Postmodern/Poststructuralist Approaches to Myth/Mythology
James Chokey
observation that there have been three main approaches of thought about
myth/mythology in the twentieth century.
The first is that of cultural anthropology and comparative religion,
initially pioneered by Frazer, Tylor, Harrison, etc., although it
continues on through a long tradition of antropologist and scholars
of comparative religion including Malinowski and Eliade. This approach
usually tends to examine myth cross-culturally, in terms of its
connection(s) to religion or ritual.
The second is that of psychoanalysis of both the Freudian and
Jungian varieties, both as it was performed early on by folks
like Otto Rank, and later on by folks like Eric Neumann-- and
most famously, Joseph Campbell. This tends to approach myth as
a kind of allegory of basic life-conflicts that is at once
individual, and universal.
The third is that of structuralism, which is perhaps best exemplified
by Claude Levi-Strauss. This approach treats myth as a complex and
counterintuitive semiotic system whose true meaning is "coded" deep
within the structure of individual myths and their variants, and which
often has little to do with the overt content of the narrative.
Although there are, of course, other intellectual sources that
have contributed to our thought on myth in the past century, Kirk's
list strikes me as a fairly appropriate listing of the "big 3" at
the time he was writing. However, reading this now in 2001, one
question leapt out at me: If Kirk were writing this today, would
he need to a list a fourth source of influence-- one having to do
with postmodernism-- either poststructuralism or some other form?
On the one hand, I'm inclined to think it would... but on the other,
I can't say that I'm really all that familiar with any postmodern
approaches to myth as a general subject. Are there any? There's
Barthes, I suppose, but then again, I'm not sure whether a book
like _Mythologies_ isn't better classified as a later variation
on the structuralist method. (Yes, I know, Barthes doesn't do all those
little Levi-Strauss triangles, and yes, he talks about all sorts
of crazy things that one wouldn't normally call myths, but in so far
as he understands myth primarily as an extension of the linguistic
sign onto another level of signification, he still seems to me to very
much rooted in the structuralist conception to myth as a
linguistically-organized semiotic system).
Are there any particularly notable postmodern studies of "myth"
as a general category? By whom? And what do they have to say?
Or is "myth" a subject that hasn't generally been explored on a
general level by postmodernists? If so, is this just an
accident, or is there something about mythology as a subject
matter that has tended to discourage a postmodern treatment
of it?
-- Jim C.
Now Playing-- White Willow, _Sacrament_
==========================================================================
| James A. Chokey jch...@mindspring.com |
| |
| http://www.mindspring.com/~jchokey/personal/ |
| |
| 'Do you think that the sciences would ever have arisen and become |
| great if there had not been magicians, alchemists, astrologers, |
| and wizards who thirsted and hungered after hidden, forbidden |
| powers?' |
| -- Nietzsche |
| |
==========================================================================
James Chokey
jch...@mindspring.com wrote on 8/13/01 1:41 AM:
> I was just reading Kirk's _Myth_ (1983).
Whoops! The book was published in 1970, not 1983. (That doesn't
change my question though...)
Carl KICE Brown
Introduction_ (ISBN 0-8018-5395-8) of interest. This is a "revised
translation" of his book first published in German in 1985. After supplying
"A Provisional Definition" in his introduction, his first chapter "The Rise
of the Scientific Study of Myth" has the following sections: The Beginning
of Modern Mythology; The Eighteenth-Century Forerunners of Heyne and Herder;
The Romantics; The Science of Myth in the Nineteenth Century; The New
Romantics; Mythology from Fontennel to Frazer. His second chapter "New
Approaches to the Interpretation of Myth in the Twentieth Century" has these
sections: Myth and Psychoanalysis; "Myth and Society: From Myth-and-Ritual
Theory to Functionalism; The Structures of Myth and of Mythical Narrative;
The Myth-and-Ritual Theory Revised; and The Semiotic Approach>
In addition you may find parts of Ken Dowden's _The Uses of Greek Mythology_
(ISBN 0-415-06135-0), published in 1992, also of interest. His 2nd chapter
"How myths work: the theories" has three sections, Old Approaches, Surviving
Systems, and Modern Tendencies. The old approaches include Historicism,
Allegory, Natural Allegory and Comparative Mythology and Cambridge
myth-ritual. The surviving systems include New Comparative Mythology,
Psychoanalysis, snd Structuralism. The modern tendencies include Modern
Myth-Ritual, 'Rome School', and 'Paris School'.
--
Kice, writing from Lone Tree
"I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different;" -- TS Eliot
"James Chokey" <jch...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:B79CE1B4.BD194%jch...@mindspring.com...
Tom Snyder
SOCIAL SCIENCES, Pauline Marie Rosenau discusses the pluralism, relativism
and opposition to Western logic of the pos-modernists. She says on page 6
of her book they tend to look with favor on past mythological systems, on
"the traditional, the sacred, the particular, and the irrational." Thus,
mythology is just as good, of not better, than science and scientific logic.
She also says they tend to reject global, all-encompassing worldviews such
as Marxism, Christianity, Fascism, Capitalism, feminism, Islam, etc. Later,
however, she indicates that they value "diversity" and "tolerance," which to
me are PC terms invented by the Cultural Marxists of the Frankfurt School
and the leftwing student "revolts" of the 1960s that now seems to have taken
over all forms of socio-political discourse. Finally, she notes that,
according to the post-modernists, all paradigms, including myth, magic,
logic, and reason "are equal because each has its own logic (128)."
(Princeton University Press)
In many ways, from what I've read, post-modernism tends to be concerened
with philosophical questions, and questions of epistemology and
hermeneutics, rather than with myth per se. I think, however, that their
arguments are essentially self-refuting and not very enlightening.
As to the other schools of thought, there is one person who should be
mentioned, anthropologist Victor W. Turner, whose work on liminality and on
structure versus anti-structure is most insightful. It seems to follow in
the Levi-Strauss tradition, but I found his work very helpful in writing my
1984 thesis on the horror, science fiction, fantasy movies of George Lucas
and Steven Spielberg. About seven years ago, I came up with a general
definition of myth which I found very useful: "Any real or fictional story,
recurring theme, or character type that appeals to the consciousness of a
people by embodying its cultural ideals or by giving expression to deep,
commonly felt emotions and rational or irrational ideas." I like to use the
concept of archetype, but not merely limit it to Jung's definition, and I
found it fun and enlightening to combine that with Michael Osborne's concept
of culturetype, e.g., Valley Forge and the notion of "the American Dream."
I also like to discuss different kinds of myths, like creation myths,
captivity myths, trickster myths, hero myths, and demonic myths. I also
like to consider different kinds of lessons that myths can impart, whether
they be philosophical, spiritual/theological, ethical, aesthetic,
psychological, socio-political, or biological.
Tom Snyder
"Carl KICE Brown" <ki...@IowaTelecom.net> wrote in message
news:9lgojv$r3o$1...@ins21.netins.net...
DMB
postmodernist approach to mythology. Maybe its just my own ignorance,
maybe its just that I don't know of any such thing. But if I may be
allowed to offer an opinion in broad sweeping terms, which means its
only kind of true... I think that semiotics and such would be
fundamentally hostile to mythology. It would be like asking a brain
surgeon about demon possession; she's not likely to take it seriously
or if she did it would be an explaination that explains it away. (Not
that I believe in demons in any literal sense.) Postmodernism tends to
be dismissive and condescending toward such things. It sort of
represents the extention and culmination of logical positivism,
whereas mythology is a kind of extension of the romantic world view.
I'd bet that there are some really great thinkers who can bridge the
gap, but that gap is pretty wide.
I'm reading a book that might offer some answers about everything you
mentioned, except the semiotic aspect. It discusses the connections
and differences between the Freudian, Rankian and Jungian views of
myth and the unconscious, among many other interesting things. The
book is Huston Smith's "CLEANSING THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION; The
Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals". If I may
impersonate a hippie for a moment, it'll blow your mind, man.
DMB
Iain Parkinson
dbuc...@classicalradio.org wrote on 18/8/01 5:02 pm:
> The
> book is Huston Smith's "CLEANSING THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION; The
> Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals". If I may
> impersonate a hippie for a moment, it'll blow your mind, man.
>
> DMB
Entheogenic?
Now there's a good word.
Iain
Joe Jefferson
>
> When she talks of mythology briefly in her book POST-MODERNISM AND THE
> SOCIAL SCIENCES, Pauline Marie Rosenau discusses the pluralism, relativism
> and opposition to Western logic of the pos-modernists. She says on page 6
> of her book they tend to look with favor on past mythological systems, on
> "the traditional, the sacred, the particular, and the irrational." Thus,
> mythology is just as good, of not better, than science and scientific logic.
Perhaps, but I personally wouldn't want to be treated by a doctor who
thinks that mythology is just as good as science.
--
Joe of Castle Jefferson
http://www.primenet.com/~jjstrshp/
Site updated October 1st, 1999.
"Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the
poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the
hand of the wicked." - Psalm 82:3-4.
DMB
Yes. And probably a new word to most people. I just learned about it
from Huston's book. He's refering to those agents that are often
called hallucinogenic or psychedelic, but he's trying to get rid of
all the negative associations. Entheogenic means something like
God-enabling or God-containing.
DMB
G*rd*n
| > When she talks of mythology briefly in her book POST-MODERNISM AND THE
| > SOCIAL SCIENCES, Pauline Marie Rosenau discusses the pluralism, relativism
| > and opposition to Western logic of the pos-modernists. She says on page 6
| > of her book they tend to look with favor on past mythological systems, on
| > "the traditional, the sacred, the particular, and the irrational." Thus,
| > mythology is just as good, of not better, than science and scientific logic.
Joe Jefferson <jjst...@mindspring.com>:
| Perhaps, but I personally wouldn't want to be treated by a doctor who
| thinks that mythology is just as good as science.
How scientific is ordinary medical practice? We may have a
myth here, still wriggling.
--
(<><>) /*/
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
{ http://www.etaoin.com | latest new material 7/21/01 <-adv't
Fedallah
G*rd*n wrote:
>
> Tom Snyder wrote:
> | > When she talks of mythology briefly in her book POST-MODERNISM AND THE
> | > SOCIAL SCIENCES, Pauline Marie Rosenau discusses the pluralism, relativism
> | > and opposition to Western logic of the pos-modernists. She says on page 6
> | > of her book they tend to look with favor on past mythological systems, on
> | > "the traditional, the sacred, the particular, and the irrational." Thus,
> | > mythology is just as good, of not better, than science and scientific logic.
>
> Joe Jefferson <jjst...@mindspring.com>:
> | Perhaps, but I personally wouldn't want to be treated by a doctor who
> | thinks that mythology is just as good as science.
G'n:
> How scientific is ordinary medical practice? We may have a
> myth here, still wriggling.
Ordinary medical practice is about as scientific as the
ordinary practice of auto-mechanics.
Rick
--
"So witless did these ideas strike me as being, so sweeping
and pompous the way they were expressed, that I associated
them immediately with literature."--Borges, "The Aleph"
la lutinerie
news:wn5f7.5100$xF5.3...@news.pacbell.net...
> When she talks of mythology briefly in her book POST-MODERNISM AND THE
> SOCIAL SCIENCES, Pauline Marie Rosenau discusses the pluralism, relativism
> and opposition to Western logic of the pos-modernists. She says on page 6
> of her book they tend to look with favor on past mythological systems, on
> "the traditional, the sacred, the particular, and the irrational." Thus,
> mythology is just as good, of not better, than science and scientific
logic.
> She also says they tend to reject global, all-encompassing worldviews such
> as Marxism, Christianity, Fascism, Capitalism, feminism, Islam, etc.
Later,
> however, she indicates that they value "diversity" and "tolerance," which
to
> me are PC terms invented by the Cultural Marxists of the Frankfurt School
> and the leftwing student "revolts" of the 1960s that now seems to have
taken
> over all forms of socio-political discourse.
These terms may be new to 'western' or judaeo-christian-programmed
consciousness
but have been around for centuries with those influenced by buddha and dao
schools
of thought and/or morality.
--
-- Lutin
ET IN ARCADIA EGO
G*rd*n
| > SOCIAL SCIENCES, Pauline Marie Rosenau discusses the pluralism, relativism
| > and opposition to Western logic of the pos-modernists. She says on page 6
| > of her book they tend to look with favor on past mythological systems, on
| > "the traditional, the sacred, the particular, and the irrational." Thus,
| > mythology is just as good, of not better, than science and scientific
| logic.
| > She also says they tend to reject global, all-encompassing worldviews such
| > as Marxism, Christianity, Fascism, Capitalism, feminism, Islam, etc.
| Later,
| > however, she indicates that they value "diversity" and "tolerance," which
| to
| > me are PC terms invented by the Cultural Marxists of the Frankfurt School
| > and the leftwing student "revolts" of the 1960s that now seems to have
| taken
| > over all forms of socio-political discourse.
"la lutinerie" <lu...@hrgi.net>:
| These terms may be new to 'western' or judaeo-christian-programmed
| consciousness
| but have been around for centuries with those influenced by buddha and dao
| schools
| of thought and/or morality.
Possibly he means bourgeois concern which such things. Up
until the 1950s or so, the ruling classes of at least the
North American and European states were highly tolerant of
intolerance and totalitarianism in public culture, although
some of them looked down on it. However, once a certain
amount of decolonization had taken hold, and previously
oppressed castes like African-Americans in the U.S. began to
revolt against their assigned place in the social system, it
was necessary for the safety of capitalism and liberalism to
absorb and bourgeoisify these impulses -- to find some way
of incorporating diverse cultures and groups into the
established order. Hence multiculturalism, which is indeed
politically correct, not for moral, but for practical
reasons, at least to the ruling class.
Naturally, some of those who would have inherited privilege
had to be pushed aside, leading to great resentment now
symbolized by the term "PC". The history of this term is
itself a good example of multi-culti: originally a hip gibe
among lesbian activists parodying and mocking an earlier
generation of orthodox Marxists, it was eventually adopted
by resentful square White boys to the extent that it was
finally found in the mouth of George Bush the First. And
yet even now people are not embarrassed to flog it about.
James Whitehead
<reha...@earthlink.net> writes
>
>
>G*rd*n wrote:
>>
>> Tom Snyder wrote:
>> | > When she talks of mythology briefly in her book POST-MODERNISM AND THE
>> | > SOCIAL SCIENCES, Pauline Marie Rosenau discusses the pluralism,
>relativism
>> | > and opposition to Western logic of the pos-modernists. She says on page
>6
>> | > of her book they tend to look with favor on past mythological systems, on
>> | > "the traditional, the sacred, the particular, and the irrational." Thus,
>> | > mythology is just as good, of not better, than science and scientific
>logic.
>>
>> Joe Jefferson <jjst...@mindspring.com>:
>> | Perhaps, but I personally wouldn't want to be treated by a doctor who
>> | thinks that mythology is just as good as science.
>
>G'n:
>> How scientific is ordinary medical practice? We may have a
>> myth here, still wriggling.
>
>Ordinary medical practice is about as scientific as the
>ordinary practice of auto-mechanics.
>
the placebo effect - i'm amazed that auto mechanics employ this to fix
my car, obviously after an oil change in a garage my car will run more
smoothly than if i did it myself?
--
James Whitehead
Mark Gerard Miller
> Are there any particularly notable postmodern studies of "myth"
> as a general category? By whom? And what do they have to say?
> Or is "myth" a subject that hasn't generally been explored on a
> general level by postmodernists? If so, is this just an
> accident, or is there something about mythology as a subject
> matter that has tended to discourage a postmodern treatment
> of it?
The very idea of a postmodern take on myth seems anachronistic. It would be
like hiring a call girl to come to your house and have her do the laundry.
Mark
Mark Gerard Miller
news:6264b1de.0108...@posting.google.com...
I first read about entheogens in "The Mushroom and the Cross," a far-out
book but very on-topic for alt.mythology about which I wrote a synopsis and
some questions to http://linguistlist.org. The linguists scoffed at the
ideas presented in "The Mushroom and the Cross," but it was fun to read.
