I will just fucking say it, then
Earlier today I tried to write a post inspired by this one, the latest on a blog I found through Andrew Sullivan.
I couldn’t do it, for three reasons.
(1) The blogger in question, whose name is Nicola Karras, is clearly bright and well read and presumably will have more fancy documents in frames hanging on her wall someday than I ever will, if she doesn’t already. (I feel safe saying this, as I have none.) That said, there is this, the closing paragraph of the post of hers to which I wanted to respond:
So what is the project of postmodern conservatism? Is it, as I think Freddie understands it, to justify conservatism in the language of postmodernity? Or is it the first steps towards overcoming?
Put aside for a moment the phrase “the language of postmodernity” and examine instead the last sentence. WHAT DOES IT MEAN? You know that thing they teach you in third grade where you restructure the question as a statement? I tried it, and the best I could come up with is:
The first steps towards overcoming is the project of postmodern conservatism.
Now, I will happily grant that I graduated from a land-grant institution with a BJ—yup, the University of Nebraska calls it a bachelor’s of journalism—and that the closest I’ve ever come to the Ivy League was sneaking into the library at Columbia to use the restroom. But I have a fairly sturdy aptitude for languages, I specialize in the English one, and back in ’94, the standardized tests put me in the 99th percentile for reading comprehension. Given all of that, I’m forced to conclude that I’m not missing something here. The problem lies with the sentence.
Am I nitpicking? What? On the Internet? Unthinkable. Seriously, though, the sentence is an important one—or rather, its placement in the post, at the end, signals that it is of import: The writer, having supplied answers to the questions that inspired the post, wants to convince us that she’s ready to move on to the new questions her answers have raised. So I think it’s a relevant nitpick. If the question is worth asking, ask it in a way that makes sense.
(2) Now let us return to “the language of postmodernity.” Honestly, I have a real problem with “postmodernity” and “postmodernism,” which words I place in scare quotes because I am not sure they are real things. Oh, I accept that they exist as conversational phenomena; certainly, people talk about postmodernism and postmodernity, some of them, I’m sure, with a genuine belief that they know what the fuck they’re saying. And yet here is what the Wikipedia—oh, hang on, don’t even start with me—entry on postmodernity says:
Postmodernity (also spelled post-modernity or the pejorative postmodern condition) is generally used to describe the economic and/or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century, replaced by post-modernity, while others would extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by Postmodernity and into the present.
Ah. And further down the page:
Postmodernity is a condition, or a state of being, or is concerned with changes to institutions and conditions (as in Giddens, 1990) - whereas postmodernism is an aesthetic, literary, political or social philosophy. In other words, postmodernism is the “cultural and intellectual phenomenon”, especially since the 1920s’ new movements in the arts, while postmodernity focuses on social and political outworkings and innovations globally, especially since the 1960s in the West.
Mmm-hmmm. And then:
Most generally, postmodernity is the state or condition of being postmodern (i.e., after or in reaction to what is modern), particularly in reference to postmodern architecture, and postmodern art in general (literature, etc., see postmodernism). In philosophy and critical theory, postmodernity more specifically refers to the state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity.
Excuse me, I have to move to the other room—the sheer illumination is keeping my wife awake.
The entry on postmodernism is equally enlightening. And lest you think I am remiss in citing Wikipedia as my only source for a piece of writing that is not about comic book characters, here is a link to another piece on postmodernity and here is one to another piece on postmodernism. They both say more or less the same thing as the Wikipedia entries, which is that postmodernity and postmodernism are very hard to define and are perhaps best approached by thinking about modernism. That is about as thorough as my research is gonna get on account of MY BRAIN IS GOING TO EXPLODE.
Here is what I think: I think “postmodernism” is a great way to justify excessive navel-gazing, obtuse writing, obfuscated thinking, and various forms of related wankery. (But if anyone wants to convince me otherwise with a concise definition of the term, the comments are open below.)
So I couldn’t respond to the post because the other big question at the end, the one that at least functions grammatically, doesn’t mean anything. Speaking as a full-time professional copy editor, a person who is in the trenches every day, working with words as concretely as one can work with abstractions, I don’t think you can have a useful language of something if you’re not clear on what it is.
(The Wiki entry on postmodern philosophy contains this gem:
Many people criticise the extensive use of jargon by postmodernists. It is alleged that this is done only to obscure from the reader the fact that the sentence is either meaningless or trivial. Postmodernists usually respond to this accusation by insisting that their use of academic jargon is necessary to communicate their ideas, and that their critics simply do not understand their work.
