Postmodernism
Paul Cornell
anything that deviates from a sequential, straightforward, structure,
basically – is in actual fact modernism, a literary movement that’s been
with us since before World War One, and to which radw forms one of the most
consistent strands of objection. Where was this forum in the 1920s, when
the battle over modernism was being fought and lost? Genuine postmodernism
appears in two forms in Doctor Who novels: on a smaller scale, offhand winks
to the fictionality of the text (for example a Terrance Dicks character
asking exactly what sort of sound the TARDIS made when it took off, entirely
so another can mention ‘wheezing and groaning’ in Blood Harvest), and on a
larger scale, in books such as The Blue Angel and comic strips such as ‘TV
Action’ in the latest DWM, which interpret Who entirely through the
nostalgic preconceptions and shared points of view the authors are fairly
certain their readers share, fiction set in and about and using fiction.
Although in the case of the comic strip at least, a narrative device is used
(a parallel universe) to avoid terrifying readers who are still slightly
nervous of the school of modernism, never mind its successor!
Ed Jefferson
Aren't crisps just the greatest thing ever. Like ever, ever?
--
Or something....
Ed Jefferson, posting through time from 2003
"The BBC it wasn't just penguins, it was your penguins.."
take out the SPAM to e-mail me
Paul Cornell
Ed Jefferson wrote in message
<19990930160443...@ng-cm1.aol.com>...
>Aren't crisps just the greatest thing ever. Like ever, ever?
Hee hee hee!
tdb
That's not very constructive, Paul. Ed's got a serious point to make. It
doesn't become us to belittle that.
What I want to know is, do Nik-Naks count? I mean, I know they're a
crispy-type product, and you'll find 'em in the 'Crisp' section of your
supermarket, but are they actually made out of potato? Sliced or
otherwise?
I guess what I'm asking here is "Are Nik-Naks part of the crisp canon?"
It's a controversial, inflammatory topic, and I expect this thread to
rage for days... nay, months.
ben w.
Gareth
>I guess what I'm asking here is "Are Nik-Naks part of the crisp canon?"
Thats : "Are crisps canoical."
Gareth.
"Throw away your gun."
tdb
Gareth wrote:
>
> >I guess what I'm asking here is "Are Nik-Naks part of the crisp canon?"
>
> Thats : "Are crisps canoical."
Are you absolutely sure about that? :)
ben w.
Si Jerram
>Gareth wrote:
>> Thats : "Are crisps canoical."
He must be a Nik-Naks fan then. Personally I think Nik-Naks take place
in another packet.
Charles Martin
<paulc...@owlservice.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
Paul:
Brilliant capsule summary of a pair of lit concepts it took me ages to
really understand.
Hope all is very very well with you. Looking forward to seeing you again
at Gally.
Cheers
Chas
Gareth
>
>Are you absolutely sure about that? :)
>
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I hate keyboards, and I salute the man
who invents the perfect voice recognition software.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Gareth. :)
"Throw away your gun."
Eric Briggs
tourist to prove that 'Timewyrm: Revelation' is no longer avant garde...
-- "Why not?" said Compassion. "That's what I would do, if I had free
will."
Eric Briggs
rico....@utoronto.ca
http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/studio/6600/bwld.html
Ed Jefferson
<paulc...@owlservice.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
>>Aren't crisps just the greatest thing ever. Like ever, ever?
>
>
>Hee hee hee!
**** YOU CORNELL. I'M GOING TO JUMP OFF A BUILDING IF THAT YOUR ****ING
REACTION TO MY ****ING MASTERPIECE.
Iian Neill
"Paul Cornell" <paulc...@owlservice.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
What we call postmodernism now (as applied to literary devices, at
least) has been around long before the movement, as such, even existed.
I must admit that I always have a good chuckle when I see a critic
trying to boost the respectability of a novel, play, or short story by
claiming it is "postmodern". Now, suddenly, we are supposed to be in
awe of the author for his cool hip-ness and cutting-edge sophistication.
In truth, though, I think it's somewhat cheeky of postmodernism to go
around finding future-echoes of itself in the past. Surely that's a
blatant case of ret-conning if there ever was one? Still, it's a whole
lot more palatable (not to mentioned sensible) than its immediate
predecessor, which had more chips on its shoulder than the proverbial
packet of crisps.
The modernist anarchy of technique is not so much revolutionary as it
is plainly ridiculous - no one attacks an author for attempting to
craft a believable plot or realistic characters, but modernist critics
felt happy in villifying the works of 19th century and contemporary
realist painters out of the (strange) belief that technical competence
(not to mention excellence) somehow cramps expression! But this credo
belongs to the same museum of thought that holds the 'flat-earth'
paradigm. Even the dimmest critic knows that for a story to be at all
effective it needs to re-create the real world in a consistent,
plausible manner; if it doesn't, the story suffers. The same carries
over into movies. The difference, perhaps, between the Americans and
the British in cinema is that the former locate plausibility in images -
ie., great pains are taken to create special effects that make the
fantastic seem real; whereas the British appear to place more
importance on plot, characters, etc., as the primary element in
plausibility.
Cheers,
Iian
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Paul Cornell
Charles Martin wrote in message ...
>In article <7t0fhp$fpq$1...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk>, "Paul Cornell"
><paulc...@owlservice.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>Hope all is very very well with you. Looking forward to seeing you again
>at Gally.
Thanks dear, you too.
Mags
Si Jerram wrote in message ...
>tdb wrote in message <37F3DB8A...@pvcdiva.demon.co.uk>...
>
>>Gareth wrote:
>
>>> >I guess what I'm asking here is "Are Nik-Naks part of the crisp canon?"
>
>
>>Are you absolutely sure about that? :)
>
>
>in another packet.
Ah, but that packet is inside a multi-pack packet which is inside...
So what's your take on the little blue packet of salt inside a packet of
Salt'n'Shake?
Mags
--
"What drives you on can drive you mad
A million lies to sell yourself is all you ever had."
Moosifer Jones' Lair
http://www.members.tripod.com/Moosifer_Jones
Ben Woodhams
>
> Si Jerram wrote in message ...
[snip]
> >He must be a Nik-Naks fan then. Personally I think Nik-Naks take place
> >in another packet.
>
> Ah, but that packet is inside a multi-pack packet which is inside...
>
> So what's your take on the little blue packet of salt inside a packet of
> Salt'n'Shake?
It's a packet universe.
ben w.
--
"I know only that I exist - everything else is just my opinion."
walde...@my-deja.com
"Paul Cornell" <paulc...@owlservice.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> anything that deviates from a sequential, straightforward, structure,
> basically – is in actual fact modernism, a literary movement that’s
been
> with us since before World War One, and to which radw forms one of the
most
Hi - There's still a whole lot of confusion about the definition of
"postmodernism". I think this is partly because what it means in
literature/ art is not exactly what it means in history/ sociology. The
various meanings have tended to blur together, and it's this blurred
version that most people are actually appealing to in these posts.
All this came up a month or so ago, and I think the definition I gave
then may still be reasonably helpful (maybe).
As I understand it, postmodernism in literature was a reaction to the
extreme subjectivity and experimentation of modernism in lit (all that
stream of consciousness stuff that Woolfe etc were writing). Modernism
was the idea you could start afresh and bugger the past, basically.
Trouble is that didn't really work, since the past tends to infect
everything you write (the historical baggage attached to every word you
use, the fact that it's all been done before etc). So postmodernism was,
in a well-known phrase or saying "revisiting the past with irony". The
idea being that if you couldn't exactly erase the past, you could sort
of acknowledge it, play with it reflexively, redefine it to suit your
own purposes. (You sort of see where this fits in with "Interference",
can't you?)
In sociology/ history, the meaning of post-modernism sort of overlaps,
but in some ways is closer to "modernism" in Literature. The idea here
is that modernism (which really isn't all that modern - 18th / 19th/
early 20th century?) was full of over-arching beliefs and social
structures - things like Christianity and (later) Marxism and great
socio-economic empires. Post-modernism here is really about disruption
and fragmentation of the old order - a kind of lose of faith in simple,
"solid" explanations and universal truths. A break-down in continuity
(canon?). You sort of see how this might also fit with "interference" as
well....
As I say, post-modernism has come to mean a mix of these meanings. A
neat short -hand way of thinking about it (maybe) goes like this:
Aristotle was sent from Heaven (or anyway, Plato's world of Perfect
Forms) to find out what had been occurring philosophically since
Greece's golden years.
He was advised to go and talk to three baseball umpires and question
each in turn as how the umpire "called" the pitches. (hope that's
the phrase , I'm not exactly a baseball fan).
The first said "I call 'em as they are!"
The second said "I call 'em as I see em."
The third said : "They ain't nothing till I calls em."
Whereupon Aristotle looked suddenly enlightened and went back to
Heaven, his question answered.
Ummm - this is taking rather longer than I expected. The idea is that
the first is working on the old classical idea that there is such a
thing as "truth" (a universal constant) and that the human being is
equipped to perceive it. The second is relying on a Modernist notion of
truth that while there is "truth" out there, in effect it comes down to
(fallible) human subjectivity : "I call em as I see em." The third is
the post-modern approach - there is no truth (over-arching universal
principles, continuity etc), "truth" is basically what we say it is, and
we can more or less make it up as we go along. You can sort of see how
this free-wheeling approach to continuity etc fits in with
"Interference" ?
Sorry to go on. Hope this is vaguely
useful------John
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
b.businovski
grrrr, aka- 'nihilism'.
Not my cup of tea.
Not to say that their exists such a thing as a cup of tea, all cups of tea
are essentially a text, and the consumers themselves a social construct,
interpreting the said cup of tea as a cup of tea because the dominant ruling
class 'says' that its a cup of tea.
That explains it, those dead white males have been responsible for the
subjugating of tea! Shame on you Ezra, is that two sugars with your salute
to 'la duce?"
Did that explain Post-modernism? Well if it did, then I must be some kind of
totalitarian. There are no such things as concrete definitions, just various
interpretations and/or readings.
Can I get published now Mr Derrida? Mr Foucault? Oops, I forgot, there is no
such thing as an author. I guess you won't be filing for copyright
infringement, after I photocopied your books and flogged them off for a
tenner.
Dave Stone
> Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I hate keyboards, and I salute the man
> who invents the perfect voice recognition software.
>
> Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
So what would it do when you said that?
--
Take care. Have fun. Bring your own banjo.
http://www.sgloomi.demon.co.uk
Gareth
>
Well I'd hope it would recognise it. And, well, tell me
to wash my mouth out with soap for using such
terrible language. And then transcribe it, properly
punctuated, into (onto? - HELP Paul) my word-
processor.