Herewith, my review:
[begin quoted material]
I am reading "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, A study of the nature and
origins of Christianity within the fertility cults of the ancient Near
East," by John M. Allegro, a philologist. The book was published by
Doubleday & Company Inc. in 1970. Allegro says the Indo-European and Semitic
language families are both derived from the ancient tongue of Sumeria, long
extinct. (Encarta contradicts Allegro, saying: "Its vocabulary, grammar, and
syntax do not appear to be related to those of any other known language.")
Allegro says religions in the ancient Near East, including the Greeks',
Hebrews' and Christians', were based on worship of a fertility god whose
sperm was the rain that fell on the earth and the fields, which were
furrowed into a vulva. Their union produced crops. "Chrisitian" means
"smeared with semen" and refers to their practice of smearing themselves
with "aromatic gums and spices of the traditional Israelite anointing oil:
myrrh, aromatic cane, cinnamon, and cassia, all representing the powerful
semen of the god." There was another ingredient in the anointing oil: magic
mushrooms (Amanita muscaria), which were "the pure unadulterated semen of
the god" and the "son of God", and which when eaten, bestowed divine
knowledge on the priest or adherent. The Old and New Testaments, written in
code to conceal the true fertility/mushroom cult from outsiders and the
authorities, are filled with puns that allude to the holy mushroom.
Here are a couple of passages from "The sacred Mushroom and the Cross":
"The use of the name Jesus (Greek iesus) as an invocation for healing was
appropriate enough. Its Hebrew original, yehoshua, Joshua, comes from
Sumerian IA-U-ShU-A (ShUSh), 'semen, which saves, restores, heals'.
Hellenized Jews used for 'Joshua' the Greek name Iason, Jason, very
properly, since iason, 'healer', and the deponent verb iaomai, 'heal', come
from the same Sumerian source. In the New Testament taunt, 'Physician, heal
thyself' (Luke 4:23), we probably have a direct allusion to this meaning, as
we certainly have in Jesus' title 'Saviour', Greek soter, the first element
of which reflects the same Sumerian word ShU, 'save', and so is rightly used
in Greek for saving from disease, harm, peril, etc., and is a common epithet
of Zeus and kings.
"The fertility God Dionysys (Greek dionusos), whose cult emblem was the
erect phallus, was also a god of healing, and his name, when broken down to
its original parts, IA-U-NU-ShUSh, is almost idential that of Jesus, having
NU, 'seed', only in addition; 'Semen, seed that saves', and is comparable
with the Greek Nosios, 'Healer', an epithet of Zeus.
And this:
"If we are to make any enlightened guess at 'primitive' man's ideas about
god and the universe it would have to be on the reasonable assumption that
they would be simple, and directly related to the world of his experience.
He may have given the god numerous epithets describing his various functions
and manifestations but there is no reason to doubt that the reality behind
the names was envisaged as one, all-powerful deity, a life-giver, supreme
creator. The etymological examination of the chief god names that is now
possible supports this view, pointing to a common theme of life-giving
fecundity. Thus the principal gods of the Greeks and Hebrews, Zeus, and
Yahweh (Jehova), have names derived from Sumerian meaning 'juice of
fecundity', spermatazoa, 'seed of life'. The phrase is composed of two
syllables, IA (ya, dialectically za), 'juice', literally 'strong water', and
U, perhaps the most important phoneme in the whole of Near Eastern religion.
It is found in the texts represented by a number of different cuneiform
signs, but at the root of them all is the idea of 'fertility'. Thus one U
means 'copulate' or 'mount', and 'create'; another 'rainstorm', as source of
the heavenly sperm; another 'vegetation', as the offspring of the god;
whilst U is the name of the storm-god himself. So, far from evincing a
multiplicity of gods and conflicting theological notions, our earliest
records lead us back to a single idea, even a single letter, 'U'. Behind
Judaism and Christianity, and indeed all the Near Eastern fertility
religions and their more sophisticated developments, there lies this single
phoneme U'."
And one more:
"The idea of the creative Word of God came to have a profound philosophical
and religious importance and was, and still is, the sujbect of much
metaphysical debate. But originally it was not an abstract notion; you could
see the "Word of God", feel it as rain on your face, see it seeping into the
furrows of mother earth, the "labia" of the womb of creation. Within burns
an eternal fire ..."
My questions for you are these: Did Allegro originate these theories, and
have they been accepted by other philologists and scholars? Is he a
reputable scholar? Does anyone else believe that the Indo-European and
Semitic languages and religions are indeed fertility and mushroom cults
derived from ancient Sumerian language and culture?
I noted in front of the book that Allegro also wrote "Dead Sea Scrolls"
(Pelican A376), "People of the Dead Sea Scrolls" (Doubleday, N.Y.) and other
books.
[end quoted material]
Mark
Odysseus
>
> My questions for you are these: Did Allegro originate these theories, and
> have they been accepted by other philologists and scholars? Is he a
> reputable scholar? Does anyone else believe that the Indo-European and
> Semitic languages and religions are indeed fertility and mushroom cults
> derived from ancient Sumerian language and culture?
>
Allegro another author has put forward a similar case regarding _Amanita
muscaria_. _Strange Fruit: Alchemy and Religion, The Hidden Truth_ by
Clark Heinrich. This work claims that a number of biblical passages
refer to this 'entheogen' and also connects aspects of the worship of
Indra to it. I don't know that it will be found very convincing, but it
made a fascinating read and the book is beautifully illustrated with
photos of fly-agarics.
--Odysseus
Mark Gerard Miller
I got this analogy turned around. A postmodern approach to myth would
be like hiring a washerwoman as a prostitute.
Mark
Alice Turner
"Mark Gerard Miller" <mg...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:Fehg7.2728$zk4.1...@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com...
Hmm. This seems odd. What do we mean by "post-modern?" The *modernist*
novel has leaned heavily on myth, from Joyce to Gaddis to Gardner to
Pynchon to DeLillo (and points in between). Who are the post-modernists
that you recognize?
Alice
Moggin Goldberg
>>My questions for you are these: Did Allegro originate these theories,
>>and have they been accepted by other philologists and scholars? Is he a
>>reputable scholar? Does anyone else believe that the Indo-European and
>>Semitic languages and religions are indeed fertility and mushroom cults
>>derived from ancient Sumerian language and culture?
Odysseus:
> I don't know about the origins of such theories, but more recently than
> Allegro another author has put forward a similar case regarding _Amanita
> muscaria_. _Strange Fruit: Alchemy and Religion, The Hidden Truth_ by
> Clark Heinrich. This work claims that a number of biblical passages
> refer to this 'entheogen' and also connects aspects of the worship of
> Indra to it.
Must be an entire class of theorizing, since a book called
_The Road to Eleusis_, by Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and
Carl Ruck, says ancient Greek philosophy was partly inspired by
the hallucinogenic properties of a drink called _kykeon_.
Haven't read it, so I dunno if they have a case, but it fits in
nicely with the others.
-- Moggin
Mark Gerard Miller
> Mark Gerard Miller:
>
> >>My questions for you are these: Did Allegro originate these theories,
> >>and have they been accepted by other philologists and scholars? Is he a
> >>reputable scholar? Does anyone else believe that the Indo-European and
> >>Semitic languages and religions are indeed fertility and mushroom cults
> >>derived from ancient Sumerian language and culture?
>
> Odysseus:
>
> > I don't know about the origins of such theories, but more recently than
> > Allegro another author has put forward a similar case regarding _Amanita
> > muscaria_. _Strange Fruit: Alchemy and Religion, The Hidden Truth_ by
> > Clark Heinrich. This work claims that a number of biblical passages
> > refer to this 'entheogen' and also connects aspects of the worship of
> > Indra to it.
>
> Must be an entire class of theorizing
Theosizing?
Mark
Mark Gerard Miller
I don't recognize any post-modernists because I don't know any. I
don't read that crap. The reason I said what I said is because I think
of post-modernists as anti-poets, and therefore anti-mythographers. To
deconstructionists, words in themselves don't have any meaning. So the
logical extension of this is that myths, which are so dependent on
words even if there is some deeper underlying meaning attached, don't
have any meaning, either. I don't know if deconstructionists are
post-moderinsts or post-post-modernists, though.
Here is an example of what a post-modernist (Judith Butler) wrote, as
quoted in a Harper's article by Tom Wolfe:
“ ‘ All gender roles are an imitation for which there is no original,’
runs her most famous paradox. She is even more famous for her
convoluted Theoryese. In 1998 the journal Philosophy and Literature
named her winner of their Bad Writing Contest for a sentence that
began, ‘The move from a structuralist account in which capital is
understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways
to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to
repetition, convergence, and rearticulation …’ – and went on for
fifty-
nine more words. Her zine fans love the insouciant yet erudite way she
dismisses such attacks. ‘Ponderousness,’ she says, referring to
Hegel, ‘is part of the phenomenological challenge of his text.’
You can see a longer excerpt from this article at
http://groups.google.com/groups?start=10&hl=en&safe=off&th=298c213c9e750534,12&rnum=12&selm=8jcv91%248ed%241%40nnrp1.deja.com.
If that link doesn't work, at the http://groups.google.com search
engine type in Tom Wolfe and Mark Gerard Miller and see that thread.
On the other hand, here is what a modernist wrote:
--Rats! bullowed the Mookse most telesphorously, the concionator, and
the sissymusses and the zozzymusses in their robenhauses quailed to
hear his tardeynois at all for you cannot wake a silken nouse out of a
hoarseoar. Blast yourself and your anathomy infairioriboos! No, hang
you for an animal rurale! I am superbly in my supremest poncif! Abase
you, baldyqueens! Gather behind me, satraps! Rots!
--I am till infinity obliged with you, bowed the Gripes, his whine
having gone to his palpruy head. I am still always having a wish on
all my extremities. By the watch, what is the time, pace?
Figure it! The pining peever! To a Mookse!
--Ask my index, mund my achilles, swell my obulum, woshup my nase
serene, answered the Mookse, rapidly by turning clement, urban,
eugenious and celestian in the formose of good grogory humours. Quote
awhore? That is quite about what I came on -my- missions with -my-
intentions -laudibiliter- to settle with -you-, barbarousse. Let thor
be orlog. Let Pauline be Irene. Let you be Beeton. And let me be Los
Angeles. Now measure your length. Now estimate my capacity. Well,
sour? Is this space of our couple of hours too dimensional for you,
temporiser? Will you give you up? -Como?- -Fuert it?-
--From Finnegan's Wake, by James Joyce
So we can see that both the modernist and post-modernist are almost
incomprehensible. The difference is that the modernist is interesting,
and the post-modernist is not.
Mark
G*rd*n
| I don't recognize any post-modernists because I don't know any. I
| don't read that crap. The reason I said what I said is because I think
| of post-modernists as anti-poets, and therefore anti-mythographers.
Given what you say, you could think of them as anything --
poets, anti-poets, calico cats from Ganymede. You know it's
crap, though, so I suppose the preponderance of the evidence
is towards the cats.
Mark Gerard Miller
> mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
> | I don't recognize any post-modernists because I don't know any. I
> | don't read that crap. The reason I said what I said is because I think
> | of post-modernists as anti-poets, and therefore anti-mythographers.
> | ...
>
> Given what you say, you could think of them as anything --
> poets, anti-poets, calico cats from Ganymede. You know it's
> crap, though, so I suppose the preponderance of the evidence
> is towards the cats.
I bitterly resent your lumping Magnificat, my calico cat, in with
post-modernists. Did you read what Judith Butler wrote? It's crap,
pure and simple.
Mark
G*rd*n
| > | I don't recognize any post-modernists because I don't know any. I
| > | don't read that crap. The reason I said what I said is because I think
| > | of post-modernists as anti-poets, and therefore anti-mythographers.
| > | ...
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote in message news:<9m0cto$du2$1...@panix2.panix.com>...
| > Given what you say, you could think of them as anything --
| > poets, anti-poets, calico cats from Ganymede. You know it's
| > crap, though, so I suppose the preponderance of the evidence
| > is towards the cats.
mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
| I bitterly resent your lumping Magnificat, my calico cat, in with
| post-modernists. Did you read what Judith Butler wrote? It's crap,
| pure and simple.
No. Why should I?
Actually, I read one sentence, and it was simulacrum of
"Baudrillard", so I figured I'd gone about as far as I ought
to go and got off the bus. I leave the hard partying to you
young'uns; I can't take it any more.
Mark Gerard Miller
> | I don't recognize any post-modernists because I don't know any. I
> | don't read that crap. The reason I said what I said is because I think
> | of post-modernists as anti-poets, and therefore anti-mythographers.
> | ...
>
> Given what you say, you could think of them as anything --
> poets, anti-poets, calico cats from Ganymede. You know it's
> crap, though, so I suppose the preponderance of the evidence
> is towards the cats.
I started reading up on post-modernists after this challenge. I only
had the article by Tom Wolfe to go buy, but others find them not just
unreadable, but incomprehensible:
Here is something Judith Butler wrote:
"Thus, the result of parody is paradoxical: the gleeful sense of
triumph indulged by the avatars of an ostensibly more serious Marxism
about their moment in the cultural limelight exemplifies and
symptomatizes precisely the cultural object of critique they oppose;
the sense of triumph over this enemy, which cannot take place without
in some eerie way taking the very place of the enemy, raises the
question of whether the aims and goals of this more serious Marxism
have not become hopelessly displaced onto a cultural domain, producing
a transient object of media attention in the place of a more
systematic analysis of economic and social relations. This sense of
triumph reinscribes a factionalization within the Left at the very
moment in which welfare rights are being abolished in this country,
class differentials are intensifying across the globe, and the right
wing in this country has successfully gained the ground of the
'middle' effectively making the Left itself invisible within the
media"
What does that mean? I'm smart enough to figure out exactly what she
is saying here. But that same intelligence forbids me to waste my time
doing so. On another Web site that was praising Judith Butler to the
nines, the author (of the Web site) quotes Butler and then provides
translations of what she was trying to say because it's so dense. See
http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-butl.htm
Here is what Noam Chomsky wrote about post-modernists, from a thread
at http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&safe=off&th=df473aee92c16342,43&start=30:
: >Fun quote on postmodernism:
: >"... on examination, a lot of it is simply illiterate, based on
: >extraordinary misreading of texts...argument that is appalling in
its
: >casual lack of elementary self-criticism, lots of statements that
are
: >trivial (though dressed up in complicated verbiage) or false; and a
good
: >deal of plain gibberish." --Noam Chomsky
:
: More on the same subject from the same source -- in fact,
: from the same interview:
:
: "I wouldn't say this if I hadn't been explicitly asked for my
: opinion -- and if asked to back it up, I'm going to respond that
: I don't think it merits the time to do so ... I've dipped into
: what they write out of curiosity, but not very far ... I don't
: spend any time on it. ... I don't proceed very far ... Again,
: sorry to make unsupported comments..." -- Noam Chomsky
To answer Alice's question, which I truthfully couldn't answer, who
are the post-modernists, from that same thread referenced above:
"Here are some writers often called 'postmodernist': Jacques Derrida,
Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Paul de Man, Jean-F
Lyotard, Donna Haraway, Louis Althusser ... just to name a few."
Has anyone ever read these people? And if people do read these
authors, must they force themselves to continue reading because their
writings are so boring and incomprehensible?
But I duly note both Alice's and gcf@panix's insinuated criticism. To
wit: Why am I writing about these authors as if I know something about
them when in fact I do not? But if they had something important or
good or interesting to say about mythology, all of us in alt.mythology
would have heard of them by now.
Mark
G*rd*n
| ...
| But I duly note both Alice's and gcf@panix's insinuated criticism. To
| wit: Why am I writing about these authors as if I know something about
| them when in fact I do not? But if they had something important or
| good or interesting to say about mythology, all of us in alt.mythology
| would have heard of them by now.
