or pertaining to the present.” So the signifier 'modern' has no positive content - it is only related to difference.


Also, I am reminded of the Duchamps/Richard Mutt ‘case’. http://www.finesite.webart.ru/shocking/fountain-1.htm


So post-modernism hasn't happened yet. It might have a meaning after all; it just hasn't got one yet. When it does happen, will somebody please let me know and I will comment further upon it - except by then it won't be post-modern at all but post-past.
There is a logic to this that your humour at first hid from me. Those artists Lyotard praises for working without rules will only find out what those rules were in the future. Look at Duchamps’ urinal now.


Yet your comment appears to have been intended as a joke:

Facetious: Treating serious subjects with deliberately inappropriate humour; Flippant.
Are you, by any chance, a postmodernist web performance artist?

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Are you, by any chance, a postmodernist web performance artist?

Let me deconstruct myself and I'll tell you. ;)

To be honest, the actual definition of modern that I bastardised said, "Of, or pertaining to the present or the recent past." But why spoil a good joke for want of a bit of accuracy?

I love philosophy, in as much as I enjoy reading the ways that far greater minds than I have tried to overlay some kind of a logical theory on this glorious chaos that we know and love as "Life".

But I am by nature a sceptic. I look for (and usually find) holes in most philosophies. Argumentative sod it says under my user name; it's not there as a joke. Post modernism (the bit that I understand) comes closer to my personal opinions than most.

All theories are flawed. Everything is subjective. There are no absolute truths. These are cornerstones of post modernism (I think). A lot of the rest I struggle with (I share your dislike of the abstruse. There is a simple way to say anything, in my opinion. Why deliberately obscure your point, unless you're trying to obscure the fact that it wasn't worth making?)

My background is in mathematics and computing. Gödel's theorem proves that no sufficiently powerful mathematical system (sufficiently powerful to completely describe any part of the world that contains itself) can be 'complete'. If mathematics, the simplest & most objective of all sciences, can never do this, how can anything as complicated and subjective as a philosophy claim that it can?

Personally, I like to take it all with a pinch of salt, do my best to see what the ideas mean, and where they are coming from, and then have a good laugh. It's a lot easier to read something like Descartes and see how his ideas bowed to the prevailing wind - how desperately he tried to force the existence of god into his theories is particularly laughable (but only when viewed in hindsight - at the time, denying the existence of god (or even suggesting that such an opinion was open to debate at all) would have been as welcome as denying the holocaust, or advocating euthanasia would be today) - than it is to see how our unconscious world view colours the theories of today's philosophers. But I have no doubt that it does. Even post modernism, which tries to stand aloof from it's place in history, is coloured by that place. As you say (or as you claim I said - how can I comment on what you read into what I wrote, I'm just the author?) the historical context of post modernism won't become apparent until it's looked back on by a bunch of even smugger philosophers in years to come. I said a similar thing in another thread about "modern literature" - maybe Dan Brown and John Grisham will be spoken of in the same breath as Dickens and Dostoevsky in 100 years time - I fear we will never know unless great strides in geriatric medecine are made in the very near future.

At the end of the day, it's great to have a good think, but even better to have a good laugh. If you can do both together, then you have acheived satori - In my own personal heaven, Woody Allen sit's at god's right hand and the seat to his left is empty.

[The Unnamable]

All theories are flawed. Everything is subjective. There are no absolute truths. Except, presumably, that one. ;)


I said a similar thing in another thread about "modern literature" - maybe Dan Brown and John Grisham will be spoken of in the same breath as Dickens and Dostoevsky in 100 years time - I fear we will never know unless great strides in geriatric medecine are made in the very near future.
And perhaps Dickens and Dostoevsky will be considered no ‘better’ than Brown and Grisham. This is where most lovers of Literature tend to rear. It’s not an idea I like, either – which is why I side with George Steiner over the theorists. I know it’s logically indefensible and that I am simply opting for my own ideology but that’s who I am. It’s not simply that I would consider a society to whom Shakespeare means nothing as terribly impoverished; I also believe (I suppose it is an act of faith in some sense) that thinking human beings will always be able to find something of interest in the best writers represented on this Forum.


At the end of the day, it's great to have a good think, but even better to have a good laugh. If you can do both together, then you have acheived satori - In my own personal heaven, Woody Allen sit's at god's right hand and the seat to his left is empty.

I’d go along with most of the above in explaining my own outlook. I also enjoy a good think. – “My brain! That’s my second favourite organ.”

British writer Kingsley Amis hated Woody Allen’s films. He considered Allen wet, simpering and horribly self-indulgent. I once saw ‘Hannah and Her Sisters’ in London with an audience of some university Feminist Society. They screamed abuse at the screen a number of times as they considered Allen outrageously sexist. Funny how some people live in a world so different from my own. But I will not be badgered into feeling guilty by self-appointed arbiters of worth and value that know very little about either. Allen makes me laugh and think. His anti-intellectual stance is made from the standpoint of someone who has at least bothered to consider his targets with considerable effort and a high level of understanding. I think I’ve earned my right to make fun of Barthes by bothering to read and trying to understand him. He still humbles me and I still read him but I have my own world as well.

“There is no antidote… against the opium of time. The winter sun shows how soon the light fades from the ash, how soon night enfolds us. Hour upon hour is added to the sum. Time itself grows old. Pyramids, arches and obelisks are melting pillars of snow. Not even those who have found a place amidst the heavenly constellations have perpetuated their names: Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osiris in the Dog Star. Indeed, old families last not three oaks. To set one's name to a work gives no one a title to be remembered, for who knows how many of the best of men have gone without a trace? The iniquity of oblivion blindly scatters her poppyseed and when wretchedness falls upon us one summer’s day like snow, all we wish for is to be forgotten.”
W G Sebald, The Rings of Saturn

I’ll leave you with some Steiner. Many find him elitist and his writing abstruse. The bits of him I understand, I love. He isn't always very straightforward, but then he is writing in his third language (one of about 7 in which he’s fluent).


“In late capitalism, money bellows. It packages time and space. The censorship of the market over what is difficult and innovative, over what is intellectually and aesthetically demanding - the 'little magazine', the philosophic treatise, the avant-garde composition - is often more effective than that exercised by political censorship and suppression. Serious literature, music and thought have the exasperating habit of being productive under tyranny. 'Squeeze us, we are olives,' said James Joyce. 'Censorship is the mother of metaphor,' added Borges. The mass-consumer market, the mass-media can bury alive. Freedom and licence can bestow insignificance (what poem could have shaken the White House as Mandelstam's epigram [his 1933 "Epigram," described the "Kremlin crag-dweller" (Stalin) with "fat fingers as oily as maggots" and "large laughing cockroach eyes"; ] shook Stalin?).