M.H. Stevens
Mark H. Stevens
>
M.H. Stevens
Paul Cornell wrote:
> Ed Jefferson wrote in message
> <19990930160443...@ng-cm1.aol.com>...
>
> >Aren't crisps just the greatest thing ever. Like ever, ever?
>
> Hee hee hee!
Now I know everyone one in this group is nuts, Paul talks about
PostModernism in Doctor Who and all you can reply with is some nonsense
about crackers?
Mark
H. Stevens
M.H. Stevens
> Modernism
> was the idea you could start afresh and bugger the past, basically.
At least now we can classify Lawrence Miles........
>
> Trouble is that didn't really work, since the past tends to infect
> everything you write (the historical baggage attached to every word you
> use, the fact that it's all been done before etc). So postmodernism was,
> in a well-known phrase or saying "revisiting the past with irony". The
> idea being that if you couldn't exactly erase the past, you could sort
> of acknowledge it, play with it reflexively, redefine it to suit your
> own purposes. (You sort of see where this fits in with "Interference",
> can't you?)
>
Unfortunately, but how do you erase the ramblings of a Modernist/
Revisionist?
Nick Caldwell
<paulc...@owlservice.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>It occurs to me that, mostly, what radwers mean by ‘postmodernism’ -
>anything that deviates from a sequential, straightforward, structure,
>basically – is in actual fact modernism, a literary movement that’s been
>with us since before World War One, and to which radw forms one of the most
>consistent strands of objection. Where was this forum in the 1920s, when
>the battle over modernism was being fought and lost? Genuine postmodernism
>appears in two forms in Doctor Who novels: on a smaller scale, offhand winks
>to the fictionality of the text
Isn't that kind of self-reflexivity a modernist trope too? Or is it
modernist if you're trying to make a point, and postmodernist if
you're trying to take the piss?
--
Nick Caldwell-----------------------------------------
s32...@student.uq.edu.au | http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/
------------------------------------------------------
Nick Caldwell
<b.busi...@student.central.murdoch.edu.au> wrote:
>postmodernism.
>
> grrrr, aka- 'nihilism'.
"postmodernism (n.) literary form almost, but not quite, entirely
unlike nihilism"
>Not my cup of tea.
>
>Not to say that their exists such a thing as a cup of tea, all cups of tea
>are essentially a text, and the consumers themselves a social construct,
>interpreting the said cup of tea as a cup of tea because the dominant ruling
>class 'says' that its a cup of tea.
No one, except a few slighly too credulous postgrads, would argue that
social constructivism actually means that reality doesn't exist.
And yes, the meanings of certain things in language are encoded
according to dominant power relations. But they're never purely
susceptible to the dominant interests.
>That explains it, those dead white males have been responsible for the
>subjugating of tea! Shame on you Ezra, is that two sugars with your salute
>to 'la duce?"
>
>Did that explain Post-modernism? Well if it did, then I must be some kind of
>totalitarian. There are no such things as concrete definitions, just various
>interpretations and/or readings.
>
>Can I get published now Mr Derrida? Mr Foucault? Oops, I forgot, there is no
>such thing as an author. I guess you won't be filing for copyright
>infringement, after I photocopied your books and flogged them off for a
>tenner.
Tatically interesting, if somewhat disingenuous move, there,
conflating about four or five different positions and politics and
calling it "postmodern". No wonder you're finding it so easy to
parody.
PS, "death of the author" began with modernism.
Ed Jefferson
<cra...@postoffice.swbell.net> writes:
>> >Aren't crisps just the greatest thing ever. Like ever, ever?
>>
>> Hee hee hee!
>
>Now I know everyone one in this group is nuts, Paul talks about
>PostModernism in Doctor Who and all you can reply with is some nonsense
>about crackers?
Or am I crackers about nonsense?
Paul Cornell
M.H. Stevens wrote in message <37F5CEB3...@postoffice.swbell.net>...
>A nice lecture Paul but just what point are you trying to make?
Oh, none at all, dear. I'm just having fun!
Paul Cornell
M.H. Stevens wrote in message <37F5CFBE...@postoffice.swbell.net>...
>
>Unfortunately, but how do you erase the ramblings of a Modernist/
>Revisionist?
Someone's actually got on the anti-modernist bandwagon! Fantastic! My next
cause is going to be votes for women.
M.H. Stevens
Paul Cornell wrote:
Very funny, but I was talking about htis Interference mess that Lawrence Miles
concocted.......
Paul Cornell
M.H. Stevens wrote in message <37F66834...@postoffice.swbell.net>...
I know you were! I just think it's wonderful that you're capable of being so
honest! It takes bravery and absolute faith in one's own ideals to tread the
path you do, and I think you should be praised from the rooftops for it.
William December Starr
cra...@swbell.net said:
> Now I know everyone one in this group is nuts, Paul talks about
> PostModernism in Doctor Who and all you can reply with is some
> nonsense about crackers?
I'm not sure, but I think that in honor of Paul's essay about
modernism (among other things) Ed is indulging in an exercise in
"Dada-ism," which either was part of or was contemporaneous with
modernism early in the 20th century. Dada-ism is hard to explain,
but basically it's the ostentatious use of non sequiturs to annoy
the people around you.
-- William December Starr <wds...@crl.com>
b.businovski
>"postmodernism (n.) literary form almost, but not quite, entirely
>unlike nihilism"
Don't you think destroying something like the canon is a bit destructive, a
bit nihilist? Thats what I reckon anyway, just my subjective modernist
opinion :)
>No one, except a few slighly too credulous postgrads, would argue that
social constructivism actually means that reality doesn't exist.
You should here my lecturer labour the point that I'm not made of flesh and
blood, but am infact a social construction and a text, to be read and
interpreted by others around me. I think he'd go into Cesser or something
and say that I am defined only by what I am not. Fair enough, but wouldn't
you spend the whole day going through a long list to find out what I am?
When just saying I am a person is simpler? But he would argue that the word
person means nothing at all, it is a word that limits me as to what I can
be, and is thus a form of facism. Curious. Reality to him, or at least the
course he is teaching, is merely a text, contrived by language. Language is
all we have he says, and that means our whole experience of the world is an
experience of nothing more than a representation.
Whenever I say anything to challenge this, he has an awesome escape clause-
Its all subjective, its all indefinate- and a whole host of other liar's
paradoxes.
>And yes, the meanings of certain things in language are encoded
>according to dominant power relations. But they're never purely
>susceptible to the dominant interests.
Thank god someone agrees with me in that department, I can't escape the
bashings I get from the various 'nists or 'ists that say 'language is used
to enslave the masses and keep the dominant ruling class's hegemony in
tact.'
I wonder what would happen if we didn't have totalitarian road rules, if the
individual was free to interpret red lights as whatever they wanted them to
mean, some interesting textual road accidents will be available for
theoretical deconstruction.- 'This driver was a conformist who interpreted
red as stop, the other was a liberal feminist who broke free from the chains
of the patriachal rule and proceeded to step on the accelerator as a show of
female solidarity'
>Tatically interesting, if somewhat disingenuous move, there,
>conflating about four or five different positions and politics and
>calling it "postmodern". No wonder you're finding it so easy to
>parody.
Isn't that what post-modernism is about though? Being inconsistent, the
anything goes mentality? Or have I been taught wrongly?
>PS, "death of the author" began with modernism.
Ouch, that hit me fair in the guts. Who started that then in the modernist's
time?
P.S. you got a kick arse site dude, super interesting !
b.businovski
"The lowering of aesthetic standards caused by the democratizatoion of
culture under industrialism. "
Clement Greenberg
Nick Caldwell
<b.busi...@student.central.murdoch.edu.au> wrote:
>>"postmodernism (n.) literary form almost, but not quite, entirely
>>unlike nihilism"
>
>
>Don't you think destroying something like the canon is a bit destructive, a
>bit nihilist? Thats what I reckon anyway, just my subjective modernist
>opinion :)
Well, no, because at the most touchy feely level, "breaking the canon"
is about creating more space for excluded and subaltern voices.
>>No one, except a few slighly too credulous postgrads, would argue that
>social constructivism actually means that reality doesn't exist.
>
>
>You should here my lecturer labour the point that I'm not made of flesh and
>blood, but am infact a social construction and a text, to be read and
>interpreted by others around me. I think he'd go into Cesser or something
>and say that I am defined only by what I am not. Fair enough, but wouldn't
>you spend the whole day going through a long list to find out what I am?
>When just saying I am a person is simpler? But he would argue that the word
>person means nothing at all, it is a word that limits me as to what I can
>be, and is thus a form of facism. Curious. Reality to him, or at least the
>course he is teaching, is merely a text, contrived by language. Language is
>all we have he says, and that means our whole experience of the world is an
>experience of nothing more than a representation.
Oh dear. What are they teaching people at Murdoch these days? This
is the sort of think that prompted Damien "poor impulse control"
Broderick to write that book moaning about people in black leather
jackets and french lit theory.
I don't think it's particularly controversial to say that reality for
us is always a mediated experience - either through language - or a
bit more scientifically, by the bandwidth limitations of the optic
nerve, auditory nerves, etc etc. I don't think a biological organism
with unrestricted access to all possible sensory data about the real
world and a brain that wouldn't even need to process it but simply
become aware of it would be remotely possible.
>Whenever I say anything to challenge this, he has an awesome escape clause-
>Its all subjective, its all indefinate- and a whole host of other liar's
>paradoxes.
As always in situations like this, I recommend reading a lot of Bruno
Latour. His new book, _Pandora's Hope_ begins with an anecdote about
a scientist friend asking him if he believes in reality. He's so
shocked the question is even necessary that he writes a book about it.
>>And yes, the meanings of certain things in language are encoded
>>according to dominant power relations. But they're never purely
>>susceptible to the dominant interests.
>
>
>Thank god someone agrees with me in that department, I can't escape the
>bashings I get from the various 'nists or 'ists that say 'language is used
>to enslave the masses and keep the dominant ruling class's hegemony in
>tact.'
Oh dear, oh dear. Is Murdoch really the last bastion of
unreconstructed Altussarian Marxism or what?
>I wonder what would happen if we didn't have totalitarian road rules, if the
>individual was free to interpret red lights as whatever they wanted them to
>mean, some interesting textual road accidents will be available for
>theoretical deconstruction.- 'This driver was a conformist who interpreted
>red as stop, the other was a liberal feminist who broke free from the chains
>of the patriachal rule and proceeded to step on the accelerator as a show of
>female solidarity'
John Fiske might be a useful corrective here. He uses Foucault to
describe how the disciplinary forces at work in society are also
productive of it - a society without disciplinary force is
unimaginable. The political point is that disciplinary forces will
always attempt to extend themselves beyond the level that they're
needed.