Note to “postmodernists” who respond thusly: You’re half right. Your critics don’t understand your work. Because you insist on using jargon to communicate your ideas. I suspect that you do so because what you are saying is either meaningless or trivial.)
(Neal Stephenson’s passage, from his novel Cryptonomicon, on Randy the Dwarf comes to mind. I would ignore the transcriber’s thoughts that follow it, however—it is understood that Randy’s qualifications would allow him to demonstrate why the “Information Superhighway” metaphor is bad, but that for him to have done so would have made for a shitty narrative. Also, every word is indeed a metaphor.)
(3) The third and final reason I couldn’t write my post earlier today responding to Nicola Karras’s was that I read hers some more, and then I read part of the post she’d been responding to, and I realized I just did not want to get into it. I mean, I’m sure that she and Freddie and everyone involved are very fine people, and highly adept thinkers in many regards, but you read a few sentences like “She is bright enough to know that the studied rejection of the studied is a bridge to nowhere, and so her conversion narrative is rescued by the epiphanic” or “The values we want to see in the world are informed by our tradition, but because we know that, any attempt at change must be a reflective, self-conscious process,” and you remember why the Gawker tag was invented. And what a relief it was to get that BJ, even more than usual.
(But here I go posting this guy, which should shoot a trackback or two out onto the poorly named Information Superhighway, and so there is the ever-so-slight chance I’ll get into it anyway, even though I just said I wasn’t going to. How’s that, Postmodernity? Did I just BLOW YOUR MIND?!?!?)
I would like to add that I really dig the itals in that first bit from the postmodernity entry: “…the economic and/or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity.” Thank you, Wikipedia contributor, for clearly indicating that you are an ass of momentous proportions.
Moff | 3:00 am on 11 October 2008
I have no idea what any of that meant. Which means you did a heckuva job, Moffie.
Phyllis Nefler | 10:12 am on 11 October 2008
Not to defend the thing, but I think of Post-Modernism mainly in terms of previous standards made meaningless, or absurd. Hence the sturdy pillar (uhn, so to speak) of po-mod–deconstructionism. As such it is a perfect vehicle for endless academic navel gazing.
Modernism as such was a logical extension of certain ideas, broadly considered neo-classic and empirical. Call it the ultimate triumph of form and function. In the US we might point to the pragmatist philosophy of William James, the before-your-eyes art of the early expressionist painters and the architecture of F L Wright as truly modern. Dewey, Freud, van der Rohe, and Pollock (to toss off a few names) we might consider late moderns–form, structure and narrative very much on their minds.
Post-modernism, I submit, began with Duchamp, who proposed that the idea of the artist is the true work of art. He deconstructed the Mona Lisa by drawing a mustache on a reproduction and hanging that in gallery (which was effing awesome, imho.) In philosophy, all ideas that came from James’ pragmatism were put on hold for hammer-and-tongs examinations of language itself as a symbol-creating enterprise.
In the English Dept., the New Criticism’s very conservative bent in the ’40s &’50s toward examination of the text in and of itself led inexorably to the examination of variant texts and finally, thanks to the Philosophy Dept., an un-grounding of the idea of a standard text altogether.
Post-modernism, to my way of thinking, takes the tools of examination out of human hands and more or less floats them in the air in front of our eyes. There they promise a lot, and might be useful for a few things, but are in the end no real help at all.
Will Divide | 10:28 am on 11 October 2008
With that last paragraph, I realize that I probably shouldn’t say anything, since I followed a track-back over here.
But at the very least, I feel like I ought to mention that I read Nicola’s question as a reference to Nietzsche, or to someone like him.
And now I will say too much:
The shortest definition of postmodernism I have ever heard is “the suspicion of meta-narratives,” which basically means a suspicion of the idea that any one story (or concept) can account for everything.
In practical terms, this is basically impossible. But trying to be suspicious of everything (”modernity,” “capitalism,” “western philosophy”) suddenly opens up tons of options for dissertations. And to go any further than this would embroil us in the kind of confusion that we see on the wikipedia page. (I have a professor who is sort-of an ex-postmodernist, and he says the term “postmodernism” was useful in the 80s, as a category for a certain group of thinkers, but by about 1995 it was pretty much meaningless.)
And some of them are TERRIBLE writers who would rather sound profound than be clear. And when you try to discuss their ideas, it bleeds over. So I don’t blame you for not being interested in dealing with it.
Also, the guy above me might have said it better.
