Thoughts on modernism, modernity, and Eliot
James Owens
for a highly rational approach to problems, together with an impatience
for traditional authority, intuition, unnecessary ornament, in short
anything for which there is no rational purpose; this being buttressed by
references to twentieth-century architecture and philosophy especially,
and perhaps music. But against this, the example of the decidedly
modernist T.S. Eliot has been invoked: Eliot, whose rich allusions suggest
a deep respect for literary tradition, and whose portraits of his time are
decidely critical of hollow rationalism. Other literary figures, such as
Joyce or Yeats, might also be invoked.
To resolve this apparent contradiction, Moggin suggests that we draw a
distinction between modernism and modernity. The latter, he argues, is the
proper name for the fascination with rational solutions, while the former
is, well, something else -- I'm not quite sure what. Perhaps it is the
human reaction to this mood. That reaction might be favourable, as with
much architecture, or unfavourable, as with literature.
The problem is that in architecture we describe the unfavourable reaction
as "post-modernism," but in literature it is not that simple. T.S. Eliot
obviously had much use for the irrational. Does this mean he is actually
a post-modern figure who has been improperly characterized? I, for one,
don't want to rush to that conclusion! To me his poetry _feels_ modern;
that is, it has a place within the heady excitement, the sense of
boundless possibility, presented by the twentieth-century modernist
movement. TO get a better hold on this, it might help to compar true
post-modernist literature. I think of Thomas Pynchon, Tim Robbins, Douglas
Coupland, Tom Wolfe -- but this is not my area and I would gratefully
accept comments.
Without going into literary theory, then, I'd like to suggest another way
of characterizing both modernism and post-modernism. I don't feel
comfortable with the idea that modernity and modernism are easily
separable things; surely they are intimately related. But I also agree
with Moggin that post-modernism is not the opposite of modernism.
What I have in mind is the modern fascination with itself as a historical
period. This reflexive, inward-looking awareness does not seem to be
significant for the Enlightenment or Romanticism, to take two random
examples. For these periods, energy was focussed on the emerging beliefs
or ways themselves. There was no acute historical consciousness of their
comparative relevance or overall significance within history.
Obviously Hegel had an important part in changing this, and commentary
turned toward society and belief itself as significant objects of
contemplation. Kierkegaard, for example, began discussing "the modern
age." The very term "modernity" is an indication that all of modernism and
post-modernism are expressions of a self-conscious interest in the
progress of thought. For modernism, it remained sincere, deep, committed,
sure of its own value; even among the literary figures a tone of serious
engagement prevailed. The rise of post-modernism, however, suggests a
profound disillusionment, to the point where all seriousness is subsumed
to the loss of value. Eliot was an earnest critic of modernity, yet
engaged within modernity by the very seriousness of his reflections on the
modern age. For post-modernism, earnestness has become a comical posture;
the cognoscenti are left only with irony.
--
James Owens ad...@Freenet.carleton.ca
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
James Owens
> . . . Kierkegaard, for example, began discussing "the modern age."
Exactly one coffee later I remember that it was "the present age" (as
translated.)
James Whitehead
<ad...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> writes
however one has to be careful of how artists react to the previous epoch
and their own - for one they need(ed) to gain a new territory - a few
may be critical - but more wished to synthersise something new from
older art forms. Though Eliot may have had misgivings about the products
of industrialisation - perhaps the rise of the uncultured masses? did he
also criticise the previous literary cannon - i don't think so. (I seem
to remember either himself of Joyce writing positively about Dickens!)
This is I think where Moggin fails to see what was going on. That is
that artists might not like certain aspects of society around them - but
related their work to a *modernist* tradition - that of a search for
new/better/more real forms of expression. This they could relate back to
the renaissance. (and again i think Eliot saw himself as part of this
tradition of modernist literature from the classical world ...
Shakespeare onwards...) The engagement of modernism within actual
social issues is *less* than previous periods as it developed along very
formal and abstract lines -(contrast this to the pre-Raphaelite
movement) - though these were seen by apologists of modernism as
socially relevant - e.g. the house as a machine for living in. Typically
we see a return to representational works in post-modern art - if it can
anymore be called art.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
The Waste Land (1922) and The Four Quartets (1943). Eliot exercised a
strong influence on Anglo-American culture from the 1920s until late in
the century. His *experiments* in diction, style, and versification
revitalized English poetry, and in a series of critical essays he
*shattered old orthodoxies and erected new ones*.
The Sacred Wood (1920), Eliot asserts that tradition, as used by the
poet, is not a mere repetition of the work of the immediate past
*("novelty is better than repetition," he said)*; rather, it comprises
the *whole of European literature from Homer to the present*.
This point of view is "programmatic" in the sense that it disposes the
reader to accept the *revolutionary novelty* of Eliot's polyglot
quotations and serious parodies of other poets' styles in The Waste
Land.
Also in The Sacred Wood, "Hamlet and His Problems" sets forth Eliot's
theory of the *objective* correlative:
The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an
*"objective correlative"*; in other words, a set of objects, a
situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that
particular emotion; such that, when the external facts, which must
terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately
evoked.
Eliot used the phrase "objective correlative" in the context of his own
*impersonal theory of poetry*; it thus had an immense influence toward
correcting the vagueness of late Victorian rhetoric by insisting on a
correspondence of word and object. Two other essays, first published the
year after The Sacred Wood, almost complete the Eliot critical canon:
"The Metaphysical Poets" and "Andrew Marvell," published in Selected
Essays, 1917-32 (1932). In these essays he effects a new historical
perspective on the *hierarchy of English poetry*
Thoughts After Lambeth (1931), The Idea of a Christian Society (1939),
and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948). These book-essays,
along with his Dante (1929), an indubitable masterpiece, broadened the
base of literature into theology and philosophy: whether a work is
poetry must be decided by literary standards; whether it is great poetry
must be decided by standards **higher** than the literary.
--
James Whitehead
Giles
> The theory has been suggested that modernism involves an enthusiasm
> for a highly rational approach to problems, together with an impatience
> for traditional authority, intuition, unnecessary ornament, in short
> anything for which there is no rational purpose; this being buttressed by
> references to twentieth-century architecture and philosophy especially,
> and perhaps music.
I'm not sure that even architecture and philosophy can be straightforwardly
used to buttress a rationalist model of modernism, and I'm fairly sure that
music can't, with some exceptions.
In architecture, for example: Adolf Loos attacked ornament in architecture
on moral grounds, not rationalist or utilitarian (Ornament as Crime). Bruno
Taut's glass architecture and Alpine cities were hardly rationalist. De
Stijl architecture was often based upon a concept of the universal as a
harmony of tensions which paid little heed to the practical or rational
organisation of life. (Has anyone sat in Rietveld's red, yellow and blue
chair? Comfort doesn't enter in to it). Russian constructivism operated on a
model of _expressing_ social use as well as organising social function,
aesthetics and organisation linked together, not sacrificed to 'problem
solving'. Bauhaus architecture, before the arrival of Meyer in 1928, was
understood as having a moral and spiritual function, not simpy being
rational problem solving. In any case, are we to count Art Nouveau as
modernist? (I've just got back from Barcelona and a distinctly uncomfortable
experience in the Sagrada Familia, so this is fresh in my mind). Post WWII
modernist architecture did follow a more ostensibly rationalist Corbusian
line, true enough, but then even Le Corbusier was not the arch rationalist
he is often made out to be.
In philosophy, well, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what you might mean
by modernist philosophy. Surely not just philososphy from the modern period?
If not then what is the qualifier? But if there is such a thing, and bits of
it are supposedly rationalist on the lines suggested above, then many and
varied counter examples exist: Nietszche, Heidegger, large swathes of
Lebensphilosophie, Benjamin, Bloch, Adorno, Bataille, Blanchot, Cioran and
so on. Many of these could certainly be called modernist, not only in their
engagement with modernity, but in their interest in and use of modernist
aesthetic means as a philosophical means. I'd be tempted to argue that the
only modernist philosophers, if they exist, were the ones who did that. All
of those who did were critics of modernity.
Music? Well, there you have lost me. The only possible example I can think
that you might mean is Serialism. But even there, for many if not all, the
point was that the serial row was a self imposed restraint - the only way
that the compositional process could avoid sterile formalism and facile
preprogrammed answers. For many the only way music could maintain a hint of
the possibility of expression, rather than become a mechanics of
sentimentality, was by surrendering composition to an abstract and very
tight regimen. Composition thus comes through the struggle with order, not
the straightforward deployment of rational construction.
> But against this, the example of the decidedly
> modernist T.S. Eliot has been invoked: Eliot, whose rich allusions suggest
> a deep respect for literary tradition, and whose portraits of his time are
> decidely critical of hollow rationalism. Other literary figures, such as
> Joyce or Yeats, might also be invoked.
And many, many others.
> To resolve this apparent contradiction, Moggin suggests that we draw a
> distinction between modernism and modernity. The latter, he argues, is the
> proper name for the fascination with rational solutions, while the former
> is, well, something else -- I'm not quite sure what. Perhaps it is the
> human reaction to this mood. That reaction might be favourable, as with
> much architecture, or unfavourable, as with literature.
No, Moggin has been quite clear in the past. Modernism is often, even
mostly, a rebellion against modernity. I'm with him on this.
> The problem is that in architecture we describe the unfavourable reaction
> as "post-modernism,"
Now, perhaps, some do. But it has had many other names in the past century
alone. Rappell a l'ordre, Neo-classicism, the attack on 'Entarte Kunst',
Volkisch Kunst, Surrealism, vernacular, etc. etc.. Clearly, these name many
different things; some are 'traditionalist', some modernist, some fascist
and some, if we include Sant' Elia, both. If you want to describe the
'unfavorable reaction' to modernity in architecture as 'post-modernist' per
se, that is up to you, but you are going to have to cover a lot of ground.
> but in literature it is not that simple. T.S. Eliot
> obviously had much use for the irrational. Does this mean he is actually
> a post-modern figure who has been improperly characterized? I, for one,
> don't want to rush to that conclusion! To me his poetry _feels_ modern;
> that is, it has a place within the heady excitement, the sense of
> boundless possibility, presented by the twentieth-century modernist
> movement.
Really? A curious reading, it seems to me. Perhaps you could indicate what
it is in Eliot's poetry that gives you a sense of heady excitement and
boundless possibility. This would also be a curious account of much
modernism, which is often, not always, not so much about boundless
possibility than it is about and from doubt, desperation and despair. Why
are irony and ambiguity key modernist tropes?
> TO get a better hold on this, it might help to compar true
> post-modernist literature. I think of Thomas Pynchon, Tim Robbins, Douglas
> Coupland, Tom Wolfe -- but this is not my area and I would gratefully
> accept comments.
>
> Without going into literary theory, then, I'd like to suggest another way
> of characterizing both modernism and post-modernism. I don't feel
> comfortable with the idea that modernity and modernism are easily
> separable things; surely they are intimately related.
Of course. But how could you have a rebellion against modernity without
modernity? How could you have an authentic rebellion which was not
fundamentally shaped by that which it rejected?
> But I also agree
> with Moggin that post-modernism is not the opposite of modernism.
>
> What I have in mind is the modern fascination with itself as a historical
> period. This reflexive, inward-looking awareness does not seem to be
> significant for the Enlightenment or Romanticism, to take two random
> examples.
Really? No, really? Just whom are you thinking about? Just such a reflexive
awareness seems to define the Enlightenment and Romanticism to me. And
other periods as well.
> For these periods, energy was focussed on the emerging beliefs
> or ways themselves. There was no acute historical consciousness of their
> comparative relevance or overall significance within history.
I disagree strongly. What about 'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive', or
Schiller, or Schlegel, or Holderlin's fled Gods? There is an acute sense of
place and historical importance in both the Enlightenment and Romanticism.
For a sense of how daft your claim is, you have just argued that the
participants in French or American revolutions were not aware of their
comparative importance and historical significance. The evidence contradicts
you.
> Obviously Hegel had an important part in changing this, and commentary
> turned toward society and belief itself as significant objects of
> contemplation.
To be blunt, no. Hegel mounted an argument about both philosophy and
history. The argument was about what that time meant and it's relation to
past and future, not whether the time was historically significant or not.
All involved in the debate accepted that it was.
> Kierkegaard, for example, began discussing "the modern
> age."
You have corrected yourself in another post. But doesn't the emphasis on
'the present age' (not past or future or the relations between the three)
strike you as a little ermm postmodern?
> The very term "modernity" is an indication that all of modernism and
> post-modernism are expressions of a self-conscious interest in the
> progress of thought. For modernism, it remained sincere, deep, committed,
> sure of its own value; even among the literary figures a tone of serious
> engagement prevailed.
Seriousness - often but not always. Sure of its own value? Hardly. Swinging
wildly between utopian dream and utter doubt/rejection, maybe.
> The rise of post-modernism, however, suggests a
> profound disillusionment, to the point where all seriousness is subsumed
> to the loss of value. Eliot was an earnest critic of modernity, yet
> engaged within modernity by the very seriousness of his reflections on the
> modern age. For post-modernism, earnestness has become a comical posture;
> the cognoscenti are left only with irony.
Irony is a very old trope. Irony was absolutely central to German
Romanticism and much modernism. The trouble is, few know what irony is
anymore, confusing it with an easy cynicism.
Ob song Alanis Morrisette. 'Isn't it Ironic' (the 'No, it isn't' remix).
> --
>
> James Owens
Regards
Giles
Giles
[snip of James Owens' post]
> I think much of what you say above is very enlightening - I do feel
> however one has to be careful of how artists react to the previous epoch
> and their own - for one they need(ed) to gain a new territory - a few
> may be critical - but more wished to synthersise something new from
> older art forms. Though Eliot may have had misgivings about the products
> of industrialisation - perhaps the rise of the uncultured masses? did he
> also criticise the previous literary cannon - i don't think so.
Yes, James, he did, and virulently. See your other post. Eliot attempted to
more or less completely reconstruct the canon as it then existed. And he did
it in the name of... not progress, but that of a constant value against the
fads, fashions and, above all, idea of progress in modernity. For him,
tradition was something to try to rise to, not improve upon.
> (I seem
> to remember either himself of Joyce writing positively about Dickens!)
> This is I think where Moggin fails to see what was going on. That is
> that artists might not like certain aspects of society around them - but
> related their work to a *modernist* tradition - that of a search for
> new/better/more real forms of expression. This they could relate back to
> the renaissance. (and again i think Eliot saw himself as part of this
> tradition of modernist literature from the classical world ...
> Shakespeare onwards...)
Nope, not 'onwards'. There is no constancy, no continuation or lineage in
Eliot's canon. His 'tradition' is discontinuous and involves no development
or progression. He looks back and attempts to rise to the standards of
expression achieved by an intermittent few in the past. Sorry. (Oh and how
is Shakespeare modernist?)
> The engagement of modernism within actual
> social issues is *less* than previous periods as it developed along very
> formal and abstract lines -(contrast this to the pre-Raphaelite
> movement) - though these were seen by apologists of modernism as
> socially relevant - e.g. the house as a machine for living in. Typically
> we see a return to representational works in post-modern art - if it can
> anymore be called art.
This is a digression from the case at hand, but form is in no way separate
from 'social issues'. Booklist moment - Adorno: 'On Commitment' in Notes to
Literature, or all of 'Aesthetic Theory'.
Regards
Giles
Giles
I am presuming that this is an extended quote from somewhere. If so, then an
argument from an unnamed authority. How convincing. Now let's look at what
is said.
> Eliot : -a leader of the *modernist* movement in poetry in such works as
> The Waste Land (1922) and The Four Quartets (1943). Eliot exercised a
> strong influence on Anglo-American culture from the 1920s until late in
> the century. His *experiments* in diction, style, and versification
> revitalized English poetry, and in a series of critical essays he
> *shattered old orthodoxies and erected new ones*.
Yep. He celebrated certain moments of the past that were generally
disparaged at the time, and attacked other celebrated ones; Milton for
instance. So?
> The Sacred Wood (1920), Eliot asserts that tradition, as used by the
> poet, is not a mere repetition of the work of the immediate past
> *("novelty is better than repetition," he said)*; rather, it comprises
> the *whole of European literature from Homer to the present*.
Now, if you can find a place where Eliot claims that his poetry is in any
way better than those in the canonical tradition that he erects (which is
not that of the immediate past, by the way), you might have an argument. But
you won't find such a place. For Eliot, it was a matter of attempting to
maintain the quality of that tradition. That could not be achieved by
repeating it's forms, at least partly because of the corrosive effects of
modernity.
> This point of view is "programmatic" in the sense that it disposes the
> reader to accept the *revolutionary novelty* of Eliot's polyglot
> quotations and serious parodies of other poets' styles in The Waste
> Land.
So apparently he is claiming a constant or eternal value for good work,
towards which his work aspires. Does he claim that his work is an
improvement on or development of the works of the tradition that he admires?
Ermm. No.
>
> Also in The Sacred Wood, "Hamlet and His Problems" sets forth Eliot's
> theory of the *objective* correlative:
>
> The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an
> *"objective correlative"*; in other words, a set of objects, a
> situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that
> particular emotion; such that, when the external facts, which must
> terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately
> evoked.
A thoroughly english Romantic view, with a long tradition. So?
> Eliot used the phrase "objective correlative" in the context of his own
> *impersonal theory of poetry*; it thus had an immense influence toward
> correcting the vagueness of late Victorian rhetoric by insisting on a
> correspondence of word and object. Two other essays, first published the
> year after The Sacred Wood, almost complete the Eliot critical canon:
> "The Metaphysical Poets" and "Andrew Marvell," published in Selected
> Essays, 1917-32 (1932). In these essays he effects a new historical
> perspective on the *hierarchy of English poetry*
Exactly. In many ways, Eliot sought a return (not as repetition), not a
progression.
> Thoughts After Lambeth (1931), The Idea of a Christian Society (1939),
> and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948). These book-essays,
> along with his Dante (1929), an indubitable masterpiece, broadened the
> base of literature into theology and philosophy: whether a work is
> poetry must be decided by literary standards; whether it is great poetry
> must be decided by standards **higher** than the literary.
This is later Eliot (and it corresponds to his crapper poetry, in my humble
view). But still, hardly an innovative view. Try Romanticism again.
Nothing in this even indicates Eliot as a progressive or developmental
modernist, indeed quite the reverse. Rather than building on his immediate
past, he rejects it for a discontinuous tradition. That tradition, for him,
is not something that can be improved upon and, as the last passage
suggests, can only be judged by eternity.
Regards
Giles
James Owens
> In architecture, for example: Adolf Loos attacked ornament in architecture
> on moral grounds, not rationalist or utilitarian (Ornament as Crime). Bruno
> Taut's glass architecture and Alpine cities were hardly rationalist. De
> Stijl architecture was often based upon a concept of the universal as a
> harmony of tensions which paid little heed to the practical or rational
> organisation of life. (Has anyone sat in Rietveld's red, yellow and blue
> chair? Comfort doesn't enter in to it). . .
As a relative illiterate, struggling to make sense of the terms
"modernist" and post-modernist," I am fortunate to have the benefit of
your insights. I have a layman's brief and inadequate understanding,
gleaned mostly from museum exhibits and coffee-table books, on the basis
of which I am able to form tentative theories based on superficial
similarities. Like my ideas about nuclear physics or modern genetics, my
rudimentary theories of modernism and post-modernism are assuredly in need
of guidance.
It is my hope that these terms have some meaning which may be conveyed,
however roughly, without benefit of intense study of the architecture,
philosophy, music, literature, visual arts, and dance of the modern
period. The suggestion that even a basic understanding must necessarily
remain exclusive to a highly schooled elite, is offensive to me. I do not
thereby declare that impossible; nevertheless I hope that, as a physicist
might popularize relativity, someone can clarify modernism and
post-modernism for a layman like me. It is only a question of finding
someone whose sophistication is such as to explain them with simplicity
and brevity. I need hardly add that, if they do turn out to be accessible
only to an inner circle, they open themselves to the sort of political
analysis which may be directed at any form of gnosticism.
Based on the tone of your remarks, I am willing to accept that my first
attempt at a definition is inadequate. Regarding their content, the
situation is more complicated, for I cannot assess content without doing a
lot of independent research. This means that our exchange will be rather
slow. But, inclined though I am to give your authority the benefit of the
doubt, I find your first claim to be less definitive than I would have
hoped. "Adolf Loos attacked ornament in architecture on moral grounds" --
but this does not imply "not rationalist or utilitarian." Having just
read the essay -- it is shocking, in places, to today's sensibility -- I
am convinced of the rationalist nature of his moral critique. Ornament is
immoral precisely because it is a primitive vanity, from which escape is a
sign or concomitant of progress. Ornament is "what every Negro can do."
Moreover, ornament is inefficient; it is "wasted capital."
Taut, Stijl, Rietvied, le Corbusier -- we are obliged to examine each one
in turn, to decide for ourselves the accuracy of your claims. But to what
extent is Taut's Utopian glass architecture a rebellion against
rationality, as your own thesis has it? It reflects, perhaps, defiance
toward practical limitation, but that is not the same thing. The
limitations imposed by physical media and even human requirements can be
read as a form of "traditional authority," with which I have suggested
modernism is impatient. Likewise, conceptually elegant but uncomfortable
chairs -- of which, I am sure, not only Rietveld was guilty -- represent
the triumph of the pure idea over the mundane considerations which
hitherto limited progress. Why else would anyone design an uncomfortable
chair, but in a misplaced enthusiasm for some abstract principle? That is
what I mean by an excessive veneration of rationality.
>
> In philosophy, well, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what you might mean
> by modernist philosophy. Surely not just philososphy from the modern period?
> If not then what is the qualifier? But if there is such a thing, and bits of
> it are supposedly rationalist on the lines suggested above, then many and
> varied counter examples exist: Nietszche, Heidegger, large swathes of
> Lebensphilosophie, Benjamin, Bloch, Adorno, Bataille, Blanchot, Cioran and
> so on. Many of these could certainly be called modernist, not only in their
> engagement with modernity, but in their interest in and use of modernist
> aesthetic means as a philosophical means. I'd be tempted to argue that the
> only modernist philosophers, if they exist, were the ones who did that. All
> of those who did were critics of modernity.
To the extent that modernism is an art movement, it doesn't make much
sense to speak of "modernist philosophy." But if modernism or
post-modernism are world-views they will surely have philosophical
correspondents. What were the major currents of philosophy in the modern
period? There were two, basically: analytic philosophy and
existentialism. I have already given my opinion of analytic philosophy as
impatient with metaphysics and dedicated to a rationalism modelled
explicity on the scientific method. Existentialism, I would argue at
embarrassing length, promoted a more convoluted rationalism, extending the
conscious rational ego into the basis of all metaphysics; this even in its
religious manifestations. It is actually a direct continuation of the
Cartesian "crisi of parturition," which also has to do with
disenchantment. Et cetera.
> Music? Well, there you have lost me. The only possible example I can think
> that you might mean is Serialism. But even there, for many if not all, the
> point was that the serial row was a self imposed restraint - the only way
> that the compositional process could avoid sterile formalism and facile
> preprogrammed answers. For many the only way music could maintain a hint of
> the possibility of expression, rather than become a mechanics of
> sentimentality, was by surrendering composition to an abstract and very
> tight regimen. Composition thus comes through the struggle with order, not
> the straightforward deployment of rational construction.
I am thinking of serialist music, of course. Schoenberg's system is an
unquestionably rational concoction, a planned ideal with no respect
whatever for traditional methods or roles. To say anything else of it is
merely to save an argument, although what you do say mostly reinforces the
idea that it is rationally conceived first and foremeost. The form of the
fugue, so far as I know, was never justified by its practitioners in such
esoteric terms. Other modern composers, like Varese or Stockhausen, became
interested in music from a mechanical point of view. This is not to say
that modern music completely denies the possibility of sensual pleasure; a
piece by Stravinsky or by Xenakis can be very enjoyable if approached
without expectations. It is to argue, though, that the conscious,
rationally controlled application of technique achieves decided
predominance over content in the modern period. The tension between the
two was certainly present for Bach and for Beethoven, but never did the
need to "push the envelope" of technique win so decisively over emotional
expression.
> . . . Perhaps you could indicate what
> it is in Eliot's poetry that gives you a sense of heady excitement and
> boundless possibility. This would also be a curious account of much
> modernism, which is often, not always, not so much about boundless
> possibility than it is about and from doubt, desperation and despair. Why
> are irony and ambiguity key modernist tropes?
Eliot's poetry itself is far too depressing to convey a sense of "heady
excitement and boundless possibility," but I said that it _has a place_
within that aspect of modernism. Having conceded clearly enough his
criticism of the modern era, I note that he nevertheless belongs within it
as a committed participant. I mean that he is not outside the modernist
tradition, but partakes of its urgent reassessment of the human world with
equivalent urgency. He is of the era. But I wasn't very clear, it's true.
>> What I have in mind is the modern fascination with itself as a historical
>> period. This reflexive, inward-looking awareness does not seem to be
>> significant for the Enlightenment or Romanticism, to take two random
>> examples.
>
> Really? No, really? Just whom are you thinking about? Just such a reflexive
> awareness seems to define the Enlightenment and Romanticism to me. And
> other periods as well.
>
>> For these periods, energy was focussed on the emerging beliefs
>> or ways themselves. There was no acute historical consciousness of their
>> comparative relevance or overall significance within history.
>
> I disagree strongly. What about 'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive', or
> Schiller, or Schlegel, or Holderlin's fled Gods? There is an acute sense of
> place and historical importance in both the Enlightenment and Romanticism.
> For a sense of how daft your claim is, you have just argued that the
> participants in French or American revolutions were not aware of their
> comparative importance and historical significance. The evidence contradicts
> you.
When I say that other historical periods were not as reflective, I do not
mean that they were completely unaware of themselves or their intellectual
antecedents. Obviously they were. Unlike the moderns, though, they did
not spend a lot of time analyzing their own permutations. They simply
_made_ progress, as they saw it, rather than conceiving a need for
progress and then trying to think of expressions for it. In this sense
they were less reflective. You don't get a lot of tracts about the
significance of Adam Smith's or Tom Payne's theories as "a statement;"
rather, you get a heated discussion of tenets, without any consciousness
of "statements" within a self-involved intellectual environment.
>> Kierkegaard, for example, began discussing "the modern
>> age."
>
> You have corrected yourself in another post. But doesn't the emphasis on
> 'the present age' (not past or future or the relations between the three)
> strike you as a little ermm postmodern?
Kierkegaard's talk of "the present age" doesn't strike me as at all
post-modern; please elucidate.
> Irony is a very old trope. Irony was absolutely central to German
> Romanticism and much modernism. The trouble is, few know what irony is
> anymore, confusing it with an easy cynicism.
Irony, as I have said before, goes back at least to Socrates. And you're
right, few have a clear idea what it is, but irony - and perhaps modernism
and post-modernism -- are sort of like Wittgenstein's "game" in being hard
to define.
ale...@my-deja.com
> Without going into literary theory, then, I'd like to suggest another
way
> of characterizing both modernism and post-modernism. I don't feel
> comfortable with the idea that modernity and modernism are easily
> separable things; surely they are intimately related. But I also agree
> with Moggin that post-modernism is not the opposite of modernism.
>
> What I have in mind is the modern fascination with itself as a
historical
> period. This reflexive, inward-looking awareness does not seem to be
> significant for the Enlightenment or Romanticism, to take two random
> examples. For these periods, energy was focussed on the emerging
beliefs
> or ways themselves. There was no acute historical consciousness of
their
> comparative relevance or overall significance within history.
Well, it could also be argued that the term "postmodernism" itself is a
periodising terminology which suggests a break between modernity and
postmodernity. The early postmodern theorists' works, do tend to promote
that strain of thinking. Another question would be: are we in
postmodernity, or neo-modernity in terms of capitalism, globalisation (a
revamp of cosmopolitanism) and economic imperialism? And if the issue of
whiteness is related to mass culture, then are we looking at the old
modernist universalism of sameness and homogenisation?
Joyce
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Moggin
> Eliot : -a leader of the *modernist* movement in poetry in such works as
> The Waste Land (1922) and The Four Quartets (1943).
[...]
Of course Eliot is a modernist. More specifically, he's a
representative of what's called "High Modernism," as I said
before. That's exactly what I've been trying to tell you. The
term "modernism" designates, e.g., a certain 20th century
literary movement. It's _not_ a synonym for "modernity," which
refers to an historical period that begins with the
Renaissance. Modernism and modernity are very different things.
-- Moggin
Moggin
> When I say that other historical periods were not as reflective, I do not
> mean that they were completely unaware of themselves or their intellectual
> antecedents. Obviously they were. Unlike the moderns, though, they did
> not spend a lot of time analyzing their own permutations. They simply
> _made_ progress, as they saw it, rather than conceiving a need for
> progress and then trying to think of expressions for it. In this sense
> they were less reflective. You don't get a lot of tracts about the
> significance of Adam Smith's or Tom Payne's theories as "a statement;"
> rather, you get a heated discussion of tenets, without any consciousness
> of "statements" within a self-involved intellectual environment.
Right. That's how come Nietzsche never wrote a long essay
called "The Use and Abuse of History for Life," where he
discussed the highly reflective, self-conscious attitude toward
living that he felt his contemporaries had adopted in
consequence of the close attention they gave to history and the
time they spent analyzing their own place in the historical
process. Also why Marx never authored "The Eighteenth Brumaire
of Louis Bonoparte," where he analyzed French politics in
terms of its recent and ancient historical antecedants, stating
that history repeats first as tragedy, then farce.
> Kierkegaard's talk of "the present age" doesn't strike me as at all
> post-modern; please elucidate.
What strikes me as post-modern about Kierkegaard are those
games he played with pseudonymity.
-- Moggin
Moggin
> The theory has been suggested that modernism involves an enthusiasm
> for a highly rational approach to problems, together with an impatience
> for traditional authority, intuition, unnecessary ornament, in short
> anything for which there is no rational purpose; this being buttressed by
> references to twentieth-century architecture and philosophy especially,
> and perhaps music. But against this, the example of the decidedly
> modernist T.S. Eliot has been invoked: Eliot, whose rich allusions suggest
> a deep respect for literary tradition, and whose portraits of his time are
> decidely critical of hollow rationalism. Other literary figures, such as
> Joyce or Yeats, might also be invoked.
I'm sure it's unintentional, James, but that misrepresents
both James Whitehead's position and mine. What's with the
paraphrasing, anyhow? Usenet lets you quote directly with very
little trouble -- it's automatic when you follow-up a post.
Lemme set things straight. Whitehead hasn't made even half the
points you're attributing to him, and I didn't reply in the
way you're describing. I've never even mentioned Eliot's "rich
allusions" or his "respect for literary tradition," forget
about invoking them against the position that you've dreamed up
for the other James.
> To resolve this apparent contradiction, Moggin suggests that we draw a
> distinction between modernism and modernity.
The hell I did. Now you're just making shit up. I didn't
say one word about resolving any contradictions. I'm
suggesting we observe the long-standing distinction between the
two, rather than ignorantly erasing it.
> The latter, he argues, is the
> proper name for the fascination with rational solutions, while the former
> is, well, something else -- I'm not quite sure what.
You're not sure because I never argued any of this. (It's
too bad you didn't take your uncertainty as a hint.) I said
in so many words that "modernity" is the name for an historical
period starting with the Renaissance and including -- among
other things -- the advent of capitalism, the rise of the
bourgeoisie, and the industrial revolution. I also stated that
"modernism" is a catch-all term for "certain cultural and
artistic movements dating from the late 19th to the mid 20th
century." I offered Nietzsche as an example in philosophy, and
I named Pound, Eliot, and Woolf to illustrate High Modernism
in literature. I also noted that modernism was in large part a
rebellion against modernity.
> Perhaps it is the
> human reaction to this mood. That reaction might be favourable, as with
> much architecture, or unfavourable, as with literature.
Yes, both attitudes are present in modernism, I completely
agree.
> The problem is that in architecture we describe the unfavourable reaction
> as "post-modernism," but in literature it is not that simple.
The term "post-modernism" has a variety of meanings. Pomo
architecture and pomo literature are two different things.
Pomo theory is something yet again. Painting and music present
their own cases, too.
> T.S. Eliot
> obviously had much use for the irrational. Does this mean he is actually
> a post-modern figure who has been improperly characterized? I, for one,
> don't want to rush to that conclusion!
Why would you? Oh, because you might believe modernism is
accurately described as "an enthusiasm for a highly rational
approach to problems": the description you attributed to James.
You have two choices. If you accept that description of
modernism, then you've got no choice but to classify Eliot as a
pomo. But you're also free to reject it as a crappy
description rooted in confusion between modernism and modernity.
> To me his poetry _feels_ modern;
> that is, it has a place within the heady excitement, the sense of
> boundless possibility, presented by the twentieth-century modernist
> movement.
Huh? I agree that Eliot is a modernist: he's represented
modernism in English literature for most of this century, as
Picasso symbolizes modernism in painting. But that's this crap
about "heady excitement" and "boundless possibility"? Eliot
is a poet of bleakness and depression, alleviated only slightly
by his spiritual leanings. After all, this is the guy who
referred to recent history "an immense panorama of futility and
anarchy."
> TO get a better hold on this, it might help to compar true
> post-modernist literature. I think of Thomas Pynchon, Tim Robbins, Douglas
> Coupland, Tom Wolfe -- but this is not my area and I would gratefully
> accept comments.
[...]
A reading suggestion: Annie Dillard's book on post-modern
literature, _Living by Fiction_. Short, accessible,
well-written (Dillard knows how to write), and not-stupid. You
may find yourself revising your list.
-- Moggin
Moggin
> This is later Eliot (and it corresponds to his crapper poetry, in my humble
> view).
Which? "The Rock" is bad bad bad, and no arguing, but the
_Four Quartets_ are truly wonderful.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
<u...@removethisredhotant.com> writes
>I am presuming that this is an extended quote from somewhere. If so, then an
>argument from an unnamed authority.
but this was brushed aside by someone - so we have to look as what is
presented...?
> How convincing. Now let's look at what
>is said.
>
>> Eliot : -a leader of the *modernist* movement in poetry in such works as
>> The Waste Land (1922) and The Four Quartets (1943). Eliot exercised a
>> strong influence on Anglo-American culture from the 1920s until late in
>> the century. His *experiments* in diction, style, and versification
>> revitalized English poetry, and in a series of critical essays he
>> *shattered old orthodoxies and erected new ones*.
>
>Yep. He celebrated certain moments of the past that were generally
>disparaged at the time, and attacked other celebrated ones; Milton for
>instance. So?
hierarchies as opposed to po-mo's Anarchy - check out Ihab Hassan's
table showing differences between the two movements (not that po-mo is a
movement) Page 17 of POSTMODERNISM for BEGINNERS - there's an authority!
>
>> The Sacred Wood (1920), Eliot asserts that tradition, as used by the
>> poet, is not a mere repetition of the work of the immediate past
>> *("novelty is better than repetition," he said)*; rather, it comprises
>> the *whole of European literature from Homer to the present*.
>
>Now, if you can find a place where Eliot claims that his poetry is in any
>way better than those in the canonical tradition that he erects
is better than repetition then if not in his own work in some others it
must be theoretically possible - ("new = better" is a modernist mantra)
Again in modernity the idea of progress is general - it does not de-
value the Individual Genius's of the past - but builds on them.
> (which is
>not that of the immediate past, by the way), you might have an argument. But
>you won't find such a place. For Eliot, it was a matter of attempting to
>maintain the quality of that tradition.
- so he thought it worse? Again he/we could echo Newton (modernist) that
he was standing on the shoulders of giants - again modernity...
>repeating it's forms, at least partly because of the corrosive effects of
>modernity.
with a history/cannon and seeking *new* forms - well that's modernism to
a T. Ok so he's upset at the social fall out - again this snobbishness
is the hallmark of modernity - as opposed to po-mo's embracing Disney
and McDonnell's - in an attempt to nullify all culture - in PO-MO there
is no difference between high/low art - would Eliot go along with
this...?
>> This point of view is "programmatic" in the sense that it disposes the
>> reader to accept the *revolutionary novelty* of Eliot's polyglot
>> quotations and serious parodies of other poets' styles in The Waste
>> Land.
>
>So apparently he is claiming a constant or eternal value for good work,
>towards which his work aspires. Does he claim that his work is an
>improvement on or development of the works of the tradition that he admires?
>Ermm. No.
- and avoid the corrosive effects of modernity - maybe - though i doubt
it - but even so if he regards art as being good or bad - surely he
would strive for the good - even if through modesty he doesn't claim to
be better.
>> Also in The Sacred Wood, "Hamlet and His Problems" sets forth Eliot's
>> theory of the *objective* correlative:
>>
>> The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an
>> *"objective correlative"*; in other words, a set of objects, a
>> situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that
>> particular emotion; such that, when the external facts, which must
>> terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately
>> evoked.
>
>A thoroughly english Romantic view, with a long tradition. So?
its called a grand narrative isn't it? - working in a tradition is part
of the modern programme - but more than that - building on it .... which
is exactly what Eliot did. These are Eliot's words - he's seeing
hierarchies and traditions and objective value systems.... So? well
that's modernity...
>
>> Eliot used the phrase "objective correlative" in the context of his own
>> *impersonal theory of poetry*; it thus had an immense influence toward
>> correcting the vagueness of late Victorian rhetoric by insisting on a
>> correspondence of word and object. Two other essays, first published the
>> year after The Sacred Wood, almost complete the Eliot critical canon:
>> "The Metaphysical Poets" and "Andrew Marvell," published in Selected
>> Essays, 1917-32 (1932). In these essays he effects a new historical
>> perspective on the *hierarchy of English poetry*
>
>Exactly. In many ways, Eliot sought a return (not as repetition), not a
>progression.
idea of progress from *late Victorian rhetoric* - the idea of progress
is modernist - How we value Eliot's work regarding the Metaphysical
Poets is a difficult matter - in po-mo terms we just wouldn't bother.
But this is the modern methodology again -
>> Thoughts After Lambeth (1931), The Idea of a Christian Society (1939),
>> and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948). These book-essays,
>> along with his Dante (1929), an indubitable masterpiece, broadened the
>> base of literature into theology and philosophy: whether a work is
>> poetry must be decided by literary standards; whether it is great poetry
>> must be decided by standards **higher** than the literary.
>
>This is later Eliot (and it corresponds to his crapper poetry, in my humble
>view). But still, hardly an innovative view. Try Romanticism again.
innovation in the arts - like it does elsewhere - involve the idea of
progress. (within modernity - in po-mo innovation is arbitrary and
progress impossible) Clearly above Eliot uses it to correct the
vagueness.... so he does- even if he can't outperform some other artists
- he clearly sees novelty as a means to progress - and this is the
methodology which runs through all modernist disciplines - from science
to the fine-arts.
I would imagine many scientists today regard the work of Einstein et al.
as something they could never measure up to - but still see science as
progressing- there's no contradiction here at all - all we are seeing is
that modernism is not just T.S.Eliot .... but a general idea or paradigm
which emerged with the renaissance and collapsed sometime in the mid
20th century.
>
>Nothing in this even indicates Eliot as a progressive or developmental
>modernist, indeed quite the reverse. Rather than building on his immediate
>past, he rejects it for a discontinuous tradition. That tradition, for him,
>is not something that can be improved upon and, as the last passage
>suggests, can only be judged by eternity.
a divine judge.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<u...@removethisredhotant.com> writes
>James Whitehead wrote:
>
>[snip of James Owens' post]
>> I think much of what you say above is very enlightening - I do feel
>> however one has to be careful of how artists react to the previous epoch
>> and their own - for one they need(ed) to gain a new territory - a few
>> may be critical - but more wished to synthersise something new from
>> older art forms. Though Eliot may have had misgivings about the products
>> of industrialisation - perhaps the rise of the uncultured masses? did he
>> also criticise the previous literary cannon - i don't think so.
