defining works
Gordon Fitch
| What would you consider to be the watershed pieces of postmodernist
| literature? Especially as they mark a beginning, middle, or end (if there is
| such a thing) of the movement. ...
I don't believe postmodernism has existed as a movement.
Rather, it has been the dissolution of a movement, or
better, a lack of movement, an institutionalization:
High Modernism, the classicization (mummification) of
Modernism. Therefore, it is hard to find a particular
point at which one can say postmodernism "begins." It
is as if one walked through a desert, and saw tufts
of grass or an isolated oasis here and there; one would
still be in the desert; but if, after awhile, one saw
that there was more and more grass, and trees had
become common, then one would be out of the desert,
yet it would be hard to say which blade of grass had
finished it.
So postmodern has referred more to a time or a style
than to a "movement" (some of the uses of this word are
all too appropriate in this context) or an ideology.
And it has done its referring vaguely.
However, I have been careful to put my verbs in the
perfect tense up there, denotive of "the past up until
now, but maybe no more." People with a vested interest
in having some ism or other to market have been laboring
mightily to ismize the postmodern. So, for all I know,
they have succeeded and there is Postmodernism, ready to
die, to be placed upon the block, carved, and sold.
Ah, but "'Dead' is dead." Let us hope.
--
)*( Gordon Fitch )*( g...@panix.com )*(
--
)*( Gordon Fitch )*( g...@panix.com )*(
kevin sawad brooks
>ggri...@english.as.ua.edu (GINGER GRIFFIN (MA)) writes:
>| What would you consider to be the watershed pieces of postmodernist
>| literature? Especially as they mark a beginning, middle, or end (if there is
>| such a thing) of the movement. ...
>
>I don't believe postmodernism has existed as a movement.
[important postmodernist manifesto repeat stuff deleted]
i assume you are making this statement because you never read
issues from the late 1970s to mid 1980's of the journal _october_.
check some of these out.
kevin
--
"This is a signature?"
NAME Daniel A. Rigney iii
or _boundary 2_, _Cultural Critique_, or even the occasionally
useful _Representations_ all of which are good places for
discourse and reference.
i can only list personal faves:
Th Basic Writings and Being and Time
- martin Heidegger
the Foucault reader
discipline and punish
-michel foucault
Structure Sign and Play
jaques derrida
_The Art of Memory_
video by the vasulkas
_Gravities rainbow_
thomas pynchon
Woman native Other
trinh T. Minh-ha
the end of education
repititions
william v. spanos
In the year of the pig
film by emil diantonio
also Kristeva, Cixous, Irigaray, and other 'frenck feminists'
there are many others i have not read, but i dig these.
oh yeah, don't forget ray federman, larry mccaffery, mark amerika,
kathy acker, and therest of the black ice crew.
it is not where you begin, it is the ways in which you are
in the midst of discovering where you already are.
or some such thing ;)
dan rigney
Gordon Fitch
|>>|What would you consider to be the watershed pieces of postmodernist
|>>|literature? Especially as they mark a beginning, middle, or end (if there is
|>>|such a thing) of the movement. ...
g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
| >>I don't believe postmodernism has existed as a movement.
| >
| >[important postmodernist manifesto repeat stuff deleted]
ksbr...@midway.uchicago.edu writes...
| >i assume you are making this statement because you never read
| >issues from the late 1970s to mid 1980's of the journal _october_.
| >check some of these out.
v092...@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (NAME "Daniel A. Rigney iii") writes:
| or _boundary 2_, _Cultural Critique_, or even the occasionally
| useful _Representations_ all of which are good places for
| discourse and reference.
| ...[ list of books which will go in my "FAQ" or better "FUQ" ] ...
I've read a few of the works mentioned -- I read about a
page and a half of Heidegger back in 1964, for example. It
seemed like badly-expressed Buddhist psychology. I've read
Kristeva, Lacan, Foucault, Pynchon, but no, I haven't read
the journal _october_. What I read seemed far from being
ideology, much more like a sort of snuffling around rather
difficult facts and concepts.
I think there are common concerns, themes, and styles which
appeared around the time High Modernism "died," but I don't
think they form an ideology or a "movement." In fact, one
of the themes of the postmodern has been the impossibility
of estabishing a regnant text, a canon, in other words, an
ideology. Obviously one can never quite make this theme
into a regnant text, a canon, an ideology. At most one can
provisionally confess one's inability to provide these
heretofore indispensible cultural artifacts, carefully and
using many neologisms, lest the unwashed pick up on the
situation and disestablish one's job. I don't see how a
text can salvage itself from this situation.
Not that High Modernism, fascism, and so forth are really
dead. High Modernism, for instance, is still sort of
living on, an element in the visual circus. As I have
also mentioned here before, it's quite common, in this
area, anyway, to see abstract-expressionist paintings on
the nails of working-class women. (But not men, yet, for
some reason.) As for the fascists, well, look around
you.
Now, if you want to say that there are people who are
working hard to turn the predicament of the postmodern
into some kind of an ideology, that's different. But I
already mentioned them very carefully, to the extent
of changing the tenses of my verbs to accord with the
probability of their existence and temporary success.
Sorry to be repetitious.
kevin sawad brooks
>ggri...@english.as.ua.edu (GINGER GRIFFIN (MA)) writes:
>|>>|What would you consider to be the watershed pieces of postmodernist
>|>>|literature? Especially as they mark a beginning, middle, or end (if there is
>|>>|such a thing) of the movement. ...
>
>g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>| >>I don't believe postmodernism has existed as a movement.
>| >
>| >[important postmodernist manifesto repeat stuff deleted]
>
>ksbr...@midway.uchicago.edu writes...
>| >i assume you are making this statement because you never read
>| >issues from the late 1970s to mid 1980's of the journal _october_.
>| >check some of these out.
[important references deleted]
[some rather dismissive but interesting stuff about heidegger deleted]
>
>I think there are common concerns, themes, and styles which
>appeared around the time High Modernism "died," but I don't
>think they form an ideology or a "movement." In fact, one
>of the themes of the postmodern has been the impossibility
>of estabishing a regnant text, a canon, in other words, an
>ideology.
but it is precisely such "themes" that we could say attempt
to form a movement. it is like when modernist writers
privilege the "fragmented self" rather than the singular one.
the topos of fragmentation is formed in order to save and
reconstitute the self. similarly, the fragmentary pomo
aesthetic is used by many critics to save art as a critical
tool.
[deleted some quite good stuff i didn't want to deal with now]
>
>Not that High Modernism, fascism, and so forth are really
>dead. High Modernism, for instance, is still sort of
>living on, an element in the visual circus. As I have
>also mentioned here before, it's quite common, in this
>area, anyway, to see abstract-expressionist paintings on
>the nails of working-class women. (But not men, yet, for
>some reason.) As for the fascists, well, look around
>you.
so, should i ask if it is coincidence that you mention
"High Modernism" and "fascism" in such close proximity?
What does the former denote for you?
>
>Now, if you want to say that there are people who are
>working hard to turn the predicament of the postmodern
>into some kind of an ideology, that's different. But I
>already mentioned them very carefully, to the extent
>of changing the tenses of my verbs to accord with the
>probability of their existence and temporary success.
>
but this can be said of anything. what i find interesting
is the (if you'll pardon) "essentialist" notion of
postmodernism that underwrites your own statement:
you pressupose that postmodernism is an object independent
of those who theorize it. i therefore put to you that your
own statement about postmdernism is of the ideological
flavor that we have been discussing all along.
kevin brooks
ksbr...@midway.uchicago.edu
CZ36
>In article <2grim6$5...@panix.com> g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>>ggri...@english.as.ua.edu (GINGER GRIFFIN (MA)) writes:
>>|>>|What would you consider to be the watershed pieces of postmodernist
>>|>>|literature? Especially as they mark a beginning, middle, or end (if there is
>>|>>|such a thing) of the movement. ...
>>
>>
>>dead. High Modernism, for instance, is still sort of
>>living on, an element in the visual circus. As I have
>>also mentioned here before, it's quite common, in this
>>area, anyway, to see abstract-expressionist paintings on
>>the nails of working-class women. (But not men, yet, for
>>some reason.) As for the fascists, well, look around
>>you.
>
>so, should i ask if it is coincidence that you mention
>"High Modernism" and "fascism" in such close proximity?
>What does the former denote for you?
>
>>
negation of Enlightenment Modernity...all the myth, reversion to legend,
Nietzsche, and glorification of the state. This was a reaction
against rationality and the inherent worth of the individual. To add,
were not de Mann and Heidegger not boot licking Fascists in their
youth?
The questions to be put to post-modern thought are: 1. What's the
the beef with modernity? and 2. What's the post-modern plan?
Derrida once argued that silence is a form of violence.....
Pete
Captain Jack
> The questions to be put to post-modern thought are: 1. What's the
> the beef with modernity? and 2. What's the post-modern plan?
>
> Derrida once argued that silence is a form of violence.....
>
As a novice to the intricacies of postmodern thought, I just wanted to
briefly comment on this pair of questions because I think they
interrelate in an interesting way. I want to start with the second one.
Postmodernism, as one of its defining characteristics, is distinctly
plural. It (very self-consciously) encompasses a variety of styles,
philosophical approaches and attitudes and these often "contradict." The
very trait of postmodernism which makes it so interesting is what makes
it so elusive -- you cannot pin it down, you cannot identify a manifesto
(a single one) which sums up its beliefs. One of the most accepted
approaches to postmodern work (although it is woefully simplistic and
incomplete) is to critique it as a post-modern, that is, as a reaction to
modern, work. This brings us to the first question.
One of the greatest faults I see among postmodern thinkers is that they
often tend to lump modernism into a single thing, as well, to demonstrate
the wonderfully plural nature of the postmodern. Modernism, too, is
incredibly plural. The modern to which postmodern is post seems to be
that modern in which formalism, rationalism, technique, complexity and
structure became the only criteria by which work was judged. This is
still the arean by which music is judged in the academy -- the music of
the serialists, of Eliot Carter -- that is to say, that work which can be
somehow quantified, becomes the standard by which new work is measured.
This kind of modernism, it seems to me, while interesting, is not what I
want to be modeling any work I do off of. However, there are many other
types of modernism: surrealism, dada, futurism to name a few which are
about mystery and poetry and music and not about schematics. These are
the movements which are resurfacing after a long absence -- atime lost on
the shadow of the formalist modernism.
I seem to have digressed. Oh well. CAtch you later.
