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Mad Science: Postmodernism - your views?

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    • CommentAuthorSolario
    • CommentTimeNov 14th 2008
     (4139.21)
    I just hope, it's something new, we're entering and not another Post-something.


    And I thought Post-Modernism was about the death of the Grand Narrative? Everything splits into itsy, bitsy bits and pieces etc.
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      CommentAuthorDavidForbes
    • CommentTimeNov 14th 2008 edited
     (4139.22)
    @ Warren Ellis: I'm curious, why would you like to see it end?

    @ allana: Good point. Habermas has very definitely made something concrete (green, and lots of it) out of it.

    I think, in the political realm especially, its effects have been even worse than useless. As one example, postmodernism bears a considerable share of the blame for turning many universities from hotbeds of radicalism to circle-jerk navel-gazing centers: it's hard to overstate the damage it has done in fields like political philosophy, sociology and poli-sci. Postmodernism fostered an apathetic approach to the differences between ideas that has helped lay the groundwork for some pretty nasty developments. It's not entirely coincidence that its heyday coincided with a right-wing resurgence in many areas. I hope that it's finally deconstructed itself into nothingness.
    ---
    Incidentally, I like Borges, Planetary and Kill Bill, but I think they're more hyper-eclectic than postmodern. There's some grand themes running throughout all of them, they're just drawing from more sources and influences to tell the tale.
  3.  (4139.23)
    Pop culture naming evolution has to become ridiculous at some point. Post-postmodernism? Whatever happened to cool names, like the Beat Movement, Art Deco, and Whore Culture?
    • CommentAuthorSolario
    • CommentTimeNov 14th 2008
     (4139.24)
    I think it's kind of the "Pop Will Eat Itself" case. There's a reason all the names for the generation after Generation X are derived of something else, like calling us The Y Generation, The iGeneration, the MyGeneration etc. It's terrible. No originality.
  5.  (4139.25)
    I think the originality, at least in terms of naming, comes when something occurs which forces people to re-name it. Or maybe just when a new wave of journalists find something happening that they feel needs a fresh label. It must be partially accidental. Like post-modernism is just a referential tag, only meaningful in terms of its precedent, deserving of its hyphen. I heard the phrase "Trans-modernism" once, as in what comes after post-modernism. Dunno what it means though; traversing different modernisms? Like a multi-cultural modernism?

    Half the problem with frigging post-modernism is that terms breed like cockroaches, groping to describe the elements and such.
  6.  (4139.26)
    @ DavidForbes: Yes! Too right. It's hobbled a number of fields and in the States especially has buried Literary Theory in verbiage. I think you're onto something concerning the rise of the Right in relation Left-wing indifference. It made room for NeoConservativism and that whole Leo Strauss crowd.

    But it does have its virtues, in narrower areas than its popularity would imply.
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      CommentAuthorvoyou
    • CommentTimeNov 14th 2008
     (4139.27)
    postmodernism bears a considerable share of the blame for turning many universities from hotbeds of radicalism to circle-jerk navel-gazing centers

    I think this is reversing cause and effect, or symptom and sickness. I think part of post-modernism's influence is because people have found it useful in figuring out what to do after the 1960s failed to bring about the revolution; this is probably true of Deleuze and Foucault, who continue to be useful for left-wing movements (to the extent that the anti-globalization movement had theorists, Deleuze and Foucault were important influences). Likewise other, less politically engaged, forms of post-modernism are responses to the weakness of the left, although of course it's true that certain ways of responding to political weakness tend to fetishize, and so prolong, this weakness. Hence the utility of the other strand in post-modernism, the one that sees post-modernity as a condition to be diagnosed, rather than a theory to be embraced or rejected, such as Jameson's Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism and Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity. I do think that simply rejecting post-modernism does neglect something important, that post-modernism is a response (sometimes useful, sometimes pathological) to a real phenomenon.
    • CommentAuthorTim Murr
    • CommentTimeNov 17th 2008
     (4139.28)
    Viva Avant Pop

    http://www.altx.com/memoriam/pomo.html
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      CommentAuthorFinagle
    • CommentTimeJan 11th 2009
     (4139.29)
    Foucault often confessed to not being able to understand what "postmodernism" - as a label - meant. There's a very interesting read on the "genealogical" works of Foucault (and to a lesser extent, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard) that sees him as building on and continuing the "critical use of reason" begun by Kant. One could describe Foucault's work as an effort to turn Reason's critical facility fully on itself and to give Reason (the proper noun) a history and a politics.

