I think it was klaus k who once suggested on this blog that we should completely eschew the word “postmodernism”, so vacuous and meaningless has it become. That seems a proposal worth reviving when you read an astonishing take on the ABC’s decision to reallocate resources away from specialist Radio National programs, particularly the Religion Report.
The questions facing mankind are, essentially, the same as they have always been: the age-old questions about what is good, true and beautiful. How do we identify those characteristics in our own and others’ behaviour? How do we achieve them in our lives?
Inevitably, we will never answer them validly if – confusing the medium with the message, to put it in Marshall McLuhan’s discredited formula – we confuse the garments for the person, the cover for the book.
Apparently, the ABC’s remit is to pose (or answer?) eternal questions, and any management decision about Radio National demonstrates “relativism” and that “they hate religion”.
I’m actually not a huge fan of Stephen Crittenden’s, but there can be no doubt that discussing programming decisions in this fashion is, well, just demented. The ABC’s decision making is driven by twin (and overlapping) logics – the decline in funding for content created inhouse by specialists, and an attempt to be a leader in interactive content. It has nothing much to do with “relativism” and “postmodernism” except in the fevered imaginings of crazed columnists. There are legitimate questions to ask about all this – but the culture wars frame makes it literally impossible to debate them sensibly. A lot is changing in public broadcasting in this country, and we really haven’t begun to discuss it because the overhang of the culture wars mindset seems to persist. Probably this sort of craziness is best ignored, and its hyperbolic nature itself a sign that its time is past, but it’s worth noting if only to call for a much better informed and contemporary discussion on public broadcasting.
It truly was one of the nuttier pieces I read yesterday. Though he might not realise it it’s rather simple, media is changing and we have to adapt to new realities, there’s no agenda about it other than that.
You can do more online than you can with a time specific radio show, extended interviews, video, resource text and links all which serve to make the original content richer and deeper for the casual eyes and ear balls who may decide to dig deeper.
The way I read it is that he’s just an analog man in a digital world and he’s not about making the transition. I guess we’ll have to leave guys like him behind.
You remember the 1950s? Black and white telly (after 1956), two radio stations in each metro area, community hymn-singing every Sunday evening, no criticism of any esteemed institution, especially the RSL, and definitely nothing controversial like Bill Peach’s incomparable “This Day Tonight”.
Shorter RWDB post-modernist: “J’accuse les 1960s.”
I couldn’t tell you whether it was me who said it, but I agree. ‘Postmodernity’, on the other hand, probably does speak to some of these shifts. No, scratch that – using words like that will probably just get me labelled a ‘postmodernist’.
but you have to have the content first. I’m wondering what shows actually need all of that internet backend. There are the Four Corners type of show, shows for sport and documentaries but what else?
Re Postmodernism and music some might find Squarepusher’s section in the Guardian of interest.
Another of these self-appointed ‘Your opinion is different from mine. As mine is indisputably the one everyone should accept – because mine is the moral authority – I will vilify and deride you in true Rovean manner. I will also jawbone you in dense, multi-syllable, loaded languge – and throw in a few pejoratives & dog whistles; twist a few truths – to add intellectual authority to moral’ opinionistas.
Another aging conservative ‘I am Sir Oracle. And when I ope my lips let no dog bark’ longing for ‘people who know broadcasting and its values because they were good at it (the kind, indeed, that the ABC did have in the 1950s)’; unlike current management which ’seemingly entirely unaware of demographic trends in Australia – has demeaned its audience as “over 50″‘ … although which ‘demographic trends’ aren’t specified, probably because specifying them by age, or radio audiences, or what percentage of ‘over 50s’ actually want or listen to 1950s-style programmes, or which age groups pay the taxes to keep Auntie broadcasting, might prove current management’s points.
I loved 1950s ABC (Argonauts, classical music and all) but other media & recording technology have replaced it and its programmes.
Where does TheOz find these self-opiniated fossils?
Although, with sales of the dead-tree version falling, those whose age+ opinions Carmody’s reflect must be an increasing percentage of the paper Oz’s readership (the non-conservatives, like me, have switched to the digital age & its magic machines).
Blaming these programming changes at Radio national on postmodernism is stupid and vacuous. It’s on the same level as RN’s pathetic attepts at justifying these cuts. To me it’s representative of the gradual dumbing down of Auntie that was set in train by Howard & co. Across the board the ABC is a shadow of its former self and nothing is sadder than the decline in Radio National, which I once termed the jewel in the crown of Australian Radio
I didn’t have a lot of time for Stephen Crittenden. He had an islamophobia that was always lurking not too far below the surface plus he he had some pretty outdated understandings in my area of bib studies, ancient Judaism etc. But full marks for him blowing the whistle on this deadful programming decision.
The Carmody piece was spot on except for the post modernism stuff. Not sure anyone knowns what is post and what is pre I don’t. It is just a debating point used the same way people use left wing right wing as weapons of attack.
But his central point was correct. The jargon used to justify the decision, the nonsense about new delivery platform, the concerns that many of the listeners are over 50 (is this a crime?) reveals the move as just the sort of dumbing down that modern managers love so much. He’s right about Norman Swan and Robin Williams who will not be replaced. Instead we will get shows like Quantum which is possibly the stupidest show on television. The same with the collectors show on Friday night. It’s bogan central. That it seems is what the ABC thinks is good programming.
But Alan, don’t you see that Carmody is like the medical diagnostician who makes an expert and scientific diagnosis of someone’s disease.
Then the diagnostician announces the cure: “A virgin must be thrown into the volcano!”
If Carmody’s cure for the ABC is a return to the values of the 1950s, he owes it to his readership, the vast majority of whom have no memory at all of 1950s ABC media, to outline what a programming schedule might look and sound like.
I am quite confident that Carmody’s 1950s gambit is nothing more than a bit of provocative coat-trailing. No sensible person would assert seriously that 1950s-style programming would attract and engage an audience in the early 21st century.
“Not sure anyone knowns what is post and what is pre I don’t. It is just a debating point used the same way people use left wing right wing as weapons of attack.”
It’s critical value is close to zero because, except in rare situations, it tends to reveal nothing about the phenomenon under examination except that the author doesn’t like it, and that it in some way challenges some concept or category they hold dear. Needless to say, other words would do just as nicely to communicate this. Further to this, I tend to view the term as something of a shibboleth: anybody who does use it tends to reveal more about themselves in doing so than about whatever it is they’re commenting on.
Carmody’s piece seemed more about the weasel words of managerialism. If he’d kept to that it would have been an interesting piece. The invocation of postmodernism was simply strange.
Actually, even there, I’m not sure Shaun whether Carmody doesn’t deserve an Epic Fail:
As far as managerial-speak goes, that seems pretty innocuous. In fact, it seems to me at least like reasonably clear prose.
Well, we know what certain commenters would say about your judgement there Mark
But yes, it does seem innocuous. From what you’ve quoted, I’d be tempted to say the word ‘discourse’ was the trigger for the postmodernism thing.
It’s a completly dumb-arsed article. But at the same time, does anyone actually think that changes to RN’s programs really are about opening it up more to ‘contemporary intellectual discourse’? Really? What would that actually mean?
I know a fair bit about ABC television and what they’re totally on about is ratings. Talk to anyone in television and they’ll tell you their key audience is over 40’s and they’re not interested on more youth oriented programs on ABC 1, because they can’t attract that audience. Both ABC and SBS are putting their bid in for more money from the government for multi-channelling. They’ll have their work cut out for them.
Innocuous it may but it doesn’t really tell me anything. But Carmody’s riff from there is strange.
It’s about changing content at the same time as changing form. The two are understood to be intextricably linked – hence the concept of ‘content genres’. It’s a way of saying that they’re going to have to axe programs and get rid of familiar voices, not just tinker with them or how they are used, and at the same time suggesting that the world has moved on and so should we all.
I think you’re right, Shaun, it doesn’t really tell us anything except that they want to put some narrative veneer on how they represent programming decisions which are, as Fine suggests, inevitably geared towards ratings. I do wonder whether this will have positive effects on that front though. I think it would have been better to change the format, but keep some of the content – including familiar voices – in order to maintain the sense of Radio National as a particular kind of community of shared enthusiasms.
It is worse than innocuous – it is using language to disguise meaning rather than facilititate it, which is common practice these days. As fine says, what does ‘contemporary intellectual discourse’ really mean, especially when it is in opposition to ‘traditional content genres’? Why are the two mutually exclusive?
“we should completely eschew the word “postmodernism”, so vacuous and meaningless has it become”
Yes, but can’t you see that the meaning of “postmodernism” is always created by the reader, and thus that there will always be a variety of valid meanings. The success of attempts to impose a single narrative about its meaning justs reflect the hegemony of the imposer, rather than any ultimate truth. To describe it as “meaningless” is therefore to mistake the meaning of meaning.
Just joking, folks – look at nom de plume.
Well, if the contemporary intellectual discourse is post-modern, I seem, with rare exceptions, not to have noticed.
Quite frankly, I don’t know what post-modernism is. I like Shakespeare, and I like soaps, especially when they become a touch Shakespearian – the Lear-like quality of B&B at the moment is a good example.
I have read some post-modern work,(very little) and my general impression is that its incomprehensible junk. Fortunately, unless I’m reading the wrong books, history is a discipline that seems relatively untainted by it.
But it surely has absolutely nothing to do with what’s happening to RN.
As for adapting to the various forms of new visual and aural media, the ABC has been doing it for years. Remember when FM Radio first started. The ABC was one of the pioneers.Or at least, that’s how it appeared when I was writing radio plays in the mid-70s.
“It is worse than innocuous – it is using language to disguise meaning rather than facilititate it, which is common practice these days.”
I don’t think they’re trying to ‘disguise’ their meaning, but rather to moderate it’s potential effects and try to give the changes some context. The irony is that this way of writing actually seems to encourage cynicism, so they may have been better off either out and out lying, or perhaps going for the ‘dose of harsh truth’ approach.
It’s not about obfuscation, so much as trying to control how these changes will be read by framing them, and yes, using certain concepts that require some interpretive labour to give the impression of a high-minded approach. In that sense it is dishonest only to the extent that we are right in being cynical about their real motives.
The implication of ‘contemporary intellectual discourse’ is that the real conversations are taking place elsewhere than Radio National, and it wants some of it.
PeterMc @ 4 – its getting more common for tv shows in the US to have internet sites, not just about information, but interactive games/puzzles, extra information, even part of the storyline. Its part of the move away from TV being purely a passive experience to an interactive one – a convergence technologies.
wow I’m not very coherent this morning.
Katz,
If that’s what I thought Carmody was saying I would agree with you. I think he was talking about changes being made that only succeeding in dumbing down the network. I can say this because in the stream of words that have been used to justify the decision on the Religion report Media report and Sports factor no-one has said what it is they will be doing in the future. Your back to the 50s analogy is just a straw man
However, this further implies that in some way the conversations that currently occur on Radio National are in some way not “real”.
The question of what is “real” and what is not “real” is embedded in the management-speak of the ABC suits. And this is a ridiculous concept.