William Brafford | 12:32 pm on 11 October 2008
@Will: Thanks muchly. That’s what I thought—it’s about taking a step back from looking at the thing to look at how you look at the thing. And the problem (I surmise) is that it quickly becomes difficult to say anything objective about a bunch of subjective reactions. (And presumably even more difficult if the people describing those reactions are intellectuals, to whom Sturgeon’s law applies as it does to everything, and they have a vested interest in saying something “groundbreaking” or “so convoluted that you will assume it is groundbreaking.”)
@William: No, thanks for saying something! When your comment came in, I was in the middle of asking if postmodernism started out as a useful idea and devolved as time went on. Which question you answered. Serendipity. Thanks, man!
@Phyllis: Thanks, lovey! Yeah, I’m pretty drunk too.
Moff | 12:51 pm on 11 October 2008
The elements are pretty simple, actually.
Linguistics was dominated for a long time by questions that had no referent, and very little practical value. Questions of the kind “Why is the word for cow… ‘cow’?” Unanswerable stuff that did little for anyone.
The field was revolutionized as thoroughly as a field can be by Ferdinand de Saussure, who instead started talking about the difference between signs (the actual sounds of audible words, the actual squiggly lines that represent written words) and what they signify. Because there is a difference; there is the thing, and there is the way we name the thing. De Saussure’s great insight was that the human mind is structured in the same way as language, with a division between signs and signifiers. This has many strange and interesting quirks for man; for example, infants don’t dream until they begin the process of language acquisition.
Now, there are a myriad of consequences to these basic notions. That’s the field of postmodernism. Some of these consequences are incredibly momentous for how we consider the ability of consciousness (an evolved, and thus imperfect, system) to accurately reflect what is outside of the mind. Some of them are minor but interesting. To us, anyway.
It really is difficult, I’m afraid, to talk to you about it if you aren’t willing to do even a modicum of reading and research. There are great pleasures to be had here, believe it or not, but they do not come without a very small sacrifice of time and attention. The best introductory text I’ve ever read was “Reality Isn’t What It Used To Be”, by Walter Truett Andersen. Alternatively, you could try “Introducing Postmodernism.” It’s in graphic novel form, but still really cool.
Here’s the thing: I’m sure you’ve hit upon this profound idea yourself, and I don’t begrudge you sharing it. But you have to understand that anyone who is interested in these questions, has done the basic reading, and pursued the issue further has heard this kind of layman’s critique a million fucking times. Seriously. Now, that’s cool– every field has critics. What chafes is the fact that everyone who comes to this notion (postmodernism doesn’t mean anything! haha! stupid college types!) acts as if they are the first to ever introduce it. And that’s tiring. I’ve heard it before, and I wasn’t impressed the first time.
Now, if you’re actually interesting in learning and engaging, I apologize if I’m being a dick. But I’m only being a dick in response to a loooooong tradition of having people act like dicks towards me and others interested in these ideas. I don’t know what rankles people so much about this stuff that they feel compelled to mock it without even the most elementary understanding, but there it is. So I’m sorry if I’m not being fair to you. But a great deal of personal history suggests to me that you, in fact, are not being fair to us.
Freddie | 5:03 pm on 11 October 2008
[...] (Another Damned Blog) [...]
Iqra’i: Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s really going on. | 6:40 pm on 11 October 2008
@Freddie: Dude, I said I didn’t want to get into it.
OK, but really, first off, the dick thing is not a problem. I think we are both Internet-savvy enough to understand that we can be a little smart-mouthed with each other and still get along fine.
So, next, let me reassure you that I was under no illusion that what I was saying was groundbreaking, and I appreciate your frustration. I hope you can appreciate mine: While Google is not a singularly reliable source of information, usually when I use it to find out what something means, I can get a reasonably concise definition, and corroboration of that definition, in a matter of minutes (or often, seconds). I can do this for modernism, for realism, for Romanticism, for Dada, for absurdism, for optimism, and for Bushisms. As such, it strikes me as notable that I couldn’t find any clear statement of what postmodernism is—only statements of what it is not (modernism), circular descriptions, and nebulous invocations of a potpourri of ideas that fall under its rubric. (If nothing else comes of this, I hope your people update the relevant Wikipedia entries.)
I realize that we are dealing with a school of thought here, and so we’re not going to nail anything down with mathematical precision, but it still seems important to me that there be some kind of manageable definition, if only because there’s no reason to name something in the first place if we can’t say with some certainty what the name stands for. If we’re not sure what postmodernism is, what stops someone from simply labeling something “postmodern” and rationalizing it away? My general sense is that the term has been abused that way by some folks.