But the conundrum of inelasticity in the number and quality of respondents, despite enrichments in schooling and access, could lie deeper. It may be that the human capacity to be interested in, to be moved by, to grasp and answer to major thought and form, though self-evidently far more widespread than are the springs of creation, is itself confined to a more or less constant minority. 'The truth has always been with the few' (Goethe). Education, should it purpose to do so, can enlarge this minority. But not indefinitely; not, one intuits, by very much. Men and women who desire to resolve non-linear equations, who can take in, at any coherent level, a Bach partita, who respond to a poem by Donne or seek to grapple with what Kant calls a 'transcendental deduction' - each of these being among the unprofitable summits of the human story - are, will most likely continue to be, few. They are an elite. This word has been incessantly thrust at me. Yet its meaning is perfectly straightforward. An elite in the world of pop-music, of athletics, of the bourse or of the life of the mind is simply that group which knows, which says that some things are better, are more worth getting to know and to love, than others.”

“Yet human exultation and sorrow, anguish and jubilation, love and hatred, will continue to press on language which, under that pressure, becomes literature. The human intellect will persist in posing questions which science has ruled illicit or unanswerable. Though perhaps condemned to ultimate circularity, this persistence is thought made urgent, which is to say, metaphysical. An imp of demonic triviality inhabits the imperial regime of the sciences. It could be that music knows better, although there is nothing more intractable to definition than the nature of that knowledge.”

If you are reading this, Virgil, here’s one you’ll like:

“The assertion that I, that anyone, has by mere virtue of social-intellectual context or a very brief lapse of time, capacities for analytic reflection, for insights into the nature of man and of being more ample, more penetrating than (I do not say ‘different from’) those of a Plato, a Dante or a Pascal, does strike me as dubious in the extreme. As does the correlative ruling that such men and/or women were the victims of a collective delusion, of consensual superstitions, of what logic calls ‘category mistakes’. The assumption that we have outgrown Spinoza or Kant – though we tell our story differently – leaves me unpersuaded. Arguments from authority are, I know, suspect. But if one is at liberty to choose one’s company, that of the believers is of overwhelming distinction. To discard it, to assign to its perceptions a merely rhetorical or antiquarian force, is to leave the greater part of our civilisation vacant.”

To me, it’s about choosing one’s company.


Here’s a much simpler but no less impressive comment:

“We have long been, I believe that we still are, guests of creation. We owe to our host the courtesy of questioning.”

[Xamonas Chegwe]

All theories are flawed. Everything is subjective. There are no absolute truths.


Except, presumably, that one. ;)

Especially that one!

The whole thrust of Gödel's theorem is the creation of an internal contradiction within mathematical logic. It shows that mathematics can never become powerfull enough to describe itself without paradox creeping in and shattering it's internal logical consistency, leading to statements that can neither be proven nor disproven.

In a similar way, any philosophy that attempts to include it's own workings within itself, also embraces paradox as a natural consequence. So when post modernism describes the way that ideologies shape our interpretation of words, removing the possibility of 'absolute truth', it must include itself as one of those ideologies and thus it's words can have no absolute meaning either.

I love that aspect; paradox always fascinates me. The only way to avoid a paradox is to 'unask' the question; to deny it's very validity.

Take this example:

The statement below is true.
The statement above is false.

Which, if any, do you believe?

Taken individually, there is no reason to question the validity of either of them. But combined, they are nonsense. The real nonsense though, is the question that follows them. It has no possible answers in any 'accepted' logical system.

In a similar way, post modernism's claims that all writing is subjective and can only be understood in terms of one ideology or another, is itself, an ideology, which influences the very words which define it, thus re-influencing itself, ad infinitum; Ourobouros, forever biting it's own tail.

This doesn't make post modernism wrong, per se. But it makes the question of whether post modernism is 'right', and any questions like it, as nonsensical as the question in the example above.

It's a great paradox. A beautiful joke. Shame most of the philosophical writings on the subject aren't as funny! Or am I missing something?

I'll add the link that I added to "Language as control", because I think it belongs here more than there - and I think it's very droll.

PMG (http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo)

[PeterL]

The whole thrust of Gödel's theorem is the creation of an internal contradiction within mathematical logic. It shows that mathematics can never become powerfull enough to describe itself without paradox creeping in and shattering it's internal logical consistency, leading to statements that can neither be proven nor disproven.

In a similar way, any philosophy that attempts to include it's own workings within itself, also embraces paradox as a natural consequence. So when post modernism describes the way that ideologies shape our interpretation of words, removing the possibility of 'absolute truth', it must include itself as one of those ideologies and thus it's words can have no absolute meaning either.

I love that aspect; paradox always fascinates me. The only way to avoid a paradox is to 'unask' the question; to deny it's very validity.

Take this example:

The statement below is true.
The statement above is false.

Which, if any, do you believe?

Taken individually, there is no reason to question the validity of either of them. But combined, they are nonsense. The real nonsense though, is the question that follows them. It has no possible answers in any 'accepted' logical system.

In a similar way, post modernism's claims that all writing is subjective and can only be understood in terms of one ideology or another, is itself, an ideology, which influences the very words which define it, thus re-influencing itself, ad infinitum; Ourobouros, forever biting it's own tail.

This doesn't make post modernism wrong, per se. But it makes the question of whether post modernism is 'right', and any questions like it, as nonsensical as the question in the example above.

It's a great paradox. A beautiful joke. Shame most of the philosophical writings on the subject aren't as funny! Or am I missing something?

I'll add the link that I added to "Language as control", because I think it belongs here more than there - and I think it's very droll.

PMG (http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo)

I enjoyed your post for several reasons, but mostly because it points toward an answer of the question posed in the title of this string. The answer being "None." While any logical system can be expected to have some internal inconsistancy, postmodernism is inconsistant throughout, because it is a metanarrative of metanarratives, and it tries to function as an explanation for everything. Even Christianity doesn't try to be everything.

One of the beauties of language is that has its own logic that makes some kinds of illogical statements clearly illogical, and there are word combinations that are not meaningful. The Postmodern Generator is a beautiful example of how language can be used against itself. Acually the cutup method in general shows how language can be used against meaning and logic.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Personally, I think that saying post modernism has no meaning is also meaningless. but, as has already been pointed out, I am a stand-up post modernist! :lol:

[Xamonas Chegwe]

I enjoyed your post for several reasons, but mostly because it points toward an answer of the question posed in the title of this string. The answer being "None."

Strictly speaking, my argument only actually 'points towards' such an answer if you accept the validity of post modernist thought in the first place, as it is that, and that alone, that the whole argument is based on! You either accept post modernism, thereby 'proving' that it has no meaning; or you deny it, thereby undermining the argument, and you're no better off!

I did warn you; I love paradox!


While any logical system can be expected to have some internal inconsistancy, postmodernism is inconsistant throughout, because it is a metanarrative of metanarratives, and it tries to function as an explanation for everything.