When managers attempt to justify their decisions on the basis of what is “real” and what is not “real”, then they are emitting nonsense on stilts.
The only honest statement in this case is to say that all conversations on Radio National are “real”. But some programs are no longer valuable, if indeed they were ever valuable.
The question of “value” is itself potentially a vexed one. However, the answer to the question of value is itself dependent to a large extent upon a critique of what is intrinsic to the programs in question, rather than extrinsic to the purported connection between the program (however poor) and the alleged “contemporary intellectual discourse in Australia and worldwide” (whatever that is).
The ABC suits need to take their anti-pomposity pills.
“But some programs are no longer valuable, if indeed they were ever valuable.”
Yes, but ‘real’ was my term, not theirs – and I meant it in the sense of ‘authentic’ ie. as being about value.
What they imply is that traditional ‘content genres’ are in some way not part of contemporary intellectual discourse. Which they self-evidently are. But as you say, it’s really about how valuable a part and the extent to which they engage with the other parts.
As I said, I think this is a mistaken approach – both rhetorically and in terms of how they’re changing programming. Much better would be to think of it in terms of growing the audience by leveraging off of the enthusiasms of the existing listeners. In other words, change the form a bit, and add to, without totally displacing, the content.
We’ve become so used to this kind of language that we barely notice it anymore – it just floats over us.
So we end up with sentences like this:
“Much better would be to think of it in terms of growing the audience by leveraging off of the enthusiasms of the existing listeners.”
Well I am perfectly happy to grow my tomatoes and a bit of basil, not to mention sundry other plants, but I have yet to grow an audience.
And “leveraging off of the enthusiasms of the existing listeners”???!!!
It’s impossible to satirise this sort of stuff.
Alan @ 7, I disagree with you that Catalyst (rather than Quantum, which stopped in 2001) or Collectors are stupid/bogan. Collectors is definitely light, but opens up interesting aspects of our history nonetheless. Catalyst is, I think, quite a reasonable magazine science program for a family to watch together, though I think they could do a lot more with their website per Chris @ 20. The Science Show is a bit more hard-core, of course. For utter stupidity, I think you have to go to the soaps: surely Home and Away is more likely to be watched by bogans than Collectors is?
None of this changes the fact that this Oz article is poorly-written and incoherent. Nor does it deal with the equity issue(conveniently forgotten by the ABC suits): not everyone has home broadband to access all that putative wonderful stuff they will deliver online.
It might be useful to put in the link here to Norman Lebrecht’s 2007
Stuart Challender Lecture, as it has applications beyond classical music that might be more relevant than the silly Oz article.
Adrian, it’s figurative language. You know, like when you say that language “floats over us”.
How about this, then, for the literal-minded: “We can increase the audience size by helping the existing audience communicate some of their enthusiasm to new listeners.”
But then the meaning has changed, as careful readers will note. I wrote ‘enthusiasms’ (plural) because Radio National listeners do not have a single thing about which they are enthusiastic.
‘Growing’ the audience is a totally innocuous use of figurative language and the meaning clear.
‘Leveraging’ (another metaphor) is being used because ‘helping communicate’ is too specific: I’m not yet sure about the means, so I chose something a little bit vaguer and more suggestive.
Klaus, I don’t want to pick on you, so I’ll say no more, but ‘growing your audience’ is a classic example of replacing a perfectly good word (expanding) with one that is normally used in a different context, and therefore becomes an unecessary annoyance to some readers.
It’s called a metaphor, adrian.
In fact, if there is a valid criticism of that sentence, it is that I used cliched metaphors and mixed them. But it was a blog comment written in about thirty seconds.
‘Growing’ in this case is incapable of conveying the distinction between ‘increasing’ and ‘expanding’, and I for one think that distinction is crucial. An increase could be purely numerical, while an expansion implies broader reach/appeal across social/political/ethnic/whatever lines.
Perhaps I didn’t think the distinction was important because what was in question was ratings? In other words, if increased ratings figures is the issue, then it doesn’t necessarily matter if the audience expanded or increased. Either would suffice. There are further assumptions at work here, I’m happy to admit.
Seriously, why is my style being singled out here? It feels like I’m under constant scrutiny, which is less than generous.
Sorry, I get a bit fired up about plain speaking. I think you’re in the unfortunate position of having used a word to actually mean something, which is very often used as vacuous window-dressing.
That’s the less-told story of the damage done by corporate-speak and ad-copy; it ruins perfectly good words by using them in place of other perfectly good words.
My apologies Klaus, it just flowed on from my previous comment, and I perhaps shouldn’t have used your style as an example.
I’ve just got a bit of a neurosis about this kind of thing, surrounded as I am by it at work. And for my sins, I used to be an English teacher.
I regret taking issue now. I think your objections are probably fair enough. I’m not an especially good writer unless I try quite hard to be.
“That’s the less-told story of the damage done by corporate-speak and ad-copy; it ruins perfectly good words by using them in place of other perfectly good words.”
Exactly FDB.
Management speak lends itself to satire through its vacuity. It avoids plain meanings because the manager is aware any change will be unwelcome in some quarters. It avoids plain phrases since it has no wish to engage with any opposing arguments. It claims to have consulted (usually a lie). It proclaims a brighter future in vague cliches. It demeans the utterer and befuddles the listener (if she can stay awake).
It uses nouns as verbs. Don Watson had a bit of a go at exposing it but his efforts weren’t as sharp as (say) Orwell on political cliches in the 1930s. ["Politics and the English Language"?] You’re right to keep your BS-detector close at hand, adrian.
Oh, bulldust, klaus! You’re a good writer.
Adrian,
Centuries ago, when I was in early secondary school, they used to call it journalese.
Does returning to the values of the fifties mean we’ll have weekly broadcasts of the Goons? If so, I’m all for it.
Ying tong iddle i po!
Thanks Ambi @ 38, but there are some definite weaknesses in my style. I think I need to do some voice work.
Anyway, back on topic: on the subject of management-speak (which not all managers speak or write, I might add), I think that it is also a sign of a competitive speech community in which creativity is felt to be important, but patience, skill and a sense of linguistic responsibility aren’t. So the linguistic ‘innovations’ tend to strike one as vacuous when apprehended outside of said community. Part of that vacuity is also to do with time: any one management-speak catachresis has a very short life, then it’s on to the next one.
… and how brightly shines a manager who does NOT write in jargon, a treasure….
‘Postmodernism’ is a perfectly valid descriptive term that might be used to discuss post-war art and architecture, or aspects of Fred Jameson’s social and critical theories, and some related scholarly concepts. I just do not see that because some ignorant twats cannot distinguish nuanced concepts and manage to apply inappropriate labels as pejoratives doesn’t mean the term loses the finesse of its actual meaning in a specialised context.
So, I refuse this refusal. Post-war hyper-capitalism exhibits postmodernity. Which is a descriptive label. Although I would say we have left or are leaving the postmodern period today, I have no hesitancy in asserting the culture of the past 50 years as dominated by postmodernism. It was, and remains, the period of western cultural development that came after modernity.*
Can we move onto structuralism and post-structuralism? I hear that gives a lot of the RWDBs the real heebeejeebees.
* yes and that actually means that the “golden age” of the 1950s belong to the post-modern period!
In my understanding, you could say that ‘postmodernism’ is the cultural logic that accompanies postmodernity (as distinct from modernity). But there are serious problems with this kind of periodisation, not least because the theories of Frederic Jameson and David Harvey and the like which frame this account don’t deal adequately with great swathes of cultural history, including the history of popular culture. Meaghan Morris’ critique of both is a good place to look, as well as her work on other theorists of ‘the postmodern’, such as Lyotard.
“I just do not see that because some ignorant twats cannot distinguish nuanced concepts and manage to apply inappropriate labels as pejoratives doesn’t mean the term loses the finesse of its actual meaning in a specialised context.”
My objection is context-specific, obviously. I have rarely encountered it used as a nuanced concept in public culture, which is why I think it should be shelved.
Klaus – well I never did say it was not an unflawed concept. Just that it’s a valid descriptive term from certain scholarly theories.
And a very adequate description for a certain architectural school.
Second, and this is my primary objection:
In other words, because some moron doesn’t know what the words mean, scholars who deal with its nuances have to stop using the term?
Shall we also ban “evolution” now because some dumb flat-earther willfully misuses the term egregiously? Shall we just keep going until we gut any specialist jargon that finds its way into the public sphere completely?
Sorry, No Sale.
In summing up: post-modern postmodernity posits postmodernism precisely and presciently of postmodernist persuasion.
Next week: Structuralists stress stroppy semioticians signifying social structures stripping strumpets sonorously slipping sideways sleepily. And other alliteration.
@PeterMC
Sure, that’s true, every show may not need to do web, but this is more about what is happening to radio, TV and print in the digital age, web can do all of that, is infinitely flexible and costs are lower.
I think you need to be in the space now and building a presence if you want to survive long term so I think the ABC decision is the right one.
Mark – There are legitimate questions to ask about all this – but the culture wars frame makes it literally impossible to debate them sensibly.
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True.
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It has nothing much to do with “relativism” and “postmodernism” except in the fevered imaginings of crazed columnists.
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False.
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Postmodernism is a multi-faceted noun. It can mean a school of architecture, a general milieu, a brand of cultural theory, a philisophical approach, a genre of British films in the late 20th century, a related movement in visual art, theatre etc.
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These don’t form a coherent whole. Part of the milieu is the absence of history for example. Yet the films of Peter Greenaway are a pastiche of 17th century obsessions providing some genealogical commentary on the present. Also, witness Derek Jarman’s Edward II: Gaveston in his leather jacket. There is history there. However, the insightful critic will link the contemporary era’s lack of history with this historical obsession. Edward II as a gay rights film. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover as an implicit assertion of the decadence of the bourgeoisie and thus capitalism.
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One of the central premises of postmodernists themselves and their opposition is the questioning of centralized, homogenous value systems. The front line in this battle is the Enlightenment presumption of the desirability of a Universal Human Civilization based on Reason. This is assumed to be benign, just and peaceful.
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It is behind all post-Enlightenment ideologies and strangely also behind the postmodern project which seeks to essentially reject a perceived hierarchy at which white men sit at the apex. It is the latest push in the urge originating with early Romantics and pushing forward in various liberal and socialist movements, toward a society in which individuality is unhindered and nothing resembling an aristocracy exists. The racial and sexual characteristics are added to the class ones as signs of heritable privilege, and thus vanquished.
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The very notion of Reason itself is challenged as a vestige of the Rule of the White Male.
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This isn’t entirely inconsistent. The Enlightenment cult of reason is a direct product of Christian culture which itself seeks to impose a universal culture on the species. Romanticism was a rebellion against the Enlightenment and this tussle defines modern culture. It is the Apollo and Dionysus of the era.
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However there’s a Yin-Yang Mandelbrot principle here. On either side of any cultural conflict between the avatars of the traditional and those of the vanguard there exists the call to reason and the rejection of same.