Violins are a form of violence
JAck
Now when I was a boy/ My daddy sat me on his knee/ And he told me/ He told
me many things/ And he said son/ There's alot of things in this world/
You're gonna have no use for/ And when you get blue/ And you've lost all
your dreams/ There's nothin like a campfire/ And a can of beans
Gordon Fitch
| >|>>|What would you consider to be the watershed pieces of postmodernist
| >|>>|literature? Especially as they mark a beginning, middle, or end (if there is
| >|>>|such a thing) of the movement. ...
| >| >>I don't believe postmodernism has existed as a movement.
| >| >i assume you are making this statement because you never read
| >| >issues from the late 1970s to mid 1980's of the journal _october_.
| >| >check some of these out.
| >I think there are common concerns, themes, and styles which
| >appeared around the time High Modernism "died," but I don't
| >think they form an ideology or a "movement." In fact, one
| >of the themes of the postmodern has been the impossibility
| >of estabishing a regnant text, a canon, in other words, an
| >ideology.
| but it is precisely such "themes" that we could say attempt
| to form a movement. it is like when modernist writers
| privilege the "fragmented self" rather than the singular one.
| the topos of fragmentation is formed in order to save and
| reconstitute the self. similarly, the fragmentary pomo
| aesthetic is used by many critics to save art as a critical
| tool.
term means something more self-conscious and directed than a
collection of tendencies, styles, and accidents.
I think the introduction of the "fragmented self" is apt,
though; it is a game, because the self, seen from the
outside, is always a construction, a thing made up from
fragments. One can take the parts apart and leave them in a
pile; then one has a _topos_; or put the parts together
again, and declare that one has rescued or rediscovered the
self. In other words, one can work a kind of legerdemain
where nothing much has really happened. Just so, one can
construct ideologies _post_facto_.
gcf:
| >Not that High Modernism, fascism, and so forth are really
| >dead. High Modernism, for instance, is still sort of
| >living on, an element in the visual circus. As I have
| >also mentioned here before, it's quite common, in this
| >area, anyway, to see abstract-expressionist paintings on
| >the nails of working-class women. (But not men, yet, for
| >some reason.) As for the fascists, well, look around
| >you.
| so, should i ask if it is coincidence that you mention
| "High Modernism" and "fascism" in such close proximity?
| What does the former denote for you?
selected from Modernism among other things such principles
as the rigorous exclusion of representation, of previous
styles, of play, of "non-functional" elements.
I associate High Modernism with the totalitarian spirit of
the 1950s. I can recall going into the Museum of Modern Art
in '57 or '58 and thinking that everything looked the same
-- that is, it was some kind of abstract expressionism.
Fascism I associate with Futurism. Fascism and totalitari-
an liberalism (that is, a liberal polity with a totalitarian
Zeitgeist) are like two leaves on a tree; I would say the
tree was part of the complex reaction to the violence which
met the penetration of liberalism into Eastern Europe and
Asia (that is, Communism, Naziism, fascism, the two World
Wars).
That reaction included a native (within the West) conserva-
tive reaction to the implications of liberalism and to the
confrontation of European culture with Asian and African
cultures which began in the late 19th century. (Note the
influence of Japanese art on the Impressionists, and of
African art on the cubists and other early Modernists.) Part
of this reaction was an attempt to classicize contemporary
art, which had clearly gotten well off the leash. (I have
given, at great length considering I was writing for the
Net, my view of the political and economic motives for this
attempt.)
This effort was temporarily successful -- those who did not
conform to the High-Modernist standard were largely driven
into the wilderness. Later, in the 1960s, they reappeared
in the galleries, I suppose because there was so much more
outside than inside that even the most rigorously classical
of gallery-owners had to take notice of it. Here I refer to
painting, but corresponding events occurred in other arts
and enterprises.
gcf:
| >Now, if you want to say that there are people who are
| >working hard to turn the predicament of the postmodern
| >into some kind of an ideology, that's different. But I
| >already mentioned them very carefully, to the extent
| >of changing the tenses of my verbs to accord with the
| >probability of their existence and temporary success.
| but this can be said of anything. what i find interesting
| is the (if you'll pardon) "essentialist" notion of
| postmodernism that underwrites your own statement:
| you pressupose that postmodernism is an object independent
| of those who theorize it. i therefore put to you that your
| own statement about postmdernism is of the ideological
| flavor that we have been discussing all along.
so it is inevitable that if I admit of such a concept as the
postmodern I must have constructed some kind of category in
my mind (as it happens, a loose one of era, style, or
theme). I think this is different, however, from
constructing an ideology, that is, a kind of metaidea of
"postmodernism" for evaluating other ideas, a regnant text
of the sort I mentioned before; I think I have been careful
to avoid this pitfall. I say that I do not observe an
ideology within the postmodern, but I do not state that one
cannot be constructed. In fact, it is my expectation that
one _will_ be constructed, because it is to the political
and economic advantage of many persons to do so, so that
they can package it and sell it, or themselves. As I said
in a previous visitation of this subject, "There goes the
neighborhood."
Alan Rosiene (Humanities)
: were not de Mann [sic] and Heidegger not boot licking Fascists in their
: youth?
Yes, they were not not bootlicking Fascists.
Alan
Malgosia Askanas
>Fascism I associate with Futurism.
Do you think that Futurism was inherently Fascist? Was there
a difference in this respect between Italian and Russian Futurism?
Patrick Horan
>In article <1994Jan11....@midway.uchicago.edu> ksbr...@ellis.uchicago.edu (kevin sawad brooks) writes:
[lots of stuff re:Nietzsche, Hiedegger, Fascism, Nazis, Enlightenment &
Modernism deleted]
>The questions to be put to post-modern thought are: 1. What's the
>the beef with modernity? and 2. What's the post-modern plan?
for answers (sort of) to these questions check out _The Condition of
Postmodernity_ (a rather pompous title, but not a bad book) & _Power Plays,
Power Works_, a very cool book by John Fiske.
>Derrida once argued that silence is a form of violence.....
>Pete
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"I am a sick man. . . I am an angry man" Fyodor D.
the patman. 221 University Centre University of Manitoba R3T 2N2
Guy Jordan
Well, I say its time we start changin' them the hell back.
The 60' liberal college "educated" Baby boomers have held court long
enough. They preached love, and happiness. Yeah, right! Go be happy, smoke
pot and play with flower petals on your own property, STAY OFF MY TV SET.
Where have our morals gone? Why is it that they preach every sexual
orientation, value, and moral standing, is a "choice"? What happened to
"right" and "wrong" --- when did the word "choice" replace both of them in
the eyes of our government. It seems you can be in any minority or special
interest group EXCEPT a Christian who stands for family values!!!!!! They
say we aren't ones to push "our rules" on society....but these are God's
rules---rules our forefathers and mothers obeyed much more strictly.
John Adams once remarked during that "the only way the Constitution
will work is if implemented by a moral Christian society". His warning is
so very vital today. Just look around.
In the sixties, hippie pinkos pushed for "free love, free drugs, free
soul...." What mind blowing philosophy. "We are in a trying time, so let's
all wish for world peace as we smoke our weed and tune out" - yeah, that's
just brilliant.
I call for a new movement, not of the hippies "dropping out", but
of Generation X's "tuning in" and starting an anti-rebellion. We must live
true to the gift of life that God has given us --- "right" and "wrong"
must not be value judgements of the past, or we.....like the
Isrealites....Persians....Greeks.....Romans......French....and English
before us, will fall from the sky as the "city upon a hill" our country
was founded to be. Post-Modernism is knowing that we are getting near the
end of things...and that God was right all along....his love endures for
us. We don't need the 60's hippie ways to find it.
-GJ
Gordon Fitch
| "Times, they are a changin..." wrote Bob Dylan
|
| Well, I say its time we start changin' them the hell back.
A witty satire. However, social conservatism and reaction
with a religious theme are already so beaten-up-on, it seems
a bit superfluous.
derek roth larson
agree on what that means. The rest of us could simply sit back and
smile while you battle for the limited territory our society reserves
for religion if you weren't always trying to escape from your little
boxes. This is not a theocracy, and unless you can take control of the
oligarchy you're outta luck, pardner.
Sure the boomers blew it, but we (the amorphous 20-35 generation)
haven't even tried anything. Calling for a return to some sort of
mythical pre-60's Christian nationalism is not the type of contribution
i want us to be remembered for. It sounds too much like the
Progressives' calls for morality at the turn of the century-- and
Prohibition was all the could achieve.
Get a grip.
--
***********************************************************************
* Derek R. Larson Indiana University Dept. of History *
* "Everything gets smaller on its way to becoming eternal." *
* Norman Maclean _Young Men and Fire_ *
Gordon Fitch
| >Fascism I associate with Futurism.
m...@dsd.camb.inmet.com (Malgosia Askanas) writes:
| Do you think that Futurism was inherently Fascist? Was there
| a difference in this respect between Italian and Russian Futurism?
I'm not familiar enough with the details of Futurism to say
whether it was inherently fascist. However, I think both the
Italian Fascist-Futurists and the Russian Communist-Futurists
seem to have believed they were sweeping away the junk of the
past (bourgeois liberalism) to produce a more efficient,
elegant art _and_ politics. This idea is certainly
reminiscent of the values of High Modernism in painting
and architecture.
In _Triumph_of_the_Will_ one of those accused of the murder
of Fascists was "Reaction" as I recall. The Fascists thought
of themselves as "progressive."
Alan Rosiene (Humanities)
>ro6...@unix1.circ.gwu.edu (Guy Jordan) writes:
>| "Times, they are a changin..." wrote Bob Dylan
>|
>| Well, I say its time we start changin' them the hell back.
>| ...
>
>A witty satire. However, social conservatism and reaction
>with a religious theme are already so beaten-up-on, it seems
>a bit superfluous.
Indeed. I thought Guy might have intended to post it to
alt.talk.bizarre. Jaysus!
Alan
BIER, LAURENCE
>"Times, they are a changin..." wrote Bob Dylan
>
>soul...." What mind blowing philosophy. "We are in a trying time, so let's
>all wish for world peace as we smoke our weed and tune out" - yeah, that's
>just brilliant.
>
> I call for a new movement, not of the hippies "dropping out", but
>of Generation X's "tuning in" and starting an anti-rebellion. We must live
>true to the gift of life that God has given us --- "right" and "wrong"
>must not be value judgements of the past, or we.....like the
>Isrealites....Persians....Greeks.....Romans......French....and English
>before us, will fall from the sky as the "city upon a hill" our country
>was founded to be. Post-Modernism is knowing that we are getting near the
>end of things...and that God was right all along....his love endures for
>us. We don't need the 60's hippie ways to find it.
Though I can barely stomach the "ideas" expressed in this article, I've
left the previous two paragraphs intact just so other netters have some idea of
what I'm responding to. As a member of "Generation X", a title I've grown
tired of hearing, I am frankly sick and tired of the attempts of the religious
Right to target the resentment we feel towards boomers for having enjoyed many
years of prosperity and rapid economic growth while we live the "best years of
our lives" in a stagnant economy, and attempt to transform it into religious
righteousness.