>
>Yes, James, he did, and virulently. See your other post. Eliot attempted to
>more or less completely reconstruct the canon as it then existed. And he did
>it in the name of... not progress, but that of a constant value against the
>fads, fashions and, above all, idea of progress in modernity. For him,
>tradition was something to try to rise to, not improve upon.
uses the modernist radical methodology - which is a problem for him...
He seems to want a very English Reformation
>> (I seem
>> to remember either himself of Joyce writing positively about Dickens!)
>> This is I think where Moggin fails to see what was going on. That is
>> that artists might not like certain aspects of society around them - but
>> related their work to a *modernist* tradition - that of a search for
>> new/better/more real forms of expression. This they could relate back to
>> the renaissance. (and again i think Eliot saw himself as part of this
>> tradition of modernist literature from the classical world ...
>> Shakespeare onwards...)
>
>Nope, not 'onwards'. There is no constancy, no continuation or lineage in
>Eliot's canon. His 'tradition' is discontinuous and involves no development
>or progression. He looks back and attempts to rise to the standards of
>expression achieved by an intermittent few in the past. Sorry. (Oh and how
>is Shakespeare modernist?)
outside the scope of a simple reply - But he seems to address in his
work themes which are modern - secular - as opposed to religious -
spiritual - Lear/Hamlet/Othello......? One suspects with James O that
there's a deliberate attempt to cloud the waters here...
>
>> The engagement of modernism within actual
>> social issues is *less* than previous periods as it developed along very
>> formal and abstract lines -(contrast this to the pre-Raphaelite
>> movement) - though these were seen by apologists of modernism as
>> socially relevant - e.g. the house as a machine for living in. Typically
>> we see a return to representational works in post-modern art - if it can
>> anymore be called art.
>
>This is a digression from the case at hand, but form is in no way separate
>from 'social issues'. Booklist moment - Adorno: 'On Commitment' in Notes to
>Literature, or all of 'Aesthetic Theory'.
innovates as opposed to placate... with the current social
trends/issues.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<u...@removethisredhotant.com> writes
>De
>Stijl architecture was often based upon a concept of the universal as a
>harmony of tensions which paid little heed to the practical or rational
>organisation of life. (Has anyone sat in Rietveld's red, yellow and blue
>chair? Comfort doesn't enter in to it).
seem to remember it was comfortable as long as you didn't move...
> Russian constructivism operated on a
>model of _expressing_ social use as well as organising social function,
>aesthetics and organisation linked together, not sacrificed to 'problem
>solving'.
> Bauhaus architecture, before the arrival of Meyer in 1928, was
>understood as having a moral and spiritual function, not simpy being
>rational problem solving.
values- isn't this the whole idea of the Good. In modernism truth to
materials generate not only an aesthetic but a moral improvement.(that
was the pitch) I seem to be missing something here - but emancipation
within class, sex, and race are all part of this - its an appeal to
logic - equality - truth - and not some given orthodoxy isn't it?
>
>Music?
In all this there seems to be a hidden agenda to see post-modernism as
essentially not that different to modernism. Let me use a crude example.
During the modern epoch popular music reached its zenith - with the post
war affluence amongst youth etc. and produced the Beatles. In terms of
what a pop group was they were that - mass appeal - innovative in dress
and music - etc. A modern ICON. What post-modernity delivers is Oasis -
a fabricated simulicron of the real thing.
However such simplicity would it seems be anathema to those who wish for
some reason to keep things as convoluted as possible.
[...]
>No, Moggin has been quite clear in the past. Modernism is often, even
>mostly, a rebellion against modernity. I'm with him on this.
mostly is derived from what? This is as daft as saying QM was a
rebellion against classical physics. What is key here - and what seems
to be deliberately avoided are factors in modernity - yes innovation -
novelty - progress - and revolution (in the political sphere) which are
found in modernity from the renaissance onwards - but which are not
found in post-modernity.
[...]
>
>Really? A curious reading, it seems to me. Perhaps you could indicate what
>it is in Eliot's poetry that gives you a sense of heady excitement and
>boundless possibility.
some re-evaluation of modernism seems to be taking place here - i think
innovation and novelty could well lead to a feeling of excitement.
>Of course. But how could you have a rebellion against modernity without
>modernity? How could you have an authentic rebellion which was not
>fundamentally shaped by that which it rejected?
Some theorists - notably Marxists - wished to see much modern art as
this - of course it suited their political aims - but was quite untrue -
are you working to some political agenda here like they were I wonder?
>few know what irony is
>anymore, confusing it with an easy cynicism.
Yes I get the impression that *a few* these days know *the truth*.
--
James Whitehead
Moggin
> During the modern epoch popular music reached its zenith - with the post
> war affluence amongst youth etc. and produced the Beatles. In terms of
> what a pop group was they were that - mass appeal - innovative in dress
> and music - etc. A modern ICON. What post-modernity delivers is Oasis -
> a fabricated simulicron of the real thing.
The 60s delivered the Beatles and "a fabricated simulacrum"
called the Monkees. The Beatles had the nickname "the Fab
Four." Shorty after they appeared, the Monkees became known as
"the pre-fab Four": a joke which summed them perfectly. The
interesting thing is that some of the Monkees' songs ("Stepping
Stone," "Clarkesville Station") were great pop music.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
> Huh? I agree that Eliot is a modernist: he's represented
>modernism in English literature for most of this century, as
>Picasso symbolizes modernism in painting. But that's this crap
>about "heady excitement" and "boundless possibility"? Eliot
>is a poet of bleakness and depression, alleviated only slightly
>by his spiritual leanings. After all, this is the guy who
>referred to recent history "an immense panorama of futility and
>anarchy."
of the other arts it found it impossible to gain greater coherence in
abstractionism - the more abstract it becomes the more incoherent. (This
might account for the poets depression.) With high modernist art
signification of *anything* was absolutely taboo and guaranteed failure.
The current wave of reading lists and authors - reminds me of a dead
rabbit i saw the other day - crawling with maggots - deconstructing the
poor creature?
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
seem to remember wrote some *fairly* good stuff. But Oasis appear 30
years on - this i find remarkable - not just a copy at the time but an
attempt at a re-creation in fairly close detail of something a
generation ago. Moreover they are considered as being experimental and
new-wave in some newsgroups- and although a creation of EMI or Sony - i
think EMI- regularly top the inde (independent) label charts!
What did you make of the Banana Splits - a fabricated monkeys band?
--
James Whitehead
James Owens
In the first of three postings (where you comment about "modern" and
post-modern" as "periodizing" terminology), you raise an interesting
question about post-modernity and neo-modernity. But first I had better
ask, is post-modernity the same as post-modernism? Also, is there such a
thing as neo-modernism?
In the second, you invoke Nietszche and Marx, apparently as
counter-examples to my suggestion that modernism marks the flowering of a
historical self-consciousness that goes beyond simple engagement in
contemporary ideas and views, toward an interest in its own activity as a
historically-framed project. I had said that the turning point was Hegel,
so I don't see how these counter-examples apply. I could add parenthetically
that when the arts began to participate in this incipient self-reflection
-- confined at first to the newly-related disciplines of philosophy,
sociology, and history -- they entered modernity and thereby expressed
modernism.
Kierkegaard's use of pseudonyms does suggest a post-modern distance from
commitment. I think I mentioned in some thread in this forum (around early
July, I'd guess) that SK anticipated the necessity of an ironic stance
toward belief from within a purely rational framework. His solution, the
"leap of faith," now seems to be emerging here and there as a reaction to
post-modern disorientation, and probably has something to do with the
concept of Zen forgetfulness mentioned earlier in one of these threads.
He was way ahead of his time, but still working within a dialectic
established by Hegel (much as it might irritate him to hear that).
The third and longest of your postings begins by asking "What's with the
paraphrasing?" This is an excellent question. Before going on, I should
point out that my initial definitions are not merely an attempted gloss of
James Whitehead's ideas. In earlier threads (now in Deja-land) I put
forth a similar position on my own account. James W. seems to be moving
in roughly the same direction, and your exchange is therefore of immediate
interest to me.
What a delightful and fascinating situation, when several people are all
talking about apparently the same thing! The metaphysical implications
are staggering. But in a situation like that, one wants to be sure that
communication is actually taking place. Paraphrasing is a way of saying,
"This is what I heard -- have I got it right?" If I were simply to quote
other passages, I would be succumbing to the post-modern mood of
inviolable texts. When you think about it, the Usenet habit of disjointed
paragraphs, points and counterpoints with no explicitly sustained
narrative, is as good a symbol of post-modern thought as any. It is like
the Laugh-In of intellectual discussion. (Do today's students recognize
the allusion?) I prefer to write at length, paraphrasing the thoughts of
others in order to weave from them longer thoughts in which everyone has a
voice. The cost is that I may sometimes get it wrong; the benefit is that
I may occasionally be corrected.
Unfortunately I sometimes get carried away with my prose, and like John
Wisdom I find that my idiosyncracies of expression are not always
appreciated. You do suggest that anyone puzzled by the contradiction
between the proposed conception of modernism and Eliot's opus would
benefit by drawing a distinction between modernism and modernity; you are
entitled to point out that you did not invent the distinction, but except
for rhetorical purposes that makes no difference.
Now we come to the nub:
> I said in so many words that "modernity" is the name for an historical
> period starting with the Renaissance and including -- among
> other things -- the advent of capitalism, the rise of the
> bourgeoisie, and the industrial revolution. I also stated that
> "modernism" is a catch-all term for "certain cultural and
> artistic movements dating from the late 19th to the mid 20th
> century." I offered Nietzsche as an example in philosophy, and
> I named Pound, Eliot, and Woolf to illustrate High Modernism
> in literature. I also noted that modernism was in large part a
> rebellion against modernity.
Socrates would say that you have been asked for one thing -- a definition
of "modernity" -- and in your generosity you have given us many. But what
do all these things have in common that makes them representative of
"modernity"? Is modernity really nothing more than a historical period,
indistinguishable from any other except by limiting dates, themselves
presumably arbitrary?
Your definition of "modernism" is the most useless imaginable. A
"catch-all term" for "certain" historical movements, indeed! You are
doubtless intelligent enough to see for yourself the utter paucity of such
a definition. Though James H. and I risk the mockery of our betters, at
least we are trying a bit harder.
Regarding Eliot, I do have a problem with the contradiction between an
initial, tentative definition of modernism and his approach to modernity,
which is precisely why I am working away from that definition. I accept
that the distinction between modernity and modernism dissolves that
particular puzzle, and that this distinction is accepted by others as well
as yourself; but I am not willing to adopt it on the strength of those
reasons alone. Without covering old ground, I allude to the problem of
"modern" vs "post-modern" architecture as a different puzzle that arises
when we propose the distinction, leaving us no futher ahead. Meanwhile, I
have tried to explain elsewhere what I meant by "heady excitement and
boundless possibility" in connection with Eliot.
Thank you for suggesting Dillard. As it happens, I bought another book of
hers not long ago (_For the Time Being_), though I have yet to read it.
Giles
And so my view gets even humbler. I was thinking of 'The Rock' and some of
the 40s bits like 'A Note on War Poetry' and 'To the Indians who Died in
Africa'. Also some of the 'Landscapes', like 'Cape Ann'. But yes, I agree.
The 'Four Quartets' are superb, even if elements of them set my teeth on
edge.
Giles
Giles
> Giles (u...@removethisredhotant.com) writes:
>
>> In architecture, for example: Adolf Loos attacked ornament in architecture
>> on moral grounds, not rationalist or utilitarian (Ornament as Crime). Bruno
>> Taut's glass architecture and Alpine cities were hardly rationalist. De
>> Stijl architecture was often based upon a concept of the universal as a
>> harmony of tensions which paid little heed to the practical or rational
>> organisation of life. (Has anyone sat in Rietveld's red, yellow and blue
>> chair? Comfort doesn't enter in to it). . .
>
> As a relative illiterate, struggling to make sense of the terms
> "modernist" and post-modernist," I am fortunate to have the benefit of
> your insights. I have a layman's brief and inadequate understanding,
> gleaned mostly from museum exhibits and coffee-table books, on the basis
> of which I am able to form tentative theories based on superficial
> similarities. Like my ideas about nuclear physics or modern genetics, my
> rudimentary theories of modernism and post-modernism are assuredly in need
> of guidance.
And I appreciate your politesse, however sharp edged. But I haven't a clue
about nuclear physics or modern genetics, so if we could leave those aside,
I'd be grateful.
> It is my hope that these terms have some meaning which may be conveyed,
> however roughly, without benefit of intense study of the architecture,
> philosophy, music, literature, visual arts, and dance of the modern
> period. The suggestion that even a basic understanding must necessarily
> remain exclusive to a highly schooled elite, is offensive to me.
And to me, I assure you. Yet if the terms are to have any value beyond being
a catch all, or worse still, a lumpen caricature that is taken to have a
significant or even definitive meaning, then study is necessary. I also find
offensive the idea that a basic understanding is sufficient for general
judgements to be made. I have been studying modernism in various forms for
some time now, I continue to do so and hopefully will so continue. Have I
got a meaning for the term? No, nothing that is not always provisional and
situational. I do have the odd opinion, though.
> I do not
> thereby declare that impossible; nevertheless I hope that, as a physicist
> might popularize relativity, someone can clarify modernism and
> post-modernism for a layman like me. It is only a question of finding
> someone whose sophistication is such as to explain them with simplicity
> and brevity. I need hardly add that, if they do turn out to be accessible
> only to an inner circle, they open themselves to the sort of political
> analysis which may be directed at any form of gnosticism.
I make no claim to gnosis. I would also try to resist wilful obscurity, but,
given that the terms modernism and postmodernism are not consistently used
even amongst those who lay claim to them, then I suspect that anyone who
rises to your challenge of simplicity and brevity is actually doing you a
grave disfavour.
> Based on the tone of your remarks, I am willing to accept that my first
> attempt at a definition is inadequate.
I didn't think that my remarks carried a particular tone (with two
exceptions, which I regret). I rather hoped that the content might have some
validity. That distinction, of course, is enough to rule me out as a
practising modernist.
> Regarding their content, the
> situation is more complicated, for I cannot assess content without doing a
> lot of independent research. This means that our exchange will be rather
> slow. But, inclined though I am to give your authority the benefit of the
> doubt, I find your first claim to be less definitive than I would have
> hoped.
Why? What were you hoping for? Definitiveness? In what way? I didn't make
any claim to being definitive and still don't. Quite the reverse. I
suggested that things weren't as straightforward as an assumption of
modernist architecture to a rationalist position would make them seem. I did
not claim that modernist architecture was anti-rationalist per se. I would
cheerfully agree that there is a strong rationalist component in most
modernist architecture, but one that also often involves other things.
> "Adolf Loos attacked ornament in architecture on moral grounds" --
> but this does not imply "not rationalist or utilitarian."
I'm not sure why not. You don't explain in what follows.
> Having just
> read the essay -- it is shocking, in places, to today's sensibility -- I
> am convinced of the rationalist nature of his moral critique. Ornament is
> immoral precisely because it is a primitive vanity, from which escape is a
> sign or concomitant of progress. Ornament is "what every Negro can do."
And there you are. In what way is this rational according to your version of
the term in the first post? This is a moral judgement based on aesthetic
form. An attack on vanity has no necessary association with a rationalist
attack on that without rational purpose, but Loos fuses the two - as you go
on to point out:
> Moreover, ornament is inefficient; it is "wasted capital."
So inefficiency is not just wasteful, but also immoral. In catholic Vienna,
this might be an "impatience with traditional authority", but in post
reformation areas, it was deeply traditional. Moreover, one wonders where
the waste comes in, as decoration in no way impairs the functioning of the
building or even its capital value. As an aside, in terms of spatial
organisation, I don't think that Loos' buildings are exactly non traditional
(but this is IMHO and open to correction).
> Taut, Stijl, Rietvied, le Corbusier
I went into no detail at all about Le Corbusier
> -- we are obliged to examine each one
> in turn, to decide for ourselves the accuracy of your claims.
Hang on. You put forward a precis, of whatever accuracy, of arguments. In
that you claimed that a rationalist model of modernism was being buttressed
by references to architecture. Now you are apparently assuming that model -
for architecture at least - as your own. If so then, at the least, it is for
both of us to support the accuracy of our claims. But then, you do not say
what you think my claim is, apart from being sadly short of definitive.
> extent is Taut's Utopian glass architecture a rebellion against
> rationality, as your own thesis has it?
Ah, now you do say what my claim supposedly is. I didn't say Taut's
architecture was a rebellion against rationality - although in some ways I
think that it is (see below) - just that it didn't fit a rationalist model.
As for an overall thesis - I said that I saw modernism as 'often, even
mostly, a rebellion against modernity'. I'll stick with that, but the
qualifiers are important. Please don't precis me inaccurately and in return
I promise to try to pay proper attention to what you write.
> It reflects, perhaps, defiance
> toward practical limitation, but that is not the same thing. The
> limitations imposed by physical media and even human requirements can be
> read as a form of "traditional authority," with which I have suggested
> modernism is impatient.
Not just practical limitation - in fact, on reflection, not even practical
limitation, as his plans were physically realisable, even then. Then comes
something more interesting - a 'defiance of human requirements'? Well yes,
clearly for Taut. His cities are gloriously pointless and would require
massive, 'wasteful', expenditure. In fact, everything that Loos would
apparently hate.
But I am mystified as to how a defiance of human requirements fits with your
first suggested definition of modernism as 'an enthusiasm for a highly
rational approach to problems' unless you mean that the problems have
nothing to do with human requirements. This could well be true if one
equates modernity and capitalism, but that still doesn't fit Taut, as Taut
hardly fits the strict instrumentality of capital's profligacy. He was not
designing Alpine leisure centres, hotels or casinos. In that sense, amongst
others - in their lack of utility even for commodification, I think Taut
opposed modernity. By now, the Alpine city would have become a health spa
and cosmetic surgery centre, of course.
Besides, a defiance of human requirements is hardly limited to modernity.
> Likewise, conceptually elegant but uncomfortable
> chairs -- of which, I am sure, not only Rietveld was guilty -- represent
> the triumph of the pure idea over the mundane considerations which
> hitherto limited progress. Why else would anyone design an uncomfortable
> chair, but in a misplaced enthusiasm for some abstract principle? That is
> what I mean by an excessive veneration of rationality.
You didn't mention an 'excessive veneration' of rationality before, just an
'enthusiasm for a rational approach to problems'. Are you suggesting that
some modernism's apparent rationality was irrational?
Still - just as an hypothesis - might it not be possible that work that
insisted on an abstract formalist absolute against utility, fashion and
progress is in some way setting itself against modernity, even though such
an abstraction is also modern?
>> In philosophy, well, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what you might mean
>> by modernist philosophy. Surely not just philososphy from the modern period?
>> If not then what is the qualifier? But if there is such a thing, and bits of
>> it are supposedly rationalist on the lines suggested above, then many and
>> varied counter examples exist: Nietszche, Heidegger, large swathes of
>> Lebensphilosophie, Benjamin, Bloch, Adorno, Bataille, Blanchot, Cioran and
>> so on. Many of these could certainly be called modernist, not only in their
>> engagement with modernity, but in their interest in and use of modernist
>> aesthetic means as a philosophical means. I'd be tempted to argue that the
>> only modernist philosophers, if they exist, were the ones who did that. All
>> of those who did were critics of modernity.
>
> To the extent that modernism is an art movement, it doesn't make much
> sense to speak of "modernist philosophy." But if modernism or
> post-modernism are world-views they will surely have philosophical
> correspondents.
Here we hit the equation of modernism and postmodernism again, and as 'world
-views' no less. I doubt the cohesiveness of either modernism or post
-modernism is such to enable either to have the status of world-view, for
all that there are common strands in (and between) both. But, unless you
wish to limit postmodernism pretty much to art movement(s), the two are not
equivalent. Having said that, I suppose there might possibly be modernist
philosophy, but that is not the same as either philosophies of modernism or
modern philosophies. More below.
> What were the major currents of philosophy in the modern
> period?
Does this make them modernist?
> There were two, basically: analytic philosophy and
> existentialism. I have already given my opinion of analytic philosophy as
> impatient with metaphysics and dedicated to a rationalism modelled
> explicity on the scientific method. Existentialism, I would argue at
> embarrassing length, promoted a more convoluted rationalism, extending the
> conscious rational ego into the basis of all metaphysics; this even in its
> religious manifestations. It is actually a direct continuation of the
> Cartesian "crisi of parturition," which also has to do with
> disenchantment. Et cetera.
What do you call the modern period? For much of the modern period as
generally taken (either from the Renaissance or the early 18th century)
neither analytic nor, in your sense, existential philosophy was formalised
and even when they were, they were hardly alone. What of Utilitarianism,
Idealism, Romanticism, Kant and Neo Kantianism, Marxism, Hegelian Marxism?
What of Schopenhauer, or of Nietzsche? Or Structuralism and
Poststructuralism? Even Heidegger doesn't quite fit your model of
existentialism IMHO. The closest to a modernist, not modern, philosophy that
I can think of would be that of Adorno, to the extent that he relies upon
modernist aesthetic means as a means for thought and representing thought.
>> Music? Well, there you have lost me. The only possible example I can think
>> that you might mean is Serialism. But even there, for many if not all, the
>> point was that the serial row was a self imposed restraint - the only way
>> that the compositional process could avoid sterile formalism and facile
>> preprogrammed answers. For many the only way music could maintain a hint of
>> the possibility of expression, rather than become a mechanics of
>> sentimentality, was by surrendering composition to an abstract and very
>> tight regimen. Composition thus comes through the struggle with order, not
>> the straightforward deployment of rational construction.
>
> I am thinking of serialist music, of course. Schoenberg's system is an
> unquestionably rational concoction, a planned ideal with no respect
> whatever for traditional methods or roles. To say anything else of it is
> merely to save an argument, although what you do say mostly reinforces the
> idea that it is rationally conceived first and foremeost.
Then I feel you perhaps miss the point. Of course in serialism there is no
respect for traditional methods in the sense of the 'proper' conventions of
the 19th century, in the same way that Eliot does not compose mock 17th
century poems, for all that he valued the originals and used some of their
means. But you need to consider the possible place of expression. How could
one avoid the already trite - mechanical sentiment? Only by renouncing the
late romantic vision of music as total expression, accepting that
composition is in part largely rational or formulaic construction beyond any
fantasy of the self and foregrounding that fact (as in some ways Mahler does
in his quotations). Then, perhaps, expression might reappear - not as
coherence but through the moments of order's disruption, or even more
bleakly, through the sheer inhumanity of the order.
A reflection of inhumanity - could perhaps be modernism in revolt against
modernity? All those modernist experiments with chance, with giving up a
sense of control to the aleoratory or the abstractly predetermined, from
Baudelaire to Cage?
In any case, what of Schoenberg's atonal period?
> The form of the
> fugue, so far as I know, was never justified by its practitioners in such
> esoteric terms.
No, because it didn't have to be. It had other justifications and senses (as
long as you mean pre early 19th century).
> Other modern composers, like Varese or Stockhausen, became
> interested in music from a mechanical point of view. This is not to say
> that modern music completely denies the possibility of sensual pleasure; a
> piece by Stravinsky or by Xenakis can be very enjoyable if approached
> without expectations. It is to argue, though, that the conscious,
> rationally controlled application of technique achieves decided
> predominance over content in the modern period. The tension between the
> two was certainly present for Bach and for Beethoven, but never did the
> need to "push the envelope" of technique win so decisively over emotional
> expression.
Well, Beethoven's late string quartets certainly go some way in that
direction, even to the point in which coventional form, more traditionally
conventional than mid Beethoven, is pushed to extremes and even incoherence.
But who said that sensual pleasure was an aim, or even a wish, for all
modernist music?
Moreover, how do you separate technique and content? Really, I am
interested.
>> . . . Perhaps you could indicate what
>> it is in Eliot's poetry that gives you a sense of heady excitement and
>> boundless possibility. This would also be a curious account of much
>> modernism, which is often, not always, not so much about boundless
>> possibility than it is about and from doubt, desperation and despair. Why
>> are irony and ambiguity key modernist tropes?
>
> Eliot's poetry itself is far too depressing to convey a sense of "heady
> excitement and boundless possibility," but I said that it _has a place_
> within that aspect of modernism. Having conceded clearly enough his
> criticism of the modern era, I note that he nevertheless belongs within it
> as a committed participant.
You didn't in the first post. But this still needs clarifying. In what way
does he 'belong within' a modernism of 'heady excitement and boundless
possibility'? Is a commitment per se a sign of heady excitement? If so, then
it was not a characteristic Eliot chose to display.
> I mean that he is not outside the modernist
> tradition, but partakes of its urgent reassessment of the human world with
> equivalent urgency. He is of the era.
Strawman. I haven't said that he isn't of the era. You dropped the bit where
I was clear about this. See below.
> But I wasn't very clear, it's true.
And you are still not, I feel. Urgent critiques of the human world are
hardly restricted to modernity. Still, as I mentioned in a passage that you
have dropped, I have no quibble at all with modernists engaging with
modernity and through the forms that modernity presents. You had written:
>>> Without going into literary theory, then, I'd like to suggest another way
>>> of characterizing both modernism and post-modernism. I don't feel
>>> comfortable with the idea that modernity and modernism are easily
>>> separable things; surely they are intimately related.
And I replied
>>Of course. But how could you have a rebellion against modernity without
>>modernity? How could you have an authentic rebellion which was not
>>fundamentally shaped by that which it rejected?
On reflection, I'm not sure about that second sentence as an unqualified
statement, but it will still do for much modernism. I'm not sure why you
dropped this statement, nor why you did not respond to it. Perhaps it wasn't
definitive enough.
>>> What I have in mind is the modern fascination with itself as a historical
>>> period. This reflexive, inward-looking awareness does not seem to be
>>> significant for the Enlightenment or Romanticism, to take two random
>>> examples.
>>
>> Really? No, really? Just whom are you thinking about? Just such a reflexive
>> awareness seems to define the Enlightenment and Romanticism to me. And
>> other periods as well.
>>
>>> For these periods, energy was focussed on the emerging beliefs
>>> or ways themselves. There was no acute historical consciousness of their
>>> comparative relevance or overall significance within history.
>>
>> I disagree strongly. What about 'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive', or
>> Schiller, or Schlegel, or Holderlin's fled Gods? There is an acute sense of
>> place and historical importance in both the Enlightenment and Romanticism.
>> For a sense of how daft your claim is, you have just argued that the
>> participants in French or American revolutions were not aware of their
>> comparative importance and historical significance. The evidence contradicts
>> you.
>
> When I say that other historical periods were not as reflective, I do not
> mean that they were completely unaware of themselves or their intellectual
> antecedents. Obviously they were.
In that case, I feel that you miss the point of my examples.
> Unlike the moderns, though, they did
> not spend a lot of time analyzing their own permutations. They simply
> _made_ progress, as they saw it, rather than conceiving a need for
> progress and then trying to think of expressions for it. In this sense
> they were less reflective. You don't get a lot of tracts about the
> significance of Adam Smith's or Tom Payne's theories as "a statement;"
> rather, you get a heated discussion of tenets, without any consciousness
> of "statements" within a self-involved intellectual environment.
First of all, I'm not sure what you mean by 'statement' here.
Secondly, thanks for saying just whom you were thinking about - Smith and
Paine - but I still disagree strongly. 'Analysing their own permutations'
was a major part of German Romanticism. An acute sense of being on the cusp
of history marks much english Romanticism (Bliss was it in that dawn...). A
strong sense of wresting history out of tradition marks much of the
material of the American and French revolutions. A profound sense of the
historical desolation of his present, compared to previous epochs, marks
Holderlin. A vigorous sense of the present as a moment of possibility and
decision, for good or ill, marks Schiller. After all, 'analysing their own
permutations' was what Kant did. The late 18th and early 19th centuries were
moments of acute crisis whatever way you take them - a crisis of legitimacy,
of value, of order, of rights, of place, of futures (plural) - and the
participants knew it. Why did the french revolutionary calendar start at
year zero if they were just 'making progress' without reflecting upon their
situation as a significant historical moment?
[...]
For some reason you have also dropped without response the passages on Hegel
that followed here, but I'll leave them aside.
>>> Kierkegaard, for example, began discussing "the modern
>>> age."
>>
>> You have corrected yourself in another post. But doesn't the emphasis on
>> 'the present age' (not past or future or the relations between the three)
>> strike you as a little ermm postmodern?
>
> Kierkegaard's talk of "the present age" doesn't strike me as at all
> post-modern; please elucidate.
A joke, or rather nearly one.
>> Irony is a very old trope. Irony was absolutely central to German
>> Romanticism and much modernism. The trouble is, few know what irony is
>> anymore, confusing it with an easy cynicism.
>
> Irony, as I have said before, goes back at least to Socrates. And you're
> right, few have a clear idea what it is, but irony - and perhaps modernism
> and post-modernism -- are sort of like Wittgenstein's "game" in being hard
> to define.
Now there we might agree.
Regards
Giles
Giles
[Giles]
>> I am presuming that this is an extended quote from somewhere. If so, then an
>> argument from an unnamed authority.
[James]
> yes - but what authority - i quoted once from Nietzsche - on Nietzsche -
> but this was brushed aside by someone - so we have to look as what is
> presented...?
Well, it would help if you said who the authority was. If we agreed that
they were an authority worth respecting, it would make things much simpler.
[Giles]
>> How convincing. Now let's look at what
>> is said.
[James]
>>> Eliot : -a leader of the *modernist* movement in poetry in such works as
>>> The Waste Land (1922) and The Four Quartets (1943). Eliot exercised a
>>> strong influence on Anglo-American culture from the 1920s until late in
>>> the century. His *experiments* in diction, style, and versification
>>> revitalized English poetry, and in a series of critical essays he
>>> *shattered old orthodoxies and erected new ones*.
[Giles]
>> Yep. He celebrated certain moments of the past that were generally
>> disparaged at the time, and attacked other celebrated ones; Milton for
>> instance. So?
[James]
> well that's a modernist trait - experimenting- creating value systems-
> hierarchies as opposed to po-mo's Anarchy - check out Ihab Hassan's
> table showing differences between the two movements (not that po-mo is a
> movement) Page 17 of POSTMODERNISM for BEGINNERS - there's an authority!
Trouble is that in at least some postmodernism (or at least self proclaimed
postmodernism) pretty much the same thing happens. A repressed past, or
'hidden' antecedents are brought out, in order to produce a counter
tradition. Anyway, aren't such oppositions, let alone expressed in a table,
supposed to be, well, meaningless?
[James]
>>> The Sacred Wood (1920), Eliot asserts that tradition, as used by the
>>> poet, is not a mere repetition of the work of the immediate past
>>> *("novelty is better than repetition," he said)*; rather, it comprises
>>> the *whole of European literature from Homer to the present*.
[Giles]
>> Now, if you can find a place where Eliot claims that his poetry is in any
>> way better than those in the canonical tradition that he erects
[James]
> erecting canonical traditions again is part of modernity... if novelty
> is better than repetition then if not in his own work in some others it
> must be theoretically possible - ("new = better" is a modernist mantra)
I think you confuse various things here. First there is a difference between
the original and its repetition. If Eliot opposes repetition, it is not
because the alternative (novelty) is better than the original, it because it
is better than the repetition. Second, there is the use of the term novelty
rather than 'the new'. Novelty might often be used as a synonym for 'new' ,
but in the context of Eliot, I doubt it. In the context of his critique of
modernity, and of fashion, I'd suugest that novelty is a passing surprise
rather than a genuine innovation or step forward. If so, then in many ways
novelty implies repetition, as it is not a genuine innovation but a
recasting of the familiar.
[James]
> Again in modernity the idea of progress is general - it does not de-
> value the Individual Genius's of the past - but builds on them.
But Eliot doesn't claim to build on them.
[Giles]
>> (which is
>> not that of the immediate past, by the way), you might have an argument. But
>> you won't find such a place. For Eliot, it was a matter of attempting to
>> maintain the quality of that tradition.
[James]
> Of course not - his work in no way looked like that of the previous ages
> - so he thought it worse? Again he/we could echo Newton (modernist) that
> he was standing on the shoulders of giants - again modernity...
No. Attempting to maintain a past standard, if not, by necessity, in the
past form, is not standing on the shoulders.... Eliot would be the first to
deny that he was seeing any further.
[Giles]
>> That could not be achieved by
>> repeating it's forms, at least partly because of the corrosive effects of
>> modernity.
[James]
> you need to say how modernity corrodes the forms - by linking himself
> with a history/cannon and seeking *new* forms - well that's modernism to
> a T.
Only if you ignore what the history/canon meant for Eliot. I'll say it
again, it was not a continuous lineage, but a discontinuous 'tradition' of
works of value. Eliot didn't see a 'history' in the sense of a story.
[James]
> Ok so he's upset at the social fall out - again this snobbishness
> is the hallmark of modernity - as opposed to po-mo's embracing Disney
> and McDonnell's - in an attempt to nullify all culture - in PO-MO there
> is no difference between high/low art - would Eliot go along with
> this...?
I don't see your point. I never said that Eliot was Pomo, nor would I.
[James]
>>> This point of view is "programmatic" in the sense that it disposes the
>>> reader to accept the *revolutionary novelty* of Eliot's polyglot
>>> quotations and serious parodies of other poets' styles in The Waste
>>> Land.
[Giles]
>> So apparently he is claiming a constant or eternal value for good work,
>> towards which his work aspires. Does he claim that his work is an
>> improvement on or development of the works of the tradition that he admires?
>> Ermm. No.
[James]
> Its just different- then? he sees himself as having to run to keep still
> - and avoid the corrosive effects of modernity - maybe - though i doubt
> it - but even so if he regards art as being good or bad - surely he
> would strive for the good - even if through modesty he doesn't claim to
> be better.
Different and the same. It isn't just modesty, I think, but a strong sense
that the quality of the work will be judged somewhere other than history.
But remove your doubts here and I agree with you.
[James]
>>> Also in The Sacred Wood, "Hamlet and His Problems" sets forth Eliot's
>>> theory of the *objective* correlative:
>>>
>>> The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an
>>> *"objective correlative"*; in other words, a set of objects, a
>>> situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that
>>> particular emotion; such that, when the external facts, which must
>>> terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately
>>> evoked.
[Giles]
>> A thoroughly english Romantic view, with a long tradition. So?
[James]
> You see if your looking for something like an *Objective Correlative* -
> its called a grand narrative isn't it?
I don't think it is, to be honest. There is no narrative about it. And it
doesn't fit with what Lyotard calls Grand Narratives.
[James]
> - working in a tradition is part
> of the modern programme - but more than that - building on it .... which
> is exactly what Eliot did. These are Eliot's words - he's seeing
> hierarchies and traditions and objective value systems.... So? well
> that's modernity...
And not just modernity. I think that in part Eliot is appealing to a
pre-modern. I wouldn't want to push that line though. But if you read
Eliot's poetry, the point of the 'Objective Correlative' might become
clearer. It is not about a value system in any rational, analytic or
'scientific' sense, but it is about a kind of value beyond the individual
subject. A value he seeks to oppose to the objectivity of 'progress'.
[James]
>>> Eliot used the phrase "objective correlative" in the context of his own
>>> *impersonal theory of poetry*; it thus had an immense influence toward
>>> correcting the vagueness of late Victorian rhetoric by insisting on a
>>> correspondence of word and object. Two other essays, first published the
>>> year after The Sacred Wood, almost complete the Eliot critical canon:
>>> "The Metaphysical Poets" and "Andrew Marvell," published in Selected
>>> Essays, 1917-32 (1932). In these essays he effects a new historical
>>> perspective on the *hierarchy of English poetry*
[Giles]
>> Exactly. In many ways, Eliot sought a return (not as repetition), not a
>> progression.
[James]
> (please explain how a return can be not repetition) Above we have the
> idea of progress from *late Victorian rhetoric* - the idea of progress
> is modernist - How we value Eliot's work regarding the Metaphysical
> Poets is a difficult matter - in po-mo terms we just wouldn't bother.
> But this is the modern methodology again -
So what are you saying, he is a modernist until he gets difficult for your
view of modernism?
I don't see why you have a problem with a return that is not a repetition.
Eliot sought to achieve the poetic and extra poetic quality that he saw in
the Metaphysicals, but for him this was impossible to achieve by simply
repeating or imitating them.
[James]
>>> Thoughts After Lambeth (1931), The Idea of a Christian Society (1939),
>>> and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948). These book-essays,
>>> along with his Dante (1929), an indubitable masterpiece, broadened the
>>> base of literature into theology and philosophy: whether a work is
>>> poetry must be decided by literary standards; whether it is great poetry
>>> must be decided by standards **higher** than the literary.
[Giles]
>> This is later Eliot (and it corresponds to his crapper poetry, in my humble
>> view). But still, hardly an innovative view. Try Romanticism again.
[James]
> Innovation the hallmark of modernity - what we are arguing about is does
> innovation in the arts - like it does elsewhere - involve the idea of
> progress.
And the answer is - not for Eliot. And he was, I think we agree, a
modernist.
[James]
>(within modernity - in po-mo innovation is arbitrary and
> progress impossible) Clearly above Eliot uses it to correct the
> vagueness.... so he does- even if he can't outperform some other artists
> - he clearly sees novelty as a means to progress
There is no 'clearly' about it. I'd tend to say the reverse. Clearly Eliot
sees novelty as a means to try to avoid progress. Things, for Eliot, don't
get better.
[James]
> - and this is the
> methodology which runs through all modernist disciplines - from science
> to the fine-arts.
> I would imagine many scientists today regard the work of Einstein et al.
> as something they could never measure up to - but still see science as
> progressing- there's no contradiction here at all - all we are seeing is
> that modernism is not just T.S.Eliot .... but a general idea or paradigm
> which emerged with the renaissance and collapsed sometime in the mid
> 20th century.
But Eliot is, as you have suggested, supposed to be something of an
archetypal modernist. If your argument doesn't work for Eliot, then maybe it
has a few problems.
[Giles]
>> Nothing in this even indicates Eliot as a progressive or developmental
>> modernist, indeed quite the reverse. Rather than building on his immediate
>> past, he rejects it for a discontinuous tradition. That tradition, for him,
>> is not something that can be improved upon and, as the last passage
>> suggests, can only be judged by eternity.
[James]
> He can't believe in something that can't be improved on - and then want
> a divine judge.
Pretty much that is exactly what he believed in, yes. Why couldn't he?
Regards
Giles
Giles
[...]
> maybe :-)
or maybe not. I lack a suitable haircut.
Giles
Giles
> In article <B5E48AD3.1046E%u...@removethisredhotant.com>, Giles
> <u...@removethisredhotant.com> writes
[snip]
>> Well, it would help if you said who the authority was. If we agreed that
>> they were an authority worth respecting, it would make things much simpler.
> Why - if the authority was Eliot - or my Auntie - surely its the content
> of the statement we are talking about.
True enough, and that is what I went on to do.
> Or are you saying that the truth
> of a statement is contingent in some way on the status of its author?
Obviously the status of the author is not a guarantor of the value of the
content. However, if you wished to use the fact that 'someone' had said such
and such about Eliot as significant in itself, then who that someone is
becomes significant. I first thought you were doing that, but, happily, I
was wrong. My apologies.
>> [James]
>>> well that's a modernist trait - experimenting- creating value systems-
>>> hierarchies as opposed to po-mo's Anarchy - check out Ihab Hassan's
>>> table showing differences between the two movements (not that po-mo is a
>>> movement) Page 17 of POSTMODERNISM for BEGINNERS - there's an authority!
[Giles]
>> Trouble is that in at least some postmodernism (or at least self proclaimed
>> postmodernism) pretty much the same thing happens. A repressed past, or
>> 'hidden' antecedents are brought out, in order to produce a counter
>> tradition.
[James]
> If this was so then there would be no way of differentiating po-mo -
> unless you just believe everything you read - *by certain authors*
Eh?