Again, it only has this internal inconsistency if you accept it's validity. And then all other schools of thought have it too!


Even Christianity doesn't try to be everything.

Does any system of belief try to be anything? I would say no (based upon my own ideological definition of the word 'no', that is). But I would argue against the view that christianity's most vociferous and fundamentalist proponents have never claimed exactly that! I have met people that say that they believe that every single word in the bible is absolutely true and that every question in the world is answered within it's pages. Sounds like 'trying to be everything' to me. Or is that my ideology talking?


One of the beauties of language is that has its own logic that makes some kinds of illogical statements clearly illogical, and there are word combinations that are not meaningful. The Postmodern Generator is a beautiful example of how language can be used against itself. Acually the cutup method in general shows how language can be used against meaning and logic.

Here we are in agreement. But I would add that there are far more 'illogical statements' whose illogic is far better concealed and only shows up in a certain light - ie. dependant upon the ideology under which they are viewed. What the generator shows me is the very 'slipperyness' of language that post modernism propounds. If you don't realise that it's a randomly generated pile of twaddle, you can spend a long time trying to understand it and actually get some sense from it! At least for a while.

Interestingly, I came across the site when I was looking for a punchline for the joke, "How many post modernists does it take to change a lightbulb?" - I never did find it - any answers? Or are all answers too slippery?

[Billy Bilo]

Postmodernism serves to create obscure Theory journals for postgrad students.

;)

[PeterL]

Here we are in agreement. But I would add that there are far more 'illogical statements' whose illogic is far better concealed and only shows up in a certain light - ie. dependant upon the ideology under which they are viewed. What the generator shows me is the very 'slipperyness' of language that post modernism propounds. If you don't realise that it's a randomly generated pile of twaddle, you can spend a long time trying to understand it and actually get some sense from it! At least for a while.

Interestingly, I came across the site when I was looking for a punchline for the joke, "How many post modernists does it take to change a lightbulb?" - I never did find it - any answers? Or are all answers too slippery?


How many post-modernists does it take to change a lightbulb?

Each and every one of us.
or
how many post-modernists does it take to change
a lightbulb? none... post-modernists aren’t afraid of the dark.

I don't think that we have a significant disagreement. It is just that you require that one accept the validity of postmodernism for it to be inconsistent, while I am willing to judge each piece of it. I think that it is easy to show that many parts of postmodernism are absurd, although there are parts of it that I have agreed with as long as I can remember.

[PeterL]

Postmodernism serves to create obscure Theory journals for postgrad students.

;)

good point

[Nerd]

do those who think that it is "pointless" think that it is bad?

not everything that is good has to have a "point."

[Virgil]

do those who think that it is "pointless" think that it is bad?

not everything that is good has to have a "point."
Do I think it's bad? No, I've said elsewhere that if philosophers really want to discuss this they can do it to their hearts content. It wouldn't bother me in the least. It's actually quite funny listening to philosophers wrap themselves up in some convoluted rhetoric. The best yet, "phallogocentric." :lol: It should almost be a Saturday Night Live skit. I do get offended when the postmodernists try to project their ideology into art. I think it's a bad approach to literary criticism. But who am I to say? If you read through posts of those who support it, you can see that they are really ideologues themselves. Silly them. They think they can change the world through literary criticism. An actual writer or artist barely makes a blip on the outside world; a critic makes none at all.

[The Unnamable]

do those who think that it is "pointless" think that it is bad?
On the contrary, I think its acknowledgement of the futility of everything is what makes it good. You are right about something not needing a point to be worthwhile.


I do get offended when the postmodernists try to project their ideology into art. I think it's a bad approach to literary criticism.
Virgil, are you proceeding with the assumption that the dripping tap makes even granite soften? If you repeat a position (one you cannot defend) a sufficient number of times, do you assume it becomes true?

An actual writer or artist barely makes a blip on the outside world; a critic makes none at all.
You continue to maintain a clear distinction between artist and critic. Firstly, poor old Dr. Johnson. Only half of him deserves recognition (lets hope it’s not the same side as the ear in which he was deaf). Secondly, when it comes to someone like Roland Barthes, the distinction becomes even more obviously meaningless. His mind is penetrating, his intelligence sharp and his writing is dazzling and witty as well as profound in its implications. S/Z is quite brilliant, regardless of whether or not you ‘agree’ with him. What is Aristotle’s Poetics if not a work of criticism? I realise that certain writers whose work has been recognised by institutions like the Nobel Academy do not fit your criteria by which merit should be judged. You consider Beckett’s work as only of any interest to the suicidal, as well as being ‘frankly very limited’, remember? Nevertheless, Beckett has had a huge impact on twentieth century literature, as has Barthes, albeit in a different way.

In the interests of fairness Virgil, I think you should distinguish between those who make no impact on the world and those who make no impact on your world.


Nerd, I am one of those labelled ‘ideologues’. I have come to realise that what it means is someone who can consider ideas and articulate a set of informed views that do not correspond with Virgil’s view of Literature. "Phallogocentric" is a funny word, deserving of being laughed at, and certainly much funnier than those used in conventional criticism, e.g. Onomatopoeia, Pathetic Fallacy or Aristotle’s own Anagnorisis. There’s nothing technical and/or silly about these words. They are real words, not fanciful inventions by ideologues.

[Virgil]

Virgil, are you proceeding with the assumption that the dripping tap makes even granite soften? If you repeat a position (one you cannot defend) a sufficient number of times, do you assume it becomes true?

Actually a dripping tap will erode granite, given time. I don't defend it, because I'm not about to go to the library to pull out articles from post modernist journals. I had to do that in grad school. It wasn't fun and frankly it was a waste of time. I put forth my experience; take it or leave it.


You continue to maintain a clear distinction between artist and critic.

Call me old fashion, but yes I do.


What is Aristotle’s Poetics if not a work of criticism?
Of course, I never said Aristotle was an artist. Nor do I say that criticism is of no value. It's different than art. I hold literary ciritics in high regard.


In the interests of fairness Virgil, I think you should distinguish between those who make no impact on the world and those who make no impact on your world.
I thought I would tweak you a little when I said that ;) , but I don't think many artists have shaped the world at large. I think art refelects the world (who was it that said Shakepeare holds a mirror to it?) not the converse.

[The Unnamable]

Actually a dripping tap will erode granite, given time.
Yes, I know – that’s why I used the comparison! I assumed it explained your approach.



I don't defend it, because I'm not about to go to the library to pull out articles from post modernist journals.
This is disingenuous. You don’t need to read any postmodernist journals to answer some of the very basic objections I have raised. I don’t have a problem if you can’t but why put it down to not having enough time or interest, as if my points could easily be dismissed if only you could be bothered? We could all use that argument. You had sufficient time to try to marginalize and mock those ‘ideologues’ who identify the flaws in your thinking.