That's an interesting standard of evaluation, I must say. If
I'm reading it aright, it's: The quality of an author can be
determined by how many people who read and write in alt.mythology
have heard of her, him, or it. Never mind actually trying to
read the material -- no one needs to do that.
But I'm curious as to where the alt.mythologists are
supposed to have heard of the authors, if they don't read
them. Cocktail parties? Bull sessions? Chance remarks
around the office water-cooler in between discussions of
recent athletic events? Vague recollections of long
afternoons in the high-school library? If you're offering
us such a cheap shot, surely you've got a worthy punchline
to follow our taking it.
James Whitehead
Gerard Miller <mark_g...@hotmail.com> writes
OK lets have a Cat Count - We share our house with two - a delightful
SBC (standard Black Cat) and a tabby who is very difficult! The SBC is
definitely PO-MO - the tabby a Victorian Fundamental Methodist.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
mos have their eyes closed 'cause they've seen what's coming.
--
James Whitehead
Gale
Miller) wrote:
<snip>
>So we can see that both the modernist and post-modernist are almost
>incomprehensible. The difference is that the modernist is interesting,
>and the post-modernist is not.
>
Beautiful! ;-) And yes, I read the Joyce delighted with the evident
emotion & laughingly wondering what the hell he was talking about ---
for the other, that would drive most rational souls to sonambulance
and the rest to the padded room. Polysyllabic idiocy!
Blessed Be,
Gale
modstaff alt.religion.wicca.moderated
original Tarot, poetry, fiction at
http://www.capstonebeads.com/Magick.html
Joe Jefferson
>
> g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote in message news:<9m0cto$du2$1...@panix2.panix.com>...
> >
> > poets, anti-poets, calico cats from Ganymede. You know it's
> > crap, though, so I suppose the preponderance of the evidence
> > is towards the cats.
>
> I bitterly resent your lumping Magnificat, my calico cat, in with
> post-modernists. Did you read what Judith Butler wrote? It's crap,
> pure and simple.
So? Doesn't your cat produce crap from time to time as well?
Mark Gerard Miller
> mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
> | ...
> | But I duly note both Alice's and gcf@panix's insinuated criticism. To
> | wit: Why am I writing about these authors as if I know something about
> | them when in fact I do not? But if they had something important or
> | good or interesting to say about mythology, all of us in alt.mythology
> | would have heard of them by now.
>
> That's an interesting standard of evaluation, I must say. If
> I'm reading it aright, it's: The quality of an author can be
> determined by how many people who read and write in alt.mythology
> have heard of her, him, or it. Never mind actually trying to
> read the material -- no one needs to do that.
All I meant was that the people who post in alt.mythology are very
well-read in myth and mythology. If there were some post-modernist out
there doing important or interesting work in the field of mythology,
we probably would have heard about him and discussed him in here.
> But I'm curious as to where the alt.mythologists are
> supposed to have heard of the authors, if they don't read
> them. Cocktail parties? Bull sessions? Chance remarks
> around the office water-cooler in between discussions of
> recent athletic events? Vague recollections of long
> afternoons in the high-school library? If you're offering
> us such a cheap shot, surely you've got a worthy punchline
> to follow our taking it.
Forgive me if it was a cheap shot. But are post-modernist authors are
worth reading? Prove me wrong. Tell me about a few books by
post-modernists that are really good reads, in both style and content.
I wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed the painting
http://www.etaoin.com/leolight.htm and the other works by this artist.
If she is post-modernist and representative of post-modernist visual
artists, then the movement is not lost.
Mark
G*rd*n
| > | ...
| > | But I duly note both Alice's and gcf@panix's insinuated criticism. To
| > | wit: Why am I writing about these authors as if I know something about
| > | them when in fact I do not? But if they had something important or
| > | good or interesting to say about mythology, all of us in alt.mythology
| > | would have heard of them by now.
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n):
| > That's an interesting standard of evaluation, I must say. If
| > I'm reading it aright, it's: The quality of an author can be
| > determined by how many people who read and write in alt.mythology
| > have heard of her, him, or it. Never mind actually trying to
| > read the material -- no one needs to do that.
mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
| All I meant was that the people who post in alt.mythology are very
| well-read in myth and mythology. If there were some post-modernist out
| there doing important or interesting work in the field of mythology,
| we probably would have heard about him and discussed him in here.
How do you know they're well-read? This is not a rhetorical
question.
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n):
| > But I'm curious as to where the alt.mythologists are
| > supposed to have heard of the authors, if they don't read
| > them. Cocktail parties? Bull sessions? Chance remarks
| > around the office water-cooler in between discussions of
| > recent athletic events? Vague recollections of long
| > afternoons in the high-school library? If you're offering
| > us such a cheap shot, surely you've got a worthy punchline
| > to follow our taking it.
|
mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
| Forgive me if it was a cheap shot. But are post-modernist authors are
| worth reading? Prove me wrong. Tell me about a few books by
| post-modernists that are really good reads, in both style and content.
Isn't that going to depend on the reader? Well, maybe
someone will pop up with a list -- we have a couple of FAQs
floating around somewhere.
| I wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed the painting
| http://www.etaoin.com/leolight.htm and the other works by this artist.
| If she is post-modernist and representative of post-modernist visual
| artists, then the movement is not lost.
I'm glad you liked the art. Usually, the forms of art which
are consigned to the "postmodern" category are pop, conceptual,
minimalist, and what I would call performative, so I think
that would leave Laura Ferguson in the "modern" category
somewhere -- but it's certainly not Modernist. At least, I
don't think so. Actually, I think in the arts that the
modern-postmodern distinction has become pretty passé.
We're 35 years down the road now from the great overthrow,
and as you get further away things which seemed far apart
begin to appear close together. The playful Modernism of
the '20s, the work of people like Max Ernst and Joseph
Cornell -- they seem very much in tune with the baroque
aspects of postmodernity.
Moggin Goldberg
>Here is what Noam Chomsky wrote about post-modernists, from a thread...
[adding header, adding attributions, restoring text]
> From: moggin (mog...@mindspring.com)
> Subject: Re: jollyroger.com KNOCK KNOCK KNOCKIN' ON BLACKBEARD CABIN'S
> DOOR HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY
> Newsgroups: alt.culture.jollyroger, misc.misc, rec.arts.books
> Date: 1996/12/15
Andrew S. Gurk Damick <gu...@ncsu.edu>:
>:>Fun quote on postmodernism:
>:>"... on examination, a lot of it is simply illiterate, based on
>:>extraordinary misreading of texts...argument that is appalling in
>:>its casual lack of elementary self-criticism, lots of statements that
>:>are trivial (though dressed up in complicated verbiage) or false; and
>:>a good deal of plain gibberish." --Noam Chomsky
Moggin <mog...@mindspring.com>:
>: More on the same subject from the same source -- in fact
>: from the same interview:
>: "I wouldn't say this if I hadn't been explicitly asked for my
>: opinion -- and if asked to back it up, I'm going to respond that
>: I don't think it merits the time to do so ... I've dipped into
>: what they write out of curiosity, but not very far ... I don't
>: spend any time on it. ... I don't proceed very far ... Again,
>: sorry to make unsupported comments..." -- Noam Chomsky
>: Some fun, huh?
There you have it: Chomsky admitted his criticism of pomo
was based on shallow reading, that he didn't devote any time
to studying the work he attacked, that he never got very far in
it, that he was making unsupported remarks, and that he'd
refuse to back up his claims even if asked. All of which makes
him a role-model for Miller, Gurk, et al.
> To answer Alice's question, which I truthfully couldn't answer, who
> are the post-modernists, from that same thread referenced above:
> "Here are some writers often called 'postmodernist': Jacques Derrida,
> Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Paul de Man, Jean-F
> Lyotard, Donna Haraway, Louis Althusser ... just to name a few."
> Has anyone ever read these people?
Yes. Many people have read those people.
> And if people do read these
> authors, must they force themselves to continue reading because their
> writings are so boring and incomprehensible?
That depends on the person and her taste.
> But I duly note both Alice's and gcf@panix's insinuated criticism. To
> wit: Why am I writing about these authors as if I know something about
> them when in fact I do not? But if they had something important or
> good or interesting to say about mythology, all of us in alt.mythology
> would have heard of them by now.
And given you haven't heard about them, why not knock them
around a bit? Only natural, after all, like when strangers
come into your local bar: nothing to do but hit them with pool
cues, since you never saw them before.
-- Moggin
Moggin Goldberg
> I don't recognize any post-modernists because I don't know any. I
> don't read that crap. The reason I said what I said is because I think
> of post-modernists as anti-poets, and therefore anti-mythographers. To
> deconstructionists, words in themselves don't have any meaning. So the
> logical extension of this is that myths, which are so dependent on
> words even if there is some deeper underlying meaning attached, don't
> have any meaning, either.
Well, no. The idea that words don't have inherent meaning
is a commonplace. If you want to locate it in respect to
post-structuralism, then it belongs to _structuralism_, in fact
to the ur-structuralist Saussure, who refers to it as "the
arbitrary nature of the sign" (_Course_ 1.1.1). Do you need an
example? O.k. The English word "bread" and the French word
"pain" both refer to the same food. The meaning of the term is
not inherent to either chain of letters.
Needless to say, the conclusion that myths have no meaning
doesn't follow. Even the conclusion that words have no
meaning would be absurd. All one can reliably conclude is that
you don't know what you're talking about and that sound
reasoning isn't one of your strengths. Interesting that you're
posting from alt.mythology, tho. In the past, most of the
ignorant and irrational cross-postings on deconstruction'n'such
have come from other newsgroups.
-- Moggin
Alice Turner
I appreciate that, after horsing around, you did try to answer my
question, which was this:
> Hmm. This seems odd. What do we mean by "post-modern?" The *modernist*
> novel has leaned heavily on myth, from Joyce to Gaddis to Gardner to
> Pynchon to DeLillo (and points in between). Who are the
post-modernists
> that you recognize?
"Mark Gerard Miller" <mark_g...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ea790d2a.01082...@posting.google.com...
> To answer Alice's question, which I truthfully couldn't answer, who
> are the post-modernists, from that same thread referenced above:
>
> "Here are some writers often called 'postmodernist': Jacques Derrida,
> Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Paul de Man, Jean-F
> Lyotard, Donna Haraway, Louis Althusser ... just to name a few."
>
> Has anyone ever read these people? And if people do read these
> authors, must they force themselves to continue reading because their
> writings are so boring and incomprehensible?
>
> But I duly note both Alice's and gcf@panix's insinuated criticism. To
> wit: Why am I writing about these authors as if I know something about
> them when in fact I do not? But if they had something important or
> good or interesting to say about mythology, all of us in alt.mythology
> would have heard of them by now.
Mark, some of these people, Foucault, de Man, Althusser, say, are pretty
damn famous. But they are not novelists. They are critics. There is a
school of criticism born in France and nurtured at Yale (but now, thank
the Sumerian gods, dying--this is a small joke, guys, don't jump on me)
that was hugely popular in academia from the 70s through the 90s. I
asked you who you considered to be post-modern novelists, pointing out
that modernists, demonstrably, were unusually interested in myth, as
opposed to realists, who couldn't care less, going back to George Eliot
(for heaven's sake!) who even made fun of it. In a later post
,Joyce's -Finnigans Wake- was pointed out, but the better example is
(obviously) -Ulysses-.
Alice
Mark Gerard Miller
> Mark Gerard Miller wrote:
> >
> > g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote in message news:<9m0cto$du2$1...@panix2.panix.com>...
> > >
> > > Given what you say, you could think of them as anything --
> > > poets, anti-poets, calico cats from Ganymede. You know it's
> > > crap, though, so I suppose the preponderance of the evidence
> > > is towards the cats.
> >
> > I bitterly resent your lumping Magnificat, my calico cat, in with
> > post-modernists. Did you read what Judith Butler wrote? It's crap,
> > pure and simple.
>
> So? Doesn't your cat produce crap from time to time as well?
Yes, but she's almost neurotic about burying it.
Mark
Gale
<pei...@attglobal.net> wrote:
<snip>
>Mark, some of these people, Foucault, de Man, Althusser, say, are pretty
>damn famous. But they are not novelists. They are critics. There is a
>school of criticism born in France and nurtured at Yale (but now, thank
>the Sumerian gods, dying--this is a small joke, guys, don't jump on me)
>that was hugely popular in academia from the 70s through the 90s. I
>asked you who you considered to be post-modern novelists, pointing out
>that modernists, demonstrably, were unusually interested in myth, as
>opposed to realists, who couldn't care less, going back to George Eliot
>(for heaven's sake!) who even made fun of it. In a later post
>,Joyce's -Finnigans Wake- was pointed out, but the better example is
>(obviously) -Ulysses-.
Interesting question in that most worthwhile novels can be approached
from any of a number of different perspectives --- putting
"post-modernism" in the hands of the critic rather than the novelist.
I'm not far enough up the academic totem pole that I need pay
attention to trends that I don't like, and I tend to think that
Foucault, etc. rely on a willful misunderstanding of language, (I
teach composition and survey level lit courses, not deep criticism),
but the contemporaries I've looked at seem open --- indeed seem to
require ---- an openness to the study of myth and established
metaphor.
Mark Gerard Miller
He said, in effect, that he didn't continuing reading these guys
because they are unreadable. Would you kindly provide links with a few
articles by some of these post-modernist authors?
> > To answer Alice's question, which I truthfully couldn't answer, who
> > are the post-modernists, from that same thread referenced above:
>
> > "Here are some writers often called 'postmodernist': Jacques Derrida,
> > Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Paul de Man, Jean-F
> > Lyotard, Donna Haraway, Louis Althusser ... just to name a few."
>
> > Has anyone ever read these people?
>
> Yes. Many people have read those people.
Who? Far left PC thought police professors and their captive students?
> > And if people do read these
> > authors, must they force themselves to continue reading because their
> > writings are so boring and incomprehensible?
>
> That depends on the person and her taste.
>
> > But I duly note both Alice's and gcf@panix's insinuated criticism. To
> > wit: Why am I writing about these authors as if I know something about
> > them when in fact I do not? But if they had something important or
> > good or interesting to say about mythology, all of us in alt.mythology
> > would have heard of them by now.
>
> And given you haven't heard about them, why not knock them
> around a bit? Only natural, after all, like when strangers
> come into your local bar: nothing to do but hit them with pool
> cues, since you never saw them before.
Fair criticism. "You ain't from 'round here, air ye boy?"
Mark
Mark Gerard Miller
Lots of attacks on deconstruction 'n' such from other newsgroups, are
there? Does that tell you anything?
I don't mind being ignorant about post-modernism, by the way. In fact,
I'm glad I am because that increases the chance that I've spent my
time productively.
How's my reasoning doing?
Mark
Mark Gerard Miller
> mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
> > Has anyone ever read these people?
>
> Yes. Many people have read those people.
It's far more fun to read *about* them. I had forgotten the entire
affair, about these two guys lampooning post-modernists and their work
being accepted by post-modernists as serious and important, laid out
here http://www.salon.com/it/feature/1998/11/cov_02feature.html
and here http://www.salon.com/media/media960517.html
Excerpt:
"Sokal's piece uses all the right terms. It cites all the best people.
It whacks sinners (white men, the 'real world'), applauds the virtuous
(women, general metaphysical lunacy) and reaches the usual
'progressive' (whatever that word is supposed to mean) conclusion. And
it is complete, unadulterated bullshit -- a fact that somehow escaped
the attention of the high-powered editors of Social Text, who must now
be experiencing that queasy sensation that afflicted the Trojans the
morning after they pulled that nice big gift horse into their city.
"It's actually easy to see why the editors accepted the article: it
parrots with deadly accuracy the style and intellectual approach of
the standard mediocre progressive post-structuralist paper available
cheap over every academic counter these days. In fact, one almost
wishes that Sokal had made his modest proposal even more egregious.