[Giles]
>> Anyway, aren't such oppositions, let alone expressed in a table,
>> supposed to be, well, meaningless?
[James]
> One of the features of po-mo is its trying to describe a very vague
> state of affairs - that is the collapse of modernism - a *simple case*
> is the political structure in the eastern block - which now is one of
> changing *countries* - boundaries and political systems. And what
> structures do we describe these with- what are relevant methodologies
> for calling some fragment of the former Yugoslavia democratic?
Well, at a guess, the same methodologies that have been used to call states
democratic for some time. A combination of fudge, realpolitic, territorial
ambition and so on. Even in the middle of the 19th century what constituted
a legitimate or even functional nation state was hotly debated. No clear
answers emerged, except everybody was sure that Luxembourg shouldn't be one
but annoyingly was.
[James]
>Another
> image you might like is that of a plane crash - asking for authority
> seems somewhat pointless. The pilots are probably dead anyway.
But a doctor might be handy.
>> [James]
>>> erecting canonical traditions again is part of modernity... if novelty
>>> is better than repetition then if not in his own work in some others it
>>> must be theoretically possible - ("new = better" is a modernist mantra)
[Giles]
>> I think you confuse various things here. First there is a difference between
>> the original and its repetition. If Eliot opposes repetition, it is not
>> because the alternative (novelty) is better than the original, it because it
>> is better than the repetition.
[James]
> Such a methodology opposes orthodoxies and creates new ones - was the
> driving force of the reformation. This is modernity - is it not?
Not, for you anyway, if the orthodoxy that Eliot opposes is 'progress'.
> Maybe
> Eliot saw some past golden age of literature which is not possible to
> re-achieve? One wonders why he bothered writing?
> But a belief in literature - is not post-modern.
'Belief' in what sense? I'm not sure where this is going, as whether Eliot
was postmodern or not was not what we were arguing about. For what it is
worth, I think he was a modernist.
[Giles]
>> Second, there is the use of the term novelty
>> rather than 'the new'. Novelty might often be used as a synonym for 'new' ,
>> but in the context of Eliot, I doubt it. In the context of his critique of
>> modernity, and of fashion, I'd suugest that novelty is a passing surprise
>> rather than a genuine innovation or step forward. If so, then in many ways
>> novelty implies repetition, as it is not a genuine innovation but a
>> recasting of the familiar.
I didn't put this well. (Late at night...). I'd like to rephrase it if I
may, and drop some of your responses. All I actually wanted to say was that:
1. Eliot doesn't oppose novelty to the original, but to repetition. So
novelty is not better than the original, but better than the act of
repeating it.
2. Novelty involves newness, but is not necessarily an advance or
improvement (thus not necessarily a 'step forward'). So, whilst novelty
might well be needed to avoid repetition (which is a bad thing), it does not
mean an advance on the originals.
Here is the context - from 'Tradition and the Individual Talent'
"Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following
the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence
to its successes, 'tradition' should positively be discouraged. We have seen
many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than
repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be
inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour.... the
historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the
past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not
merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the
whole of literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the
literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a
simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless
as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and temporal together, is
what makes a writer traditional"
(and traditional in this context is a Good Thing for Eliot)
[James]
> We are arguing about progress here - which its possible that in the arts
> we dont like - is Beethoven better than Bach. Its clear in science -
> (and politics perhaps) that modernity sees a progress in understanding.
> Only hard line modernists would admit to this in the plastic arts- we
> seem to want to continually see the relevance of past work. Mendelssohn
> championed a re-evaluation of Bach - and Pound of Vivaldi I understand.
Mendelsson a modernist? Pound, yes. I'm not sure that we continually want to
see the relevance of past work, or rather it seems to me that different bits
of the past are relevant at different times and in different ways. But it is
not just a case of the relevance of past work for Eliot, but its presence in
the present, the timeless and temporal together. That, surely, is an
opposite of a sense of progress.
> Despite this though its clear that the Novelty in the art of modernism
> was not arbitrary. (are you saying that Eliot's fragmented structure of
> the wastelands was a passing surprise and not a step forward
No. I didn't mean that, but put it very badly. Not a step forward,
certainly. But here is another snippet from 'T&IT'.
"The existing order [of tradition] is complete before the new work arrives;
for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the *whole* existing
order must be, if ever so slightly, altered".
Perhaps novelty (which is never merely new) is necessary to enter the order
of tradition, but novelty alone is not sufficient.
> - and are
> you saying this didn't influence successive writers who adopted even
> more abstract forms...)
Oh no, certainly other writers picked up on Eliot's means, much as he had
picked up on Joyce's. I'm not sure about 'more abstract' forms. Some were, I
suppose. But Mallarme had aimed at a pure poetry in the late 19th century.
> As i said its only with the extreme modernists
> we see an admission of this idea - (common in other social areas) - the
> idea of progress.
This is a new note from you in our arguments.
[snip]
>> [James]
>>> Again in modernity the idea of progress is general - it does not de-
>>> value the Individual Genius's of the past - but builds on them.
[Giles]
>> But Eliot doesn't claim to build on them.
[James]
> So he came to writing afresh ... without influence ... I thought past
> literature was everywhere alluded to in his work?
I hope the longer passage from T&IT above might have made what I meant
clearer
> His black thoughts on
> modernity (i suspect a snobbishness at work) did not prevent him from
> attempting to create high art. Within this he synthesises the past
> literature tradition in novel ways? Or does he just make things up? The
> problem he and may modernist's have in the arts is the idea of progress.
> As i said i differentiate modernism from modernity as modernism is the
> conclusion - which is either that the programme failed - progress was an
> illusion - or it succeeded - but has reached its final utopian form.
I probably missed it, but I haven't seen you make this differentiation
before. So would you take 'negative' modernism as an attack on modernity?
> Eliot took the pessimistic view perhaps - someone like Reinhardt was
> more the optimist about his work. Again the analogy is you come out of
> hospital dead or alive -
> the Marxist's I guess think modernity sucks
> (now - back in the 1920s they thought it cool) - whilst the Capitalists
> think it was wonderful.
Marxists of many varieties since Marx have thought that modernity really
sucked, but was also a good thing, at the same time.
[snip]
[Giles]
>> Only if you ignore what the history/canon meant for Eliot. I'll say it
>> again, it was not a continuous lineage, but a discontinuous 'tradition' of
>> works of value. Eliot didn't see a 'history' in the sense of a story.
[James]
> you haven't explained the corrosive process - It would work if art was
> like a steady state throwing up work at random - but that would
> undermine both tradition and a cannon. However in my quote its says that
> Eliot believed in a hierarchy of English poetry- and techniques to be
> used - I think with a hierarchy and use of novelty we can establish an
> idea of progress. This is sufficient.
Alas, it isn't. This is from the essay on 'The Metaphysical Poets', which
was the one referred to in your quote: "we may ask, what would have been the
fate of the 'metaphysical' had the current of poetry descended in a direct
line from them, as it descended in a direct line to them". The Metaphysical
poets are high in Eliot's hierarchy and he makes clear that, for him, there
is no 'direct line' from them. A little further on, he suggest that
something like novelty might be necessary at his moment:
"We can only say that it appears likely that poets in our civilization, as
it exists at present, must be *difficult*... The poet must become more and
more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to
dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning". But, just in case this
looks like progress, he continues "Hence we get something which looks very
like the conceit - we get, in fact, a method curiously similar to that of
the 'metaphysical poets', similar also in its use of obscure words and of
simple phrasing".
Thus a hierarchy, novelty and an opposition to the idea of progress.
[snip]
>> [James]
>>> Its just different- then? he sees himself as having to run to keep still
>>> - and avoid the corrosive effects of modernity - maybe - though i doubt
>>> it - but even so if he regards art as being good or bad - surely he
>>> would strive for the good - even if through modesty he doesn't claim to
>>> be better.
[Giles]
>> Different and the same. It isn't just modesty, I think, but a strong sense
>> that the quality of the work will be judged somewhere other than history.
>> But remove your doubts here and I agree with you.
[James]
> Where judged ... please!
I suppose perhaps by someone who also lives in tradition in the sense in the
passage from T&IT above, someone with that sense of the timeless and the
temporal together.
[snip]
>> [James]
>>> You see if your looking for something like an *Objective Correlative* -
>>> its called a grand narrative isn't it?
[Giles]
>> I don't think it is, to be honest. There is no narrative about it. And it
>> doesn't fit with what Lyotard calls Grand Narratives.
[James]
> Lyotard either recognises something - or states what is on authority -
> in the first case i'd say a belief in tradition in eliot's terms is a
> grand narrative at work.
Without a narrative?
I've snipped the rest, as I think it mostly went over the same ground.
Please bring back anything you want to.
Regards
Giles
James Whitehead
<u...@removethisredhotant.com> writes
>
>[James]
>> If this was so then there would be no way of differentiating po-mo -
>> unless you just believe everything you read - *by certain authors*
>
>Eh?
it is so-
>[James]
>> Such a methodology opposes orthodoxies and creates new ones - was the
>> driving force of the reformation. This is modernity - is it not?
>
>Not, for you anyway, if the orthodoxy that Eliot opposes is 'progress'.
repetition - he also saw a hierarchy - but located it somewhere other
than with himself or in the present - perhaps. He also had objective
criteria at work in all this. (i seem to have to keep saying this)
>
>> Maybe
>> Eliot saw some past golden age of literature which is not possible to
>> re-achieve? One wonders why he bothered writing?
>> But a belief in literature - is not post-modern.
>
>'Belief' in what sense? I'm not sure where this is going, as whether Eliot
>was postmodern or not was not what we were arguing about. For what it is
>worth, I think he was a modernist.
differentiate post-modernism from modernism - that's the origin - James
Owens question. Moggin sees Po-mo as Mo with the foot harder on the gas
- so Eliot is a slow po-mo poet - you have yet to draw a line in the
sand. I think Eliot was a modernist - but for different reasons -
defining modernism as a critical denial of modernity and the idea of
progress won't do - see list & reasons elsewhere - or is po-mo such.
>I didn't put this well. (Late at night...). I'd like to rephrase it if I
>may, and drop some of your responses. All I actually wanted to say was that:
>1. Eliot doesn't oppose novelty to the original, but to repetition. So
>novelty is not better than the original, but better than the act of
>repeating it.
but please why? and why can't it in theory improve on the original - and
if it can why doesn't the artist try to - write good, better best
poetry- even if they do not succeed.
>2. Novelty involves newness, but is not necessarily an advance or
>improvement (thus not necessarily a 'step forward'). So, whilst novelty
>might well be needed to avoid repetition (which is a bad thing), it does not
>mean an advance on the originals.
Quite so - but does he and you say it could not be an advance - that an
advance would be wrong to attempt - in principle.
>
>Here is the context - from 'Tradition and the Individual Talent'
>
>"Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following
>the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence
>to its successes, 'tradition' should positively be discouraged. We have seen
>many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than
>repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be
>inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour.... the
>historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the
>past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not
>merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the
>whole of literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the
>literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a
>simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless
>as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and temporal together, is
>what makes a writer traditional"
>(and traditional in this context is a Good Thing for Eliot)
OK so he can *match* the whole of the tradition in quality while taking
it all in - hummm! I'm sorry this smacks of being better - a summation
of the tradition in a novel thought - its pure modernity - why shampoo
and condition when you can wash and go! He hints at wanting some higher
judge - bet he wants the crown. Oh vanity! Look he's a poet - he's
creating a theory that leads to his door - and covering his tracks - me?
oh gosh well really.... any artist always makes the best possible art..
eliots modernity is not a case of mountaineering in holland. He lists
all the great peaks - and wants to climb them. He knows what the current
epoch is - he knows the previous - he judges and finds modernity lacking
- then writes a piece of literature saying so - in a novel and
revolutionary poetical style. Giles - he's "going for the card that was
so high and wild he'd never have to deal another" - "just some Joseph
looking for a Manger"
>
>[James]
>> We are arguing about progress here - which its possible that in the arts
>> we dont like - is Beethoven better than Bach. Its clear in science -
>> (and politics perhaps) that modernity sees a progress in understanding.
>> Only hard line modernists would admit to this in the plastic arts- we
>> seem to want to continually see the relevance of past work. Mendelssohn
>> championed a re-evaluation of Bach - and Pound of Vivaldi I understand.
>
>Mendelsson a modernist?
He was part of the development of music in the sense of modernity - the
process began in the renaissance - one of the first to be popular
amongst the middle classes - within the period of the industrialization
of europe - toured to sell out concerts all over europe - to a big fan
base... one of the first to base his status on a broad patronage and not
that given by some aristocratic sponsor ... sounds familiar?
> Pound, yes. I'm not sure that we continually want to
>see the relevance of past work, or rather it seems to me that different bits
>of the past are relevant at different times and in different ways. But it is
>not just a case of the relevance of past work for Eliot, but its presence in
>the present, the timeless and temporal together. That, surely, is an
>opposite of a sense of progress.
Not if your wrapping it all up in one convenient package - modernity
offers the timeless pleasures of the past to the populous of today - and
sees that as progress.
>
>> Despite this though its clear that the Novelty in the art of modernism
>> was not arbitrary. (are you saying that Eliot's fragmented structure of
>> the wastelands was a passing surprise and not a step forward
>
>No. I didn't mean that, but put it very badly. Not a step forward,
>certainly. But here is another snippet from 'T&IT'.
>"The existing order [of tradition] is complete before the new work arrives;
>for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the *whole* existing
>order must be, if ever so slightly, altered".
It's complete - so what the hell is he doing - not simply re-stating but
adding novelty - is it that the past art loses its potency - hence need
for a perversion to stimulate still?
>Perhaps novelty (which is never merely new) is necessary to enter the order
>of tradition, but novelty alone is not sufficient.
what else is...
>
>> - and are
>> you saying this didn't influence successive writers who adopted even
>> more abstract forms...)
>
>Oh no, certainly other writers picked up on Eliot's means, much as he had
>picked up on Joyce's. I'm not sure about 'more abstract' forms. Some were, I
>suppose. But Mallarme had aimed at a pure poetry in the late 19th century.
why did they - ?
>
>> As i said its only with the extreme modernists
>> we see an admission of this idea - (common in other social areas) - the
>> idea of progress.
>
>This is a new note from you in our arguments.
not elsewhere - i'm never certain who has read what... its a deep
problem in the arts - was Beethoven better than Bach? Tricky.. it takes
a very up front modernist to say yes.
"With Ludwig van Beethoven the symphony became no longer entertainment
music but an expression of monumental intellect and innermost
feeling..."
sorry to me this seems to be saying he made some development - i may
prefer Bach - i do - but that's beside the point regarding formalism &
modernity...
>I hope the longer passage from T&IT above might have made what I meant
>clearer
yes it does - but i still disagree on your conclusions...
>> As i said i differentiate modernism from modernity as modernism is the
>> conclusion - which is either that the programme failed - progress was an
>> illusion - or it succeeded - but has reached its final utopian form.
>
>I probably missed it, but I haven't seen you make this differentiation
>before. So would you take 'negative' modernism as an attack on modernity?
Oh i have said so - no i would say look at what's happening - not at
what is said is happening. Eliot is producing new forms which inform and
influence a subsequent generation of artists. He is arguing why such a
technique is valid - to counter an existing orthodoxy - creating a
revolution to improve the perceived existing state of art. Yes? He seeks
to validate this by appeal to the past. Andre's bricks were justified by
an appeal to Constable. (Silly justification) Mao said once that he had
more in common with LBJ than Sartre - attacking modernity by writing
poems - printed on its presses and distributed through its
infrastructure only entertains the middle class that creates it.
>Marxists of many varieties since Marx have thought that modernity really
>sucked, but was also a good thing, at the same time.
I thought that the USSR embraced science?
>
>[James]
>> you haven't explained the corrosive process - It would work if art was
>> like a steady state throwing up work at random - but that would
>> undermine both tradition and a cannon. However in my quote its says that
>> Eliot believed in a hierarchy of English poetry- and techniques to be
>> used - I think with a hierarchy and use of novelty we can establish an
>> idea of progress. This is sufficient.
>
>Alas, it isn't. This is from the essay on 'The Metaphysical Poets', which
>was the one referred to in your quote: "we may ask, what would have been the
>fate of the 'metaphysical' had the current of poetry descended in a direct
>line from them, as it descended in a direct line to them". The Metaphysical
>poets are high in Eliot's hierarchy and he makes clear that, for him, there
>is no 'direct line' from them. A little further on, he suggest that
>something like novelty might be necessary at his moment:
>"We can only say that it appears likely that poets in our civilization, as
>it exists at present, must be *difficult*... The poet must become more and
>more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to
>dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning". But, just in case this
>looks like progress, he continues "Hence we get something which looks very
>like the conceit - we get, in fact, a method curiously similar to that of
>the 'metaphysical poets', similar also in its use of obscure words and of
>simple phrasing".
>
>Thus a hierarchy, novelty and an opposition to the idea of progress.
>
>[snip]
well i've seen justifications for cubism by reference to early
renaissance ideas - the dependence on pure geometric form - but it was
still formally a progressive movement - within modernist ideology... so
not surprised - Eliot is trying to legitimise his revolution along
similar lines. What did he think of the Victorian poets?
>emove your doubts here and I agree with you.
>
>[James]
>> Where judged ... please!
>
>I suppose perhaps by someone who also lives in tradition in the sense in the
>passage from T&IT above, someone with that sense of the timeless and the
>temporal together.
sorry don't follow this - "timeless and temporal together" to be
timeless means to have no activity at all - to be temporal implies
coming into being existing and then not - events make time - maybe god
can hold this contradiction but i'm afraid i can't.
>
>> Lyotard either recognises something - or states what is on authority -
>> in the first case i'd say a belief in tradition in eliot's terms is a
>> grand narrative at work.
>
>Without a narrative?
its called "the tradition" - he later gets into "Religion"
>
>I've snipped the rest, as I think it mostly went over the same ground.
>Please bring back anything you want to.
>
which i have done - though all this is interesting and educational for
me - i would quite like to get back to attempting to differentiate by
use of non-negative statements the difference between modernism and
post-modernism -
ho - hum..
--
James Whitehead
HenryBerry
Just a quick reply, or obervation, to your insightful analysis: Postmodernism
is not the opposite of modernism, but rather the "hyper" mode of modernism, as
in "hyper-reality." The distinction modernism-modernity is largely
word-playing. Eliot can be categorized as an author of the era of modernism not
only because of his mood, but because of his style, no matter what his regard
of tradition.
Henry Berry
Ned Ludd
news:B5E5DA74.1062E%u...@removethisredhotant.com...
James W:
>> In teaching its often necessary to simplify
>> otherwise the student is overwhelmed in detail.
Giles:
> In teaching, students are expected to do the reading or looking before
> they decide what something means. Or they are in my sessions, at least.
> For pity's sake, James, this isn't teaching, this is Usenet. I was
> arguing with people who appeared to put foward something I disagreed
> with. Now, apparently, I'm failing in my duties as a teacher! Bluntly,
> you can all fuck off.
>
Is Usenet a postmodern thing, as opposed to a modern one?
Ned
Moggin
> In the first of three postings (where you comment about "modern" and
> post-modern" as "periodizing" terminology), you raise an interesting
> question about post-modernity and neo-modernity. But first I had better
> ask, is post-modernity the same as post-modernism? Also, is there such a
> thing as neo-modernism?
If there's any such thing "neo-modernism," I haven't heard
about it. I also don't recall raising any questions on the
topic. There are as many meanings of "post-modernism" as there
are fish in the sea.
> In the second, you invoke Nietszche and Marx, apparently as
> counter-examples to my suggestion that modernism marks the flowering of a
> historical self-consciousness that goes beyond simple engagement in
> contemporary ideas and views, toward an interest in its own activity as a
> historically-framed project. I had said that the turning point was Hegel,
> so I don't see how these counter-examples apply.
Oh, you're beginning modernism with Hegel? Then obviously
my counter-examples don't apply.
[...]
> Kierkegaard's use of pseudonyms does suggest a post-modern distance from
> commitment.
I guess there's that, too, but I was thinking on different
lines. They're an application of his concept of "indirect
communication." When he composes philosophy as, e.g., Johannes
Climacus, he's not just distancing himself, but adopting a
certain perspective and persona. As Nietzsche would say, truth
requires a mask.
[...]
> What a delightful and fascinating situation, when several people are all
> talking about apparently the same thing! The metaphysical implications
> are staggering. But in a situation like that, one wants to be sure that
> communication is actually taking place. Paraphrasing is a way of saying,
> "This is what I heard -- have I got it right?" If I were simply to quote
> other passages, I would be succumbing to the post-modern mood of
> inviolable texts.
The heresy of paraphrase belongs to modernism, represented
by the New Criticism. And of course I never asked you to
"simply quote other passages": I pointed out that you invented
the arguments you attributed to me.
> When you think about it, the Usenet habit of disjointed
> paragraphs, points and counterpoints with no explicitly sustained
> narrative, is as good a symbol of post-modern thought as any. It is like
> the Laugh-In of intellectual discussion. (Do today's students recognize
> the allusion?) I prefer to write at length, paraphrasing the thoughts of
> others in order to weave from them longer thoughts in which everyone has a
> voice. The cost is that I may sometimes get it wrong; the benefit is that
> I may occasionally be corrected.
Everyone here has a voice, courtesy of Usenet. Apparently
you prefer for people to speak thru you, not in their own
tones. My point, though, is that I never spoke the lines which
you had me reciting in your supposed paraphrase.
Incidentally, you seem to have skipped over an alternative.
You went straight from disjointed conversation, which you
dislike, to the order and harmony you offer in your paraphrased
accounts.
> Unfortunately I sometimes get carried away with my prose, and like John
> Wisdom I find that my idiosyncracies of expression are not always
> appreciated.
Excuse me, but I didn't object to your idiosyncracies. In
fact, I didn't even notice any. I complained that you put
words in my mouth -- not just words, but entire arguments. You
wove them out of whole cloth.
> You do suggest that anyone puzzled by the contradiction
> between the proposed conception of modernism and Eliot's opus would
> benefit by drawing a distinction between modernism and modernity.
Rather I observe the proposed conception of post-modernism
makes Eliot, the High Modernist, into a pomo.
Owens:
>>> [Modernity] he argues, is the
>>> proper name for the fascination with rational solutions, while
>>> [modernism] is, well, something else -- I'm not quite sure what.
Moggin:
>> You're not sure because I never argued any of this. (It's
>> too bad you didn't take your uncertainty as a hint.) I said
>> in so many words that "modernity" is the name for an historical
>> period starting with the Renaissance and including -- among
>> other things -- the advent of capitalism, the rise of the
>> bourgeoisie, and the industrial revolution. I also stated that
>> "modernism" is a catch-all term for "certain cultural and
>> artistic movements dating from the late 19th to the mid 20th
>> century." I offered Nietzsche as an example in philosophy, and
>> I named Pound, Eliot, and Woolf to illustrate High Modernism
>> in literature. I also noted that modernism was in large part a
>> rebellion against modernity.
Owens:
> Socrates would say that you have been asked for one thing -- a definition
> of "modernity" -- and in your generosity you have given us many.
In that case Socrates would be wrong, since I wasn't asked
for a definition and didn't offer to give one.
> But what
> do all these things have in common that makes them representative of
> "modernity"? Is modernity really nothing more than a historical period,
> indistinguishable from any other except by limiting dates, themselves
> presumably arbitrary? Your definition of "modernism" is the most useless
> imaginable. A "catch-all term" for "certain" historical movements, indeed!
> You are doubtless intelligent enough to see for yourself the utter paucity
> of such a definition.
I can see that's not what I said; I can also see that what
I _did_ say was accurate, even useful.
> Though James H. and I risk the mockery of our betters, at
> least we are trying a bit harder.
[...]
You make a mockery of yourselves in more ways than I could
politely list. Agreed you seem to work at it.
-- Moggin
Moggin
> i quoted once from Nietzsche - on Nietzsche -
> but this was brushed aside by someone - so we have to look as what is
> presented...?
Exactly. Someone brushed aside your quotation because the
question at issue concerned Nietzsche's work, rather than
Nietzsche's opinion of his work. That required looking at what
was present in his work, not just at the remarks which he
presented about it. Your quotation also said considerably less
than the proposition you offered it to support.
-- Moggin
Moggin
>>> During the modern epoch popular music reached its zenith - with the post
>>> war affluence amongst youth etc. and produced the Beatles. In terms of
>>> what a pop group was they were that - mass appeal - innovative in dress
>>> and music - etc. A modern ICON. What post-modernity delivers is Oasis -
>>> a fabricated simulicron of the real thing.
Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>> The 60s delivered the Beatles and "a fabricated simulacrum"
>> called the Monkees. The Beatles had the nickname "the Fab
>> Four." Shorty after they appeared, the Monkees became known as
>> "the pre-fab Four": a joke which summed them perfectly. The
>> interesting thing is that some of the Monkees' songs ("Stepping
>> Stone," "Clarkesville Station") were great pop music.
James:
> Yes - not only Carol King wrote for them but the nesmith(sp?) guy i
> seem to remember wrote some *fairly* good stuff. But Oasis appear 30
> years on - this i find remarkable - not just a copy at the time but an
> attempt at a re-creation in fairly close detail of something a
> generation ago. Moreover they are considered as being experimental and
> new-wave in some newsgroups- and although a creation of EMI or Sony - i
> think EMI- regularly top the inde (independent) label charts!
I don't know Oasis that well -- just what I've listened to
on the radio -- but they don't seem that remarkable. The
resemblance to the Beatles isn't very strong -- they sure don't
seem like a detailed recreation to me. (And now that I'm
thinking about it, I've also seen them on MTV.) You don't mean
the Ruttles, by any chance?
What's neat about the Monkees is precisely that they _were_
"a copy at the time" -- a t.v. version of the Beatles, but
touring and releasing singles at the same time the Beatles were
doing those same things. (Although the Beatles may have
stopped touring by then.) And wasn't Checkov, on Star Trek, an
imitation Davey Jones?
> What did you make of the Banana Splits - a fabricated monkeys band?
No idea. Sorry.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
<u...@removethisredhotant.com> writes
>I have been studying modernism in various forms for
>some time now, I continue to do so and hopefully will so continue. Have I
>got a meaning for the term? No, nothing that is not always provisional and
>situational. I do have the odd opinion, though.
"In several sources it is indicated that one of the essential elements
of Postmodernism is that it is an attack against theory and methodology.
proponents claim to relinquish all attempts to create new knowledge in a
systematic fashion, but instead employ an anti rules approach. However
there are two methodologies characteristic of Postmodernism,
Interpretation and De construction. These methodologies are
interdependent in that Interpretation is inherent in De construction.
Post modern methodology is post positivist or anti positivist. As
substitutes for the scientific method the affirmatives look to feelings
and personal experience, the skeptical post modernists provide
substitutes for method because they argue we can never really know
anything.
De construction emphasizes negative critical capacity. De construction
involves demystifying a text to reveal internal arbitrary hierarchies
and presuppositions. By examining the margins of a text, the effort of
de construction examines what it represses, what it does not say, and
its incongruities. It does not solely unmask error, but redefines the
text by undoing and reversing polar opposites. De construction does not
resolve inconsistencies, but rather exposes hierarchies involved for
distillation of information .
Rosenau's Guidelines for De construction Characteristics are,
Find and exception to a generalization in a text and push it to the
limit so that this generalization appears absurd. Use the exception to
undermine the principle.
Interpret the arguments in a text being de constructed in their most
extreme form.
Avoid absolute statements and cultivate intellectual excitement by
making statements that are both startling and sensational.
Deny the legitimacy of dichotomies because there are always a few
exceptions.
Nothing is to be accepted, nothing is to be rejected. It is extremely
difficult to criticize a de constructive argument if no clear viewpoint
is expressed.
Write so as to permit the greatest number of interpretations possible.
Obscurity may protect from serious scrutiny. The idea is to create a
text without finality or completion, one with which the reader can never
be finished.
Employ new and unusual terminology in order that familiar positions may
not seem too familiar and otherwise obvious scholarship may not seem so
obviously relevant.
Never consent to a change of terminology and always insist that the
wording of the de constructive argument is sacrosanct. More familiar
formulations undermine any sense that the de constructive position is
unique."
maybe :-)
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<u...@removethisredhotant.com> writes
>> yes - but what authority - i quoted once from Nietzsche - on Nietzsche -
>> but this was brushed aside by someone - so we have to look as what is
>> presented...?
>
>Well, it would help if you said who the authority was. If we agreed that
>they were an authority worth respecting, it would make things much simpler.
of a statement is contingent in some way on the status of its author?
>
>> well that's a modernist trait - experimenting- creating value systems-
>> hierarchies as opposed to po-mo's Anarchy - check out Ihab Hassan's
>> table showing differences between the two movements (not that po-mo is a
>> movement) Page 17 of POSTMODERNISM for BEGINNERS - there's an authority!
>
>Trouble is that in at least some postmodernism (or at least self proclaimed
>postmodernism) pretty much the same thing happens. A repressed past, or
>'hidden' antecedents are brought out, in order to produce a counter
>tradition.
unless you just believe everything you read - *by certain authors*
>supposed to be, well, meaningless?
state of affairs - that is the collapse of modernism - a *simple case*
is the political structure in the eastern block - which now is one of
changing *countries* - boundaries and political systems. And what
structures do we describe these with- what are relevant methodologies
image you might like is that of a plane crash - asking for authority
seems somewhat pointless. The pilots are probably dead anyway.
>
>[James]
>> erecting canonical traditions again is part of modernity... if novelty
>> is better than repetition then if not in his own work in some others it
>> must be theoretically possible - ("new = better" is a modernist mantra)
>
>I think you confuse various things here. First there is a difference between
>the original and its repetition. If Eliot opposes repetition, it is not
>because the alternative (novelty) is better than the original, it because it
>is better than the repetition.
Such a methodology opposes orthodoxies and creates new ones - was the
driving force of the reformation. This is modernity - is it not? Maybe
Eliot saw some past golden age of literature which is not possible to
re-achieve? One wonders why he bothered writing? But a belief in
literature - is not post-modern.
> Second, there is the use of the term novelty
>rather than 'the new'. Novelty might often be used as a synonym for 'new' ,
>but in the context of Eliot, I doubt it. In the context of his critique of
>modernity, and of fashion, I'd suugest that novelty is a passing surprise
>rather than a genuine innovation or step forward. If so, then in many ways
>novelty implies repetition, as it is not a genuine innovation but a
>recasting of the familiar.
We are arguing about progress here - which its possible that in the arts
we dont like - is Beethoven better than Bach. Its clear in science -
(and politics perhaps) that modernity sees a progress in understanding.
Only hard line modernists would admit to this in the plastic arts- we
seem to want to continually see the relevance of past work. Mendelssohn
championed a re-evaluation of Bach - and Pound of Vivaldi I understand.
Despite this though its clear that the Novelty in the art of modernism
was not arbitrary. (are you saying that Eliot's fragmented structure of
the wastelands was a passing surprise and not a step forward - and are
you saying this didn't influence successive writers who adopted even
more abstract forms...) As i said its only with the extreme modernists
we see an admission of this idea - (common in other social areas) - the
idea of progress. If Eliot really doesn't see progress as possible then
novelty's increase is like taking stronger doses of some narcotic to
produce less and less of a high? - Is he saying that society predicated
on novelty - industry - is bad - yet use this same methodology. At any
rate he creates a set of value judgements - if a little confusing. He
appears like a junkie hooked on and hating the consequences of his
habit.
>
>[James]
>> Again in modernity the idea of progress is general - it does not de-
>> value the Individual Genius's of the past - but builds on them.
>
>But Eliot doesn't claim to build on them.
So he came to writing afresh ... without influence ... I thought past
literature was everywhere alluded to in his work? His black thoughts on
modernity (i suspect a snobbishness at work) did not prevent him from
attempting to create high art. Within this he synthesises the past
literature tradition in novel ways? Or does he just make things up? The
problem he and may modernist's have in the arts is the idea of progress.
As i said i differentiate modernism from modernity as modernism is the
conclusion - which is either that the programme failed - progress was an
illusion - or it succeeded - but has reached its final utopian form.
Eliot took the pessimistic view perhaps - someone like Reinhardt was
more the optimist about his work. Again the analogy is you come out of
hospital dead or alive - the Marxist's I guess think modernity sucks
(now - back in the 1920s they thought it cool) - whilst the Capitalists
think it was wonderful.
>No. Attempting to maintain a past standard, if not, by necessity, in the
>past form, is not standing on the shoulders.... Eliot would be the first to
>deny that he was seeing any further.
It requires ever more novelty and innovation within literature so he or
it is doomed to failure - is this why he turned to Christianity i
wonder? An abdication of the great weight?
>[James]
>> you need to say how modernity corrodes the forms - by linking himself
>> with a history/cannon and seeking *new* forms - well that's modernism to
>> a T.
>
>Only if you ignore what the history/canon meant for Eliot. I'll say it
>again, it was not a continuous lineage, but a discontinuous 'tradition' of
>works of value. Eliot didn't see a 'history' in the sense of a story.
you haven't explained the corrosive process - It would work if art was
like a steady state throwing up work at random - but that would
undermine both tradition and a cannon. However in my quote its says that
Eliot believed in a hierarchy of English poetry- and techniques to be
used - I think with a hierarchy and use of novelty we can establish an
idea of progress. This is sufficient.
>
Where judged ... please! But without my doubts he sees that modernity
was a futile pointless exercise - we agree - though why the hell he
continued writing beats me?
>[James]
>> You see if your looking for something like an *Objective Correlative* -
>> its called a grand narrative isn't it?
>
>I don't think it is, to be honest. There is no narrative about it. And it
>doesn't fit with what Lyotard calls Grand Narratives.
Lyotard either recognises something - or states what is on authority -
in the first case i'd say a belief in tradition in eliot's terms is a
grand narrative at work.
>
>[James]
>> - working in a tradition is part
>> of the modern programme - but more than that - building on it .... which
>> is exactly what Eliot did. These are Eliot's words - he's seeing
>> hierarchies and traditions and objective value systems.... So? well
>> that's modernity...
>
>And not just modernity. I think that in part Eliot is appealing to a
>pre-modern. I wouldn't want to push that line though. But if you read
>Eliot's poetry, the point of the 'Objective Correlative' might become
>clearer. It is not about a value system in any rational, analytic or
>'scientific' sense, but it is about a kind of value beyond the individual
>subject. A value he seeks to oppose to the objectivity of 'progress'.
I suppose ultimately a re-belief in God then... because here we dispose
of progress. Is this the same thing that drove Pound to Fascism?
>[James]
>> (please explain how a return can be not repetition) Above we have the
>> idea of progress from *late Victorian rhetoric* - the idea of progress
>> is modernist - How we value Eliot's work regarding the Metaphysical
>> Poets is a difficult matter - in po-mo terms we just wouldn't bother.
>> But this is the modern methodology again -
>
>So what are you saying, he is a modernist until he gets difficult for your
>view of modernism?
I've explained my view of modernism - by background is not literature
but fine art - and not theory but practice - so I may have difficulties
explaining what I make of modernity and post-modernity. However its not
a theory - its an attempt to explain such things as the end of modern
painting- that is given the modern methodology it became impossible to
paint as art - only as decoration. The more we discuss Eliot the more I
hope i see what his problems and concerns as an artist might have been.
One problem for me is that during the 1920s there was a neo-classicism
which in fine art (and music) was a kind of pulling back from total
abstractionism. - and Eliot may have been part of this? I don't know.
>
>I don't see why you have a problem with a return that is not a repetition.
Well its like doing experiments without the idea of discovery - and
without the idea that what is produced has value. As a painter to devote
your life to such an activity seems futile.
>Eliot sought to achieve the poetic and extra poetic quality that he saw in
>the Metaphysicals, but for him this was impossible to achieve by simply
>repeating or imitating them.
To expose this extra poetic quality in a novel form would be considered
as progress - because it would be less dependent on superfluous detail
and themes.
>
>[James]
>> Innovation the hallmark of modernity - what we are arguing about is does
>> innovation in the arts - like it does elsewhere - involve the idea of
>> progress.
>
>And the answer is - not for Eliot. And he was, I think we agree, a
>modernist.
This I say above is a pessimistic outcome.
>
>[James]
>>(within modernity - in po-mo innovation is arbitrary and
>> progress impossible) Clearly above Eliot uses it to correct the
>> vagueness.... so he does- even if he can't outperform some other artists
>> - he clearly sees novelty as a means to progress
>
>There is no 'clearly' about it. I'd tend to say the reverse. Clearly Eliot
>sees novelty as a means to try to avoid progress. Things, for Eliot, don't
>get better.
If this is true then its perverse in the extreme - he did not regard his
work as better - then why do it? However this view doesn't fit my poor
reading of the work and the even less reading of the theory about it -
but to say *revolutionary novelty* for me implies at least an attempt
at progress.
>
>[James]
>> - and this is the
>> methodology which runs through all modernist disciplines - from science
>> to the fine-arts.
>> I would imagine many scientists today regard the work of Einstein et al.
>> as something they could never measure up to - but still see science as
>> progressing- there's no contradiction here at all - all we are seeing is
>> that modernism is not just T.S.Eliot .... but a general idea or paradigm
>> which emerged with the renaissance and collapsed sometime in the mid
>> 20th century.
>
>But Eliot is, as you have suggested, supposed to be something of an
>archetypal modernist. If your argument doesn't work for Eliot, then maybe it
>has a few problems.
Not so - I'm not a student of literature - Eliot i guess is too early
and too English to fit the archetypal view - he reminds me of Max Plank
- an unwilling victim of modernism perhaps. I did not i think invoke him
- not sure who I would in literature ... but my argument does work for
Eliot as I outline above - in fact it offers an explanation for his
return to the fold of pre-modern dogmatic thought (well as dogmatic as
you get in the Anglican church) Didn't Auden do the same? As I said
elsewhere perhaps literature has a problem with the abstract nature of
modernism - though I remember those concrete poems of the 60s - would
they not represent the ultimate in defragmentation of text - which Eliot
used in the wastelands? :-)
>
>[Giles]
>>> Nothing in this even indicates Eliot as a progressive or developmental
>>> modernist, indeed quite the reverse. Rather than building on his immediate
>>> past, he rejects it for a discontinuous tradition. That tradition, for him,
>>> is not something that can be improved upon and, as the last passage
>>> suggests, can only be judged by eternity.
>
>[James]
>> He can't believe in something that can't be improved on - and then want
>> a divine judge.
>
>Pretty much that is exactly what he believed in, yes. Why couldn't he?
>
Because if he thought already something was the case - he didn't need a
judge - if he was uncertain he would. Again wheel in the old god and
modernity is finished.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
> I don't know Oasis that well -- just what I've listened to
>on the radio -- but they don't seem that remarkable. The
>resemblance to the Beatles isn't very strong -- they sure don't
>seem like a detailed recreation to me. (And now that I'm
>thinking about it, I've also seen them on MTV.) You don't mean
>the Ruttles, by any chance?
Oasis are created in the look sound and feel of the Beatles circa Rubber
Soul to Sgnt Pepper - there is a black and white video of one of their
songs which at first i thought was from rubber soul. What the difference
is that now this is presented as serious music - and original - The
simulacrum is not a copy - well is more than a copy - the *quality* is
better than the original - it denies the original- makes the original
worthless and pointless. The simulacrum is a cybernetic replacement of
the original.
>
> What's neat about the Monkees is precisely that they _were_
>"a copy at the time" -- a t.v. version of the Beatles, but
>touring and releasing singles at the same time the Beatles were
>doing those same things. (Although the Beatles may have
>stopped touring by then.) And wasn't Checkov, on Star Trek, an
>imitation Davey Jones?
different people - i thought Davy Jokes was the cute McCartney figure?
Checkov is the serious type Illa Kruiachin ? to Napoleon Solo's Kirk?