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This has reached a certain tipping point. We are torn between a set of values which have been marginalized, discredited and abandoned by a large portion of society in favour of the relativist hedonism embedded in liberal society. Do what you want as long as you don’t hurt others. The custodians of those values are understandably alarmed. This stems first from their convictions of the reality of (their version of) God’s law but also more fundamentally the sub-conscious understanding that society needs must have some central cultural truths to maintain coherence.
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On one side of the debate we have an increasingly hysterical reactionary assertion of a moral system that is obsolete. On the other the flat-out denial that a moral system is needed.
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And out there on the street what do we have?
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Whatever we do have postmodernism is a word that describes something real. (Many things yes but we know what we’re talking about don’t we?). Or do we? Considering the vogue for knee-jerk multiplicity, the dismissal of all objections to relativism not to mention the over-indulgence in semantic tactics I wonder if we do know or can. perhaps we can add yet another category in the dictionary entry under ‘postmodernism’; a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Actually it’s simply a form of decadence and mannerism. We’ve seen it before. And we’ll see it again. Human civilization doesn’t change that much simply because we’ve got better telescopes and iPods.
“In other words, because some moron doesn’t know what the words mean, scholars who deal with its nuances have to stop using the term?”
No, I’m talking about media and public culture. You can use whatever term you like in your conference papers. Actually, you’re free to disagree with me on the question of public culture as well.
I think Carmody’s reference to postmodernism as a ‘dogma’ indicates what the real trouble is here. Certain sorts of commentators think it’s a belief system held by those actively out to destroy the beautiful and the true. The problem with these people is that they’re all busily consulting each other to find out what postmodernism is and reinforcing each others’ ignorance instead of Googling it or buying a copy of Postmodernism for Dummies.
OK then, fair enough … well in terms of public debate in the newspaper I see it as filtering keyword. So by all means they should drop the P-bomb as often as they like, hopefully near the front of the article so I can apply the attention filter and stop reading should I have somehow strayed into their column by accident or something.
I think Pavlov’s Cat hit the nail on the head.
I feel like I’m kicking a columnist when he’s down, but it seems to me that that sentence, inelegant and somewhat managerialist as it is, is completely jargon-free. With the possible exception of ‘discourse’, there isn’t a word in it that I hadn’t learned in primary school.
Carmody’s main field is medicine. I’m fairly sure that if you challenged his use of medical jargon in any context he wouldn’t be able to see the equivalence. FWIW it’s (as someone said up-thread) ‘discourse’ and possibly also ‘genre’ that have got him going here, I think.
In many other cases as well as Carmody’s, it’s only ever other people whose professional vocabulary is just ‘jargon’.
Dr. Cat: “…instead of buying a copy of Postmodernism for Dummies.”
Now there’s an apt title if ever I heard one. I’ll have to buy it and put it on my shelf right next to Ventriloquism for Dummies.
While I take your point about jargon, PC, (and you’ve made it elegantly in the past as well), I think you’re not addressing the central premise (or the central prejudice, if you prefer). Medical jargon helps to produce medical results, which can be evaluated for their success or failure and usefulness to the patient. Medical jargon about say MRI data can be shown to yield more efficacy than, say, medical jargon about the balance of the humours, or demonic possession. But when we get to jargon about cultural theory, we cannot place our bets with the same confidence, and the end product is often simply… more jargon. Nothing wrong with that if your society is rich enough to afford it, but you can at least see where the practitioners of the measurable and the ostensibly “useful” get their prejudices from.
11 Mark Nov 20th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Anyone who uses the term “discourse” in ordinary speech is revealing themselves as a post-modernist. Especially when qualified with the adjective “privileged”.
Post-modernists prefer the fashionable to the traditional, the transgressive to the progressive, the carnival to the Canon.
So it makes perfect sense for people of that mind-set to be hostile to “The Religion Report” a program which takes a non-neurotic, non-dogmatic and mildly entertaining interest into the reality of religious expression.
Paul Burns @ 18
“Quite frankly, I don’t know what post-modernism is. I like Shakespeare, and I like soaps, especially when they become a touch Shakespearian – the Lear-like quality of B&B at the moment is a good example. I have read some post-modern work,(very little) and my general impression is that its incomprehensible junk.”
OMG, another example of the reified stupidity defensive attack:
1) I don’t understand it (or have not even read it)
2) I am smart and understand the things I understand to be smart
3) Therefore if I don’t understand it, then it must be nonsense (ala ‘junk’)
Can I trademark this or something? because I first noted it back during the Lucy-Mickler wars and since then some conservative seems to attempt the ‘reified stupidity’ rhetorical move every single time we talk about pomo on this blog.
Passing judgement on something without understanding it is strictly post-Kantian, and possibly the most pomo part of this thread so far.
5.30am, Fridays, Radio National. Neddie and all of his friends.
You’ll have to get up earlier to travel back to the Fifties, Jane.
“But when we get to jargon about cultural theory, we cannot place our bets with the same confidence, and the end product is often simply… more jargon.”
Indeed there are more risks, jpz, but there is also less at stake.
Some of the problems seen here spring from similar conditions as management-speak, in the sense that we have a fairly insular speech community that at different times prizes certain forms of linguistic creativity. Add to this that a lot of theoretical ‘jargon’ is necessary as intellectual shorthand – a way of referring concisely to earlier debates without having to rehearse them. Much academic writing is built on assumptions about who is reading it and what they know already. The need to lean on theoretical terms is exacerbated by the pressure for productivity and the narrowness of the audience being spoken to.
Having said this, I would also stress that I don’t believe that academics should have to produce belles lettres, or for that matter speak to audiences outside of their specialised field, even when the public benefits of their inquiry are less than obvious. In Australia at least, there are processes in place through which academics have to articulate the importance of their work in order to secure research funding. To make further public accountability an imperative would curtail academic freedom by evaporating the time to actually do research. Perhaps if there were more weight given to writing for non-academic audiences by the academies themselves, then we would find it more common for academics to cultivate better public writing.
‘Genre’ is barely jargon and as far as I can see is used entirely appropriately in the quoted sentence.
‘Contemporary intellectual discourse’ has a very faint whiff of jargon about it, but the problem for Carmody is not that the meaning is unclear, it is that he doesn’t like the meaning. He knows perfectly well what is meant by the phrase, but would prefer to ignore “contemporary intellectual discourse” in order to focus on the scholarship of past eras.
glen@55,
Post modernist theory simply doesn’t apply to my field of study, so far as I can see. What I have read of both the theory and its application indicates the post-modernists produce so much babble simply don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.At least most other philosophers, eg Marx, Sartre, Plato, and many others, have the decency to write in understandable language instead of being so far up their own fundamentals not even they know what they’re talking about to each other.
What a waste of intellectual effort.
klaus k — Thanks for your elegant summation of those issues. I’m aware of most of what you set forth, but you’ve put it all together far better than I could. To take the problem forward a step…
A word that enjoys as much polemical popularity as “jargon” is going to become inherently unstable, subject as it is to coarse manipulations. In a better world, we’d make a distinction between simple “terms of art” (viz. a professional’s specialized vocabulary, as PC intends) and “jargon” as the attempt to wilfully obstruct clarity and understanding, either to conceal inherent ignorance or intellectual weakness, or else to further an interest, such as to preserve a guild secret or defend a political position. It is, I think, these last charges that the practitioners of cultural theory are especially vulnerable to, given how difficult it can be to quantify or subject a “theory” proposition to a falsification test. This leaves the discipline open to the danger of devolution into priestcraft, in the same way that law, political ideology, and of cpurse theology itself are open to the same danger (these disciplines being based not on externally measurable standards, but upon a consensual acceptance of certain conceptual proposirions). But this is why the defenders of po-mo or cultural theory should resist the temptation to circle their wagons: mistrust of priestcraft has been an honorable tradition in Anglo-Saxon culture for the past few centuries, a trait responsible for much of its vigor and rude health. The “reification of stupidity” line of attack proposed by glen above, lends itself to a mirror countercharge all too easily.
Best I think to separate the word “jargon” and accept that it is polemical and pejorative (and to evaluate the worth of the given polemic), and give tecnical vocabulary its due as a value-neutral marker, whether it’s the valid vocabulary of say engineering, or the benighted (though no less erudite for all that) terminology of Ptolemy’s epicycles.
“In a better world, we’d make a distinction between simple “terms of art” (viz. a professional’s specialized vocabulary, as PC intends) and “jargon” as the attempt to wilfully obstruct clarity and understanding, either to conceal inherent ignorance or intellectual weakness, or else to further an interest, such as to preserve a guild secret or defend a political position. It is, I think, these last charges that the practitioners of cultural theory are especially vulnerable to, given how difficult it can be to quantify or subject a “theory” proposition to a falsification test.”
I see theory as a set of conceptual tools, and while cultural theory is not readily falsifiable, it can be found wanting, be challenged, revised or rejected in intellectually rigorous ways. These might (and do) include interdisciplinary interventions and empirical challenges. I mentioned Meaghan Morris earlier on this thread, and for me at least she is a great tester of theoretical propositions of this kind, and has found many wanting.
In my experience, concealing intellectual weakness is a more likely motivation (often unconscious) for overly ‘jargonistic’ uses, rather than furthering interests in the senses you’re referring to (unless we extend that to mean ‘furthering professional interests by concealing intellectual weakness’). Unfortunately concealing intellectual weakness is on something of a continuum with other forms of intellectual shorthand, and the distinction between ‘jargon’ and ‘terms of art’ is difficult to sustain in any absolute sense.
To deal with many of these problems, I advocate more resources being made available for long-term and large-scale historical and empirical humanities projects. Unfortunately, in Australia at least, the material conditions under which scholars operate often prevent them conducting these kinds of projects.
In general, and pace Paul Burns, I think this is an excellent argument. Sadly, whenever I make the same argument about spelling, punctuation and grammar, I get called a Nazi.
And indeed, the most pomo part of our current culture! And particularly newspaper columns which attack pomo.
I agree with Klaus btw – in response to Tyro’s comments – what I’m suggesting is the problematic nature of using pomo in public conversations and polemics, not arguing it has no utility in academic discussions or in fields such as art, architecture, etc. Having said that, it’s often used very sloppily and imprecisely in those domains too!
This points to the nub of post-modernism.
There are potentially an infinite number of “externally measurable standards” that have, or hypothetically can be proposed and even enforced by all sorts of disciplines, movements and creeds.
And indeed, within the mini-universes of discourse created by either tacit or explicit acceptance of a number of postulates, there are “measurable standards”. However, by definition, if these standards accept as given certain postulates, then, again by definition, these “measurable standards” cannot be “externally measuable standards”. On the contrary, they can only be “internally measurable standards”.
Godel said it: an axiomatic theory can either be consistent or complete.
Thus the ultimate non-existence of “externally measurable standards”, the non-existence of a master text, or reliable perception of an objective reality (note I am not denying the existence of objective reality, merely our ability to perceive it and to understand it) makes post modernism the only intellectually defensible means of understanding our world. This understanding will always be partial and contingent.