His paper, which is arrant nonsense, is quite literally
indistinguishable from a thousand others -- a fact which itself says
volumes about the decrepit state of the humanities today."
And, "For well over a decade, critics from all points on the political
spectrum have been bashing the obscurantism, scholastic pedantry and
phony radicalism rampant in the contemporary humanities. Those attacks
have had little or no effect. But as Sokal points out, 'the blow that
can't be brushed off is the one that's self-inflicted.' Maybe his
little hoax will be the pin that will finally let some hot air out of
the counter-phallocentric balloon."
And yet again, I cannot resist. Enter the Phallocentric Puissant God
of Jouissance himself, Priapus, introduced by that avatar of clarity,
Jacques Lacan, quoted at
http://www.salon.com/it/feature/1998/11/cov_02feature.html:
"Thus the erectile organ comes to symbolize the place of jouissance,
not in itself, or even in the form of an image, but as a part lacking
in the desired image: that is why it is equivalent to the [square root
of] -1 of the signification produced above, of the jouissance that it
restores by the coefficient if its statement to the function of lack
of signifier (-1)."
To understand the myth of Priapus properly in post-modernist
sociology, remember that Priapus' gender is not truly male, but he may
act as though his gender is male from time to time. Now Dionysus
dressing up as a nymph, Hercules serving as Omphale's handmaiden,
these two would be embraced lovingly, celebrated, feted, even, by the
post-modernist. In fact, as ambiguous as sexuality is in myth, I am
surprised more of the post-modernists haven't appropriated mythology.
With a nod to Camille Paglia and Paghat, I, a white man, remain your
sincere correspondent,
Mark
G*rd*n
| there? Does that tell you anything?
On the Net, there's a lot of resentment of anything unconventional,
which is pretty funny given the widespread self-congratulation
in the same venues of everyone's unconventionality, individualism,
and originality. Many seem to be channeling their parents or
grandparents. In rec.arts.fine, for example, the last time
I looked a lot of people were still having trouble with abstract
art, although it's been around for several thousand years,
can be found in almost any suburban mall, and died as an item
of public controvery more than a generation ago. I don't mean
they hate it -- I mean they think it's some kind of moral or
political offense. My guess is that people spend too much
time watching television, which seems to do something bad to
their central nervous systems.
| I don't mind being ignorant about post-modernism, by the way. In fact,
| I'm glad I am because that increases the chance that I've spent my
| time productively.
You're posting on Usenet, which is evidence to the contrary.
Carl KICE Brown
"DMB" <dbuc...@classicalradio.org> wrote in message
news:6264b1de.0108...@posting.google.com...
> Iain Parkinson <ia...@parko.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:<B7A4AE29.1A68F%ia...@parko.demon.co.uk>...
> > in article 6264b1de.01081...@posting.google.com, DMB at
> > dbuc...@classicalradio.org wrote on 18/8/01 5:02 pm:
> >
> > > The
> > > book is Huston Smith's "CLEANSING THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION; The
> > > Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals". If I may
> > > impersonate a hippie for a moment, it'll blow your mind, man.
> > >
> > > DMB
> >
> >
> > Entheogenic?
> >
> > Now there's a good word.
> >
> > Iain
>
> Yes. And probably a new word to most people. I just learned about it
> from Huston's book. He's refering to those agents that are often
> called hallucinogenic or psychedelic, but he's trying to get rid of
> all the negative associations. Entheogenic means something like
> God-enabling or God-containing.
>
> DMB
Thanks for the reference to Huston Smith's book -- I hadn't realized he'd
written on the subject. Here are some other references: (1) Richard Evans
Schultes & Albert Hoffmann (the latter was the biochemist who first
synthesized LSD, by the way) _Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing and
Hallucinogenic Powers_ (ISBN 0-89281-406-3). (2) R. Gordan Wasson _Soma:
Divine Mushroom of Immortality_ (ISBN 0-15-683800-1). (3) R. G. Wasson
_The Wondrous Mushroom: Mycolatry in Mesoamerica_ (ISBN 0-07-068443-X). (4)
R.G. Wasson, Carl A. P. Ruck, & Albert Hoffmann _The Road to Eleusis:
Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries_ (ISBN 0-15-625279-1) ... this book
includes D Staples' translation of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. For a
critical view of this latter book see Helene P. Foley (editor) _The Homeric
Hymn to Demeter: Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays_ (ISBN
0-691-01479-5). (5) R. G. Wasson, Stella Kranrisch, Jonathan Ott, & C. A.
P. Ruck _Persephone's Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion_ (ISBN
0-300-05266-9). -- You'll find also that there are a number of other
books and studies of the role of ecstasis per se in religion/shamanism/etc.,
the result (for me, at least) of such reading was to realize that the use
of entheogenic plants was only one of several paths to experiencing or
communing with one's "Inner Deity".
--
Kice, writing from Lone Tree
"I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different;" -- TS Eliot
Jeffrey Ketland
Katz/pigeons
Z/S: a paraconsistent hyper-explosive logic, evaluated over a glutty
coherent complete partial ordering (ccpo) (see, Visser 1984, "Four valued
semantics and the liar", J.Phil.Log 13, 181-212)
Mark Gerard Miller
> mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
> | ...
> | Lots of attacks on deconstruction 'n' such from other newsgroups, are
> | there? Does that tell you anything?
>
> On the Net, there's a lot of resentment of anything unconventional,
> which is pretty funny given the widespread self-congratulation
> in the same venues of everyone's unconventionality, individualism,
> and originality. Many seem to be channeling their parents or
> grandparents. In rec.arts.fine, for example, the last time
> I looked a lot of people were still having trouble with abstract
> art, although it's been around for several thousand years,
> can be found in almost any suburban mall, and died as an item
> of public controvery more than a generation ago. I don't mean
> they hate it -- I mean they think it's some kind of moral or
> political offense. My guess is that people spend too much
> time watching television, which seems to do something bad to
> their central nervous systems.
The thing that offends me about abstract art isn't the abstract art,
it's that representational artists, i.e. non-abstract artists, and
artists who don't necessarily have a political agenda, have a very
difficult time obtaining financing from the NEA. In this case we enter
the realm of the absurd. Now I like absurdism, but it's best that it
remain in the realm of art.
> | I don't mind being ignorant about post-modernism, by the way. In fact,
> | I'm glad I am because that increases the chance that I've spent my
> | time productively.
>
> You're posting on Usenet, which is evidence to the contrary.
Ouch. But I didn't say that by cutting out post-modernism I had
eliminated time wastage, just that I had reduced it.
Mark
Mark Gerard Miller
> mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
> | > | ...
> | > | But I duly note both Alice's and gcf@panix's insinuated criticism. To
> | > | wit: Why am I writing about these authors as if I know something about
> | > | them when in fact I do not? But if they had something important or
> | > | good or interesting to say about mythology, all of us in alt.mythology
> | > | would have heard of them by now.
>
> g...@panix.com (G*rd*n):
> | > That's an interesting standard of evaluation, I must say. If
> | > I'm reading it aright, it's: The quality of an author can be
> | > determined by how many people who read and write in alt.mythology
> | > have heard of her, him, or it. Never mind actually trying to
> | > read the material -- no one needs to do that.
>
> mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
> | All I meant was that the people who post in alt.mythology are very
> | well-read in myth and mythology. If there were some post-modernist out
> | there doing important or interesting work in the field of mythology,
> | we probably would have heard about him and discussed him in here.
>
> How do you know they're well-read? This is not a rhetorical
> question.
Hang around for a while and you will see why I say that the people in
here are well-read in mythology. I have been reading a lot in myth,
mythology and sacred texts for a few years now, and I am a tenderfoot
compared to many of these folks.
Mark
Mark Gerard Miller
Hi Gale. From what I have read, post-modernism is also in the hands of
the sociologists. Neither sociology nor criticism are subjects for
novelists or even standard fare for college students and
college-educated people, so maybe that is why post-modernism is given
so little shrift by mainstream media.
Which contemporaries are you referring to? Post-modernist ones?
Mark
Mark Gerard Miller
> Moggin Goldberg <mog...@mediaone.net> wrote in message news:<moggin-0D8967....@bvnntp.nevol.mediaone.net>...
> > mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
>
> > > Has anyone ever read these people?
> >
> > Yes. Many people have read those people.
>
> It's far more fun to read *about* them. I had forgotten the entire
> affair, about these two guys lampooning post-modernists and their work
> being accepted by post-modernists as serious and important, laid out
> here http://www.salon.com/it/feature/1998/11/cov_02feature.html
Excuse me, just one guy. The other guy came in when they wrote a
serious book criticizing the math and science of post-modernist
intellectuals.
Mark
G*rd*n
| > | ...
| > | Lots of attacks on deconstruction 'n' such from other newsgroups, are
| > | there? Does that tell you anything?
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote in message news:<9m32sd$9ns$1...@panix3.panix.com>...
| > On the Net, there's a lot of resentment of anything unconventional,
| > which is pretty funny given the widespread self-congratulation
| > in the same venues of everyone's unconventionality, individualism,
| > and originality. Many seem to be channeling their parents or
| > grandparents. In rec.arts.fine, for example, the last time
| > I looked a lot of people were still having trouble with abstract
| > art, although it's been around for several thousand years,
| > can be found in almost any suburban mall, and died as an item
| > of public controvery more than a generation ago. I don't mean
| > they hate it -- I mean they think it's some kind of moral or
| > political offense. My guess is that people spend too much
| > time watching television, which seems to do something bad to
| > their central nervous systems.
mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
| The thing that offends me about abstract art isn't the abstract art,
| it's that representational artists, i.e. non-abstract artists, and
| artists who don't necessarily have a political agenda, have a very
| difficult time obtaining financing from the NEA. In this case we enter
| the realm of the absurd. Now I like absurdism, but it's best that it
| remain in the realm of art.
I've never seen a breakdown of NEA funding according to
genre of work produced, so I'm curious as to how you know
about how it ends up. I think its very small potatoes go
mostly or entirely to institutions. Still funding poor
old abex, are they? If it's in the mall and on the
fingernails of store clerks, it doesn't need the
government's help.
mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
| > | I don't mind being ignorant about post-modernism, by the way. In fact,
| > | I'm glad I am because that increases the chance that I've spent my
| > | time productively.
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote in message news:<9m32sd$9ns$1...@panix3.panix.com>...
| > You're posting on Usenet, which is evidence to the contrary.
mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
| Ouch. But I didn't say that by cutting out post-modernism I had
| eliminated time wastage, just that I had reduced it.
You haven't cut out postmodernism -- if there's ever been a
particularly postmodern artifact, it's Usenet. If you
weren't ignorant about "postmodernism", then you might be
aware of this, and get into a 12-step program or something
like that and recover all that time you're losing to your
unfortunate habit.
G*rd*n
|>|>| ...
|>|>| But I duly note both Alice's and gcf@panix's insinuated criticism. To
|>|>| wit: Why am I writing about these authors as if I know something about
|>|>| them when in fact I do not? But if they had something important or
|>|>| good or interesting to say about mythology, all of us in alt.mythology
|>|>| would have heard of them by now.
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n):
|>|> That's an interesting standard of evaluation, I must say. If
|>|> I'm reading it aright, it's: The quality of an author can be
|>|> determined by how many people who read and write in alt.mythology
|>|> have heard of her, him, or it. Never mind actually trying to
|>|> read the material -- no one needs to do that.
mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
|>| All I meant was that the people who post in alt.mythology are very
|>| well-read in myth and mythology. If there were some post-modernist out
|>| there doing important or interesting work in the field of mythology,
|>| we probably would have heard about him and discussed him in here.
g...@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote in message news:<9m1tvq$hdk$1...@panix2.panix.com>...
|> How do you know they're well-read? This is not a rhetorical
|> question.
mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
| Hang around for a while and you will see why I say that the people in
| here are well-read in mythology. I have been reading a lot in myth,
| mythology and sacred texts for a few years now, and I am a tenderfoot
| compared to many of these folks.
So in the field of mythology, you _do_ read. That's how you
know that certain other people are well-read.
Now all you have to do is consider postmodernism to be a
myth, and you're all set.
Mark Gerard Miller
> Mark Gerard Miller wrote in message ...
> [spayed]
>
> Katz/pigeons
>
> Z/S: a paraconsistent hyper-explosive logic, evaluated over a glutty
> coherent complete partial ordering (ccpo) (see, Visser 1984, "Four valued
> semantics and the liar", J.Phil.Log 13, 181-212)
Eh?
Mark
Jeffrey Ketland
>"Jeffrey Ketland" <ket...@ketland.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:<9m3ga7$mi7$1...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk>...
>> Mark Gerard Miller wrote in message ...
>> >Moggin Goldberg <mog...@mediaone.net> post-moderned in message
news:<moggin-
>> [spayed]
>>
>> Katz/pigeons
>>
>> Z/S: a paraconsistent hyper-explosive logic, evaluated over a glutty
>> coherent complete partial ordering (ccpo) (see, Visser 1984, "Four valued
>> semantics and the liar", J.Phil.Log 13, 181-212)
>
>Eh?
>
>Mark
Whoops--did you miss the
paraconsistent-logic-shows-Alan-Sokal-is-a-hypocrite thread?
The rest is mainly a rather crap joke (the paper by Albert Visser is
genuine, and is connected to theories of truth where sentences can be both
true and false: these are called "truth value gluts").
The Z/S bit---S/Z is a book by Barthes (who I guess you know, because he
wrote about myth). All I know is that it's a book and it's by Barthes, and
fits because logicians give their theories names like ZF, ZFC, RTT, PA, PRA,
ACA, Z_2, PA(S), ISigma_n, ...
- Jeff
Moggin Goldberg
> ... I had forgotten the entire
> affair, about these two guys lampooning post-modernists and their work
> being accepted by post-modernists as serious and important, laid out
> here http://www.salon.com/it/feature/1998/11/cov_02feature.html
> Excuse me, just one guy.
And just a handful of pomos: the editors who were running
the small-time cultural-studies journal that Soxal hoaxed.
Not exactly a big haul. On the other hand, Sokal has succeeded
into hoaxing countless people into believing he proved
something about deconstruction, or "the contemporary humanities"
or the state of Western Civ.
Excerpt:
> "Sokal's piece uses all the right terms. It cites all the best people.
> It whacks sinners (white men, the 'real world'), applauds the virtuous
> (women, general metaphysical lunacy) and reaches the usual
> 'progressive' (whatever that word is supposed to mean) conclusion. And
> it is complete, unadulterated bullshit -- a fact that somehow escaped
> the attention of the high-powered editors of Social Text..."
Not that I was there, or anything -- I don't even read _ST_
-- but the "somehow" seems easy to explain. _ST_ is an
unrefereed cultural studies journal. Sokal's paper is centered
on physics and math. The parts that could called "general
metaphysics" -- the first couple of paragraphs and the
conclusion, if I recall correctly -- make sense, but the
majority of the article is devoted to topics like string theory,
quantum gravity, morphogenetic fields, multidimensional
manifolds with boundaries, differential toplology and symmetric
second-rank tensors. Here's a sample:
Analogous topological structures arise in quantum gravity,
but inasmuch as the manifolds involved are
multidimensional rather than two-dimensional, higher
homology groups play a role as well. These
multidimensional manifolds are no longer amenable to
visualization in conventional three-dimensional Cartesian
space: for example, the projective space RP[exponent]3,
which arises from the ordinary 3-sphere by identification
of antipodes, would require a Euclidean embedding space
of dimension at least 5 (James 1991, 272-272).[34]
Nevertheless, the higher homology groups can be perceived,
at least approximately, via a suitable multidimensional
(nonlinear) logic (Kosko 1993).
34. It is, however, worth noting that the space
RP[exponent]3 is homeomorphic to the group SO(3) of
rotational symmetries of conventional three-dimensional
Euclidean space. Thus, some aspects of three-dimensional
Euclidicity are preserved (albeit in modified form) in the
postmodern physics, just as some aspects of Newtonian
mechanics were preserved in modified form in Einsteinian
physics.
