PM vs Modern: Same Old Baloney?
Lois Shawver
: Experiential friction. Without it, we're bored.
This is, of course, a universal stated in the form of a metaphor - and in
all situations in which we are not 'bored' (staring at sunsets, for
example) we can look for and find a way in which it involves friction,
maybe.
Alektra
writes:
>NS Brown (nsb...@zeus.IntNet.net) wrote:
Wow, I never noticed how fast the sun seems to move when it's near the
horizon! Weird how that cloud looks black. Did you ever see a black cloud
like it? Maybe it's because the sun is moving behind it. Will the sun come
out from behind it in time? Hey, DIDJA SEE THAT? DIDJA SEE THE GREEN
FLASH?
jle...@utdallas.edu
> Cris here. :)
>
> Sam Vagenas (nol...@primenet.com) wrote:
>
> [... jlelson had written ...]
> : >Isn't the notion of "overcoming" modernity, and metaphysics as well,
> : >problematic? If we follow Nietzsche's lead, as Gianni Vattimo does in
> : >this regard, by saying that modernity refers to the era of "overcoming"
> : >the errors of the past in hopes of increasingly approaching the "Truth",
> : >any attempt to "overcome"/"transcend"/"leave behind" modernity can at
> : >best only resuscitate modernity in a "new and improved" form.
>
> [... to which Sam replied that such a perspective was probably
> more properly attributed to Heidegger than to Derrida, but then
> asked ...]
> : However, you raise an interesting point. Is the postmodern/modern
> : debate just another bipolar construction which must be deconstructed?
> : And once that's done, what is the postmodern?
> I don't think the notion of "understanding" is necessarily linked
> to "overcoming," and thus I *don't* see postmodernism as merely
> another kind of modernism. [....]
I'm not sure how the notion of "understanding" got involved, but it seems
that I should have been clearer. I do _not_ submit that post-modernism
is "merely another kind of modernism." I was being rhetorical and
suggesting a way to understand post-modernism by saying what it is
not, i.e., modernism. Sorry for the confusion.
> [Much of what follows was developed in preparing my thesis
> entitled "The Experiential Aesthetic -- A New Old Approach
> to the Creation and Appreciation of Art," in pursuit of my
> B.A. degree in theatre at the University of South Florida (1992).]
[many lines deleted]
> Note that "experiential friction" is a superset of "conflict."
> That is, experiential friction includes some types of interactions
> which we normally wouldn't describe as "conflicts." But more
> important, "conflict" is a term which implies winning/losing,
> or at least (what we consider) a normal desire to *end* it in
> some fashion. As we're about to see, this isn't always true of
> experiential friction.
By superset, do you mean that "conflict" is a special case or certain
category of "experiential friction?"
> Returning to my original thesis: the essence of consciousness
> lies in seeking and manipulating experiential friction. By this
> I mean that experiential friction is not merely something that
> is dumped on us by an uncooperative experiential milieu. Some
> of that friction *is* dumped on us, to be sure. But it strikes
> me as highly significant that if we don't have *enough* friction
> in our lives, we go out and invent some. We invent sports and
> games which are intentionally difficult (why does a tennis court
> have a net? and why is a basketball rim 18" around and 10' high,
> rather than 10' around and 18" high?). The list of examples
> could go on indefinitely, but the point is made.
Agreed. Am I correct in assuming that this "friction" is necessary in
order for us to make any kind of distinction, intellectual or otherwise?
> [....] My view of philosophy is not so much driven by a search for a
> better tool with which to manipulate life, but a search for a better
> lens through which to look, so that I can more fully experience.
Excellent point.
--
============================================================================
James L Elson: |<o When you stare into the abyss too long o>|
School of Arts & Humanities |<o the abyss stares back into you. o>|
University of Texas-Dallas | --Nietzsche-- |
Alektra
Brown) writes:
>She's really lethal when it comes to strawmen. Now
>if maybe she could learn to read an argument and reason, it
>might be more difficult, but still ... she's doing fine with
>straw ....
It's the best way to test swords when you don't have any prisoners handy.
Lois Shawver
Lois: Consider the case of watching a sunset
Chris: In a workaday world where all seems often dreary and unremarkable,
there is suddenly inserted the sublime and beautiful...Therein lies
the friction.
It is like saying, "All redhead people are soft," and when someone says,
"Hey, I'm a redhead and I'm built like a rock," your saying, "Yeah, but
you're soft in the head," and his saying, "What do you mean? Look at my
Nobel prize," and your saying, ....
Such universals do not inform us about the world. They are merely a
game to test your ability to apply the metaphor to everything.