I put forth my experience; take it or leave it.


Then I guess I’ll have to leave it. I assumed that the purpose of a discussion forum was to discuss views, not simply state them and then refuse to consider anything that challenges them. Yes, your views are out of date, but I don’t object to them on the grounds of fashion but by reason of their lack of logic and inability to withstand scrutiny.



An actual writer or artist barely makes a blip on the outside world; a critic makes none at all.

Nor do I say that criticism is of no value. It's different than art. I hold literary ciritics in high regard.
Do you see no contradiction in these two positions? So you think that critics are worthy of your high regard in spite of the fact that they make no impact at all on the world? You also must only be referring only to those critics who hold your own views because there are a great many fine ‘critics’ you are effectively dismissing when you call them ‘Johnny come latelys’. By your own words (you say you don’t consider Aristotle an artist) Aristotle has made no impact on the world (he was a critic you appear to be conceding). Why are we still reading and discussing him? I also note that you haven’t helped poor Dr. Johnson’s predicament. Nor have you conceded that Barthes might have written a great piece of Literature in S/Z. What about Pope’s An Essay on Criticism? Is Pope now considered not to be a major literary artist because he wrote criticism? Your approach is riddled with contradictions, none of which you are prepared to recognise. The idea that “phallogocentric” is a word that doesn’t belong in the realm of criticism, whereas “Anagnorisis” is a word that does is, quite simply, nonsense.


I don’t know who said that Shakespeare holds a mirror up to the world but it was Hamlet who said:

“the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature;”

Shakespeare also believed a good many things that we would find laughable now, so it’s rather a foolish move to try to cite such beliefs as authoritative. Our understanding of the relationship between Art and the world has changed since the seventeenth century. The most astounding thing about your position is that it unconcernedly dismisses the work of so many key writers, thinkers artists of the past eighty odd years. You don’t argue with the ideas of Barthes/Lacan/Foucault etc., you merely repeat that you think they are wrong and seek to make up for the deficiencies in your argument by recruiting others to sneer with you:

“It’s actually quite funny listening to philosophers wrap themselves up in some convoluted rhetoric. The best yet, “phallogocentric.” It should almost be a Saturday Night Live skit.”

That’s your choice but in a discussion such as the subject of this topic, do you not think it’s useful to have justifications for one’s opinions. I am perfectly prepared to try to explain and justify what I say. Challenge my views and allow me to challenge yours. I can think of two other people who would also have disagreed with your views about the nature of reality, two who might carry more weight with you as an engineer:

"Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world."
A. Einstein and I. Infeld, The Evolution of Physics



(Mr. Bennet retires to his library.)

[Virgil]

This is disingenuous. You don’t need to read any postmodernist journals to answer some of the very basic objections I have raised. I don’t have a problem if you can’t but why put it down to not having enough time or interest, as if my points could easily be dismissed if only you could be bothered? We could all use that argument. You had sufficient time to try to marginalize and mock those ‘ideologues’ who identify the flaws in your thinking.

You're right. Although I don't think disingenuous is the right word; perhaps unfair. I humbly accept your chastisement. I will try in the future.


Do you see no contradiction in these two positions? So you think that critics are worthy of your high regard in spite of the fact that they make no impact at all on the world?
I don't think those statements are mutually exclusive. What I meant by the world was the outside world that the average person lives in. The politics, the going to work, the shopping for groceries.


You also must only be referring only to those critics who hold your own views because there are a great many fine ‘critics’ you are effectively dismissing when you call them ‘Johnny come latelys’. By your own words (you say you don’t consider Aristotle an artist) Aristotle has made no impact on the world (he was a critic you appear to be conceding). Why are we still reading and discussing him?
No, not all. Even the one's I'm sympathetic too. Even me in my little way on this forum. Other than being forced to in grade school, how many people actually read or have read Shakespeare? Or did Shakespeare himself have any impact on the society he lived in or followed him? That's my point. Some books do, but I'm not sure it's tied to the fact that it's great literature. For instance, Pilgrim's Progress probably had more impact to society than King Lear. I don't want to disparage PP, but it's no Shakespeare.


Nor have you conceded that Barthes might have written a great piece of Literature in S/Z. What about Pope’s An Essay on Criticism? Is Pope now considered not to be a major literary artist because he wrote criticism?
I think I said somnewhere there is nothing wrong for artists to create with postmodern ideas in mind. (BTW, I have S/Z somewhere in my library; just haven't gotten to it.) Without sounding like that dripping tap, I've said postmodernism as a critical approach is problemmatic to me, not as literature or art. Look, I did my master's thesis on D.H. Lawrence. He had so many cockimamy ideas that you sometimes wonder about him. But he was a great writer, and although I sometimes vehemently disagree with his ideas, I can still appreciate the writing. Pope's Essay blurs the distinctions, doesn't it. But we can isolate the poetry and isolate the criticism. You know, in my life I've probably short changed the 18th C writers. And yet I might be more in sync with them then other periods. I ought to spend a solid year reading 18th C works. Perhaps next year.

But just to sum my point up, if Shakespeare hardly makes a blip on the average person, how can a literary critic. But that doesn't mean I, personally, don't appreciate both.

[s_fenella]

Postmodernism is not a new thing for me because i have read some of the books that can be classified in the postmodern genre. However, i have given up trying to figure out or make sense of the things that some post-modern writers write about, such as Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Even after i finish reading the book, i still can't get the juice of it. Anyone ever read this book before? Any comments?

[cuppajoe_9]

Does anybody else really hate the term 'post-modernism'? Isn't 'modern' whatever is happening in the present? How can a set of ideas come after the present?

[Ithuriel]

Admittedly, pomo and its lack of discipline, invited a large groups of phonies into the game. However, history does bear it out.

[s_fenella]

Yes. The term postmodernism is very confusing. Why is it post-modern when we say that we often say we are in the "modern world with modern society and modern technology"? Does the term post-modernism apply only to literature, art, and architecture? What else?

[you_per7]

postmodernism comes to reconstruct the principles of enlightenment .it tries to reconsider the human mind in association with the spiritual dimension.

[ennison]

She knew not what the curse may be
That kept her weaving steadily
But she had heard a whisper say
''Tis post-modernism'

[PeterL]

Does anybody else really hate the term 'post-modernism'? Isn't 'modern' whatever is happening in the present? How can a set of ideas come after the present?

I also hate the term, but it wasn't intended to mean "after the present time". It was intended to mean something that came after the "Modernist" movement in art, architecture, etc. It alomst makes sense, but I am trying to start the "Preter-modern" movement. "Preter" meaning 'beyond', rather than after.

[Hippolite]

But now what comes next, after Post-Modernism? Or is nothing possible after Post-Modernism? Is Post-Modernism the total deconstruction of culture such that there is no more discernable culture and hence nothing can come after it? Maybe Post-Modernism denotes, after all, the decline and fall of Western Civilization?