>>Tatically interesting, if somewhat disingenuous move, there,
>>conflating about four or five different positions and politics and
>>calling it "postmodern". No wonder you're finding it so easy to
>>parody.
>
>
>Isn't that what post-modernism is about though? Being inconsistent, the
>anything goes mentality? Or have I been taught wrongly?
No, no, and yes. As the then head of my English department said a few
years back, only Helen Dimedenko could have thought postmodernism
means it's ok to be a plagarist.
>>PS, "death of the author" began with modernism.
>
>
>Ouch, that hit me fair in the guts. Who started that then in the modernist's
>time?
Not sure of the precise timeline. I've read that ignoring
intentionality was a standard practice in the "New Criticism" school.
I'm not sure if Barthes' essay was written when he was still a
structuralist.
>P.S. you got a kick arse site dude, super interesting !
Well, it's not just mine of course, but thanks!
Ummm ObWho: Yeah, I'm a geek, I wrote an article about Doctor Who for
M/C at the start of the year.
http://english.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/who.html
Not sure I entirely agree with it now - (aha, intentionality proven
false!) but it's not attracted any comment here...
Nick Caldwell
<cra...@postoffice.swbell.net> wrote:
>
>Paul Cornell wrote:
>
>> Ed Jefferson wrote in message
>> <19990930160443...@ng-cm1.aol.com>...
>>
>> >Aren't crisps just the greatest thing ever. Like ever, ever?
>>
>> Hee hee hee!
>
>Now I know everyone one in this group is nuts, Paul talks about
>PostModernism in Doctor Who and all you can reply with is some nonsense
>about crackers?
How much did it cost to have your sense of humour surgically removed?
Daniel Frankham
>In article <37F5CF0C...@postoffice.swbell.net>,
>cra...@swbell.net said:
>
>> PostModernism in Doctor Who and all you can reply with is some
>> nonsense about crackers?
>
>modernism (among other things) Ed is indulging in an exercise in
>"Dada-ism," which either was part of or was contemporaneous with
>modernism early in the 20th century. Dada-ism is hard to explain,
>but basically it's the ostentatious use of non sequiturs to annoy
>the people around you.
Dada is anti-art, anti-theory, anti-meaning, anti-explanation. And a fish.
--
Daniel Frankham
----------------------------------------------------------------------
We love television because television brings us a world in which
television does not exist. In fact, deep in their hearts, this is what
the spuds crave most: a rich, new, participatory life.
(Barbara Ehrenreich)
Joxer
Nick Caldwell <s32...@student.uq.edu.au> wrote in message
news:37f9bfee...@news.uq.edu.au...
> On Sat, 02 Oct 1999 04:23:24 -0500, "M.H. Stevens"
> <cra...@postoffice.swbell.net> wrote:
>
> >
> >Paul Cornell wrote:
> >
> >> Ed Jefferson wrote in message
> >> <19990930160443...@ng-cm1.aol.com>...
> >>
> >> >Aren't crisps just the greatest thing ever. Like ever, ever?
> >>
> >> Hee hee hee!
> >
> >PostModernism in Doctor Who and all you can reply with is some nonsense
> >about crackers?
>
erm... crisps... nuts... crackers... *someone*s sense of humour is certainly
not firing on all cylinders, but as for whose...
--
Colin B.
baggy...and a bit loose at the seams.
William December Starr
dan...@oztek.net.au said:
>> I'm not sure, but I think that in honor of Paul's essay about
>> modernism (among other things) Ed is indulging in an exercise in
>> "Dada-ism," which either was part of or was contemporaneous with
>> modernism early in the 20th century. Dada-ism is hard to explain,
>> but basically it's the ostentatious use of non sequiturs to annoy
>> the people around you.
>
> Dada is anti-art, anti-theory, anti-meaning, anti-explanation. And a
> fish.
No, I think my definition's a lot more accurate. It's basically an
excuse to be a jerk.
Phillip Pascoe
> >A nice lecture Paul but just what point are you trying to make?
>
> Oh, none at all, dear. I'm just having fun!
Oi, Cornell! Feel up to dicussing postcolonialism next?
:-) Phil
Phillip Pascoe
> <paulc...@owlservice.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >It occurs to me that, mostly, what radwers mean by ‘postmodernism’ -
> >anything that deviates from a sequential, straightforward, structure,
> >basically – is in actual fact modernism, a literary movement that’s been
> >with us since before World War One, and to which radw forms one of the most
> >consistent strands of objection. Where was this forum in the 1920s, when
> >the battle over modernism was being fought and lost? Genuine postmodernism
> >appears in two forms in Doctor Who novels: on a smaller scale, offhand winks
> >to the fictionality of the text
>
> Isn't that kind of self-reflexivity a modernist trope too? Or is it
> modernist if you're trying to make a point, and postmodernist if
> you're trying to take the piss?
Nick, you've just written my major English essay for me. <g>
Modernism: playing around with structure and referentiality, but still
believing in big stories like civilisation, progress, human betterment.
Postmodernism: nicking the techniques of modernism to have a bit of a
laugh, without the security blanket of grand narratives.
:-) Phil
Phillip Pascoe
> >Not to say that their exists such a thing as a cup of tea, all cups of tea
> >are essentially a text, and the consumers themselves a social construct,
> >interpreting the said cup of tea as a cup of tea because the dominant ruling
> >class 'says' that its a cup of tea.
>
> social constructivism actually means that reality doesn't exist.
As Lawrence Miles delights in exploring, reality exists, it just isn't
real in the way we think it should be...
> And yes, the meanings of certain things in language are encoded
> according to dominant power relations. But they're never purely
> susceptible to the dominant interests.
Power is after all diffuse throughout all levels of society. No one has
absolute power, no matter how many times trad writers like using the Lord
Acton quote to give their PDAs "depth". Those without much power can still
use what they have, and take what those with lots of power have got, to
resist authority.
Of course... try telling that to the rebel Karfelons. "Look, you needn't
keep throwing your lives away trying to bring down the Borad. Just
appropriate the most redolent discursive postions from the networks of
signification his regime has erected."
Hrm.
Phil.
Phillip Pascoe
> >Tatically interesting, if somewhat disingenuous move, there,
> >conflating about four or five different positions and politics and
> >calling it "postmodern". No wonder you're finding it so easy to
> >parody.
>
> Isn't that what post-modernism is about though? Being inconsistent, the
> anything goes mentality? Or have I been taught wrongly?
You have been taught... in a different way to me. Once you head into po/mo
theory you can end up most confused and, if you're a really good student,
able to confuse others. ;-)
The alternative is to set aside theory and actually read postmodern
fiction. Lots of it out there, doing lots of interesting stuff, and it's
great that a few authors have decided to play around with that in the
EDAs. Play - the important word. Po/mo fic takes pleasure (and
occasionally politics) in the ways it tells stories.
Phil.
Phillip Pascoe
> >You should here my lecturer labour the point that I'm not made of flesh and
> >blood, but am infact a social construction and a text, to be read and
> >interpreted by others around me.
Uh... why can't you be both? The meat interface isn't much use without
some way of talking to other flesh users, and the various clusters of
meaning and social constructivity aren't able to circulate without
bodies... except on usenet of course. <g>
> >Isn't that what post-modernism is about though? Being inconsistent, the
> >anything goes mentality? Or have I been taught wrongly?
>
> No, no, and yes. As the then head of my English department said a few
> years back, only Helen Dimedenko could have thought postmodernism
> means it's ok to be a plagarist.
<Paul Cornell/> Demidenko, not Dimedenko! Honestly, we don't even know the
names of anti-Semitic plagiarists, it's so embarassing! <reads own post>
Damn you, Cornell, not Demidenko, Darville! Don't even know how to
distinguish between pseudonyms and real names, you inarticulate buffoon...
Hey... that hurt. No wonder no one came to my birthday party... ;-) </Paul
Cornell>
> >P.S. you got a kick arse site dude, super interesting !
>
> Ummm ObWho: Yeah, I'm a geek, I wrote an article about Doctor Who for
> M/C at the start of the year.
>
> http://english.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/who.html
>
> Not sure I entirely agree with it now - (aha, intentionality proven
> false!) but it's not attracted any comment here...
I liked it, wanted to see more.
Phil
Paul Cornell
William December Starr wrote in message <7t8uma$m...@crl4.crl.com>...
>No, I think my definition's a lot more accurate. It's basically an
>excuse to be a jerk.
That's a rather better definition of the internet.
M.H. Stevens
Daniel Frankham wrote in message <37f6f077...@loomi.telstra.net>...
>On 2 Oct 1999 18:50:57 -0700, William December Starr wrote:
>>In article <37F5CF0C...@postoffice.swbell.net>,
>>cra...@swbell.net said:
>>
>>> PostModernism in Doctor Who and all you can reply with is some
>>> nonsense about crackers?
>>
>>modernism (among other things) Ed is indulging in an exercise in
>>"Dada-ism," which either was part of or was contemporaneous with
>>modernism early in the 20th century. Dada-ism is hard to explain,
>>but basically it's the ostentatious use of non sequiturs to annoy
>>the people around you.
>
>Dada is anti-art, anti-theory, anti-meaning, anti-explanation. And a fish.
>
M.H. Stevens
Paul Cornell wrote in message <7t5u1p$1qp$1...@news6.svr.pol.co.uk>...
got on my side, I feel like I'm punching a brick wall trying to make my
point but no one seems to listen to what I have to say, simply call me
melodramatic or try to change my mind..........
Mark H. Stevens
Nick Caldwell
wrote:
>
>Nick Caldwell <s32...@student.uq.edu.au> wrote in message
>news:37f9bfee...@news.uq.edu.au...
>> On Sat, 02 Oct 1999 04:23:24 -0500, "M.H. Stevens"
>> <cra...@postoffice.swbell.net> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >Paul Cornell wrote:
>> >
>> >> Ed Jefferson wrote in message
>> >> <19990930160443...@ng-cm1.aol.com>...
>> >>
>> >> >Aren't crisps just the greatest thing ever. Like ever, ever?
>> >>
>> >> Hee hee hee!
>> >
>> >Now I know everyone one in this group is nuts, Paul talks about
>> >PostModernism in Doctor Who and all you can reply with is some nonsense
>> >about crackers?
>>
>> How much did it cost to have your sense of humour surgically removed?
