WHAT END DOES POST MODERNISM SERVE?

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Originally Posted by PeterL

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

I agree. I am of the opinion that Coleridge wrote a deliberately obscured poem about sexual intercourse.

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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?

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Originally Posted by PeterL

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

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

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What knowledge of language? What knowledge of the world?

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

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.

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

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Originally Posted by blp

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

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I did put the author – Billy Collins. If I could write like that, I’d be elsewhere. ;)

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

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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."

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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.

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Originally Posted by rachel

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.

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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. ;)

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.

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.

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

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Originally Posted by litlearner

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.

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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.

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.

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Originally Posted by litlearner

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.

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‘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. :)

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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:

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Originally Posted by blp

I think there are probably many postmodernisms.

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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:

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

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.

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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:

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

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

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

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

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Except, presumably, that one. ;)

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

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.

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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.”

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Originally Posted by Myself

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

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

Except, presumably, that one. ;)

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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

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

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

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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.

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:

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Originally Posted by PeterL

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."

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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!

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Originally Posted by PeterL

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.

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

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Originally Posted by PeterL

Even Christianity doesn't try to be everything.

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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?

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Originally Posted by PeterL

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.

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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?

Postmodernism serves to create obscure Theory journals for postgrad students.

;)

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

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?

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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.

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Originally Posted by Billy Bilo

Postmodernism serves to create obscure Theory journals for postgrad students.

;)

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good point

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

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

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Originally Posted by Nerd

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

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by Nerd

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I do get offended when the postmodernists try to project their ideology into art. I think it's a bad approach to literary criticism.

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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?

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

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?

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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.

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

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Call me old fashion, but yes I do.

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What is Aristotle’s Poetics if not a work of criticism?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Actually a dripping tap will erode granite, given time.

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Yes, I know – that’s why I used the comparison! I assumed it explained your approach.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I don't defend it, because I'm not about to go to the library to pull out articles from post modernist journals.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

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.

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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.)

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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?

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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.

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?

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?

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

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?

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

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

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Originally Posted by 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?

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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.

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.

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).

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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.