Of course I have no real clue about what Post-Modernism is, so I’m not one to say. I think somebody defined it as Las Vegas, though, and if that’s the case then it most assuredly does mark the decline and fall of Western Civilization.

[the facade]

admittedly, i have not covered the whole thread, but in regards to the comment on the irony of post-modernism leaning on marxism - it does so only partially. post-modernism is more kin to post-marxism (which is entirely different).

[Emil Miller]

But now what comes next, after Post-Modernism? Or is nothing possible after Post-Modernism? Is Post-Modernism the total deconstruction of culture such that there is no more discernable culture and hence nothing can come after it? Maybe Post-Modernism denotes, after all, the decline and fall of Western Civilization?

Of course I have no real clue about what Post-Modernism is, so I’m not one to say. I think somebody defined it as Las Vegas, though, and if that’s the case then it most assuredly does mark the decline and fall of Western Civilization.

I wish we had on Litnet now, such erudite assessments of the situation posited in the original thread.
"Maybe Post-Modernism denotes, after all, the decline and fall of Western Civilization."
There's no 'maybe' about it, it's just that too many people (let's refrain from calling them idiots) do not only understand it but are actually engaged in its destruction.

[stlukesguild]

I wish we had on Litnet now, such erudite assessments of the situation posited in the original thread.
"Maybe Post-Modernism denotes, after all, the decline and fall of Western Civilization."

There's no 'maybe' about it, it's just that too many people (let's refrain from calling them idiots) do not only understand it but are actually engaged in its destruction.

There have been those crying that the sky is falling since the very first.

[Jozanny]

Postmodernism is not a new thing for me because i have read some of the books that can be classified in the postmodern genre. However, i have given up trying to figure out or make sense of the things that some post-modern writers write about, such as Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Even after i finish reading the book, i still can't get the juice of it. Anyone ever read this book before? Any comments?

fen, I am not the greatest Pynchon admirer, and Lot 49 isn't on my list of things to get to, but Pynchon likes to reflect American power as a paranoid conspiracy network, in GR this plays out as a coption of the Nazi's, with the rockets screaming against the sky, or a coption of Japan's psychic guilt for its defeat and the consequences of its atomic molestation, in Vineland, where Godzilla's footprint makes an unfathomable appearance, and the best progressive liberalism can do is tune out an smoke a but; he tries, as some critcs have noted, to be the American allegorist, not always successfully, but he has influenced later generations.

[Emil Miller]

I wish we had on Litnet now, such erudite assessments of the situation posited in the original thread.
"Maybe Post-Modernism denotes, after all, the decline and fall of Western Civilization."

There's no 'maybe' about it, it's just that too many people (let's refrain from calling them idiots) do not only understand it but are actually engaged in its destruction.

There have been those crying that the sky is falling since the very first.

The history of the world is littered with dead civilizations, I see no reason to exempt ours. Current political, economic and social trends show an obvious shift away from the Western hemisphere. There are signs in France and Germany, and even the UK, that the liberal ethos that has held sway since 1945, and in my view has been partially to blame for the current situation, is being challenged at governmental level, but it appears to be too little too late.

[Seasider]

Perhaps we should call it PostEurocentrism. Or Globalism? Universalism?

[Perandorrrr]

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/3891/isbn.jpg (http://img404.imageshack.us/i/isbn.jpg/)

I didn't study postmodernism until after college. I didn't know much about it, but saw that my writing was influenced by it without me realizing. The other day I was staring at the cover of Norton's idea of postmodernism. I think it symbolizes this attempt at something bigger and greater, but, at this point, it falls short since we still are techinically in that phase; people are talking; the enormous hype; waiting and where is it? In the sky -- still?. A very critical way of labeling the "movement" would be, as I think, anyway, a chance for non-creative types to become creative using some basis("modern" works) or starting point. You have many critics and theorists putting a stamp or idea on something and it's basically never wrong. I think the fact it's never been definite, at least when it comes to scholars has harmed its chance to evolve. There is nothing wrong with no rules, per se; I think the Futurists, were really on to something. If you have this idea (post modernism) and at this point it still isn't clear what it is, we have to sit down and discuss this. I don't know why this hasn't been addressed sooner. Until then, I think it's nothing more than a great attempt.

[stlukesguild]

Why drag politics into it? Seriously, Asia and the Middle-East, etc... were just as limited in their world view as the writers in Europe or America. As for globalism....? Wishful thinking. Some of us may have read one or two books from Africa, the Middle-East, Latin-America, or Asia... most of these written in the last 100 years and in a style that is clearly impacted by Western literature. Beyond that? I don't see the Shanameh, Tu Fu, Li Bo, the Mahabharata, the Man'yōshū, Yosano Akiko, Ono no Komachi, Hakīm Abu'l-Qāsim Firdowsī, Attar of Nishapur, Saadi, Nezami Ganjavi, or even Alejo Carpentier, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Homero Aridjis, Machado de Assis, etc... pop up much in conversation. Heck, we're lucky if a non-Russian Eastern European or Scandinavian writer ever even gets mentioned. Certainly few names from outside Britain, France, England, Germany, Russia, Spain, Italy, Classical Greece, and the United States ever get mentioned and discussed in those endless lists of "best of".

[stlukesguild]

I think the Futurists, were really on to something. If you have this idea (post modernism) and at this point it still isn't clear what it is, we have to sit down and discuss this.

The reality is that all the "-isms" are but names attached by academics attempting to make some sense of an entire group of artists or an entire milieu. Some artists/writers/composers are also critics and as such struggle to make sense of what they are doing and how it fits within the tradition they inherited. Most artists/writers/composers are more concerned with creating and fit the aphorism: "God does not stoop to engage in theological debate."

Because all the "-isms" are but artificially imposed attempts to categorize art and artists, they are all rather "fuzzy". Can we find a point in history after which the Renaissance was no more and Mannerism had taken over? A point at which Modernism clearly began as separate from what went before? Where does Modernism start? Kafka? T.S. Eliot? Baudelaire? Wordsworth? Cervantes? Where does it end? Is Borges a Modernist or Post-Modernist? Beckett? Italo Calvino? Pessoa? Barth? Barthleme? Anne Carson?

[Jozanny]

The complaint that post-modernist techniques feel gimmicky may be justified in some cases. It annoys me in Pynchon, certainly, although Gravity's Rainbow was worth the experience, and Gaddis, who is a generation before, might have been stronger if he had trimmed the preaching. Even David Foster Wallace cannot make it work when he self-refers in his suicide story.

But post modernists have something to say, and the best of them are as powerful as any classicist, or realist. I agree with one of my professors that Enlightenment era English literature is a bloody bore, for instance, but I do not damn Milton or Pope for my sentiments, or excise the era from my understanding simply because its style is dull. I don't think it's a waste of time to learn how and why the post-modernists evolved, and they probably had some influence on my poetry, as I studied creative writing with a post modernist.