>
>erm... crisps... nuts... crackers... *someone*s sense of humour is certainly
>not firing on all cylinders, but as for whose...
Well, I thought it was only moderately amusing but I was getting a bit
fed up with what a negative boring old moaner M H Stevens is. This
newsgroup is at least partly about hanging out with fellow fans and
having a bit of a laugh. Telling people off for doing so is as bad as
stepping on puppy heads in my book*.
*My book is entitled Hyperbole and Comic Exaggeration for Fun and
Profit. Avaliable at all good bokkstores.
Nick Caldwell
<ppa...@tartarus.uwa.edu.au> wrote:
>On Sun, 3 Oct 1999, Nick Caldwell wrote:
><Paul Cornell/> Demidenko, not Dimedenko! Honestly, we don't even know the
Dimedenko. Hmmm.. I just realised I made a funny with that typo
there. Gosh, arent' I the clever one today.
>> >P.S. you got a kick arse site dude, super interesting !
>>
>> Ummm ObWho: Yeah, I'm a geek, I wrote an article about Doctor Who for
>> M/C at the start of the year.
>>
>> http://english.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/who.html
>>
>> Not sure I entirely agree with it now - (aha, intentionality proven
>> false!) but it's not attracted any comment here...
>
>I liked it, wanted to see more.
I have the embarrassing tendancy of writing essays that are far too
short. I'm still wondering where the extra 2k words in my honours
thesis came from...
Nick Caldwell
<ppa...@tartarus.uwa.edu.au> wrote:
>On Sat, 2 Oct 1999, Nick Caldwell wrote:
>> <paulc...@owlservice.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> >It occurs to me that, mostly, what radwers mean by ‘postmodernism’ -
>> >anything that deviates from a sequential, straightforward, structure,
>> >basically – is in actual fact modernism, a literary movement that’s been
>> >with us since before World War One, and to which radw forms one of the most
>> >consistent strands of objection. Where was this forum in the 1920s, when
>> >the battle over modernism was being fought and lost? Genuine postmodernism
>> >appears in two forms in Doctor Who novels: on a smaller scale, offhand winks
>> >to the fictionality of the text
>>
>> Isn't that kind of self-reflexivity a modernist trope too? Or is it
>> modernist if you're trying to make a point, and postmodernist if
>> you're trying to take the piss?
>
>Nick, you've just written my major English essay for me. <g>
If I get teaching next semester, I wonder if reading RADW will count
for my Available For Students hours.
>Modernism: playing around with structure and referentiality, but still
>believing in big stories like civilisation, progress, human betterment.
Not so much still believing - I think the big modern metanarratives
are a product of modernity.
>Postmodernism: nicking the techniques of modernism to have a bit of a
>laugh, without the security blanket of grand narratives.
Mmmm... ish. I need to do some more background reading.
Daniel Frankham
>On Sun, 3 Oct 1999 01:59:38 +0800, "b.businovski"
><b.busi...@student.central.murdoch.edu.au> wrote:
>>Thank god someone agrees with me in that department, I can't escape the
>>bashings I get from the various 'nists or 'ists that say 'language is used
>>to enslave the masses and keep the dominant ruling class's hegemony in
>>tact.'
>
>Oh dear, oh dear. Is Murdoch really the last bastion of
>unreconstructed Altussarian Marxism or what?
<Cornell> Althusserian </Cornell> Aaah, Murdoch is the name of a Uni. For
a moment I thought you meant Rupert Murdoch, which was strangely
appropriate in context.
>>Isn't that what post-modernism is about though? Being inconsistent, the
>>anything goes mentality? Or have I been taught wrongly?
>
>No, no, and yes. As the then head of my English department said a few
>years back, only Helen Dimedenko could have thought postmodernism
>means it's ok to be a plagarist.
Poor Helen. I thought she got a pretty raw deal. The people who were
against her seemed to need a very "safe", contained literature, with
well-defined boundaries of fictionality, starting after the copyright
notice and ending before the back cover. Heaven forbid the nasty fiction
might escape into the outside world. A curiously 20th century phenomenon
-- in the past other literary hoaxers continued to be popular and to be
read long after the "hoax" was discovered, because people had a clearer
idea that the book was what mattered, not trivial peripheral issues like
the name and life history of the author.
The only wrong thing she did was that newspaper column where she copied
something she'd found on the internet. IMHO.
>>P.S. you got a kick arse site dude, super interesting !
>
>Well, it's not just mine of course, but thanks!
>
>Ummm ObWho: Yeah, I'm a geek, I wrote an article about Doctor Who for
>M/C at the start of the year.
>
>http://english.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/who.html
>
>Not sure I entirely agree with it now - (aha, intentionality proven
>false!) but it's not attracted any comment here...
Ooh, you mis-spelled Quatermass!
Ed Jefferson
writes:
>>> I'm not sure, but I think that in honor of Paul's essay about
>>> modernism (among other things) Ed is indulging in an exercise in
>>> "Dada-ism," which either was part of or was contemporaneous with
>>> modernism early in the 20th century. Dada-ism is hard to explain,
>>> but basically it's the ostentatious use of non sequiturs to annoy
>>> the people around you.
>>
>> Dada is anti-art, anti-theory, anti-meaning, anti-explanation. And a
>> fish.
>
>No, I think my definition's a lot more accurate. It's basically an
>excuse to be a jerk.
>
Nah, I was being postmodern
Nick Caldwell
Frankham) wrote:
>On Sun, 03 Oct 1999 00:38:24 GMT, Nick Caldwell wrote:
>>On Sun, 3 Oct 1999 01:59:38 +0800, "b.businovski"
>><b.busi...@student.central.murdoch.edu.au> wrote:
>
>>>Thank god someone agrees with me in that department, I can't escape the
>>>bashings I get from the various 'nists or 'ists that say 'language is used
>>>to enslave the masses and keep the dominant ruling class's hegemony in
>>>tact.'
>>
>>Oh dear, oh dear. Is Murdoch really the last bastion of
>>unreconstructed Altussarian Marxism or what?
>
><Cornell> Althusserian </Cornell>
Feck.
>Aaah, Murdoch is the name of a Uni. For
>a moment I thought you meant Rupert Murdoch, which was strangely
>appropriate in context.
My thoughts about *that* Murdoch remain largely unprintable. Feck.
>>>Isn't that what post-modernism is about though? Being inconsistent, the
>>>anything goes mentality? Or have I been taught wrongly?
>>
>>No, no, and yes. As the then head of my English department said a few
>>years back, only Helen Dimedenko could have thought postmodernism
>>means it's ok to be a plagarist.
>
>Poor Helen. I thought she got a pretty raw deal. The people who were
>against her seemed to need a very "safe", contained literature, with
>well-defined boundaries of fictionality, starting after the copyright
>notice and ending before the back cover. Heaven forbid the nasty fiction
>might escape into the outside world. A curiously 20th century phenomenon
>-- in the past other literary hoaxers continued to be popular and to be
>read long after the "hoax" was discovered, because people had a clearer
>idea that the book was what mattered, not trivial peripheral issues like
>the name and life history of the author.
I'd normally agree, but when you're telling a story about allegedly
real atrocities committed by Jews in WW2 you do need a little
authenticity. I say this in as untheorised a way as possible.
>The only wrong thing she did was that newspaper column where she copied
>something she'd found on the internet. IMHO.
She did that one a few times, though. There are lines nicked from all
over the place in the book, and she was plagarising entire articles
way back when she was a contributor to Semper Florat (UQ student
magazine).
>>>P.S. you got a kick arse site dude, super interesting !
>>
>>Well, it's not just mine of course, but thanks!
>>
>>Ummm ObWho: Yeah, I'm a geek, I wrote an article about Doctor Who for
>>M/C at the start of the year.
>>
>>http://english.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/who.html
>>
>>Not sure I entirely agree with it now - (aha, intentionality proven
>>false!) but it's not attracted any comment here...
>
>Ooh, you mis-spelled Quatermass!
Feck. Arse. Drink.
William December Starr
dan...@oztek.net.au said:
>> No, no, and yes. As the then head of my English department said a
>> few years back, only Helen Dimedenko could have thought
>> postmodernism means it's ok to be a plagarist. [Nick Caldwell]
>
> Poor Helen. I thought she got a pretty raw deal. The people who
> were against her seemed to need a very "safe", contained literature,
> with well-defined boundaries of fictionality, starting after the
> copyright notice and ending before the back cover. Heaven forbid
> the nasty fiction might escape into the outside world. A curiously
> 20th century phenomenon -- in the past other literary hoaxers
> continued to be popular and to be read long after the "hoax" was
> discovered, because people had a clearer idea that the book was what
> mattered, not trivial peripheral issues like the name and life
> history of the author.
Um, I have no idea who this Helen Last-name-starts-with-D is or what
she did. Any chance of a quick summary? (I'm sitting here trying to
figure out what "fiction escaping into the outside world" could
possibly mean, and not getting anywhere...)
William December Starr
"Paul Cornell" <paulc...@owlservice.freeserve.co.uk> said:
>> No, I think my definition's a lot more accurate. It's
>> basically an excuse to be a jerk. [wdstarr, re "Dada"]
>
> That's a rather better definition of the internet.
Hmmm. Is there really a difference between Usenet trolling and
indulging in Dada-ism? Both seem to be dome primarily for the
purpose of pissing other people off, after all.
Paul 'Ozymandias' Harman
news:7t5gt2$efd$1...@newsman.murdoch.edu.au...
> When just saying I am a person is simpler? But he would argue that the
word
> person means nothing at all, it is a word that limits me as to what I can
> be, and is thus a form of facism. Curious. Reality to him, or at least the
> course he is teaching, is merely a text, contrived by language. Language
is
> all we have he says, and that means our whole experience of the world is
an
> experience of nothing more than a representation.
And that, your honour, is where I stopped reading, and is a perfect
summation of why I /so/ dislike "The Arts".
Ozzy
DDFA
>
> Paul Cornell wrote:
>
> > Ed Jefferson wrote in message
> > <19990930160443...@ng-cm1.aol.com>...
> >
> > >Aren't crisps just the greatest thing ever. Like ever, ever?
> >
> > Hee hee hee!
>
> Now I know everyone one in this group is nuts, Paul talks about
> PostModernism in Doctor Who and all you can reply with is some nonsense
> about crackers?
Yes, but they're SO important to the structure of everything. :)
--
MAPPY.... The Right Dishonourable Mark A Page
aka DDFA, for no readily apparent reason other than black jellybeans
"10,000 Slices of Daicon Attack!!!!!"