What "hippie pinkos" (and believe me, whoever you are, you are not going
to make many converts tossing around phrases like that) did in the '60s and
what boomers did in the '60s are two very different things. It is true that
there was a fringe element which existed at the time, but many boomers lived
very normal lives, very much like yours and mine: they went to school, got jobs,
got married, and had children, possibly creating you and me. This is perhaps
the first misunderstanding that needs to be corrected if the "gap" (I put this
word in quotes for reasons that will be explained in the next paragraph)
between generations is to be bridged.
I don't believe you are going to be very successful in this endeavour for
one main reason. The members of Generation X and the boomers may differ, and
they have their misunderstandings, but the differences between them are not as
great as they think. It is my belief, that in their morals they are very much
the same, with Generation X being more liberal in some areas and in some areas,
mostly economic, more conservative than their generational predecessors. That
does not mean that Generation X is mostly liberal, any more than Boomers are
mostly liberal. I believe there is, in general, the same mix of liberalism
and conservatism that exists in the previous generation with a more liberal
slant towards feminist ideas, such as the ideas that abortion should be
available to all women and that women should have an equal chance at getting
a job as a man does, etc., with a more conservative slant on economic ideas,
i.e. that the government should interfere with the market as little as
possible. More importantly, the idea that boomers live in some ivory tower
and toss down their liberal ideas to the poor, huddled Generation X masses below
them is erroneous. We live with boomers everyday. They are our parents, our
doctors, our teachers, and speaking for myself, we get along very nicely, thank
you.
I have addressed the general theme of this posting as opposed to attacking
the posting itself, as there exists so much that is open to attack in the
original posting. The writer continually relies on rhetoric (not particularly
well-written) as opposed to actual intellectual arguments and evidence.
As for those Xers, who have agreed with the general attack of the poster that
the boomers "blew it", I would advise them to examine closely the agenda of
their generation as compared to the previous one. Theirs was far greater in
scope and in ambition, and even if ours was the same agenda, there is always
the phrase "...there but for the grace of God, go I..." to chide us when we
want to crow over the boomers' failures.
*******************************************************************************
"In this country you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the
money you get the power. Then when you get the power then you get the
woman."
*******************************************************************************
Sandra Vigil
>"Times, they are a changin..." wrote Bob Dylan
[moral tirade deleted in effort to keep my lunch down]
Damn. I overslept again. And for some reason, my calendar reads Jan 14
and not April 1.
/S
--
"It's good, you know, when you got a * *
woman who is a friend of your mind." Sandra Vigil
- Beloved vi...@esca.com
Toni Morrison * *
CZ36
Pete
>.
>.
CZ36000
>>the beef with modernity? and 2. What's the post-modern plan?
>
>for answers (sort of) to these questions check out _The Condition of
>Postmodernity_ (a rather pompous title, but not a bad book) & _Power Plays,
>Power Works_, a very cool book by John Fiske.
>
I appreciate the reference. For the bad 'ol positivist/modern response
to these questions see _Postmodernism, Reason, and Religion_ by Ernest
Gellner.
Pete
Guy Jordan
this is a test to make sure this posts
Guy Jordan
I'm the guy who wrote the article that bashed the 60's and I just
want to say I agree with you all and I'm sorry. I wrote a long apology but
it came up blank, in short -- I am a christian, but I really should grow
up and start acting like one. I have a lot of anger and hatred that
clouds my vision sometimes, and I'm sorry to have subjected you all to my
"dump session". I guess I watched "Bob Roberts" once too many times.
I really still feel that our country is having problems because we
are all, as individuals (I can attest to this) deficient morally. In
short, i guess I'm angry because it seems every ethnic/political/interest
group is thought of as "O.K." except the conservative christians. When we
mention "God", people seem to laugh or think we are Pat Robertson Clones
out to brainwash them. It's a shame, really, and idiots like me posting
hate messages while in the same breath imply that I'm a follower of Christ
does nothing but burn to the ground my own argument and the arguments of
other christians. I am truly sorry, and I apologize.
--Guy Jordan
CZ36000
>Face it JG, we're not all Christians. Even those of your who are can't
>agree on what that means. The rest of us could simply sit back and
>smile while you battle for the limited territory our society reserves
>for religion if you weren't always trying to escape from your little
>boxes. This is not a theocracy, and unless you can take control of the
>oligarchy you're outta luck, pardner.
>
>Sure the boomers blew it, but we (the amorphous 20-35 generation)
>haven't even tried anything. Calling for a return to some sort of
>mythical pre-60's Christian nationalism is not the type of contribution
>i want us to be remembered for. It sounds too much like the
>Progressives' calls for morality at the turn of the century-- and
>Prohibition was all the could achieve.
>
>Get a grip.
>--
toward anchoring morality in something more than say Habermas's
communicative action should not be ignored nor discounted as the ravings
of a few zealots. Serious philosophical ethicists are attempting
to repair the damage done by post-modernity's cultural and moral
relativism. Certainly, some forms of Islamic, Chrisitan, and Jewish
fundamentalisms carry excesses and JG's particular answer may be
literary critics can be returned to their Ivory Towers and
Pete
Gordon Fitch
| >>The questions to be put to post-modern thought are: 1. What's the
| >>the beef with modernity? and 2. What's the post-modern plan?
(attribution lost):
| >for answers (sort of) to these questions check out _The Condition of
| >Postmodernity_ (a rather pompous title, but not a bad book) & _Power Plays,
| >Power Works_, a very cool book by John Fiske.
CZ36000 <CZ...@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA> writes:
| I appreciate the reference. For the bad 'ol positivist/modern response
| to these questions see _Postmodernism, Reason, and Religion_ by Ernest
| Gellner.
| Pete
I find answers to questions giving the titles of books which
can be found only in (maybe some) university libraries or
big-city hip books stores to be essentially repressive.
Should I explain, or can you dig it and answer the implicit
challenge?
Gordon Fitch
| ... Serious philosophical ethicists are attempting
| to repair the damage done by post-modernity's cultural and moral
Could you describe this in somewhat greater detail? Like,
who are these ethicists, how are they doing repairs, what
precisely has been damaged?
Alan Rosiene (Humanities)
>>Pete wrote, in an unintentional moment of sanity:
>>: were not de Mann [sic] and Heidegger not boot licking Fascists in their
>>: youth?
>>Yes, they were not not bootlicking Fascists.
Pete wrote back:
>Well, Alan that is not unmeaningless.
I write:
No, Pete, but that IS a nice try. Next!
Alan "Photographs don't smell."
The Soft Boys
Sourcerer
: Alan
Perhaps it's a commentary on "I Am Legend". The times they are inverted.
--
(}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}})__
({{{{{{{{{{{{{{{ Aim to please. Shoot to Kill.{{} /(**)\
({dje...@telerama.LM.com{{{{{{{Sourcerer{{{{{{{{{{) \../
(}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}) ||
Sourcerer
:
: I'm the guy who wrote the article that bashed the 60's and I just
: --Guy Jordan
By their acts ye shall know them -- which explains why christians make
the rest of us...uneasy.
(signed) A Pinko Hippie
NAME Daniel A. Rigney iii
also see "Heidegger, Nazism and the Repressive Hypothesis" in HEIDEGGER
AND CRITICISM by William V. Spanos. On Univ of Minnesota Press I beleive.
It may have been published in either BOUNDARY 2 or CULTURAL CRITIQUE as well.
Spanos looks at the Nazi/Heidegger controversy within the context of what
Foucault calls "the repressive hypothesis' in HISTORY OF SEXUALITY. it is
dense, but required reading to my mind.
dan rigney
NAME Daniel A. Rigney iii
huh?
dan rigney
NAME Daniel A. Rigney iii
oh...
gee...
thanks...
i guess.
dan rigney
NAME Daniel A. Rigney iii
i think it is inherently oppressive to rely on mainstream bookstores which
deal with a very small number of publishing conglomerates and call that somehow
the "majority" of the press. Barnes and Nobel may look big, but the choice
is rather narrow, don't you think? i mean, is having the ability to buy one of
20 Judith Krantz novels really a choice?
and Gordon, many of us here on alt.postmodern happen to be in academic society
and use this net to enhance our research. isn't the exchange of information
and ideas what the Internet is all about? you ever look up these texts in your
library. i'll bet many of them are there, or can be ordered.
in short, i disagree.
dan rigney
ps sorry about the plethora of posts, i have been away from the Usenet
for a while. just catching up.
;)
Joel Kent Baxter
In article <2h7q22$f...@telerama.lm.com>,
Sourcerer <dje...@telerama.lm.com> wrote:
>Guy Jordan (ro6...@unix1.circ.gwu.edu) wrote:
>:
>: I'm the guy who wrote the article that bashed the 60's and I just
>: want to say I agree with you all and I'm sorry. I wrote a long apology but
>: it came up blank, in short -- I am a christian, but I really should grow
>: up and start acting like one. I have a lot of anger and hatred that
>: clouds my vision sometimes, and I'm sorry to have subjected you all to my
>: "dump session". I guess I watched "Bob Roberts" once too many times.
>: I really still feel that our country is having problems because we
>: are all, as individuals (I can attest to this) deficient morally. In
>: short, i guess I'm angry because it seems every ethnic/political/interest
>: group is thought of as "O.K." except the conservative christians. When we
>: mention "God", people seem to laugh or think we are Pat Robertson Clones
>: out to brainwash them. It's a shame, really, and idiots like me posting
>: hate messages while in the same breath imply that I'm a follower of Christ
>: does nothing but burn to the ground my own argument and the arguments of
>: other christians. I am truly sorry, and I apologize.
>
>: --Guy Jordan
>
>By their acts ye shall know them -- which explains why christians make
>the rest of us...uneasy.
>
>(signed) A Pinko Hippie
I realize Guy's post turned a lot of people's cranks, but, jeez, the man
posted a very coherent apology for posting in the heat of the moment, which
I <rarely> see anyone do (apologize, that is). I was so pleasantly amazed to
see this that I hope there won't be too many more people who take the chance
to kick him while he's down.
Unless he makes you...uneasy; then, of course, it's OK.
JB
ObBook: Hmmm...I would suggest _Les Miserables_, Victor Hugo, on the theme
of "kicking people while they're down", but that seems a bit melodramatic for
the occasion; how about _Replay_, Ken Grimwood, for "give the guy a second
chance".
Gordon Fitch
| >I find answers to questions giving the titles of books which
| >can be found only in (maybe some) university libraries or
| >big-city hip books stores to be essentially repressive.
| >Should I explain, or can you dig it and answer the implicit
| >challenge?
v092...@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (NAME "Daniel A. Rigney iii") writes:
| i think it is inherently oppressive to rely on mainstream bookstores which
| deal with a very small number of publishing conglomerates and call that somehow
| the "majority" of the press. Barnes and Nobel may look big, but the choice
| is rather narrow, don't you think? i mean, is having the ability to buy one of
| 20 Judith Krantz novels really a choice?