Broadly, they will challenge structure, subvert traditional expectations, and challenge us even with the meaning of written language itself. If European Modernists saw that the world order had self-destructed, the post modernists push it further, and fragment the authority of even our personal experiences, or classical models, like the way John Gardner implodes Beowulf in his novel Grendel. Their use of fragmentation is symptomatic of modern life, with our domestication and technology illusionary, at best, of our supremacy as a species.

Doesn't mean it cannot be trivialized or abused, and these authors aren't always overly deep. Gardner is a delight, at his best-- but their vision is worth the effort of understanding. I certainly know no one will have to tell me I told you so. :)

[Theunderground]

This movement is one that has misunderstood Nietzsche and thus stagnated at intellectual nihilism... Though if you were to punch one in the name of 'moral relativism' he would soon abandon this 'intellectual avant gard tolerance' and call the cops....

Conversely,it can be a great intellectual tool to break free of tyranical or conditioned morality....
Suppose really,it how you use this 'theoretical language tool'.

Finally,post modern writing really bores the pants of me and is terribly oblique,obfuscatory,wordy and most of all self indulgent,AKA 'look how intellectual i am'. Writing concisely and with realism are great arts not to be cheapened by post modern dogma.

[Emil Miller]

This movement is one that has misunderstood Nietzsche and thus stagnated at intellectual nihilism... Though if you were to punch one in the name of 'moral relativism' he would soon abandon this 'intellectual avant gard tolerance' and call the cops....

Conversely,it can be a great intellectual tool to break free of tyranical or conditioned morality....
Suppose really,it how you use this 'theoretical language tool'.

Finally,post modern writing really bores the pants of me and is terribly oblique,obfuscatory,wordy and most of all self indulgent,AKA 'look how intellectual i am'. Writing concisely and with realism are great arts not to be cheapened by post modern dogma.

While browsing in bookstores, I have occasionally looked into some of the authors mentioned on Litnet as post-modernnist, and your post says it all as far as I'm concerned. Although there may be writers that don't fit what to my mind is an increasingly pejorative description.

[Jozanny]

I use pejorative to apply to genre writers who don't care to challenge themselves or their readers to work a bit harder, but pad, write for money, and basically make no sense at the end of the day, but I still read them. Not all. I have not touched Rowling, but that is economics, and I know enough about her revival of the fantastical tradition in Britain that her Potter can wait.

You cannot, however, put Mitchell in the same category as Pynchon and claim not to missing something extraordinary. I am not going to repeat my last post, but all the over-educated have is a self-referential irony, and in the hands of extraordinary talent it can be just as rewarding.

[Emil Miller]

Well, as I said, there may be writers that don't fit that particular description but some of them appear to be reflective of the nihilism that is becoming self-evident in artistic endeavour generally and, ironically, not only reflect it but also contribute to it in so doing. J K Rowling cannot be taken seriously as one might take Lewis Carroll or Kenneth Grahame, who were writing before the advent of the Random House publicity machine and the cinema industry who are the true progenitors of Harry Potter.
Whilst we all read for various reasons, my preference is, and will remain, for well written stories that don't require me to scratch my head after every couple of sentences.

[YesNo]

I have not touched Rowling, but that is economics, and I know enough about her revival of the fantastical tradition in Britain that her Potter can wait.

According to my teenage children the Harry Potter movies follow the books closely. They've consumed both almost as soon as they come out.

So you can skip the books and see the movies instead.



Whilst we all read for various reasons, my preference is, and will remain, for well written stories that don't require me to scratch my head after every couple of sentences.

What is the best, most representative post-modernist novel that someone would recommend?

I don't mind scratching my head for 20 pages, but if it goes longer, for the sake of my hair, I'd have to stop, which is why I won't even bother asking for poetry recommendations.

[Jozanny]

Yes, maybe you'd enjoy sampling John Gardner; he died while I was an undergraduate, and doesn't expect his readers to brace for pyrotechnics. I have a soft spot for Gardner, and his wry optimism that still manages to convey he is nobody's fool. I would not recommend Grendel to start, as it is a bit deep and Gardner expects you to understand literary irony, but maybe October Light, or similar title.

[YesNo]

Yes, maybe you'd enjoy sampling John Gardner; he died while I was an undergraduate, and doesn't expect his readers to brace for pyrotechnics. I have a soft spot for Gardner, and his wry optimism that still manages to convey he is nobody's fool. I would not recommend Grendel to start, as it is a bit deep and Gardner expects you to understand literary irony, but maybe October Light, or similar title.
Thanks! It turns out October Light is in the local library. I'll check it out this evening.

[sixsmith]

Well, as I said, there may be writers that don't fit that particular description but some of them appear to be reflective of the nihilism that is becoming self-evident in artistic endeavour generally and, ironically, not only reflect it but also contribute to it in so doing. J K Rowling cannot be taken seriously as one might take Lewis Carroll or Kenneth Grahame, who were writing before the advent of the Random House publicity machine and the cinema industry who are the true progenitors of Harry Potter.
Whilst we all read for various reasons, my preference is, and will remain, for well written stories that don't require me to scratch my head after every couple of sentences.

Brian,

It seems to me that many of the exemplary 'post-modern' novels (by way of achievement rather than homogenous technique) are railing against the very nihilism (such as it is) that you decry. White Noise, The Crying of Lot 49, Infinite Jest, Cloud Atlas, for example, are all, to a greater or lesser extent, parodying and/or criticizing what their authors see as an increasingly obscuratanist and deracinated culture. The popular conception of 'post-modern' novels as exceedingly difficult is mostly erroneous. That said, if one is going to enjoy the pleasures of post-modern literature, they must be willing to loosen their grip on the tenets of 'realist' fiction, an exercise that, at least for a while, engenders some scratching of the head. Alas, I suspect that it is far too late in the day to convince you that scratching the head, whilst likely bad for the scalp, can be pretty darn good for the brain and, indeed, the soul.

[Emil Miller]

If, as you say, the writers named are parodying the nihilistic state of society, then I'm glad to hear it. However, surely it is better to do so in a manner that will carry their message to the greatest number of readers. There have been many books that have been written parodying the state of affairs at any given date. Indeed, it's one of Literature's raisons d'etre. Reading Gulliver's Travels, Brave New World or Animal Farm for example sends a message direct to the reader, albeit one that is allusive.
Trying to reflect obscurantism by writing obscurely is simply self-defeating unless, that is, you are writing only for people who like scratching their heads.

