Teaching Postmodernism
PR...@cunyvm.cuny.edu
>
>"Starting"??? I think people, especially in Academia, have
>been laboring very hard to _make_ it mean something, other
>than a collection of artistic styles, which is what it
>meant when I first ran into it. In the plastic arts and
>architecture, it was easy to make it mean something because
>we had High Modernism to hit off, a very classicized style
>whose centerpiece was abstract expressionism. No one had
>any doubt that Andy Warhol was "postmodern." In literature,
>philosophy, science, business, or pop culture it's a lot
>harder to draw a distinction between modernity and
>postmodernity. But if people keep working at it, they
>ought to come up with something, eh?
>--
I think postmodernism has come to mean maintaining sophisticated modes
of intertextual and paradoxical thinking. This kind of postmodernism is
still very enlightened. Very few "postmodernists" are willing to admit
that they are given to any ontological system even if they are involved
in negotiating with other such systems from a fixed point.
Is the Pope postmodern?
jle...@utdallas.edu
> Pinaki Chakravorty <pch...@minerva.cis.yale.edu>:
> | Yuh, in fact, postmodern writers should no longer really have the
> | adjective "postmodern" appended to them every time they come up. The
> | word is almost starting to become meaningless. ...
> "Starting"??? I think people, especially in Academia, have
> been laboring very hard to _make_ it mean something, other
> than a collection of artistic styles, which is what it
> meant when I first ran into it. .... In literature,
> philosophy, science, business, or pop culture it's a lot
> harder to draw a distinction between modernity and
> postmodernity. But if people keep working at it, they
> ought to come up with something, eh?
Some of us already have. :)
--
============================================================================
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-- |
DAVID BRUCE ROSENTHAL
: Yuh, in fact, postmodern writers should no longer really have the
: from Bataille, who is very different from Hayden White, etc. It's fine
: to use the word to class writers in survey courses (just as Keats and
: Byron, two very different poets, are classed together in courses on
: Romantic poetry---still, "Romantic poet" says more about Keats and Byron
: than "postmodern" continues to say about Derrida and Hayden White). But
: by and large, "postmodern" (like "deconstruction") is grievously
: overused. I've seen the word in everything from Jameson to Better Homes
: and Gardens. I mean really, most students either know by now that the
: word means little that is extraordinary or have little interest in what
: is represented by "postmodernism." It's time to start studying
: postmodern writers as writers, not circus attractions.
Then why is this called "alt.postmodern?" :-)
--Dave
Gordon Fitch
| I think postmodernism has come to mean maintaining sophisticated modes
| of intertextual and paradoxical thinking. This kind of postmodernism is
| still very enlightened. Very few "postmodernists" are willing to admit
| that they are given to any ontological system even if they are involved
| in negotiating with other such systems from a fixed point.
Certainly a satisfactorily self-contradictory position: "My
system is not to have a system." Eventually, one can work
it up to the point of giving people a grade in it. No, two
or three grades. An indefinite number of grades.
| Is the Pope postmodern?
Does a bear deconstruct in the woods?
--
>< Gordon Fitch >< g...@panix.com ><