Note also that much nonsense has been spouted in defence of post-modernism. Post modernism is robust enough not to need idiots to defend it.
shorter Katz: everywhere there are idiots
Katz — the initial point of comparison was between medical vocabulary and the vocabulary of cultural criticism.
Here’s a statement:
“Good news, your throat culture came back from the lab, and we’ve ruled out strep infection.”
The statement can be reasonably evaluated by a competent practitioner.
Another statement:
“Bad news, your culture is bourgeois and patriarchal, and must undergo structural change so that ’social justice’ can prevail.”
There is no lab. There is no competent practitioner. Prospects for reasonable evaluation may vary, depending on the politics in your local faculty lounge.
I confess I made up this whole comment just so I could use that moniker.
– j_p_z, who likes Meddle better than Atom Heart Mother anyway…
[sighs]so thinking post-modernism is a waste of time makes me dumb and old-fashioned?
Oh, well.
I wouldn’t say that, Paul, but while there was a lot of froth associated with postmodernism in academia, it’s left quite an important legacy in terms of epistemology whose dimensions are only now being properly appreciated now that the wave has receded. Incidentally, there have been vigorous debates in the philosophy of history and historiography about postmodernism. If you’re interested, I could point you to some books.
Paul, if I may be permitted to mediate on this, I think glen is saying that your argument against postmodernism is an example of ‘reified stupidity’, not that you are.
Having read a fair bit of what you’ve said in comments on this blog, I think it’d be more accurate to say that you haven’t been convinced of the need to familiarise yourself with postmodern theories. And that you’d rather get on with your own research – which is clearly important, and has its own material to grapple with – unless someone can convince you otherwise. Would I be wrong?
Mark, I would be delighted if you can recommend me some reading on post-modernism and the philosophy and practice of history. The theory of the latter a minor obsession of mine. My main influences have been Collingwood (on the historical imagination) and Croce (on subjectivity and objectivity in history.)And of course, Marx. (My Marxist mates think I’m medeningly empiricist, to the point that I even end up defending the Right if the evidence leads that way. Fortunately, I stop at c. 1949.)
klaus k, you bet. I haven’t even yet managed to completely famuiliarize myself with all the schools of American history dealing with the revolutionary period. I’m pretty good on very contemporary writing – the Left, and I suppose what one would call post Progressives – Maier, Wood,etc, and the various more modern biographers, Ellis and Ferling and to a lesser extent Mccullough. and, coming up, i hope of course, the Imperialists, notably Gipson, who I yet have to get into soon. And of course, there’s the debate about contemporaneous histories, which I won’t even try to outline here.
Gary Nash, on the left, so to speak, has some work on the theory and practice of history, mainly protesting against the attacks of the right on radical American historians who deal with the colonial and revolutionary period.I haven’t read it yet, but he summarises his arguments in the intro. to his The Unknown American Revolution. It is attractive.
Oh, the Imperialists aren’t modern. they’re conteporaneous (I think) with the Progressives – Beard, I think, and definitely Schlesinger and Boorstin, etc, etc.
I’d be interested in finding out what you modern historians think of the topic, so please supply the references Mark! As ancient historians our “archive” is of a considerably different nature to you moderns, and occupies most of our debate about historiography, and so the dimensions of our problem are often different … but I suspect many points of similarity.
I just also wanted to point out that the label “postmodernism” is often used as a rubric (often lazily and especially by newspaper commentators) for a entire range of more specific concepts like structuralism and postcolonialism, as well as a whole bunch of literary critique (reading the the supermarket as a ‘text’).
I find this notion of knowledge-as-fixed-as-the-heavens a tiring concept. Knowledge – the same knowledge – can be reconfigured over time and it often is. In my own field, all you need do is read any pre-war work of scholarship in classics and you might find a terribly unfunny, and un-self-aware, set of cultural projections, you known, from an Edwardian perspective. Even Syme’s great work ‘The Roman Revolution’ with it’s modern background of the rise of European fascism is not immune! Fancy that, someone one living in the shadow of 1930s Hitler might conceptualise Caesar as an ancient power-usurping fascistic populist!
Modern scholarship can easily re-read the same texts in reference to some tiny extra amount of material evidence and come up with a completely different interpretation. And you know what, concepts from “postmodernism” have helped enormously. Who’d have though that Tacitus could write from a position of power and privilege and that his “historiography” might reflect his biases as a member of the senatorial order? Practically no-one before the war!
Aaagghhh! 5.30am on the electric type radio! Well I can see there’ll be no more curried eggs for me.
Mmmm interesting.
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Let’s just pretend for a minute that perhaps the notion that postmodernism is an ideology set on challenging truth, beauty, justice and other such sublime norms is valid. Maybe.
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To consider this one must hear from the opposition yes? After all, we’re democratic people are we not? We don’t treat those different as inherently nefarious do we? We discuss, debate and compromise.
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Or if we can’t we rely on the force of numbers
Hey, we were sort of postmodern back in our day, in ancient Alexandria. Kinda. Sorta. If you squint a little, and get Catullus to stand in front for the group photo.
Hey, I was sort of postmodern, too! Just ask Aristophanes. He got all over my case for it in The Birds, or was it The Frogs. I can never keep his damn stuff straight. At least in my plays, when somebody got killed, you tended to really remember it.
Your point being?
Believe it or not, a post-modernist could endorse your sentiments about both of those statements.
Like the bourgeois gentilehomme, you are talking post-modern without knowing it.
Moreover, you will notice (note the tense) that your statement 1 speaks about the past, whereas your statement 2 speaks about the future. “Bourgeois and patriachal” are current conditions that can be measured, even if inexactly. Your statement about the future condition of “social justice” is entirely hypothetical. Only a very idiotic kind of post-modernist cannot tell the difference between statements about the present and statements about the future.
Let’s put the boot on the other foot:
“Good news, your throat culture came back from the lab, you do have throat cancer, but I can say with absolute assurance, given the pace of medical advances, that we will find a cure before your condition becomes terminal.”
Medical advances do happen and they are measurable, but it would be a very foolish person who either makes or accepts that assurance based on the known fcts.
In the final weeks of his presidency Bill Clinton gave a speech viz foreign policy at some midwestern University. He said that he found the concept of tolerance disconcerting because it inferred “that there’s a dominant culture putting up with a subordinate one.”
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Somehow I don’t think the civilians in Baghdad and Belgrade think Bubba was toleratin’ ‘em much.
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Still that’s the meat of what critics of postmodernism think an ideology. The best description of the historical process underpinning this ‘crisis of values’, as the Cultural Right see it, is this:
American Empire
pp 81-2
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The extent to which this is accurate is immediately debatable. Were Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, in their scruffy baggy English schoolboy attire c. 1956, aware that, in sharing an enthusiasm for Chess Studios, Chicago – they were initiating in a Cultural Revolution? Of course not. But still the notion that the Rolling Stones were at the very least emblemic of some profound changes in social mores occurring meantime is a well-worn axiom.
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The opposition between the inalienable rights of the individual and the assertion of the importance of diversity and context will be something objected to here. But is it entirely spurious? What evidence shall we examine?
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The shift from the sovereign individual to the sociological mode is hardly postmodern however, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of historians who:
This was more than ten years before The Communist Manifesto. Written in a country that had no serious socialist movement. Like many aspects of ‘postmodernism’ the move toward sociological history is part of a longer, more subterranean, trend that proceeds from the Enlightenment and Romanticism. What were Jagger and Richards if not dandies? Their names bounce of each other and define an era and an ethos much like Byron and Shelley. .
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There is of course a reaction to the counterculture and we see it in the radical affirmation of literalist religion which seeks to roll back the Enlightenment with its own kind of Romanticism. These are finally becoming a concern to the rational Right who see it probably, and if so rightly, as a phenomena of postmodernism. A cultural zone where the rules and the reality are products of your personal creation. Insofar as you can afford to do that.
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Gertrude Himmelfard argues postmodernism:
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On Looking Into The Abyss
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???????????????????????????????????????????
BTW I’m qualified. I did a subject on Postmodernism once. And I got a ‘B’ – Mexican-American don’t just get into gang fights, they like flowers and romance and girls named Debbie too…
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. As Hayden White said in 1978:
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Oh damn!! Sorry. It’s my attention deficiency and Hollywood colonization.
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Anyway: Postmodernism H3LH2 or some shit like dat. Four lecturers all insisting that postmodernism was something completely different and that the other three didn’t know what they were talking about. The most vital bit of information necessary to pass the course was who was gonna mark your paper. (please not Dieter)
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The hip avant-gardist said that whereas modernism was about revolting against Western values postmodernism was about stamping all the broken bits of it into the ground.
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Then there was Wayne Hudson.
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He seemed to think maybe there was no such thing. What postmodernism? Post-Modernism? Post-modernism. Postmodernism, post? I mean they can’t even agree how to spell the damn thing right? We know there’s a garden post. But a Modern post? And so what? Sure McDonald’s is tacky and sells junk food but it’s a place to take the kids and they shut-up for ten minutes. Sorta.
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Anyway as Foucault told someone fully useless once “theory does not express, translate or serve practice: it is practice”.
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Yeah, it’s the practice of serving practice via speculation and analysis you great slaphead’d Leather Queen. Oh? I see. You wanna do the theory without anything to practice on. Oh?
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Well good luck finding someone to fund that.
Well Hayden get a job. C’arn Hayden haven’t you noticed the cultural cringe in Europe ya Seppho barbarian you. The English always cringe to the Frogs the Frogs cringe to the Germans who’re all desperate to be Greek. Funnily ’nuff it’s the English who’re most Greek it’s a gay thing.
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Anyway Postmodernism isn’t attacking the Western Tradition, it is the Western Tradition: Import things from East of here.. And get ‘em totally wrong.
I’ll have what he’s having.
even if what he’s having, is having you on?
Adrien’s rhetoric is always easily decodable, Ambi, but I do envy him his manic unsquelchability.
I’m not saying it’s a good thing, mind. I’m saying I envy it.
unsquelchability – bravo to you both, adrien and pavlov’s
Adrien wrote:
I hate to break into your reverie, but the glimmer twins were bloody products Adrien. Saleable goods. The so-called counter cultural revolution achieved nothing except putting a price tag on social revolution, thereby rendering it void.
In a modest tome centred on various persons hailing mostly from Monash in the ’90s a small collection of essays was published during the years of the Keating gov. This government precipitated the Culture War here, I believe. It was entitled Multiculturalism, Difference and Postmodernism and declared in its introduction:
Clark et al eds, 1993
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Bouncing off the white male icon of Australianness – John Simpson the authors outline what they see as the multicultural project:
Well that’s not a bad thing is it? After all we can still have John Simpson carting the wounded as our hero it’s just maybe not all the heroes are white boys. Or white boys like that. Different boys? The difference is that what is called the privileging of the white (straight) male is now over.