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
> You make a mockery of yourselves in more ways than I could
>politely list. Agreed you seem to work at it.
>
>-- Moggin
"even you could become an ass through abundance and wisdom"
--
James Whitehead
Giles
> In article <B5E3114D.10406%u...@removethisredhotant.com>, Giles
> <u...@removethisredhotant.com> writes
>> James Whitehead wrote:
>>
>> [snip of James Owens' post]
>>> I think much of what you say above is very enlightening - I do feel
>>> however one has to be careful of how artists react to the previous epoch
>>> and their own - for one they need(ed) to gain a new territory - a few
>>> may be critical - but more wished to synthersise something new from
>>> older art forms. Though Eliot may have had misgivings about the products
>>> of industrialisation - perhaps the rise of the uncultured masses? did he
>>> also criticise the previous literary cannon - i don't think so.
>>
>> Yes, James, he did, and virulently. See your other post. Eliot attempted to
>> more or less completely reconstruct the canon as it then existed. And he did
>> it in the name of... not progress, but that of a constant value against the
>> fads, fashions and, above all, idea of progress in modernity. For him,
>> tradition was something to try to rise to, not improve upon.
> It's important you see that though he might be conservative here - he
> uses the modernist radical methodology - which is a problem for him...
Why is it a problem for him?
> He seems to want a very English Reformation
?
>>> (I seem
>>> to remember either himself of Joyce writing positively about Dickens!)
>>> This is I think where Moggin fails to see what was going on. That is
>>> that artists might not like certain aspects of society around them - but
>>> related their work to a *modernist* tradition - that of a search for
>>> new/better/more real forms of expression. This they could relate back to
>>> the renaissance. (and again i think Eliot saw himself as part of this
>>> tradition of modernist literature from the classical world ...
>>> Shakespeare onwards...)
>>
>> Nope, not 'onwards'. There is no constancy, no continuation or lineage in
>> Eliot's canon. His 'tradition' is discontinuous and involves no development
>> or progression. He looks back and attempts to rise to the standards of
>> expression achieved by an intermittent few in the past. Sorry. (Oh and how
>> is Shakespeare modernist?)
> OK Evolution by jerks - :-)
Without progression?
> Shakespeare's modernity is something
> outside the scope of a simple reply - But he seems to address in his
> work themes which are modern - secular - as opposed to religious -
> spiritual - Lear/Hamlet/Othello......? One suspects with James O that
> there's a deliberate attempt to cloud the waters here...
I'm sorry? Not more agendas on my part, surely. You brought in Shakespeare
as modernist. I asked about it, as a digression, clearly. Shakespeare's
'modernity' strikes me as a different matter to his 'modernism', but let it
lie, please.
>>> The engagement of modernism within actual
>>> social issues is *less* than previous periods as it developed along very
>>> formal and abstract lines -(contrast this to the pre-Raphaelite
>>> movement) - though these were seen by apologists of modernism as
>>> socially relevant - e.g. the house as a machine for living in. Typically
>>> we see a return to representational works in post-modern art - if it can
>>> anymore be called art.
>>
>> This is a digression from the case at hand, but form is in no way separate
>> from 'social issues'. Booklist moment - Adorno: 'On Commitment' in Notes to
>> Literature, or all of 'Aesthetic Theory'.
> In no way is form and social issues unrelated - but the modern artist
> innovates as opposed to placate... with the current social
> trends/issues.
Here we probably agree, then. I'm not entirely clear what you mean in the
last bit, but what the hell, I'll agree anyway.
Regards
Giles
Giles
> In article <B5E30ACA.10404%u...@removethisredhotant.com>, Giles
> <u...@removethisredhotant.com> writes
[snip]
>> Bauhaus architecture, before the arrival of Meyer in 1928, was
>> understood as having a moral and spiritual function, not simpy being
>> rational problem solving.
> Rationality can I think have high - the highest of moral forms and
> values- isn't this the whole idea of the Good. In modernism truth to
> materials generate not only an aesthetic but a moral improvement.(that
> was the pitch) I seem to be missing something here - but emancipation
> within class, sex, and race are all part of this - its an appeal to
> logic - equality - truth - and not some given orthodoxy isn't it?
How is the morality of 'truth to materials' logical?
>> Music?
> In all this there seems to be a hidden agenda to see post-modernism as
> essentially not that different to modernism.
No, that is not my agenda, hidden or otherwise. I thought that what I was
doing here was arguing against a concept of modernism and modernity as
identical.
> Let me use a crude example.
> During the modern epoch popular music reached its zenith - with the post
> war affluence amongst youth etc. and produced the Beatles. In terms of
> what a pop group was they were that - mass appeal - innovative in dress
> and music - etc. A modern ICON. What post-modernity delivers is Oasis -
> a fabricated simulicron of the real thing.
A strawman.
> However such simplicity would it seems be anathema to those who wish for
> some reason to keep things as convoluted as possible.
Only where such simplicity is a misrepresentation.
>> No, Moggin has been quite clear in the past. Modernism is often, even
>> mostly, a rebellion against modernity. I'm with him on this.
> mostly is derived from what? This is as daft as saying QM was a
> rebellion against classical physics. What is key here - and what seems
> to be deliberately avoided are factors in modernity - yes innovation -
> novelty - progress - and revolution (in the political sphere) which are
> found in modernity from the renaissance onwards - but which are not
> found in post-modernity.
Once again, I have not argued that modernism is a separate thing from
modernity, quite the reverse. How about adding a few things to your factors
of modernity, by the way: quantification, 'disenchantment', fragmentation,
the rise of capitalism, wage labour and the spread of the commodity form,
industrialisation and fashion as repetitive novelty, for starters. Oh, and
industrialised warfare.
>> Really? A curious reading, it seems to me. Perhaps you could indicate what
>> it is in Eliot's poetry that gives you a sense of heady excitement and
>> boundless possibility.
> some re-evaluation of modernism seems to be taking place here - i think
> innovation and novelty could well lead to a feeling of excitement.
The point of the question was what in Eliot's poetry indicates a sense of
heady excitement? But if reading it gives you a sense of boundless
possibility, I still feel that would be a very curious reading.
>> Of course. But how could you have a rebellion against modernity without
>> modernity? How could you have an authentic rebellion which was not
>> fundamentally shaped by that which it rejected?
> Some theorists - notably Marxists - wished to see much modern art as
> this - of course it suited their political aims - but was quite untrue -
> are you working to some political agenda here like they were I wonder?
Senator McCarthy, I presume? Am I now or have I ever been...? You really
have started to get a preoccupation with agendas.
But the question remains: would not a rebellion against modernity be
thoroughly enmeshed in modernity?
>> few know what irony is
>> anymore, confusing it with an easy cynicism.
> Yes I get the impression that *a few* these days know *the truth*.
Heh, fair enough. I recant, I recant. Still, over the last few posts, I've
been arguing for doubt and complexity and you have been arguing with
absolute certainty for your version of modernism. Pot and Kettle?
Regards
Giles (passing through Finland in a sealed train)
James Whitehead
<u...@removethisredhotant.com> writes
>James Whitehead wrote:
>
>> In article <B5E30ACA.10404%u...@removethisredhotant.com>, Giles
>> <u...@removethisredhotant.com> writes
>[snip]
>>> Bauhaus architecture, before the arrival of Meyer in 1928, was
>>> understood as having a moral and spiritual function, not simpy being
>>> rational problem solving.
>> Rationality can I think have high - the highest of moral forms and
>> values- isn't this the whole idea of the Good. In modernism truth to
>> materials generate not only an aesthetic but a moral improvement.(that
>> was the pitch) I seem to be missing something here - but emancipation
>> within class, sex, and race are all part of this - its an appeal to
>> logic - equality - truth - and not some given orthodoxy isn't it?
>
>How is the morality of 'truth to materials' logical?
social problems - With good housing, welfare and clean new cities the
sources of crime and disease would be removed. The post war architecture
reflected this. - you would if your interested in modernity be best to
research this - you might do well to read about science and technology
also - as these are keys to understanding modernism and modernity. Good
design was seen as producing a new humanist morality. Much as I would
like to develop this - if its just to raise name calling on yours
moggins side I'm somewhat reluctant. But if you confine your research to
tiny detail you will fail to see the big picture. The world from a
narrow inspection may appear flat. What james Ownes I think wanted was
an overview - which you seem reluctant to offer - why? All maps except
at a scale of 1 to 1 are inaccurate - but useful. Eliot's modernity no
doubt changed throughout his life - and though this might be an
interesting study - what I thought we were discussing were
generalisations in history. You really need to check out the prevailing
paradigm of modernity - science - before getting lost in the detail.
When Eliot experiments and seeks innovation - its so like scientific
method - i know he would hate this assertion probably - why? And why use
it. And what is it?
>> essentially not that different to modernism.
>
>No, that is not my agenda, hidden or otherwise. I thought that what I was
>doing here was arguing against a concept of modernism and modernity as
>identical.
modernity for ever more. This is fine - but makes you pretty useless at
offering directions. In teaching its often necessary to simplify
otherwise the student is overwhelmed in detail. Maybe your just too
zealous for the subject or maybe throwing up smoke screens? A detailed
study of what modernity was is a valuable enterprise - (somewhat deeply
flawed without reference to science however) - an honest good hearted
fellow could offer some pointers - not endless detailed reading lists -
a teacher has to suffer fools gladly - your not trying to be a teacher?
- or is moggin - so in effect you end up confusing - putting people of
and if not calling them ignorant making them feel so. You do yourself
and your study a diss-service. And yes it appears as gnosticism. I
anticipate your throwing up your hands and denying all this - but to
join in conversation without any sympathy for your fellows makes you a
bad sport. In my dealings with academics however i have noticed the
reverse of this - a concern for understanding and sympathy for someone
who may not want or have the time for such detailed exposition. This
does not exclude them from some genuine engagement. I could maintain
that you could never have a clue about modernity if not have faced the
painters dilemma at the end of the 1960s - however although you can not
experience this now - i could with patience share an understanding of it
with you.
>> During the modern epoch popular music reached its zenith - with the post
>> war affluence amongst youth etc. and produced the Beatles. In terms of
>> what a pop group was they were that - mass appeal - innovative in dress
>> and music - etc. A modern ICON. What post-modernity delivers is Oasis -
>> a fabricated simulicron of the real thing.
>
>A strawman.
>> However such simplicity would it seems be anathema to those who wish for
>> some reason to keep things as convoluted as possible.
>
>Only where such simplicity is a misrepresentation.
can't be considered by just looking at the poetry of Eliot - or at
poetry in general - in modernity simplicity is not only possible its a
virtue- in post modernity its quite different. But if your using post
modern methods to create any understanding your lost, but maybe your
aware of this.
>Once again, I have not argued that modernism is a separate thing from
>modernity, quite the reverse. How about adding a few things to your factors
>of modernity, by the way: quantification, 'disenchantment', fragmentation,
>the rise of capitalism, wage labour and the spread of the commodity form,
>industrialisation and fashion as repetitive novelty, for starters. Oh, and
>industrialised warfare.
yourself? and moggin as seeing modernism as typified by a negative
critique of modernity - but its not so - some do others don't (bring
back the Italians!) and cubism, pop art, post war architecture, politics
- American abstractionism - rock and roll... Nuclear Power The National
Health Service... it might be that in literature a fairly pessimistic
view of modernity is found - whereas in the plastic arts it isn't - but
what is significant in these is the formal development - based on an
experimental & innovative method.
One note: fashion as repetitive novelty is a po-mo phenomenon, fashion
during the 20th C followed the modernist theories of - progress -
newness & less is more- gave the bikini, mini skirt and topless dress -
the latter hasn't yet resurfaced and probably wont - as it - like the
end of oh Calcutta! represents a terminus of sorts. (well the next step
is obvious)
>
>The point of the question was what in Eliot's poetry indicates a sense of
>heady excitement? But if reading it gives you a sense of boundless
>possibility, I still feel that would be a very curious reading.
could see Gurnica as offering boundless possibilities. You must separate
theory and politics from the activity if you wish to see it as a
practitioner - and its these who create modernity - not the critics.
Another example - Pollock's beautiful drip paintings developed from
studies of terrible scenes of human carnage e.g. war 1947. You can see
traces in number 1 - but by the high art of pollock its completely
gone. Theorists must understand that artists have more allegiance to
their art than a theorists idea -they use these - and throw them away
for new ones as needed. Again I could relate this to mathematics and
science - scientists have a very cavalier attitude to the mathematics
they use - and have since Newton. If you are genuine about understanding
modernity you need to take this on board.
>
>
>But the question remains: would not a rebellion against modernity be
>thoroughly enmeshed in modernity?
dialectical process taking place - but please modern art was not an
illustration of any set of theories - it was a practice of innovation
and discovery - sure representational art has to have a subject - is it
*artistically* significant that the women in Demoiselles d'Avignon are
prostitutes.
>>> few know what irony is
>>> anymore, confusing it with an easy cynicism.
>> Yes I get the impression that *a few* these days know *the truth*.
>
>Heh, fair enough. I recant, I recant. Still, over the last few posts, I've
>been arguing for doubt and complexity and you have been arguing with
>absolute certainty for your version of modernism. Pot and Kettle?
and fun in the detail - but if someone asks what a dog is do you say
"without analysing all possible dogs - living and dead its impossible to
tell." Some may not have tails - but we have to begin somewhere.
>
>Regards
>
>Giles (passing through Finland in a sealed train)
>
bet there's trouble when you arrive
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
Rather I observe the proposed conception of post-modernism
makes Eliot, the High Modernist, into a pomo.
I never argued Eliot was
a post-modernist: I observed that while he was a famous
example of High Modernism, in your scheme of things he would be
labeled a pomo.
since I'm not arguing that Eliot is a pomo by
Lyotard's definition.
Lyotard speaks of post-modernism as the
"acceleration of modernism"
Of course Eliot is a modernist.
Wasn't I plain? I said I wished you and others would stop
conflating modernism with post-modernism.
"Post-modernism" is a misnomer ... My view is that "late modernism"
would have been a much better choice of words, if there had been moment
of choosing. Since the two are part of the same continuum
--
James Whitehead
Giles
James, we have had a reasonable discussion, I thought. But some of what you
say in this post about 'teaching' has really pissed me off. I have tried to
be more or less polite throughout, but don't ever tell me what my supposed
duties are again.
[snip]
>>> Rationality can I think have high - the highest of moral forms and
>>> values- isn't this the whole idea of the Good. In modernism truth to
>>> materials generate not only an aesthetic but a moral improvement.(that
>>> was the pitch) I seem to be missing something here - but emancipation
>>> within class, sex, and race are all part of this - its an appeal to
>>> logic - equality - truth - and not some given orthodoxy isn't it?
>>
>> How is the morality of 'truth to materials' logical?
> The logic was of the post war period that modernity could solve all
> social problems - With good housing, welfare and clean new cities the
> sources of crime and disease would be removed. The post war architecture
> reflected this.
I agree with you on all of this. But I still wonder about how 'truth to
materials' as a moral value is logical.
> - you would if your interested in modernity be best to
> research this - you might do well to read about science and technology
> also -
Quite possibly so, those are gaping holes for me.
> as these are keys to understanding modernism and modernity.
There we disagree.
> Good
> design was seen as producing a new humanist morality. Much as I would
> like to develop this - if its just to raise name calling on yours
> moggins side I'm somewhat reluctant.
Where in this spurt of posts have I indulged in name calling? Or even said
anything faintly derogatory about people involved in this discussion? I
thought I was responding to people's comments and asking serious questions
in return, In fact, that is exactly what I was doing, and I intend to
continue that way if things continue. If, however, you suspect everything I
write of having a hidden agenda or two, or of setting you up for abuse - on
no evidence - then there probably isn't much point carrying on.
> But if you confine your research to
> tiny detail you will fail to see the big picture. The world from a
> narrow inspection may appear flat. What james Ownes I think wanted was
> an overview - which you seem reluctant to offer - why? All maps except
> at a scale of 1 to 1 are inaccurate - but useful.
James Owens posted an account of a debate (which I had all but missed, being
away), and to which I responded. It wasn't until his reply that I even knew
that he was looking for an overview. I'll come back to my response below.
> Eliot's modernity no
> doubt changed throughout his life - and though this might be an
> interesting study - what I thought we were discussing were
> generalisations in history. You really need to check out the prevailing
> paradigm of modernity - science - before getting lost in the detail.
> When Eliot experiments and seeks innovation - its so like scientific
> method - i know he would hate this assertion probably - why? And why use
> it. And what is it?
I won't duplicate the discussion in the other thread about Eliot's
innovation, which by the way I thought had got quite interesting - it sent
me back to the poems and essays for a think.
As to the generalisation, these were, for me, put foward in James Owens'
post, and I responded with a quantity of examples and arguments as to why I
thought that generalisation wasn't a good one. You took the Eliot example -
which was whose in the first place? I'd guess maybe Moggin's - into another
thread, which is where you and I have been arguing about Eliot and progress.
The generalisation has been a subtext, but the point would be that if it
doesn't hold for Eliot, who is generally held to be one the major figures of
literary modernism, then maybe it isn't a satisfactory generalisation.
>>> In all this there seems to be a hidden agenda to see post-modernism as
>>> essentially not that different to modernism.
>>
>> No, that is not my agenda, hidden or otherwise. I thought that what I was
>> doing here was arguing against a concept of modernism and modernity as
>> identical.
> Your agenda - given elsewhere- is to continue exploring definitions of
> modernity for ever more.
Eh? I said I hoped to continue studying modernism. But, much though it
interests me, the thought of spending eternity doing it horrifies me.
> This is fine - but makes you pretty useless at
> offering directions.
I wasn't being asked for directions, I was being asked for a thumbnail
sketch, something akin to a popularising science book, only presumably
shorter. I offered directions, but people keep calling these booklists. If I
posted something book length, then I bet people would also be pissed off
(I'd bet that they are already), but then it is fairly certain that someone
would demand that it be reduced to the 'gist' of it. 'Simplicity and
brevity' was demanded by James Owens, like someone explaining relativity -
Oh but that is currently another, lengthy, thread isn't it, and even that is
only about one detail of relativity. Oops.
> In teaching its often necessary to simplify
> otherwise the student is overwhelmed in detail.
In teaching, students are expected to do the reading or looking before they
decide what something means. Or they are in my sessions, at least.
For pity's sake, James, this isn't teaching, this is Usenet. I was arguing
with people who appeared to put foward something I disagreed with. Now,
apparently, I'm failing in my duties as a teacher! Bluntly, you can all fuck
off.
> Maybe your just too
> zealous for the subject
Because I can't or don't want to turn it into a easily digestible thumbnail
sketch? If I did that for my students, I would have failed to do my best for
them and they would be nothing but information receivers. You have a
perverse, even New Labour, idea of education if that is the case.
>or maybe throwing up smoke screens?
Behind which are more hidden agendas?
> A detailed
> study of what modernity was is a valuable enterprise - (somewhat deeply
> flawed without reference to science however) - an honest good hearted
> fellow could offer some pointers - not endless detailed reading lists -
neither endless, nor detailed and quite pointed.
> a teacher has to suffer fools gladly - your not trying to be a teacher?
No, I'm damn well not. I thought I was having various arguments/discussions.
> - or is moggin -
If you accuse Moggin of wanting to be a teacher, all hell will break loose.
> so in effect you end up confusing - putting people of
> and if not calling them ignorant making them feel so. You do yourself
> and your study a diss-service.
James, this is Usenet. I have not set myself up as a teacher here, I have
not asked to be made a teacher here, and I deeply resent being told I should
be. I am no sodding authority and have no intention of doling out screen
sized chunks of easily digestible wisdom, even if I had them to dole out,
which I don't.
If somebody asks for information about something that I think I can help
with, I might well suggest what I can. If somebody puts foward something I
disagree with, then I might well respond. On occasions I have posted
thorough agreements, or thanks, or requests for details or information. I
have also posted foolish things that I regret and try to apologise for. At
times I have been made to feel a fool. Sometimes arguments get heated.
That is Usenet.
But, with the possible exception of one individual (not you), I have never
aimed to make someone feel foolish (and even then it didn't really work, he
was armour plated in his ridiculousness). That is Usenet. If someone makes a
grand claim and then feels that they can't back it up and feels foolish,
then that is their problem. There is no obligation on me to simply put them
right, even if I could, which is highly unlikely.
Let's be honest, If someone wants a beginners guide to modernism and
postmodernism, then there are lots of books that do that. They only have to
read two cartoon Beginners Guide books for a cartoon beginner's guide. There
is also a non cartoonish FAQ for alt.postmodern, for which I have just
realised I no longer have the url. Help... anyone?
Better still is that they might actually read or see some primary material,
surely. Wouldn't you object if I had only heard about Rothko but insisted
that I was right because the book that I had read said such and such?
> And yes it appears as gnosticism. I
> anticipate your throwing up your hands and denying all this - but to
> join in conversation without any sympathy for your fellows makes you a
> bad sport.
What? So let's turn this round. Doesn't it depend on what and how people
post? I responded to what was said and demanded. You don't like me even
asking you reasonable questions at times, so how should I respond to a
demand? That is what it was, after all, complete with an explicit
condemnation. James Owens wrote: "It is only a question of finding someone
whose sophistication is such as to explain them with simplicity and
brevity."
> In my dealings with academics however i have noticed the
> reverse of this - a concern for understanding and sympathy for someone
> who may not want or have the time for such detailed exposition.
Of course, and if someone posts or mails saying 'could you expand on X' or
'what did you mean by Y', if I could respond and had time, I would do so
(and have done). I have also written to others asking for a clarification,
arguing with them, or requesting a joint reading of a text. Generally I have
had a positive response, however caustic they might appear.
But that was not what was being demanded in this case. What was being
demanded was a simple and brief clarification (for which read definition) of
modernism and postmodernism. Can I do that? No. Can it be done? I doubt it,
but all the attempts that have appeared are book length (Beginners Guides
included). Am I going to write and post a book or two, even assuming that I
am able, willing and competent to write such a thing, which I am not? No.
>This
> does not exclude them from some genuine engagement.
No it doesn't. I agree. But again, that was not what was being asked.
Engagement does not look for a simple and brief definition. Engagement sees
questions.
> I could maintain
> that you could never have a clue about modernity if not have faced the
> painters dilemma at the end of the 1960s - however although you can not
> experience this now - i could with patience share an understanding of it
> with you.
And I would, in all seriousness, be interested. My email is at the top of
the page, if you want to go private.
>>> Let me use a crude example.
>>> During the modern epoch popular music reached its zenith - with the post
>>> war affluence amongst youth etc. and produced the Beatles. In terms of
>>> what a pop group was they were that - mass appeal - innovative in dress
>>> and music - etc. A modern ICON. What post-modernity delivers is Oasis -
>>> a fabricated simulicron of the real thing.
>>
>> A strawman.
> Not so - the simulacrum is more authentic than the original.
A straw man because I had said nothing about music and postmodernism and
that was not the issue. For what it's worth, I agree that Oasis are but a
simulation of rock 'n' roll.
>>
>>> However such simplicity would it seems be anathema to those who wish for
>>> some reason to keep things as convoluted as possible.
>>
>> Only where such simplicity is a misrepresentation.
> The misrepresentation is all yours - What began with the renaissance
> can't be considered by just looking at the poetry of Eliot - or at
> poetry in general - in modernity simplicity is not only possible its a
> virtue-
Now here we really disagree strongly. Simplicity of means is not simplicity.
And the history of modernism, pace Eliot, is not simple.
> in post modernity its quite different. But if your using post
> modern methods to create any understanding your lost, but maybe your
> aware of this.
On the contrary, I am trying to reach an understanding of the modernist work
that continues to fascinate me.
>> Once again, I have not argued that modernism is a separate thing from
>> modernity, quite the reverse. How about adding a few things to your factors
>> of modernity, by the way: quantification, 'disenchantment', fragmentation,
>> the rise of capitalism, wage labour and the spread of the commodity form,
>> industrialisation and fashion as repetitive novelty, for starters. Oh, and
>> industrialised warfare.
> I have no argument with this - and modernism fits in well - but we see
> yourself? and moggin as seeing modernism as typified by a negative
> critique of modernity - but its not so - some do others don't
No argument there from me. I dunno about Moggin. I have stuck to much,
perhaps most, modernism as some kind of rebellion against modernity from the
outset. Negative critique is a term I'd also accept for some, or much
modernism. 'Some do, others don't' seems fair enough, and it was there that
we started the whole thing. You were for 'all don't' at that point.
> (bring
> back the Italians!)
What, with their denial of tradition or evolution and all? Diverting rivers
through the museums and longing for the meadow flowers of machine gun fire?
> and cubism, pop art, post war architecture, politics
> - American abstractionism - rock and roll... Nuclear Power The National
> Health Service... it might be that in literature a fairly pessimistic
> view of modernity is found - whereas in the plastic arts it isn't - but
> what is significant in these is the formal development - based on an
> experimental & innovative method.
Again, no argument from me about the significance of formal experiment and
innovation - although maybe we'd argue about what the significance might be.
On the other hand, I disagree that the plastic arts lack a pessimistic, or
negative, conception of modernity.
> One note: fashion as repetitive novelty is a po-mo phenomenon, fashion
> during the 20th C followed the modernist theories of - progress -
> newness & less is more- gave the bikini, mini skirt and topless dress -
> the latter hasn't yet resurfaced and probably wont - as it - like the
> end of oh Calcutta! represents a terminus of sorts. (well the next step
> is obvious)
Oh come on - fashion, ever since it became a relatively broad phenomenon,
has been a series of revivals. From the Neo-classical garb of the French
revolutionary period (Liberty dress anyone?) to the 19th century retro of
the post WWII new look and beyond. Interspersed with some modern moments,
I'll grant you - 'Rational Dress', Coco Chanel, and Quant, I suppose. But
arguably the only true modern dress is the man's suit.: hardly changed since
the early 19th century, democratic (in a bourgeois sense), functional,
rational, the very garb of the public sphere, allowing distinctions of
class, yet capable of confusing gender from Georges Sand on. Who will show
us as heroes in our suits? cried Baudelaire - and answer came there none.
>>
>> The point of the question was what in Eliot's poetry indicates a sense of
>> heady excitement? But if reading it gives you a sense of boundless
>> possibility, I still feel that would be a very curious reading.
> I would think as a poet it would - new methods - just as a painter i
> could see Gurnica as offering boundless possibilities. You must separate
> theory and politics from the activity if you wish to see it as a
> practitioner - and its these who create modernity - not the critics.
You miss the point a bit, I think. James Owens said that Eliot's poetry had
a place in a modernism of boundless possibility and heady excitement. I was
curious and remain curious what that place might be. You suggest that the
poet would feel such an excitement on discovering these means. I can't argue
with that - maybe he did, maybe he didn't - but there is no evidence, I
think, either in the poems, or Eliot's essays, which seem to describe the
form as something of a mingling of tradition and impersonal necessity. But
who knows what Eliot felt?
And I would certainly not insist on the conscious presence of 'theory and
politics' in the activity of creating, quite the reverse.
> Another example - Pollock's beautiful drip paintings developed from
> studies of terrible scenes of human carnage e.g. war 1947. You can see
> traces in number 1 - but by the high art of pollock its completely
> gone. Theorists must understand that artists have more allegiance to
> their art than a theorists idea -they use these - and throw them away
> for new ones as needed.
Like Pollock's adherence to really bad pop psychoanalysis and Jungianism.
That might have been his way of making sense of his work, but if that was
all it was, then it would not be worth looking at. If you would like to say
that an argument about formal matters is the significant one, then I would
happily agree - although no doubt we would disagree on what that
significance might be.
> Again I could relate this to mathematics and
> science - scientists have a very cavalier attitude to the mathematics
> they use - and have since Newton. If you are genuine about understanding
> modernity you need to take this on board.
>> But the question remains: would not a rebellion against modernity be
>> thoroughly enmeshed in modernity?
> again i think your confusing theory and practice. Maybe there is a
> dialectical process taking place - but please modern art was not an
> illustration of any set of theories - it was a practice of innovation
> and discovery - sure representational art has to have a subject - is it
> *artistically* significant that the women in Demoiselles d'Avignon are
> prostitutes.
Nope, I said nothing about illustration of theory. I was just making a point
that a rebellion against X should not therefore be taken as being outside of
or a completely separate thing to X.
>>>> few know what irony is
>>>> anymore, confusing it with an easy cynicism.
>>> Yes I get the impression that *a few* these days know *the truth*.
>>
>> Heh, fair enough. I recant, I recant. Still, over the last few posts, I've
>> been arguing for doubt and complexity and you have been arguing with
>> absolute certainty for your version of modernism. Pot and Kettle?
> No no - I was trying to paint a broad picture - sure there is the devil
> and fun in the detail - but if someone asks what a dog is do you say
> "without analysing all possible dogs - living and dead its impossible to
> tell." Some may not have tails - but we have to begin somewhere.
That was not what was going on, as far as I can tell. Take the Eliot
discussion - here we have one of the prime candidates for dogness, even one
of the models for literary caninehood, and he turned out to go 'miaow' in
your version of dogidom.
>> Giles (passing through Finland in a sealed train)
>>
> bet there's trouble when you arrive
But that's why I'm going - travelling in hope rather than expectation.
Giles
James Owens
> I also find offensive the idea that a basic understanding is sufficient
> for general judgements to be made. . . I suspect that anyone who
> rises to your challenge of simplicity and brevity is actually doing
> you a grave disfavour.
Well, one must approach a topic somehow. Generally one begins to study,
forms a preliminary impression, tests it against further study, corrects
it where necessary, and so on. This process can go on indefinitely, but
at some point a moderately accurate outline does emerge. Think of a
willow: someone with next to no knowledge of botany can easily recognize
one by its general shape, well before learning the technical description
of its leaves or the fine detail of its sexual parts. It's the same with
anything: romanticism, the Baroque, medieval illumination, Greek history:
an educated layman's understanding is not only possible, but for general
purposes sufficient. Why should modernism or post-modernism be any different?
> I didn't think that my remarks carried a particular tone (with two
> exceptions, which I regret). I rather hoped that the content might have
> some validity. That distinction, of course, is enough to rule me out as
> a practising modernist.
All remarks carry a tone, whether intentional or not. Even studied
tonelessness is a tone (think HAL). Your first post, and I mean no harm,
seemed to convey a wearily patient erudition. I have taken no offense at
anything you said.
>> . . . But, inclined though I am to give your authority the benefit
>> of the doubt, I find your first claim to be less definitive than I
>> would have hoped.
> Why? What were you hoping for? Definitiveness? In what way? I didn't
> make any claim to being definitive and still don't. Quite the reverse.
> I suggested that things weren't as straightforward as an assumption of
> modernist architecture to a rationalist position would make them seem.
Your initial reference to Loos was not so qualified: that is, you held him
to be quite clearly saying one thing and not another: "Loos attacked
ornament in architecture on moral grounds, not rationalist or utilitarian
(Ornament as Crime)." I had hoped that on reading him I would see this
for myself. Yet when I read his essay I found that it was not as clear as
all that. I learned that for Loos, as I paraphrased,
>> Ornament is immoral precisely because it is a primitive vanity, from
>> which escape is a sign or concomitant of progress. Ornament is "what
>> every Negro can do."
Which brings us to the first point of substance (as opposed to discussing
our discussion, which seems to be a popular pastime for this group):
> And there you are. In what way is this rational according to your
> version of the term in the first post? This is a moral judgement based
> on aesthetic form. An attack on vanity has no necessary association
> with a rationalist attack on that without rational purpose, but Loos
> fuses the two - as you go on to point out:
>> Moreover, ornament is inefficient; it is "wasted capital."
> So inefficiency is not just wasteful, but also immoral. In catholic
> Vienna, this might be an "impatience with traditional authority", but
> in post reformation areas, it was deeply traditional. Moreover, one
> wonders where the waste comes in, as decoration in no way impairs the
> functioning of the building or even its capital value.
Conveniently enough, Loos explains where the waste comes in: "Ornament is
wasted labour and hence wasted health. That's how it has always been.
Today, however, it is also wasted material, and both together add up to
wasted capital." This, at least, is not "a moral judgement on aesthetic
form" but on waste. Why is waste immoral? Not because offends an
aesthetic -- that would be a circularity-- but because it perpetuates
poverty. "The lack of ornament means shorter working hours
and consequently higher wages."
And what does this have to do with rationality? It isn't hard to draw a
general connection between rationality and the design of a better society,
but I don't want to put words in Loos' mouth. He is not explicit.
However, he does leave what I see as a telling metaphor.
"[The aristocrats] understand the native weaving ornaments into textiles
to a certain rhythm, which can be seen only when torn apart, the Persian
knotting his carpet, the Slovak peasant woman embroidering her lace, the
old lady crocheting wonderful objects in beads and silk. The aristocrat
lets them be, for he knows they work in moments of revelation. The
revolutionary would go there and say 'This is all nonsense.' Just as he
would pull the old woman away from the roadside shrine with the words:
'There is no God.'"
>> extent is Taut's Utopian glass architecture a rebellion against
>> rationality, as your own thesis has it?
> Ah, now you do say what my claim supposedly is. I didn't say Taut's
> architecture was a rebellion against rationality - although in some
> ways I think that it is (see below) - just that it didn't fit a
> rationalist model. As for an overall thesis - I said that I saw >
modernism as 'often, even mostly, a rebellion against modernity'. I'll
> stick with that, but the qualifiers are important. Please don't precis
> me inaccurately and in return I promise to try to pay proper attention
> to what you write.
That's fair comment. I apologize. Fortunately the point survives my
mangled rendition, if by "hardly rationalist" you mean something like "not
rationalist," since I mean that to my understanding it _is_ rationalist,
albeit in a rather sick way. I am taking the view that there is a
well-adjusted rationalism that, true to the Greek root, deals in a
measured way with all the aspects of making a decision, including human
factors; and then there is a feverish rationalism, which is carried away
by one dimension -- usually of logic or principle -- into extremes that
normal rationalism finds unacceptable for one reason or another. I was
reading _Voltaire's Bastards_ by John Ralston Saul when this distinction
first came to my attention. I hope it answers your puzzlement:
> But I am mystified as to how a defiance of human requirements fits with
> your first suggested definition of modernism as 'an enthusiasm for a
> highly rational approach to problems' unless you mean that the problems
> have nothing to do with human requirements.
> . . .
> Still - just as an hypothesis - might it not be possible that work that
> insisted on an abstract formalist absolute against utility, fashion and
> progress is in some way setting itself against modernity, even though
> such an abstraction is also modern?
It occurred to me that modernism could be critiquing modernity through a
form of _reductio ad absurdem_.
>> To the extent that modernism is an art movement, it doesn't make much
>> sense to speak of "modernist philosophy." But if modernism or
>> post-modernism are world-views they will surely have philosophical
>> correspondents.
> Here we hit the equation of modernism and postmodernism again, and as
> 'world-views' no less. I doubt the cohesiveness of either modernism or
> post-modernism is such to enable either to have the status of
> world-view, for all that there are common strands in (and between)
> both. But, unless you wish to limit postmodernism pretty much to art
> movement(s), the two are not equivalent. Having said that, I suppose
> there might possibly be modernist philosophy, but that is not the same
> as either philosophies of modernism or modern philosophies. . .
Just to be clear, I don't equate modernism and post-modernism, in the
sense of interchangeability. They are different. If modernism is nothing
except an art movement, and post-modernism is more than that (or something
else again), then perhaps we have identified a source of confusion for me.
And the term "world-view" is ill-chosen if it conveys some kind of
certainty or coherence. I mean a way of seeing, an approach to
experiencing and interacting with the world, not necessarily consciously
specified, but with an internal consistency, an unheard leitmotif, a
coherence derived from the unwritten rules of its discourse. . . pardon
my hand-waving . . .
> What do you call the modern period?
Ah! That depends. Are we talking about modern art? Modern philosophy?
Modern science? Modern literature? Modern music? Here's a gem:
Modern music: A term used so loosely that it is virtually
meaningless. . .
Harvard Dictionary of Music (1975)
By modern philosophy I might mean philosophy from Neitszche or Russell, or
from Hegel or Kant, or from Descartes or Hume, or. . . well, I guess we'd
have to stop there, but it might depend on what argument I was trying to
win. ;-) In connection with modernism, I mean philosophy contemporaneous
with it.
Here I want to try to refine my ideas a bit. In another thread I've
associated historical reflectivity with something which I will happily
call modernity, and which goes back to Hegel (and Schiller, why not?)
Let's agree that modernism is something else, a twentieth century
phenomenon. I've also suggested in that other thread that it arises late
in response to modernity; that a confluence of philosophy, sociology and
history laid the groundwork of modernity. So modernism is a response to
modernity. You see, I'm not irredeemable! However, for the moment I'm
sticking to the thesis that it is not deeply a rebellion against
modernity, because in the first place its "simplified formal vocabulary"
(this description of modernism comes from a Toronto curator quoted in
today's Globe and Mail) remains a reflection, however distorted, of the
modern ideal; and in the second place (as I currently understand things)
the rejection of modernity belongs to post-modernism (assuming for the
moment that post-modernism is the artistic expression of post-modernity.)
The alternative is to find some other way of distinguishing modernism from
post-modernism -- and I do believe they are not the same thing, though
neither are they opposites.
As Moggin repeatedly observes, modernist literature presents a problem for
this view, since it is pessimistic about modernity. It would apparently
make of Eliot a post-modern poet, which defies both well-established
convention and ordinary common sense. In answer to this conundrum, I am
now proposing that a _rebellion_ against modernity is not necessarily the
same thing as a _rejection_ of modernity. At a deeper level, modernist
literature _accepts_ modernity; it accepts the finality of modernity with
resignation and lament. A thorough-going rejection would simply not
accept modernity's terms; but modernist terms are indeed the ones in which
Eliot sadly speaks.
>> I am thinking of serialist music, of course. Schoenberg's system is an
>> unquestionably rational concoction, a planned ideal with no respect
>> whatever for traditional methods or roles. To say anything else of it is
>> merely to save an argument, although what you do say mostly reinforces
>> the idea that it is rationally conceived first and foremeost.
> Then I feel you perhaps miss the point. Of course in serialism there is
> no respect for traditional methods in the sense of the 'proper'
> conventions of the 19th century, in the same way that Eliot does not
> compose mock 17th century poems, for all that he valued the originals and
> used some of their means. But you need to consider the possible place of
> expression. How could one avoid the already trite - mechanical
sentiment?
> . . .
> A reflection of inhumanity - could perhaps be modernism in revolt against
> modernity? All those modernist experiments with chance, with giving up a
> sense of control to the aleoratory or the abstractly predetermined, from
> Baudelaire to Cage?
> In any case, what of Schoenberg's atonal period?
In Schoenberg's atonalism, the conventional aesthetic values involving
sentiment were entirely, systematically, even ruthlessly subsumed to a
new, rational aesthetic. It is not so much what Schoenberg was trying to
do -- surely every composer looks for ways out of deadening contemporary
cliche -- but how he chose to do it: with a tightly rational scheme,
followed relentlessly. Aleatory music took a different approach, but also
a fundamentally calculated and theoretical one. The plan -- in this case
to have no plan -- mattered far more than the sounds, which from this
perspective were incidental and even meaningless outside the rationalist
context of their creation. And so I say:
>> the conscious, rationally controlled application of technique achieves
>> decided predominance over content in the modern period.
> . . . how do you separate technique and content? Really, I am
> interested.
You do this when you prefer one approach to the other. For example, in
contrapuntal music you might have the choice of inverting the theme
perfectly, or diminishing an interval to make it more agreeable (to your
own ear at least.) If you think technique matters more, you leave the
note and accept a sound you don't like; if you care more for content, you
flatten the note.
And now to return to the discussion of our discussion:
>> I mean that [Eliot] is not outside the modernist
>> tradition, but partakes of its urgent reassessment of the human world
>> with equivalent urgency. He is of the era.