NS Brown
Lois Shawver (rath...@crl.com) wrote:
[... I had written ...]
: : Experiential friction. Without it, we're bored.
: This is, of course, a universal stated in the form of a metaphor - and in
: all situations in which we are not 'bored' (staring at sunsets, for
: example) we can look for and find a way in which it involves friction,
: maybe.
Exactly. What happens when you watch a sunset? I watch a lot of
them -- it's a popular hobby on the west coast of Florida, where we
get tropical sunsets of dusty rose and peach and teal, strewn over
taffy clouds from horizon to horizon -- and the words I most often
hear from other sunset-watchers are "incredible" and "unbelievable."
In a workaday world where all seems often dreary and unremarkable,
there is suddenly inserted the sublime and beautiful.
Therein lies the friction.
Cris
NS Brown
Alektra (ale...@aol.com) wrote:
[... in response to Lois positing a sunset as an example of an
experience which seemingly has no friction, but for which she
thought I'd find some (see my prior post; I did) ...]
: Wow, I never noticed how fast the sun seems to move when it's near the
: horizon! Weird how that cloud looks black. Did you ever see a black cloud
: like it? Maybe it's because the sun is moving behind it. Will the sun come
: out from behind it in time? Hey, DIDJA SEE THAT? DIDJA SEE THE GREEN
: FLASH?
Didja see that, how Alektra set up a strawman and demolished
it? Wow! She's really lethal when it comes to strawmen. Now
if maybe she could learn to read an argument and reason, it
might be more difficult, but still ... she's doing fine with
straw ....
Cris
jle...@utdallas.edu
In article <3cneuv$3...@xcalibur.IntNet.net> writes:
>
> Sam Vagenas (nol...@primenet.com) wrote:
>
> [... jlelson had written ...]
> : >Isn't the notion of "overcoming" modernity, and metaphysics as well,
> : >problematic? If we follow Nietzsche's lead, as Gianni Vattimo does in
> : >this regard, by saying that modernity refers to the era of "overcoming"
> : >the errors of the past in hopes of increasingly approaching the "Truth",
> : >any attempt to "overcome"/"transcend"/"leave behind" modernity can at
> : >best only resuscitate modernity in a "new and improved" form.
>
> [... to which Sam replied that such a perspective was probably
> more properly attributed to Heidegger than to Derrida, but then
> asked ...]
You are correct. Vattimo often emulates Heidegger's voice. He goes on
to say that Nietzsche was employing the Heideggerain notion of
_Verwindung_ even though he never used that term. _Verwindung_, unlike
_Uberwindung_ ("overcoming"), suggests a resignation, a convalescence
from a chronic disease, traces of an injury, a usage that distort.
Sam writes:
> : However, you raise an interesting point. Is the postmodern/modern
> : debate just another bipolar construction which must be deconstructed?
> : And once that's done, what is the postmodern?
Perhaps, perhaps not. I don't view it as a bipolar opposition since
to be at one pole entails not being at the other. If was such an
opposition, then post-modernity merely would be a new variety of
modernism. When we recognize the epistemological 'errors' of modernity,
we also recognize that we no have any basis that would allow us to "leave
it behind"/"overcome" it 'errors'. We have no "truths", only 'fables'.
The traces of modernity and metaphysical remain with us. We cannot
"overcome" the epistemological 'errors' in modern thought since there
is no "ground" available to us that would allow us to do so with _full
rigor._ We cannot simply leave our language behind because of the
metaphysics built into grammar. However, we can convalesce; we can
begin to use it in creative ways that distort and undermine the
metaphysics inherent in language. "Truth" becomes a 'fable";
everything becomes a 'text' that has no definitive interpretation.
One of the main 'virtues' I see in Vattimo's approach is that it provides
a way to answer the charges of inconsistency leveled against
post-modernism by "moldy figs and metaphysical prigs" [said with a grin]
in manner with which they can relate. (Of course, many of them will
probably refuse to do so.) Also, it helps me remember not to take any
interpretative scheme/'fable' too seriously: if I ever found one that was
"true", I'd had no way of knowing it.
NS Brown
Lois Shawver (rath...@crl.com) wrote:
: Chris: Experiential friction. Without it, we're bored.
First, my name is Cris (no "h"). I've never typed it otherwise,
and everyone else seems to pick up on it. This leads me to believe
either: (a) you don't read very closely; or, (b) you're being
purposefully insulting by misspelling someone's name.