The comments have yielded better results than my search, although the answers so far remain (through no fault of the commenters) vague; they all summon up a general sense of something, interesting ideas that are clearly related, but that I’m having trouble condensing into a more portable definition.
In regard to your comment specifically, while I appreciate what you’re saying about de Saussure, I don’t have enough information here to be convinced that “everything that follows from his breakthrough” is an accurate or useful definition of postmodernism. At least, I’m having trouble corroborating it, and it still seems like it could be so hard to pin down as to be useless. I won’t do you the disservice of promising to read the books you mention, because my follow-through on that sort of thing sucks, but I’ll try to remember to look for them the next time I’m at B&N, and sincerely, thanks for the titles.
(And no dickness here, but in the interest of lively discourse, I did find this pretty well-sourced page that submits that babies do dream.)
Moff | 4:28 am on 11 October 2008
Yes, as I said, babies start to dream once they have begun the process of language acquisition. Language is a system of signs and signifiers, things that we want to discuss, and the way that we refer to those things that we want to discuss. Until babies become differentiated– until they recognize that they are a separate being from the world, and then from their mother– they don’t develop the sign/signifier system, which is the fundamental logical turn for being able to operate in the world. Before language, there is no unconscious, and no dreams.
Look– it really is this simple. If you want to know what postmodernism is, you’ve got to do a little reading. Of course, that’s no different from any other field, if we want to know something of actual value rather than getting a clever epigram that teaches us nothing but leaves us self-satisfied that we know what metaphysics is, or what modernism is. The fact that we as a culture think that you can actually appreciate any of those -isms in anything like an intelligent or meaningful way is, I have to tell you, disturbing to me. Frankly, you seem to be privileging a way of understanding that is exactly wrong, and I personally think it’s telling that we live in a time where people think that five minutes of farting around Google can demonstrate not only knowledge about a subject, but enough knowledge to out of hand dismiss a field and the thousands of people who are involved in that field. But then, that’s the age of the individual, I guess.
Thousands of genuinely committed and brilliant academics care about this stuff, and think it has value. That’s not dispositive of anything in particular, and of course, they could all be wrong. I’m sure, in fact, that if it wasn’t academics and professors who cared about this stuff, you wouldn’t be as interested in tearing it down. But the fact that you seem to think that you are qualified to dismiss them all because of your amazing fluency in Google is simply bullshit. And while I don’t ask you to privilege postmodernism because many academics did and do think it’s worthwhile, you could at least tamp down your own intellectual arrogance enough to make a good faith effort to understand it, or to at least ask yourself “maybe this isn’t all just a put on, maybe there really is something here, just something that takes more time to understand than I expected. It’s at least worth an actual effort to find out.” Instead, you sneered, said you weren’t interested, and moved on. Is that an at all unfair version of what this post is?
Now to answer your question, a big part of the reason that people refuse to make the kind of capsule definitions of postmodernism is postmodernism is largely concerned with the rejection of the kind of thinking that suggest Because here’s the thing: you don’t, actually, know what modernism, or Dada, or Romanticism is, at least not from reading two paragraphs a bored grad student threw up on Wikipedia. The idea that you can distill thousands of books and journal articles and whatever else into a couple of paragraphs– the idea that knowledge is inherently collapsable and compressible– is a function of a kind of classical notion of knowledge that postmodernism is resistant to. (I promise you: the definition that you may have gotten about Romanticism from Googling is incomplete, deceptive, and unhelpful. Has to be.) If you’ve abandoned the idea that there are extra-human sources of knowledge or truth, and if you don’t believe that any kind of knowledge can be acquired in a way that is permanent, non-contingent or untroubled, then you tend not to want to come up with a twelve-words-or-less definition of your views. ‘Cause you’re just participating in the problematic kind of knowledge your field is trying to move away from.
But, hey, I’m here to help. Check it out:
Postmodernism is the field of philosophical thought concerning the breakdown of traditional structures of meaning and legitimacy which result from skepticism of meta-narratives, such as religion, justice, morality, logic, or rationality.
There you go. That’s a Freddie original. You can quote that whenever the subject comes up. It doesn’t actually say anything worth knowing, but if the point is to score points and not to increase understanding– which is what I would say this post is about, and I don’t think that’s uncharitable– then, well, excelsior, man. Glad to be of service.