I'm not talking about _relying_ on any bookstores. I guess
I could have expressed myself more clearly: a discourse of
citation _only_, where the citation can't be easily found
by those hearing the discourse, is repressive.
| and Gordon, many of us here on alt.postmodern happen to be in academic society
| and use this net to enhance our research. isn't the exchange of information
| and ideas what the Internet is all about? you ever look up these texts in your
| library. i'll bet many of them are there, or can be ordered.
Sure, but academic society, like all structures of authority
in a bourgeois society, is repressive, and games which
evolve within it are likely to be repressive. I'm quite
familiar with the game of "My bibliography is longer and
more obscure than your bibliography" which is close kin to
what we're talking about here. The goal of the game is to
achieve domination and repress the ideas and repute of the
other participants. It's precisely the "exchange of
information and ideas" that I want to liberate.
Derek Taylor
[deleted - apology for the right]
This is quite funny. Let's have some more!
CZ36
>| i think it is inherently oppressive to rely on mainstream bookstores which
>| deal with a very small number of publishing conglomerates and call that somehow
>| the "majority" of the press. Barnes and Nobel may look big, but the choice
>| is rather narrow, don't you think? i mean, is having the ability to buy one of
>| 20 Judith Krantz novels really a choice?
>
>I'm not talking about _relying_ on any bookstores. I guess
>I could have expressed myself more clearly: a discourse of
>citation _only_, where the citation can't be easily found
>by those hearing the discourse, is repressive.
>
>
book.
>Sure, but academic society, like all structures of authority
>in a bourgeois society, is repressive, and games which
>evolve within it are likely to be repressive. I'm quite
>familiar with the game of "My bibliography is longer and
>more obscure than your bibliography" which is close kin to
>what we're talking about here. The goal of the game is to
>achieve domination and repress the ideas and repute of the
>other participants. It's precisely the "exchange of
>information and ideas" that I want to liberate.
>--
>
This is true dribble. My saying that does not oppress you for
you will certainly write back. Discursive formations do not
oppress; the best they can do is dominate which is not the same.
Post-modern approaches which conflate the usage of very important
words is quite a problem. Save repression, violence, or oppression
for real bloodletting, killing, and the other various fun things
that plagues nations. To use such phrases takes away from the force
of their usage when the real thing happens.
Now, I agree that mere citations are a poor substitute for the exchange
of knowledge and can sometimes be used as a crude appeal to authority.
I beleive that I was just responding to an inquiry on the subject not
proving a point with the response. So lets move on to ideas.
Stating that all structures in bourgeois society are oppressive really
carries no analytical weight. The answer is, so what?
Find a soceity without coercive elements. In comparision, say to
agrarian societies the oppressive elements are far fewer. A capitalist
society (which Isuppose you target as well) may allow certain formations
to acheive hegemony at one time or another, but its strength lies in
the fact that such hegemony is hardly permenant. With economic power
fairly well dispersed, communications technology easily managed by
individuals, and a very diverse media few voices are shut out. How else
do you explain the prominence of Chomsky, Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault,
and so on? They found their voices realized in the most capitalist
bourgeois society of all times.
In short, the question of who beneifts in any society is valid, but the
movement toward an answer and a normative prescription is not found in
in your ramblings. Once you argue a position, advocate a program or
idea, you become locked in yet another discursive, repressive formation.
You become locked in sophisticated navel gazing, afraid to step out into
a committment. Our world is hierarchical, driven by real social,
political, and economic forces which favor some and disadvantage others.
Life is hard.
I believe this is why post-modern thought is incapable of dealing with
real world problems. Can a feminist challenge the cultural practises
of another culture within a framework of cultural relativism?
What is the proper relation between the individual and the community?
The questions go on but silence and neat reinterpretations are all
po-mos offer.
More later......Pete
DAVID DURR
on?'" American Christianity is just another tattered fragment of the times.
It cannot lead by moral example because, like our political parties, our
schools and colleges, all of the customary and historical institutions of
popular life, is has been reformed and reinvented to death. Or, more
precisely, to incoherence, the communal grave. Let them all go. Let them
go. And then accept that societies are not redeemed by choice. You
cannot make a better neighborhood let alone a better world by design.
A culture is not a machine. You cannot take a piece of mismanagement or
injustice out over here and screw in a new law or program over there and make
it all better. If we need a simile, the ways of a people are like a tree:
they are organic. They arise from the sad, funny, clever, irrational, and
demented wisdom of the past. To every new generation they appear outrageous
or sacred or irrelevant. But cut out a part over here and then stick it
into an incision over there and the tree doesn't "reform"; it dies. To
deliberately attempt to remake a whole society according to some ideology or
"new morality" is demented. It gets even spacier when an open society
devolves into a political talk show where, every few years, spin-doctors and
the earnest defenders of the latest cultural tree surgery jump in front of
the cameras and cut up the body politic into more pieces. Henry Adams
should have lived to see just how much politics has become "the systematic
organization of hatreds." Now, whoever has the microphone last makes the
rules for everyone else. Not to worry, six or eight years from now there
will be an entirely new set of them. Of course they won't be any more
satisfactory than the previous set. And so it goes. "The punctual rape of
every blessed day."
Perhaps Americans can learn to "love their crooked neighbors with their
crooked hearts." But it won't be because our churches or our politics will
teach us how. They are the vacant lots of our minds. They have been
evacuated by the mysticism of pleasure. It is not a fit life for a person,
and certainly not for a nation, to amuse itself with political channel
surfing while seeking spiritual serenity in the possibility of cryogenics or
salvation through the return to Mayan ruins of some "ancient astronauts."
Churches that offer ice cream sundaes and mass hysteria to reluctant
Christians and political parties that build constituencies on the uncertain
identities of self-dramatizing "victims of society" cannot lead the United
States to anything worthwhile.
New social ways will have to come by learning to live with what happens
as well as we can, not by what we try to batter or trick each other into.
The "necessary arrangements" will have to come about as a kind of found art.
By trying to discover whatever is left of some true commonality, Americans
can become less manic and less hateful. I believe there is some principal of
the post modern that says, "If you don't build it, they will come." Or
as Whitman put it, "You will yet find the friend you were looking for."
Beneath this religion and politics, there is another religion and politics.
I do not know what they are. I am waiting to see.
CZ36
>CZ36000 <CZ...@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA> writes:
>| ... Serious philosophical ethicists are attempting
>| to repair the damage done by post-modernity's cultural and moral
>| relativism. ...
>
>Could you describe this in somewhat greater detail? Like,
>who are these ethicists, how are they doing repairs, what
>precisely has been damaged?
Perhaps ethicist was not an apt description. In the aftermath of
post-modernity's critique of epitemology and Enlightenment's attempt
at foundations (Richard Rorty's _Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature_)
some theorists, mostly liberals, have been trying to restablish
some grounds for cross-cultural and inter-cultural judgements on what
is good and bad, what should be tolerated and what should not.
Those that I am familiar with are: John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, John Gray
and even Jurgen Habermas.
The best example of how this relativism clouds an intellectually honest
assessment of morality regards feminism and multi-culturalism. Both
ideologies share in po-mo's common heritage beginning with Nietzsche
streching into modern forms of individualism and relativism.
How then can Western feminists decry other culture's treatment of women?
Molly Yard declared Saudi Arabia a gender apartheid state without having
ever been there or I suspect ever having read the Koran on which
Saudi Arabia's government is (supposedly) based. One wonders what
her attitude toward some African cultures' treatment of young
girls genitalia would be. Thus, while we are emplored to hold all
cultural practises, no matter how repugnant, as morally equal, we are
allowed to critisize those same cultures for transgressions sensed to be
politically acceptable. Either there are truths to which society can
and must attach itself and defend, or not.
Pete
Gordon Fitch
| i guess my problem with your battle of the biblio argument it that
| for myself, i think i'd rather let people know that what i talk about
| is a result not merely of my own 'originative' thinking but comes out
| of a process of reading and relating the ideas that others have written
| about. your 'battle' metaphor neglects the notion that footnotes and
| sources are a means by which the text can branch out. ...
We aren't talking about citations, footnotes and
bibliographies but the use of reference in place of direct
text, where the references cannot be easily dereferenced by
a reader without a large university library at hand.
dar:
| another aspect of your argument which gets me is that there is somehow
| something inherently concrete in language and communication. that ideas
| should somehow be "self-evident" in the discourse. for me a claim of
| "self-evidence" in any discourse is immediately suspicious. it smacks of
| the kind of rhetoric of "pragmatism" which for me at least is perhaps
| the most oppressive of all discourses as it posits singular "what works"
| over interpretation and debate. the "Know nothings" who seem to pop up
| in fascist times calling for the burning of books and a return to "simple
| transcendent truths" are as bad as skinheads and sheet wearers to my mind.
I don't think I said that discourses had to be entirely
self-evident, although the Founding Fathers (I am writing
this in the United States) would have been surprised to hear
anyone characterizing "self-evident truths" as necessarily
fascistic. The pragmatic of repressive citation (and other
forms of obscurantism) is quite active, whether it is
rhetoricized or not; it makes discussion materially
difficult or impossible for a certain class of people.
There is a contrary pragmatic, that of attempting to explain
your ideas (or whoever's ideas) as clearly as reasonably
possible, given the medium. The former is an attempt to
repress, the latter to elicit.
gcf:
| >Sure, but academic society, like all structures of authority
| >in a bourgeois society, is repressive, and games which
| >evolve within it are likely to be repressive. I'm quite
| >familiar with the game of "My bibliography is longer and
| >more obscure than your bibliography" which is close kin to
| >what we're talking about here. The goal of the game is to
| >achieve domination and repress the ideas and repute of the
| >other participants. It's precisely the "exchange of
| >information and ideas" that I want to liberate.
| This is true dribble. My saying that does not oppress you for
| you will certainly write back. Discursive formations do not
| oppress; the best they can do is dominate which is not the same.
| Post-modern approaches which conflate the usage of very important
| words is quite a problem. Save repression, violence, or oppression
| for real bloodletting, killing, and the other various fun things
| that plagues nations. To use such phrases takes away from the force
| of their usage when the real thing happens.
accurate. To repress something is not to lie upon it or
crush it (_oppress_) but to push it back. In some cases,
like the maintenance of human consciousness in individuals,
repression seems to be necessary. In the politics of the
physical world, it becomes more questionable, at least in
liberal political philosophy. In an exchange of texts, like
the Net, print media, or conversation, it is more
questionable still. In any case, I think it should be able
to justify itself. I don't see the justification for what
I have called "repressive citation", especially in
discourse which styles itself as "postmodern" where such
authorities as regnant texts have supposedly been deposed.