In other words, Sokal hoaxed a cultural studies journal by
sending in paper mostly about math and physics, written
largely in the jargon of those fields. Apparently that escaped
the writer of the _Salon_ article. And you.
> "... who must now
> be experiencing that queasy sensation that afflicted the Trojans the
> morning after they pulled that nice big gift horse into their city.
>It's actually easy to see why the editors accepted the article: it
> parrots with deadly accuracy the style and intellectual approach of
> the standard mediocre progressive post-structuralist paper available
> cheap over every academic counter these days. In fact, one almost
> wishes that Sokal had made his modest proposal even more egregious.
> His paper, which is arrant nonsense, is quite literally
> indistinguishable from a thousand others ..."
That is quite literally a lie. Sokal's article is totally
unlike "the standard...post-structuralist paper" (note the
_Salon_ writer doesn't even attempt to flesh out the
comparision). It belongs to a completely different genre: the
science appreciation exercise. "Transgressing the
Boundaries" is close kin to _The Dancing Wu-Li Masters_ or _The
Tao of Science_ -- not _Allegories of Reading_.
> -- a fact which itself says
> volumes about the decrepit state of the humanities today."
A fact which itself is a falsehood, revealing the writer's
ignorance of post-structuralism. Yours, too, since you're
approvingly quoting her article. Sokal's Trojan hoax takes two
more victims.
> And, "For well over a decade, critics from all points on the political
> spectrum have been bashing the obscurantism, scholastic pedantry and
> phony radicalism rampant in the contemporary humanities. Those attacks
> have had little or no effect. But as Sokal points out, 'the blow that
> can't be brushed off is the one that's self-inflicted.'
[...]
Since the only ones who can be said to have inflicted this
blow on themselves are the _Social Text_ eds., they're the
only people Sokal's comment applies to. And even in their case
it's no criticism of "obscurantism, scholastic pedantry and
phony radicalism," since -- to repeat -- Sokal hoaxed _ST_ with
a paper mostly about physics and math.
-- Moggin
Moggin Goldberg
>>>I don't recognize any post-modernists because I don't know any. I
>>>don't read that crap. The reason I said what I said is because I think
>>of post-modernists as anti-poets, and therefore anti-mythographers. To
>>>deconstructionists, words in themselves don't have any meaning. So the
>>>logical extension of this is that myths, which are so dependent on
>>>words even if there is some deeper underlying meaning attached, don't
>>>have any meaning, either.
Moggin Goldberg <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>> Well, no. The idea that words don't have inherent meaning
>> is a commonplace. If you want to locate it in respect to
>> post-structuralism, then it belongs to _structuralism_, in fact
>> to the ur-structuralist Saussure, who refers to it as "the
>> arbitrary nature of the sign" (_Course_ 1.1.1). Do you need an
>> example? O.k. The English word "bread" and the French word
>> "pain" both refer to the same food. The meaning of the term is
>> not inherent to either chain of letters.
>> Needless to say, the conclusion that myths have no meaning
>> doesn't follow. Even the conclusion that words have no
>> meaning would be absurd. All one can reliably conclude is that
>> you don't know what you're talking about and that sound
>> reasoning isn't one of your strengths. Interesting that you're
>> posting from alt.mythology, tho. In the past, most of the
>> ignorant and irrational cross-postings on deconstruction'n'such
>> have come from other newsgroups.
Mark:
> Lots of attacks on deconstruction 'n' such from other newsgroups, are
> there?
Lots of ignorant, irrational attacks on deconstruction and
such.
> Does that tell you anything?
Tells me there's lots of ignorant, irrational people. I'd
already guessed.
> I don't mind being ignorant about post-modernism, by the way. In fact,
> I'm glad I am because that increases the chance that I've spent my
> time productively.
Here you spent your time criticizing deconstruction -- but
that was time wasted due to your ignorance, which kept you
from offering informed comments and prevented you from
recognizing your own mistakes. In a nearby post you spent time
attacking post-modernism thru Sokal's hoax -- and once again
your ignorance made that time wasted, since you didn't know who
was hoaxed or how, let alone what Sokal proved.
> How's my reasoning doing?
I'd say it couldn't be much worse, but you might take that
as a challenge.
-- Moggin
Moggin Goldberg
[Chomsky on pomo]
> He said, in effect, that he didn't continuing reading these guys
> because they are unreadable.
He said in so many words that he never got very far in his
reading and that he hadn't devoted any time to studying the
ideas he'd attacked. He also said that he wouldn't back up his
criticism, even if asked.
> Would you kindly provide links with a few
> articles by some of these post-modernist authors?
I'll be glad to give you some good starting-points for the
kinda things Chomsky is talking about. (Keep in mind that
"post-modernism" has various meanings. Chomsky is referring to
what he calls "the Paris school," which turns out to mean
post-structuralism, plus a few other odds and ends.) If I were
you, I'd start with Roland Barthes' "From Work to Text" (in
_Image Music Text_), Paul de Man's "Semiology and Rhetoric" (in
_Allegories of Reading_), and Jacques Derrida's "Force and
Signification" (in _Writing and Difference_). They're probably
not on-line. Try the library.
-- Moggin
Gale
<mog...@mediaone.net> wrote:
<snip>
>
> In other words, Sokal hoaxed a cultural studies journal by
>sending in paper mostly about math and physics, written
>largely in the jargon of those fields. Apparently that escaped
>the writer of the _Salon_ article. And you.
According to a mathematician friend of mine, Sokal's mock paper is not
"about" math and physics, but rather willfully misuses terms from math
and physics. And you have an explanation as to why a cultural studies
journal printed an article that was not only incomprehensible to its
own editors but was pure nonsense to anyone who was familiar with the
terms?
<snip>
Gale
Miller) wrote:
<snip>
>
>Hi Gale. From what I have read, post-modernism is also in the hands of
>the sociologists. Neither sociology nor criticism are subjects for
>novelists or even standard fare for college students and
>college-educated people, so maybe that is why post-modernism is given
>so little shrift by mainstream media.
>
>Which contemporaries are you referring to? Post-modernist ones?
As I warned, I offer a very poor list; it isn't my area of interest
and I don't have to read it, so ... . I've glanced at fiction from a
couple people labeled "Feminist" school, such as Toni Morrison who
likes to use those hyphens and create fake etymologies in her
nonfiction, and found the writing not that impressive. John Hawkes,
who I looked at in graduate school about 25 years ago, struck me as
pretty much a direct descendent from such writers as Flannery O'Connor
(and myth, religion, and context are major elements of a close reading
of O'Connor, likewise of other favorites of the "close reading" set).
I refuse to read folks who don't write a good story: "why the hell
should I look for deeper layers if I can't make sense of the top one?"
That, I think, prevents me from ever seeing whatever these folks think
is "ideal" writing, if there is such a thing being produced.
(Side note: some years ago I wandered across and read a piece on Carl
Barks who created the "Uncle Scrooge" comics written by a person who
described himself as a "deconstructionist." The author appeared to me
to be doing something not much different from old fashioned
biographical / contextual criticism. No fancy incomprehensible terms.
And a very neat little article that was pleasent and informative
reading. I guess the author's definition of his own "post-modernity"
was his willingness to write seriously on pop / kid's culture, rather
than any affection for incomprehensibility.)
Fedallah
Gale wrote:
>
> On Fri, 24 Aug 2001 06:21:49 GMT, Moggin Goldberg
> <mog...@mediaone.net> wrote:
> <snip>
> >
> > In other words, Sokal hoaxed a cultural studies journal by
> >sending in paper mostly about math and physics, written
> >largely in the jargon of those fields. Apparently that escaped
> >the writer of the _Salon_ article. And you.
Gale:
> According to a mathematician friend of mine, Sokal's mock paper is not
> "about" math and physics, but rather willfully misuses terms from math
> and physics. And you have an explanation as to why a cultural studies
> journal printed an article that was not only incomprehensible to its
> own editors but was pure nonsense to anyone who was familiar with the
> terms?
> <snip>
Well, according to the article itself it's about a new
physics that has certain implications... and it's highly
laudatory of this physics. Sure, the physics used in the
paper is garbage, but hoaxing some cultural studies rag with
bogus physics doesn't seem like much of a coup to me.
Impugning Deconstructionism or "Post-Modern" thinking on the
basis of the publication of such an article when it didn't
even touch such things in any substantial way is comical or
sad, depending on one's perspective.
You can conclude that the editors of the journal in question
were shitty editors, or that science has enough of a
"revealed truth" type place in our society that many cease
to think critically when approaching supposedly scientific
writings, or some combination of the two. Beyond that, the
publication itself of Sokal's article really doesn't say
much, despite the hyena mentality of those who blew its
significance out of proportion. That mentality itself may
speak volumes about certain things though...
Rick
Mark Gerard Miller
Whose reasoning is faulty? "People who attack post-modernism and
related schools of thought are ignorant and irrational because they
attack post-modernism and related schools of thought."
> > I don't mind being ignorant about post-modernism, by the way. In fact,
> > I'm glad I am because that increases the chance that I've spent my
> > time productively.
>
> Here you spent your time criticizing deconstruction -- but
> that was time wasted due to your ignorance, which kept you
> from offering informed comments and prevented you from
> recognizing your own mistakes. In a nearby post you spent time
> attacking post-modernism thru Sokal's hoax -- and once again
> your ignorance made that time wasted, since you didn't know who
> was hoaxed or how, let alone what Sokal proved.
I read the article and understood it, which is more than I can say for
you. If the author of the Salon.com article was correct, Sokal was
pointing out that the science and mathematics used by modern
intellectuals is frequently erroneous, flat wrong. The larger point,
made by the author of the Salon.com article, was to question why any
science and math, but especially erroneous science and math, would be
employed to understand the human psyche at all.
> > How's my reasoning doing?
>
> I'd say it couldn't be much worse, but you might take that
> as a challenge.
You have a problem with my premises, not my reasoning.
What about the high-handed commandeering of the universities by the
radical left PC post-modernist thought police and their ilk? They run
dissenting professors and students off campus on a rail if anyone
dares to speak or teach in more traditional, objective ways, if what I
read is true. What about the abandonment of philosophy's traditional
pursuit of truth and beauty, only to replace it with some castrated
(literally) sociological gobbledygook that no one, apparently not even
modern intellectuals, can understand in many cases? What about the
modern intellectuals' fawning over prostitutes (er, excuse me, sex
workers), hermaphrodites both real and surgically made (er, excuse me,
the differently gendered), perverts (er, excuse me, paraphiliacs),
homosexuals (er, excuse me, gays), porno actors (er ... porno actors)
-- that is, anything and anyone as long as they are not just
heterosexuals living traditional lifestyles. Now you are going to
accuse me of being a bigot. Don't. I don't give a damn what anyone
does with respect to sex and lifestyle, but is it necessary to draw
specific, particular attention to people's differences? Do we have to
devote time to worrying gender and sex and race and physical handicaps
like a mink trying to chew its leg off to get out of the trap? In a
way, the Radical Left Campus Thought Police are like the Boy Scouts in
banning gays: They draw attention to differences, when if they ignored
them and live and let live, the world would be a far more tolerant and
peaceful place.
Tom Wolfe put it a lot better than I did in his article in Harper's
Magazine in June 2000:
“That leaves our academic philosophers, our year 2000 versions
of
Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, and David Hume. Here we come upon one
of the choicest chapters in the human comedy. Today, at any leading
American university, a Kant, with all his dithering about God,
freedom,
and immortality, or even a Hume, wouldn't survive a year in graduate
school, much less get hired as an instructor. The philosophy
departments, history departments, and, at many universities,
anthropology, sociology, and even psychology departments are now
divided in John L'Heureux's delicious terminology ('The Handmaid of
Desire'), into the Young Turks and the Fools. Most Fools are old, mid-
fifties, early sixties, but a Fool can be any age, twenty-eight as
easily as fifty-eight, if he is one of the minority on the faculty who
still believe in the old nineteenth-century Germanic modes of
so-called
objective scholarship. Today the humanities faculties are hives of
abstruse doctrines such as structuralism, post-structuralism,
postmodernism, deconstruction, reader-response theory, commodification
theory ... The names vary, but the subtext is always the same: Marxism
may be dead, and the proletariat has proved to be hopeless. They're
all
at sea with their third wives. But we can find new proletariats whose
ideological benefactors we can be -- women, non-whites, put-upon white
ethnics, homosexuals, the polymorphously perverse, pornographers,
prostitutes, sex workers, hardwood trees -- which we can use to
express
our indignation toward the powers that be and our aloofness to their
bourgeois stooges, to keep the flame of skepticism, cynicism, irony,
and contempt burning. This will not be Vulgar Marxism; it will be ...
Rococo Marxism, elegant as a Fragonard, sly as a Watteau. We won't get
too hung up on political issues, which never seem to work out right
anyway. Instead, we will expose the stooges' so-called truths, which
the Fools ignorantly cultivate, and deconstruct their self-deluding
concoctions of eternal verities. We will show how the powers that be
manipulate, with poisonous efficiency, the very language we speak in
order to imprison us in an invisible panopticon, to use the late
French 'postculturalist' Michel Foucault's term."
Later in this article, Wolfe writes:
“The battle of the Fools versus the Young Turks has escalated
beyond
mere words, however. In 1987 the traditionalists formed a self-defense
organization called the National Association of Scholars; 1,000
joined.
In a public statement, Fish, then at Duke,
branded them with the R word, the S word, and the H word –
racist,
sexist and homophobic – and sent a memo to Duke’s provost
recommending
that no member of the tainted organization be allowed on key
university
committees. The provost refused. The Scholars accused Fish of trying
to
blacklist them. At more than one major university, Young Turks roamed
about in Gen X clothes, red ballpoint pens at the ready, sniffing out
deviationists … sexists … racists … classists (sic)
... homophobes …
ethnophobes … The stories of Young Turks nudging and whispering
to keep
graduate students away from Fools courses, to the point where some
Fools end up with zero students for the year, would make a fairly
grisly chapter in a book.”
For a more complete excerpt of Wolfe's article, click here
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&safe=off&rnum=12&selm=8jcv91%248ed%241%40nnrp1.deja.com
You're right, Moggin. I can't address post-modernism and attendant
schools per se because I am ignorant about them. But as I said
earlier, and especially if the perceptions about them by critical
outsiders are true, I am happy to remain ignorant. I do thoroughly
enjoy reading about the modern intelligentsia, though, because of
their high camp and utter lunacy.
Here, you never addressed this, which I wrote earlier in this thread:
[begin quote]
And yet again, I cannot resist. Enter the Phallocentric Puissant God
of Jouissance himself, Priapus, introduced by that avatar of clarity,
Jacques Lacan, quoted at
http://www.salon.com/it/feature/1998/11/cov_02feature.html:
"Thus the erectile organ comes to symbolize the place of jouissance,
not in itself, or even in the form of an image, but as a part lacking
in the desired image: that is why it is equivalent to the [square root
of] -1 of the signification produced above, of the jouissance that it
restores by the coefficient if its statement to the function of lack
of signifier (-1)."
To understand the myth of Priapus properly in post-modernist
sociology, remember that Priapus' gender is not truly male, but he may
act as though his gender is male from time to time. Now Dionysus
dressing up as a nymph, Hercules serving as Omphale's handmaiden,
these two would be embraced lovingly, celebrated, feted, even, by the
post-modernist. In fact, as ambiguous as sexuality is in myth, I am
surprised more of the post-modernists haven't appropriated mythology.
[end quote]
To read a post-modernist story of my own, please click here
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=%23fE1txsuAHA.301%40cpmsnbbsa09&output=gplain
Now, after you have read that, can we be friends?
Mark
Mark Gerard Miller
> Mark Gerard Miller wrote in message ...
> >"Jeffrey Ketland" <ket...@ketland.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:<9m3ga7$mi7$1...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk>...
> >> Mark Gerard Miller wrote in message ...