> Strawman. I haven't said that he isn't of the era. You dropped the bit
> where I was clear about this. . .
Didn't Eliot say we are all straw men? But before you get too excited, I
never ascribed this view to you. I am agreeing with you that he is of the
era, and trying to explain how my remarks about headiness and
boundlessness were meant to fit with this view.
>> You don't get a lot of tracts about the significance of Adam Smith's or
>> Tom Payne's theories as "a statement;" rather, you get a heated
>> discussion of tenets, without any consciousness of "statements" within a
>> self-involved intellectual environment.
> First of all, I'm not sure what you mean by 'statement' here.
> Secondly, thanks for saying just whom you were thinking about - Smith and
> Paine - but I still disagree strongly. . . Why did the French
> revolutionary calendar start at year zero if they were just 'making
> progress' without reflecting upon their situation as a significant
> historical moment?
I left out some things for brevity, but I certainly left in the last
point, because it is persuasive. And I think where I talk about
"statements" I am mixing up art and political philosophy unforgiveably. I
suppose the French Revolution makes the sort of historically
self-conscious "statement" I had in mind. That is, apart from its content
(liberty, fraternity, equality) it has a revolutionary purposiveness,
which could easily have been associated with other content without being
diminished. The rhetoric of the French Revolution is saying something, not
only about equality and so on, but about _itself_; that is its
"statement." I don't know whether you could make the same observation
about, say, ancient Athens; there you have revolutionary content
(incipient democracy), but not necessarily the same self-important
rhetoric about "the revolution" that I identify as the "statement." But
whatever the point of origin in political history, I'm not sure you find
it in art history to any degree until modernism. Only then do you begin
talking about art as "statement."
Where I have dropped things from this thread (or others) my intention is
only to remove what seems redundant or parenthetical, especially since my
time for this is limited; I'm not trying to ignore or obscure any
important points. And I hope you realize that I have made some
concessions in this posting; thanks to you for helping me think through
problems with my first approach.
Moggin
> There is also a non cartoonish FAQ for alt.postmodern, for which I have just
> realised I no longer have the url. Help... anyone?
<http://broquard.tilted.com/faq/>. Yes, I was the one who
brought up Eliot. One of my favorites both as a poet and
critic, notwithstanding the various items we agree are godawful.
[...]
Giles:
>>> Once again, I have not argued that modernism is a separate thing from
>>> modernity, quite the reverse. How about adding a few things to your
>>> factors of modernity, by the way: quantification, 'disenchantment',
>>> fragmentation, the rise of capitalism, wage labour and the spread of
>>> the commodity form, industrialisation and fashion as repetitive novelty,
>>> for starters. Oh, and industrialised warfare.
James:
>> I have no argument with this - and modernism fits in well - but we see
>> yourself? and moggin as seeing modernism as typified by a negative
>> critique of modernity - but its not so - some do others don't (bring
>> back the Italians!)
Giles:
> No argument there from me. I dunno about Moggin. I have stuck to much,
> perhaps most, modernism as some kind of rebellion against modernity from
> the outset. Negative critique is a term I'd also accept for some, or much
> modernism. 'Some do, others don't' seems fair enough, and it was there that
> we started the whole thing. You were for 'all don't' at that point.
James has gotten confused again. I was the one who invited
in the Italians, offering the Futurists as a case in which
modernism positively celebrated modernity. James wanted to send
them away ("We can ignore the Italian mob?"), but now wants
them back again. Lord. My small supply of patience was used up
several posts ago.
-- Moggin
Moggin
>>> Oasis appear 30
>>> years on - this i find remarkable - not just a copy at the time but an
>>> attempt at a re-creation in fairly close detail of something a
>>> generation ago.
Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>> I don't know Oasis that well -- just what I've listened to
>> on the radio -- but they don't seem that remarkable. The
>> resemblance to the Beatles isn't very strong -- they sure don't
>> seem like a detailed recreation to me. (And now that I'm
>> thinking about it, I've also seen them on MTV.) You don't mean
>> the Ruttles, by any chance?
James:
> No the ruttles were a fine pastiche - And the Monkeys a poor copy -
But the Ruttles match your description -- "an attempt at a
re-creation in fairly close detail of something a generation
ago," where "something" refers to the Beatles --
notwithstanding the fact they were a satire. I'm not sure that
Oasis fits well at all.
> Oasis are created in the look sound and feel of the Beatles circa Rubber
> Soul to Sgnt Pepper - there is a black and white video of one of their
> songs which at first i thought was from rubber soul.
The songs I've heard -- again, just the ones that got onto
the radio or MTV -- aren't especially like the mid-period
Beatles. Ditto for Oasis' image: I haven't seen anything that
looks like a detailed recreation of the Beatles. Same
qualification: I haven't seen them much. Have they dressed up
like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?
> What the difference
> is that now this is presented as serious music - and original - The
> simulacrum is not a copy - well is more than a copy - the *quality* is
> better than the original - it denies the original- makes the original
> worthless and pointless.
Can't agree with that, either: the songs I've that heard
are pleasant enough, but they're not obvious copies of the
mid-period Beatles, and they're certainly not better than what
the Beatles did then.
> The simulacrum is a cybernetic replacement of the original.
Sure thing, Jimbo.
Moggin:
>> What's neat about the Monkees is precisely that they _were_
>> "a copy at the time" -- a t.v. version of the Beatles, but
>> touring and releasing singles at the same time the Beatles were
>> doing those same things. (Although the Beatles may have
>> stopped touring by then.) And wasn't Checkov, on Star Trek, an
>> imitation Davey Jones?
James:
> Well the crew of star trek like the monkeys were created to appeal to
> different people - i thought Davy Jokes was the cute McCartney figure?
> Checkov is the serious type Illa Kruiachin ? to Napoleon Solo's Kirk?
Say _what_? Checkov is the cute little Davey Jones figure
-- i.e., the cute little McCartney figure twice-removed.
That's my point: if McCartney is the "original," Checkov was a
third-generation copy.
-- Moggin
Moggin
>> For what it is worth, I think he was a modernist.
James Whitehead:
> well in the broader sense it is - what i was trying to do is
> differentiate post-modernism from modernism - that's the origin - James
> Owens question. Moggin sees Po-mo as Mo with the foot harder on the gas
> - so Eliot is a slow po-mo poet -
Not according to me. I called him a High Modernist -- the
usual classification -- and showed that he came out of the
scheme you proposed with a "pomo" label on. You then said that
I saw Eliot as a post-modernist, which is no worse than the
mispresentations offered by the other James, and about equal to
the treatment you once gave Nietzsche.
-- Moggin
Moggin
>Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>since I'm not arguing that Eliot is a pomo by
>Lyotard's definition.
>Lyotard speaks of post-modernism as the
>"acceleration of modernism"
Back to your old editing-tricks, eh James? The definition
I was referring was the one that you offered, viz. "po-mo
rejects grand meta-narratives." You submitted "rebellion" as a
for-instance, suggesting that would qualify Eliot as a
post-modernist: a foolish idea, since as I already pointed out
to you, "rebellion" isn't even a narrative.
>Wasn't I plain? I said I wished you and others would stop
>conflating modernism with post-modernism.
>"Post-modernism" is a misnomer ... My view is that "late modernism"
>would have been a much better choice of words, if there had been moment
>of choosing.
Exactly. The "post-" in the term "post-modernism" is part
of what misleads uninformed people into thinking that
modernism and post-modernism are opposites: the mistake that I
entered this thread to correct. Of course they're also not
identical. That's why I suggested "late modernism" rather than
tossing them into a heap.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
>Giles re Eliot:
>
>>> For what it is worth, I think he was a modernist.
>
>James Whitehead:
>
>> well in the broader sense it is - what i was trying to do is
>> differentiate post-modernism from modernism - that's the origin - James
>> Owens question. Moggin sees Po-mo as Mo with the foot harder on the gas
>> - so Eliot is a slow po-mo poet -
>
> Not according to me.
"My view is that "late modernism" would have been a much better choice
part of the same continuum (Lyotard speaks of post-modernism as the
"acceleration of modernism")"
so Eliot is a slow po-mo poet...
> I called him a High Modernist -- the
>usual classification -- and showed that he came out of the
>scheme you proposed with a "pomo" label on.
Not me - I do not see po-mo as a critique of modernity - you do - its
part of the continuum - its speed (whatever that means) is its only
difference - again your definition (quoting Lyotard) in your FAQ.
> You then said that
>I saw Eliot as a post-modernist,
not so- i said it follows from your definition in your FAQ - see above
that Eliot is a slow po-mo poet...
I disagree...
> which is no worse than the
>mispresentations offered by the other James, and about equal to
>the treatment you once gave Nietzsche.
Never given Nietzche the treatment ... never met the guy - if your
referring to a long protracted thread about how we felt our life was
worth- well that's another matter. I noticed recently in the NG you said
you are not happy being in this age?
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
> I haven't seen anything that
>looks like a detailed recreation of the Beatles.
> I haven't seen them much. Have they dressed up
>like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?
they might get up to this -
>> What the difference
>> is that now this is presented as serious music - and original - The
>> simulacrum is not a copy - well is more than a copy - the *quality* is
>> better than the original - it denies the original- makes the original
>> worthless and pointless.
>
> Can't agree with that, either: the songs I've that heard
>are pleasant enough, but they're not obvious copies of the
>mid-period Beatles,
>and they're certainly not better than what
>the Beatles did then.
digitally edited back in.
>> The simulacrum is a cybernetic replacement of the original.
>
> Sure thing, Jimbo.
>
>-- i.e., the cute little McCartney figure twice-removed.
>That's my point: if McCartney is the "original," Checkov was a
>third-generation copy.
which can never be as good as the original - and a digital simulation
which can be.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<u...@removethisredhotant.com> writes
>
>
>James, we have had a reasonable discussion, I thought. But some of what you
>say in this post about 'teaching' has really pissed me off. I have tried to
>be more or less polite throughout, but don't ever tell me what my supposed
>duties are again.
elsewhere points out that sometimes impressions gathered can be
mistaken. Moggin has often adopted the "your too stupid to understand"
approach to threads - and a kind of weary yawn of contempt - and I
wasn't accusing you of this but trying to make a point that if a general
description cant be given it could be that its impossible - but it could
be that to make clear was not what is intended. I'm aware - the quote-
that within post-modernism clarity may not be intended at all.
>materials' as a moral value is logical.
logical consequence of - rather than an emotional object. High modern
art is often seen as being cool. The end product of an abstract and
formal proposition. In late abstract paintings even the brush stroke is
removed - any trace of the human - and more so in the work of the
minimalists.
[on James seeing the significance of science?...]
>There we disagree.
This might be another interesting discussion - but modernity seems
profoundly bound to the rise of science- Galileo - Newton, Darwin,
Marx, Freud ... certainly had an influence within the arts?
>
>> Good
>> design was seen as producing a new humanist morality. Much as I would
>> like to develop this - if its just to raise name calling on yours
>> moggins side I'm somewhat reluctant.
>
>Where in this spurt of posts have I indulged in name calling? Or even said
>anything faintly derogatory about people involved in this discussion? I
>thought I was responding to people's comments and asking serious questions
>in return, In fact, that is exactly what I was doing, and I intend to
>continue that way if things continue. If, however, you suspect everything I
>write of having a hidden agenda or two, or of setting you up for abuse - on
>no evidence - then there probably isn't much point carrying on.
No i don't think you have name called - sorry if i gave this impression
- but others have led a discussion more for an excuse for a display of
intellectual arrogance and boredom with my attempts at explanations -
and this has made me reluctant to offer up ideas for ridicule. I perhaps
was over anticipating from previous experiences on this NG for which I'm
sorry.
>
>James Owens posted an account of a debate (which I had all but missed, being
>away), and to which I responded. It wasn't until his reply that I even knew
>that he was looking for an overview. I'll come back to my response below.
There seemed to be an intention to confuse - this in your case was not
so -
>
>
>I won't duplicate the discussion in the other thread about Eliot's
>innovation, which by the way I thought had got quite interesting - it sent
>me back to the poems and essays for a think.
>
>As to the generalisation, these were, for me, put foward in James Owens'
>post, and I responded with a quantity of examples and arguments as to why I
>thought that generalisation wasn't a good one. You took the Eliot example -
>which was whose in the first place? I'd guess maybe Moggin's - into another
>thread, which is where you and I have been arguing about Eliot and progress.
>The generalisation has been a subtext, but the point would be that if it
>doesn't hold for Eliot, who is generally held to be one the major figures of
>literary modernism, then maybe it isn't a satisfactory generalisation.
Eliot offered novelty and innovation (ok not explicitly progress) and
these are modern methodologies - and within them has a set of problems.
Firstly its possible to exhaust all new and innovative possibilities -
and second continual innovation becomes boring - the shock of the new
can only be achieved once. To innovate itself is a repetition of Eliots
programme - so its flawed. I've said elsewhere pessimism or optimism
regarding society in formal terms are besides the point. I would guess
that what influenced successive writers was Eliot's formalism not his
attitudes to modern life. Why eliot is a modernist seems to be more to
do with his introduction of novelty as opposed to repetition that aligns
him with others in other areas of art in the modern period.
[...]
>
>> Your agenda - given elsewhere- is to continue exploring definitions of
>> modernity for ever more.
>
>Eh? I said I hoped to continue studying modernism. But, much though it
>interests me, the thought of spending eternity doing it horrifies me.
again it was your unwillingness to make a generalisation- because you
think one cant be given or because you don't want to?
>
>> This is fine - but makes you pretty useless at
>> offering directions.
>
>I wasn't being asked for directions, I was being asked for a thumbnail
>sketch, something akin to a popularising science book, only presumably
>shorter. I offered directions, but people keep calling these booklists.
no that was just me - if someone asks about Darwin i think you can
sketch evolution by natural selection in a few sentences - yet there are
libraries on the subject.
> If I
>posted something book length, then I bet people would also be pissed off
>(I'd bet that they are already), but then it is fairly certain that someone
>would demand that it be reduced to the 'gist' of it. 'Simplicity and
>brevity' was demanded by James Owens, like someone explaining relativity -
well Julian Barbour does it with one diagram and 211 words p.132 "The
End of time" There's something quite important for me here - it seems
some would say with out a PhD in maths its impossible to understand
anything about modern physics - and resort in discussion to convoluted
terminology - I'm of the opinion that i can ask questions and a rough
thumb nail could be given.
>Oh but that is currently another, lengthy, thread isn't it, and even that is
>only about one detail of relativity. Oops.
>
>> In teaching its often necessary to simplify
>> otherwise the student is overwhelmed in detail.
>
>In teaching, students are expected to do the reading or looking before they
>decide what something means. Or they are in my sessions, at least.
>
>For pity's sake, James, this isn't teaching, this is Usenet. I was arguing
>with people who appeared to put foward something I disagreed with. Now,
>apparently, I'm failing in my duties as a teacher! Bluntly, you can all fuck
>off.
Please - learning can take place even within a newsgroup? - i wasn't
saying that you were teaching here i was offering an idea of a positive
approach to a question - I once asked a newspaper seller for directions
- "Go buy a f***ing map" came the reply... I haven't said you have a
duty as a teacher in the NG - wasn't aware you are one.
Was your argument that no thumb nail sketch of modernity can be given?
>
>Because I can't or don't want to turn it into a easily digestible thumbnail
>sketch? If I did that for my students, I would have failed to do my best for
>them and they would be nothing but information receivers. You have a
>perverse, even New Labour, idea of education if that is the case.
No no - but you are effectively saying without detailed study no answer
can be given - so someone who is not about doing a PhD in High Modernist
Literature should just Fuck Off?
Why not provide an easily digestible thumb nail - it may interest the
person further - I don't want to criticise your approach here but isn't
it a little exclusive.
>
>> A detailed
>> study of what modernity was is a valuable enterprise - (somewhat deeply
>> flawed without reference to science however) - an honest good hearted
>> fellow could offer some pointers - not endless detailed reading lists -
>
>neither endless, nor detailed and quite pointed.
>
>> a teacher has to suffer fools gladly - your not trying to be a teacher?
>
>No, I'm damn well not. I thought I was having various arguments/discussions.
not if your offering reading lists - this you imply above is one of your
teaching methodologies.
>If you accuse Moggin of wanting to be a teacher, all hell will break loose.
It will anyway - Moggin just wants to be king of the castle... he has
said so before - that is that in a thread no one admits they are
wrong...
>
>> so in effect you end up confusing - putting people of
>> and if not calling them ignorant making them feel so. You do yourself
>> and your study a diss-service.
>
>James, this is Usenet. I have not set myself up as a teacher here, I have
>not asked to be made a teacher here, and I deeply resent being told I should
>be. I am no sodding authority and have no intention of doling out screen
>sized chunks of easily digestible wisdom, even if I had them to dole out,
>which I don't.
Without wanting to upset you even more - what then are you doling out?
>
>If somebody asks for information about something that I think I can help
>with, I might well suggest what I can. If somebody puts foward something I
>disagree with, then I might well respond. On occasions I have posted
>thorough agreements, or thanks, or requests for details or information. I
>have also posted foolish things that I regret and try to apologise for. At
>times I have been made to feel a fool. Sometimes arguments get heated.
>That is Usenet.
yes it can be fun
>
>But, with the possible exception of one individual (not you), I have never
>aimed to make someone feel foolish (and even then it didn't really work, he
>was armour plated in his ridiculousness). That is Usenet. If someone makes a
>grand claim and then feels that they can't back it up and feels foolish,
>then that is their problem. There is no obligation on me to simply put them
>right, even if I could, which is highly unlikely.
>
>Let's be honest, If someone wants a beginners guide to modernism and
>postmodernism, then there are lots of books that do that. They only have to
>read two cartoon Beginners Guide books for a cartoon beginner's guide. There
>is also a non cartoonish FAQ for alt.postmodern, for which I have just
>realised I no longer have the url. Help... anyone?
>
>Better still is that they might actually read or see some primary material,
>surely. Wouldn't you object if I had only heard about Rothko but insisted
>that I was right because the book that I had read said such and such?
I have to disagree with you here - if sending people away to read
beginners guides or the primary texts - then why bother with the usenet
at all. For one - non of these - even the primary texts are interactive
- if po-mo is anything its got to be here surely?
>
>> And yes it appears as gnosticism. I
>> anticipate your throwing up your hands and denying all this - but to
>> join in conversation without any sympathy for your fellows makes you a
>> bad sport.
>
>What? So let's turn this round. Doesn't it depend on what and how people
>post? I responded to what was said and demanded. You don't like me even
>asking you reasonable questions at times,
no - ask away - i was questioning your motives - are you asking as a way
of showing me to be in error - or for my slant on the topic...
> so how should I respond to a
>demand? That is what it was, after all, complete with an explicit
>condemnation. James Owens wrote: "It is only a question of finding someone
>whose sophistication is such as to explain them with simplicity and
>brevity."
I think James asked a reasonable question - and we set the dogs on him..
>
>> In my dealings with academics however i have noticed the
>> reverse of this - a concern for understanding and sympathy for someone
>> who may not want or have the time for such detailed exposition.
>
>Of course, and if someone posts or mails saying 'could you expand on X' or
>'what did you mean by Y', if I could respond and had time, I would do so
>(and have done). I have also written to others asking for a clarification,
>arguing with them, or requesting a joint reading of a text. Generally I have
>had a positive response, however caustic they might appear.
>
>But that was not what was being demanded in this case. What was being
>demanded was a simple and brief clarification (for which read definition) of
>modernism and postmodernism. Can I do that? No. Can it be done? I doubt it,
>but all the attempts that have appeared are book length (Beginners Guides
>included). Am I going to write and post a book or two, even assuming that I
>am able, willing and competent to write such a thing, which I am not? No.
sorry - then your of little use to James- other than pointing out his
question is un-answerable. And we cant move on to differentiation its
all too complex unresolved - bit of a mess really? Is this your
position.
Its a good position to engage in theory - but excludes this theory being
of any use to anyone else...
>No it doesn't. I agree. But again, that was not what was being asked.
>Engagement does not look for a simple and brief definition. Engagement sees
>questions.
It often begins with a simple question - which is then expanded
I know you may hate this -But it can be made simple or complex - and
the degree of complexity will never achieve the actual reality, so its
how big you thumb-nail is. "Eliot - poet of the modern period" ..
"Eliot was a modernist poet, he championed the use of novelty in the
form of fragmentation of texts within his work" ..... and so on ad-
infinitum. We have established a commonality in modernism we both agree
on - Pound's make it new! as being a central theme? What we can argue
about is the idea of progress in this. I have a problem with the idea of
new and innovation not implying progress. But that doesn't prevent
seeing the end of this in the failure or success of the methodology and
the resultant post-modernism.
>
>> in post modernity its quite different. But if your using post
>> modern methods to create any understanding your lost, but maybe your
>> aware of this.
>
>On the contrary, I am trying to reach an understanding of the modernist work
>that continues to fascinate me.
An absolute understanding being impossible...?
Its less relevant - and in abstract art unrecognisable.
>
>> One note: fashion as repetitive novelty is a po-mo phenomenon, fashion
>> during the 20th C followed the modernist theories of - progress -
>> newness & less is more- gave the bikini, mini skirt and topless dress -
>> the latter hasn't yet resurfaced and probably wont - as it - like the
>> end of oh Calcutta! represents a terminus of sorts. (well the next step
>> is obvious)
>
>Oh come on - fashion, ever since it became a relatively broad phenomenon,
>has been a series of revivals. From the Neo-classical garb of the French
>revolutionary period (Liberty dress anyone?) to the 19th century retro of
>the post WWII new look and beyond. Interspersed with some modern moments,
>I'll grant you - 'Rational Dress', Coco Chanel, and Quant, I suppose. But
>arguably the only true modern dress is the man's suit.: hardly changed since
>the early 19th century, democratic (in a bourgeois sense), functional,
>rational, the very garb of the public sphere, allowing distinctions of
>class, yet capable of confusing gender from Georges Sand on. Who will show
>us as heroes in our suits? cried Baudelaire - and answer came there none.
This has opened up a whole new theme - The suit like the Ball Gown
wedding dress are ever much the same - but fashion as innovation did
occur during the twentieth century - that it can't now is something
else. I think someone in 19thc dress would stand out today unlike
someone in 60s jeans and t shirt.
>
>>>
>>> The point of the question was what in Eliot's poetry indicates a sense of
>>> heady excitement? But if reading it gives you a sense of boundless
>>> possibility, I still feel that would be a very curious reading.
>> I would think as a poet it would - new methods - just as a painter i
>> could see Gurnica as offering boundless possibilities. You must separate
>> theory and politics from the activity if you wish to see it as a
>> practitioner - and its these who create modernity - not the critics.
>
>You miss the point a bit, I think. James Owens said that Eliot's poetry had
>a place in a modernism of boundless possibility and heady excitement. I was
>curious and remain curious what that place might be. You suggest that the
>poet would feel such an excitement on discovering these means. I can't argue
>with that - maybe he did, maybe he didn't - but there is no evidence, I
>think, either in the poems, or Eliot's essays, which seem to describe the
>form as something of a mingling of tradition and impersonal necessity. But
>who knows what Eliot felt?
The poet - any poet could feel this ... aren't new things at first
surprising and exciting - and aren't we within modernity taught that new
goes with improved? Why oh why do Eliot and Pound in a society where the
adverts proclaim new and improved use this idea? Does being new gain
some truth?
>
>And I would certainly not insist on the conscious presence of 'theory and
>politics' in the activity of creating, quite the reverse.
>
>> Another example - Pollock's beautiful drip paintings developed from
>> studies of terrible scenes of human carnage e.g. war 1947. You can see
>> traces in number 1 - but by the high art of pollock its completely
>> gone. Theorists must understand that artists have more allegiance to
>> their art than a theorists idea -they use these - and throw them away
>> for new ones as needed.
>
>Like Pollock's adherence to really bad pop psychoanalysis and Jungianism.
>That might have been his way of making sense of his work, but if that was
>all it was, then it would not be worth looking at. If you would like to say
>that an argument about formal matters is the significant one, then I would
>happily agree - although no doubt we would disagree on what that
>significance might be.
its my point - that the formalist development into new forms is
modernity at work. And I would assume the artist doing this considered
it a good thing to do.
>
>> Again I could relate this to mathematics and
>> science - scientists have a very cavalier attitude to the mathematics
>> they use - and have since Newton. If you are genuine about understanding
>> modernity you need to take this on board.
>
>>> But the question remains: would not a rebellion against modernity be
>>> thoroughly enmeshed in modernity?
>
>> again i think your confusing theory and practice. Maybe there is a
>> dialectical process taking place - but please modern art was not an
>> illustration of any set of theories - it was a practice of innovation
>> and discovery - sure representational art has to have a subject - is it
>> *artistically* significant that the women in Demoiselles d'Avignon are
>> prostitutes.
>
>Nope, I said nothing about illustration of theory. I was just making a point
>that a rebellion against X should not therefore be taken as being outside of
>or a completely separate thing to X.
There was no *real* rebellion - some pessimistic feelings perhaps - even
hypocrisy at work - who paid these pipers?
>
>>>>> few know what irony is
>>>>> anymore, confusing it with an easy cynicism.
>>>> Yes I get the impression that *a few* these days know *the truth*.
>>>
>>> Heh, fair enough. I recant, I recant. Still, over the last few posts, I've
>>> been arguing for doubt and complexity and you have been arguing with
>>> absolute certainty for your version of modernism. Pot and Kettle?
>
>> No no - I was trying to paint a broad picture - sure there is the devil
>> and fun in the detail - but if someone asks what a dog is do you say
>> "without analysing all possible dogs - living and dead its impossible to
>> tell." Some may not have tails - but we have to begin somewhere.
>
>That was not what was going on, as far as I can tell. Take the Eliot
>discussion - here we have one of the prime candidates for dogness, even one
>of the models for literary caninehood, and he turned out to go 'miaow' in
>your version of dogidom.
>
>>> Giles (passing through Finland in a sealed train)
>>>
>> bet there's trouble when you arrive
>
>But that's why I'm going - travelling in hope rather than expectation.
>
>Giles
>
>
>
when you arrive - where ever - you will find a McDonalds and a Holiday
Inn -
regards
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
>James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>
>>Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>
>>since I'm not arguing that Eliot is a pomo by
>>Lyotard's definition.
>
>>Lyotard speaks of post-modernism as the
>>"acceleration of modernism"
>
> Back to your old editing-tricks, eh James?
>The definition
>I was referring was the one that you offered, viz. "po-mo
>rejects grand meta-narratives." You submitted "rebellion" as a
>for-instance,
modernity from its on set, Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Marx... etc.
The industrial American & French revolutions... I think this qualifies..
that there is a belief in progress through revolution...
>suggesting that would qualify Eliot as a
>post-modernist: a foolish idea, since as I already pointed out
>to you, "rebellion" isn't even a narrative.
innovation - Eliot's words - here qualifies him as modern - innovation
is a Big idea within modernity.
>
>>Wasn't I plain? I said I wished you and others would stop
>>conflating modernism with post-modernism.
>>"Post-modernism" is a misnomer ... My view is that "late modernism"
>>would have been a much better choice of words, if there had been moment
>>of choosing.
>
> Exactly. The "post-" in the term "post-modernism" is part
>of what misleads uninformed people into thinking that
>modernism and post-modernism are opposites:
implies modernism has ended. What has replaced it is up for debate -
actually being created now. The opposite of modernism would i guess be
some sort of religious fundamentalism.
>entered this thread to correct. Of course they're also not
>identical. That's why I suggested "late modernism" rather than
>tossing them into a heap.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
> James has gotten confused again. I was the one who invited
>in the Italians, offering the Futurists as a case in which
>modernism positively celebrated modernity. James wanted to send
>them away ("We can ignore the Italian mob?"), but now wants
>them back again. Lord. My small supply of patience was used up
>several posts ago.
>
>-- Moggin
obvious - and not representative of the formal aspects of modernism
which I wanted to concentrate on. As it seems unless a painter paints a
picture which is a literal representation of theory you fail to see what
is going on we might need them back for your benefit - but you would i
fear miss the point of much of modern art. Louis Rothko Newman et al
were not illustrators.. - In - *modern* art often the subject is of
less importance than the method... in painting ... until in high
modernism in painting its thrown out completely. By abstract - non-
representational - that is paintings cease to be *mere* illustrations, I
think in literature there is perhaps a problem going this far - but
remember some such work - from here we can see the crisis in painting -
it is an example of the success of modernism... i.e. these paintings are
art and save being paintings nothing else.
sorry your running out of patience -
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
By perfecting an art by use of objective method - novelty and innovation
- that is enough for me. (I wasn't aware of his anti Semitism btw)
[from the internet quotes are eliot's words]
"the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will
be the man who suffers and the mind which creates,"
"objective correlative"
"reasons of race and religion combine to make any large
number of free-thinking Jews undesirable."
he shattered old orthodoxy's and erected new ones.
Eliot asserts that tradition, as used by the poet, is not a mere
repetition of the work of the immediate past ("novelty is better than
repetition," he said); rather, it comprises the whole of European
literature from Homer to the present. The poet writing in English may
therefore make his own tradition by using materials from any past
period, in any language. This point of view is "programmatic" in the
sense that it disposes the reader to accept the revolutionary novelty of
Eliot's polyglot quotations and serious parodies of other poets' styles
Eliot used the phrase "objective correlative" in the context of his own
impersonal theory of poetry; it thus had an immense influence toward
correcting the vagueness of late Victorian rhetoric by insisting on a
correspondence of word and object. Two other essays, first published the
year after The Sacred Wood, almost complete the Eliot critical canon:
"The Metaphysical Poets" and "Andrew Marvell," published in Selected
Essays, 1917-32 (1932). In these essays he effects a new historical
perspective on the hierarchy of English poetry, putting at the top Donne
and other Metaphysical poets of the 17th century and lowering poets of
the 18th and 19th centuries. Eliot's second famous phrase appears here--
"dissociation of sensibility," invented to explain the change that came
over English poetry after Donne and Andrew Marvell. This change seems to
him to consist in a loss of the union of thought and feeling.
cheers
--
James Whitehead
James Owens
> ad...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (James Owens):
>> In the first of three postings (where you comment about "modern" and
>> post-modern" as "periodizing" terminology)
> . . . don't recall raising any questions on the topic. . .
My profuse apologies! That posting was someone else's.
>> In the second, you invoke Nietszche and Marx, apparently as
>> counter-examples to my suggestion that modernism marks the flowering of
>> a historical self-consciousness that goes beyond simple engagement in
>> contemporary ideas and views, toward an interest in its own activity as
>> a historically-framed project. I had said that the turning point was
>> Hegel, so I don't see how these counter-examples apply.
> Oh, you're beginning modernism with Hegel? Then obviously
> my counter-examples don't apply.
If you're following my discussion with Giles, you'll know that my
understanding of the term "modernism" is evolving; but in any case I never
said that modernism begins with Hegel. I said, "What I have in mind is the
modern fascination with itself as a historical period. . . Obviously Hegel
had an important part in changing this." Modernity may well begin with
Hegel (or maybe with Descartes or Neitszche), but if modernism was its
flowering, the seed still needed time to grow. To Giles' helpful
observation that the French Revolution showed such an explicit
self-consciousness, I responded that modernism, as an art movement,
partook of the change but lagged it.
>> Kierkegaard's use of pseudonyms does suggest a post-modern distance from
>> commitment.
> I guess there's that, too, but I was thinking on different
> lines. They're an application of his concept of "indirect
> communication." When he composes philosophy as, e.g., Johannes
> Climacus, he's not just distancing himself, but adopting a
> certain perspective and persona. As Nietzsche would say, truth
> requires a mask.
I'd add that the pseudonymous authors were, in Kiekegaard's view,
separated from _truth_ by their inability to make the leap of faith. This
sharply separates him from post-modernism, although he can still be seen
as commenting on its approach. (In as much as "truth is subjectivity," I
suppose his authors were separated from themselves, in one of the forms of
despair catalogued in _The Sickness Unto Death_.)
>> If I were simply to quote
>> other passages, I would be succumbing to the post-modern mood of
>> inviolable texts.
> The heresy of paraphrase belongs to modernism, represented
> by the New Criticism. And of course I never asked you to
> "simply quote other passages": I pointed out that you invented
> the arguments you attributed to me.
I stand to learn something here, because I associate the inviolability of
text with Foucault or Derrida (vaguely, having overheard discussions about
them.)
And I never said that you asked me to quote other passages. I simply
explained why I used paraphrase, in response to this: "What's with the
paraphrasing, anyhow? Usenet lets you quote directly with very little
trouble -- it's automatic when you follow-up a post."
> My point, though, is that I never spoke the lines which
> you had me reciting in your supposed paraphrase.
Obviously, since I didn't quote you, I could not have accused you of
"speaking the lines which you had me reciting." Sometimes you're more
confused than you think. But I did associate your name with a portion of
a discussion; the discussion was about modernity, modernism, and Eliot.
"Moggin suggests that we draw a distinction between modernism and
modernity," I said. You _do_ want us to make this distinction, don't
you?
I went on to say, "The latter, he argues, is the proper name for the
fascination with rational solutions, while the former is, well, something
else -- I'm not quite sure what." On re-reading your exchange with James
Whitehead, I see that I may have misread as acceptance a disinclination to
discuss "the latter" specifically:
> "You identified modernity (anyway you meant modernity, even
> tho you referred to "modernists") with progress, housing,
> health, science, etc., and you associated post-modernism with a
> questioning attitude toward same. But I've already pointed
> out that T.S. Eliot, a High Modernist, is a pomo in your scheme.
And again:
[James Whitehead:]
>> I was specifically talking about a concept within science and technology
>> which can I think be traced back to the enlightenment - that scientific
>> progress brought humanity benefits. Central to modernism.
[Moggin:]
> No, central to modernity, which you systematically confuse
> with modernism.
It remains to be shown that "a fascination with rational solutions" is in
the same area as "science" and "progress," but I don't see that to be an
uphill battle. Quite possibly in an explicit discussion you would dispute
this general interpretation of "modernity," and I guess I had better ask:
would you?
> Incidentally, you seem to have skipped over an alternative.
> You went straight from disjointed conversation, which you
> dislike, to the order and harmony you offer in your paraphrased
> accounts.
Well, I won't second-guess you.
>> Unfortunately I sometimes get carried away with my prose, and like John
>> Wisdom I find that my idiosyncracies of expression are not always
>> appreciated.
> Excuse me, but I didn't object to your idiosyncracies. In
> fact, I didn't even notice any. I complained that you put
> words in my mouth -- not just words, but entire arguments. You
> wove them out of whole cloth.
There you go again. I didn't say you objected to my idiosyncracies. I
suggested (obliquely) that you didn't appreciate them, and I was right:
you "didn't even notice any." The same thing just happened here. By using
a richer sense of "appreciate" than usual, I indulged an idiosyncracy
which you did not appreciate, causing you to miss what I was saying.
>> You do suggest that anyone puzzled by the contradiction
>> between the proposed conception of modernism and Eliot's opus would
>> benefit by drawing a distinction between modernism and modernity.
> Rather I observe the proposed conception of post-modernism
> makes Eliot, the High Modernist, into a pomo.
That's only a small part of what you are saying. The "proposed conception
of modernism" has to do with progress. This wrongly conflates modernity
and modernism, as you say:
[James Whitehead:]
>> If you wish to conflate
>> modernism with po-mo then fine -
[Moggin:]
> No, I wish that you and others would _stop_ conflating the
> two, although I doubt my wish will be filled.
The "proposed conception of post-modernism" that you have in mind (and you
don't subscribe to it) is that post-modernism encompasses that which
opposes modernity (is that right?). But, you argue, Eliot opposes
modernity. Therefore we are forced either to the unhappy conclusion that
Eliot was a post-modernist, or to the re-evaluation of our premisses.
We can re-evaluate the premise that to oppose modernity is to be
post-modern, and you certainly want to do that. But it is not even
possible to consider the alternative to which we are then directed -- that
to oppose modernity is also (or perhaps exclusively) to be modernist --
until modernity and modernism have been distinguished. Without this, the
"proposed conception of modernism" (as modernity or directly expressive of
its ideals) stands in a puzzling relation to Eliot's poetry. So first and
foremost you want to re-evaluate the premise that modernism is modernity,
or directly expressive of its ideals.
This is the line of reasoning I attribute to you. Am I that far off?
>> I said
>> in so many words that "modernity" is the name for an historical
>> period starting with the Renaissance and including -- among
>> other things -- the advent of capitalism, the rise of the
>> bourgeoisie, and the industrial revolution. I also stated that
>> "modernism" is a catch-all term for "certain cultural and
>> artistic movements dating from the late 19th to the mid 20th
>> century." I offered Nietzsche as an example in philosophy, and
>> I named Pound, Eliot, and Woolf to illustrate High Modernism
>> in literature. I also noted that modernism was in large part a
>> rebellion against modernity.
> Is modernity really nothing more than a historical period,
> indistinguishable from any other except by limiting dates, themselves
> presumably arbitrary? Your definition of "modernism" is the most useless
> imaginable.
> I can see that's not what I said; I can also see that what
> I _did_ say was accurate, even useful.
Of modernity, you said that it names an historical period that includes
various things. But why mark off that section of history and call it
"modernity"? How is it different from any other marked-off period?
Supposing, for the sake of argument, I proposed to move the first boundary
to Aquinas, and the second to Darwin. Nonsense, obviously, but what do
you say to me? Presumably there is some difference in the character of
medieval philosophy, some reason why Descartes belongs with Sartre but not
Anselm; otherwise it is only the arbitrary dictum of whover holds the
marking-pen. In short, when you merely delineate a period and name some
things in it, you give me no sense of why they belong together.
Of modernism, you said that it is "a catch-all term for 'certain cultural
and artistic movements dating from the late 19th to the mid 20th century.'"
This is even worse, since if it is really a "catch-all" we can throw
anything in, but for some reason you want to throw in "certain" things and
not others; this makes the absurdity especially egregious.
Then you say that "modernism is a rebellion against modernity," as if that
helps somehow. But I have no idea whether any given thing belongs to
modernity or modernism, except according to your dates; by which
definition, I note, Lud was a modernist, and Bach was a modern.
James Owens
> James Owens,
>
> Just a quick reply, or obervation, to your insightful analysis: Postmodernism
> is not the opposite of modernism, but rather the "hyper" mode of modernism, as
> in "hyper-reality." The distinction modernism-modernity is largely
> word-playing. Eliot can be categorized as an author of the era of modernism not
> only because of his mood, but because of his style, no matter what his regard
> of tradition.
Thank you for the kind word, and for these remarks. I am coming around to
the view that "modernism" is used to describe (roughly) twentieth-century
art, or perhaps art with something else in common -- we know not what, but
I've spoken of self-conscious "statement" -- that happens to fall within the
twentieth century. Modernity, on the other hand, is subject to various
definitions, the worst of which are entirely historical; I think it has
something to do with individualism and disenchantment.
Post-modernism I think is in an uneasy relationship to modernity, sort of
half-in and half-out.
James Owens
> I think James asked a reasonable question - and we set the dogs on him.
It's good of you to stick up for me, but they seem to be friendly dogs --
and if I may say so, their bark is worse than their bite. Please don't
antagonize Giles or Moggin on my account -- that pleasure is mine. :-)
I enjoyed your posting, "Is Giles a post-modernist then?" Who is this
Rosenau? But the techniques he describes are not news to me, and when
used they usually indicate a chronic inability to keep to the point -- a
failing encouraged no doubt by the Usenet format -- more than
Machiavellian technique or wilful malice. They amount essentially to a
blockade of the argument; and any blockade, under a sustained and
well-directed barrage, will eventually either fall or hopelessly isolate
those inside. I don't think the insinuation that they are in use here is
fair to Giles.
James Owens
> blockade of the argument; and any blockade, under a sustained and
Did I say "blockade"? I hate when that happens! I meant, you know, when
you barricade yourself in or circle the wagons or whatever. . .