CZ36:
| Now, I agree that mere citations are a poor substitute for the exchange
| of knowledge and can sometimes be used as a crude appeal to authority.
| I beleive that I was just responding to an inquiry on the subject not
I wasn't responding to any single article, but what I see as
a generalized practice.
CZ36:
| Stating that all structures in bourgeois society are oppressive really
| carries no analytical weight. The answer is, so what?
issue. I was responding to the assertion that argument by
citation was normal for an academic environment by pointing
out that the academic environment is bourgeois,
hierarchical, bureaucratic, and therefore (superfluously)
repressive. As I would prefer not to be repressed, and not
to have certain other voices repressed, which do not fit in
to the academic schema, my strategy is to (1) see if I can
find allies; (2) break apart, weaken, or transform the
academic structure so that it doesn't stand in my -- and
others' -- way. Far from being oppressed, I have the Net at
my disposal to carry out this strategy.
CZ36:
| Find a soceity without coercive elements. In comparision, say to
| agrarian societies the oppressive elements are far fewer. A capitalist
| society (which Isuppose you target as well) may allow certain formations
| to acheive hegemony at one time or another, but its strength lies in
| the fact that such hegemony is hardly permenant. With economic power
| fairly well dispersed, communications technology easily managed by
| individuals, and a very diverse media few voices are shut out. How else
| do you explain the prominence of Chomsky, Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault,
| and so on? They found their voices realized in the most capitalist
| bourgeois society of all times.
interesting, but they are tainted by their complicity in
bourgeois institutions. Chomsky, for instance, teaches at
MIT, over the last forty years one of the major organs of
the military-industrial-academic complex, of which he claims
to be a critic or even an enemy while it pays him. Now,
everyone but the rich need jobs, and this may be the best he
can do, but both the circumstances of his existence and his
works need to be looked at with suspicion. It may be that
"radicals" such as Chomsky serve not as counterforces to
bourgeois domination but simply as immunizations against
such counterforces.
In reference to finding other societies, I see no reason to
believe that after several thousand years of slavery and
imperialism there are any which are an improvement over our
own -- if there ever were. On the other hand, I don't find
the present one any kind of utopia, and I'm doing what I can
to change it to my liking.
CZ36:
| In short, the question of who beneifts in any society is valid, but the
| movement toward an answer and a normative prescription is not found in
| in your ramblings. Once you argue a position, advocate a program or
| idea, you become locked in yet another discursive, repressive formation.
| You become locked in sophisticated navel gazing, afraid to step out into
| a committment.
arguing the position, etcetera, to find out whether it is a
good position, or using the argument as a tactic to
further some other interest, like power or ego. In the
latter case, it's true one may spend a lot of time
sharpening one's weapon so as to be ready for the next
contest.
CZ36:
| Our world is hierarchical, driven by real social,
| political, and economic forces which favor some and disadvantage others.
|
| Life is hard.
critically and attempt to modify, avoid, or subvert what one
doesn't like.
CZ36:
| I believe this is why post-modern thought is incapable of dealing with
I think this question is now running in another thread.
kevin sawad brooks
>In article <1994Jan11....@midway.uchicago.edu> ksbr...@ellis.uchicago.edu (kevin sawad brooks) writes:
>>>ggri...@english.as.ua.edu (GINGER GRIFFIN (MA)) writes:
>>>|>>|What would you consider to be the watershed pieces of postmodernist
>>>|>>|literature? Especially as they mark a beginning, middle, or end (if there is
>>>|>>|such a thing) of the movement. ...
>>>
>>>
>>>Not that High Modernism, fascism, and so forth are really
>>>dead. High Modernism, for instance, is still sort of
>>>living on, an element in the visual circus. As I have
>>>also mentioned here before, it's quite common, in this
>>>area, anyway, to see abstract-expressionist paintings on
>>>the nails of working-class women. (But not men, yet, for
>>>some reason.) As for the fascists, well, look around
>>>you.
>>
>>so, should i ask if it is coincidence that you mention
>>"High Modernism" and "fascism" in such close proximity?
>>What does the former denote for you?
>>
>>>
>I believe you have a good point here. The Nazis were afterall the
>negation of Enlightenment Modernity...all the myth, reversion to legend,
>Nietzsche, and glorification of the state. This was a reaction
>against rationality and the inherent worth of the individual. To add,
>were not de Mann and Heidegger not boot licking Fascists in their
>youth?
>The questions to be put to post-modern thought are: 1. What's the
>the beef with modernity? and 2. What's the post-modern plan?
>
firstly, it is "de man." secondly, he never regarded himself as a
"postmodernist." thirdly, you should read what they wrote before
asking such a question. clearly heidegger was a member of the nazi
party and, perhaps, never resigned. the de man case is quite different.
both cases exist for us in relation to a complex self-proclaimed
anti-deconstruction rhetoric seeking to undermine that mode
of reading by attempting to grasp at the grossest "evidence."
>Derrida once argued that silence is a form of violence.....
>
naming is violence as well, so what?
kevin brooks
ksbr...@midway.uchicago.edu
>Pete
>
>
--
"This is a signature?"
kevin sawad brooks
>ggri...@english.as.ua.edu (GINGER GRIFFIN (MA)) writes:
>| >|>>|What would you consider to be the watershed pieces of postmodernist
>| >|>>|literature? Especially as they mark a beginning, middle, or end (if there is
>| >|>>|such a thing) of the movement. ...
>
>| >| >>I don't believe postmodernism has existed as a movement.
>
>ksbr...@midway.uchicago.edu writes...
>| >| >i assume you are making this statement because you never read
>| >| >issues from the late 1970s to mid 1980's of the journal _october_.
>| >| >check some of these out.
>
>gcf:
>| >I think there are common concerns, themes, and styles which
>| >appeared around the time High Modernism "died," but I don't
>| >think they form an ideology or a "movement." In fact, one
>| >of the themes of the postmodern has been the impossibility
>| >of estabishing a regnant text, a canon, in other words, an
>| >ideology.
>
>ksbrooks:
>| but it is precisely such "themes" that we could say attempt
>| to form a movement. it is like when modernist writers
>| privilege the "fragmented self" rather than the singular one.
>| the topos of fragmentation is formed in order to save and
>| reconstitute the self. similarly, the fragmentary pomo
>| aesthetic is used by many critics to save art as a critical
>| tool.
>
>It depends what you mean by a "movement." Generally, the
>term means something more self-conscious and directed than a
>collection of tendencies, styles, and accidents.
>
do you live by the dictionary? is everything categorizable as
either "conscious" or "unconscious?" nonetheless, the "movement"
of post-modernism as forwarded in the pages of _october_ and in
art galleries and writings by artists was about as conscious as
your definition requires, although i will hold that there remained
"un-thought-out," unconscious elements at work in these statements.
see discussion of ideology below.
>I think the introduction of the "fragmented self" is apt,
>though; it is a game, because the self, seen from the
>outside, is always a construction, a thing made up from
>fragments. One can take the parts apart and leave them in a
>pile; then one has a _topos_; or put the parts together
>again, and declare that one has rescued or rediscovered the
>self. In other words, one can work a kind of legerdemain
>where nothing much has really happened. Just so, one can
>construct ideologies _post_facto_.
>
"outside"/"inside": what is that? the fragmented self is a
notion of the myth of the self, no matter from which direction
you look at it. the notions of "inside"/"outside" are *part* of
that grand fiction. therefore, they cannot be brought *in* to
explain or take apart the myth -- they are already the myth.
>gcf:
>| >Not that High Modernism, fascism, and so forth are really
>| >dead. High Modernism, for instance, is still sort of
>| >living on, an element in the visual circus. As I have
>| >also mentioned here before, it's quite common, in this
>| >area, anyway, to see abstract-expressionist paintings on
>| >the nails of working-class women. (But not men, yet, for
>| >some reason.) As for the fascists, well, look around
>| >you.
>
>ksbrooks:
>| so, should i ask if it is coincidence that you mention
>| "High Modernism" and "fascism" in such close proximity?
>| What does the former denote for you?
>
>High Modernism was the classicization of Modernism, and
>selected from Modernism among other things such principles
>as the rigorous exclusion of representation, of previous
>styles, of play, of "non-functional" elements.
>
your temporalization is definitely "classicist" in that you
presume that terms such as "modern" or "classical" occur
in opposition rather than dialectically and synchronically.
the notion of modernism (always) includes a classical
notion within itself: certain modernist texts made (later)
to be classically modernist, i.e. cezanne. this dialectic
constitutes and marks a central modernist anxiety (of influence).
>I associate High Modernism with the totalitarian spirit of
>the 1950s. I can recall going into the Museum of Modern Art
>in '57 or '58 and thinking that everything looked the same
>-- that is, it was some kind of abstract expressionism.
although i don't usually rely on "history" for my "examples,"
i will say here that a.e. was, if anything, a reaction
against controlling political/social forces. i suggest you
read some of barnett newman's and harold rosenberg's writings.
for contemporary writings, check fred orton's.
by the way, by 57 and 58 a.e. was "out" and johns and
rauschenberg were begining to dominate the castelli
scene.
>Fascism I associate with Futurism. Fascism and totalitari-
>an liberalism (that is, a liberal polity with a totalitarian
>Zeitgeist) are like two leaves on a tree; I would say the
>tree was part of the complex reaction to the violence which
>met the penetration of liberalism into Eastern Europe and
>Asia (that is, Communism, Naziism, fascism, the two World
>Wars).
so is all modernism, including a.e., to be grouped in w/
futurism? seems incongruous.
>
>That reaction included a native (within the West) conserva-
>tive reaction to the implications of liberalism and to the
>confrontation of European culture with Asian and African
>cultures which began in the late 19th century. (Note the
>influence of Japanese art on the Impressionists, and of
>African art on the cubists and other early Modernists.) Part
>of this reaction was an attempt to classicize contemporary
>art, which had clearly gotten well off the leash. (I have
>given, at great length considering I was writing for the
>Net, my view of the political and economic motives for this
>attempt.)
so, again, a.e. was created as a "classicism?"
of which sort?
>
>This effort was temporarily successful -- those who did not
>conform to the High-Modernist standard were largely driven
>into the wilderness. Later, in the 1960s, they reappeared
>in the galleries, I suppose because there was so much more
>outside than inside that even the most rigorously classical
>of gallery-owners had to take notice of it. Here I refer to
>painting, but corresponding events occurred in other arts
>and enterprises.
can you be more specific?
>
>gcf:
>| >Now, if you want to say that there are people who are
>| >working hard to turn the predicament of the postmodern
>| >into some kind of an ideology, that's different. But I
>| >already mentioned them very carefully, to the extent
>| >of changing the tenses of my verbs to accord with the
>| >probability of their existence and temporary success.
>
>ksbrooks:
>| but this can be said of anything. what i find interesting
>| is the (if you'll pardon) "essentialist" notion of
>| postmodernism that underwrites your own statement:
>| you pressupose that postmodernism is an object independent
>| of those who theorize it. i therefore put to you that your
>| own statement about postmdernism is of the ideological
>| flavor that we have been discussing all along.