DDFA
> >A nice lecture Paul but just what point are you trying to make?
>
> Oh, none at all, dear. I'm just having fun!
We noticed. :)
Paul Cornell
William December Starr wrote in message <7tbnia$9...@crl.crl.com>...
Okay, to take this seriously for a moment, Dada was created to undermine a
lot of boring, well-worn assumptions, a form of resistance to orthodoxy
which (as you might expect) really appeals to me (and is very Doctorish).
It requires courage and art. Usenet trolling is just going along with the
dominant culture, and requires neither.
Zebee Johnstone
William December Starr <wds...@crl.com> wrote:
>
>Um, I have no idea who this Helen Last-name-starts-with-D is or what
>she did. Any chance of a quick summary? (I'm sitting here trying to
>figure out what "fiction escaping into the outside world" could
>possibly mean, and not getting anywhere...)
She wrote a book claiming to be a factual narrative of her
Ukrainian background, dealing with a lot of hot button stuff,
and claiming (I vaguely recall) a lot of stuff about who inUkrainia
did nasty things to whom politically during and after the war.
The book was marketed as fct, and in both the book and interviews
she claimed it to be a story of her family.
She won a literary prize, not so much for the writing as for
the "courage".... And because the author was a) female and
b) not Anglo.
Several people took issue, saying that a number of "facts" were
clearly wrong and she wasn't Ukrainian anyway but Anglo. (no one
has denied her Y chromosome though)
Shit hits fan in literary establishment.
I too may have some or all "facts" wrong, as I didn't
pay a lot of attention. For example, it may have been
Serbian/yugoslav not Ukrainian and it's vaguely possible it was
not marketed as straight fact but as "autobiographical novel" but
I think the major shit was the stuff spoken in book and interview as
"true" that wasn't.
Unlike literary hoaxes that have remained known about and lauded,
it wasn't a good book *or* a good hoax.
See the Angry Penguins thing where a bunch of people fooled a very
modernist avantgarde editor of a magazine with some modern poems
supposedly written by an ex-serviceman named Ern O'Malley but had been
concocted more or less at random. The literati praised them as meaningful
and symbolic.
Reading the poems 50 years later, I can't see a lot of difference between
them and the great works of the movement they parodied (meaning they
were a good hoax) and indeed some of them are quite fun!
Dermidenko's book is unlikely to be thought much chop by anyone in future
times, probably not even as a decent hoax.
It did point out the idiocy of the literati award system though.
Zebee
Daniel Frankham
>On Mon, 04 Oct 1999 10:40:43 GMT, dan...@oztek.net.au (Daniel
>Frankham) wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 03 Oct 1999 00:38:24 GMT, Nick Caldwell wrote:
>>>No, no, and yes. As the then head of my English department said a few
>>>years back, only Helen Dimedenko could have thought postmodernism
>>>means it's ok to be a plagarist.
>>
>>Poor Helen. I thought she got a pretty raw deal. The people who were
>>against her seemed to need a very "safe", contained literature, with
>>well-defined boundaries of fictionality, starting after the copyright
>>notice and ending before the back cover. Heaven forbid the nasty fiction
>>might escape into the outside world. A curiously 20th century phenomenon
>>-- in the past other literary hoaxers continued to be popular and to be
>>read long after the "hoax" was discovered, because people had a clearer
>>idea that the book was what mattered, not trivial peripheral issues like
>>the name and life history of the author.
>
>I'd normally agree, but when you're telling a story about allegedly
>real atrocities committed by Jews in WW2 you do need a little
>authenticity. I say this in as untheorised a way as possible.
I suppose her main fault there lies in creating the impression that the
novel was a thinly disguised account of things that had actually happened
and which Helen knew about from family and other personal contacts (and
really, sophisticated fiction readers should know better than to buy into
that). I have no problem with the "idea" behind the book, since even if it
didn't happen in real life, I think that it's something that is within the
realms of possibility in human nature. As, indeed, is just about anything,
in the right circumstances. I thought the novel was fairly brave for being
prepared to present the ugliest possible side of human nature; I
interpreted a lot of the Demidenko controversy as being a case of shooting
the messenger.
>>The only wrong thing she did was that newspaper column where she copied
>>something she'd found on the internet. IMHO.
>
>She did that one a few times, though. There are lines nicked from all
>over the place in the book,
I wondered if that might be what you (and your lecturer) were referring
to. I never understood the outrage behind that. It's just bog-standard
modern lit technique, evoking or entering into dialogue with other texts
by referencing them. Some people point it out, perhaps afraid the reader
won't see how well-read they are unless the quotes are pointed out; and
some people just stick them in the text. Like the writers of The Simpsons.
A single line isn't plagiarism, IMHO. Especially when, placed in another
context than the original, it acquires a different meaning. If anything,
it's a bit of a postmodern cliche. But nobody else who does it gets called
a cheat and a plagiarist on the front pages of national newspapers :)
>and she was plagarising entire articles
>way back when she was a contributor to Semper Florat (UQ student
>magazine).
Didn't know about that. Hmmm... <reassessment>... Hmmm...
(Semper Florat? Always flowers? My Latin's a little rusty...)
>>Ooh, you mis-spelled Quatermass!
>
>Feck. Arse. Drink.
You'll be pleased to know I'm now over the nitpick thing. It was just a
phase that was going through me.
Daniel Frankham
>In rec.arts.drwho on 4 Oct 1999 19:20:27 -0700
>William December Starr <wds...@crl.com> wrote:
>>
>>Um, I have no idea who this Helen Last-name-starts-with-D is or what
>>she did. Any chance of a quick summary? (I'm sitting here trying to
>>figure out what "fiction escaping into the outside world" could
>>possibly mean, and not getting anywhere...)
>
>She wrote a book claiming to be a factual narrative of her
>Ukrainian background, dealing with a lot of hot button stuff,
>and claiming (I vaguely recall) a lot of stuff about who inUkrainia
>did nasty things to whom politically during and after the war.
I don't think she named any names, though.
>The book was marketed as fct, and in both the book and interviews
>she claimed it to be a story of her family.
This was largely what I had in mind with the "fiction escaping into
reality" thing. Her real name was Helen Darville; her novel was narrated
by a young Australian woman with Ukrainian ancestry, and she adopted that
persona while researching the book, and maintained it in interviews after
it was published. For some people there's a fine line between lying and
continuing a fiction beyond the pages of a book and into real life...
well, actually, no line at all.
A lot of people felt that a large part of the reason she won the Vogel
award was that she was "ethnic". There was a perception that the judges
were predisposed toward giving the award to young ethnic women whose
novels were thinly veiled accounts of life in their ethnic communities. In
a rather astonishing leap of cynicism, these people accepted the truth and
propriety of this, and were outraged that Helen had cheated by pretending
to be "ethnic" when she wasn't. The assumption behind this feeling was
that the content of the novel was secondary to the identity and background
of the author. Please note that I'm merely reporting fact (as I see it),
and not expressing my opinion... though ISTR an nth-generation Anglo
Aussie bloke won the Vogel the year after, no doubt after having his
family tree scrutinised by an army of genealogists. Awards are bunk :)
(The same thing happened a few years later, though it didn't receive
nearly as much press -- an Aboriginal writer named "Wanda Koolmatrie" won
an award for her autobiography, _My Own Sweet Time_, which was stripped
from her when it was found she was a white man and it was entirely
fictional. Then a year or so later a successful Aboriginal artist turned
out to be an elderly white woman, IIRC... It all says some interesting
things about the way perceptions of art and literature are inextricably
tied in with authorial identity these days, IMHO; and particularly the
role ethnicity plays in the perception of artistic merit.)
>She won a literary prize, not so much for the writing as for
>the "courage".... And because the author was a) female and
>b) not Anglo.
>
>Several people took issue, saying that a number of "facts" were
>clearly wrong and she wasn't Ukrainian anyway but Anglo. (no one
>has denied her Y chromosome though)
ISTR one letter to the editor... Well, maybe not. It's been a while :)
>Shit hits fan in literary establishment.
>
>I too may have some or all "facts" wrong, as I didn't
>pay a lot of attention. For example, it may have been
>Serbian/yugoslav not Ukrainian and it's vaguely possible it was
>not marketed as straight fact but as "autobiographical novel" but
>I think the major shit was the stuff spoken in book and interview as
>"true" that wasn't.
>
>Unlike literary hoaxes that have remained known about and lauded,
>it wasn't a good book *or* a good hoax.
It wasn't a bad book... well, not a bad book for such a young and
inexperienced person to have written. (And the Vogel award is for people
who've not published a novel before, IIRC, so in a way it's supposed to be
a kind of encouragement for promising beginners, rather than a mark of
Eternal Literary Greatness). I may be wrong -- it's years since I last
read the Vogel rules.
>See the Angry Penguins thing where a bunch of people fooled a very
>modernist avantgarde editor of a magazine with some modern poems
>supposedly written by an ex-serviceman named Ern O'Malley but had been
>concocted more or less at random. The literati praised them as meaningful
>and symbolic.
>
>Reading the poems 50 years later, I can't see a lot of difference between
>them and the great works of the movement they parodied (meaning they
>were a good hoax) and indeed some of them are quite fun!
I'll be pedantic just once more: Ern Malley.
Part of the greatness of the Malley hoax is that the hoax poems really are
great examples of the type of poetry they're supposed to be parodying. The
trouble was that the hoaxers didn't realise that a lot of the modernist
poetry they despised already incoporated an element of self-parody; so
rather than taking the piss, they were simply engaging in exactly the same
kind of activity as those they were trying to take the piss out of (and
doing it better, IMHO). The only difference was that other poets writing
that sort of thing said, "I'm a modernist poet and these are modernist
poems", while these guys said, "We hate modernism and we're just taking
the piss." And then it got into the media, which doesn't seem to have a
very good handle on the Intentional Fallacy.
The great and beautiful irony of the Malley hoax is that nothing either of
the poets involved ever wrote in their "real" personae was fit to piss on
Malley's work. A fitting punishment, I think, for what they did to Max
Harris... Malley was genuinely a far better poet than they were.
It's one of my favourite aspects of these sort of hoaxes: the hoaxers
sometimes think they're taking the piss but, in a sense, when they adopt
the persona of a different kind of writer to themselves, they're just
achieving a higher level of creativity. Because often the writer they
pretend to be is far more talented than themselves. A few other famous
hoaxers (Thomas Chatterton, a teenager who, in the late 18th century,
wrote some fake medieval poems which fooled local historians, though not
scholars) and James McPherson (who at around the same time wrote some fake
epics by a medieval Scottish poet named Ossian) also never wrote anything
else half as good as their hoaxes. I think a lot of the greatness in Great
Literature comes from writers being able to, more or less, "channel" a
narrator who is a better writer than their own real persona... Some
writers can do it at will, some can only do it when they convince
themselves that they're perpetrating a hoax.