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Still even from among supporters of the project anger seems to ooze. Consider this challenge to the privilege of this hegemony as is expressed in Art and Literature, the Canon:
Giselda Pollock
Differencing the Canon
1999
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This is detached academic prose. However on the back page a melange of graffiti from various readers ensues. A supportive voice declares:
Yay team. But it fractures, someone else writes:
Woah! That’s a bit harsh innit? But someone else concurs:
Well said??! Not the woman who wants Griselda to die mind (assuming s/he is a woman) but Griselda. Griselda who writes such ‘angry’ sentences as:
To the barricades. Griselda’s lambasting the precious Canon and resisting internalized sexism, racism (homophobia?).
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In response to the assertion that Griselda is angry, another writes:
And still for yet another backpage debater Griselda goes not far enough:
Well it coulda been worse sister. You coulda read Paglia. She says there isn’t any (in painting).
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Still it makes me think. Doubtless someone will be tempted to pedantry and wish to point out the differences between postmodernism, feminism, multiculturalism. But to revoke the words first quoted above – the common thread is difference. After noting these passages I had a look thru Annie Leibowitz’s American Music, its portraits of John Lee Hooker, Laurie Anderson, Mary J Blige, Dolly Parton, June Carter and Johnny Cash, their grandchildren. The house where Aretha Franklin grew up. Lots of porches and broken down shacks.
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Leibowitz is a great artist, she’s also America’s current premiere propagandist. You can be both just ask David or Michelangelo. I wonder, is Leibowitz – a lesbian and half of, until recently, one of the premiere queer couples in American culture (RIP) – an avatar of postmodern diversity or American hegemony?
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Both?
David – I hate to break into your reverie, but the glimmer twins were bloody products Adrien. Saleable goods.
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Well I’m glad to break the good news to you David slavery has been abolished! It’s no longer legal, in Britain anyway, to buy and sell people. What Jagger and Richard do is write, record and perform music. What is saleable are the recorded copies, the copyright and tickets to the performances of same. Alan Greenspan cited the Stones as an aspect of globalization. They are.
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The so-called counter cultural revolution achieved nothing except putting a price tag on social revolution, thereby rendering it void.
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An historian who describes himself as too old to’ve ever worn jeans describes the Cultural Revolution’s importance thus:
Hobsbawm
The Age of Anxiety
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To cite an different expression from a much shriveled brain describing the same thing:
Michael Savage
Liberalism is a Mental Disorder
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This guy is the same rotund bulldog-headed beady-eyed type as Alan Jones. Is there a factory that makes these guys?
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Anyway, obviously these series of quotes indicate two things. First there’s a conflation of the cultural revolution starting in the 1960s with various movements of identity politics and postmodern theory. Amongst these things there is the common thread of difference, of revolt against norms. However the thread is tenuously strung. The 1960s and beyond were more the product of consumer society and the promises of liberalism. The radical movements associated with era ran out of steam, the Romatic Personality that the Stones represented did not.
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However something has happened. The hegemonic norms are, at least no longer taken for granted. They are being defended. Many of the people doing so are empty-headed bigots making money from populist anger. But some of them are serious and intelligent. Their concern is, fundamentally, what basis for social cohesion will replace that demolished by the Cultural Revolution.
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On the other side people like Giselda Pollock bemoan that this attack on hegemony is withering. And here we have a thread claiming postmodernism is a meaningless term. It isn’t. I’ve tried to show that.
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This is a serious debate. It’s taking place between those who wish to restore ancient hegemony and those wish to preserve the new diversity, the new liberty that comes of leaving this relationship behind. I’m of the latter disposition, contrary to popular belief, but I do recognize that societies need coherence and that hitherto this coherence has mostly been made on the basis of blood and religion not ideas. Whatever you think of the States it was based on an idea. That idea has invaded the world and changes whilst not overtly political have occurred which are significant. The coherence principle of this human kaleidoscope is still elusive for many reasons which are overtly political and economic.
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This is not a frivilous tension, it leads to war. And should be taken seriously. The postmodern question is at the heart of it. And yet we play semantics.
Adrien quoted:
More the triumph of the individual over society for their right to shop, something that was never extended outside of the rich industrialised countries.
I’m sure it’s interesting stuff Adrien, but the conflict you describe is based on the assumption that there is a huge ongoing culture wars, when in reality it’s just a skirmish between westerners who shop with different philosophies.
The rest of the world is literally dying to allow us to do so and arguing about postmodernity in that context is farcical.
Adrien, if you think this is a ‘thread claiming postmodernism is a meaningless term’ then either you haven’t understood it or you haven’t read it. What the thread, or some of it including the original post, is claiming is that ‘postemodernism’ as used by the conservative commentariat is a meaningless term, mainly because said commentariat, as it repeatedly demonstrates, does not in fact know what it means.
However, and this may come as a surprise to you, there are a fair few people here who already knew quite a lot about postmodernism and its implications before they’d ever heard of you, and are therefore in no need of a condescending lecture about it. And I suspect I’m not the only person here who’s getting a bit sick of being ticked off by various men, erm, persons for not discussing the correct things and/or not discussing them in the correct way.
Adrien,
Quite some time ago I had to teach the history of the 60s/70s Cultural Revolution in Australia. At the time it was a very new topic, with very few texts. There was Donald Horne’s Time of Hope in the Australian context and that was it, practically, apart from one or two books on environmental and some on Aboriginal history.
I found myself having to resort to books like Richard Neville’s book on thehippie trail – its name escapes me – , Leary’s Politics of Ecstacy, Greer’s Female Eunuch,and for the environment, Geoffrey Bolton’s Spoils and Spoilers, and various works on 20th century Aboriginal history. Post Modernism didn;t even come into it. If I recall correctly, post-modernism, so far as I’m aware didn’t even exist. It was only just beginning to surface in English departments. Believe me, if it had been a significsant intellectual current at the time in the history of ideas for the 60s and 70s, I would have found something on it, and taught it. (even though I was only a lowly tutor doing postgrad work.)
Of course, there’s much more stuff around nowadays, but it wasn’t there when we first started teaching it as history.
Wot David Rubie and Pavlov’s Cat said.
Some clarification on my previous comment. Post-modernism, so far as I know, was only beginning to surface in English Departments in the 1980s. It was not part of the Cultural revolution, which in Australia dates from c.1966-1975, 1977 at the latest.
And I meant stuff around noiwadays on the 1960s/70s cultural revolution and its antecedents .
Some folks on this thread have endorsed post-modernism as worthy of consideration. As I understand him, Adrien is one of these in that he endorses Hobsbawm’s characterisation of the cultural revolution of which Hobsbawm writes.
Some folks on this thread have disavowed post-modernism as anything more than trivial, although for reasons different from those of the “conservative commentariat”. Paul Burns is an example.
Some folks on this thread have endorsed the views of the “conservative comentariat”.
I wish to address myself to Paul Burns.
You are probably correct that post-modern histories of this movement did not exist. But more to the point, Hobsbawm’s characterisation of this cultural revolution, though not written in a way that is especially “post-modern’, nevertheless addresses in its own [non-post-modern] way the naissance of post-modernism.
This isn’t particularly unusual. There were romantic poets around for some time before anyone detected the Romantic Movement. Likewise thinking later dubbbed as “enlightenment”. It is only in retrospect that Hobsbawm feels confident enough to impose a pattern on a series of events that at the time seemed quite chaotic.
Adrien then talks about how post-modernism was co-opted, which is another issue.
Katz,
If the Cultural revolution of the 60s/70s needs to be labelled, to some extent, and that’s an important qualifier, I would have thought, and did think so at the time, with my head stuck on Byron, Keats, Shelley, the Beat Poets, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen,of it as a New Romanticism. This view was reinforced very early on by American Modern Art displayed at the NSW Art Gallery in the early 60s – stuff most people here had never seen before. It was breathtaking.
Paul, I’ve been away from the computer for most of the weekend so sorry for the late nature of my book suggestions.
I’d recommend Ernst Breisach’s On the Future of History: The Postmodernist Challenge and its Aftermath. Ann Curthoys and John Docker’s Is History Fiction? also contains a chapter discussing postmodernism and poststructuralism in historiography.
I’d also suggest Perry Anderson’s The Origin of Postmodernism.
Thanks, Mark. Will check them out.
Pavlov’s Cat – Adrien, if you think this is a ‘thread claiming postmodernism is a meaningless term’ then either you haven’t understood it or you haven’t read it.
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Really? Would you care to explain what this:
Really means then?
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What the thread, or some of it including the original post, is claiming is that ‘postemodernism’ as used by the conservative commentariat is a meaningless term, mainly because said commentariat, as it repeatedly demonstrates, does not in fact know what it means.
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Indeed and I disagree. My quotes from Bacevich and Himmelfarb demonstrate that there are those on the Right intelligentsia who understand it well enough. Their characterization of postmodern philosophy and its project has not been seriously challenged here.
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It’s not a meaningless term. It’s a debate. And it’s disingenuous to simply deal with the opposition in this debate by ignoring their best voices. It’s extremely dishonest to pretend that postmodernism is meaningless. It has a meaning. I’ve demonstrated it.
David R – I’m sure it’s interesting stuff Adrien, but the conflict you describe is based on the assumption that there is a huge ongoing culture wars, when in reality it’s just a skirmish between westerners who shop with different philosophies.
. I like it! It isn’t entirely the truth however…
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Mmmm
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The rest of the world is literally dying to allow us to do so and arguing about postmodernity in that context is farcical.
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I think that’s a tad hyperbolous. What is apparent is that, globally, a material hierarchy is emerging where there are, again, the haves and have-nots. The haves can no longer be characterized as Western. Neither can the have-nots. One of the features of the modern world, and of what Bacevich refers to as Postmodern America, is the phenomena of hedonistic relativism. This is the life philosophy where the whole point is to enjoy one’s self. And, provided one does no harm to others (at least others one can see), the mode by which you do this is your business. This leads to diversities of various kinds. Think the different and evolving modes of youth subculture for example.
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Outside of this tho’ are people who for various reasons (and not just Western exploitation) cannot or will not involve themselves in this milieu. This includes the lower classes of the Middle-East as well as the people who live in Flyover America. They have no access to the abundance that underpins the ‘freedom’ of modern consumer society. They thus reject the whole package of liberalism which creates it. It is no coincidence that it is these places which are at the heart of a revival of a militant, fundamentalist and hostile form of Abrahamic faith.
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Considering the impacts of this ethos on geopolitical reality it is anything but facile.
Post Modernism didn’t even come into it. If I recall correctly,
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Postmodern philosophy didn’t really emerge as a dominant discourse in the English speaking world until the 90s. In the 70s Hayden White, as quoted above, doubted Foucault would have much impact. There is, as I say, a synchronicity between the counter-culture, postmodern philosophy, multicultural policy and globalization; a convergence if you will. This is sensed by those who, for various reasons, reject it. But the common ethos is hedonistic relativism.
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One of the criticisms of hedonistic relativism is that it eschews responsibility collectively for the means by which ‘freedom’ obtains. As Bacevich points out correctly the Vietnam War put paid to the concept of the citizen-soldier. The American military industrial complex now relies on a standing army of professional soldiers and mercenaries. This apparatus is utilized in pursuing American economic interests (as it has always been) and this is all in aid of perpetuating the ‘right’ to shop.