    There's a great quote in "What is Enlightenment?" that resonates a lot with the grinders of /Doktor Sleepless/:

    if we are not to settle for the affirmation or the empty dream of freedom, it seems to me that this historico-critical attitude must also be an experimental one. I mean that this work done at the limits of ourselves must, on the one hand, open up a realm of historical inquiry and, on the other, put itself to the test of reality, of contemporary reality, both to grasp the points where change is possible and desirable, and to determine the precise form this change should take. This means that the historical ontology of ourselves must turn away from all projects that claim to be global or radical. In fact we know from experience that the claim to escape from the system of contemporary reality so as to produce the overall programs of another society, of another way of thinking, another culture, another vision of the world, has led only to the return of the most dangerous traditions.

    I prefer the very specific transformations that have proved to be possible in the last twenty years in a certain number of areas that concern our ways of being and thinking, relations to authority, relations between the sexes, the way in which we perceive insanity or illness; I prefer even these partial transformations that have been made in the correlation of historical analysis and the practical attitude, to the programs for a new man that the worst political systems have repeated throughout the twentieth century.

    I shall thus characterize the philosophical ethos appropriate to the critical ontology of ourselves as a historico-practical test of the limits that we may go beyond, and thus as work carried out by ourselves upon ourselves as free beings.
    - What Is Enlightenment
  10.  (4139.30)
    Frankly, I'm beginning to wonder if what the first postmodern thinkers loudly proclaimed to be the end of (objective, monothink) history might not have been one of those inevitable explosions of evolutionary chaos you get, in thought as in nature, when something big dies and starts to rot. The perceived collapse of old modern 'certainties', coupled with the communications revolution, produced an environment conducive to this kind of political and philosophical great leap, but recently (see the WireCult of Obama, transnational/transcultural internet movements, etc.) there have been indications of things at least vaguely resembling the old modernist structures emerging again. Potentially dead fucking wrong (postmodernism being a slippery subject, the future being a devious thing and me being full of brandy coffee), but the next decade or so should make for interesting viewing in that regard (usual provisos about the Men Who Are In Charge, Yes not blowing us all to kingdom come applying, as ever).
    • CommentAuthorWakefield
    • CommentTimeJan 11th 2009
     (4139.31)
    Can someone define postmodernism in a single sentence?

    What is monothink? is it a noun or an adjective?

    Can you give me some concrete examples of "old modernist structures?"
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      CommentAuthorFinagle
    • CommentTimeJan 11th 2009 edited
     (4139.32)
    @twicetold - paraphrasing Lyotard, I would offer a definition of "postmodernism" as incredulity to metanarratives . (I don't know if that's how Squidfisher is using it).
  13.  (4139.33)
    I think of postmodernism as a way of explaining the current state we're in, culturally, since up until modernism, culture had been more-or-less chunkable into movements, but after modernism, there was a movement against artistic and cultural movements themselves, giving us a culture that has fewer and fewer shared cultural experiences and no overarching "movement" that defines it. (That's slightly more a definition of post-structuralism I guess, isn't it?)

    I've never heard the term before (neither has google), but I assume monothink is something like groupthink?
  14.  (4139.34)
    Postmodernism has always struck me as one of those empty labels that people (philosophers in particualar) use to categorize things that defy categorization. It serves no useful purposes, has no defined perameters and lacks any fundamental definition. It's amusing to contemplate but is essentially self-contradicting and carries with it the same flaw as most philosophical ideas in that it eventually over-complicates and muddles the issue.

    The analysis is too finite, it doesn't allow for a broader perspective which essentially eliminates any potential for true insight. As a species we are moving into a dark, unknown future and postmodernism is simply a pacifier, a way to attempt understanding of what can't be understood, categorized or predicted.
  15.  (4139.35)
    Personally I find postmodernism has much greater utility as a label for a certain class of observable traits in cultural works than as a coherent definition of a philosophy or (universe forfend) political doctrine (most instances of which are merely examples of weasels hiding behind the most convenient hedge).