Yes, I have a bit of a fixation on literary hoaxes. I have a folder of
newspaper cuttings and photocopies which I'll incorporate into a literary
hoax web site some day :)
>Dermidenko's book is unlikely to be thought much chop by anyone in future
>times, probably not even as a decent hoax.
I don't think it was really intended as a full-on hoax. It was just...
kind of weird behaviour :)
>It did point out the idiocy of the literati award system though.
Yeah :)
William December Starr
ze...@zip.com.au said:
> See the Angry Penguins thing where a bunch of people fooled a very
> modernist avantgarde editor of a magazine with some modern poems
> supposedly written by an ex-serviceman named Ern O'Malley but had
> been concocted more or less at random. The literati praised them as
> meaningful and symbolic.
>
> Reading the poems 50 years later, I can't see a lot of difference
> between them and the great works of the movement they parodied
> (meaning they were a good hoax) and indeed some of them are quite
> fun!
Slightly off-course: One of the great hacks in MIT history[1] was
along similar lines. There was an exhibit of contemporary art of some
sort somewhere on campus (yes, art at MIT... it happens occasionally,
usually in the form of fairly ugly sculpture). Someone sneaked in
overnight and added a "work" that consisted of a tray and place
setting from one of the school cafeterias, sans a knife. They also
added a helpful plaque, in the same format as the rest of the ones at
the exhibit, identifying the piece ("No Knife," of course) and its
(fictitious) artist.
It sat there for the duration of the exhibit, it's right to be there
along with the rest of the works of art unchallenged by anyone...
[1] From "MIT IHTFP Hack Gallery"[2] at http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/:
"The word hack at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and
'ethical' prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for
the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes
even the rest of the world!). Note that this has nothing to do
with computer (or phone) hacking (which we call 'cracking')."
[2] "IHTFP" has a lot of meanings at MIT. For some it means "I Have
Truly Found Paradise" but mostly it stands for "I Hate This Place."
Allan Bednar
100...@tartarus.uwa.edu.au>,
Phillip Pascoe <ppa...@tartarus.uwa.edu.au> wrote:
> On Sat, 2 Oct 1999, Paul Cornell wrote:
> > >A nice lecture Paul but just what point are you trying to make?
> >
> > Oh, none at all, dear. I'm just having fun!
>
>
> :-) Phil
>
>
And then could you guys look at postnatalism next.
Yes I have just invented it as a cultural movement, but that doesn't
mean I don't want to learn something about it.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Allan Bednar
> > <b.busi...@student.central.murdoch.edu.au> wrote:
> > >Not to say that their exists such a thing as a cup of tea, all
cups of tea
> > >are essentially a text, and the consumers themselves a social
construct,
> > >interpreting the said cup of tea as a cup of tea because the
dominant ruling
> > >class 'says' that its a cup of tea.
> >
> > No one, except a few slighly too credulous postgrads, would argue
that
> > social constructivism actually means that reality doesn't exist.
>
Are you guys referring mainly to ideas stemming from that Derrida-dude
or a whole raft of thinkers with whom I am not even on "That-
philosopher-owes-me-a-pint" terms? Who are the big names responsible?
Allan Bednar
> > >You should here my lecturer labour the point that I'm not made of
flesh and
> > >blood, but am infact a social construction and a text, to be read
and
> > >interpreted by others around me.
>
> Uh... why can't you be both? The meat interface isn't much use without
> some way of talking to other flesh users, and the various clusters of
> meaning and social constructivity aren't able to circulate without
> bodies... except on usenet of course. <g>
Is there no "meat" because the concept/word defines how you are looking
at reality in the first place? Where you delineate the difference
between things?
Or am I just looking at it all through rose coloured Buddist glasses?
I understand it would take too long to tell me how I'm missing it; I
just want to know if I am really REALLY missing it. Cheers.
Paul Cornell
Allan Bednar wrote in message <7tff06$lk6$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>...
>And then could you guys look at postnatalism next.
I think it's a little too soon for this newsgroup to be into postnatalism.
C. Norman
Paul 'Ozymandias' Harman wrote in message ...
It frightens me a little bit just how often this kind of Philistine
silliness is manifested in DW fans.
CN
Paul 'Ozymandias' Harman
news:FJ6np...@campus-news-reading.utoronto.ca...
> It frightens me a little bit just how often this kind of Philistine
> silliness is manifested in DW fans.
Well, I'm the kind of guy who likes to call a spade a spade, and I can't
stand that particular kind of philosophical jiggery-pokery.
I'm sure it's all very clever, those people sitting around and contemplating
their navels (metaphysical or otherwise). I just prefer to read books that
are a darn good read, and I try not to psychoanalyse the author in order to
do it.
Ozzy
C. Norman
Paul 'Ozymandias' Harman wrote in message
But you *do* realize how ridiculous it is to claim to detest
"The Arts" (whatever it is you think they are), do you not?
CN
Nicholas Smale
> >And that, your honour, is where I stopped reading, and is a perfect
> >summation of why I /so/ dislike "The Arts".
That's silly. After all, just like Berg's Violin Concerto, T S Eliot's
THE WASTELAND and the Benny Hill Show, DOCTOR WHO is a product of "The
Arts"...
--
Nick Smale <http://www.smale.demon.co.uk>
Manchester, UK
ann
Date: Mon, 04 October 1999 10:20 PM EDT
> (I'm sitting here trying to
>figure out what "fiction escaping into the outside world" could
>possibly mean, and not getting anywhere...)
Has anyone here read "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder?
{If you're reading it now, or plan to read it in the near future, skip this
message. Spoiler arriving soon}
It's a history of Western philosphy written in the form of a novel, and it has
an ending that. . . well. . . if I tell, it would be a spoiler for *that*
novel, and if I don't tell, the whole point of this reply vanishes... Oh, the
ethics, the ethics!
Oh, what the hell! This is a Doctor Who group, after all, not a Plato group!
Anyway, the novel starts out about Sophie, taking part in philosophy
correspondance course with a mysterious professor type <sound familiar?>.
[Spoiler starts here]
But it turns out half way through the book that Sophie's story is a novel
within a novel... The girl reading the novel is, in context at least, "real",
Sophie is "fiction"... "Sophie's world" is being created by the girl's father,
and after a while he starts playing games with his creation -- slipping asides
aimed directly at his audience into the text, for example, or inserting Disney
and Mother Goose characters just for fun.
The problem is, that by this time, Sophie and the professor have enough energy
to be real in their own right, albeit in a different dimension... and start to
find ways to fight back against their creator / tormentor. Toward the end of
the book, they do, indeed, "escape into the outside world" (literally -- though
a gap in a hedge, if IIRC), and struggle to make a mark on the "real" world....
Anyway, I've been thinking about that book a lot while reading through this NG,
and all the discussions about what rights an author has to fiddle with the
Whoniverse....
Nick Caldwell
<oz...@kasterborus.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>C. Norman <c.no...@utoronto.ca> wrote in message
>news:FJ6np...@campus-news-reading.utoronto.ca...
>> It frightens me a little bit just how often this kind of Philistine
>> silliness is manifested in DW fans.
>
>Well, I'm the kind of guy who likes to call a spade a spade, and I can't
>stand that particular kind of philosophical jiggery-pokery.
>
>I'm sure it's all very clever, those people sitting around and contemplating
>their navels (metaphysical or otherwise). I just prefer to read books that
>are a darn good read, and I try not to psychoanalyse the author in order to
>do it.
Non of the theories discussed have the slightest thing to do with
"psychoanalys[ing] the author". Theories of postmodernity are
concerned with the ways individuals live their lives in western late
capitalist society. This necessarily requires analysis of the
cultural sphere in which most of us do in fact live our lives - the
media sphere. Nothing, in fact, could be less metaphysical, although
the tools of enquiry sometimes are.
Nick Caldwell
<all...@gremlin-studios.com> wrote:
>In article <Pine.LNX.3.96.991004103116.12114D-
>100...@tartarus.uwa.edu.au>,
> Phillip Pascoe <ppa...@tartarus.uwa.edu.au> wrote:
>> On Sat, 2 Oct 1999, Nick Caldwell wrote:
>> > <b.busi...@student.central.murdoch.edu.au> wrote:
>> > >Not to say that their exists such a thing as a cup of tea, all
>cups of tea
>> > >are essentially a text, and the consumers themselves a social
>construct,
>> > >interpreting the said cup of tea as a cup of tea because the
>dominant ruling
>> > >class 'says' that its a cup of tea.
>> >
>> > No one, except a few slighly too credulous postgrads, would argue
>that
>> > social constructivism actually means that reality doesn't exist.
>>
>
>Are you guys referring mainly to ideas stemming from that Derrida-dude
>or a whole raft of thinkers with whom I am not even on "That-
>philosopher-owes-me-a-pint" terms? Who are the big names responsible?
Derrida, Foucault, Latour [conflating these three together should get
me expelled, but never mind now], various others on the French side of
things.
Paul 'Ozymandias' Harman
> But you *do* realize how ridiculous it is to claim to detest
> "The Arts" (whatever it is you think they are), do you not?
No, I don't...!
People pay millions of pounds for pictures of sparse tartan, or for
something that looks like a monkey's painting. Thousands upon thousands of
students every year go to university (and consequently get horribly into
debt) to study "art" subjects with almost zero prospect of getting a job out
of it at the other end, apart from going into teaching to encourage more
students to do the same....
That's what's ridiculous.
Now, as I said before, I love a darn good read or a pretty picture or a
great piece of music as much as the next man; but the pretentiousness of
"The Arts" really gets up my nose.
Ozzy
Paul 'Ozymandias' Harman
news:1dza4nl.42...@smale.demon.co.uk...
> That's silly. After all, just like Berg's Violin Concerto, T S Eliot's
> THE WASTELAND and the Benny Hill Show, DOCTOR WHO is a product of "The
> Arts"...
Okay, I hate the "poncy" arts.
Ozzy
Jonathan Blum
Paul 'Ozymandias' Harman <oz...@kasterborus.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Well, I'm the kind of guy who likes to call a spade a spade, and I can't
>stand that particular kind of philosophical jiggery-pokery.