> >> >Moggin Goldberg <mog...@mediaone.net> post-moderned in message
> news:<moggin-
> >> [spayed]
> >>
> >> Katz/pigeons
> >>
> >> Z/S: a paraconsistent hyper-explosive logic, evaluated over a glutty
> >> coherent complete partial ordering (ccpo) (see, Visser 1984, "Four valued
> >> semantics and the liar", J.Phil.Log 13, 181-212)
> >
> >Eh?
> >
> >Mark
>
> Whoops--did you miss the
> paraconsistent-logic-shows-Alan-Sokal-is-a-hypocrite thread?
> The rest is mainly a rather crap joke (the paper by Albert Visser is
> genuine, and is connected to theories of truth where sentences can be both
> true and false: these are called "truth value gluts").
> The Z/S bit---S/Z is a book by Barthes (who I guess you know, because he
> wrote about myth). All I know is that it's a book and it's by Barthes, and
> fits because logicians give their theories names like ZF, ZFC, RTT, PA, PRA,
> ACA, Z_2, PA(S), ISigma_n, ...
>
> - Jeff
IC. Is "Jeff" your name, or a theory? As to Barthes, please see the
part of this thread where I refer to myself as a "tenderfoot" with
respect to reading in mythology.
Please provide an example of a truth value glut.
Marko(mega)
Jeffrey Ketland
>IC. Is "Jeff" your name, or a theory? As to Barthes, please see the
>part of this thread where I refer to myself as a "tenderfoot" with
>respect to reading in mythology.
"Jeff" is a name. What is "tenderfoot"?
>Please provide an example of a truth value glut.
The famous one is the liar sentence, a sentence L which is equivalent to "L
is false". If L is true, then it's false. If it's false, then it's true.
Standard truth theories contain an axiom that no sentence is both, so this
is a problem. (Actually, it's just the axiom: ~A is true iff A is not
true).
There are various ways out of this problem, some saying L *lacks* a truth
value (this is called a "truth value gap"). The most well-known theory
working this out is by the philosopher Saul Kripke.
Another, due to Alfred Tarski, is to replace "true" with a hierarchy
"true_0", "true_1", etc., sometimes called the Tarski hierarchy of
metalanguages. No particular language can define its own concept of truth,
but the concept becomes definable at the next level up.
But more recently people have tried to work out what happens if you bite the
bullett, and say that L is both true and false. You can do it in interesting
ways--the technical problem is to make sure not *every* sentence is both
true and false, which makes the theory trivial.
Normally, with an inconsistent theory T, every sentence is provable using
the inference rules: this is called "explosive". Paraconsistency occurs when
T contains at least one contradiction (say, A&~A), but it is not explosive.
Popular in Brazil (Newton da Costa), Australia (Graham Priest) and a few
other places, mostly computer science and philosophy departments.
By the way, it doesn't show that Sokal is a hypocrite--it shows that the
author of the thread didn't grasp the ideas involved, and presumably having
heard a tiny "snippet" of what it's about, wanted to use their
misunderstanding to abuse someone: in other words, rhetoric and sophistry.
-- Jeff
Moggin Goldberg
> Whose reasoning is faulty?
Yours.
> "People who attack post-modernism and
> related schools of thought are ignorant and irrational because they
> attack post-modernism and related schools of thought."
Your paraphrasing is crappy, too. I never said people who
attack pomo are ignorant and irrational because they attack
pomo. I said there were lots of ignorant and irrational
attacks and drew the conclusion there were lots of ignorant and
irrational people. Thanks for illustrating.
Mark:
> I read the article and understood it, which is more than I can say for
> you.
You wasted your time, despite your expressed desire to use
it productively, by offering ignorant and error-filled
criticism. Congratulations for reading a magazine article, tho.
> If the author of the Salon.com article was correct, Sokal was
> pointing out that the science and mathematics used by modern
> intellectuals is frequently erroneous, flat wrong. The larger point,
> made by the author of the Salon.com article, was to question why any
> science and math, but especially erroneous science and math, would be
> employed to understand the human psyche at all.
Evidently your math is worst of all: you can't count even
to two. (I make no boasts for my own counting skills, but
they usually don't break down until three or four.) There were
two Salon articles by two different authors. You seem to be
thinking of the following bit from the one by Kristina Zarlengo:
Even if Sokal and Bricmont's broadest allegations of fraud
and incompetence are warranted, it's hard to see why
humanists would want to follow along their denunciatory
path. How could a physics-worthy slash diet of rational
skepticism satisfy scholars' desires to unscientifically
understand hopelessly complex phenomena like the human
psyche, or racism, or modern culture. Why should it?
That's not a point about what Sokal showed, or a criticism
of post-modernism. It's a critical observation about Sokal
and his pal Bricmont. Zarlengo is asking why anyone interested
in learning about, e.g. the psyche or modern culture would
want to go on the "physics-worthy slash diet of rational
skepticism" which she believes Sokal and Bricmont are promoting.
> What about the high-handed commandeering of the universities by the
> radical left PC post-modernist thought police and their ilk?
[...]
Pete Townshend answered that a long time ago. "Here comes
the new boss/Same as the old boss."
-- Moggin
Moggin Goldberg
>> In other words, Sokal hoaxed a cultural studies journal by
>> sending in paper mostly about math and physics, written
>> largely in the jargon of those fields. Apparently that escaped
>> the writer of the _Salon_ article. And you.
ga...@arwm.net (Gale):
> According to a mathematician friend of mine, Sokal's mock paper is not
> "about" math and physics, but rather willfully misuses terms from math
> and physics.
Your mathematician friend is offering a non sequitur: the
fake math and physics talk in Sokal's article doesn't change
his paper's topic. It's still primarily about math and physics.
Which means Sokal hoaxed an unrefereed cultural studies
journal with fake talk about physics and math. Somehow I don't
feel impressed. If you do, then please explain why. I'd
advise against asking your mathematician friend for help -- she
doesn't seem to think too clearly.
> And you have an explanation as to why a cultural studies
> journal printed an article that was not only incomprehensible to its
> own editors but was pure nonsense to anyone who was familiar with the
> terms?
I'd guess that Sokal's article was incomprehensible to the
editors precisely _because_ they were unfamiliar with the
terms. Anyway that's what makes most of it incomprehensible to
me. I also notice that Sokal was careful to choose an
unrefereed journal, i.e., one which doesn't send submissions to
specialists for review.
How come they printed him? I can only speculate. (Like I
said to Mark, I wasn't there, and I don't even read the
magazine.) But Sokal tempted them with a promise of scientific
authority. Looks like they succumbed.
-- Moggin
Gale
<mog...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>Moggin Goldberg <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>
>>> In other words, Sokal hoaxed a cultural studies journal by
>>> sending in paper mostly about math and physics, written
>>> largely in the jargon of those fields. Apparently that escaped
>>> the writer of the _Salon_ article. And you.
>
>ga...@arwm.net (Gale):
>
>> According to a mathematician friend of mine, Sokal's mock paper is not
>> "about" math and physics, but rather willfully misuses terms from math
>> and physics.
>
> Your mathematician friend is offering a non sequitur: the
>fake math and physics talk in Sokal's article doesn't change
>his paper's topic. It's still primarily about math and physics.
No, it isn't. It isn't about math or physics at all. It would have
to have appropriate content, rather than just a layer of misused
terms, to be "about" math and physics. If I layer together in
nonsense form a stack of terms from a medical dictionary, the result
is not "about" medicine, it is really not about anything. It is just
pure nonsense.
>Which means Sokal hoaxed an unrefereed cultural studies
>journal with fake talk about physics and math. Somehow I don't
>feel impressed. If you do, then please explain why. I'd
>advise against asking your mathematician friend for help -- she
>doesn't seem to think too clearly.
She??? --- Do I note automatic and assumed sexual prejudice? Assume
the person you wish to dismiss is female? Veiled ad hominem, folks!!!
;-) (Goes well with the overt one "doesn't think to clearly" which is
being offered by a person who thinks a nonsensical string of technical
terms constitutes "math and physics." --- see how simple name-calling
is; I can do it too, so why don't you skip it.)
>
>> And you have an explanation as to why a cultural studies
>> journal printed an article that was not only incomprehensible to its
>> own editors but was pure nonsense to anyone who was familiar with the
>> terms?
>
> I'd guess that Sokal's article was incomprehensible to the
>editors precisely _because_ they were unfamiliar with the
>terms.
So they thought it a wonderful idea to publish something whose meaning
they could not even guess at?
> Anyway that's what makes most of it incomprehensible to
>me. I also notice that Sokal was careful to choose an
>unrefereed journal, i.e., one which doesn't send submissions to
>specialists for review.
>
> How come they printed him? I can only speculate. (Like I
>said to Mark, I wasn't there, and I don't even read the
>magazine.) But Sokal tempted them with a promise of scientific
>authority. Looks like they succumbed.
Can you give me their addresses? I have this wonderful stock option
for a bridge in Brooklyn I'd love to share with them. ;-)
Moggin Goldberg
>>>> In other words, Sokal hoaxed a cultural studies journal by
>>>> sending in paper mostly about math and physics, written
>>>> largely in the jargon of those fields. Apparently that escaped
>>>> the writer of the _Salon_ article. And you.
ga...@arwm.net (Gale):
>>> According to a mathematician friend of mine, Sokal's mock paper is not
>>> "about" math and physics, but rather willfully misuses terms from math
>>> and physics.
Moggin:
>> Your mathematician friend is offering a non sequitur: the
>>fake math and physics talk in Sokal's article doesn't change
>>his paper's topic. It's still primarily about math and physics.
Gale:
> No, it isn't.
Sure is. Contrary to the claim of the article Mark quoted
before, Sokal's hoax is not "literally indistinguishable"
from "the standard ... post-structuralist essay." (Or even too
similar.) Nor did Sokal send it to a post-structuralist
journal. He wrote a paper largely about physics and math, then
used it to hoax a cultural studies rag.
> It isn't about math or physics at all.
It's very much about math and physics. Of course not only
about them, but talk about physics and math -- e.g. string
theory, quantum gravity, morphogenetic fields, multidimensional
manifolds with boundaries, differential toplology, and
symmetric second-rank tensors -- makes up the bulk of the piece.
> It would have
> to have appropriate content, rather than just a layer of misused
> terms, to be "about" math and physics.
Layer, hell: that "layer" is the substance of the article.
Here's the same sample I showed to Mark:
Analogous topological structures arise in quantum gravity,
but inasmuch as the manifolds involved are
multidimensional rather than two-dimensional, higher
homology groups play a role as well. These
multidimensional manifolds are no longer amenable to
visualization in conventional three-dimensional Cartesian
space: for example, the projective space RP[exponent]3,
which arises from the ordinary 3-sphere by identification
of antipodes, would require a Euclidean embedding space
of dimension at least 5 (James 1991, 272-272).[34]
Nevertheless, the higher homology groups can be perceived,
at least approximately, via a suitable multidimensional
(nonlinear) logic (Kosko 1993).
34. It is, however, worth noting that the space
RP[exponent]3 is homeomorphic to the group SO(3) of
rotational symmetries of conventional three-dimensional
Euclidean space. Thus, some aspects of three-dimensional
Euclidicity are preserved (albeit in modified form) in the
postmodern physics, just as some aspects of Newtonian
mechanics were preserved in modified form in Einsteinian
physics.
That's how most of the article reads, aside from the intro
and the conclusion.
> If I layer together in
> nonsense form a stack of terms from a medical dictionary, the result
> is not "about" medicine, it is really not about anything. It is just
> pure nonsense.
Highly impure nonsense. Pure nonsense would be like white
noise. Since you drew all your words from a medical
dictionary, you left purity far behind. If you order them into
sentences of the kind that one might expect to find in an
article on medicine, then you've produced nonsense on that very
topic, just as Sokal produced nonsense (so I'm told) on math
and physics. Now, if you got your nonsense accepted by the New
England Journal of Medicine, that would be something. But
Sokal submitted his nonsense on math and physics to the editors
of a cultural studies journal. The interesting thing is he
still got good results: he fooled people into making all sorts
of ridiculous claims about what he proved, for example that
he'd discredited post-structuralism. In that respect, his hoax
was a stunning success.
Moggin:
>> Which means Sokal hoaxed an unrefereed cultural studies
>> journal with fake talk about physics and math. Somehow I don't
>> feel impressed. If you do, then please explain why. I'd
>> advise against asking your mathematician friend for help -- she
>> doesn't seem to think too clearly.
Gale:
> She???
She!!!
> --- Do I note automatic and assumed sexual prejudice?
Lord only knows. You might note anything that happened to
be floating around in your pretty little head. But you
certainly could have noted that I didn't automatically assume a
mathematician would be a man.
> Assume
> the person you wish to dismiss is female? Veiled ad hominem, folks!!!
> ;-) (Goes well with the overt one "doesn't think to clearly" which is
> being offered by a person who thinks a nonsensical string of technical
> terms constitutes "math and physics." --- see how simple name-calling
> is; I can do it too, so why don't you skip it.)
I see you can become hysterical at the idea a
mathematician might be female. I also see that you can't reply
to my question. In case you've forgotten, I asked what was
impressive about hoaxing an unreferred cultural studies journal
with an article about physics and math.
Gale:
>>> And you have an explanation as to why a cultural studies
>>> journal printed an article that was not only incomprehensible to its
>>> own editors but was pure nonsense to anyone who was familiar with the
>>> terms?
Moggin:
>> I'd guess that Sokal's article was incomprehensible to the
>> editors precisely _because_ they were unfamiliar with the
>> terms. Anyway that's what makes most of it incomprehensible to
>> me. I also notice that Sokal was careful to choose an
>> unrefereed journal, i.e., one which doesn't send submissions to
>> specialists for review.
Gale:
> So they thought it a wonderful idea to publish something whose meaning
> they could not even guess at?
Again, I wasn't there, I've never met the editors, and I'm
not one of their readers. But since you keep asking me to
speculate, I would say that they did guess what Sokal's article
meant. Seems they guessed wrong.
Moggin:
>> How come they printed him? I can only speculate. (Like I
>> said to Mark, I wasn't there, and I don't even read the
>> magazine.) But Sokal tempted them with a promise of scientific
>> authority. Looks like they succumbed.
Gale:
> Can you give me their addresses? I have this wonderful stock option
> for a bridge in Brooklyn I'd love to share with them. ;-)
Like I said, I don't read _ST_, so I don't have any notion
where you should write. If you're really interested, do a
little hunting. I'm sure you'll be able to find a subscription
blank if you look hard enough.
-- Moggin
Gale
<mog...@mediaone.net> wrote:
<snip>
>>> Which means Sokal hoaxed an unrefereed cultural studies
>>> journal with fake talk about physics and math. Somehow I don't
>>> feel impressed. If you do, then please explain why. I'd
>>> advise against asking your mathematician friend for help -- she
>>> doesn't seem to think too clearly.
>
>Gale:
>
>> She???
>
> She!!!
>
>> --- Do I note automatic and assumed sexual prejudice?
>
> Lord only knows. You might note anything that happened to
>be floating around in your pretty little head. But you
>certainly could have noted that I didn't automatically assume a
>mathematician would be a man.
>
>> Assume
>> the person you wish to dismiss is female? Veiled ad hominem, folks!!!
>> ;-) (Goes well with the overt one "doesn't think to clearly" which is
>> being offered by a person who thinks a nonsensical string of technical
>> terms constitutes "math and physics." --- see how simple name-calling
>> is; I can do it too, so why don't you skip it.)
>
> I see you can become hysterical at the idea a
>mathematician might be female. I also see that you can't reply
>to my question. In case you've forgotten, I asked what was
>impressive about hoaxing an unreferred cultural studies journal
>with an article about physics and math.
<snip>
Yes, it does matter that the journal was unreferreed --- you are
correct. It would have been rather more impressive to have hoaxed a
peer-reviewed one. By the way, I'm going to send you a bill for a new
keyboard. I just spilled coffee all over mine laughing regarding your
--- how shall I put this? --- gender assumptions.