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The hedonistic kaleidoscope of Postmodern America thus does two things. It creates an ethos of individual desire and suspends the concept of duty to the state which provides the space to indulge one’s self so. There is a danger here. Conservatives in general have a knee-jerk reaction against it which is often a mask for bigotry. Thinking and open-minded conservatives like Bacevich, like Himmelfarb however articulate more serious concerns.
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It should be noted that this is not merely an American phenomena. What you see there, what you see here, you see in Japan and China as well. There is a cultural transformation emerging. In general I support this, however I believe that it is fraught with danger. One such is that liberty is balanced with duty. If not then it lives on borrowed time. The other is that liberty conceived solely as the indulgence of the material self is impoverished and destructive.
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This pertains to the Culture Wars in that traditional modes of social relation are vanquished. Homosexuality, for example, no longer suppressed by compulsory family relations, liberated by the individual’s capacity to obtain economic independence from the clan, to move elsewhere, to associate as one wishes, begins to express itself. As I said this is true of China, please read Xinran The Good Women of China. (Please read Xinran – class).
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In that book Xinran describes her talk-back show in which she speaks with various Chinese women about their experiences. One such, a lesbian, tells her story. This is dangerous because homosexuality is taboo in China. Yet this woman had found the means via modern economy, via modern communications to live as a lesbian. Albeit under high levels of mental and emotional stress. I was struck by the similarity between this episode and stories of early Gay emancipatory movements in the ’60s and ’70s. Despite the fact that China is a dictatorship, modernism still creates a certain liberty.
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This is to be celebrated. I have no desire to return to Christendom even if I thought that possible. However I do realize that societies need some coherence and that Myth and Religion are what have underpinned this in the past. As Nietzsche stated, these things are fictional, but necessary. And they are not as Foucault would have it merely the fabrication of discourse. There is a deeper resonance.
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The history of religion shows that when human knowledge of the world, the cosmos of nature is greatly expanded the traditional religious-metaphysical ethos suffers irreparable damage. This persons in the early city-state era leave behind their animism for the pantheistic sky-cult which will eventually give us Olympus. Olympus is found by the avatars of High Empire wanting, hence monotheism etc. Note that the conceptualization of the human relationship expands in each case: tribe, city, empire.
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We live in a similar time. The monotheisms have suffered irreparable damage because far from being the central characters of the cosmological drama as previously thought, we find that we live on a tiny ball of rock in a vast galaxy that itself is one of billions of other such and dwarfed by a superstructure we don’t fully comprehend. We find that we are monkeys.
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It is no coincidence that the revival and transformation of Abrahamic faiths includes a political mission to roll back and even eradicate these scientific discoveries.
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Myth is fictitious but necessary. That we regard it as Truth is an essential part of the game. A way of conning ourselves into a meaningful existence. Nietzsche’s Overman was a human who could face the nihilist void and create meaning without the mind-trick. As the closest we’ve got to this so far seems to be “I shop therefore I am” I think we’ve a way to go along that tightrope before we get to that point.
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The debate viz postmodernism is a debate a viz a crisis of values. Appreciate the dialectic. What comes next is the invention of new value. Probably, as the advocates of cyclic metahistory assert, a new theological age.
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I just hope it ain’t Fundamentalist Batshittery. That’s going backwards. But they’ve got their shit together, they’ve got their lobby groups, their ethical commitment, their discipline, their guns.
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We’ve got debates over whether this or that word has any meaning. We sneer at the capitalist system using technology it provides to do so. We lambast the liberalism that created the 1960s and beyond. We make a fuzzy warble of its premises and refuse even to engage with reasonable advocates of liberal society because they make the dumb-arsed mistake of disagreeing with us.
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It isn’t possible to return to Christendom no. But it is possible to go forward to something much worse. Here we are, the 21st century and we’re on the verge of Religious war.
Quick Eve put the apple back.
No PC, you’re simply wrong. No-one here knew anything about post-modernism before Adrien started his lecture series.
I apologize for my verbosity Fine but in the face of ‘postmodernism is meaningless’ and the the attitude that the Right are just barking mad I’m afraid I feel the need to demonstrate unequivocally that a. Postmodernism has meaning, b. That there is a significant debate proceeding from issues and concepts on which it touches and c. That this is important and why?
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Given that PC says outright (yet again) that I misunderstand I have some reason to go into a long excursion citing the myriad texts that frame the debate. The post clearly states that perhaps postmodernism has become meaningless. Yet as the post concerns the appropriateness or otherwise of a program on religion, as religion is the number #1 target of any philosophy asserting nihilism, I think that this is dishonest.
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The thing is that debates such as these are not merely pastimes. They have concrete ramifications. Griselda Pollock says the critique of hegemony is withering. She’s right. The assertion of a heterogenous view of human relations (which I support) is losing ground. Given the substandard, lacklustre and evasive tactics displayed on the whole I’m hardly surprised.
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Debate is a contest. Those on the side of pluralistic liberal society are losing it.
Fine, Fine, get it right: it’s “No you tax-eating commie your just LYING”.
Adrien at 97: my understanding of the passage you quote is that it was written in the context of the way the word is being bandied about in the alleged Australian culture wars — bandied about, that is, in the press, not by serious historians like Himmelfarb. My reading of Mark’s original post is that given its overall context, the words ‘in contemporary popular usage’ are implicit in ’so vacuous and meaningless has it become.’
I make these assumptions because the whole raison d’être of the original post was a silly column, typical of its ilk, in The Australian, written by someone not well-versed in cultural or social theory.
If I am wrong in these assumptions then I shall be very happy for Mark to tell me so.
Okay PC, fair point. I think the word, however, connotes a certain struggle between a will to homogeny with the underlying assumptions of traditional social relations (ie Eurocentric patriarchy) and the various examples of cultural movements away from this.
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The former have concerns which are not entirely legitimate. I think these should be recognize and addressed by supporters of multiculturalism (to cite another popularly misused term) in order to strategically head off any Great Reaction. Engaging with serious and rational people on the Right is part of this. It’s worth noting that many conservatives these days accept certain principles of feminism etc as good things. So much so that some of them are taking credit!
In short what I’m advocating PC is a new ethos. One that celebrates diversity grounded in the liberal principles of the Enlightenment with appropriate qualifications. I mentioned Annie Leibovitz before. Her images might not articulate this ethos but they do display, in the American context, the images of it. It is no accident that she arises from the counterculture and now is the Culture.
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Of course the American Image will gradually come to share the stage with other images from other cultures. Images that such as Xinran provides. Something however must ground these. I feel that at base the ancient conept that liberty is balanced by duty, by mastery of self is at the heart of it somehow: politically, culturally, ecologically.
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Andrew Bacevich is a conservative but what he regards as the important issues of the 21st century converge with the project of the radical Left. This is an opportunity.
It’s a concept that’s applied to too wide a range of phenomena, and with too little precision to be genuinely useful in public discussion, unless coupled with qualifiers that make the meaning more clear.
For example, I don’t see the links between ‘multiculturalism’ (which in Australia is a policy position with its origins in state responses to wildcat strikes initiated by migrant workers in the 1970s) and ‘postmodern philosophy’ (by which I assume is meant French ‘poststructuralist’ philosophy. Or is it the theorisation of postmodernity by Anglophone marxist philosophers? Or is it a postmodern aesthetic philosophy?) unless they’re both understood as symptoms. In which case, the merits of postmodern philosophy are beside the point, and it’s the underlying causes of both (ie the causes of both multiculturalism and postmodern philosophy, now assumed to be the same causes) that need to be examined.
But wasn’t this originally about some wanker claiming that scrapping the Religion Report was a victory for post-modernism? Therefore showing a total ignorance about what post-modernism might mean. When it’s actually a symptom of a broadcaster trying to do too much without enough money and running around in circles because of it.
Dr Cat @ #103, you’re completely right about my assumptions. Indeed, I think I clarified and circumscribed what I was saying earlier on the thread – a few days ago if memory serves!
To put my objection to the term another way: I don’t believe we should no longer discuss the issues that are often discussed under the heading ‘postmodernism’ (ie the content), I just no longer see the usefulness of debating using that particular term (ie the current form these debates take). In public discussion, the influence of the term on discussing the phenomena is to actually obscure those phenomena, rather than reveal more about them.
Mark, to return to your post:
Certainly the use of the concept “post-modern” is frequently designed to add heat but no discernible light to discussion. Indeed, Carmody is guilty of this vice. But that doesn’t mean that there cannot be sensible discussion about things pertaining to the post-modern?
And is your point here that culture wars are chimerical or trivial? Do you believe that the concept can serve no useful purpose in aiding understanding of public policy issues of the kind (poorly and crassly) discussed by Carmody?
Adrien wrote:
What does nihilism have to do with it? That seems like one of those conflations (postmodernism and nihilism, or atheism and nihilism) that the RWDB crowd love but we know to be bullshit. It’s hard to shop without purpose, you’ll end up lost in the supermarket, no longer shopping happily (vale Mr Strummer).
I’m with David. Religion can just as easily lead to a sort of resigned quietism or pietism which isn’t all that far from nihilism. Because Christianity has structured our culture so powerfully historically, there are actually few concepts which aren’t secularised theological ones. That’s even before we get to “world rejecting” religions such as Theravada Buddhism (which might open up another big debate, including the degree to which the category of “religion” is an Abrahamic one which has little applicability to other “world faiths” seen in their own terms.)
Yes and no, Katz. Yes to the first question – because their polemics are framed in such a way as to add almost no light to any of the ostensible topics of discussion, and indeed that obfuscation is part of the purpose of the said culture wars.
No to the second question – but as a meta-analytical category. The whole culture wars exemplify postmodernism in one sense.
Is it correct to conclude, therefore, that you believe that it is possible to discuss the culture wars without being polemical?
Can it also be said that postmodernism exemplifies the culture wars?
On the science boards I frequent the usual formulation is that “Postmodernism = relativism = believing that the law of gravity is just a belief but this is easily disproved by inviting the postmodernists to jump out of an open window”.
OTOH the view that science constructs models which aim to predict behaviour but which cannot be said to describe the true nature of reality is the conventional one, but few people seem to appreciate that this actually has a deeply postmodernist sensibility to it.
Katz, yes – I think one can discuss the culture wars dispassionately. It’s somewhat harder to participate in them dispassionately!
Martin B:
OTOH the view that science constructs models which aim to predict behaviour but which cannot be said to describe the true nature of reality is the conventional one, but few people seem to appreciate that this actually has a deeply postmodernist sensibility to it.
Cannot be said to carry ultimate and eternal truth, but that’s a LONG way from science hypotheses and ‘laws’ being capricious, MERELY social constructs; tools of white, male domination; etc etc. “Science” as misunderstood by “leading” pomo writers has stood in the dock, under attack from these writers and walked away unscathed.
“Intellecrtual Impostures” by Alan Sokal & Jean Bricmont, 2003 [translated from a 1999 book in French], also published as “Fashionable Nonsense”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense
Martin B
see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense
Ambi, their project seems very specific. This is a completely different issue from ‘for/against pomo’ as such, though the ensuing brouhaha seems to have collapsed into the usual sides-taking.