>I'm sure it's all very clever, those people sitting around and contemplating
>their navels (metaphysical or otherwise). I just prefer to read books that
>are a darn good read, and I try not to psychoanalyse the author in order to
>do it.
I think there's a degree of reverse snobbery inherent in that attitude.
Some people -- especially talk radio hosts -- labor under the delusion
that meat and potatoes is somehow *better* than pad khing tofu or miso
soup, cause it's more "normal", more what "real" people enjoy. It's more
*honest* not to look too deeply at things, so you can look down on those
who do.
That's the same kind of attitude directed at SF fandom in general by the
outside world -- oh I'm sure it can be *fun*, but it's just weird to take
any of that spaceships-n-rayguns stuff too seriously. It's bloody
depressing to see it on the inside as well.
Regards,
Jon Blum
Paul 'Ozymandias' Harman
news:7thsgp$ept$1...@zipperii.zip.com.au...
> In article <0LIK3.363$xa4....@news.colt.net>,
> Paul 'Ozymandias' Harman <oz...@kasterborus.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >I'm sure it's all very clever, those people sitting around and
contemplating
> >their navels (metaphysical or otherwise). I just prefer to read books
that
> >are a darn good read, and I try not to psychoanalyse the author in order
to
> >do it.
>
> I think there's a degree of reverse snobbery inherent in that attitude.
> Some people -- especially talk radio hosts -- labor under the delusion
> that meat and potatoes is somehow *better* than pad khing tofu or miso
> soup, cause it's more "normal", more what "real" people enjoy. It's more
> *honest* not to look too deeply at things, so you can look down on those
> who do.
The attitude I outlined drives me round the wall. Admittedly I didn't
explain myself too well so I guess it came over as if I was slagging
everyone off who held said attitude. Hey, you can take whatever approach to
literature you like, and if doing that kind of in-depth analysis is your bag
then so be it.
What /I/ want of a story is a darn good read. You can be clever /as well as/
producing stories like that, then I'm happy. But if your storyt is /only/
that, ie it requires me to go though all of that jiggery-pokery in order to
extract any enjoyment whatsoever, then I don't like it.
And I'd like to say here that /no/ story we have had yet has done that to
me. The Scarlett Empress and The Blue Angel have got close, but then that's
Paul Magrs' bag down to a tee.
> That's the same kind of attitude directed at SF fandom in general by the
> outside world -- oh I'm sure it can be *fun*, but it's just weird to take
> any of that spaceships-n-rayguns stuff too seriously. It's bloody
> depressing to see it on the inside as well.
I can't apologise for my attitude, that's just me };*)
While I can understand the attitude you suggest, and yes I have suffered
from it, in my experience the flow of contempt always flows from those who
like "proper" fiction down to those of us who like "pulp" fiction.
Ozzy
Graham Nelson
Sorry -- I've never been to Natal.
--
Graham Nelson | gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom
Paul Cornell
Graham Nelson wrote in message ...
>Sorry -- I've never been to Natal.
So do you prefer to describe yourself as a Prenatalist or an Antinatalist?
Graham Nelson
news:1dza4nl.42...@smale.demon.co.uk...
> That's silly. After all, just like Berg's Violin Concerto, T S Eliot's
> THE WASTELAND and the Benny Hill Show, DOCTOR WHO is a product of "The
> Arts"...
T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" has a space in it, and that's at
least as important as the apostrophe in "The Daleks' Master Plan",
believe me. Which itself is about four times as important as
this thread?
As for the Benny Hill Show, the nymphs have departed, leaving no
forwarding address.
Si Jerram
> I think there's a degree of reverse snobbery inherent in that attitude.
> Some people -- especially talk radio hosts -- labor under the delusion
> that meat and potatoes is somehow *better* than pad khing tofu or miso
> soup, cause it's more "normal", more what "real" people enjoy. It's more
> *honest* not to look too deeply at things, so you can look down on those
> who do.
> That's the same kind of attitude directed at SF fandom in general by the
> outside world -- oh I'm sure it can be *fun*, but it's just weird to take
> any of that spaceships-n-rayguns stuff too seriously. It's bloody
> depressing to see it on the inside as well.
Sometimes I really disagree, with you Jon, but not today.
That's spot on.
--
Simon Jerram Email:si...@telos.clara.co.uk
I'm far more intelligent that I sound. No really.
b.businovski
>Has anyone here read "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder?
>
One of my set texts last semester. It tried too hard to be a 400 page
history of philosophy. It was rubbish, an appalling read, I think they gave
us that book as a crash course on philosophy, it should be called,
'Philosophy for the masses' (Im hearing Depeche mode for some reason). As
fiction it is pants, as a reference book, marxism explained in a few
paragraphs, that sort of thing,its ok.
ann
>fiction it is pants, as a reference book, marxism explained in a few
>paragraphs, that sort of thing,its ok.
>
Okay.
I was just responding to William December Starr's comment that he was having
trouble visualizing "fiction escaping into the real world" (I can't go back and
cut and paste his words exactly right now).
Anyway, when I read that, it just reminded me of those scenes at the end of the
novel.
As a review, though, I think you're right... it is rather awkward -- not sure
if it wants to be a horse or a duck, and is therefore not very good at being
either. It's 400 pages of "concept".
However, I think the idea of fiction being a world of another dimension, and of
thought-forms taking on a reality of their own (independant of the person<s>
who created them) to be an intriguing one.
Oh well. . .
Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had not sung
Had he not found it certain beyond dreams
That out of life's own self-delight had sprung
The abounding, glittering jet . . .
WB Yeats
Jonathan Blum
>indulging in Dada-ism? Both seem to be dome primarily for the
>purpose of pissing other people off, after all.
From what I've gathered, the actual Dada movement wasn't just about
self-aggrandizement -- trolls want to *stop* you thinking and just make
you jump at their whim, dadaists want to jar your neurons into thinking
about things you wouldn't otherwise. There's also much more of an
engagement with the world -- the Dadaists were reacting to World War I,
with millions of people being pointlessly massacred with mustard gas and
machine guns, so a lot of their artistic stunts were designed to grab you
by the necktie and shout that THE WORLD HAS GONE COMPLETELY FUCKING
INSANE, HAVEN'T YOU NOTICED???
A lot of the early Surrealist movement was an outgrowth of Dada, but where
surrealism was more interested in unearthing subconscious truths from
images which didn't make literal sense, Dadaism's attitude was that the
"truth" itself was as ridiculous as a urinal exhibited in an art museum.
But then, what do I know? I first really discovered Dada from Rupert
Booth's brilliant Protoverse episode...
Regards,
Jon Blum
Allan Bednar
s32...@student.uq.edu.au (Nick Caldwell) wrote:
> Derrida, Foucault, Latour [conflating these three together should get
> me expelled, but never mind now], various others on the French side of
> things.
>
>
Latour is entirely new to me. Cheers.
Trey Korte
>Thank god someone agrees with me in that department, I can't escape >the
>bashings I get from the various 'nists or 'ists that say 'language is used
>to enslave the masses and keep the dominant ruling class's hegemony in
>tact.'
Well if it's so evil, then they shouldn't use it now, should they?
Next time they feed you that bullshit, just say "Stop trying to enslave me!"
>I wonder what would happen if we didn't have totalitarian road rules, if >the
>individual was free to interpret red lights as whatever they wanted >them to
>mean, some interesting textual road accidents will be available for
>theoretical deconstruction.- 'This driver was a conformist who >interpreted
>red as stop, the other was a liberal feminist who broke free from the >chains
>of the patriachal rule and proceeded to step on the accelerator as a show of
>female solidarity'
Hence the frequent comments about women drivers.
>Isn't that what post-modernism is about though? Being inconsistent, the
>anything goes mentality? Or have I been taught wrongly?
The bee in my bonnet regarding post-modernism is this: There are no absolute
truths.
Well that's a pretty absolute statement isn't it? So how do we know that the
"truth" about there being no absolute truths is really true?
What it really comes down to is people don't want to be told what's right and
wrong. Or to take responsibility.
I loathe "isms" and "ists" and everything else. I sometimes wanted to study
English at school because I love reading and books but I was turned off by this
sort of nonsense.
Does all this postmodern/nihlism/modern/dada/I'msofuckingcleverism twaddle
actually enhance anyone's enjoyment of a novel or a story?
Trey
TreyK...@hotmail.com
"Express Yourself, Don't Repress Yourself"
"Absolutely *No* Regrets"
Trey Korte
a wealthy land owning family but wrote about how poor and impovershed her
family was?
Has this happened more than once?
Trey Korte
>I think there's a degree of reverse snobbery inherent in that attitude.
>Some people -- especially talk radio hosts -- labor under the delusion
>that meat and potatoes is somehow *better* than pad khing tofu or miso
>soup, cause it's more "normal", more what "real" people enjoy. It's more
>*honest* not to look too deeply at things, so you can look down on those
>who do.
I think it's really a matter of *why* are you eating Pad Khing tofu and miso
soup? Do you like the taste or are you trying to be avant garde,
non-traditional?
This is actually an excellent example. I have always liked Middle Eastern food
because my mother likes it and she has always cooked it. My friend and I would
go to a middle eastern restuarant and for her, it oftened seemed that she was
more enjoying the fact that she was eating at a middle eastern restaurant and
"expriencing another culture" (as if eating at a restaurant is experiencing
another culture) more than the food itself.
So I think that's what happens with literature and in the Who books. Something
startling different occurs and I think some people automatically like it simply
because it's different, more so than whether or not it's any good.
Trey Korte
>But you *do* realize how ridiculous it is to claim to detest
>"The Arts" (whatever it is you think they are), do you not?
I think that Paul was referring to the Arts in quotes meaning the sort of
JohnCleeseandEleanorBroninCityofDeath types that you come across, not
necessarily the arts themseleves.
I'm reminded a lot of City of Death and the messages in that episode. The
satire on the art critics with John and Eleanor, the stuff about the Mona Lisa
'Well it's a very pretty painting who cares if it has "This is a fake" written
in it?"
Daniel Gooley
>Jon Blum writes:
>
>>I think there's a degree of reverse snobbery inherent in that attitude.
>>Some people -- especially talk radio hosts -- labor under the delusion
>>that meat and potatoes is somehow *better* than pad khing tofu or miso
>>soup, cause it's more "normal", more what "real" people enjoy. It's more
>>*honest* not to look too deeply at things, so you can look down on those
>>who do.
>
>I think it's really a matter of *why* are you eating Pad Khing tofu and
miso
>soup? Do you like the taste or are you trying to be avant garde,
>non-traditional?