[mal4mac]

If, as you say, the writers named are parodying the nihilistic state of society, then I'm glad to hear it. However, surely it is better to do so in a manner that will carry their message to the greatest number of readers. There have been many books that have been written parodying the state of affairs at any given date. Indeed, it's one of Literature's raisons d'etre. Reading Gulliver's Travels, Brave New World or Animal Farm for example sends a message direct to the reader, albeit one that is allusive.
Trying to reflect obscurantism by writing obscurely is simply self-defeating unless, that is, you are writing only for people who like scratching their heads.

Since Joyce and Proust, a certain faction of literati have thought that 'head scratching' was the way to go. It's a ploy by an elite to keep them 'above the mass'. If everyone can read Dickens then, if the elite reads Dickens, how can the elite say they are better than others? The solution is to dismiss Dickens and put forward Proust, Joyce and other modernists/post-modernists as 'the way to go'.

The members of this elite are *very* happy that most people don't read their books, because they are against the mass either (i) because they are aristocrats who don't want to associate with plebs in any way, or (ii) because they are intellectuals who need to feel intellectually superior to the mass.

John Carey de-constructs their position in his superb book: "The Intellectuals and the Masses" and indicates another way to go - which is basically the way you suggest - the 'intellectuals who support the mass' can concentrate on books that most of the mass can appreciate, and view the whole of mankind as intellectual partners rather than as 'beneath them'.

Intellectually honest members of the intellectual elite, who are still blinkered enough to genuflect before Proust and Joyce, cannot dismiss Dickens, Shakespeare, Swift, Huxley, Orwell, and many other readable great authors - enough for a lifetime of reading. So 'the mass' can experience intellectual riches at the highest artistic level, while avoiding the unreadable.

Intellectuals like Carey can help them do this, and become not only true intellectuals but true humanists - they can lead the young to Dickens rather than Proust and make the world a much happier place.

[Jozanny]

Intellectually honest members of the intellectual elite, who are still blinkered enough to genuflect before Proust and Joyce, cannot dismiss Dickens, Shakespeare, Swift, Huxley, Orwell, and many other readable great authors - enough for a lifetime of reading. So 'the mass' can experience intellectual riches at the highest artistic level, while avoiding the unreadable.

Intellectuals like Carey can help them do this, and become not only true intellectuals but true humanists - they can lead the young to Dickens rather than Proust and make the world a much happier place.

I may have had a few inflammatory moments since I've been registered here, as I am not perfect, but it is assertions like these that make me care very little whether I stay or go.

I have never dismissed literary populism, ever, regardless of my personal tastes, but see nothing wrong with a preference for linguistic intricacy over and above Dickensonian exaggeration--indeed, I recently defended Dickens on my blog against Christopher Hitchens.

I'm a smart woman, like theory and the constructs surrounding it, and will not be ashamed of it.

As to Shakespeare, mal, it is only academics that keeps his work in the concourse of popular culture. As some prominent minority intellectuals know, like McWhorter, we are becoming rapidly too far removed from Shakespearean semantics for students to understand the verbal ironies of the actual plays, and it takes some work to get the context, which even scholars have lost in relation to the farces.

Good God, if people don't like to take some effort for their pleasure, then don't, but if I can spare equal delight in Ovid and David Mitchell both, then I have contributed to the evolutionary, intelligent advance of this amazing species, one that evidently beat some long odds in that African genetic bottleneck a million years ago.
*************
Why I am still bothering raises an interesting point, but look at the sheer complexity of our modern world, its technical, industrial systems-- examining BP as an energy conglomerate is a good example, or our multicultural accommodations and clashes brought on by total conquest of the planet, or our increasing empowerment of identity.

Sitting around with our noses entrenched in Tolstoy's Christian plebianism is no match for the modern world the West has made, and the East, as it is increasingly claimed, is taking back. Scholars like Ferguson don't sit on their butts citing explorers like Livingstone without also globe-trotting to explore and understand the complexity of the systems we've created, politically, economically, and post-modernists have been ahead of this drumbeat since Sterne's Shandy, remember him?

Don't read them; fine by me, but their influence affects your television viewing (Lost, Simpsons), film, arcitecture, design, and will no doubt continue to do so even if we collapse these systems back on ourselves.

Conservative retrenchment isn't going to change a damn thing about the complications of modern life.

[YesNo]

Yes, maybe you'd enjoy sampling John Gardner; he died while I was an undergraduate, and doesn't expect his readers to brace for pyrotechnics. I have a soft spot for Gardner, and his wry optimism that still manages to convey he is nobody's fool. I would not recommend Grendel to start, as it is a bit deep and Gardner expects you to understand literary irony, but maybe October Light, or similar title.
The first chapter of Gardner's October Light was entertaining. It started with a Big Bang on page 2 when the old man James Page fired a shotgun at his sister's TV while she was watching it. I didn't have to scratch my head at all, at least not after that. He has a nice way of waking up the reader.

Thanks for the recommendation.

[Jozanny]

The first chapter of Gardner's October Light was entertaining. It started with a Big Bang on page 2 when the old man James Page fired a shotgun at his sister's TV while she was watching it. I didn't have to scratch my head at all, at least not after that. He has a nice way of waking up the reader.

Thanks for the recommendation.

You're welcome Yes.

[Jassy Melson]

How much I would have missed if I had not read Pre-Post Moderist fiction. But I'm glad I have read Gravity's Rainbow too, and other Post-Moderist works. Fiction is and has been undergoing an upheaval since WW11. It will probably continue to do so. As long as the reader can keep in mind that contemporary fiction is for the most part without direction (the Potter books are an exception, I guess, but even they , it could be argued, have no real direction) he or she will be able to keep their boat from capsizing. I love John Barth's poem "Night Journey". It relates, in poetic terms, the delimina we all face living as we do in this time. I don't think it has an end.

[Jozanny]

Even though I'm busy today, I'd like to be clear about a few points:

a. I do not claim that post modernism is the end of history in terms of literary movements, only that it does offer something at its best which can as facile as Shakespeare. I do not have time right now to analyze the virtues of what the pomos offer in an aggregate sense, only that the experience can be as rewarding.

b. It is not better than Renaissance literature, or 19th century realism or other more traditional forms, it simply recognizes something else that other literary periods cannot speak to, understandably so.

c. I understand the weariness with versatility that threatens to topple the reader over with too much gimmick and not enough heart going into the text, but to claim that Humanities are these days misguided for not sticking to core canon classics is simply ridiiculous.

Modern academics is changing. Scholars, including Shakespeareans, engage in the field with a hands on approach. It is not just, "here is your syllabus and required reading," not anymore, and to claim that this somehow detracts from the Grecian plays, or Ovid, or Tolstoy is simply absurd; his Russian grand niece makes her living accredited in our academic structure, and she's a magical realist, go figure.

[JBI]

Meh, postmodernism functions to take the idea of literature and the world, and flip it so that it laughs, or cries over itself. We here are so obsessed with American post-modernism, that we fail to realize there is highly accessible, great literature written elsewhere than can be termed post-modern.