That ‘Fashionable Nonsense’ title has ‘Harumph, pass the port’ written all over it, doesn’t it. I bet Sokal and Bricmont wouldn’t have been super happy with it, either. The French revere fashion.
I think that is a straw argument. Not even the genuine relativsts argue that.
Yes, it’s a very specific project Pavlov’s. I was responding to Martin B who had been similarly specific. Originally “Impostures intellectuelles”, je croi. First translation into anglais: “Intellectual Impostures”.
The contents are quite interesting. I agree that the US title isn’t good. Do publishers sometimes reach for the cliche, like newspaper sub-editors?
Thanks Martin B, it may be a straw argument, but I think you’ll find plenty of straw of that ilk quoted in “Intellectual Impostures”. And the book doesn’t target minor writers, it goes for prominent po-mo ‘theorists’. Quite startling. I recommend having a look.
Even if if can be accurately observed that post-modernism has been enunciated by persons more susceptible than usual to making foolish statements, that does not address the necessary corollary that post-modernism has generated a number of resilient and non-trivial statements. Sokal and Bricmont acknowledge this truth by implication.
Detractors of post-modernism would be better employed attempting to identify the latter category of statements. Then they should attempt to demolish them, if they can.
Scientific enquiry has achieved many resilient and non-trivial statements and concepts. It is open to critical comment and indeed requires frequent self-correction.
The examples cited by Sokal and Bricmont are of a different type. Misrepresentations of the content, spirit and terminology of particular sciences. Not just a little ignorant or foolish: extreme cases.
Now it may be that their book “filled a much-needed gap in the literature”. I happen to think not.
Drivel is best exposed, don’t you think, Katz? It seems to be one of your own main endeavourss: drivel-exposure, I mean.
Klaus – It’s a concept that’s applied to too wide a range of phenomena, and with too little precision to be genuinely useful in public discussion, unless coupled with qualifiers that make the meaning more clear.
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Indeed. Perhaps a general consensus viz trying to impose clear meanings on these sorts of terms might have some merit.
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David R – What does nihilism have to do with it?
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Nihilism is the philosophical position that there is no truth or meaning writ in the Cosmos or by its Creator. Obviously its an implicitly atheist position. Every ethos, then, all morals, ethics, codes of behaviour and idealistic notions of the ‘good’ in general are human products. Foucault, in particular, was indebted to this Nietzschean notion. His project was to expose the modes by which modern society creates its ethos focusing on the apparatus of technocratic institutions like prisons.
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But it’s not all about the places with hard floors and rows and rows of doors.
P Cat – That ‘Fashionable Nonsense’ title has ‘Harumph, pass the port’ written all over it, doesn’t it.
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I imagine they’re more into claret. It’s a funny book. My favourite is the dig at the ’smash the Canon’ lobby: Hamlet is just the same as the White Pages.
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Ophelia Benson check her out.
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That said criticizing the Canon is a good idea. It changes all the time don’t you know. See Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon. He spends the entire time defending his beloved Shakespeare and then proposes a canon at the back. This Western Canon doesn’t look as Western as it used to.
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Martin B – the view that science constructs models which aim to predict behaviour but which cannot be said to describe the true nature of reality is the conventional one, but few people seem to appreciate that this actually has a deeply postmodernist sensibility to it.
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I do, I used to point it out to science student friends of mine at Uni. They poo poo’d the idea. They poo poo’d it because postmodern philsophy is conducted in the realm of literary speculation. As a matter of discipline physicists and the like have to restrict that sort of stuff very harshly. For good reasons.
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Sokal wrote nonsense and got it passed. Seeing a resemblance between postmodernism and quantum mechanics say doesn’t mean it’s actually there. It helps if you learn something about the subject. The editors of Social Text fucked up. And there’s a lesson there.
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I think a good way of thinking of that corner of the debate is by acknowledging the spectrum between, on the hand:
On History
Hobsbawm
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He is the Master.
Adrien wrote:
That’s a crap definition Adrien, even the wiki has a better one (yours seems to be one of the basic modern evangelical Christian definitions).
Interestingly (and I didn’t know this until I had a look at the wiki), Nietzche used the term in describing christians – that rejection of the natural world for a place in the afterlife as the material world held no meaning. No wonder conservatives hate it
Oh dear and it was so civil there for a bit. From your link:
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And mine:
If there’s no God there’s no true objectivity. To be objective one must be able to see the Cosmos entire from all angles simultaneously. God s’posedly can do that. We can’t. Belief in God might give you the idea that you can do that, that’s a problem. Nihilism means there’s no meaning. What meaning there is, we create.
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If you think I’m a born-again Christian buddy, you’re barking in the wrong forest.
Blogs lend themselves to drivel-exposure.
If I were writing a book, I’d regard drivel-exposure, pure and simple, a trifle infra-dig.
You missed the point Adrien, your definition specifically includes two definitions that require an actor “meaning writ in the Cosmos or by its Creator.”, theirs doesn’t. My intention wasn’t to be uncivil, just to point out that by using the definitions created explicitly to impugn atheists as by definition nihilists. It ain’t so.
What other actors are there David? Capable of producing big ‘m’ Meaning in the big ‘u’ Universe (or infinite multiples even), ey? Cosmos actually says it all except one could argue Jehovah hangs on a chair outside of reality somehow.
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So what other agents are capable of producing such a meaning David? Us? I have no way of knowing for certain but I’d be very surprised if the nearest intelligent, technological species (assuming there is such) lives for Heavy Metal, Jesus or Socialism.
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Perhaps you think it’s the Borg? Resistance is futile? A bleak ontology but a valid one.
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I didn’t say atheists were nihilists, I said nihilists were atheists. A humanist can be an atheist.
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Ve beleef in nuzink Lebowski.
That’s the problem tho’. Nihilism is the metaphysics of the way things are to the best of our knowledge. The evidence says that we’re just the accidental by-product of the simple interactions of large amounts of energy creating more and more complexity to burn itself out faster. Doesn’t exactly keep you warm on a Winter’s night now does it?
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Old conceptions of God aren’t big enough to encompass a universe we can’t even see most of. Given the myriad notions of Absolute Truth on this planet and the myriad slaughters that incur it’s obvious to the rational perspective to conclude that we make it up out of the fear of death and other stuff.
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We then get to the existential void described by Hassan-i Sabbah’s last words: Nothing is true, everything is permitted. A bit difficult to run a complex global society on that basis. Trouble is you can’t run it according to religion either. They’d kill the world fighting over who goes first. And anyway having that lot run things is less fun than unnecessary colonic irrigation sans anesthetic.
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What’s need is some simple central ethos. No-one can design this. It either evolves or is pronounced from above by decree.
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BTW They probably weren’t Hassan-i Sabbah’s last words. That’s an Illuminati lie. They rig the Oscar nights doncha know
Adrien,
the history of science demonstrates that there is no Master. Hobsbawm is not a Master, he’s just a very naughty little boy!
Katz, longer books with narrower scope and less meat have been published, than “Impostures Intellectuelles”. Look around.
Hobsbawm is not a Master, he’s just a very naughty little boy!
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Let me tell you sweetheart he’s both at the same time.
Adrien wrote:
Yes you did, which is exactly why I pulled you up on it. It’s entirely possible to be a christian and be a nihilist (i.e. believe the material world holds no value) – in fact that (I will point out again) was part of Nietzche’s original definition.
Ambi, just out of curiosity, have you actually read any of the philosophy discussed in the Sokal/Bricmont book other than where it is quoted by them? I’m always interested in the answer to this question. I know Adrien has, but I’m not sure what your intellectual background is. I’m genuinely interested – not looking for a ‘gotcha’ at all.
My opinion is in line with Adrien on the hoax itself – Social Text made asses of themselves – although I’m less sympathetic to the book, because I’ve read much of the philosophy they discuss, and I think their claims would be stronger if the philosophers examined were actually talking about maths or physics. Many of them simply aren’t, and they’re not arguing vulgar ’social constructionist’ positions either for the most part.
Hi klaus, I think it’s a couple of years since I read “Intellectual Impostures”. From what I recall of the examples quoted – at reasonable length – they purported to be about maths, physics, engineering (fluid mechanics).
But no, I haven’t studied the authors in detail. I’ve read only a few scores of pages. A Luce Irigary book recently seen: I couldn’t cope. You asked a fair question. I am now open to “gotcha” by interlocutors less generous than you. So be it. Hier stehe ich.
BTW, I never accepted the chasm suggested by “The Two Cultures” in the 1960s.
One of the reasons that “Two Cultures” chasm does not exist is that much of the empirical positivist project that fuelled so-called “hard science” collapsed by the 1960s.
In the 1940s and after, thinkers like Carl Hempel attempted to impose a deductive framework on to history and social sciences. Of course, the project failed.
But, ironically, at the very time that Hempel was promoting his scientistic scheme on history and social science, lo and behold, it came to pass that the so-called “hard sciences” fell out of love with that particular framework of explanation.
The result was a closure of the alleged chasm, but in the opposite direction to that promoted by Carl Hempel.
It is true that Carmody’s use of “postmodernism” does not make much sense. But even after 138 posts here, the LP attempts to reveal the word’s meaning/s and utility is even more confused – in fact, bordering on incoherent.
Paul Burns
I am not sure what area of history you work in, but postmodernism has been extraordinarily influential in historiography for nearly two decades. Here is a link to an excellent example of postmodern historiography in the Australian context.
http://evatt.org.au/publications/papers/162.html
Maybe so, smiley, but how much of that is attributable to the incoherence of the posts and how much to the incoherence of the subject?
Surprisingly enough, big ideas in academia that have traditionally been explored in journals, or large doorstop tomes, don’t come out looking too flash in a blog discussion.
But then, I’ve never seen a rigourous blogospheric exposition of the solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem, either (I understand it runs to over 100+ pages of mathematical symbols). Doesn’t mean the theorem hasn’t been proved, but.
Do you think the results would be any less incoherent if someone walked into a random crowd and said:
“quantum mechanics — discuss”
or
“relativistic physics — discuss”
or
“abiogenesis — discuss”
If you asked anybody at random about the meaning and significance of these phenomena, you would most likely get a response that is no less incoherent that the sort of discussion had here.
Mostly because many people are willfully unaware, deliberately obtuse, creatively misinterpret or otherwise remain uninterested in dispensing the effort necessary to get a good grip on these subjects. Or worse, they’ve had a glance over some key terms, applied their own prejudices, and refused to engage in a deeper consideration of the issues.
And the ones who are, and have, and do understand, often get understandably snippy trying to explain for the umpteenth time concepts that they have actually put the effort in to address over many years or decades, but into which their interlocutors wish to put little or no such effort themselves, except to berate the speaker’s inability to condense 20 years of study into a five-minute summary.
And so you end up with the sort of discussion we’ve witnessed for the last 100+ posts.
But it doesn’t follow from any of this that the subjects themselves, or the phenomena they describe, lack for coherence or validity.