>
>Everything we think about is a categorization of phenomena,
>so it is inevitable that if I admit of such a concept as the
>postmodern I must have constructed some kind of category in
>my mind
not necessarily. in fact, in this statement a disclosure
is made of certain operative presuppositions about the relation
of language to the world. you seem to hold that the "admitance"
of something necessitates a corresponding structure to mimetically
exist in the so-called mind. this is, in fact, a leap of faith, as
a statement is simply that: a statement, with no necessary relation
between what it may denote and the "mind" connected to the body
that utters or writes it. your pressuposition is an ideology and
i would not even say that it is *conscious*. it IS part of the
"logocentric" tradition to which derrida has dedicated much writing.
(as it happens, a loose one of era, style, or
>theme). I think this is different, however, from
>constructing an ideology, that is, a kind of metaidea of
>"postmodernism" for evaluating other ideas, a regnant text
>of the sort I mentioned before; I think I have been careful
>to avoid this pitfall. I say that I do not observe an
>ideology within the postmodern, but I do not state that one
>cannot be constructed. In fact, it is my expectation that
>one _will_ be constructed, because it is to the political
>and economic advantage of many persons to do so, so that
>they can package it and sell it, or themselves.
your concept of ideology seem different from that to which i
am used. why must everything be conscious in your mind?
why must it have an end?
As I said
>in a previous visitation of this subject, "There goes the
>neighborhood."
>--
>
> )*( Gordon Fitch )*( g...@panix.com )*(
Guy Jordan
I'm a....?glad? you're amused, but I meant the apology. Here is a
non-acidic version of what I was so upset about:
1. Morality is NOT relative. It is given to us from the divine
God. Absolute truth supercedes relative truth.
2. Each person in this world/esp. in America must individually
re-commit themselves to a higher level of morality. The terms "right" and
"wrong" have been replaced in American society by the term "choice". This
is dangerous.
3. The founding fathers and mothers intended the Constitution of
the U.S. to govern a group of morally upright God-fearing people. John
Adams said so on the floor of the Constitutioal Convention in one of the
most neglected speeches in American History.
4. No one, it seems, wants to accept this because the truth, as
always, hurts.
All you have to do is look around and see the crime, despair, and
addiction to sin (sex, drugs, violence, money) that is so prevelent in
this country. Criminals are breaking down the doors to get into already
crowded jail cells. What should we do? Should we do anything? What do
you all think? I don't want my generation to be known as the one that let
the country take a fast sleigh ride straight to Dante's Inferno. This is
the challenge facing us as we approach the next millenium.
-Guy Jordan
Guy Jordan
WILL know Christians by their works. People who shoot Abortion Doctors,
and hoard monetary contributions for personal gain may not be the real McCoy.
I don't want to turn this into alt.christian.....board, but remember that
many people will come before Christ shouting "Lord, Lord" and will be
turned away because they never knew him. We all make mistakes, but God
knows which ones truly repent. Christians really aren't bad people when
you get to know them.
-Guy
kevin sawad brooks
Gordon Fitch
| what do you read, gordon?
I take it you mean "besides the Net, computer manuals, and
the backs of milk cartons." Stuff I pick up, especially
remaindered, second-hand, or thrown out. On my desk now are
Georgia O'Keeffe: One Hundred Flowers; History of Childhood
Quarterly: The Journal of Psychohistory vol. 3 no. 2 fall
1975; a Land's End catalog; the collected novels of Jean
Rhys; The Encyclopedia of Pop Culture; The Works of William
Blake; a bilingual New Testament; a bunch of foreign-
language dictionaries; the New York Review of Books; a
couple of trashy novels; a book about Antarctica; a xero-
copy of The Precession of Simulacra. The usual. Then
there's the stuff on the floor.... It's fun making lists
like this, but why do you ask?
stephen miller
: ksbr...@midway.uchicago.edu:
: | what do you read, gordon?
: I take it you mean "besides the Net, computer manuals, and
: the backs of milk cartons." Stuff I pick up, especially
: remaindered, second-hand, or thrown out. On my desk now are
a lot of things that I do not have and that require someone to aquire
first (buy *new*) before our triumphant ascetic could appropriate them so
bravely ;>.
Gee Gordon, It is amazing that you can denounce answers to a question (id
est the one that started this thread: Are there any sources for looking
into pomo) as being elitist and obscure by using language and making
references that only a priveleged few with the luxury of time needed to
cultivate such resources could possibly comprehend.
Stephen Miller
"Celebrate Contradiction"
stephen miller
: Pete:
Try Edward Said, esp. _The World, the Text, and the Critic_ for an answer
to this ideal speech situation upon which Habermas bases the possibility
for this "new morality" that you so desparately crave. For the
academically disenfranchised, try James Joyce _Portait ... as a Young Man_
(yeah, I know, it doesn't flash up on your PoMoMeter, but then again
neither does the New Testament in translation or an English-to-whatever
dictionary.--you know who I'm talking to :>-#).
Stephen
Gordon Fitch
| : | what do you read, gordon?
Gordon Fitch (g...@panix.com) wrote:
| : I take it you mean "besides the Net, computer manuals, and
| : the backs of milk cartons." Stuff I pick up, especially
| : remaindered, second-hand, or thrown out. On my desk now are
sm1...@u.cc.utah.edu (stephen miller):
| a lot of things that I do not have and that require someone to aquire
| first (buy *new*) before our triumphant ascetic could appropriate them so
| bravely ;>.
If you're referring to me, I'm not an ascetic, I'm merely
cheap. I buy books second-hand and used because I can get
a lot more of them that way for the same money. This
isn't relevant to my complaint, however.
| Gee Gordon, It is amazing that you can denounce answers to a question (id
| est the one that started this thread: Are there any sources for looking
| into pomo) as being elitist and obscure by using language and making
| references that only a priveleged few with the luxury of time needed to
| cultivate such resources could possibly comprehend.
People tell me my language is plain or at least clear, but
if it isn't please call my attention to the obscurity and
I will try to correct it. As for references, I'm not sure
which you're talking about. Or is this humor? I'm not
feeling very humorous at the moment, since I'm still
awaiting lift-off from my third cup off coffee this
morning.
stephen miller
: Sure, but academic society, like all structures of authority
: in a bourgeois society, is repressive, and games which
: evolve within it are likely to be repressive. I'm quite
: familiar with the game of "My bibliography is longer and
: more obscure than your bibliography" which is close kin to
: what we're talking about here. The goal of the game is to
: achieve domination and repress the ideas and repute of the
: other participants. It's precisely the "exchange of
: information and ideas" that I want to liberate.
Bullshit. Man, you want to bully people around with your linguistic and
even-more-obscure references. In all of your postings (and I admit I am
new here) I have seen you do nothing but belittle the shit out of anyone
who even glanced at your critical turf. You employ highly specialized
language and, despite your claims to asceticism, your references suggest
that you have had considerable access to information that most folks could
not make heads or tails of (yes, that is a preposition ending this
sentence. I bet you're tempted to correct, aren't you?). I mean realy,
how many people do you think know how to read Heidegger or any of your
other references that you treat as if they were common knowledge? If you
asked your green grocer to explain "Dasein," she would probably telll you
to get a new pair of glasses, tomatoes are on sale today. By encoding
your information and ideas is this abviously academic code you merely
contibute to the domination and elitism of which you do complain.
Furthermore, by treating anyone who disagrees with you or who offers
alternatives to your anti-academic politics like absolute crap. But I
suppose that is the perogative of the pomo prole vangaurd.
Stephen Miller
"Word authority more habitforming than junk ... " wsb
Richard Caley
c> Thus, while we are emplored to hold all cultural practises, no
c> matter how repugnant, as morally equal, we are allowed to critisize
c> those same cultures for transgressions sensed to be politically
c> acceptable.
This is silly. There is no contradiction between holding morality (or
aesthetics or whatever) to be relative and having a personal morality.
So there is no contradiction in advocating diversity while saying some
things are (in your opinion) wrong.
--
r...@cogsci.ed.ac.uk _O_
|<
Gordon Fitch
Alan Rosiene (Humanities)
>Bullshit. Man, you want to bully people around with your linguistic and
>even-more-obscure references. In all of your postings (and I admit I am
>new here) I have seen you do nothing but belittle the shit out of anyone
>who even glanced at your critical turf.
And so on. Stick around a while longer, Stephen. You'll find that
Gordon is not as you describe him at all (tho' he has been slightly
grumpy of late). His coffee table's a throwaway; why should it upset
you so? Fight furniture with furniture.
I think it's time for some serious caffeine, misself.
Alan
Gordon Fitch
| : Sure, but academic society, like all structures of authority
| : in a bourgeois society, is repressive, and games which
sm1...@u.cc.utah.edu (stephen miller):
| Bullshit. Man, you want to bully people around with your linguistic and
| even-more-obscure references. In all of your postings (and I admit I am
| new here) I have seen you do nothing but belittle the shit out of anyone
| who even glanced at your critical turf. You employ highly specialized
| language and, despite your claims to asceticism, your references suggest
| that you have had considerable access to information that most folks could
| not make heads or tails of
Could you be more specific? It is profoundly against my
desire to belittle anyone or to be obscure -- or at least
any more obscure than necessary. Therefore, if you could
say whom I've belittled and how, or point out a gratui-
tous obscurity, I'd appreciate it.
| (yes, that is a preposition ending this
| sentence. I bet you're tempted to correct, aren't you?).
No. Please feel free to use all the prepositions you
you like to end sentences with.
| I mean realy,
| how many people do you think know how to read Heidegger or any of your
| other references that you treat as if they were common knowledge? If you
| asked your green grocer to explain "Dasein," she would probably telll you
| to get a new pair of glasses, tomatoes are on sale today. By encoding
| your information and ideas is this abviously academic code you merely
| contibute to the domination and elitism of which you do complain.
Well, I may be making fun of it. This is why I'd like
you to be more specific. I assure you, I _don't_ know
how to read Heidegger, only how _not_ to read Heidegger,
which I suspect may be the better of the two.
| Furthermore, by treating anyone who disagrees with you or who offers
| alternatives to your anti-academic politics like absolute crap. But I
| suppose that is the perogative of the pomo prole vangaurd.
Again, I'd like you to be more specific. I'm not aware
of treating anyone like crap, with one exception whose
articles I now avoid rigorously to preclude a temptation
I cannot resist. If you are a recent Net participant, you
will not have observed my crimes against this unfortunate
individual.
I like "pomo prole vanguard," though. It may replace
"The moral circus" which is now becoming somewhat
tattered.