You assume Mathemetician X is female. You assume I am female. And you
make disparaging remarks based on sex ("floating around in your pretty
little head"). Neither making such assumptions nor offering
gender-derived ad hominems increases your credibility. (And
"hysterical," if I remember correctly, is another gender-linked term
--- that by real etymology, not the fake stuff of "feminist" critics.
When used referring to out of control emotions other than laughter, it
still is directed at females far more than males. Since my hysteria is
that of laughter, however, your application of the term in this
instance is correct and non-sexist (no credit to your intentions).)
Mark Gerard Miller
You could say, "Birds fly," which is always true in one sense of the
word in some cases, sometimes true in some cases in another sense of
the word, and never true in the case of ostriches and emus. Is that
too simplistic?
The author of the thread or the author of the article?
Mark
Mark Gerard Miller
> mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
Duly noted that you snipped the bulk of my last message because you
know that there is no answer for the fact that the nation's
universities have been taken over by freaks, pissers and sociologists
who can't write well enough to make clear their faulty, erroneous,
wrongminded theses. And where they're not erroneous, they're
inconsequential.
> Mark:
>
> > I read the article and understood it, which is more than I can say for
> > you.
>
> You wasted your time, despite your expressed desire to use
> it productively, by offering ignorant and error-filled
> criticism. Congratulations for reading a magazine article, tho.
>
> > If the author of the Salon.com article was correct, Sokal was
> > pointing out that the science and mathematics used by modern
> > intellectuals is frequently erroneous, flat wrong. The larger point,
> > made by the author of the Salon.com article, was to question why any
> > science and math, but especially erroneous science and math, would be
> > employed to understand the human psyche at all.
>
> You seem to be
> thinking of the following bit from the one by Kristina Zarlengo:
> Even if Sokal and Bricmont's broadest allegations of fraud
> and incompetence are warranted, it's hard to see why
> humanists would want to follow along their denunciatory
> path. How could a physics-worthy slash diet of rational
> skepticism satisfy scholars' desires to unscientifically
> understand hopelessly complex phenomena like the human
> psyche, or racism, or modern culture. Why should it?
>
> That's not a point about what Sokal showed, or a criticism
> of post-modernism. It's a critical observation about Sokal
> and his pal Bricmont. Zarlengo is asking why anyone interested
> in learning about, e.g. the psyche or modern culture would
> want to go on the "physics-worthy slash diet of rational
> skepticism" which she believes Sokal and Bricmont are promoting.
You're correct. I was writing from memory. But my point was still
correct, and you did not address it as you have failed to address any
of the larger points I've made in this thread about the radical left
pissers and freaks running the asylum. It's as if humanities
departments have replaced Socrates with the Marquis de Sade minus the
wit and even rudimentary writing skills. Too bad the madmen who run
the universities aren't like the madmen in the movie "The King of
Hearts."
> > What about the high-handed commandeering of the universities by the
> > radical left PC post-modernist thought police and their ilk?
>
> [...]
>
> Pete Townshend answered that a long time ago. "Here comes
> the new boss/Same as the old boss."
Good answer. But at least the old boss could make himself understood.
Mark
Mark Gerard Miller
> Mark Gerard Miller wrote in message ...
>
> >IC. Is "Jeff" your name, or a theory? As to Barthes, please see the
> >part of this thread where I refer to myself as a "tenderfoot" with
> >respect to reading in mythology.
>
> "Jeff" is a name. What is "tenderfoot"?
Tenderfoot is the first rank in Boy Scouts.
Mark
DMB
>
> Thanks for the reference to Huston Smith's book -- I hadn't realized he'd
> written on the subject. Here are some other references: (1) Richard Evans
> Schultes & Albert Hoffmann (the latter was the biochemist who first
> synthesized LSD, by the way) _Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing and
> Hallucinogenic Powers_ (ISBN 0-89281-406-3). (2) R. Gordan Wasson _Soma:
> Divine Mushroom of Immortality_ (ISBN 0-15-683800-1). (3) R. G. Wasson
> _The Wondrous Mushroom: Mycolatry in Mesoamerica_ (ISBN 0-07-068443-X). (4)
> R.G. Wasson, Carl A. P. Ruck, & Albert Hoffmann _The Road to Eleusis:
> Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries_ (ISBN 0-15-625279-1) ... this book
> includes D Staples' translation of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. For a
> critical view of this latter book see Helene P. Foley (editor) _The Homeric
> Hymn to Demeter: Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays_ (ISBN
> 0-691-01479-5). (5) R. G. Wasson, Stella Kranrisch, Jonathan Ott, & C. A.
> P. Ruck _Persephone's Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion_ (ISBN
> 0-300-05266-9). -- You'll find also that there are a number of other
> books and studies of the role of ecstasis per se in religion/shamanism/etc.,
> the result (for me, at least) of such reading was to realize that the use
> of entheogenic plants was only one of several paths to experiencing or
> communing with one's "Inner Deity".
You're welcome. Huston Smith's book is new, came out last year, but
its largely a collection of essays written in past decades. The
chapters in it summarize many of the other books you've listed. And
smith personally knows many of the authors. (I have a copy of PLANTS
OF THE GODS, which is a beautifully illustrated book, but its not very
informative.) As Smith tells it, Wasson's book on SOMA seems the most
worthy reading for folks interested in mythology. As the sub-title of
PERSEPHONE'S QUEST suggests, entheogens might be connected to the very
origins of religion, which means they are connected to the source of
myth. Smith makes a case, in discussing Wasson's SOMA, that the
mythological and metaphysical contents of the Hindu Vedas are almost
entirely inspired by the experiences associated with SOMA, and that
SOMA is a kind of mushroom juice. (Smith speculates that the very
first entheogenic experiences may been had by extremely hungry and
exhausted hunters, but that such cases would have been accidental and
very dangerous. It would be a close-to-death kind of thing, like the
story of Jesus wandering in the wilderness for 40 days without food.)
I forgot where I learned that the myth of Santa and his reindeer is a
reference to this same entheogenic experience. (Sorry, kids)
Apparently, the shamans of Siberia drank the urine of reindeer who had
eaten the "magic" mushroom. The animals filtered out the toxins, but
left the entheogenic qualities almost entirely intact. Smith mentions
certain kinds of "pubs" in old Russia that charged decreasing amounts
of money for such urine, depending on how many times the mushrooms had
been filtered. They say that even the 20th man's urine was worth
drinking. (I know, its disgusting. Get over it.) Likewise, there are
references in the Vedas to drinking directly from the ancient Hindu
priests. It makes one wonder about the connections those rain/semen
images too, not only because of crops and babies, but also simply
because mushrooms grow after it rains. I'm talking about piss and
mysticism at the same time. Go figure.
Merry Christmas! DMB
Moggin Goldberg
> Duly noted that you snipped the bulk of my last message because you
> know that there is no answer for the fact that the nation's
> universities have been taken over by freaks, pissers and sociologists
> who can't write well enough to make clear their faulty, erroneous,
You're dull, alright. You're also lying, since I answered
you directly. (You even replied "Good answer.") If you'd
like to continue the conversation, you're gonna have to improve
on the diatribes you've been offering.
[...]
Zarlengo:
>> Even if Sokal and Bricmont's broadest allegations of
>> fraud and incompetence are warranted, it's hard to see why
>> humanists would want to follow along their denunciatory
>> path. How could a physics-worthy slash diet of rational
>> skepticism satisfy scholars' desires to unscientifically
>> understand hopelessly complex phenomena like the human
>> psyche, or racism, or modern culture. Why should it?
Moggin:
>> That's not a point about what Sokal showed, or a criticism
>> of post-modernism. It's a critical observation about Sokal
>> and his pal Bricmont. Zarlengo is asking why anyone interested
>> in learning about, e.g. the psyche or modern culture would
>> want to go on the "physics-worthy slash diet of rational
>> skepticism" which she believes Sokal and Bricmont are promoting.
Mark:
> You're correct. I was writing from memory. But my point was still
> correct ...
Your point was nonsense. You were parroting something you
read in a magazine -- but even simple parroting was beyond
your abilities, since you turned a criticism aimed at Sokal and
Bricmont into their own supposed criticism of "modern
intellectuals." Sokal and Bricmont didn't ask "why science and
math...would be employed to understand the human psyche" --
the _Salon_ writer, Zarlengo, is asking why anyone who wants to
understand the psyche would follow Sokal.
> ... and you did not address it as you have failed to address any
> of the larger points I've made in this thread about the radical left
> pissers and freaks running the asylum.
You haven't made any larger points -- only pointless rants.
Not that I'm objecting. You're free to rant and rave about
anything you'd like. But what makes you think that demands any
response from me?
> It's as if humanities
> departments have replaced Socrates with the Marquis de Sade minus
> the wit and even rudimentary writing skills. ...
Socrates wasn't even in the academy, let alone running the
show. Plato, the advisor-to-tyrants, established an
educational institution. Socrates was merely a marketplace fly
who got swatted out.
-- Moggin
Moggin Goldberg
>> I see you can become hysterical at the idea a
>> mathematician might be female. I also see that you can't reply
>> to my question. In case you've forgotten, I asked what was
>> impressive about hoaxing an unreferred cultural studies journal
>> with an article about physics and math.
ga...@arwm.net (Gale):
> Yes, it does matter that the journal was unreferreed --- you are
> correct. It would have been rather more impressive to have hoaxed a
> peer-reviewed one.
[...]
Half an answer, so I guess it counts as progress. I agree
Sokal's hoax would've been more impressive if he hadn't
selected an unrefereed journal as his target. But what's there
to be impressed by in what he really did? Seems to me his
biggest accomplishment was to fool countless people into making
exaggerated claims for his hoax.
-- Moggin
Gale
<mog...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>Moggin Goldberg <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>
>>> I see you can become hysterical at the idea a
>>> mathematician might be female.
And I see you've cut my complaint regarding your ad hominem while
leaving a portion of the ad hominem. "A mathmetician" can indeed be
female --- I know a few. The particular mathmetician I referred to is
not "a" mathmetician, he is an individual with particular
characteristics, in this case including being male. I accused you of
assigning the pronoun "she" to someone whose credibility you wished to
denigrate without evidence (using the psychologically verifiable
standard that females in hard science and math fields are
automatically judged as less credible than males). In case you've
forgotten, you used the "she" as a lead for an uninformed put-down
line.
As you cannot seem to offer a comment without including a gratitious
ad hominem, I must conclude that you have no confidence in your own
ability to construct a reasoned argument. As far as I am concerned,
you have *no* credibility.
I also see that you can't reply
>>> to my question. In case you've forgotten, I asked what was
>>> impressive about hoaxing an unreferred cultural studies journal
>>> with an article about physics and math.
>
>ga...@arwm.net (Gale):
>
>> Yes, it does matter that the journal was unreferreed --- you are
>> correct. It would have been rather more impressive to have hoaxed a
>> peer-reviewed one.
>
>[...]
>
> Half an answer, so I guess it counts as progress. I agree
>Sokal's hoax would've been more impressive if he hadn't
>selected an unrefereed journal as his target. But what's there
>to be impressed by in what he really did? Seems to me his
>biggest accomplishment was to fool countless people into making
>exaggerated claims for his hoax.
More than a few scientifically trained persons disagree with your
assessment. Most have rather more credibility than you have
demonstrated --- note above.
Jeffrey Ketland
>Tenderfoot is the first rank in Boy Scouts.
Ahh - the Girl Guides, me.
-- Jeff
Mark Gerard Miller
"DMB" <dbuc...@classicalradio.org> wrote in message
news:6264b1de.01082...@posting.google.com...
> Apparently, the shamans of Siberia drank the urine of reindeer who had
> eaten the "magic" mushroom. The animals filtered out the toxins, but
> left the entheogenic qualities almost entirely intact. Smith mentions
> certain kinds of "pubs" in old Russia that charged decreasing amounts
> of money for such urine, depending on how many times the mushrooms had
> been filtered. They say that even the 20th man's urine was worth
> drinking. (I know, its disgusting. Get over it.) Likewise, there are
> references in the Vedas to drinking directly from the ancient Hindu
> priests. It makes one wonder about the connections those rain/semen
> images too, not only because of crops and babies, but also simply
> because mushrooms grow after it rains. I'm talking about piss and
> mysticism at the same time. Go figure.
Hi DMB. I heard once but don't know if it's true that if one drinks urine,
he should not then drink his urine again after urinating urine prime because
it is deadly toxic.
Mark
Mark Gerard Miller
Lucky.
Mark
Moggin Goldberg
>> I see you can become hysterical at the idea a
>> mathematician might be female. I also see that you can't reply
>> to my question. In case you've forgotten, I asked what was
>> impressive about hoaxing an unreferred cultural studies journal
>> with an article about physics and math.
ga...@arwm.net (Gale):
> ... I see you've cut my complaint regarding your ad hominem while
> leaving a portion of the ad hominem.
False premise, since I never offered an ad hominem -- that
is, I never tried to pass off criticism of a person as
criticism of that person's ideas. You may not like what I said
about your-friend-the-mathematician, but I told you exactly
where and how your pal's thinking went wrong. Since that seems
to have gone by you, I'll explain again.
He said -- according to you -- that "Sokal's mock paper is
not 'about' math and physics, but rather willfully misuses
terms from math and physics." That's a non sequitur, since the
conclusion -- "Sokal's mock paper is not about math and
physics" -- isn't entailed by the premise it "willfully misuses
terms from math and physics."
To put it another way, your-pal-the-mathematician set up a
false opposition between writing a paper about math and
physics -- on the one hand -- and willfully misusing terms from
those disciplines (on the other). Sokal had no problem in
doing both: writing a paper centered on math and physics which
misused math and physics terms.
(I'm assuming they _are_ misused, since I can't make heads
or tails of them, myself. The question came up once in an
earlier thread, and the science campers quickly disagreeed with
each other about what counted as nonsense.)
[...]
> As far as I am concerned, you have *no* credibility.
Nothing to be concerned about, since I never suggested you
should accept anything I said on the basis of my personal
authority. Why are you unable to discuss ideas on their merits
-- or their dismerits, as the case may be?
And while I'm asking, how come you've been unable to reply
to my question above? I asked what was so impressive about
hoaxing an unrefereed cultural studies rag with a paper focused
on math and physics. You haven't answered.
Moggin:
>> ... I agree
>> Sokal's hoax would've been more impressive if he hadn't
>> selected an unrefereed journal as his target. But what's there
>> to be impressed by in what he really did? Seems to me his
>> biggest accomplishment was to fool countless people into making
>> exaggerated claims for his hoax.
Gale:
> More than a few scientifically trained persons disagree with your
> assessment. Most have rather more credibility than you have
> demonstrated --- note above.
I note you're giving an argument-from-authority, or anyway
what would be an argument-from-authority if you'd named any
authorities. I also note that you're still dodging my question.
-- Moggin
Gale
<mog...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>Moggin Goldberg <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>
>>> I see you can become hysterical at the idea a
>>> mathematician might be female. I also see that you can't reply
>>> to my question. In case you've forgotten, I asked what was
>>> impressive about hoaxing an unreferred cultural studies journal
>>> with an article about physics and math.
>
>ga...@arwm.net (Gale):
>
>> ... I see you've cut my complaint regarding your ad hominem while
>> leaving a portion of the ad hominem.
>
> False premise, since I never offered an ad hominem -- that
>is, I never tried to pass off criticism of a person as
>criticism of that person's ideas. You may not like what I said
>about your-friend-the-mathematician, but I told you exactly
>where and how your pal's thinking went wrong. Since that seems
>to have gone by you, I'll explain again.
>
> He said -- according to you -- that "Sokal's mock paper is
>not 'about' math and physics, but rather willfully misuses
>terms from math and physics." That's a non sequitur, since the
>conclusion -- "Sokal's mock paper is not about math and
>physics" -- isn't entailed by the premise it "willfully misuses
>terms from math and physics."