I'm _not_ getting old. . . I'm _not_ getting old. . .
Giles
> Giles (u...@removethisredhotant.com) writes:
>
>> I also find offensive the idea that a basic understanding is sufficient
>> for general judgements to be made. . . I suspect that anyone who
>> rises to your challenge of simplicity and brevity is actually doing
>> you a grave disfavour.
>
> Well, one must approach a topic somehow. Generally one begins to study,
> forms a preliminary impression, tests it against further study, corrects
> it where necessary, and so on. This process can go on indefinitely, but
> at some point a moderately accurate outline does emerge. Think of a
> willow: someone with next to no knowledge of botany can easily recognize
> one by its general shape, well before learning the technical description
> of its leaves or the fine detail of its sexual parts. It's the same with
> anything: romanticism, the Baroque, medieval illumination, Greek history:
> an educated layman's understanding is not only possible, but for general
> purposes sufficient. Why should modernism or post-modernism be any different?
I think we perhaps mistook each other. I would be firmly set against any
claim to 'professional' restriction of knowledge or understanding, or to the
necessity of an 'official' course of study. I meant that the topic resists
simplicity and brevity, and a brief account which aims to offer definitions
or, say, central characteristics would quite possibly hinder an approach to
material which took it as a guide. In that way, your analogy with a willow
doesn't quite work (and I'm not sure it quite works with Romanticism or the
Baroque either), as there is not an easily recognisable general shape.
Another analogy could involve that mouse-like creature which turned out to
be the closest genetic relative of the elephant.
[snip]
>>> . . . But, inclined though I am to give your authority the benefit
>>> of the doubt, I find your first claim to be less definitive than I
>>> would have hoped.
>
>> Why? What were you hoping for? Definitiveness? In what way? I didn't
>> make any claim to being definitive and still don't. Quite the reverse.
>> I suggested that things weren't as straightforward as an assumption of
>> modernist architecture to a rationalist position would make them seem.
>
> Your initial reference to Loos was not so qualified: that is, you held him
> to be quite clearly saying one thing and not another: "Loos attacked
> ornament in architecture on moral grounds, not rationalist or utilitarian
> (Ornament as Crime)."
You are quite right - that should have been qualified. I am duly humbled. A
quick reread has made that clear. But, given that I was arguing for a
qualified view of the potential relation of modernist architecture and a
rationalist model of modernism, then the broader point still stands. Loos
puts forward critera of value based upon turning an aesthetic distinction
into a moral judgement and, as you point out, a racial distinction into a
mark of progress.
Thanks. The critique of waste certainly does take a rationalist appearance,
albeit one that relies on a moral judgement. If ornament is wasted labour
and material, where does the waste lie? If it is wasted then it is because
it is not being deployed for other uses. The judgement about which use
constitute wastes and which doesn't is where morality returns and with it,
in Loos, the aesthetic/moral critique. For instance, the possibility that
ornament might be a pleasure and thus a good thing is ruled out by the moral
critique of vanity and the racial attack on ornament as primitive.
The suggestion that 'lack of ornament means shorter working hours and higher
wages' is a pleasing idea, but is plausibly a moral argument rather than a
rational one (a 'should' or 'ought', not a 'will'). There is no rational
reason, other things being equal, that lack of ornament wouldn't mean the
same working hours and wages with greater output, and that is just what
happened.
But, to return to my suggestion that even the rationalism of modernist
architecture isn't necessarily as clear cut as it seems, Loos attempts to
fuse the rational critique with a moral one. That moral critique, of vanity,
combined with a racially based attack on ornament as primitive, also
supports his conception of progress.
> And what does this have to do with rationality? It isn't hard to draw a
> general connection between rationality and the design of a better society,
Or indeed a worse one. But Loos still sets out a moral judgement drawn on an
aesthetic distinction as a basis for determining what 'better' is. His
combination of 'waste' and 'vanity' might also sound familar to protestant
churches.
> but I don't want to put words in Loos' mouth. He is not explicit.
> However, he does leave what I see as a telling metaphor.
>
> "[The aristocrats] understand the native weaving ornaments into textiles
> to a certain rhythm, which can be seen only when torn apart, the Persian
> knotting his carpet, the Slovak peasant woman embroidering her lace, the
> old lady crocheting wonderful objects in beads and silk. The aristocrat
> lets them be, for he knows they work in moments of revelation. The
> revolutionary would go there and say 'This is all nonsense.' Just as he
> would pull the old woman away from the roadside shrine with the words:
> 'There is no God.'"
Odd, isn't it.
>>> extent is Taut's Utopian glass architecture a rebellion against
>>> rationality, as your own thesis has it?
>
>> Ah, now you do say what my claim supposedly is. I didn't say Taut's
>> architecture was a rebellion against rationality - although in some
>> ways I think that it is (see below) - just that it didn't fit a
>> rationalist model. As for an overall thesis - I said that I saw
>> modernism as 'often, even mostly, a rebellion against modernity'. I'll
>> stick with that, but the qualifiers are important. Please don't precis
>> me inaccurately and in return I promise to try to pay proper attention
>> to what you write.
>
> That's fair comment. I apologize. Fortunately the point survives my
> mangled rendition, if by "hardly rationalist" you mean something like "not
> rationalist," since I mean that to my understanding it _is_ rationalist,
> albeit in a rather sick way. I am taking the view that there is a
> well-adjusted rationalism that, true to the Greek root, deals in a
> measured way with all the aspects of making a decision, including human
> factors; and then there is a feverish rationalism, which is carried away
> by one dimension -- usually of logic or principle -- into extremes that
> normal rationalism finds unacceptable for one reason or another. I was
> reading _Voltaire's Bastards_ by John Ralston Saul when this distinction
> first came to my attention. I hope it answers your puzzlement:
Well, that is a pleasant view to have. I'd quite merrily go along with a
suggestion that modernity contains a rationalism that has nothing to do with
human requirements. The well adjusted version doesn't seem to have such an
impressive track record.
I brought in Taut in the first place following your outline of a modernism
impatient with 'anything for which there is no rational purpose', buttressed
by references to architecture. Taut's alpine glass cities seemed and seem to
me to be an antithesis of rational purpose. As things have gone on, they
also emerged to stand against the rational in terms of Loos' 'rationality'
of waste or indeed his morality of ornament. They would have been a
practical challenge, but not impossible, even then. So Taut really didn't
seem fit anything that you had outlined as the rationalist version of
modernism. Even with this extended version of rationality, the rather sick,
feverish one, I still remain puzzled as to where Taut's rationality lies.
[...]
>> Still - just as an hypothesis - might it not be possible that work that
>> insisted on an abstract formalist absolute against utility, fashion and
>> progress is in some way setting itself against modernity, even though
>> such an abstraction is also modern?
>
> It occurred to me that modernism could be critiquing modernity through a
> form of _reductio ad absurdem_.
Again, I'd fall back on a qualifier, but this is something that I'd
entertain as a possibility in relation to some modernism. The trouble is
that, given the history of the 20th century, modernity performed its own
reductio ad absurdem.
>>> To the extent that modernism is an art movement, it doesn't make much
>>> sense to speak of "modernist philosophy." But if modernism or
>>> post-modernism are world-views they will surely have philosophical
>>> correspondents.
>
>> Here we hit the equation of modernism and postmodernism again, and as
>> 'world-views' no less. I doubt the cohesiveness of either modernism or
>> post-modernism is such to enable either to have the status of
>> world-view, for all that there are common strands in (and between)
>> both. But, unless you wish to limit postmodernism pretty much to art
>> movement(s), the two are not equivalent. Having said that, I suppose
>> there might possibly be modernist philosophy, but that is not the same
>> as either philosophies of modernism or modern philosophies. . .
>
> Just to be clear, I don't equate modernism and post-modernism, in the
> sense of interchangeability. They are different. If modernism is nothing
> except an art movement, and post-modernism is more than that (or something
> else again), then perhaps we have identified a source of confusion for me.
I didn't take you to be equating them in that sense, I meant that the terms
were used as if they were similar in the kind of designation that they made.
As to your potential source of confusion, I'd have to say, at the risk of
annoying people, it all depends. Modernism, in much usage, is the name given
to assorted art works and art groups (and anti-art groups), including work
in the areas of architecture, applied arts/design, plastic arts, literature,
theatre, dance, music, and (more hotly debated) photography and film. It
might also designate associated art theory and criticism. Very roughly - and
varying across areas - such material stems from after the middle of the 19th
century. This is pretty much what I'd go for. As such, modernism is distinct
from modernity (in pretty much whatever sense that term is used) even while
modernist work is clearly not separate from modernity. Not all art produced
in modernity is called modernist, for example, or something might be called
'modern' without being called 'modernist'. However, as you will have
gathered, 'modernism' is also used by some as something of a synonym for
modernity.
The usages of Postmodernism as a term are many and various, in my limited
experience. One usage is, or was, anyway, to designate an assortment of
architectural works. It was also used to designate an assortment of literary
and art works, and work in film, photography, television, dance and drama.
That usage might have some equivalence with the useage of modernism, but it
seemed clear that this was not what you meant. But it is also used to
designate some philosophical work and some critical practices, or, rather
more expansively, a historical (or Post-historical?) period, a sociological
or cultural condition and/or an economic structure. Or a combination of any
of these. This is an incomplete list, but enough for the gist. Postmodernism
is often used as a synonym for postmodernity, if postmodernity has some
equivalence with modernity, but also often not.
> And the term "world-view" is ill-chosen if it conveys some kind of
> certainty or coherence. I mean a way of seeing, an approach to
> experiencing and interacting with the world, not necessarily consciously
> specified, but with an internal consistency, an unheard leitmotif, a
> coherence derived from the unwritten rules of its discourse. . . pardon
> my hand-waving . . .
Weltanschauung?
>> What do you call the modern period?
>
> Ah! That depends. Are we talking about modern art? Modern philosophy?
> Modern science? Modern literature? Modern music?
Well, specifically, you were talking about philosophy in the modern period -
'the major currents of philosophy in the modern period', which, for you,
were analytic philosophy and existentialism.
> By modern philosophy I might mean philosophy from Neitszche or Russell, or
> from Hegel or Kant, or from Descartes or Hume, or. . . well, I guess we'd
> have to stop there, but it might depend on what argument I was trying to
> win. ;-) In connection with modernism, I mean philosophy contemporaneous
> with it.
O.k., then I'll limit the alternatives to analytic philosophy and
existentialism likewise, after Nietzsche, say? (I would say Marx, but he
wouldn't want to be called a philosopher). But that would still leave
Neo-Kantianism, various Marxisms, large swathes of Lebensphilosophie,
Benjamin, Bloch, Adorno, Bataille, Blanchot, Cioran, and so on
.
> Here I want to try to refine my ideas a bit. In another thread I've
> associated historical reflectivity with something which I will happily
> call modernity, and which goes back to Hegel (and Schiller, why not?)
> Let's agree that modernism is something else, a twentieth century
> phenomenon.
Make that after the mid 19th century and I'd tentatively agree.
> I've also suggested in that other thread that it arises late
> in response to modernity; that a confluence of philosophy, sociology and
> history laid the groundwork of modernity. So modernism is a response to
> modernity. You see, I'm not irredeemable! However, for the moment I'm
> sticking to the thesis that it is not deeply a rebellion against
> modernity, because in the first place its "simplified formal vocabulary"
> (this description of modernism comes from a Toronto curator quoted in
> today's Globe and Mail) remains a reflection, however distorted, of the
> modern ideal;
A couple of things. I'm not sure why you would expect a rebellion against
modernity not to involve a 'reflection, however distorted' of modernity.
What would be the alternative? A conservative rejection of modernity in
favour of a lost past? There are some of those in modernism, but many many
more outside it. And those visions of the lost past are in any case
thoroughly shaped by modernity - their fixation is on what has 'been lost'.
Second. 'Simplified formal vocabulary' is not necessarily the case. Often
yes, but often no. As the Eliot discussion brought up, he saw poetry
necessarily becoming 'difficult', 'various and complex', 'more allusive,
more indirect'.
> and in the second place (as I currently understand things)
> the rejection of modernity belongs to post-modernism (assuming for the
> moment that post-modernism is the artistic expression of post-modernity.)
> The alternative is to find some other way of distinguishing modernism from
> post-modernism -- and I do believe they are not the same thing, though
> neither are they opposites.
>
> As Moggin repeatedly observes, modernist literature presents a problem for
> this view, since it is pessimistic about modernity. It would apparently
> make of Eliot a post-modern poet, which defies both well-established
> convention and ordinary common sense. In answer to this conundrum, I am
> now proposing that a _rebellion_ against modernity is not necessarily the
> same thing as a _rejection_ of modernity. At a deeper level, modernist
> literature _accepts_ modernity; it accepts the finality of modernity with
> resignation and lament. A thorough-going rejection would simply not
> accept modernity's terms; but modernist terms are indeed the ones in which
> Eliot sadly speaks.
This is why I didn't and don't want to offer a model of modernism or
postmodernism. The categories and qualities get assigned in their proper
places and a judgement is reached.
For some variety, how about a quote from Walter Benjamin, a
critic-historian-philosopher and a candidate for 'modernist philosopher',
writing in the 1939.
"The concept of the historical progress of mankind cannot be sundered from
the concept of its progression through a homogenous, empty time. A critique
of the concept of such a progression must be the basis of any criticism of
the concept of progress itself".
Or as he put it otherwise (quoted from memory) 'That things just keep on
like this is the catastrophe'. What is 'keeping on' is 'progress'. (Despite
their opposite political polarities, these have a certain similarity to some
of Eliot's formulations). Some modernist work aims at interruption,
sometimes from an imagined outside, sometimes from sparks or possibilties
inside. Does this fit a model of resigned pessimism? Does it not have
qualities of rejection?
[snip]
I'm going to have to come back to the rest of the post in a couple of days.
Regards
Giles
ale...@my-deja.com
>
> This is the line of reasoning I attribute to you. Am I that far off?
>
> >> I said
> >> in so many words that "modernity" is the name for an historical
> >> period starting with the Renaissance and including -- among
> >> other things -- the advent of capitalism, the rise of the
> >> bourgeoisie, and the industrial revolution. I also stated that
> >> "modernism" is a catch-all term for "certain cultural and
> >> artistic movements dating from the late 19th to the mid 20th
> >> century." I offered Nietzsche as an example in philosophy, and
> >> I named Pound, Eliot, and Woolf to illustrate High Modernism
> >> in literature. I also noted that modernism was in large part a
> >> rebellion against modernity.
>
> > Is modernity really nothing more than a historical period,
> > indistinguishable from any other except by limiting dates,
themselves
> > presumably arbitrary? Your definition of "modernism" is the most
useless
> > imaginable.
I could be confused here, but wasn't modernism a sort of "rescue"
project to "redeem" humanity through art (albeit an arbitrarily
defined field) and from the basic wrecks of modernity, particularly in
response to WWI?
Agreed. The notion of epoch, or periodising certain moments of "time" as
if they are separate entities is naive to say the least.
>
What I'm concerned with the theme of this thread though, is the ongoing
contention between who is what and who is not - do we really need to
categorise things and people into discursive label, or are we doing this
out of routine?
Joyce
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Moggin
>>> Kierkegaard's use of pseudonyms does suggest a post-modern distance from
>>> commitment.
Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>> I guess there's that, too, but I was thinking on different
>> lines. They're an application of his concept of "indirect
>> communication." When he composes philosophy as, e.g., Johannes
>> Climacus, he's not just distancing himself, but adopting a
>> certain perspective and persona. As Nietzsche would say, truth
>> requires a mask.
James:
> I'd add that the pseudonymous authors were, in Kiekegaard's view,
> separated from _truth_ by their inability to make the leap of faith. This
> sharply separates him from post-modernism, although he can still be seen
> as commenting on its approach. (In as much as "truth is subjectivity," I
> suppose his authors were separated from themselves, in one of the forms of
> despair catalogued in _The Sickness Unto Death_.)
Not exactly, no. Remember that Kierkegaard _invented_ his
pseudonymous authors precisely in order to communicate the
truth -- indirectly. As I said, K wasn't just putting distance
between himself and his words -- he also wasn't merely
commenting on the personas he adopted. To him they were also a
means of conveying truth. If truth requires a mask, as
Nietzsche says, then a truthful person will be sure to wear the
appropriate costumes.
James:
>>> Paraphrasing is a way of saying,
>>> "This is what I heard -- have I got it right?"
No -- you got it ludicrously wrong, quite possibly because
your focus was on creating a paraphrase.
James:
>>> If I were simply to quote
>>> other passages, I would be succumbing to the post-modern mood of
>>> inviolable texts.
Moggin:
>> The heresy of paraphrase belongs to modernism, represented
>> by the New Criticism. And of course I never asked you to
>> "simply quote other passages": I pointed out that you invented
>> the arguments you attributed to me.
James:
> I stand to learn something here, because I associate the inviolability of
> text with Foucault or Derrida (vaguely, having overheard discussions about
> them.)
Hard to guess what you heard, or how it related to Derrida
and Foucault. The heresy of paraphrase is classic New
Criticism, but it's probably best illustrated by a story (maybe
an apocryphal one) about Isadora Duncan, who's said to have
came off stage one night to find herself faced by reporters who
demanded she explain the meaning of her performance. She
answered something like, "Oh, for god's sake. If I could _tell_
you that, would I waste my time dancing?"
[...]
> Obviously, since I didn't quote you, I could not have accused you of
> "speaking the lines which you had me reciting." Sometimes you're more
> confused than you think.
Doubtless I am. But I think this isn't one of those times.
You're just being overly literal. My point was that you
attributed arguments to me I never gave. Your "paraphrase" was
in large part sheer invention. Get it? You claim your
paraphrasing is a way of asking if you understood, but it seems
you don't wanna hear that you didn't.
> It remains to be shown that "a fascination with rational solutions" is in
> the same area as "science" and "progress," but I don't see that to be an
> uphill battle. Quite possibly in an explicit discussion you would dispute
> this general interpretation of "modernity," and I guess I had better ask:
> would you?
Sure. That won't get any argument from me.
[...]
> The "proposed conception of post-modernism" that you have in mind (and you
> don't subscribe to it) is that post-modernism encompasses that which
> opposes modernity (is that right?). But, you argue, Eliot opposes
> modernity. Therefore we are forced either to the unhappy conclusion that
> Eliot was a post-modernist, or to the re-evaluation of our premisses.
> We can re-evaluate the premise that to oppose modernity is to be
> post-modern, and you certainly want to do that. But it is not even
> possible to consider the alternative to which we are then directed -- that
> to oppose modernity is also (or perhaps exclusively) to be modernist --
> until modernity and modernism have been distinguished. Without this, the
> "proposed conception of modernism" (as modernity or directly expressive of
> its ideals) stands in a puzzling relation to Eliot's poetry. So first and
> foremost you want to re-evaluate the premise that modernism is modernity,
> or directly expressive of its ideals.
> This is the line of reasoning I attribute to you. Am I that far off?
This is a new line of reasoning that you've credited to me
-- not the one you gave me before. It doesn't immediately
remind me of me, but it's certainly an improvement. I'll think
over the details and get back to you.
James:
>>> Is modernity really nothing more than a historical period,
>>> indistinguishable from any other except by limiting dates, themselves
>>> presumably arbitrary? Your definition of "modernism" is the most useless
>>> imaginable.
Moggin:
>> I can see that's not what I said; I can also see that what
>> I _did_ say was accurate, even useful.
James:
> Of modernity, you said that it names an historical period that includes
> various things.
Right: modernity, not modernism. I also offered examples
of the things it contains.
> But why mark off that section of history and call it
> "modernity"? How is it different from any other marked-off period?
> Supposing, for the sake of argument, I proposed to move the first boundary
> to Aquinas, and the second to Darwin. Nonsense, obviously, but what do
> you say to me? Presumably there is some difference in the character of
> medieval philosophy, some reason why Descartes belongs with Sartre but not
> Anselm; otherwise it is only the arbitrary dictum of whover holds the
> marking-pen. In short, when you merely delineate a period and name some
> things in it, you give me no sense of why they belong together.
I'm also not discussing why they belong together; I'm just
trying to correct some basic errors concerning the way in
which the terms are used. If you say it makes sense to analyze
history differently, you may well be right. Take the
suggestion that we should bracket a span from Aquinas to Darwin.
That's not obvious nonsense. I admit the sense doesn't leap
out at me, but I'd be interested. So my answer to the question
"What do you say to me?" is, "Interesting. Why?" If you
claim that period is "modernity," my answer is, "That's not how
the term 'modernity' is usually applied."
I understand what you want: you want "Europe." It wasn't
long ago that talk about the concept of Europe was all the
rage. (It may still be, for all I know -- I don't pay too much
attention.) I'm just saying the term "Europe" designates a
group of countries hanging off the western end of Asia: Russia
(a debated case), Germany, and France, for example. You
believe that's an arbitrary delineation? You're welcome to say
so. I'm only explaining what the term denotes. You think
that I'm being egregiously absurd? You're uninformed. You say
Europe includes Bhutan? Ditto.
> Of modernism, you said that it is "a catch-all term for 'certain cultural
> and artistic movements dating from the late 19th to the mid 20th century.'"
And so it is.
> This is even worse, since if it is really a "catch-all" we can throw
> anything in...
Doesn't follow. Oh, wait -- you're probably being literal
again: something called a "catch-all," you reason, must be
able to catch all there is to catch. But that's not true about
catch-alls. Besides, I said explicitly that this was a
catch-all for some things and not others. I also gave examples
of what it contained.
> ...but for some reason you want to throw in "certain" things and
> not others; this makes the absurdity especially egregious.
Excuse me for being rude, James, but you're being
egregiously stupid. Some terms do serve as catch-alls. That's
not to your liking, I gather, but there it is: language
wasn't written to your design. So happens both "modernism" and
"post-modernism" are terms of that kind.
> Then you say that "modernism is a rebellion against modernity," as if that
> helps somehow.
It helps considerably in distinguishing the meaning of the
term "modernism" from the meaning of the term "modernity,"
which happens to be exactly what I was trying to do when I made
my point. It's very little help in your pursuit of the
Platonic Ideal of modernism, I agree. But then I wasn't trying
to help with that.
> But I have no idea whether any given thing belongs to
> modernity or modernism, except according to your dates; by which
> definition, I note, Lud was a modernist, and Bach was a modern.
And I note you're batty. Even if you applied the dates so
crudely as that, you still couldn't conclude that Lud was a
modernist; not if you applied them accurately, anyhow. He died
in 1827 -- I put modernism in a span from "the late 19th to
the mid 20th century," which would leave him out of the running.
-- Moggin
Moggin
> I do not see po-mo as a critique of modernity -
Of course you do. You describe modernity as "progress as some
line zooming off into the great distance- of health housing and
pollution free energy .... eternal youth... all offered up to us by
SCIENCE." And speaking of pomo ("in general terms"), you say
"folks began to question this understanding- there are limits - and
recognising that we have reached these- Or that the whole thing
was a fraud in the first place." There you are: you see pomo as a
critique of modernity.
> you do - its
> part of the continuum - its speed (whatever that means) is its only
> difference - again your definition (quoting Lyotard) in your FAQ.
[...]
No, I didn't give a definition. I also didn't contend any one
thing was the "only difference" -- I didn't even address that
subject. And the passage you're referring to hasn't been in my FAQ
for years.
-- Moggin
Moggin
>>>> ... we see
>>>> yourself? and moggin as seeing modernism as typified by a negative
>>>> critique of modernity - but its not so - some do others don't (bring
>>>> back the Italians!)
Giles:
>> No argument there from me. I dunno about Moggin. I have stuck to much,
>>> perhaps most, modernism as some kind of rebellion against modernity
>>> from the outset. Negative critique is a term I'd also accept for some, or
>>> much modernism. 'Some do, others don't' seems fair enough, and it was there
>>> that we started the whole thing. You were for 'all don't' at that point.
Moggin:
>> James has gotten confused again. I was the one who invited
>> in the Italians, offering the Futurists as a case in which
>> modernism positively celebrated modernity. James wanted to send
>> them away ("We can ignore the Italian mob?"), but now wants
>> them back again. Lord. My small supply of patience was used up
>> several posts ago.
James:
> i placed the Italians on one side as they are somewhat too
> obvious - and not representative of the formal aspects of modernism
> which I wanted to concentrate on.
Bullshit. You were speaking in terms of themes ("the theme
of rebel," which you found in modernism), issues ("the issues
of modernity") and programs ("modernity's programme"), not about
"the formal aspects of modernism."
> As it seems unless a painter paints a
> picture which is a literal representation of theory you fail to see what
> is going on.
[...]
It's easy to see what's going on -- you're weaseling around
in your customary fashion.
-- Moggin
Moggin
>>> Oasis are created in the look sound and feel of the Beatles circa Rubber
>>> Soul to Sgnt Pepper - there is a black and white video of one of their
>>> songs which at first i thought was from rubber soul.
Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>> The songs I've heard -- again, just the ones that got onto
>> the radio or MTV -- aren't especially like the mid-period
>> Beatles. Ditto for Oasis' image: I haven't seen anything that
>> looks like a detailed recreation of the Beatles. Same
>> qualification: I haven't seen them much. Have they dressed up
>> like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?
James:
> They go more for the look on Revolver - roll necks and dark glasses -
Lots of people wear turtlenecks and sunglasses. And it so
happens there are no turtlenecks in the _Revolver_ photos.
Sunglasses, yes: Ringo, George, and Paul are all wearing those.
But John is in an open-necked shirt, George and Paul seem to
be, too, while Ringo has on a jacket and tie. The _Rubber Soul_
shots do have turtlenecks (all four Beatles) as well as open
collars (John and George) but no sunglasses anywhere to be seen.
James:
>>> What the difference
>>> is that now this is presented as serious music - and original - The
>>> simulacrum is not a copy - well is more than a copy - the *quality* is
>>> better than the original - it denies the original- makes the original
>>> worthless and pointless.
Moggin:
>> Can't agree with that, either: the songs I've that heard
>> are pleasant enough, but they're not obvious copies of the
>> mid-period Beatles, and they're certainly not better than what
>> the Beatles did then.
James:
> gee it worked then - that's the whole idea...
Not according to you: you argued Oasis is a "re-creation
in fairly close detail" of the Beatles. But it seems to me
that description applies to the Ruttles much better than Oasis.
> The modern version is qualitatively better -
Not judging from anything I've heard. I guess your taste
differs.
[...]
Moggin re Star Trek:
>> Say _what_? Checkov is the cute little Davey Jones figure
>> -- i.e., the cute little McCartney figure twice-removed.
>> That's my point: if McCartney is the "original," Checkov was a
>> third-generation copy.
James:
> I was trying to point out the difference between an analogue copy -
> which can never be as good as the original - and a digital simulation
> which can be.
Sure you were.
-- Moggin
Moggin
>> ... The definition
>> I was referring was the one that you offered, viz. "po-mo
>> rejects grand meta-narratives." You submitted "rebellion" as a
>> for-instance, suggesting that would qualify Eliot as a
>> post-modernist: a foolish idea, since as I already pointed out
>> to you, "rebellion" isn't even a narrative.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
[...]
> It is a foolish idea because grand-narratives are not found in po-mo
Only if you adopt Lyotard's definition. And even then, he
wouldn't accept "rebellion" as a grand narrative.
> innovation - Eliot's words - here qualifies him as modern - innovation
> is a Big idea within modernity.
You noted that the New Age movement and modernity are both
enamored of the concept of progress. Does that mean
patchouli-scented bookstores with the collected works of Deepak
Chopra are retailing modernity?
Moggin:
>> ... The "post-" in the term "post-modernism" is part
>> of what misleads uninformed people into thinking that
>> modernism and post-modernism are opposites: the mistake that I
>> entered this thread to correct. Of course they're also not
>> identical. That's why I suggested "late modernism" rather than
>> tossing them into a heap.
James:
[...]
> I'm not aware of a confusion - post means after - not opposite. It
> implies modernism has ended.
Not necessarily, no. "Post" can also mean "beginning with."
In other words, the expression "post-Renaissance" can mean
"since the beginning of the Renaissance," or the "since the end
of the Renaissance," although the latter is probably more
common. Anyway, the idea that modernism and post-modernism are
a pair of opposites, where "modernism" is confused with
modernity, isn't unusual. I think that the "post-" in the term
"post-moderism" is one cause of the mix-up.
-- Moggin
Moggin
> Agreed. The notion of epoch, or periodising certain moments of "time" as
> if they are separate entities is naive to say the least.
You're not agreeing with James, since that's not the point
he made, or even the issue he was talking about. He just
complained about the way that I delineated the era that we were
discussing. You could be right, of course, that
periodization is naive. Hell, thinking might be naive. But my
description of modernism as a catch-all (that's what James
objected to) does not reify the concept, despite what you imply.
Or maybe I've misunderstood what you mean by "separate
entities." Is history an homogenous and undifferentiated thing
to you?
> What I'm concerned with the theme of this thread though, is the ongoing
> contention between who is what and who is not - do we really need to
> categorise things and people into discursive label, or are we doing this
> out of routine?
We're composing entries for a certain Chinese encyclopedia.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
<ad...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> writes
>James Whitehead (jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk) writes:
>
>> I think James asked a reasonable question - and we set the dogs on him.
>
>It's good of you to stick up for me, but they seem to be friendly dogs --
>and if I may say so, their bark is worse than their bite. Please don't
>antagonize Giles or Moggin on my account -- that pleasure is mine. :-)
>
>I enjoyed your posting, "Is Giles a post-modernist then?" Who is this
>Rosenau? But the techniques he describes are not news to me, and when
>used they usually indicate a chronic inability to keep to the point -- a
>failing encouraged no doubt by the Usenet format -- more than
>Machiavellian technique or wilful malice. They amount essentially to a
>those inside. I don't think the insinuation that they are in use here is
>fair to Giles.
>
but from my point of view the devil lies in the detail - theorizing is
all well and good if its intentions are clarification.. but it seems
this doesn't necessarily follow..
If the explanation is so complex you cant figure anything out- what your
faced with is noise - I think some arts folks need to see this (a quick
course in information theory?) "lets unpack what you mean by the house
is on fire" - if its accidental that in their counter-counter-counter
examples (that is motivated by a search for the truth) we end up with
such noise - then I could forgive them - and pass quietly by - but then
I found this
"These cantos do not resemble, suggests Carpenter, "a classical text
which will finally reward patient unravelling. Rather, the reader
encounters an imagination that has not left sufficient clues as to its
activities." That's one way of putting it; another would be to say that
Pound's obscurantist technique results not from the felt complexity of
modern life and language, as do those of Ulysses and The Waste Land, but
from a will to lord it over and baffle the reader."
Hummm?
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
>
>
>>
>> This is the line of reasoning I attribute to you. Am I that far off?
>>
>> >> I said
>> >> in so many words that "modernity" is the name for an historical
>> >> period starting with the Renaissance and including -- among
>> >> other things -- the advent of capitalism, the rise of the
>> >> bourgeoisie, and the industrial revolution. I also stated that
>> >> "modernism" is a catch-all term for "certain cultural and
>> >> artistic movements dating from the late 19th to the mid 20th
>> >> century." I offered Nietzsche as an example in philosophy, and
>> >> I named Pound, Eliot, and Woolf to illustrate High Modernism
>> >> in literature. I also noted that modernism was in large part a
>> >> rebellion against modernity.
>>
>> > Is modernity really nothing more than a historical period,
>> > indistinguishable from any other except by limiting dates,
>themselves
>> > presumably arbitrary? Your definition of "modernism" is the most
>useless
>> > imaginable.
>
>I could be confused here,
>but wasn't modernism a sort of "rescue"
>project to "redeem" humanity through art (albeit an arbitrarily
>defined field) and from the basic wrecks of modernity, particularly in
>response to WWI?
That's what some would make out - however it was in many of the arts
well underway before 1914. In particular the movement reacted to
Victorian decoration & elaboration in architecture painting sculpture
music and literature - such that the cliché less-is-more became its
battle cry. Along with "Make it New!" They borrowed
scientific/technological methodologies... and maxims as a way out of the
Victorian gothic miasma... It may appear that some poets were deeply
concerned with the aftermath of the Great War - but on closer inspection
they seem not to care a dam. (being writers they need a subject and a
bowl of fruit or naked woman just wont do) We admire their poetry not
their sentiment.
(the above seems to sound authoritative but it more a small spanner
gliding through the air..)
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
>
>> They go more for the look on Revolver - roll necks and dark glasses -
>
> Lots of people wear turtlenecks and sunglasses. And it so
>happens there are no turtlenecks in the _Revolver_ photos.
>Sunglasses, yes: Ringo, George, and Paul are all wearing those.
>But John is in an open-necked shirt, George and Paul seem to
>be, too, while Ringo has on a jacket and tie. The _Rubber Soul_
>shots do have turtlenecks (all four Beatles) as well as open
>collars (John and George) but no sunglasses anywhere to be seen.
>
>>> Can't agree with that, either: the songs I've that heard
>>> are pleasant enough, but they're not obvious copies of the
>>> mid-period Beatles, and they're certainly not better than what
>>> the Beatles did then.
>
>
>> gee it worked then - that's the whole idea...
>
>in fairly close detail" of the Beatles.
I said allot more which qualifies and explains this -
>that description applies to the Ruttles much better than Oasis.
piss-take of the beatles and a very good one at that... the idea of
Oasis is quite a different thing altogether. Your not supposed to see it
as a copy - however much it is. There was a quote of a recent producer
who said just this about 90s + music - its cleaver in that its all 60s
but in the mix your never sure - Kinks or Small Faces....
>> I was trying to point out the difference between an analogue copy -
>> which can never be as good as the original - and a digital simulation
>> which can be.
>
> Sure you were.
>
wrong by catching you out on an edited snip - as per - fine
I recant everything I have said in this thread upto this full stop.
Happy?
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
>James:
>
>> i placed the Italians on one side as they are somewhat too
>> obvious - and not representative of the formal aspects of modernism
>> which I wanted to concentrate on.
>
> Bullshit. You were speaking in terms of themes ("the theme
>of rebel," which you found in modernism), issues ("the issues
>of modernity") and programs ("modernity's programme"), not about
>"the formal aspects of modernism."
deliberately do - i have many times said that modernism is essentially a
formalist programme - and yes this has attached to it the idea of
revolution and rebel - upsetting the status quo.
>
>> As it seems unless a painter paints a
>> picture which is a literal representation of theory you fail to see what
>> is going on.
>
>[...]
>
> It's easy to see what's going on -- you're weaseling around
>in your customary fashion.
Well if you think I'm about that i'm sorry for you - its not true - I
want to explore ideas about the modern epoch - not be tripped on my own
words - all we are doing now is dissecting what I said - I await
something positive about the *issues*.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
>James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>
>> I do not see po-mo as a critique of modernity -
>
> Of course you do. You describe modernity as "progress as some
>line zooming off into the great distance- of health housing and
>pollution free energy .... eternal youth... all offered up to us by
>SCIENCE." And speaking of pomo ("in general terms"), you say
>"folks began to question this understanding- there are limits - and
>recognising that we have reached these- Or that the whole thing
>was a fraud in the first place." There you are: you see pomo as a
>critique of modernity.
>
everything else i have said on the issue so we get a clearer idea.. and
the context?
"It is much easier to point out the faults and errors in the
work of a great mind than to give a distinct and full exposition of
its value. For the faults are particular and finite, and can
therefore be fully comprehended; while, on the contrary, the very
stamp which genius impresses upon its works is that their excellence
is unfathomable and inexhaustible."
>> you do - its
>> part of the continuum - its speed (whatever that means) is its only
>> difference - again your definition (quoting Lyotard) in your FAQ.
>
>[...]
>
> No, I didn't give a definition.
Its your method..
> I also didn't contend any one
>thing was the "only difference" -- I didn't even address that
>subject. And the passage you're referring to hasn't been in my FAQ
>for years.
So its not what you think - what is the situation then - please - is the
passage in error - and if you cite a difference in a FAQ - i would have
thought you would quote the significant difference - if you explain
something?
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
>Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>
>>> ... The definition
>>> I was referring was the one that you offered, viz. "po-mo
>>> rejects grand meta-narratives." You submitted "rebellion" as a
>>> for-instance, suggesting that would qualify Eliot as a
>>> post-modernist: a foolish idea, since as I already pointed out
>>> to you, "rebellion" isn't even a narrative.
>
>
>[...]
>
>> It is a foolish idea because grand-narratives are not found in po-mo
>
> Only if you adopt Lyotard's definition.
and see a failure in art science political thought.... I examine the
methodologies within them and see how they had a structure and a form
and ideas of such things as truth ... progress ... absolute and
objective understanding... perhaps its not quite what Lyotard meant -
i'm not that interested in knowing - if i could - exactly what he means
- but its a nice phrase which lumps these things together. I think
modernity had a grand narrative perhaps in his terms - the idea of
progress. It had methodologies - the dialectic being one - elsewhere you
say i think po-mo is a critique of modernity - well no - not in the
manner of the dialectic - its quite different. Its more fundamental than
that. A critique would be to engage in it in quite a different way as
this too is a method. If you like the evaluation of it itself collapses
- there's more here but your not wanting it i think... "the decline of
the truth of beings occurs necessarily, and indeed as the completion of
metaphysics" You find even in the successes of modernism such a
completeness and so an end. You see its not the success or failure of
modernity - i can describe it as both - and even now it might give a
cure for cancer, eternal youth and a final theory of everything - but
even then its completed - and over - my post-modernity lies in this.
So its not fair to say its a critique - as that implies judgement - but
its a strange judgement for either success or failure its judged as
over.
>
> You noted that the New Age movement and modernity are both
>enamored of the concept of progress. Does that mean
>patchouli-scented bookstores with the collected works of Deepak
>Chopra are retailing modernity?
There is something strange going on here as many doctors in the UK are
venturing into homeopathy and other alternative medicines - it would
appear that something like this may be occurring. Though the New Age
progress might be back to some mythical utopia in the past? This could
almost make Eliot part of this movement - but obviously not so.
>
>Moggin:
>
>>> ... The "post-" in the term "post-modernism" is part
>>> of what misleads uninformed people into thinking that
>>> modernism and post-modernism are opposites: the mistake that I
>>> entered this thread to correct. Of course they're also not
>>> identical. That's why I suggested "late modernism" rather than
>>> tossing them into a heap.
>
>James:
>
>[...]
>
>> I'm not aware of a confusion - post means after - not opposite. It
>> implies modernism has ended.
>
> Not necessarily, no. "Post" can also mean "beginning with."
>In other words, the expression "post-Renaissance" can mean
>"since the beginning of the Renaissance," or the "since the end
>of the Renaissance," although the latter is probably more
>common.
So it needs clearing up - post-modernism meaning from the begging of
modernism to now and after doesn't delineate anything within the period
- even a speeding up! - you may like this but a more general meaning i
think is what occurred after the modern period. Even if only a speeding
up!- can you have it both ways? A source says that it implies
assumptions "that there is no common denominator - in nature or truth"
and that "human systems are self reflexive". I like these ideas but then
they miss the consequences. At its extreme there is a position within
po-mo which denies history. So finishes the debate there. What we do is
venture out from such a cave and grub about with reason and language -
but cannot re-construct the city. This is all aimed at rational
explanation - and if I could find some objective construct to ensure I
could communicate what I wish to you I would be saved - that I can't is
recognisable - that I could would be un-satisfactory anyway - so that is
this...
> Anyway, the idea that modernism and post-modernism are
>a pair of opposites, where "modernism" is confused with
>modernity, isn't unusual. I think that the "post-" in the term
>"post-moderism" is one cause of the mix-up.
I think if you mean from the beginning of modernism then we need another
phrase for from the end- (for those who believe it ended - you it seems
might not) - in order to be clear - and then discuss those ideas.