The way you phrase this here genuine taste vrs posturing, but your example
is slightly different. Rather than acting in a way which she thinks will
impress people, your mother seems to like to eat Middle Eastern food because
she enjoys it. To what extent that enjoyment comes from an aesthetic
appreciation of the taste and how much it is the romance of the exotic is
more or less irrelevant. Regardless of her reasons, genuine enjoyment of
the food is as good a reason as I can think of for choosing to eat it.
So I think your "why are you eating Pad King tofu and miso soup?" question
should really be: "Do you enjoy the meal, or are you posturing?" If you are
just eating tofu because that's what the in set are eating at the moment, or
conversely if you are just eating meat and potatoes because you'd feel like
a pretentious wanker eating sushi, then you are losing out on the
experience.
>So I think that's what happens with literature and in the Who books.
Something
>startling different occurs and I think some people automatically like it
simply
>because it's different, more so than whether or not it's any good.
Perhaps, but isn't this just the half-full/half-empty thing again? Some
people are going to automatically like it because it's different, some will
automatically loathe it for the same reason. "Good" is a very subjective
measure, and it's very difficult to seperate out all the little influences
about what will make us appreciate one thing and hate another. If you
genuinely like something, for whatever reasons, then that's justification
enough for doing it.
Danny
(who loves a wide variety of foods from different cultures, but doesn't care
to second-guess why that might be)
Paul 'Ozymandias' Harman
news:19991011181151...@ng-ci1.aol.com...
> I think that Paul was referring to the Arts in quotes meaning the sort of
> JohnCleeseandEleanorBroninCityofDeath types that you come across, not
> necessarily the arts themseleves.
Yup };*)
Ozzy
Daniel Frankham
>I loathe "isms" and "ists" and everything else.
Does being an anti-intellectualist fill you with self-loathing?
--
Daniel Frankham
----------------------------------------------------------------------
We love television because television brings us a world in which
television does not exist. In fact, deep in their hearts, this is what
the spuds crave most: a rich, new, participatory life.
(Barbara Ehrenreich)
treyk...@hotmail.com
dan...@oztek.net.au wrote:
> On 11 Oct 1999 21:54:31 GMT, Trey Korte wrote:
>
> >I loathe "isms" and "ists" and everything else.
>
> Does being an anti-intellectualist fill you with self-loathing?
>
> --
I'm not anti-intellectualist.
What I am anti is any sort of mindset that limits a person to one way
of thinking...isms and ists usually lead to closed minds one way or
another. Some of the most closed minded people I have known have
prided themselves on their open minds.
The only thing I specifically hate about intellectualism is that there
is a lot of posturing and snobbery within it. The sort of
intellectualism that states "If youd idn't like Interference, it must
have been because you couldn't understand it or fully appreciate it".
Trey
--
"Express Yourself, Don't Repress Yourself"--Human Nature
treyk...@hotmail.com
"Next phase, next stage, next craze, next wave"
Nick Caldwell
<all...@gremlin-studios.com> wrote:
>In article <37fd4f1...@news.uq.edu.au>,
> s32...@student.uq.edu.au (Nick Caldwell) wrote:
>
>> Derrida, Foucault, Latour [conflating these three together should get
>> me expelled, but never mind now], various others on the French side of
>> things.
>>
>>
>
>Latour is entirely new to me. Cheers.
Latour's an interesting one. He's not a postmodernist, he goes as far
as to say that modernity is a sham as well.
Daniel Frankham
>In article <380343a3...@loomi.telstra.net>,
> dan...@oztek.net.au wrote:
>> On 11 Oct 1999 21:54:31 GMT, Trey Korte wrote:
>>
>> >I loathe "isms" and "ists" and everything else.
>>
>> Does being an anti-intellectualist fill you with self-loathing?
>I'm not anti-intellectualist.
>
>What I am anti is any sort of mindset that limits a person to one way
>of thinking...isms and ists usually lead to closed minds one way or
>another. Some of the most closed minded people I have known have
>prided themselves on their open minds.
>
>The only thing I specifically hate about intellectualism is that there
>is a lot of posturing and snobbery within it. The sort of
>intellectualism that states "If youd idn't like Interference, it must
>have been because you couldn't understand it or fully appreciate it".
I didn't really mean to label you an *ist, but it seems to me that your
opinions of postmodernism (and everything else you've discussed in the
last few posts in this thread) are just as limiting as you believe these
so-called isms are. For a start, it seems that you dismiss any body of
thought which has been labelled with a name ending in the syllable "ism",
rather than for any reasons to do with the actual content of those bodies
of thought. Since nobody can really pin down a satisfactory definition of
what postmodernism is (Paul Cornell notwithstanding), it's difficult to
see how anyone can meaningfully say they agree or disagree with it... In
any case, despite the "ism" name, it's more an attempt to describe the way
the world seems to be, than an ideology.
And as for dismissing Dadaism -- the Dadaists would have been the first to
agree with you. (IIRC there's a famous quote from a Dadaist which goes
something like "To be a Dadaist means to be against Dada. Dada is
anti-Dada." Or something.)
(For what it's worth, having to study a lot of disposable lit crit helped
to turn me off literary academia in a big way... But the best lit crit
still informs the way I read.)
Steven Kitson
> Fun fact I just learned today: The Bonzo Dog (Doo Dah) Band, Neil Innes'
> comedy-music group in the days before Monty Python and the Rutles, was
> originally called the Bonzo Dog Dada Band, for reasons that seem
> startlingly obvious in hindsight.
> There's a torturous path by which to connect this fact to Who, probably
> through the fact that Innes' "How Sweet To Be An Idiot" is the theme music
> to fan video maker Rupert Booth's series "if", but I'm not sure if it's
> worth the effort...
Micheal Palin sings 'I'm the Urban Spaceman' in 'Monty Python live at the
Holywood Bowl'. Also in the Flying Circus was of course John Cleese, who
was in 'City of Death' (I think).
So the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band has a Who Number of three.
I like this game. Can we play some more?
--
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
David Brunt
>Micheal Palin sings 'I'm the Urban Spaceman' in 'Monty Python live at the
>Holywood Bowl'. Also in the Flying Circus was of course John Cleese, who
>was in 'City of Death' (I think).
>
>So the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band has a Who Number of three.
Er no. It's Innes who performs 'Spaceman' at the Bowl.........
David
Steven Kitson
Whoops. It's ages since I saw it, and he was dressed funny.
But the point stands.
Ta for pointing that out.
William December Starr
jb...@zipworld.com.au (Jonathan Blum) said:
>> And as for dismissing Dadaism -- the Dadaists would have been the
>> first to agree with you. (IIRC there's a famous quote from a
>> Dadaist which goes something like "To be a Dadaist means to be
>> against Dada. Dada is anti-Dada." Or something.) [Daniel Frankham]
>
> To translate for the Dada-impaired, that particular koan is
> basically a way of saying "*We* recognize our own ridiculousness,
> that's the whole point. Do you?"
Hmm. Did Dadaists tend to get punched in the nose a lot?
-- William December Starr <wds...@crl.com>
William December Starr
jb...@zipworld.com.au (Jonathan Blum) said:
>> Well that's a pretty absolute statement isn't it? So how do we know
>> that the "truth" about there being no absolute truths is really
>> true? [Trey Korte]
>
> You don't -- that's rather the point. But when you're questioning
> *that* "truth", you're doing exactly what those wacky postmodernists
> really want you to do, which is to question truths.
>
> If they can get you to think, they've won. The only way avoid it is
> not to think. :-)
Either that or they're a bunch of pretentious twits whom you are
giving far more credit than they deserve. Take your pick.
(Somewhere or other I read an Original Trek parody in which Kirk said
to a megalomaniacal computer something like "Everything I say is a
lie. I am lying. Now, what am I?" and stepped back triumphantly,
anticipating the computer's inevitable nervous breakdown, accompanied
by pyrotechnics. "You're an idiot if you think I'm falling for that
old chestnut," replied the computer, zapping him.)
[ *snip* ]
> Yep, just like your "realism" and "commonsenseism" do. That sort of
> meat-and-potatoes thinking gives you one perspective on a text.
> Looking at it from other perspectives can bring up other interesting
> ideas. Is there really only one "normal" way to look at a text?
> Your own point of view is no less an "ism" than anything else. Even
> if you don't think about it.
It's a continuum, of course. I really believe that some ways of
looking at a work _are_ more rational than others. For example:
> For a trivial example, it's a lot of fun to watch DS9 starting from
> the premise that Bashir and O'Brien are shagging like rabbits. All
> their ultra-blokey mateishness while Keiko's away, and dressing up
> in butch costumes for games in the holosuites, takes on a whole new
> meaning. That's a little bit of deconstructionism and resistant
> reading.
It's a nice little joke, but taking it seriously seems ridiculous.
(By the way: "resistant" to what?)
> For a more Who-oriented example -- take the bit in "Invasion of
> Time" where the Doctor turns to the camera and says "Even the sonic
> screwdriver won't get me out of that one." If you're just taking
> the episode at face value, either that line will do nothing for you,
> or else it might annoy you because breaking the fourth wall hurts
> your suspension of disbelief. But it's actually a postmodern joke,
> which draws on the viewer's knowledge of genre conventions in a
> self-aware way. If you recognize its (ahem) extra-textual
> significance, you might just get a good laugh out of it which you
> wouldn't have otherwise.
*Or* you might recognize it as a postmodern joke which draws on etc.
_and_ be annoyed at whatever I'msofuckingclever genius behind the lens
decided to include it in an otherwise perfectly good story... Never,
*ever*, conflate "I don't think that joke is funny" with "Duh, I don't
get it" or "Joke? What joke?"
Jonathan Blum
Daniel Frankham <dan...@oztek.net.au> wrote:
>And as for dismissing Dadaism -- the Dadaists would have been the first to
>agree with you. (IIRC there's a famous quote from a Dadaist which goes
>something like "To be a Dadaist means to be against Dada. Dada is
>anti-Dada." Or something.)
To translate for the Dada-impaired, that particular koan is basically a
way of saying "*We* recognize our own ridiculousness, that's the whole
point. Do you?"
Fun fact I just learned today: The Bonzo Dog (Doo Dah) Band, Neil Innes'
comedy-music group in the days before Monty Python and the Rutles, was
originally called the Bonzo Dog Dada Band, for reasons that seem
startlingly obvious in hindsight.
There's a torturous path by which to connect this fact to Who, probably
through the fact that Innes' "How Sweet To Be An Idiot" is the theme music
to fan video maker Rupert Booth's series "if", but I'm not sure if it's
worth the effort...
Regards,
Jon Blum