Second, the construct of experiential friction *can* inform us
about the world, if only we stop and think instead of responding
blindly. Your posts of today are unlike you, Lois. You're
normally very intelligent and expressive; today you're terse,
rude and bordering on dense.
Personally, I can't wait for Merry-Fucking-Christmas to get over
with, so we can get back to our real selves and get off this
Madison Avenue Runaround.
Cris
NS Brown
Sam Vagenas (nol...@primenet.com) wrote:
: Experiential Friction?
: I still have not figured how this response met mine on the issue whether the
: modern/postmodern distinction was just another static, bipolarity which needed
: to deconstructed.
: "Experience" always brings us back to a subject. It seems to me the subject
: is more properly situated in the horizon of modernity than postmodernity.
Your question was whether postmodernism attempts to "overcome"
modernism, and whether modernist thoughts will be "othered" under
postmodernist analysis.
I offered a perspective which permitted (indeed celebrates!)
friction-without-resolution. There is no need to "overcome"
or "other." Not all frictions need to be resolved; some can
be preserved and indeed enjoyed.
I offered Experiential Friction as a broader and (to me) more
useful term than "conflict." One could say that a modernist
would see modernism/postmodernism as being "in conflict." If
a postmodernist adopted the construct of experiential friction,
he/she might see modernism/postmodernism as creating friction.
The modernist (conflict) view implies the necessity of a victor,
that one overcomes the other. The postmodernist (friction)
view merely notes the existence of friction, with no inherent
need to resolve that friction.
Thus, modernism/postmodernism is not necessarily a distinction
in need of deconstruction. We can do so if there are pragmatic
imperatives which demand it. Absent such imperatives, we might
be better off preserving the friction and letting it play in
our consciousness.
I hope this better answers your question.
Cris
NS Brown
[I had written that experiential friction is a superset of conflict.
James Elson replies ...]
: By superset, do you mean that "conflict" is a special case or certain
: category of "experiential friction?"
Yes. All conflicts are examples of experiential friction.
However, not all examples of experiential friction are what
we would call conflicts.
Example: Take the phrase "the words rolled drippingly down
his chin." We have (for purposes of this illustration) two
experiential elements. The first is the words themselves.
The second is another set of words which ring behind them:
"the words rolled trippingly off his tongue." These two
elements move in different directions, and thus create
experiential friction. But this isn't the type of friction
which we'd normally describe as a "conflict."
Humor often takes advantage of this sort of experiential
friction: bouncing one possible meaning of a word against
another possible meaning, or turning a phrase in a way that
we experience both the turned phrase and the original phrase,
and laugh at the friction between them.
: Agreed. Am I correct in assuming that this "friction" is necessary in
: order for us to make any kind of distinction, intellectual or otherwise?
You might even say that experiential friction is what underlies
distinctions. Not so much that it is "necessary for," but that
it seems "inherent in."
[What follows is pure *speculation* about the functioning of
the brain; I may be totally wrong from a biological perspective,
but I think the metaphor makes sense anyway.]
You might conceive of the brain as a parallel processor with lots
and lots of channels available. At any given moment, your brain
is doing hundreds of things, from directing your eyes across this
screen to monitoring other sensory organs for alerts to thinking
about wrapping Christmas presents to mulling over some problem at
work to ... well, you get the idea.
Recognizing a distinction implies at least three channels in
operation. The first channel notes the first element. The
second channel notes the second element. The third (or more,
depending on the complexity of the operation) channel notes
the difference between them.
My theory of experiential aesthetics proposed that the key to
creating the aesthetic experience -- that feeling of stepping
"out" of the workaday milieu and "getting into" the aesthetic
milieu of the work -- was a function of occupying as many of
those processing channels as possible ... right up to the point
where the work gets "too dense," "too confusing," "I just can't
follow it."
If the artist stops just shy of that point (and it's a different
point for each work of art and each percipient, so there is no
exact measurement possible), the percipient's consciousness is
almost totally occupied with the work of art ... and thus he/she
loses his/her awareness of the workaday milieu.
Okay, back to experiential friction and distinctions. I theorized
that whenever we *resolve* a friction (such that the elements are
moving in the same direction at the same speed), we clump-and-dump.
That is, we *unify* those elements and put them on one processing
channel. So ...
... if we're aware of a distinction, there is experiential friction.
That is, we've got at least three channels busy. If we decide the
distinction isn't important, or if the distinction is resolved, we
put the whole mess on one channel (or dump it altogether) ... and
the experiential friction vanishes.
So, as best as I can explain it, that's the relationship between
distinctions and experiential friction.
Just an opinion, worth what you paid for it. :)
Cris