Collapse of Marxism etc. In general most usage of the term I think is to
denote after-modernism. Post modern art is certainly art after modern
art - same with architecture and others If you say the post-renaissence
period - its after I think - As a historical term I think in separates
modern from what came after.. is a term to say what occurred. Post-war
Britain i think begins 46 - and looking in some dictionaries for usage
after seems to predominate - post-coloninal "the condition of life after
the end of colonialism" etc. Further Modernism is a little more subtle-
I think as it encompasses not just a historical period but a set of
ideas / activities - and therefore post means after the activity. Post
war poets and War poets - you would have Wifred Owen -died 1918 in
action as a post-war poet? - i think you might even bridle yourself a
little at your own pedantry on this one... If you are of the mind that
modernism as a cultural period began late 19th early 20th c still
continues- altered but fundamentally the same - then you would be best
saying that the idea of a post-modernist period is a mistake. Its an
interesting idea.
--
James Whitehead
James Owens
> Not so - the ruttles were a joke... you were meant to see it as such - a
> piss-take of the beatles and a very good one at that... the idea of
> Oasis is quite a different thing altogether. Your not supposed to see it
> as a copy - however much it is. There was a quote of a recent producer
> who said just this about 90s + music - its cleaver in that its all 60s
> but in the mix your never sure - Kinks or Small Faces....
I hope no one minds if I throw a few random thoughts into this thread:
- I remember the Banana Splitz. It was a Saturday morning TV band for the
kiddies. The performers wore monkey costumes, but I never had the
impression it was a takeoff on the Monkees. It was just a stupid kids' show.
- That makes me think of the Archies (and wasn't there a Josie offshoot?)
and the Partridge Family. The executives really wanted to cash in on the
60s music phenomenon. But the Monkees stood apart because at first their
"prefab" quality was not admitted (as I recall.) Later, when there was no
denying it any longer, they spoofed themselves. In the movie _Head_ they
chanted, "The money's in, we're made of tin" (there's more, but I don't
remember it.) As an aside, _The Man From UNCLE_ also ended up spoofing
itself.
- For post-Beatles marketing there was the Bay City Rollers -- a big flop
and the last manufactured band aimed at anything but the most naive
audiences (now I'm thinking of pre-teen bands like the Spice Girls or the
Back Street Boys).
- For post-Beatles music there was Harrison's own "When we was fab," and
then a song called "Sowing the seeds of love" by the guys who did "Shout,"
that sounded more like a tribute than anything. I think Oasis is in this
tradition. The later Beatles songs were interesting, but that tradition
was left undeveloped because of the rise of super-groups like Yes and
Emerson Lake and Palmer with their project to make rock into the classical
music of the generation (and on the other hand the rise of head-banging or
disco or other straight-ahead stuff.) A few, like David Bowie or the
Rhythmatics, hung in there writing short, lyrical, innovative rock songs.
You can see Oasis as simply picking up where the Beatles left off --
although in the one song I've heard, the very strong resemblance makes
them seem derivative.
James Owens
>>>> Kierkegaard's use of pseudonyms does suggest a post-modern distance from
>>>> commitment.
> Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>>> I guess there's that, too, but I was thinking on different
>>> lines. . . he's not just distancing himself, but adopting a
>>> certain perspective and persona. As Nietzsche would say, truth
>>> requires a mask.
> James:
>> I'd add that the pseudonymous authors were, in Kiekegaard's view,
>> separated from _truth_ by their inability to make the leap of faith. This
>> sharply separates him from post-modernism, although he can still be seen
>> as commenting on its approach. (In as much as "truth is subjectivity," I
>> suppose his authors were separated from themselves, in one of the forms of
>> despair catalogued in _The Sickness Unto Death_.)
> Not exactly, no. Remember that Kierkegaard _invented_ his
> pseudonymous authors precisely in order to communicate the
> truth -- indirectly. As I said, K wasn't just putting distance
> between himself and his words -- he also wasn't merely
> commenting on the personas he adopted. To him they were also a
> means of conveying truth. If truth requires a mask, as
> Nietzsche says, then a truthful person will be sure to wear the
> appropriate costumes.
As SK himself says, in _The Point of View for My Work as An Author_,
"But from the point of view of my whole activity as an author, integrally
conceived, the aesthetic work is a deception, and herein is to be found
the deeper significance of the use of pseudonyms. A deception, however,
is a rather ugly thing. To this I would make answer: One must not let
oneself be deceived by the word 'deception'. One can deceive a person for
the truth's sake, and (to recall old Socrates) one can deceive a person
into the truth. Indeed, it is only by this means, i.e. by deceiving him,
that it is possible to bring into the truth one who is in an illusion. . .
"What then, does it mean, 'to deceive'? It means that one does not begin
_directly_ with the matter one wants to communicate, but begins by
accepting the other man's illusion as good money. . . the deception
consists in the fact that one talks thus merely to get to the religious
theme."
I think we are mostly in agreement. In adopting a pseudonym SK is putting
on a mask, so in a sense truth is wearing a mask, as you say. But the
pseudonymous authors themselves stand for a deceived position, in order as
it were to befriend the deceived. The difference for some postmodern
thought is that various positions are not seen as _deceived_ with respect
to an absolute truth. Rather, they are different forms or expressions of
truth, each with its own validity.
>> Obviously, since I didn't quote you, I could not have accused you of
>> "speaking the lines which you had me reciting." Sometimes you're more
>> confused than you think.
> Doubtless I am. But I think this isn't one of those times.
> You're just being overly literal. My point was that you
> attributed arguments to me I never gave. Your "paraphrase" was
> in large part sheer invention. Get it? You claim your
> paraphrasing is a way of asking if you understood, but it seems
> you don't wanna hear that you didn't.
Here I must confess to a little deception myself. In this part of the
discussion, and also later when I complain about "catch-alls," I am indeed
being overly literal. Normally I would assume that I know what you mean,
even though it isn't what you actually said. But weren't you just taking
me to task for that? Now I am in a precarious position indeed, for if I
paraphrase you I am putting words in your mouth, and if I don't, I am at
risk of being "egregiously stupid."
I don't mind hearing that I didn't understand, as long as this is
accompanied by a corrective hint or two. If you think I invented
something from "whole cloth," you can tell me that, and you have. My
reply is that actually I didn't, which by careful expansion I hope to have
demonstrated.
>> It remains to be shown that "a fascination with rational solutions" is in
>> the same area as "science" and "progress," but I don't see that to be an
>> uphill battle. Quite possibly in an explicit discussion you would dispute
>> this general interpretation of "modernity," and I guess I had better ask:
>> would you?
> Sure. That won't get any argument from me.
As if by divine providence, here is a case where I really can't guess what
you mean. Is this "Sure, I'd dispute it," or (as I imagine) "Sure, I'd
accept an interpretation of this sort"?
> I understand what you want: you want "Europe."
No, I know what Europe is, more or less! Regarding modernism, modernity,
and postmodernism I'm not nearly so sure, though regarding the first two I
think I'm getting a better idea. In another thread I mentioned
Wittgenstein's idea that you can't define a "game" simply, because it
involves a family of things -- like a big Venn diagram where some circles
might not overlap others directly, but nevertheless the whole thing
encloses a single space. Far from being a Platonist, I'm willing to go
with that. I just want to characterize some of the circles.
>> But I have no idea whether any given thing belongs to
>> modernity or modernism, except according to your dates; by which
>> definition, I note, Lud was a modernist, and Bach was a modern.
> And I note you're batty. Even if you applied the dates so
> crudely as that, you still couldn't conclude that Lud was a
> modernist; not if you applied them accurately, anyhow. He died
> in 1827 -- I put modernism in a span from "the late 19th to
> the mid 20th century," which would leave him out of the running.
Dickens, then (James Whitehead already mentioned him.) He's within the
period and he protested a significant feature of modernity. Besides, why
do you want to exclude Lud as a modernist? A clearer rebellion against
modernity I can't imagine. So what if he was earlier than all the rest?
This is just the same sort of objection you've raised over Eliot.
The counter-example demands a re-evaluation of terms.
James Whitehead
<ad...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> writes
>James Whitehead (jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk) writes:
>
>> Not so - the ruttles were a joke... you were meant to see it as such - a
>> piss-take of the beatles and a very good one at that... the idea of
>> Oasis is quite a different thing altogether. Your not supposed to see it
>> as a copy - however much it is. There was a quote of a recent producer
>> who said just this about 90s + music - its cleaver in that its all 60s
>> but in the mix your never sure - Kinks or Small Faces....
>
>I hope no one minds if I throw a few random thoughts into this thread:
>
>- I remember the Banana Splitz. It was a Saturday morning TV band for the
>kiddies.
> The performers wore monkey costumes, but I never had the
>impression it was a takeoff on the Monkees. It was just a stupid kids' show.
I thought they dressed in Banana costumes and drove one of those 6 wheel
beach buggies - not certain as the age range the Monkeys targeted but i
think the "splits" began this kiddy pop - and the idea of pop sit-com
can be traced to the monkeys..? Did the wombles ever make it to America?
>
>- That makes me think of the Archies (and wasn't there a Josie offshoot?)
>and the Partridge Family. The executives really wanted to cash in on the
>60s music phenomenon. But the Monkees stood apart because at first their
>"prefab" quality was not admitted (as I recall.) Later, when there was no
>denying it any longer, they spoofed themselves. In the movie _Head_ they
>chanted, "The money's in, we're made of tin" (there's more, but I don't
>remember it.) As an aside, _The Man From UNCLE_ also ended up spoofing
>itself.
>
>- For post-Beatles marketing there was the Bay City Rollers -- a big flop
not in the UK they were big(ish) - but they were pitched at 9 -11 year
old girls.
>and the last manufactured band aimed at anything but the most naive
>audiences (now I'm thinking of pre-teen bands like the Spice Girls or the
>Back Street Boys).
The Spice girls audience - i learnt from a record shop owner *was*
young girls and "dirty old men" fairly even 60/40 and they pretty much
saved the pop industry. Back street boys - no - boys own are popular
also with Gay men. As is the Eurovision Song Contest.
>
>- For post-Beatles music there was Harrison's own "When we was fab," and
>then a song called "Sowing the seeds of love" by the guys who did "Shout,"
>that sounded more like a tribute than anything.
>I think Oasis is in this
>tradition. The later Beatles songs were interesting, but that tradition
>was left undeveloped because of the rise of super-groups like Yes and
>Emerson Lake and Palmer with their project to make rock into the classical
>music of the generation (and on the other hand the rise of head-banging or
>disco or other straight-ahead stuff.) A few, like David Bowie or the
>Rhythmatics, hung in there writing short, lyrical, innovative rock songs.
>You can see Oasis as simply picking up where the Beatles left off --
>although in the one song I've heard, the very strong resemblance makes
>them seem derivative.
I would have to disagree here - Oasis are High Beatles before the more
relaxed Get Back r&b stuff. Use of strings quite allot and long trailing
endings - some backwards stuff- are the signs. I'm no Oasis expert -
would need to do more research on this - but its admitted they are -
they have now - is it Liam or Noel who looks like Lennon and didn't he
name his son after him? "Yes" i seem to remember didn't get big until
after the beatles broke up. As for the beatles heritage Harrison's All
things Must Pass offers an insight - produced by phil spector as was Let
it Be and some songs written prior to Let it Be. Bowie has said he
couldn't make it until after they split...
Again Oasis are interesting - songs like wonderwall - its a Harrison
L.P. for the film of the same name.. late 60s. The point about the
Beatles was they could span the chessey McCartney Ob-la-di- bla-da to
the avant garde of revolution 9 on one LP - which IMO is a concept
album- The beatles look at or do contemporary music - i.e. lets do a
beach boys number and call it Back in the USSR - or the wonderful Yer
Blues- all packaged by Richard Hamilton's white sleeve - with unique
number - and excellent for rolling dope on i'm told. I think it acquired
the title the White Album some time after its release - i seem to
remember calling it *the new beatles album* - and then *the double
album* as late as 1973 (what am i saying...)
*************************
You make me laugh
Give me your autograph
Can I ride with you in your BMW ?
You can sail with me in my yellow submarine
'Cos my friend said he'd take you home
He sits in a corner all alone
He lives under a waterfall
No body can see him
No body can ever hear him call
She made me laugh
I got her autograph
She done it with a doctor on a helicopter
She's sniffin in her tissue
Sellin' the Big Issue
**********************
....from supersonic
key words ideas themes - *yellow submarine* "baby you can drive my car*
*he flat top he got mo jo football....* *nowhere man*
*********************
And all the roads we have to walk along are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I would
Like to say to you
I don't know how
Because maybe
You're gonna be the one who saves me?
And after all
You're my wonderwall
****************
"i'd like to tell you" "wonderwall" " the long and winding road"
Its like all the beatles lyrics are in some computer genration algorithm
- add to this the lennon drawl - Liam i think sings noel writes? - to
get a good correlation you would have to do some statistical analysis -
if you were to prove this fairly conclusively - and look at the rhythm
metre, phrasing and timbre.
--
James Whitehead
Moggin
>> Not exactly, no. Remember that Kierkegaard _invented_ his
>> pseudonymous authors precisely in order to communicate the
>> truth -- indirectly. As I said, K wasn't just putting distance
>> between himself and his words -- he also wasn't merely
>> commenting on the personas he adopted. To him they were also a
>> means of conveying truth. If truth requires a mask, as
>> Nietzsche says, then a truthful person will be sure to wear the
>> appropriate costumes.
ad...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (James Owens):
> As SK himself says, in _The Point of View for My Work as An Author_,
> "But from the point of view of my whole activity as an author, integrally
> conceived, the aesthetic work is a deception, and herein is to be found
> the deeper significance of the use of pseudonyms. A deception, however,
> is a rather ugly thing. To this I would make answer: One must not let
> oneself be deceived by the word 'deception'. One can deceive a person for
> the truth's sake, and (to recall old Socrates) one can deceive a person
> into the truth. Indeed, it is only by this means, i.e. by deceiving him,
> that it is possible to bring into the truth one who is in an illusion. . .
> "What then, does it mean, 'to deceive'? It means that one does not begin
> _directly_ with the matter one wants to communicate, but begins by
> accepting the other man's illusion as good money. . . the deception
> consists in the fact that one talks thus merely to get to the religious
> theme."
> I think we are mostly in agreement. In adopting a pseudonym SK is putting
> on a mask, so in a sense truth is wearing a mask, as you say. But the
> pseudonymous authors themselves stand for a deceived position, in order as
> it were to befriend the deceived. The difference for some postmodern
> thought is that various positions are not seen as _deceived_ with respect
> to an absolute truth. Rather, they are different forms or expressions of
> truth, each with its own validity.
Kierkegaard isn't saying that the pseudonymous authors are
deceived, but rather that they're deceptions -- more
specifically, deceptions which serve the truth. That's exactly
what I was talking about above when I related them to his
concept of "indirect communication." They offer a way to speak
obliquely about things which can't be directly conveyed.
Emily Dickinson: "Tell the truth, but tell it slant/Success in
circuit lies."
James:
>>> Obviously, since I didn't quote you, I could not have accused you of
>>> "speaking the lines which you had me reciting." Sometimes you're more
>>> confused than you think.
Moggin:
>> Doubtless I am. But I think this isn't one of those times.
>> You're just being overly literal. My point was that you
>> attributed arguments to me I never gave. Your "paraphrase" was
>> in large part sheer invention. Get it? You claim your
>> paraphrasing is a way of asking if you understood, but it seems
>> you don't wanna hear that you didn't.
James:
> Here I must confess to a little deception myself. In this part of the
> discussion, and also later when I complain about "catch-alls," I am indeed
> being overly literal. Normally I would assume that I know what you mean,
> even though it isn't what you actually said. But weren't you just taking
> me to task for that?
No, I wasn't. I took you to task for ignoring what I said
and replacing it with a supposed "paraphrase" in which you
attributed arguments to me I had never made. Evidently you had
paraphrased me without bothering to read what I wrote.
Alternatively, it may be that your devotion to paraphrasing was
a hindrance to your reading abilities.
> Now I am in a precarious position indeed, for if I
> paraphrase you I am putting words in your mouth, and if I don't, I am at
> risk of being "egregiously stupid."
Nah, you're just being tiresomely literal again. It seems
you're a one-trick pony.
> I don't mind hearing that I didn't understand, as long as this is
> accompanied by a corrective hint or two. If you think I invented
> something from "whole cloth," you can tell me that, and you have. My
> reply is that actually I didn't, which by careful expansion I hope to have
> demonstrated.
No, you actually did misunderstand. And you haven't tried
to show there was any basis for your inventions -- you've
simply erased that whole part of the discussion. Probably does
demonstrate something, I agree.
> Is this "Sure, I'd dispute it," or (as I imagine) "Sure, I'd
> accept an interpretation of this sort"?
I meant that I would accept the interpretation without any
dispute.
Moggin:
>> I understand what you want: you want "Europe."
James:
> No, I know what Europe is, more or less!
I'm sure you do. But you miss the point. Maybe I was too
obscure. A few years ago, there was a big discussion about
the _concept_ of "Europe." The result, as you could guess, was
alot of pretentious nattering. I see an analogy. You
strongly objected to my description of "modernism" as a
a catch-all term. An egregious absurdity, you said. But it so
happens that "modernism" _is_ a catch-all term, much in the
way that "Europe" is. "Modernism" refers (as I said before) to
certain cultural and artistic movements dating from the late
19th to the mid 20th century. Similarly, "Europe" designates a
certain group of countries found leftward of Asia. What you
want is a discourse on "The Idea of Europe." Fine. But to say
it's absurd to explain "Europe" denotes a set of nations --
France, Germany, and so on -- in a certain part of the world is
absurdly stupid.
> Regarding modernism, modernity,
> and postmodernism I'm not nearly so sure, though regarding the first two I
> think I'm getting a better idea. In another thread I mentioned
> Wittgenstein's idea that you can't define a "game" simply, because it
> involves a family of things -- like a big Venn diagram where some circles
> might not overlap others directly, but nevertheless the whole thing
> encloses a single space.
Wittengstein's point is that the circles _don't_ enclose a
single space: there's no one thing that all games have in
common. "Don't say," W says, that "'there _must_ be something
in common, or they would not be called 'games'" -- but _look
and see_ whether there is anything common to all." He then has
a look and concludes games don't all share a common feature.
That's _Philosophical Investigations_ 66. In PI 67 he supplies
an analogy: a thread is composed of many fibers, but none
that runs its entire length. There isn't a single fiber that's
as long as the thread.
> Far from being a Platonist, I'm willing to go
> with that. I just want to characterize some of the circles.
Well, you were a Platonist the other day: you even quoted
Socrates' objection to a multiplicity of definitions. I was
about to say you were bewitched by language, to borrow W's turn
of phrase. Those "puzzles" you were confronting were the
result. But maybe your thinking has evolved since then, as you
said.
James:
>>> But I have no idea whether any given thing belongs to
>>> modernity or modernism, except according to your dates; by which
>>> definition, I note, Lud was a modernist, and Bach was a modern.
Moggin:
>> And I note you're batty. Even if you applied the dates so
>> crudely as that, you still couldn't conclude that Lud was a
>> modernist; not if you applied them accurately, anyhow. He died
>> in 1827 -- I put modernism in a span from "the late 19th to
>> the mid 20th century," which would leave him out of the running.
James:
> Dickens, then (James Whitehead already mentioned him.) He's within the
> period and he protested a significant feature of modernity.
No, Dickens isn't in that period. Again, I named the late
19th century as a starting point. You're welcome to argue
with that dating (I have some arguments of my own), but it does
rule out Dickens, who was dead and buried by 1870.
> Besides, why
> do you want to exclude Lud as a modernist? A clearer rebellion against
> modernity I can't imagine. So what if he was earlier than all the rest?
> This is just the same sort of objection you've raised over Eliot.
I didn't raise Eliot as an objection. I offered him first
as an example of modernism, and then as an illustration in
defense of my point that rebellion against modernity belongs to
modernism as a central theme.
> The counter-example demands a re-evaluation of terms.
Nah. I never even suggested that questioning modernity is
unique to modernism. It's obvious the theme appeared in
Romanticism over a century before. My point was that the terms
"modernism" and "modernity" are not synonymous, and I drove
that point home by noting that modernism is in part a rebellion
against modernity, as you can see in Eliot.
-- Moggin
Moggin
>>>> ... The definition
>>>> I was referring was the one that you offered, viz. "po-mo
>>>> rejects grand meta-narratives." You submitted "rebellion" as a
>>>> for-instance, suggesting that would qualify Eliot as a
>>>> post-modernist: a foolish idea, since as I already pointed out
>>>> to you, "rebellion" isn't even a narrative.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>>> It is a foolish idea because grand-narratives are not found in po-mo
Moggin:
>> Only if you adopt Lyotard's definition. And even then, he
>> wouldn't accept "rebellion" as a grand narrative.
James:
> No - i'm working out my own definition -
Which as chance would have it is precisely the same as L's.
Next you'll author the _Quixote_. Anyway, "rebellion" still
isn't a grand narrative, or a narrative of any kind which comes
to mind.
[...]
James:
>>> innovation - Eliot's words - here qualifies him as modern - innovation
>>> is a Big idea within modernity.
Moggin:
>> You noted that the New Age movement and modernity are both
>> enamored of the concept of progress. Does that mean
>> patchouli-scented bookstores with the collected works of Deepak
>> Chopra are retailing modernity?
James:
> There is something strange going on here as many doctors in the UK are
> venturing into homeopathy and other alternative medicines - it would
> appear that something like this may be occurring. Though the New Age
> progress might be back to some mythical utopia in the past? This could
> almost make Eliot part of this movement - but obviously not so.
You seem to have missed my point. If innovation is enough
to make Eliot a modern (distinct from a modernist), since
"innovation is a Big idea within modernity," then an
infatuation with progress must make New Age bookstores outposts
of modernity.
James:
>>> I'm not aware of a confusion - post means after - not opposite. It
>>> implies modernism has ended.
Moggin:
>> Not necessarily, no. "Post" can also mean "beginning with."
>> In other words, the expression "post-Renaissance" can mean
>> "since the beginning of the Renaissance," or the "since the end
>> of the Renaissance," although the latter is probably more
>> common. Anyway, the idea that modernism and post-modernism are
>> a pair of opposites, where "modernism" is confused with
>> modernity, isn't unusual. I think that the "post-" in the term
>> "post-moderism" is one cause of the mix-up.
James:
[...]
> I think if you mean from the beginning of modernism then we need another
> phrase for from the end- (for those who believe it ended - you it seems
> might not) - in order to be clear - and then discuss those ideas.
> Collapse of Marxism etc. In general most usage of the term I think is to
> denote after-modernism. Post modern art is certainly art after modern
> art - same with architecture and others If you say the post-renaissence
> period - its after I think - As a historical term I think in separates
> modern from what came after.. is a term to say what occurred. Post-war
> Britain i think begins 46 - and looking in some dictionaries for usage
> after seems to predominate - post-coloninal "the condition of life after
> the end of colonialism" etc. Further Modernism is a little more subtle-
> I think as it encompasses not just a historical period but a set of
> ideas / activities - and therefore post means after the activity. Post
> war poets and War poets - you would have Wifred Owen -died 1918 in
> action as a post-war poet? - i think you might even bridle yourself a
> little at your own pedantry on this one...
[...]
The pedantry, or rather the illiteracy, is yours. Somehow
you've convinced yourself that I'm arguing "post" can't
possibly mean "after," when I said in so many words that it can
mean "since the beginning" or "since the end." I even said
that the latter is probably more common, so it should have been
obvious that wasn't in dispute.
-- Moggin
Moggin
>>> I do not see po-mo as a critique of modernity -
Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>> Of course you do. You describe modernity as "progress as some
>> line zooming off into the great distance- of health housing and
>> pollution free energy .... eternal youth... all offered up to us by
>> SCIENCE." And speaking of pomo ("in general terms"), you say
>> "folks began to question this understanding- there are limits - and
>> recognising that we have reached these- Or that the whole thing
>> was a fraud in the first place." There you are: you see pomo as a
>> critique of modernity.
James:
> gosh you must have worked hard on this - might you also put in
> everything else i have said on the issue so we get a clearer idea.. and
> the context?
[...]
Seems plain enough to me. You associate modernity -- even
tho you said "modernists" -- with progress, health, housing,
science, etc., and you describe post-modernism as a questioning
of all that. Context: you offered your observations to
someone you suspected had faith in progress, explaining that he
would "have a problem with po-mo."
-- Moggin
Moggin
>>> i placed the Italians on one side as they are somewhat too
>>> obvious - and not representative of the formal aspects of modernism
>>> which I wanted to concentrate on.
Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>> Bullshit. You were speaking in terms of themes ("the theme
>> of rebel," which you found in modernism), issues ("the issues
>> of modernity") and programs ("modernity's programme"), not about
>> "the formal aspects of modernism."
James:
> You either genuinely misunderstand what i'm trying to say or
> deliberately do -
I genuinely understand that you began by talking about the
themes, issues, and programs of modernity and modernism. In
specific, you disputed my idea that rebellion against modernity
is one of modernism's central themes. I also genuinely
understand that when the dispute went badly, you pretended that
you had wanted to focus on "formal aspects."
> i have many times said that modernism is essentially a
> formalist programme - and yes this has attached to it the idea of
> revolution and rebel - upsetting the status quo.
Great -- there's something we can agree on. Of course I'd
add that the status quo modernism was rebelling against was
modernity, in large part. I'd also say there are cases -- like
for example Futurism -- where that's not so, and fields (I'm
thinking of architecture) where the story goes very differently.
Although Giles may differ with that last.
> I want to explore ideas about the modern epoch - not be tripped on my own
> words - all we are doing now is dissecting what I said - I await
> something positive about the *issues*.
I began with "something positive." You decided to quarrel
with me. I didn't bitch about that: I simply defended my
position. Naturally that meant addressing your criticism. But
if you want me to ignore you, I'll try. I can't promise to
succeed, tho, especially if you keep talking about things which
I'm interested in.
-- Moggin
Moggin
>>>> ... The songs I've that heard
>>>> are pleasant enough, but they're not obvious copies of the
>>>> mid-period Beatles, and they're certainly not better than what
>>>> the Beatles did then.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>>> gee it worked then - that's the whole idea...
Moggin:
>> Not according to you: you argued Oasis is a "re-creation
>> in fairly close detail" of the Beatles. But it seems to me
>> that description applies to the Ruttles much better than Oasis.
James:
> Not so - the ruttles were a joke... you were meant to see it as such - a
> piss-take of the beatles and a very good one at that...
We're been over this. Of course the Ruttles were a satire
-- that's obvious. But they were a satire which re-created
the Beatles in fairly close detail -- something that's not true
of Oasis.
> the idea of
> Oasis is quite a different thing altogether. Your not supposed to see it
> as a copy - however much it is.
So it's not that the emperor doesn't have any clothes, but
merely that he doesn't want you to see them.
> If you want to make this thread into a i'll prove you
> wrong by catching you out on an edited snip - as per - fine
> I recant everything I have said in this thread upto this full stop.
> Happy?
I'm not trying to catch you out at all. I began by adding
the example of the Monkees to the subject you raised:
fabricated rock bands. I didn't quarrel about Oasis. I simply
pointed out the 60's included both the Beatles and an
imitation, namely the Monkees, "the pre-fab Four." While I was
at it, I also mentioned that Chechov (meaning the Star Trek
character, not the writer) was an imitation Davey Jones, making
him Paul McCartney twice-removed. You kept coming back to
Oasis, stating -- and no, this isn't an "edited snip" -- "Oasis
appear 30 years on - this i find remarkable- not just a copy
at the time but an attempt at a re-creation in fairly close
detail of something a generation ago." You also stated, "Oasis
are created in the look sound and feel of the Beatles circa
Rubber Soul to Sgnt Pepper," and you referred to them them as a
"simulacrum" of the Beatles, claiming that they made the
original "worthless and pointless." If you'd rather forget all
about that, fine. Let's move on.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
>Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>
>>>>> ... The definition
>>>>> I was referring was the one that you offered, viz. "po-mo
>>>>> rejects grand meta-narratives." You submitted "rebellion" as a
>>>>> for-instance, suggesting that would qualify Eliot as a
>>>>> post-modernist: a foolish idea, since as I already pointed out
>>>>> to you, "rebellion" isn't even a narrative.
>
>James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>
>>>> It is a foolish idea because grand-narratives are not found in po-mo
>
>Moggin:
>
>>> Only if you adopt Lyotard's definition. And even then, he
>>> wouldn't accept "rebellion" as a grand narrative.
>
>James:
>
>> No - i'm working out my own definition -
>
> Which as chance would have it is precisely the same as L's.
>Next you'll author the _Quixote_. Anyway, "rebellion" still
>isn't a grand narrative, or a narrative of any kind which comes
>to mind.
themes - you need to look the wider context. Going over it again - the
idea of rebellion - from the authority of the church - from the
medieval aristocratic political systems - serfdom... underpinned by a
humanism and idea of progress... novelty and invention... the invention
of the sowing machine probably wont do either for the description of a
grand narrative - its part of one - in my opinion - its part of the
chanting round the fire which Lyotard talks of - the gods vomiting the
moon... so the mechanisation is part of Modernities grand narrative...
>[...]
>
>James:
>
>> There is something strange going on here as many doctors in the UK are
>> venturing into homeopathy and other alternative medicines - it would
>> appear that something like this may be occurring. Though the New Age
>> progress might be back to some mythical utopia in the past? This could
>> almost make Eliot part of this movement - but obviously not so.
>
> You seem to have missed my point. If innovation is enough
>to make Eliot a modern (distinct from a modernist), since
>"innovation is a Big idea within modernity," then an
>infatuation with progress must make New Age bookstores outposts
>of modernity.
I didn't miss your point - but to address it- again innovation isn't on
its own enough - i have said so before -its also the idea of progress
(which giles argues with - do you?) and the idea of objective
methodologies - these three qualify Eliot - disqualify the New Age
movement because it lacks objectivity -
>
>[...]
>
>> I think if you mean from the beginning of modernism then we need another
>> phrase for from the end- (for those who believe it ended - you it seems
>> might not) - in order to be clear - and then discuss those ideas.
>> Collapse of Marxism etc. In general most usage of the term I think is to
>> denote after-modernism. Post modern art is certainly art after modern
>> art - same with architecture and others If you say the post-renaissence
>> period - its after I think - As a historical term I think in separates
>> modern from what came after.. is a term to say what occurred. Post-war
>> Britain i think begins 46 - and looking in some dictionaries for usage
>> after seems to predominate - post-coloninal "the condition of life after
>> the end of colonialism" etc. Further Modernism is a little more subtle-
>> I think as it encompasses not just a historical period but a set of
>> ideas / activities - and therefore post means after the activity. Post
>> war poets and War poets - you would have Wifred Owen -died 1918 in
>> action as a post-war poet? - i think you might even bridle yourself a
>> little at your own pedantry on this one...
>
>[...]
>
> The pedantry, or rather the illiteracy, is yours. Somehow
>you've convinced yourself that I'm arguing "post" can't
>possibly mean "after," when I said in so many words that it can
>mean "since the beginning" or "since the end." I even said
>that the latter is probably more common, so it should have been
>obvious that wasn't in dispute.
make up your mind pedantry or illiteracy - do they mean the same?...
I suppose you should say which meaning of post *you* are using. The
popularist or the other. You seem to imply the more common - so then the
question of what features identify post-modernity from modernity can be
raised - which was. You said its not the opposite... OK so what in your
opinion is it. (I also maintain its not the opposite - as it doesn't
oppose -it can appear to - but -po-mo is essentially null - empty - so
is incapable of opposition - rebellion... revolution - if it was the
opposite it would be capable of generating a potential - and from this
art... etc. )
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
>[...]
>
> Seems plain enough to me. You associate modernity -- even
>tho you said "modernists" -- with progress, health, housing,
>science, etc., and you describe post-modernism as a questioning
>of all that. Context: you offered your observations to
>someone you suspected had faith in progress, explaining that he
>would "have a problem with po-mo."
reply i see po-mo as a ground state re- modernism and modernity. The
argument I think i can remember was with someone holding the modernist -
in your sense of the word - even ? - view.
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
> We're been over this. Of course the Ruttles were a satire
>-- that's obvious. But they were a satire which re-created
>the Beatles in fairly close detail -- something that's not true
>of Oasis.
seriously as musicians...
> So it's not that the emperor doesn't have any clothes, but
>merely that he doesn't want you to see them.
kids) - its wanting to identify Oasis with the beatles then identify
them as being original - until the two become something *new* I thought
this was something like the idea of the simulacrum.
- if you visit the web site btw you'll see some pics - which I think
demonstrate this.
>> If you want to make this thread into a i'll prove you
>> wrong by catching you out on an edited snip - as per - fine
>> I recant everything I have said in this thread upto this full stop.
>> Happy?
>
> I'm not trying to catch you out at all. I began by adding
>the example of the Monkees to the subject you raised:
>fabricated rock bands. I didn't quarrel about Oasis. I simply
>pointed out the 60's included both the Beatles and an
>imitation, namely the Monkees, "the pre-fab Four." While I was
>at it, I also mentioned that Chechov (meaning the Star Trek
>character, not the writer)
> was an imitation Davey Jones, making
>him Paul McCartney twice-removed. You kept coming back to
>Oasis, stating -- and no, this isn't an "edited snip" -- "Oasis
>appear 30 years on - this i find remarkable- not just a copy
>at the time but an attempt at a re-creation in fairly close
>detail of something a generation ago."
> You also stated, "Oasis
>are created in the look sound and feel of the Beatles circa
>Rubber Soul to Sgnt Pepper," and you referred to them them as a
>"simulacrum" of the Beatles, claiming that they made the
>original "worthless and pointless." If you'd rather forget all
>about that, fine. Let's move on.
Diana Doors - the English pre-fab) Or compare the new version of the
Thomas Crown affair to the original - which used revolutionary new
cinematography and avoided the cliché happy end with a nice bit of
originality?
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
>
>> You either genuinely misunderstand what i'm trying to say or
>> deliberately do -
>
> I genuinely understand that you began by talking about the
>themes, issues, and programs of modernity and modernism. In
>specific, you disputed my idea that rebellion against modernity
>is one of modernism's central themes.
- and why - as I discovered Eliot's criticism of modernity maybe implies
some feeling for humanity in the man - which it seems was totally
untrue. Even his Christianity seem a selfish wish for a very personal
absolution and redemption.
A year or so ago we discussed this - Rebellion isn't central to
modernism- its consequential of the modern methodology. (A mistake easy
to make perhaps "the shock of the new" is not the same as "to shock is
to be new") To rebel is not to be modern - to be modern may well cause
rebellion. New ideas may upset the status quo. They may not - post war
abstractionism was approved by the establishment - the CIA even
sponsored it. In the UK our bombed cities were rebuilt using its
architecture - this was high modernity but due to political factors was
promoted by the establishment. If ever you get the chance visit Coventry
and you'll be surrounded by it.
> I also genuinely
>understand that when the dispute went badly, you pretended that
>you had wanted to focus on "formal aspects."
I enjoy the debate - but your tendency to be both opponent and referee
at times gets the better of me for which i'm sorry. I think the debate
is worthwhile - and your very good at picking up on my sloppiness.
>
>> i have many times said that modernism is essentially a
>> formalist programme - and yes this has attached to it the idea of
>> revolution and rebel - upsetting the status quo.
>
> Great -- there's something we can agree on.
I don't think so - as the attaching is not necessarily so - as in my
examples above. Schoenberg is a good example here i think to point out
our difference - he didn't wish for a revolution in music - but it was
consequence of his formalism. I don't think Einstein set out to prove
Newton wrong - but prove something new & true.
> Of course I'd
>add that the status quo modernism was rebelling against was
>modernity, in large part.
From a spectators point of view it might appear so - but the artist
often finds this reaction confusing as the products produced are obvious
- to the artist.
>I'd also say there are cases -- like
>for example Futurism -- where that's not so, and fields (I'm
>thinking of architecture) where the story goes very differently.
>Although Giles may differ with that last.
Yes which is why in modernist painting the futurists were seen as
mistake - they were illustrators of an idea...
[..]
> I began with "something positive." You decided to quarrel
>with me. I didn't bitch about that: I simply defended my
>position.
If your position - or positive statement was that Modernism was
essentially a rebellion against modernity then yes i have offered an
alternative view. What i mean here by positive was some amplification
perhaps - but last year when we discussed this you ducked out saying you
didn't know enough or some such..
> Naturally that meant addressing your criticism. But
>if you want me to ignore you, I'll try. I can't promise to
>succeed, tho, especially if you keep talking about things which
>I'm interested in.
You of course may do as you please, my frustrations were more in your
tendency to make claims for what you have shown - as opposed to what you
think you have shown or tried to show... a frustration which I must keep
to myself .. as your comments are most provoking and useful in tidying
up a cluttered mind.
--
James Whitehead
James Owens
> I would have to disagree here - Oasis are High Beatles before the more
For that period, the term "high Beatles" does seem especially apt!
James Owens
> . . . I meant that the topic resists simplicity and brevity, and a
> brief account which aims to offer definitions or, say, central
> characteristics would quite possibly hinder an approach to material
> which took it as a guide.
I guess I'm more optimistic about the average person's ability to develop
ideas. I can see how some people might immediately get it wrong and not
pay attention thereafter -- ideologues or the terminally dense, perhaps --
but I think most people with a basic competence would be able to correct
course from any reasonable starting point.
> The judgement about which use constitutes waste and which doesn't is
> where morality returns and with it, in Loos, the aesthetic/moral
> critique. For instance, the possibility that ornament might be a
> pleasure and thus a good thing is ruled out by the moral critique of
> vanity and the racial attack on ornament as primitive.
I'm sorry, but I'm having difficulty with your elaboration in this and
subsequent paragraphs. If you mean that Loos' ideas are not very definite,
then I think you have conveyed that with marvelous clarity. But to my mind
he is trying to saying something definite and rationalist, only he is not
doing a very good job of it.
It seems to me that Loos finds ornament aesthetically objectionable, and
is attempting to explain why any rational person ought to agree with him.
I'm not sure this is a sensible project, but Loos goes ahead anyway. He
observes that ornament is primitive. It is a throwback comparable to
believing in God -- the quintessential irrationality for a Scientific Age.
This is why I find the metaphor telling. The point is to shame the modern
white man, who regards himself as superior for having overcome
mumbo-jumbo, into disliking ornament for much the same reason.
> The suggestion that 'lack of ornament means shorter working hours and
> higher wages' is a pleasing idea, but is plausibly a moral argument
> rather than a rational one (a 'should' or 'ought', not a 'will').
> There is no rational reason, other things being equal, that lack of
> ornament wouldn't mean the same working hours and wages with greater
> output, and that is just what happened.
Loos was certainly no economist -- it wouldn't necessarily help! -- but he
did believe that ornament translated into poverty, and he believed poverty
to be immoral. The immorality of poverty might or might not be explained
in terms of a rationalist utopianiasm, say in Marxist terms, and I'd be
inclined to go there. But even without that, Loos does attempt to justify
an aesthetic preference by appeal to a rational chain of inference, in
this case an economic argument that is every bit the equal of his social
argument.
> But, to return to my suggestion that even the rationalism of
> modernist architecture isn't necessarily as clear cut as it seems,
> Loos attempts to fuse the rational critique with a moral one. That
> moral critique, of vanity, combined with a racially based attack on
> ornament as primitive, also supports his conception of progress.
> . . . Loos still sets out a moral judgement drawn on an
> aesthetic distinction as a basis for determining what 'better' is.
> His combination of 'waste' and 'vanity' might also sound familar to
> protestant churches.
Your mention of Protestantism puts me in mind of Weber's commentary on the
capitalist ethic.
> I'd quite merrily go along with a suggestion that modernity contains
> a rationalism that has nothing to do with human requirements. The
> well adjusted version doesn't seem to have such an impressive track
> record.