CZ36000
>>I believe you have a good point here. The Nazis were afterall the
>>negation of Enlightenment Modernity...all the myth, reversion to legend,
>>Nietzsche, and glorification of the state. This was a reaction
>>against rationality and the inherent worth of the individual. To add,
>>were not de Mann and Heidegger not boot licking Fascists in their
>>youth?
>>The questions to be put to post-modern thought are: 1. What's the
>>the beef with modernity? and 2. What's the post-modern plan?
>>
>
>firstly, it is "de man." secondly, he never regarded himself as a
>"postmodernist." thirdly, you should read what they wrote before
>asking such a question. clearly heidegger was a member of the nazi
>party and, perhaps, never resigned. the de man case is quite different.
>both cases exist for us in relation to a complex self-proclaimed
>anti-deconstruction rhetoric seeking to undermine that mode
>of reading by attempting to grasp at the grossest "evidence."
>
The questions are put to a broad body of anti-modern, essentially post-
modern work, not specific theorists. I have been spoon-feed some
Heidegger and am currently enjoying Otto's book on the man. Your
reaction against anti-deconstruction suggests that either you have not
read the broader works involved (beyond the embarrassing biographies) or
you really do believe that what Derrida is doing is novel and leading
to something better than what modernity has given. Guessing the latter
I would still be interested in answers to the questions, if there
are any.
Pete.
NAME Daniel A. Rigney iii
wow gordon, good stuff. i have don delillo's WHITE NOISE, AVANT-POP--the Black
Ice anthology, a MacWarehouse catalogue, empty checkbooks, Video toaster User
is#15, Option Nov/Dec93, ENGLAND'S DREAMING, THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, Barnouw's
DOCUMENTARY, Kinsella's translation of the Tain Bo Cuailnge, RIVETHEAD,
GOING AFTER CACCIOTO, DEMONBOX, Heidegger's Basic Writings and a copy
of the Buffalo news.
dan rigney
CZ36
particular piece. Is it new? I am not necessarily searching for a new
morality (the old is just fine) but am interested in new ways to ground
knowledge and moral stances in the aftermath of anti-positivism, an so
on. I'm not sure, of what I have been exposed to, that post-modernist
approaches offer much and may in some instances be damaging.
I'm a big Joyce fan. the question of his relation to po-mo thought is
interesting given the influence Wittigstein supposedly had on Joyce's
own perspective. Maybe someone knows more of this connection.
Pete
CZ36
>c> Thus, while we are emplored to hold all cultural practises, no
>c> matter how repugnant, as morally equal, we are allowed to critisize
>c> those same cultures for transgressions sensed to be politically
>c> acceptable.
>
>This is silly. There is no contradiction between holding morality (or
>aesthetics or whatever) to be relative and having a personal morality.
>So there is no contradiction in advocating diversity while saying some
>things are (in your opinion) wrong.
>
or advocacy of diversity and opinion; rather a contradiction between
on the one hand the post-epistemological (read po-mo) charge that
all cultures are only readable (and criticizable) within their own
cultural milieu (modern day cultural anthropology) because of
a lack of foundations upon which to cross-culturally anchor knowledge
or morality and the concurrent desire by many Western organizations
and individuals, who would nevertheless embrace post-epistemology,
to embark on just that type of cross-cultural critque to satisfy
hidden guilt or whatever. Viewing this from such a (dominate)
philosophical perspective concludes that discursive critiques (read
Mrs. Yard's comments) are a form of cultural imperialism and actual
action toward the critique (as evidenced by the recent trial in France
of a Ghanaian woman, I believe, who performed a cliterictomy?) as full
blown Western suppression of another cultures' time honored traditions.
To relate this to real theorists in the field, I believe that Edward
Said comes very close to endorsing cultural relativism (he wants to have
his cake and eat it) and Clifford Geertz who in my opinion jumps in
with both flippers.
Pete.
Gordon Fitch
| >| what do you read, gordon?
g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes...
| >I take it you mean "besides the Net, computer manuals, and
| >the backs of milk cartons." Stuff I pick up, especially
| >remaindered, second-hand, or thrown out. On my desk now are
| >Georgia O'Keeffe: One Hundred Flowers; History of Childhood
| >Quarterly: The Journal of Psychohistory vol. 3 no. 2 fall
| >1975; a Land's End catalog; the collected novels of Jean
| >Rhys; The Encyclopedia of Pop Culture; The Works of William
| >Blake; a bilingual New Testament; a bunch of foreign-
| >language dictionaries; the New York Review of Books; a
| >couple of trashy novels; a book about Antarctica; a xero-
| >copy of The Precession of Simulacra. The usual. Then
| >there's the stuff on the floor.... It's fun making lists
| >like this, but why do you ask?
v092...@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (NAME "Daniel A. Rigney iii"):
| wow gordon, good stuff. i have don delillo's WHITE NOISE, AVANT-POP--the Black
| Ice anthology, a MacWarehouse catalogue, empty checkbooks, Video toaster User
| is#15, Option Nov/Dec93, ENGLAND'S DREAMING, THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, Barnouw's
| DOCUMENTARY, Kinsella's translation of the Tain Bo Cuailnge, RIVETHEAD,
| GOING AFTER CACCIOTO, DEMONBOX, Heidegger's Basic Writings and a copy
| of the Buffalo news.
I think your pile is much better than mine. If you weren't
in Buffalo I'd sneak over to your house and steal some of it.
But we'd better be careful. This thread is being cross-posted
to rec.arts.books, and it'll start a series of "WHAT'S ON MY
DESK RIGHT NOW" postings which are even worse than cascades,
although not as bad as "THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF ALL TIME." In
either case we'll wind up with _The_Wind_in_the_Willows_. So
we must be careful.
Christopher Ogden
> 1. Morality is NOT relative. It is given to us from the divine
>God. Absolute truth supercedes relative truth.
"Morality" is a word that is part of a human language we know of as english,
thus as a human you interpret the meaning of the word "morality". How can a
concept created and interpreted by humans be absolute?
-----------------------------
Christopher Ogden
ogd...@caedm.et.byu.edu
Gordon Fitch
|
| > 1. Morality is NOT relative. It is given to us from the divine
| >God. Absolute truth supercedes relative truth.
OGD...@caedm.et.byu.edu (Christopher Ogden):
| "Morality" is a word that is part of a human language we know of as english,
| thus as a human you interpret the meaning of the word "morality". How can a
| concept created and interpreted by humans be absolute?
If one believes in some kind of omnipotent god, or even a rather
powerful one, then one can say that the god is able to maintain
certain elements of certain languages absolutely X where X is
some quality or other, e.g. "true", which is in turn defined by
the said god. I believe it's a completely self-consistent
set of concepts and if it corresponds to Guy's experience he
might as well stick to it. However, he will find it difficult
to export.
CZ36000
>ro6...@unix1.circ.gwu.edu (Guy Jordan) writes:
>|
>| > 1. Morality is NOT relative. It is given to us from the divine
>| >God. Absolute truth supercedes relative truth.
>
>OGD...@caedm.et.byu.edu (Christopher Ogden):
>| "Morality" is a word that is part of a human language we know of as english,
>| thus as a human you interpret the meaning of the word "morality". How can a
>| concept created and interpreted by humans be absolute?
>
revelation, strictly speaking, instrumental, realist, and positivist
attempts to ground a system of moral values (ethics) has always
ended in circular reasoning. Religious perspectives give valuable
lessons on what the moral life is but it is up to human inquiry to
anchor these guides to conduct across culture and religion. So far
thanks to modernity's success at breeding the harbingers of its
own philosophical doom, the project of anchoring has not been completed.
>If one believes in some kind of omnipotent god, or even a rather
>powerful one, then one can say that the god is able to maintain
>certain elements of certain languages absolutely X where X is
>some quality or other, e.g. "true", which is in turn defined by
>the said god. I believe it's a completely self-consistent
>set of concepts and if it corresponds to Guy's experience he
>might as well stick to it. However, he will find it difficult
>to export.
What Gordon reflects here is a type of methodological individualism
when it comes to ethical guidelines. Symbols only represent reality
(that is representationalism in Rorty's terms...hope I'm not repressing
you here) within one's own universe. Outside that there is no way to
ensure correspondence (ground) between language symbol X and reality.
This can lead to what is refered to in
logical terms as a self-referential paradox---"All truth is relative."
Thus, it seems that from the positivist camp the verdict has not been
reached and for the extreme individualists the hunt should be abandoned.
This leads to the second part of the problem, both the amazing
concurrence of basic moral tenants across cultural reality and the fact
that indeed moral guidelines have been exported and accepted by other
cultures. In the former, observation confirms that on issues such as
murder, incest, fratricide, etc. there is a hefty concensus on their
abolition or strict regulation. On the latter the global concern with
human rights attests to the acceptance of much of what stands to
reason in liberal ethics.
Many others,including myself, are neither satisfied with the relativists
nor are confident that without a new foundation the empirical
convergence may not hold. This is because relativistic positions hold
little insight or effective prescription for real world societal, moral,
and political impasses that demand responses or else rather nasty
answers can take hold. When the Queen's school board rejected certain
NY school board texts because it conflicted with their moral guidelines
it is difficult to believe that a truly relativistic based outlook
could offer any meaningful solutions and still remain true to its
philosophical credo of be true only to your own life world.
Modern Western civilization is truely unique in the sense of not
letting the barbarians in the gate but growing them at home and arming
them to the teeth.
Pete.
Alan Rosiene (Humanities)
>Modern Western civilization is truely unique in the sense of not
>letting the barbarians in the gate but growing them at home and arming
>them to the teeth.
Hardly. Take a look at the Later Roman Empire.
Alan
Malgosia Askanas
>revelation, strictly speaking, instrumental, realist, and positivist
>attempts to ground a system of moral values (ethics) has always
>ended in circular reasoning. Religious perspectives give valuable
>lessons on what the moral life is but it is up to human inquiry to
>anchor these guides to conduct across culture and religion. So far
>thanks to modernity's success at breeding the harbingers of its
>own philosophical doom, the project of anchoring has not been completed.
What is "the project of anchoring"? Whose project is it? Why is it
deemed important? What would it mean to complete it?
>This leads to the second part of the problem, both the amazing
>concurrence of basic moral tenants across cultural reality and the fact
>that indeed moral guidelines have been exported and accepted by other
>cultures. In the former, observation confirms that on issues such as
>murder, incest, fratricide, etc. there is a hefty concensus on their
>abolition or strict regulation. On the latter the global concern with
>human rights attests to the acceptance of much of what stands to
>reason in liberal ethics.
I gather that this "project of anchoring" is a project you approve
of, and that you feel that it is needed over and above the observed
moral consensus across cultures. Can you elaborate?
>Many others,including myself, are neither satisfied with the relativists
>nor are confident that without a new foundation the empirical
>convergence may not hold. This is because relativistic positions hold
>little insight or effective prescription for real world societal, moral,
>and political impasses that demand responses or else rather nasty
>answers can take hold.