The thing with the United States was it was rather confused given the disaster and death of Vietnam, the gloom of the cold war, and also this desire to criticize itself, while maintaining itself as superior to its enemy - this went wackier after the Berlin wall came down, from what I can tell, bringing an end to what was originally called post-modernism, in favor of an open question of identity. Of all cultures though, the States, given its place, had and seems to have one of the hardest times laughing at itself (China would be another example of a culture unable to ironize itself, though the population in general has moved from fiction to Blog as an outlet for self-satire, thereby breaking through).

Generally speaking, from what I can gather, the reason for all the nonsense and inaccessibility of American post-modernity is the simple fact that the authors, like the readers, have no idea exactly what everything means - the culture is totally uncertain which direction it is going in - that's why so many argue and argued it went downhill, or that certain people are ruining it.

So basically you have modern ideas of narratology and open form exploited with uncertainty and failure, self-loathing and pride, and you give birth to American post-modernism.

Canadian post-modernism on the other hand is stranger - it for the most part, functioning primarily in novels, is about undercutting narrative itself. But generally our novels tend to be far more comedic than anything else, featuring often rather bawdy humor and self-depricating jokes - a good example would be Kroetch's hero Hazard from The Stud Horse Man literally "****ing the pants off of" history (embodied in a museum historian, making wax figures of historical figures. The idea of laughing at oneself was far more accepted, as was ignoring the "greater cause" that persisted in The States. Simply put, not really at war, we weren't preoccupied with saving our image and history, and searching for that justifiable fragile lost innocence and identity - only recreating it and redefining Canada as without definition.


As for Post-modernism now, well, the authors are being weeded - virtually none of the commonly anthologized American poets are really surfacing - there is a strange void from what I see in new poetry anthologies, that has a missing generation, or perhaps, a strange generation of American poets - the big Post-modern figures seem to be dying or dead now, with long established careers - someone like Wilbur, who is still kicking is anthologized, whereas someone like Adrienne Rich is rather difficult to write into a book - she simply cannot hold up as anything outside her sphere of writing, whereas other poet's can - perhaps the emphasis on American political and cultural reconstruction held artists back, as do and did the political games of exposure that have all "black" anthologies, or all "Chinese" anthologies, or perhaps the more hideous, all "Asian" anthologies. The question is, are any of those worthy of the "all poets" anthologies?

On the whole though, things are being weeded. The true excellence or failure of the artists now esteemed and to be esteemed is still in the question. One thing is certain though, as a tradition, Post-Modernism found a much stronger artistic delivery, from what can be seen now outside of The United States - we just look to Latin America to see the real literary boom and greatness of post-modernity, not to Europe or the States (in point of fact, this was realized a long time ago, in places as far as China, where, few speak English, and fewer other languages but somehow the major trendsetters since the 1980s have been pulling from Latin America and not the States.

[Jassy Melson]

You say that the U.S. has perhaps one of the hardest times laughing at itself. You should read more southern literature. The south's writers are the only ones in the U.S. who are laughing occasionally at ourselves. The writers from the north, midwest and west take things too seriously. Southern writers for some reason are able to get past the seriousness and see the humor.

[YesNo]

Generally speaking, from what I can gather, the reason for all the nonsense and inaccessibility of American post-modernity is the simple fact that the authors, like the readers, have no idea exactly what everything means
I didn't follow most of your post, but I placed in bold the part that I think I could agree with.

Where I would disagree is that I think the readers have a different "idea exactly what everything means" and this is what leads to the conflict. The readers aren't as clueless as I think you portray them.

[Emil Miller]

Reviewing some of the posts on this thread and coming back to the original question i.e. WHAT END DOES POST MODERNISM SERVE? The answer would appear to be: Its own.

[Alexander III]

"WHAT END DOES POST MODERNISM SERVE? "

Sorry but that is just a stupid question.

What end does art have?

[Perandorrrr]

Sorry but that is just a stupid question.


:nonod:

[YesNo]

You're welcome Yes.

I finally finished Gardner's October Light. It was pretty good, Jozanny. I can see why people like him.

I also read Grendal since it was shorter. It seemed as if Beowulf talked Grendal to death, although tearing off his arm probably helped.

[Tarvaa]

I stumble across this debate mid-flow. I admit from the outset that I have read only about 1 percent of people's thoughts on this thread. However, it is an interesting idea that post-modernism serves or does not serve someone or something. My thoughts are not those of an expert.

As far as I can see, post-modernism does have a purpose. It does serve its supplicants. Historically, thought has been governed either by religion or philosophy, and both have been interlaced with each other over the years. This caused a dilution of the original idea. More importantly in regards to this conversation, it permitted the subtle use of either to promote the goals of their proponents. Catholic philosophy served the Papacy and the princes of the Vatican; Marxist philosophy certainly did not serve well the aristocracy of Tsarist Russia, and thus by following that to its logical ending, it is argued that Marxist theory served the non-aristocracy. Countless other philosophy had its proponents and their goals and thus arguably people who suffered, ie. non-proponents, or those deemed villainous by the ideas put forth in a philosophy.

Post-modernism, is a reaction against modernism, the synthesis of philosophies that occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries. All the hard labour that thinkers had done culminated in the modern world. The path was not easy, as mentioned above, there were victors and the defeated. Post-modernism declares that the foundations of such a society are itself flawed. It invalidates the grounds on which hegemony had been constructed. It asks the people of earth to question the very ground they walk on. And as such, it serves the purposes of philosophy well. But more importantly perhaps, post-modernism allows the hitherto silent to speak out.

[YesNo]

Post-modernism, is a reaction against modernism, the synthesis of philosophies that occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries. All the hard labour that thinkers had done culminated in the modern world. The path was not easy, as mentioned above, there were victors and the defeated. Post-modernism declares that the foundations of such a society are itself flawed. It invalidates the grounds on which hegemony had been constructed. It asks the people of earth to question the very ground they walk on. And as such, it serves the purposes of philosophy well. But more importantly perhaps, post-modernism allows the hitherto silent to speak out.

Your description seems to be what I currently understand post-modernism to be.

However, I have only started to explore it since I saw this thread. I've read some essays of Rorty and some introductory books that were available in the library. Unfortunately, Derrida didn't make any sense to me, so I had to give it up.

Do you know of anything you might recommend to someone who doesn't know much about post-modernism to read?

[Ser Nevarc]

Who says it needs an end?

[PeterL]

Who says it needs an end?

I don't think that anyone has, and, because post modernism is nihilistic, not having any end goals makes it truer to istself.

On the other hand, why would anyone be interested in a philosophy that had no enda or results? It would simply by sound and fury signifying nothing, wouldn't it? I suppose that there are people who simply want to make noise, but they don't generally know what philosophy is.