Saul's thesis is that socially and politically the well-adjusted variety
has not been much in evidence since Voltaire. He identifies Voltaire as
the father of rational policy, but thinks he would have disowned in
disgust what he begat. Thus the title _Voltaire's Bastards_.
> I brought in Taut in the first place following your outline of a
> modernism impatient with 'anything for which there is no rational
> purpose', buttressed by references to architecture. Taut's alpine
> glass cities seemed and seem to me to be an antithesis of rational
> purpose.
From what little I can find on the WWW, I gather Taut was a founder of
"New Objective" architecture, which obviously piques my interest, since
objectivity and scientific rationality go hand in hand. I sense also that
the Alpine architecture has something to do with utopianism, which has a
persistent association with rationality (especially of the fevered
variety). But I'll have to visit a library before taking this up.
Thanks for your general remarks on modernism and postmodernism (removed
from this reply); they do help to orient me and to confirm some of my
impressions so far.
>> pardon my hand-waving . . .
> Weltanschauung?
I though that _meant_ "world-view"!
> O.k., then I'll limit the alternatives to analytic philosophy and
> existentialism likewise, after Nietzsche, say? (I would say Marx, but
> he wouldn't want to be called a philosopher). But that would still
> leave Neo-Kantianism, various Marxisms, large swathes of
> Lebensphilosophie, Benjamin, Bloch, Adorno, Bataille, Blanchot,
> Cioran, and so on
You mean that school of philosopers whose names begin near B?
Seriously though, I said originally that "The theory has been suggested
that modernism involves an enthusiasm for a highly rational approach to
problems, together with an impatience for traditional authority,
intuition, unnecessary ornament, in short anything for which there is no
rational purpose; this being buttressed by references to twentieth-century
architecture and philosophy especially. . ." There was nothing in this to
indicate that I meant _all_ twentieth-century philosophy. At the time I
had in mind the analytic school; I would cheerfully add any sort of
thought which operates from the Cartesian assumption that only a strict
logic limited to the ego's experience, and ruthless toward fuzzy
"sentimental" objections, can lead us to a correct understanding. This
sort of philosophy seems to me characteristic of the modern period. You
are more likely to find Time magazine alluding to Popper or Sartre than to
Adorno or Bergson, because they resonate better with the modern notes of
reductionism and "solitary will" as Iris Murdoch put it. Some of Jacques
Brel's songs, maudlin in retrospect, illustrate the popular conception I
have in mind.
We can except Murdoch, and Whitehead whom I have already mentioned; and if
counter-examples prove anything, we would be looking for other
essentialists, mystics, or intuitionists, among whome Adorno might find a
place (from what little I know of him.) The Marxists come under Hegel's
wing, so I might try to link them with the "being-in-the-world" gang, but
anyway as a "highly rational approach to problems" I think Marxism
qualifies. Do the neo-Kantians include Einstein?
I'm enjoying our conversation, but it is taking a toll on the rest of my
life. I have to stop here, and for the next while I must limit myself to
about an hour a day, which means you may not hear from me for days at a
stretch. I hope that's all right.
James Owens
> I brought in Taut in the first place following your outline of a
> modernism impatient with 'anything for which there is no rational
> purpose', buttressed by references to architecture. Taut's alpine
> glass cities seemed and seem to me to be an antithesis of rational
> purpose. As things have gone on, they also emerged to stand against
> the rational in terms of Loos' 'rationality' of waste or indeed his
> morality of ornament. They would have been a practical challenge, but
> not impossible, even then. So Taut really didn't seem fit anything
> that you had outlined as the rationalist version of modernism. Even
> with this extended version of rationality, the rather sick, feverish
> one, I still remain puzzled as to where Taut's rationality lies.
Dear me. Now I think you must be pulling my leg.
"In his book published in 1929 B. Taut summarized the character of the
modern movement in these five points:
"'1. The first requirement in every building is the achievement of the
greatest possible utility.
"'2. The materials employed and the building system used must be
completely subordinated to this primary need.
"'3. Beauty consists in the direct relationship between the building and
its purpose, in the appropriate features of the materials and in the
elegance of the constructional system.'"
(Points four and five are not pertinent, having to do with unity of
design.) This passage comes from _A History of Modern Architecture_, by
Leonardo Benevolo; he is quoting Taut's _Die Neue Baukunst in Europa und
Amerika_. It suggests to me that one can indeed get a grasp of something
like modern architecture without going too much into detail; in fact one
might be better advised not to!
How Taut squared this philosophy with his Alpine architecture is not my
problem. He states plainly enough that the modern movement elevates
utility to the first principle and associates beauty with purpose.
Moggin
>>>>> ... Grand-narratives are not found in po-mo
Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>>>> Only if you adopt Lyotard's definition. And even then, he
>>>> wouldn't accept "rebellion" as a grand narrative.
James:
>>> No - i'm working out my own definition -
Moggin:
>> Which as chance would have it is precisely the same as L's.
>> Next you'll author the _Quixote_. Anyway, "rebellion" still
>> isn't a grand narrative, or a narrative of any kind which comes
>> to mind.
James:
> If you extract rebellion from the rest probably not - as one of the
> themes - you need to look the wider context.
That's how you offered it. "I would say rebelliousness is
one attribute of modernity which modernism shares - in fact
perhaps excels - " No narrative, no context: just a reference
to "rebelliousness." As I replied:
Modernity had its beginning as a revolt against Church and
Throne. So historically speaking, there's certainly an
element of rebellion. But the rebelliousness of the modernists
was directed in part against modernity, i.e., against the
Crystal Palace and the ennui-inducing, not-sufficiently-satanic
Mill.
> Going over it again - the
> idea of rebellion - from the authority of the church - from the
> medieval aristocratic political systems - serfdom... underpinned by a
> humanism and idea of progress...
Now you're catching on. That's modernity. And it's plain
enough that modernism isn't the same thing. In most places
rebellions against "the medieval aristocratic political systems"
were impossible by the 20th century, if only because the
Middle Ages had ended a long while before. Modernism, like
Romanticism, rebelled in large part against what _followed_ the
Middle Ages: i.e., modernity.
[...]
Moggin:
>> You seem to have missed my point. If innovation is enough
>> to make Eliot a modern (distinct from a modernist), since
>> "innovation is a Big idea within modernity," then an
>> infatuation with progress must make New Age bookstores outposts
>> of modernity.
James:
> I didn't miss your point - but to address it- again innovation isn't on
> its own enough - i have said so before -its also the idea of progress
> (which giles argues with - do you?) and the idea of objective
> methodologies - these three qualify Eliot - disqualify the New Age
> movement because it lacks objectivity -
Yes, I disagree Eliot is an apostle of progress. I showed
before that he criticizes exactly the kind of progress
associated with modernity. (Guess you forgot about that.) And
in "The Metaphysical Poets" he argues that we've regressed
since the 17th century: again exactly the opposite of what you
claim.
-- Moggin
Moggin
>> Seems plain enough to me. You associate modernity -- even
>> tho you said "modernists" -- with progress, health, housing,
>> science, etc., and you describe post-modernism as a questioning
>> of all that. Context: you offered your observations to
>> someone you suspected had faith in progress, explaining that he
>> would "have a problem with po-mo."
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
> In the context of that thread it was significant - as i say in my other
> reply i see po-mo as a ground state re- modernism and modernity. The
> argument I think i can remember was with someone holding the modernist -
> in your sense of the word - even ? - view.
You were replying to someone named Simon Best. (You still
here, Simon?) You suspected he was a "modernist" in the
mistaken sense you used the term, where it denoted faith in the
ability of science to deliver progress (e.g. in health and
housing), and you warned him that he would "have a problem with
po-mo," which questioned his supposed beliefs.
-- Moggin
Moggin
>>> i have many times said that modernism is essentially a
>>> formalist programme - and yes this has attached to it the idea of
>>> revolution and rebel - upsetting the status quo.
Moggin <mog...@mediaone.net>:
>> Great -- there's something we can agree on. Of course I'd
>> add that the status quo modernism was rebelling against was
>> modernity, in large part. I'd also say there are cases -- like
>> for example Futurism -- where that's not so, and fields (I'm
>> thinking of architecture) where the story goes very differently.
>> Although Giles may differ with that last.
James re agreement:
> I don't think so - as the attaching is not necessarily so - as in my
> examples above.
You didn't offer any examples above, and I didn't make any
claims about necessity -- in fact I gave Marinetti to show
that in some cases modernism _celebrated_ modernity rather than
questioning it. But if you'd prefer we disagreed, I don't
mind -- I'm sure it won't be any trouble to find something else
we can differ on.
[...]
> last year when we discussed this you ducked out saying you
> didn't know enough or some such.
Not so. When we discussed this before, you contended that
Pound, Eliot, Woolf, Rilke, Picasso and Schoenberg all saw
themselves with the tradition of modernity and even "explicitly
position their work within this framework" -- a notion that
you entirely failed to support. We went back and forth, up and
down while you found various ways to dodge the issue. The
debate ended when you denied you'd ever made the assertion we'd
been talking about: "I was careful not to say they all made
these claims." That was false, of course -- you had maintained
"All these artists seem to explicitly position their work
within this framework," and when I wondered if you could really
be saying such a stupid-ass thing, you'd confirmed it: "I'm
saying _they_ made this claim" (your emphasis). The discussion
ended after you denied your own words.
-- Moggin
Moggin
>> We're been over this. Of course the Ruttles were a satire
>> -- that's obvious. But they were a satire which re-created
>> the Beatles in fairly close detail -- something that's not true
>> of Oasis.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
> Oasis are closer in the respect that your supposed to take them
> seriously as musicians...
But they're farther away from being a detailed re-creation.
[...]
James:
>>> If you want to make this thread into a i'll prove you
>>> wrong by catching you out on an edited snip - as per - fine
>>> I recant everything I have said in this thread upto this full stop.
>>> Happy?
Moggin:
>> I'm not trying to catch you out at all. I began by adding
>> the example of the Monkees to the subject you raised:
>> fabricated rock bands. I didn't quarrel about Oasis. I simply
>> pointed out the 60's included both the Beatles and an
>> imitation, namely the Monkees, "the pre-fab Four." While I was
>> at it, I also mentioned that Chechov (meaning the Star Trek
>> character, not the writer) was an imitation Davey Jones, making
>> him Paul McCartney twice-removed. You kept coming back to
>> Oasis, stating -- and no, this isn't an "edited snip" -- "Oasis
>> appear 30 years on - this i find remarkable- not just a copy
>> at the time but an attempt at a re-creation in fairly close
>> detail of something a generation ago." You also stated, "Oasis
>> are created in the look sound and feel of the Beatles circa
>> Rubber Soul to Sgnt Pepper," and you referred to them them as a
>> "simulacrum" of the Beatles, claiming that they made the
>> original "worthless and pointless." If you'd rather forget all
>> about that, fine. Let's move on.
James:
> Not at all - What do you think of Madonna - re- Monroe (as opposed to
> Diana Doors - the English pre-fab) Or compare the new version of the
> Thomas Crown affair to the original - which used revolutionary new
> cinematography and avoided the cliché happy end with a nice bit of
> originality?
Can't comment about Diana Doors or _The Thomas Crown
Affair_. Madonna did a video in which she was presented as the
Monroe of _Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend_ -- I assume
that's what you're talking about. That was awhile back. These
days she's a hippie chick covering Don MacLean.
-- Moggin
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
> You didn't offer any examples above,
somewhere..
> and I didn't make any
>claims about necessity -- in fact I gave Marinetti to show
>that in some cases modernism _celebrated_ modernity rather than
>questioning it. But if you'd prefer we disagreed, I don't
>mind -- I'm sure it won't be any trouble to find something else
>we can differ on.
>
>[...]
>
>> last year when we discussed this you ducked out saying you
>> didn't know enough or some such.
>
> Not so. When we discussed this before, you contended that
>Pound, Eliot, Woolf, Rilke, Picasso and Schoenberg all saw
>themselves with the tradition of modernity and even "explicitly
>position their work within this framework" -- a notion that
>you entirely failed to support. We went back and forth, up and
>down while you found various ways to dodge the issue. The
>debate ended when you denied you'd ever made the assertion we'd
>been talking about: "I was careful not to say they all made
>these claims." That was false, of course -- you had maintained
>"All these artists seem to explicitly position their work
- like pleading guilty - pedantry again.
>be saying such a stupid-ass thing, you'd confirmed it: "I'm
>saying _they_ made this claim" (your emphasis). The discussion
>ended after you denied your own words.
positioning his work near (sic) the top- Monet, Renoir Cezanne, Klee,
Kandinsky, Braque, Picasso, Matisse, Rothko, Pollock, Newman,
Reindhardt, Still, Louis, Hockney, Stella, Noland, Riley, Flavin, Andre,
Judd, LeWitt, Ryman, Long, Smithson, Kosuth produced work in the main
if not in total that has nothing to do with a critique of any sort with
modernity. They saw themselves as part of its tradition. I've excluded
the Pop art movement - but they seem to have adored Modernity. (this
might in some cases have been ironic - not in Peter Blake's..) Some of
the more recent in the list I've met - and talked with as a student -
there concerns were their position within art and working with its
formal framework. I used Ad Reinhardt as the obvious example - who was
influential to minimalism. I will also point out one of the great
Abstract Colourists - Morris Louis - and his relation to Matisee who in
turn looked back to Delacroix. The above Artists in the main were/are
influenced by other artists and are typically formalist. In earshot of
the guns in WW1 Monet painted his water lilies, Braque in the 20s
returned to the nude after seeing Renoir's late work....
What we are faced with in modern art is a movement towards minimalism of
the late 60s - it was not an illustration of a theory (the lists given
in this NG of philosophers and theorists unknown to many artists i
suspect - i was considered an odd type at art school because i read some
philosophy) But an engagement with art - and what art essentially is.
Maybe its why they did art and not write theories of art?
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
-re a copy
>
> But they're farther away from being a detailed re-creation.
>
cream would not. (for long)
--
James Whitehead
James Whitehead
<mog...@mediaone.net> writes
>James:
>
>> If you extract rebellion from the rest probably not - as one of the
>> themes - you need to look the wider context.
>
> That's how you offered it. "I would say rebelliousness is
>one attribute of modernity which modernism shares - in fact
>perhaps excels - " No narrative, no context: just a reference
>to "rebelliousness." As I replied:
>
> Modernity had its beginning as a revolt against Church and
>Throne. So historically speaking, there's certainly an
>element of rebellion. But the rebelliousness of the modernists
>was directed in part against modernity, i.e., against the
>Crystal Palace and the ennui-inducing, not-sufficiently-satanic
architecture a revolt against the Crystal Palace - from my understanding
it was heralded as one of the first True Modern works. "honoured by
later generations as a unique forerunner of the technological
architecture of the twentieth century" Form follows function etc. You
almost have it here - it was built using such systems because it was
better - quicker to build - cheaper - than the proposed brick building
which won the competition. Its design was not a critique of the older
methods but a revolutionary new method. You might be able to see this.
Take a look at the Cubists they seem to be in love with the poetry of
the modern city - being in Paris it was the Eiffel Tower Delaunay
painted he - "used cubists methods to express a dynamic vision of a
modern city" Be careful about this though because if Delauny continues a
politicking about the wonders of modernity - or its evils he would soon
become a mere illustrator.
>Mill.
>
>> Going over it again - the
>> idea of rebellion - from the authority of the church - from the
>> medieval aristocratic political systems - serfdom... underpinned by a
>> humanism and idea of progress...
Again your missing something of my argument - that the rebellion is a
consequence of modernity (at times) - not the other way round - if the
British had granted the right of representation to the American
Colonists there would have been no rebellion. But the attainment of
rights was a theme of modernity - rebellion a consequence in some
perhaps many cases. (some colonies were granted independence with out
rebellion)
>
> Now you're catching on. That's modernity. And it's plain
>enough that modernism isn't the same thing. In most places
>rebellions against "the medieval aristocratic political systems"
>were impossible by the 20th century, if only because the
>Middle Ages had ended a long while before. Modernism, like
>Romanticism, rebelled in large part against what _followed_ the
>Middle Ages: i.e., modernity.
>
The Russian revolution - which falls slap in your time frame of
modernism - was a rebellion against an aristocratic medieval system -
Marxism was not an attack on a particular system (of a previous age) -
it was a new system - hey! modern - new - scientific - improved means of
government. That existing governments might resist its adoption was by
the by. That audiences thought Schoenberg's work a racket was also by
the by.. etc.
> Yes, I disagree Eliot is an apostle of progress. I showed
>before that he criticizes exactly the kind of progress
>associated with modernity. (Guess you forgot about that.)
I have.. remind me please...
> And
>in "The Metaphysical Poets" he argues that we've regressed
>since the 17th century: again exactly the opposite of what you
>claim.
Again I said it wasn't always a smooth evolution perhaps - strangely
some art forms go through periods of rapid development - whilst others
may ossify - also true of science ... and technology ...i'm not saying
this is true but during the period Eliot sees as being bad in literature
- and i guess he dams the romantics - music was going through a rapid
development - in formal terms -
--
James Whitehead
James Owens
> James Owens wrote:
>> . . . So modernism is a response to modernity. You see, I'm not
>> irredeemable! However, for the moment I'm sticking to the thesis that
>> it is not deeply a rebellion against modernity, because in the first
>> place its "simplified formal vocabulary" (this description of
>> modernism comes from a Toronto curator quoted in today's Globe and
>> Mail) remains a reflection, however distorted, of the modern ideal;
> A couple of things. I'm not sure why you would expect a rebellion
> against modernity not to involve a 'reflection, however distorted' of
> modernity. What would be the alternative?
> Second. 'Simplified formal vocabulary' is not necessarily the case.
> Often yes, but often no. As the Eliot discussion brought up, he saw
> poetry necessarily becoming 'difficult', 'various and complex', 'more
> allusive, more indirect'.
A rebellion against modernity may still reflect modernity, if it is posed
in modernity's terms. For example, a "neo-traditional" community with
porches, garages around the back, shops you can walk to, and so on, is
still a careful, deliberate attempt to realize a consciously articulated
plan for daily life. (This shows how post-modernism can be an extension
of modernism.) But a rebellion could instead thoroughly reject the terms.
For an alternative, think of a libertarian community -- we may have to
imagine one -- where structures are thrown up as needed, and the place
grows organically without an overarching plan.
To the extent that Eliot intended by conscious plan to advance the art of
poetry, and to realize in his own poetry this clear and prior ideal, he
continued to reflect modernity. I maintain that this is one deeper level
of interpretation which satisfactorily explains why he is called
"modernist" despite what he says about modernity. Another is that what he
does say does not reach beyond the sterility of the modern understanding,
but resides within it, calling attention to it without quite knowing what
to do. If there is alternative poetry or literature, it might be more or
less thrown together without regard for intellectual principle, on the
basis of what feels right at the moment; and it would at the very least
ignore the dismal, oppressive, pervasive sense of absurdity that came to
haunt modernity, perhaps to celebrate unreflectively whatever is handy. I
think of Tom Robbins (but Moggin has suggested I read a certain book by
Annie Dillard for an idea of post-modern literature).
> For some variety, how about a quote from Walter Benjamin, a
> critic-historian-philosopher and a candidate for 'modernist
> philosopher', writing in the 1939.
> "The concept of the historical progress of mankind cannot be sundered
> from the concept of its progression through a homogenous, empty time. A
> critique of the concept of such a progression must be the basis of any
> criticism of the concept of progress itself".
> Or as he put it otherwise (quoted from memory) 'That things just keep
> on like this is the catastrophe'. What is 'keeping on' is 'progress'.
> (Despite their opposite political polarities, these have a certain
> similarity to some of Eliot's formulations). Some modernist work aims
> at interruption, sometimes from an imagined outside, sometimes from
> sparks or possibilties inside. Does this fit a model of resigned
> pessimism? Does it not have qualities of rejection?
"That things just keep going on like this is the catatrophe" does sound
resignedly pessimistic to me. I don't know why Benjamin wants to criticize
the concept of "progress," but others might identify it as central to
modernity and try to attack modernity there. He seems to be going deeper
to question the modern (or perhaps even the human) concept of time, but
what are we going to do about that? Apparently within a normal
understanding of time we are saddled inevitably with the notion of
"progress." I'd have to know what he proposed as an alternative.
Lev Lafayette
On Fri, 15 Sep 2000 ale...@my-deja.com wrote:
[select rm]
> I could be confused here, but wasn't modernism a sort of "rescue"
> project to "redeem" humanity through art (albeit an arbitrarily
> defined field) and from the basic wrecks of modernity, particularly in
> response to WWI?
Really depends on the discipline. I put the origins of modernity in the
fifteenth century. But in general you may be right in terms of aesthetics.
> >
> What I'm concerned with the theme of this thread though, is the ongoing
> contention between who is what and who is not - do we really need to
> categorise things and people into discursive label, or are we doing this
> out of routine?
It's about treating thinkers like components of a spice-rack.
How to Make Similcra
Take one half-baked Foucault.
Add a dash of differance.
Lacan to taste. Stir vigorously...
Lev Lafayette.
l...@student.unimelb.edu.au http://www.student.unimelb.edu.au/~lev
Giles
> Giles (u...@removethisredhotant.com) writes:
>
>> . . . I meant that the topic resists simplicity and brevity, and a
>> brief account which aims to offer definitions or, say, central
>> characteristics would quite possibly hinder an approach to material
>> which took it as a guide.
>
> I guess I'm more optimistic about the average person's ability to develop
> ideas. I can see how some people might immediately get it wrong and not
> pay attention thereafter -- ideologues or the terminally dense, perhaps --
> but I think most people with a basic competence would be able to correct
> course from any reasonable starting point.
I'm highly optimistic about people's abilities to develop ideas, despite our
conversation so far. I say the topic resists simplicity and you read that as
an attack on people being able to think. That strikes me as an evasion. I
also note that you have dropped the whole 'recognising a willow' bit. Do you
have a reply to that? Perhaps you would like to explain what the easily
recognisable form of Romanticism is? Or the Baroque?
>> The judgement about which use constitutes waste and which doesn't is
>> where morality returns and with it, in Loos, the aesthetic/moral
>> critique. For instance, the possibility that ornament might be a
>> pleasure and thus a good thing is ruled out by the moral critique of
>> vanity and the racial attack on ornament as primitive.
>
> I'm sorry, but I'm having difficulty with your elaboration in this and
> subsequent paragraphs. If you mean that Loos' ideas are not very definite,
> then I think you have conveyed that with marvelous clarity. But to my mind
> he is trying to saying something definite and rationalist, only he is not
> doing a very good job of it.
What was not clear? The judgement about what constitutes waste is primarily
a moral judgement. The rationalist arguments about the benefits of avoiding
waste (see below) can only have a point if ornament has been ruled out as a
good thing. Otherwise, making ornament would not be a waste. Loos says
ornament is vain and primitive. If it wasn't, if it was a pleasure for maker
and receiver, say, then it would not be a waste of labour or of material.
Nor would abandoning it constitute progress. Clear enough?
> It seems to me that Loos finds ornament aesthetically objectionable, and
> is attempting to explain why any rational person ought to agree with him.
Exactly, his rational arguments rely on an aesthetic value rendered as a
moral judgement, and portrayed in rational terms.
> I'm not sure this is a sensible project, but Loos goes ahead anyway. He
> observes that ornament is primitive. It is a throwback comparable to
> believing in God -- the quintessential irrationality for a Scientific Age.
> This is why I find the metaphor telling.
Apart from the way in which this confirms my argument - an aestheic
distinction as a moral and 'historical'' distinction, I'm surprised that you
don't find in that passage some odd nostalgia for an apparently more organic
age.
> The point is to shame the modern
> white man, who regards himself as superior for having overcome
> mumbo-jumbo, into disliking ornament for much the same reason.
Oh, so in order to make the moderns reject vanity, he appeals to their, umm,
vanity.
>> The suggestion that 'lack of ornament means shorter working hours and
>> higher wages' is a pleasing idea, but is plausibly a moral argument
>> rather than a rational one (a 'should' or 'ought', not a 'will').
>> There is no rational reason, other things being equal, that lack of
>> ornament wouldn't mean the same working hours and wages with greater
>> output, and that is just what happened.
>
> Loos was certainly no economist -- it wouldn't necessarily help! -- but he
> did believe that ornament translated into poverty, and he believed poverty
> to be immoral.
It matters little whether he was deeply heartfelt in this belief, or just
using it as a cover for his aesthetic/moral judgements. My point was that
his supposedly rational argument (less ornament = higher wages) was based
upon a moral judgement (ornament is bad), not a rational argument. As I
said, all else being equal - and given the history of industrialisation, of
which Loos might be expected to have an inkling - rationally, the opposite
would happen. So he trys to turn a pious hope into a logical sequence (not
that he was alone in doing so). Moreover, this is an afterthought to the
vanity/waste argument, which, as I said above, entirely relies on the moral
rejection of ornament.
> The immorality of poverty might or might not be explained
> in terms of a rationalist utopianiasm, say in Marxist terms, and I'd be
> inclined to go there.
And you might be a bit wrong. Immorality (and irrationality) for Marx does
not lie in poverty per se, but in the relations of production, which produce
poverty. Loos just wants to change working hours. Big difference.
> But even without that, Loos does attempt to justify
> an aesthetic preference by appeal to a rational chain of inference, in
> this case an economic argument that is every bit the equal of his social
> argument.
Both are equally dodgy. And both are superstructure to his moral argument.
Once again, he has already decided the question of fitting use (of labour,
material and capital). Once that has been decided, then whether ornament is
condemned as vanity or waste makes little difference. The moral judgement is
fundamental.
>> But, to return to my suggestion that even the rationalism of
>> modernist architecture isn't necessarily as clear cut as it seems,
>> Loos attempts to fuse the rational critique with a moral one. That
>> moral critique, of vanity, combined with a racially based attack on
>> ornament as primitive, also supports his conception of progress.
>
>> . . . Loos still sets out a moral judgement drawn on an
>> aesthetic distinction as a basis for determining what 'better' is.
>> His combination of 'waste' and 'vanity' might also sound familar to
>> protestant churches.
>
> Your mention of Protestantism puts me in mind of Weber's commentary on the
> capitalist ethic.
As well it might, if you meant protestant ethic, rather than capitalist. So,
it is thoroughly rationalist?
>> I'd quite merrily go along with a suggestion that modernity contains
>> a rationalism that has nothing to do with human requirements. The
>> well adjusted version doesn't seem to have such an impressive track
>> record.
>
> Saul's thesis is that socially and politically the well-adjusted variety
> has not been much in evidence since Voltaire. He identifies Voltaire as
> the father of rational policy, but thinks he would have disowned in
> disgust what he begat. Thus the title _Voltaire's Bastards_.
And so a modernist exaggeration, parody or attack on rationality might be...
something of a rebellion against modernity?
>> I brought in Taut in the first place following your outline of a
>> modernism impatient with 'anything for which there is no rational
>> purpose', buttressed by references to architecture. Taut's alpine
>> glass cities seemed and seem to me to be an antithesis of rational
>> purpose.
>
> From what little I can find on the WWW, I gather Taut was a founder of
> "New Objective" architecture, which obviously piques my interest, since
> objectivity and scientific rationality go hand in hand. I sense also that
> the Alpine architecture has something to do with utopianism, which has a
> persistent association with rationality (especially of the fevered
> variety). But I'll have to visit a library before taking this up.
>
> Thanks for your general remarks on modernism and postmodernism (removed
> from this reply); they do help to orient me and to confirm some of my
> impressions so far.
Oh? How?
>
>>> pardon my hand-waving . . .
>
>> Weltanschauung?
>
> I though that _meant_ "world-view"!
Which seemed to be exactly what you were talking about - 'an approach to
experiencing and interacting with the world', you said.
>> O.k., then I'll limit the alternatives to analytic philosophy and
>> existentialism likewise, after Nietzsche, say? (I would say Marx, but
>> he wouldn't want to be called a philosopher). But that would still
>> leave Neo-Kantianism, various Marxisms, large swathes of
>> Lebensphilosophie, Benjamin, Bloch, Adorno, Bataille, Blanchot,
>> Cioran, and so on
>
> You mean that school of philosopers whose names begin near B?
>
> Seriously though, I said originally that "The theory has been suggested
> that modernism involves an enthusiasm for a highly rational approach to
> problems, together with an impatience for traditional authority,
> intuition, unnecessary ornament, in short anything for which there is no
> rational purpose; this being buttressed by references to twentieth-century
> architecture and philosophy especially. . ." There was nothing in this to
> indicate that I meant _all_ twentieth-century philosophy.
There was nothing in this to indicate that you meant *any* modern
philosophy in particular. All you went on to ask was 'what were the major
currents of philosophy in the modern period'?
> At the time I
> had in mind the analytic school; I would cheerfully add any sort of
> thought which operates from the Cartesian assumption that only a strict
> logic limited to the ego's experience, and ruthless toward fuzzy
> "sentimental" objections, can lead us to a correct understanding. This
> sort of philosophy seems to me characteristic of the modern period. You
> are more likely to find Time magazine alluding to Popper or Sartre than to
> Adorno or Bergson, because they resonate better with the modern notes of
> reductionism and "solitary will" as Iris Murdoch put it. Some of Jacques
> Brel's songs, maudlin in retrospect, illustrate the popular conception I
> have in mind.
The trouble is that you didn't even mean 20th century philosophy. You asked
'what were the major currents of philosophy in the modern period?' and
answered yourself thus:
'There were two, basically: analytic philosophy and existentialism'.
When I questioned 'modern period' and suggested alternatives, you restricted
it to 'philosophy contempraneous with modernism'. Nothing mentioned there
about any restrictions in that period. Indeed, you wanted to find a
philosophical counterpart of modernism. I suggested a few, but you are
apparently not interested. You suggested one or two modern philosophies, but
it turns out that you meant only those whose authors might appear in Time
magazine. Fine. The only modern philosophers are Anglo-American or
occasionally French and are likely to have been featured in Time, because
they are resonant. Now please stop piddling about.
> We can except Murdoch, and Whitehead whom I have already mentioned; and if
> counter-examples prove anything, we would be looking for other
> essentialists, mystics, or intuitionists, among whome Adorno might find a
> place (from what little I know of him.)
For Adorno, no, no, and no. You are showing a disturbing passion to leap to
conclusions. If you can deduce this of Adorno, then you do not know a
little, you know nothing. Not many people do, so that is OK, but then not
many people who know nothing would be so ready to assign him a place.
> The Marxists come under Hegel's
> wing, so I might try to link them with the "being-in-the-world" gang, but
> anyway as a "highly rational approach to problems" I think Marxism
> qualifies. Do the neo-Kantians include Einstein?
Haven't a clue. Probably not. But 'the Marxists' do not come under Hegel's
wing. In fact, literally, the reverse (standing Hegel on his head,
remember?).
> I'm enjoying our conversation, but it is taking a toll on the rest of my
> life. I have to stop here, and for the next while I must limit myself to
> about an hour a day, which means you may not hear from me for days at a
> stretch. I hope that's all right.
Fine. I've just had to disappear for a bit and will have to again.
Giles
Giles
> Giles (u...@removethisredhotant.com) writes:
>
>> I brought in Taut in the first place following your outline of a
>> modernism impatient with 'anything for which there is no rational
>> purpose', buttressed by references to architecture. Taut's alpine
>> glass cities seemed and seem to me to be an antithesis of rational
Yes it is, obviously. You apparently want to claim modernist architecture as
a 'buttress' for a rationalist conception of modernism, or at least have
argued for this. I will happily say that there was a strong rationalist
component in modernist architecture. My point was and remains that this was
not always as straightforwardly rationalist as it has been cast. Now you
have to tell me how Taut's alpine architecture was rationalist, a question I
asked before but which you have dodged. You did say that that you saw it as
rationalist, even if in the 'rather sick' sense, so how?
By the way, about leg pulling. I presume that you are pulling mine, as 1929
is roughly 15 years after Taut's alpine projects. I thought that I might
mention that, just in case you thought that these comments might apply to
those plans.
> He states plainly enough that the modern movement elevates
> utility to the first principle and associates beauty with purpose.
No, he doesn't say anything about the modern movement in your quotes, nor
does he associate himself with it in them. He might well have done so, but
your quotes don't show it, let alone 'plainly enough'.
> James Owens
Regards
Giles
Giles
> Giles (u...@removethisredhotant.com) writes:
>> James Owens wrote:
>
>>> . . . So modernism is a response to modernity. You see, I'm not
>>> irredeemable! However, for the moment I'm sticking to the thesis that
>>> it is not deeply a rebellion against modernity, because in the first
>>> place its "simplified formal vocabulary" (this description of
>>> modernism comes from a Toronto curator quoted in today's Globe and
>>> Mail) remains a reflection, however distorted, of the modern ideal;
>
>> A couple of things. I'm not sure why you would expect a rebellion
>> against modernity not to involve a 'reflection, however distorted' of
>> modernity. What would be the alternative?
>
>> Second. 'Simplified formal vocabulary' is not necessarily the case.
>> Often yes, but often no. As the Eliot discussion brought up, he saw
>> poetry necessarily becoming 'difficult', 'various and complex', 'more
>> allusive, more indirect'.
>
> A rebellion against modernity may still reflect modernity, if it is posed
> in modernity's terms. For example, a "neo-traditional" community with
> porches, garages around the back, shops you can walk to, and so on, is
> still a careful, deliberate attempt to realize a consciously articulated
> plan for daily life. (This shows how post-modernism can be an extension
> of modernism.)
No argument there. But then you offer no argument at all to my comments.
As to the modernity of 'neo-traditional' communities, I already responded to
that in a bit you cut: 'A conservative rejection of modernity in favour of a
lost past? There are some of those in modernism, but many many more outside
it. And those visions of the lost past are in any case thoroughly shaped by
modernity - their fixation is on what has 'been lost'.' was what I said.
Apparently, you didn't want to include that bit.
> But a rebellion could instead thoroughly reject the terms.
Wait a bit- a few moments ago you said a rebellion was 'not necessarily the
same thing as a _rejection_ of modernity'. In fact you were quite clear, you
said: 'At a deeper level, modernist literature _accepts_ modernity; it
accepts the finality of modernity with resignation and lament'.
Are you now saying that it might be a rebellion involving rejection?
> For an alternative, think of a libertarian community -- we may have to
> imagine one -- where structures are thrown up as needed, and the place
> grows organically without an overarching plan.
Find me even a fevered imagining of such a community that does not expressly
set itself against the present, or in some way constitute itself through the
negation of what is.
> To the extent that Eliot intended by conscious plan to advance the art of
> poetry, and to realize in his own poetry this clear and prior ideal, he
> continued to reflect modernity.
But, as I hoped that the other thread had made clear, he *didn't* aim to
advance the art of poetry. Try reading the lengthy quote that I posted from
'Tradition and the Individual Talent' or, as others have suggested, the
essay on the metaphysical poets.
> I maintain that this is one deeper level
> of interpretation which satisfactorily explains why he is called
> "modernist" despite what he says about modernity.
And, at least as far as he is concerned, you would be wrong.
> Another is that what he
> does say does not reach beyond the sterility of the modern understanding,
> but resides within it, calling attention to it without quite knowing what
> to do.
Have you read Eliot? Surely you must have, but this seems an odd reading.
[...]
>> For some variety, how about a quote from Walter Benjamin, a
>> critic-historian-philosopher and a candidate for 'modernist
>> philosopher', writing in the 1939.
>
>> "The concept of the historical progress of mankind cannot be sundered
>> from the concept of its progression through a homogenous, empty time. A
>> critique of the concept of such a progression must be the basis of any
>> criticism of the concept of progress itself".
>
>> Or as he put it otherwise (quoted from memory) 'That things just keep
>> on like this is the catastrophe'. What is 'keeping on' is 'progress'.
>> (Despite their opposite political polarities, these have a certain
>> similarity to some of Eliot's formulations). Some modernist work aims
>> at interruption, sometimes from an imagined outside, sometimes from
>> sparks or possibilties inside. Does this fit a model of resigned
>> pessimism? Does it not have qualities of rejection?
>
> "That things just keep going on like this is the catatrophe" does sound
> resignedly pessimistic to me. I don't know why Benjamin wants to criticize
> the concept of "progress," but others might identify it as central to
> modernity and try to attack modernity there. He seems to be going deeper
> to question the modern (or perhaps even the human) concept of time, but
> what are we going to do about that? Apparently within a normal
> understanding of time we are saddled inevitably with the notion of
> "progress." I'd have to know what he proposed as an alternative.
Not, I think, much of an answer, particularly when it comes to the 'normal'
understanding of time. What is 'normal' about it? If you want progress as
modern, then how do you deal with a modernist, or modernists, who, sometimes
virulently and violently, attack that concept? If you want progress as the
'normal understanding of time' then 'modernity' in your sense of a distinct
thing, period or condition is nonsense. If you want 'modernity' as progress,
then you have to deal with modernists who both critiqued and assaulted
'progress'. Your call.
What did Benjamin propose as an alternative? Most often, revolution - you
know, taking the means of production out of the hands of their owners. Was
this revolution as progress - pace Whitehead - no.
> James Owens ad...@Freenet.carleton.ca
> Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Regards
Giles
Giles
[snip]
>
>> i have many times said that modernism is essentially a
>> formalist programme - and yes this has attached to it the idea of
>> revolution and rebel - upsetting the status quo.
>
> Great -- there's something we can agree on. Of course I'd
> add that the status quo modernism was rebelling against was
> modernity, in large part. I'd also say there are cases -- like
> for example Futurism -- where that's not so, and fields (I'm
> thinking of architecture) where the story goes very differently.
> Although Giles may differ with that last.
Only a bit. By and large it goes differently, just with some odd moments.
[snip]
> -- Moggin
Giles
[snip]
You and I had this one out at length - negationary modernism, remember -
which ended with you backing out because the thread 'was so negative'. I
don't want to rehearse it, it is surely still there on deja.com, but nothing
was finished or concluded, on either side. Still, your example of Braque
'returning' blows your own argument. As does Ad Reinhardt, who had no
problem writing endless theories of art. Nor did Kosuth. But - just to build
the booklist - you might try T. J. Clark 'Farewell to a Idea'. If nothing
else, the title should appeal to you.
Regards
Giles
Moggin
[...]
> To the extent that Eliot intended by conscious plan to advance the art of
> poetry, and to realize in his own poetry this clear and prior ideal, he
> continued to reflect modernity. I maintain that this is one deeper level
> of interpretation which satisfactorily explains why he is called
> "modernist" despite what he says about modernity. Another is that what he
> does say does not reach beyond the sterility of the modern understanding,
> but resides within it, calling attention to it without quite knowing what
> to do. If there is alternative poetry or literature, it might be more or
> less thrown together without regard for intellectual principle, on the
> basis of what feels right at the moment; and it would at the very least
> ignore the dismal, oppressive, pervasive sense of absurdity that came to
> haunt modernity, perhaps to celebrate unreflectively whatever is handy. I
> think of Tom Robbins (but Moggin has suggested I read a certain book by
> Annie Dillard for an idea of post-modern literature).
Or hell, just read Beckett. You're in for a huge surprise.
-- Moggin
Moggin
>>>> We're been over this. Of course the Ruttles were a satire
>>>> -- that's obvious. But they were a satire which re-created
>>>> the Beatles in fairly close detail -- something that's not true
>>>> of Oasis.
James Whitehead <jl...@jliat.demon.co.uk>:
>>> Oasis are closer in the respect that your supposed to take them
>>> seriously as musicians...
Moggin:
>> But they're farther away from being a detailed re-creation.
James:
> An essential re-creation of Boat is that it floats - a copy made in ice-
> cream would not. (for long)
So a copy made of ice cream would float, after all. Maybe
for a long time. That would depend on the temperature. But
we were talking about the detail of a copy, specifically a copy
of the Beatles. And the Ruttles are a fairly "detailed
re-creation" -- that helps to make the satire effective. Oasis
is not.
-- Moggin