Freddie | 11:54 am on 11 October 2008
Not to be annoying, but if I understand Freddie correctly then Post Modernism is the end point of a logical extension of pragmatic studies in linguistics and philosophy, to a point where the utilities of logic and pragmatism, as vehicles of narrative/enquiry, are regarded as so subjective as to be, at best, provisional (i.e. meaningless.)
If all is language, and language is tautology, then our universe is nothing more than a self-referent language bag? I guess I can live with that, but my feeling is that it gives the universe a homogenity I don’t think it deserves.
Will Divide | 2:54 pm on 11 October 2008
If everyone were as well-read as Freddie, the term “postmodernism” wouldn’t be at all problematic. Because Freddie knows what he is talking about, at least more than I do.
On the other hand, there are plenty of people who think they understand postmodernism but misapply it. As a Christian and a sometime evangelical, I’ve had to sit through many discussions of what a “postmodern Church” would look like. Now that I think about it, this sort of enthusiastic misunderstanding-on-the-fringes happens in pretty much any intellectual movement, but postmodernism’s built-in suspicions make it even harder to say “what it is.”
I feel safest using the word as a designation for a group of important (I didn’t emphasize this enough in my earlier post) and interesting thinkers—Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, and many others that Freddie could tell you about—and for some of the immediate consequences of their ideas, but I don’t like to go much further than that. I’m on the journey myself.
By the way, I remembered that “incredulity towards metanarratives” actually comes from Jean-Francoise Lyotard.
William Brafford | 4:57 pm on 11 October 2008
@Freddie: You’re accusing me of intellectual arrogance, but I don’t see anywhere that I said I was qualified to dismiss anyone’s work. I just noted that I couldn’t find a capsule definition of postmodernism, that it was exceptional in that sense, and that that seemed problematic to me. Since I do still subscribe to the kind of classical thinking that says capsule definitions have some value—if I didn’t, we wouldn’t be having this discussion—it seemed like a fair point to raise. (I would also submit that I am, in fact, making a good-faith effort to understand postmodernism. Here I am, talking with you about it. I’m skeptical, sure, and unwilling to accept at first blush that you, some dude I encountered electronically a couple of days ago, know what you’re talking about—but that’s not arrogant; that’s the appropriate response. And I’ll grant that I did sneer, albeit with my tongue in my cheek, but it is evident that I have not moved on.)
You have said twice that this is all very simple, but to bite Nicola’s reference from yesterday, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” At best, you’re saying that it’s a function of postmodernism not to want to discuss postmodernism in the manner most people still discuss things. But maybe you’re being wry.
Your note about academics and professors is kinda silly, in that it’s tautological. You’ll just have to take my word on it that if plumbers were advancing the same arguments, I’d be just as skeptical.
Now, some points I’m confused on:
1) Capsule definitions have no “actual value,” but some (“a little”) reading does? That’s pretty arbitrary. Or is your concern with capsule definitions just that most people think they’re the end all, be all, and accept them uncritically? I mean, obviously, a capsule definition is going to be incomplete and even deceptive. But unhelpful? Absolutely? Unable to offer even a jot of usefulness? Maybe you really think so and can elaborate, but if your concern is just that people tend to abuse capsule definitions, I think the problem actually lies with the people. And should this discussion continue, you may rest assured that I don’t think any knowledge is permanent, noncontingent, or untroubled, either.
2) I realize that you have disavowed the usefulness of your own capsule definition of postmodernism, but I’m going to ask a question about it anyway (and, I guess, I think it’s quite useful in the sense that it’s a springboard for further inquiry): How is it different from your most basic Socrates—“I know that I know nothing,” I mean—taken as far as it can go?
3) Are you just trying to say that postmodernism is kinda like poetry, in that it eludes attempts to capture it in simple prose parameters, but that if you immerse yourself in it and practice it, understanding gradually dawns?
Finally, I’m sorry—the pretty well-sourced piece I linked to submits that babies dream while they’re still gestating. I should have clarified that, and blame my sloppiness on it having been 4:30 in the morning.
Moff | 6:21 pm on 11 October 2008
@Will: I could live with that, too, but shit, only as a last resort.
@William: Well, that’s what I was wondering—if it was just a label for a sort of loose collection of thinkers from the last century who dealt with similar ideas. But I do like the passage on your blog, too.
Moff | 6:36 pm on 11 October 2008
[...] have been pretty busy over in the comments on the the postmodernism tirade, but I want to take a free moment to recognize the post in question for being my first ever to [...]
Another Damned Blog » Celebration! | scribblescribblescribble.com | 6:59 pm on 11 October 2008
I am not going to address these other comments because, generally speaking, I don’t care what anyone EXCEPT ME has to say about anything.