No, it is not. The statement is a *description,* not a logical
analysis. There is no *premise*. There is no *conclusion*. There is
a *comparison* of two unlike things: a medical dictionary is not a
medical text; a cow is not a toaster; a piece of nonsense larded with
technical terms is not an account of a scientifically verifiable
study.
Are you misreading the language on purpose?
>
> To put it another way, your-pal-the-mathematician set up a
>false opposition between writing a paper about math and
>physics -- on the one hand -- and willfully misusing terms from
>those disciplines (on the other). Sokal had no problem in
>doing both: writing a paper centered on math and physics which
>misused math and physics terms.
No, he did not. His analysis of the paper allowed him to make the
conclusion to the effect that "the paper is *not* about math and
physics, but is merely a stringing together of terms in a nonsensical
fashion." Nowhere was it stated or implied that the two were
*necessarily* exclusive; the statement was that, in the case in
question, they were *in fact* exclusive.
>
> (I'm assuming they _are_ misused, since I can't make heads
>or tails of them, myself. The question came up once in an
>earlier thread, and the science campers quickly disagreeed with
>each other about what counted as nonsense.)
>
>[...]
>
>> As far as I am concerned, you have *no* credibility.
>
> Nothing to be concerned about, since I never suggested you
>should accept anything I said on the basis of my personal
>authority. Why are you unable to discuss ideas on their merits
>-- or their dismerits, as the case may be?
I didn't claim to be an expert. I did, however, note that you
attempted to set yourself as a higher authority than my friend (noted
above), but that your claim rested significantly on a basic error in
freshman logic and a taste for using ad hominems.
>
> And while I'm asking, how come you've been unable to reply
>to my question above? I asked what was so impressive about
>hoaxing an unrefereed cultural studies rag with a paper focused
>on math and physics. You haven't answered.
Well, editors are supposed to have better sense than to publish
pointless gobbledy-gook. That part is obvious. That the criticism for
doing so should come from outside the field rather than within it (as
we expect when a scientific journal "blows one") appears unpleasantly
significant, as does your evident need to defend the entire field from
the repurcussions of what you insist is a "trivial" hoax.
Mark Gerard Miller
Lucky.
Mark
yapasdequoi
In my first letter, I called to your attention some very
influential philosophers who have decreed that it is RATIONAL to
reason inconsistently. May I now make so bold as to share with you a
not untypical junior professor's take on the Junk Logic craze? In
message news:<9m5qfj$ufh$1...@news6.svr.pol.co.uk>, Jeffrey Ketland
writes:
> >Please provide an example of a truth value glut.
>
> The famous one is the liar sentence, a sentence L which is equivalent to "L
> is false". If L is true, then it's false. If it's false, then it's true.
>
> the inference rules: this is called "explosive". Paraconsistency occurs when
> T contains at least one contradiction (say, A&~A), but it is not explosive.
> Popular in Brazil (Newton da Costa), Australia (Graham Priest) and a few
> other places, mostly computer science and philosophy departments.
>
In other words, Newton da Costa, Graham Priest, and Mark Sainsbury
(all of whom are as influential in their fields as Judith Butler is in
hers) pop for irrationalism--and so does lad Jeffrey. (A new hire in
philosophy at the University of Nottingham, Jeffrey is pleased to
acquaint his students with out-of-the-box thinking in epistemology and
logic.)
Ô noble Warriors of Science! Is it only in literature departments that
irrationalists hold forth from bully pulpits?
Cordially,
Spartacus
DMB
concerned, but you can rest assured that I'll NOT be drinking even the
freshest of urine, no matter where it comes from.
I've been reading your posts in this thread and quite agree with you
and Noam. Semiotics is not worth the effort it would take. I looked
into it just enough to find out that its an ugly dead end. Some kind
of Nihilism.
DMB
"Mark Gerard Miller" <mg...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:<e7ii7.21938$zk4.1...@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>...
Moggin Goldberg
[re Gales' pet mathematician]:
>> He said -- according to you -- that "Sokal's mock paper is
>> not 'about' math and physics, but rather willfully misuses
>> terms from math and physics." That's a non sequitur, since the
>> conclusion -- "Sokal's mock paper is not about math and
>> physics" -- isn't entailed by the premise it "willfully misuses
>> terms from math and physics."
ga...@arwm.net (Gale):
> No, it is not. The statement is a *description,* not a logical
> analysis. There is no *premise*. There is no *conclusion*.
According to you, your friend was offering an analysis and
_did_ reach a conclusion. Here's what you said: "His
analysis of the paper allowed him to make the conclusion to the
effect that 'the paper is _not_ about math and physics...'"
There you are: you stated in so many words that he's giving an
analysis and reaching a conclusion, directly contradicting
your claim that he's not making a logical analysis and there is
no conclusion.
But let's say you're right: your pal _didn't_ analyze the
article and he _didn't_ reach any conclusions about it. In
that case you're wrong to sau his analysis allowed him to reach
the conclusion that the paper isn't about math and physics.
He couldn't possibly have done so, since you've firmly asserted
that "there is no conclusion." You've misrepresented
your-friend-the-mathematician, which is hardly a friendly thing
to do.
> There is
> a *comparison* of two unlike things: a medical dictionary is not a
> medical text; a cow is not a toaster; a piece of nonsense larded with
> technical terms is not an account of a scientifically verifiable
> study.
[...]
Strawman. I never contended Sokal's paper was "an account
of a scientifically verifiable study." I pointed out that
Sokal hoaxed an unrefereed cultural studies rag with an article
focused on math and physics, and I asked what was so
impressive about that achievement. You've been trying to dodge
my question ever since.
-- Moggin
Jeffrey Ketland
>"Jeffrey Ketland" <ket...@ketland.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:9mbmvd$g2n$1...@news6.svr.pol.co.uk...
>> Mark Gerard Miller wrote in message ...
>>
>> >Tenderfoot is the first rank in Boy Scouts.
>>
>> Ahh - the Girl Guides, me.
>>
>> -- Jeff
>
>Lucky.
Not for badly drawn boys.
; )
- Jeff
>
>
>
>
Gale
<mog...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>Moggin Goldberg <mog...@mediaone.net:
>
>[re Gales' pet mathematician]:
>
>>> He said -- according to you -- that "Sokal's mock paper is
>>> not 'about' math and physics, but rather willfully misuses
>>> terms from math and physics." That's a non sequitur, since the
>>> conclusion -- "Sokal's mock paper is not about math and
>>> physics" -- isn't entailed by the premise it "willfully misuses
>>> terms from math and physics."
>
>ga...@arwm.net (Gale):
>
>> No, it is not. The statement is a *description,* not a logical
>> analysis. There is no *premise*. There is no *conclusion*.
>
> According to you, your friend was offering an analysis and
>_did_ reach a conclusion.
Correct. He summarized his analysis. I *described* his conclusion.
Therefore, my words most certainly did not contain "premise"
"analysis" or "conclusion." My words were a brief summary of *a*
conclusion (and a statement of a conclusion is not the same thing as
"conclusion" within the context of logical structure).
>
>Here's what you said: "His
>analysis of the paper allowed him to make the conclusion to the
>effect that 'the paper is _not_ about math and physics...'"
>There you are: you stated in so many words that he's giving an
>analysis and reaching a conclusion, directly contradicting
>your claim that he's not making a logical analysis and there is
>no conclusion.
No, I did not say that he was not making an analysis. I said I was
*reporting* his conclusion, *not* his logical analysis. My statement,
by the way, can only be misinterpreted by a willful effort on your
part --- adolescent sophistry. Unless your goal is to prove that
post-modernists do not understand the English language while the rest
of us do, I have no idea what your point is. I will admit I have seen
examples of willful misunderstanding in the place of analysis in
Foucault (the Chinese categories example he seemed to be fond of), and
will also note said examples convinced me that he must surely have
nothing serious to say --- such antics do not enhance one's
credibility (as I have reminded you several times).
>
> But let's say you're right: your pal _didn't_ analyze the
>article and he _didn't_ reach any conclusions about it.
I did not say that.
> In
>that case you're wrong to sau his analysis allowed him to reach
>the conclusion that the paper isn't about math and physics.
>He couldn't possibly have done so, since you've firmly asserted
>that "there is no conclusion." You've misrepresented
>your-friend-the-mathematician, which is hardly a friendly thing
>to do.
You are engaging in sophistry, adolescent games and foolishness ---
such studied illogic went out of fashion thousands of years ago.
<PLONK>
Mark Gerard Miller
> mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
I repeat:
> > Duly noted that you snipped the bulk of my last message because you
> > know that there is no answer for the fact that the nation's
> > universities have been taken over by freaks, pissers and sociologists
> > who can't write well enough to make clear their faulty, erroneous,
> > wrongminded theses. ...
No, my point was not nonsense. Read it again. Your insults only show
how weak your position is.
> > ... and you did not address it as you have failed to address any
> > of the larger points I've made in this thread about the radical left
> > pissers and freaks running the asylum.
>
> You haven't made any larger points -- only pointless rants.
> Not that I'm objecting. You're free to rant and rave about
> anything you'd like. But what makes you think that demands any
> response from me?
Then why respond at all? It makes you look like a dumbass.
> > It's as if humanities
> > departments have replaced Socrates with the Marquis de Sade minus
> > the wit and even rudimentary writing skills. ...
>
> Socrates wasn't even in the academy, let alone running the
> show. Plato, the advisor-to-tyrants, established an
> educational institution. Socrates was merely a marketplace fly
> who got swatted out.
I don't see how this has anything whatsoever to do with what I wrote.
I wasn't writing about the academy, I was writing about post-modern
universities.
Mark
Moggin Goldberg
>> Your point was nonsense. You were parroting something you
>> read in a magazine -- but even simple parroting was beyond
>> your abilities, since you turned a criticism aimed at Sokal and
>> Bricmont into their own supposed criticism of "modern
>> intellectuals." Sokal and Bricmont didn't ask "why science and
>> math...would be employed to understand the human psyche" --
>> the _Salon_ writer, Zarlengo, is asking why anyone who wants to
>> understand the psyche would follow Sokal.
mark_g...@hotmail.com (Mark Gerard Miller):
> No, my point was not nonsense. Read it again.
O.k., I read it again. My reply stands. If you can think
of a more substantial answer than "Read it again," I'll be
glad to hear from you. No, pasting in one of Tom Wolfe's rants
won't do the job.
> Your insults only show how weak your position is.
More crappy reasoning. Only of I'd offered _only_ insults
would you have a point. But either way Chomksy must have a
weak position, since he tosses plenty of insults in the remarks
you quoted from before.
Mark:
>>> It's as if humanities
>>> departments have replaced Socrates with the Marquis de Sade minus
>>> the wit and even rudimentary writing skills. ...
Moggin:
>> Socrates wasn't even in the academy, let alone running the
>> show. Plato, the advisor-to-tyrants, established an
>> educational institution. Socrates was merely a marketplace fly
>> who got swatted out.
Mark:
> I don't see how this has anything whatsoever to do with what I wrote.
> I wasn't writing about the academy, I was writing about post-modern
> universities.
Universities _are_ the academy. Aincha ever heard of "the
groves of acadame"? You talked as tho Socrates had been
running the academy, then got evicted by de Sade. But Socrates
never held that position. Again, he was a marketplace fly
who got hit with a can of Raid. The fella with an acaademy was
Plato, friend of tyrants.
-- Moggin
Moggin Goldberg
>> ... A piece of nonsense larded with
>> technical terms is not an account of a scientifically verifiable
>> study.
Moggin Goldberg <mog...@mediaone.net:
> Strawman. I never contended Sokal's paper was "an account
> of a scientifically verifiable study." I pointed out that
> Sokal hoaxed an unrefereed cultural studies rag with an article
> focused on math and physics, and I asked what was so
> impressive about that achievement. You've been trying to dodge
> my question ever since.
Gale:
[ No reply ]
I think it's safe to conclude that Gale can't offer of any
good reason to be impressed by Sokal's hoax.
-- Moggin
Mark Gerard Miller
and note the name of the plant in question.
Mark
dbuc...@classicalradio.org (DMB) wrote in message news:<6264b1de.01081...@posting.google.com>...
> J.A.Chokey: I suspect you won't find too much inspiration from a
> postmodernist approach to mythology. Maybe its just my own ignorance,
> maybe its just that I don't know of any such thing. But if I may be
> allowed to offer an opinion in broad sweeping terms, which means its
> only kind of true... I think that semiotics and such would be
> fundamentally hostile to mythology. It would be like asking a brain
> surgeon about demon possession; she's not likely to take it seriously
> or if she did it would be an explaination that explains it away. (Not
> that I believe in demons in any literal sense.) Postmodernism tends to
> be dismissive and condescending toward such things. It sort of
> represents the extention and culmination of logical positivism,
> whereas mythology is a kind of extension of the romantic world view.
> I'd bet that there are some really great thinkers who can bridge the
> gap, but that gap is pretty wide.
>
> I'm reading a book that might offer some answers about everything you
> mentioned, except the semiotic aspect. It discusses the connections
> and differences between the Freudian, Rankian and Jungian views of
> myth and the unconscious, among many other interesting things. The
> book is Huston Smith's "CLEANSING THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION; The
> Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals". If I may
> impersonate a hippie for a moment, it'll blow your mind, man.
>
> DMB
Mark Gerard Miller
> Are there any particularly notable postmodern studies of "myth"
> as a general category? By whom? And what do they have to say?
> Or is "myth" a subject that hasn't generally been explored on a
> general level by postmodernists? If so, is this just an
> accident, or is there something about mythology as a subject
> matter that has tended to discourage a postmodern treatment
> of it?
There is a Web site devoted to myth in contemporary art, though I
don't suppose it qualifies as post-moderninst or post-structuralist
(whatever they are).
http://www.endicott-studio.com/
From the home page:
"The Endicott Studio was founded by Terri Windling in 1987 to promote
Mythic Arts (contemporary art and literature rooted in folklore and
myth), which are part of the broader movement of Interstitial Arts
(literary, visual, and performance arts that blur or abolish the
boundaries drawn between genres and art disciplines). First
established in Boston, Massachusetts and New York City, the studio is
now based in Tucson, Arizona and Devon, England."
Hope this helps.
Mark
Mark Gerard Miller
> Are there any particularly notable postmodern studies of "myth"
> as a general category? By whom? And what do they have to say?
> Or is "myth" a subject that hasn't generally been explored on a
> general level by postmodernists? If so, is this just an
> accident, or is there something about mythology as a subject
> matter that has tended to discourage a postmodern treatment
> of it?
Hi Jim. I came across a post-modern take on one myth figure in my
reading today. It is in "The Trickster: Tranformation Archetype," a
dissertation by Suzanne Evertsen Lundquist, Mellen Research University
Press, 1991. Chapter V is titled "Trickster and Jung In a Postmodern
Society." Excerpt:
Folklorist Roger "Abrahams, in trying to get the [conference] audience
to see the weaknesses in the archetypal approach, asked, 'What do you
really have when you say that some character is a Trickster figure?'
Abrahams's question reflects the concerns of other Postmodern
thinkers. For example, in a Postmodern, Post-structural,
Post-metaphysical, Post-Jungian culture, Campbell's 'mono-myth' and
Jung's 'archetypes' are criticized on the grounds that both men's
theories are 'reductive' in nature; that is, when one attempts to
totalize the universe, what happens, ironically, is that differences
collapse. The Other is reduce to the Same. When, for example, Luke
Skywalker, Buddha, and Jesus Christ are recognized as having taken a
hero's journey, something about Campbell's Hero with a thousand faces
seems flawed, distorted.
...
"Postmodernisn, as a movement in philosophy, literary theory, and
cultural anthropology, is a movement away from reductionist thinking
towards the belief that what exists are multiple descriptions,
multiple narratives of human experience. Clifford Geertz describes the
heart of the issue as the 'unity and diversity theme.'"
I got the dissertation through my library's inter-library loan
program. I hope this helps.
Mark