    I'm intrigued by Warren's speculation that we're nearing the end of postmodernism's reign, because I tend to see it as an inevitable outgrowth of late-stage consumer capitalism that's been amplified hugely by the old triple-w. Are we looking at the sort of paradigm shift that Sterling has been talking about in his State of the World pow-wow at the WELL, something that knocks a whole raft of cultural assumptions into the proverbial cocked topper?
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      CommentAuthoraike
    • CommentTimeJan 11th 2009
     (4139.36)
    The problem lies, in my most humble opinion, not with postmodernism, but with the idea that it can be applied exclusively and universally. Apart from postmodernism applied as a universal "truth" being a paradoxical notion in of itself, any system of thought simply is incapable of dealing with all the complexities and intricacies of our existence by itself. Postmodernism, with the essential core that everything must be questionable, we cannot be certain about anything and nothing should be set in concrete (except postmodern architecture.. ha ha) is not necessarily wrong. Neither are its objections to the fundamental assumptions or distinctions of objectivity and subjectivity. Where it breaks down is when it becomes an excuse for relativism, incuriousity, and is used as a void counterargument to philosophical or scientific inquiry.

    Any system of thought, when applied in a fundamentalist way, is not going to be terribly enlightening. That, however, does not mean that that system does not have anything useful or worth applying. Thus to desire to get rid of postmodernism, in my opinion, would be as much of a mistake as to desire to make it the fundamental truth. The aim must be to evolve it, use what is good and helpful to form the next stage.

    We do not know, nor can we know the answers to many things, there can be no certainties, says the postmodernist. This may be true, however I would argue that should not stop the question from being asked. Even if the answers we find, and here the postmodernist probably is correct, will presumably be ever more questions. Perhaps the postmodernist is correct in deflating the value we have put on "the answer" in our world, and perhaps what needs to happen is an increase of value in the question itself. Perhaps a good question should not necessarily produce an answer, but rather myriad of deeper and bigger questions.

    I apply this primarily to the philosophical aspect of postmodernism, but art, literature, music, etc. all fall into the same trap. Too much postmodernism is terribly depressing and bleak (and occasionally simply utterly stupid), no question. When you can shit in a can and sell it as an art statement for huge amounts of money, I question the sanity of it all (though the statement itself is rather amusing). But that does not mean it, in some measure, is not useful. I would argue we have not yet exhausted its usefulness, and possibly (says the postmodernist in me) never should or will.

    This all should be taken with a pinch of salt - I am in the middle of a chemo round, so my brain is addled with drugs-a-plenty. If it is entirely incoherent, chalk it up to the pharmaceuticals. If it does make sense, then I am all the more genius, no?
  17.  (4139.37)
    I'm intrigued by Warren's speculation that we're nearing the end of postmodernism's reign, because I tend to see it as an inevitable outgrowth of late-stage consumer capitalism that's been amplified hugely by the old triple-w.


    It takes more than a bunch of wanking Marxists insisting it's late capitalism for it to be late capitalism.
    • CommentAuthorWakefield
    • CommentTimeJan 11th 2009
     (4139.38)
    Good luck with the chemo, man.

    So how do we differentiate postmodernism from modernism (other than, "you know, postmodernism came after")?

    Neoclassicism: Re-imagining classic techniques

    Modernism: Stripping your work of all that classical bullshit and re-defining it all from ground-up

    Postmodernism: A label
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      CommentAuthorFinagle
    • CommentTimeJan 11th 2009
     (4139.39)
    @twicetold -

    Modernism - Stripping your work of all that classical bullshit and re-defining it all from the ground-up in the service of some overarching narrative such as Man, the March of Progress, Science! and so on.

    Post-modernism- What happens after you stop believing in the grand, overarching narratives.
  20.  (4139.40)
    @warrenellis - Oh, agreed - and the last thing anyone would accuse me of (I hope) is being a Marxist! It's just that I see po-mo as being very tied up in the cultural Zeitgeist, of which everything-as-product-including-ourselves is very much a component, and I'm at a loss to guess what could derail that without something pretty cataclysmic occurring. The whole nested-references and links thing... strikes me that the web is the ideal agar plate for the the spores of the po-mo condition. But if capitalism isn't going anywhere (and I doubt it is, not for a good long while, though it's mutating right now) what's going to nullify po-mo?

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