A preface, I’m coming at the idea of “postmodernism” almost entirely from its involvement in theatrical literature in the twentieth century, so that’s a reason to completely ignore this.
But. Postmodernism is properly understood not as a philosophical or literary tradition, but as an event. Postmodernism occurred, and as a result the entire history of warring literary traditions was shown to be meaningless. All of the content of all traditions was revealed as equally meaningful–from a philosophical standpoint–and equally irrelevant, as we could now analyze the nature of “tradition” itself.
This isn’t the first time it’s happened, and that fact is the reason why “Postmodernism” is relatively useless nowadays. Socrates, indeed, did exactly the same thing in ancient Greece, and the consequence was a philosophical obliteration of traditional modes of inquiry.
For about a generation. Then, confronted by the practical limitations of a philosophical worldview in which nothing means anything and it’s impossible to actually KNOW, Plato and Aristotle and all the rest went ahead and re-invented traditional modes of inquiry.
We’re in the same place right now. Postmodernism dropped on our literary and ontological modes like an atom bomb and blew them all to shit, but it doesn’t offer an answer to the question, “Now what?”
So, we have to reinvent. Ideally, we’ll walk this fine, paradoxical line between creating traditional structures and simultaneously recognizing their irrelevance as anything other than necessary psychological tools. But probably not–this has been going on for a while.
Anyway, that’s what makes the statement, “justify the Conservativism in the language of Postmodernity” basically meaningless–the entire point of postmodern language is that nothing CAN be justified with it–but the intent behind the desire relevant: in a world in which postmodernism has occurred, every tradition is unjustified and meaningless, and so it takes an act of will to make something meaningful out of it.
braak | 1:13 pm on 11 October 2008
I generally try to avoid the mummer’s game of defining postmodernism, but I’ll make a couple brief points and then send you to the experts.
First, postmodernism is used in very different academic fields and contexts, so it is reasonable to expect that it will refer to different things when abstracted into a general vague category.
Second, the term, “postmodernism” is very recent, deriving from Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition in 1979. So it should not be surprising that there is a lot of confusion and conflict surrounding its meaning. In fact, the really surprising thing is that it filters down into general vocabulary so quickly.
Finally, wikipedia is helpful sometimes, but if you want an authoritative source in philosophy, the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is much better. It is a professional encyclopedia that is written by experts on the topic for professional philosophers and well-read amateurs. The article on Postmodernism gives a brief history of the idea, a background on some of the precursors, and discusses some of the core ideas. However, note that this article is only relevant to philosophical postmodernism.
Sabina's Hat | 5:48 pm on 11 October 2008
@braak & @Sabina’s Hat: Thanks much for the thoughtful responses and links. I don’t have more to say than that, but that’s simply a function of still having to get a lot done before bedtime (but wanting to acknowledge the time you took in a timely manner).
Thanks, really, to everyone who’s commented here. In case anyone is wondering, here is what I think now: I think “postmodernism” is a great way to justify excessive navel-gazing, obtuse writing, obfuscated thinking, and various forms of related wankery for some people (and no, that is not a dig at you, Freddie, or anyone else here), but you can say that about many things (including blogging), and it is evident that many other people take postmodernism quite seriously and, as best I can tell, their reasons for doing so have merit. I’m genuinely grateful for the inkling more understanding I’ve garnered, and I’m sorry if the rude, shouty impetus to it all was too intense for anybody. (I’ll probably do it again, though.)
Moff | 11:41 pm on 11 October 2008
[...] KIDDING. For anyone who was following this post and the comments it generated and is interested, there’s a little more here, after the thought-provoking take on [...]
Another Damned Blog » Awesome, we disproved postmodernism | scribblescribblescribble.com | 11:52 pm on 11 October 2008
Babies don’t dream until they begin to acquire language? Such a ridiculous statement is an indictment upon either the intellect or the worldview of the speaker.
Heck, dogs dream. And they know themselves from other dogs. It doesn’t take symbols and referents to figure out one’s relationship to the world.
It sounds like some philosopher or non-experimental psychologist just pulled that story out of his ass and a bunch of credulous folks have been repeating it.
one-off, won't be back for replies, sorry | 12:40 pm on 11 October 2008
[...] excitement here over postmodernism has faded, and this blog’s Sitemeter statistics are on their way back to the level we found [...]
Another Damned Blog » Aha! Postmodernism defined (maybe) | scribblescribblescribble.com | 1:15 pm on 11 October 2008