What is "empirical convergence"? Is it something that holds now,
or does not hold? Also, what are "relativistic positions" and who
exactly holds them?
>When the Queen's school board rejected certain
>NY school board texts because it conflicted with their moral guidelines
>it is difficult to believe that a truly relativistic based outlook
>could offer any meaningful solutions and still remain true to its
>philosophical credo of be true only to your own life world.
Is this a story we are all supposed to be familiar with? It must
have been pretty serious to justify your philosphical generalization;
nevertheless, I have never heard about it, so please explain.
Barclay Blanchard
> I really still feel that our country is having problems because we
> are all, as individuals (I can attest to this) deficient morally.
I think that's inherent in the human condition... no one's perfect. On the
other hand, (for those of us who believe in a divine creator ... mine's a
Goddess) perhaps we're perfect *with* our imperfections... we're meant to
be what we are, and each of us is beautiful and lovable by virtue of having
been created by a loving deity. That's my belief.
>In
> short, i guess I'm angry because it seems every ethnic/political/interest
> group is thought of as "O.K." except the conservative christians.
I agree. I have a lot of prejudice against conservative Christians, largely
because I'm afraid of the violence some of them do to non-Christians or to
other Christians who don't believe the same things they do.
I think you're apology took remarkable courage.
--
Barclay Elizabeth Blanchard
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was sentenced to 20 years of boredom for |bar...@rail9000.gatech.edu
trying to fight the system from within.--unknown |BAR...@DALVM3.vnet.ibm.com
kevin sawad brooks
>
>Chomsky, Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault are all very
>interesting, but they are tainted by their complicity in
>bourgeois institutions. Chomsky, for instance, teaches at
>MIT, over the last forty years one of the major organs of
gordon, i notice you make this assertion about "tainted"
criticism/ideas in a number of posts. i've for some time
wanted to ask you how it is you use this notion. it
seems to me that criticism in the "western" world -- whatever
that is -- will always arise *in connection to*, as you say, "bourgeois
intitutions." (this is not to say that these are responsible for all.)
thus, it is always tainted, in your sense. this
being the case, i wonder then about the efficacy of your argument.
could you expand on this?
kevin
ksbr...@midway.uchicago.edu
Gordon Fitch
| >...
| >Chomsky, Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault are all very
| >interesting, but they are tainted by their complicity in
| >bourgeois institutions. Chomsky, for instance, teaches at
| >MIT, over the last forty years one of the major organs of
| [snip!]
| gordon, i notice you make this assertion about "tainted"
| criticism/ideas in a number of posts. i've for some time
| wanted to ask you how it is you use this notion. it
| seems to me that criticism in the "western" world -- whatever
| that is -- will always arise *in connection to*, as you say, "bourgeois
| intitutions." (this is not to say that these are responsible for all.)
| thus, it is always tainted, in your sense. this
| being the case, i wonder then about the efficacy of your argument.
| could you expand on this?
anyone's character -- I have very little idea of the
character of any of the people I mentioned -- but am
speaking only of their repute and political function.
It is quite right to say that everything we do is affected
-- tainted -- by connection to bourgeois institutions.
However, the particular people in question have made
bourgeois careers within bourgeois institutions (mostly the
academic system, and to some extent the print media) at
least partially _by_means_of_ their criticism of these
institutions. This sort of thing is called a "conflict of
interest" in other venues, like business. If they were to
substantially damage the authoritarian structures they
purport to criticize, they might well lose their paychecks
and their opportunities. Moreover, it is unlikely that they
achieved a right to speak through these institutions without
demonstrating usefulness and submission to them (although
they could certainly betray them subsequently).
As a point of comparison, someone (like me) who derives
nothing from writing criticism, and has happened on a right
to speak without obtaining anyone's permission, may still be
implicated in bourgeois institutions -- I get my present
income from people who are, essentially, croupiers in the
financial business -- but my writing affects my income and
prospects only very indirectly, if at all.
My argument here is, of course, a kind of ad-hominem, and as
a consequence I won't flatly say that the authors above are
all trimmers and sell-outs. On the other hand, I have to be
suspicious of them, especially when (as certainly in the
case of Chomsky and Derrida) they become the centers of
cults of personality. Chomsky notices, for example, that
the mass media present a narrow spectrum of positions on any
issue as the full range of possible opinion; but he himself,
by playing lovable lefty curmudgeon on NET, may well support
this behavior. After all, one says that the revolution will
not be televised.
Certainly, one must notice that the standard "left" or "hip"
bodies of criticism are singularly ineffectual even within
those realms that are particularly thought to belong to
them. I've noticed, for example, than in discussions about
academic "political correctness" in the media, and I
certainly include almost all the left and hip media in this
along with the mainstream, no one ever brings up the fact
that the institutions involved are and have always been
authoritarian and have always projected one kind of
political correctness or other. It is clear that both the
attackers and defenders of whatever "political correctness"
is supposed to be feel that mentioning this embarrassment is
striking too close to home; they wish to preserve the myth
of academic freedom, most likely because it helps put the
bread on the table, by protecting the bread machine from
the wrath of the unwashed and the semi-washed.
By participating in the institutions they claim to criticize
(and therefore, subordinate and superordinate systems as
well), critics like Chomsky vitiate their own criticisms.
(As I said previously, I understand that this may be the
best they can do.) The general result of the vitiation is
that the totalitarian center can continue in its project of
neutralizing and obviating every other point of view. I
find this a boring result.
(To preclude a certain sort of response: By "totalitarian"
I refer to spirit and desire, not practice.)
000000000 LATE REGISTRATION
-TBD
NAME Daniel A. Rigney iii
>Who says that "defining works?"
>
>-TBD
alright, now that this thread has played itself out, are there any
good books out there that no one has read yet but you? if you think they
relate to this board post 'em and tell us why.
dan rigney
ps any one read CRITIFICTION? or RADIOTEXT(E)?
i may need to buy them so i'd like to know what i am getting into.
John McCarthy
References: <2h7ird$b...@unix1.circ.gwu.edu> <2h7jfj$b...@unix1.circ.gwu.edu> <2h7q22$f...@telerama.lm.com>
Guy Jordan wrote:
> I really still feel that our country is having problems because we
> are all, as individuals (I can attest to this) deficient morally.
I think that's inherent in the human condition... no one's perfect. On the
other hand, (for those of us who believe in a divine creator ... mine's a
Goddess) perhaps we're perfect *with* our imperfections... we're meant to
be what we are, and each of us is beautiful and lovable by virtue of having
been created by a loving deity. That's my belief.
>In
> short, i guess I'm angry because it seems every ethnic/political/interest
> group is thought of as "O.K." except the conservative christians.
I agree. I have a lot of prejudice against conservative Christians, largely
because I'm afraid of the violence some of them do to non-Christians or to
other Christians who don't believe the same things they do.
I think you're apology took remarkable courage.
--
Barclay Elizabeth Blanchard
I wonder if Barclay is confusing the violence some conservative
Christians do to people who *act* in ways they disapprove of, i.e.
carry out abortions, with doing violence to people "who don't believe
the same things they do." I disapprove of their actions against
doctors who perform abortions, but I don't know of recent (say after
1970) violence against people who merely believe in ways they don't.
As an atheist, what violence must I beware of?
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
kevin sawad brooks
AND i have the Macintosh C Programming Primer, THINK C for Macintosh
User's Guide, The German Library Vol. 21 (Novalis, Schlegel, Schleiermacher,
and others), Miriam Hansen's Babel & Babylon, Heidegger's The Question
Concerning Technology, Kemal and Gaskell's The Language of Art History,
The Whole Internet, a photocopy of Kenneth Smith's Mutiple-Valued Logic:
A Tutorial and Appreciation, and much, much more...
kevin
kevin sawad brooks
this would suggest that i don't read his project as separate from modernism,
wouldn't it?
>to something better than what modernity has given. Guessing the latter
>I would still be interested in answers to the questions, if there
>are any.
>
>Pete.
>
you actually mention specific theorists (de man[n your "n"] and heidegger)!
why does my response to what you call "anti-deconstruction" suggest to
you that i haven't "read the broader works involved (beyond the embarrassing biographies)?" your hypothesis, not to mention its proof, would require
a supreme hermeneutic effort on someone's part. the problem that would
occur if i were to attempt an answer to your questions would be that i would
be accepting the terms of your questions as well. let me say this: i don't
read derrida as an "anti-modernist," as perhaps you would have him.
again, in the case of de man, i also do not read his work as anti-modernist.
some self-proclaimed "post-modernists" have expressed anti-modernist
projects. neither derrida nor de man, to my knowledge, proclaimed themselves
as members of this "post-modernist" project. do you have contradictory
evidence?
if you want answers to your questions on your terms, read hal foster's
_the anti-aesthetic_. i don't believe that even in this volume will
you get answers on your terms.
the problem of modernism is more complex than simply being for or
Elizabeth Haley
>In article <CJt5F...@acsu.buffalo.edu> v092...@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (NAME "Daniel A. Rigney iii") writes:
>>In article <2he1b2$t...@panix.com>, g...@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes...
>>>ksbr...@midway.uchicago.edu:
>>>| what do you read, gordon?
>>>
>>>I take it you mean "besides the Net, computer manuals, and
...
>>wow gordon, good stuff. i have don delillo's WHITE NOISE, AVANT-POP
...
>>dan rigney
>AND i have the Macintosh C Programming Primer, THINK C for Macintosh
...
>kevin
just to be social, here's mine:
Green Eggs and Ham, Plant Alchemy, USGovt Consumer Info. Catalog,
Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, The Trail of Cthulhu, Zen
Macrobiotic Cooking, The Illuminatus! Trilogy, The Medium is the
Massage, I Seem to Be a Verb, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Book of Tofu,
Another Roadside Attraction, The Pictorial Key To the Tarot (Waite),
The Cyberiad, The Incredible I Ching, The Lesbian Reader, Two Zen
Classics, Always Coming Home, The Herb Book, The Kernighan and Ritchie
C book, an e-copy of Hakim Bey's Chaos: Broadsheets of Ontological
Anarch (y? ism? ists?), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and an old
Newsweek with an article on meta-humor and intelligent stupidity.
ChaoTao to authority,
Rob Shields
>ro6...@unix1.circ.gwu.edu (Guy Jordan) writes:
>| "Times, they are a changin..." wrote Bob Dylan
>|
>| Well, I say its time we start changin' them the hell back.
>| ...
>A witty satire. However, social conservatism and reaction
>with a religious theme are already so beaten-up-on, it seems
>a bit superfluous.
>--
YYYessss!
-Rob
Rob Shields
On that point, check out Lefebvre and Guterman _Le Conscience
Mystifiee_ published around '36. Rather interesting to see their
critical take on the politics of the discursive.
(Just a little point from the archives...)
-Rob