Perhaps the culture-warriors can rally around this campaign slogan “Let’s Ban Postmodernism! Er, Once We Figure Out What It Is…OK, We’ll Get Back To You”.
Katz noted “the necessary corollary that post-modernism has generated a number of resilient and non-trivial statements.”
Good point. Some crazy writing by some leading exponents does not necessarily condemn a whole field.
Ambi, it’s not that they didn’t really have traction with a few of their examples – Irigaray for one. But then, I wouldn’t read Irigaray for her perspectives on science any more than I would read Sokal on feminist histories of philosophy or sexual difference. Irigaray’s point on ’sexed equations’ is, I think, probably close to the weakest part of her work, because she doesn’t really seek to account adequately for science. It’s over-extending her model, and there has been decades of feminist scholarship on science now that is much, much stronger. Her critique of psychoanalysis and her ethics are, for obvious reasons, much stronger as well.
One cited example in Sokal/Bricmont is Gilles Deleuze on metastability. Deleuze is using scientific and mathematical terms, but he’s using them as philosophical terms – it’s an appropriation. This may be irritating to scientists and mathematicians – roughly equivalent to how irritating readers of Derrida find the 1,001 misuses of the term ‘deconstruction’, I imagine. But then, philosophers often draw on concepts from elsewhere and give them properly philosophical definitions. In my reading, Deleuze is doing that. His project is framed as philosophy. He even has a book on that where he defines the contours of philosophy, art and science in a way that, I think, many scientists would be comfortable with.
They also take swipes at Bruno Latour. Here, I think they’re on shakier ground because they’re casting opposing positions on the philosophy of science as though they lacked legitimacy. But whether you take on Latour’s developed account of scientific practice or not, I think it stakes a legitimate position. It is far from nonsensical. Having said that, I think Latour has moved further away from the earliest sociology of science stuff in the intervening years.
I haven’t read the whole book. Does anybody know whether they have anything to say on Isabelle Stengers? I’m willing to bet they don’t.
smiley @ 140,
Thanks for that. Most of the material in the Curthoys article is not new to me apart from the debate about Holocaust denial in relation to postmodernism and the ridiculous position taken by Jenkins. The ideas Curthoys outlines are part and parcel of any philosophy and practice of history course and have been for decades. I can’t see that Jenkins makes any contribution whatever; rather I cautiously suggest he proves my point about the uselessness of postmodernism for history, insofar as his ideas are outlined in the Curthoys-Docker article.And I am cautious, because I haven’t read his work.Close reading of the text, inferred by Derrida, is something historians always do, as I’m sure you know.
The general debate as to whether history is fiction has been a topic of philosophy of history courses for aeons, long before the advent of postmodernism, and at the bottom of it is how reliable are one’s primary sources.
As for the area of history I’m involved in : it used to be Australia from 1929-49, but it is now 18c Australia and Britain and the American Revolution, on which I’m researching a book.
Thanks, klaus.
David – Yes you did, which is exactly why I pulled you up on it.
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Please review your grade 6 textbooks viz sets and subsets. Nihilism is a subset of atheism not the reverse.
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It’s entirely possible to be a christian and be a nihilist (i.e. believe the material world holds no value) – in fact that (I will point out again) was part of Nietzche’s original definition.
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Nietzsche’s use of the word is not authoritative. Foucault’s use of discourse likewise. Nihilism means literally Nothingism. As the Dude’s main man says: say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism dude, at least it’s an ethos.
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Gettit?
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A nihilist believes in nothing. All systems of value are artificial and therefore void.
Klaus – I’m less sympathetic to the book, because I’ve read much of the philosophy they discuss, and I think their claims would be stronger if the philosophers examined were actually talking about maths or physics.
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There’s actually a series of books. I don’t have the list on me but I can get it. The basic argument across the board is that:
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a. – The assertions of much of the theory being discussed are bogus at least when it comes to an examination of their uses of science.
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b – That the obfuscatory poetics of the work in question would come a handy tactic for an academic charlatan.
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At the very least the benefits of writing clearly are obvious if the ideas expressed have any utility. This doesn’t mean the ideas associated with postmodernism, poststructuralism or whatever don’t. Foucault’s ideas have utility and the articles and books I’ve read only catch him out on his associations. Deleuze gets special treatment.
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Irigaray’s point on ’sexed equations’ is, I think, probably close to the weakest part of her work, because she doesn’t really seek to account adequately for science.
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Considering the silliness of an argument that says the speed of light is ‘privileged’ and that this somehow relates to ‘masculinist ideology’ it’s a fair call to doubt the worthiness of others things that are said by her. That statement is not simply over-extending a model. It’s bullshit.
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Deleuze is using scientific and mathematical terms, but he’s using them as philosophical terms
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Indeed one of the major bugbears of Sokal, Dawkins et al. If you keep applying words metaphorically and simultaneously seek to assert that metaphoric use as authoritative, and postmodernists do this. Scientific terms mean something specific. The metaphors are not explicitly identified as such and sometimes don’t make sense if you understand the terms properly. This is a fault.
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Consider the extent to which the meaning of postmodernism is debated. Although the basic features associated with it are understood any criticism is usually countered first-off with “well that’s not postmodernism”. How convenient.
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Most of the writers involved in this critique are politically left-wing and involved with the sciences. I can recall at least two qualifying their rhetoric by stating that they were not competent to assess the quality of this work as, say, literary criticism. It’s been said of Sokal that it helps that his ‘left-wing credentials are impeccable’ and that this is ’strictly irrelevant’.
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That’s an interesting statement. It’s true too. Sokal’s observations are in no way dependent on his political views for their veracity. Why then does it help?
“a. – The assertions of much of the theory being discussed are bogus at least when it comes to an examination of their uses of science.
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b – That the obfuscatory poetics of the work in question would come a handy tactic for an academic charlatan.”
a) hinges on the assertion that words used in science shouldn’t be available in, say, philosophy; I think this needs to be argued case by case, and I’m not convinced of what I’ve seen from Sokal/Bricmont
b) rests on the assumption that the poetics of the writers in question is obfuscatory – in other words that it is deliberately designed to be obscure – which I think is probably only true in the case of the Baudrillardian anti-philosophy
There are actually two issues here: how these thinkers discuss science and how they use terms that others seek to reserve for science. I have less problem with the criticism of how a lot of those authors discuss science – they’re inexpert on scientific topics – and what’s more I don’t think the philosophy of science is central to their projects. Apart from Bruno Latour, a particular case, and a markedly different thinker to those he has been lumped in with.
Harsh, Adrien. ‘She said one silly thing so everything else she says is bullshit too.’
Could you pass this test yourself?
More to the point, apparently Sokal was less than familiar with somee of the mathematics involved anyway, which makes his criticisms of literary theorists moot.
A quote from the Wikipedia page
Now, I just ordered Plotnitsky’s book off Amazon because it looks like a good read and I need something to read over summer that’s not on the topic of ancient historiography or the Roman frontier. So perhaps by December sometime I may have a developed a more rigorous critique.
Frankly, regarding Dawkins, my impression of his writing that I have read is that he seriously fails to understand most philosophy that’s not explicitly empirical in its basis. Now while that’s certainly admirable in regards to understand the natural philosophy, it’s actually insufficient to reason about about other philosophical fields of endeavour. In particular with Dawkins, his characterisations of various religious positions shows he is unfamiliar with and incurious about theology. But despite this ignorance he nonetheless manages to sally forth and condemn all religion as irrational. Which also shows me he doesn’t fully appreciate the difference between rationalism and empiricism. I don’t seek to defend religion, far from it, but one must understand the mind of one’s foe and in my mind, clearly Dawkins does not. He’s like a war-mongering neo-con who can’t differentiate between Sunni and Shia, or Pashtun and Tajik.
It strikes me that Sokal might be another in this category. “I don’t know nuthin’ about literary critiquen’ but I doos knows them ain’t scienticially-correct in them thar books”.
I think there’s a very good reason that often in scholarly debate the student becomes the greatest critic of the master, and it’s all about depth of understanding.
Klaus – a. I don’t think so. It’s not that you can’t use the words. Everyone can use words however they like. But if one uses scientific terms as a groovy-sounding tactic in furtherance of convincing people that a naked monarch is wearing something than surely you draw the line.
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b. My God! Must we really drag out the examples? There are heaps. Frankly if a book is written, and much of the debate about it boils down to arguments about what the author is actually bloody saying it diminishes the value of the text. This is not a feature of postmodernism. Spinoza, for example, is the subject of such argument. But, for some reason, the tendency of French intellectuals to write in circles has been adopted in the English-speaking world as a virtue. It is not.
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Many graduates of arts courses who work in the cultural industries such as myself now disregard books that sound off like they were written by the postmodernism generator. So at the very least one might consider the lost audience.
P Cat – Could you pass this test yourself?
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Of absolute impeccable accuracy without making any error of fact or application? No of course not. You yourself have caught me out more than once. But the light-speed is extremely foolhardy. It shows a lack of reasoning or the expectation of same amongst the audience.
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That said I very much doubt I’d ever say anything quite that silly and actually mean it.
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BTW – “doubt the worthiness of others things that are said by her.” is not the same as “She said one silly thing so everything else she says is bullshit too.”.
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All writers make mistakes and get things wrong, every single one of ‘em. Thing is to know the difference and why. For example:
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T Rex – Sokal was less than familiar with some of the mathematics involved anyway, which makes his criticisms of literary theorists moot.
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Exactly how does getting maths wrong make criticisms of literary theory moot? And where’s the specifics?
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That wiki entry is amusing. There is not one concrete explication of what Sokal has actually written. There’s just a list of things he’s supposedly unaware of or doesn’t take into account. In the first place how this factors with his criticisms isn’t explained. In the second none of this is demonstrated as having any validity. We’re juts supposed to take the Word for it.
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It is written thus it’s true. The motto of canonical learning. No. Saying something doesn’t make it true.
T Rex – my impression of his writing that I have read is that he seriously fails to understand most philosophy that’s not explicitly empirical in its basis.
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I think it’s not that he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t want it. I find his Rationalism irksome at times. He fails to understand for example that the religious imagination is not all about hooey, it’s a way of creating meaning. Kahil Gilbran wrote that “Faith is an oasis in the heart that cannot be reached by the caravan of thought”. Dawkins wouldn;t know where to catch the lift.
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But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a point. Nor does it mean he simply fails to understand. He does. For example:
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He’s like a war-mongering neo-con who can’t differentiate between Sunni and Shia, or Pashtun and Tajik.
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I’d wager if he were to discuss such things his understanding would be impeccable. One thing that scientists do well, when they do it, is to conceptualize with the limits of their knowledge in mind.
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The last time I read Dawkins he was having a wee chuckle at people who use the word ‘gender’ when discussing sexual difference. Like me, he finds the inferred idea that sexual difference is all of a social construction a bit wanting. As he points out many languages are gendered but the binary opposition (or trinary even) doesn’t correspond to sexual difference. Gender, as its used these days he says, is an example of Western cultural imperialism.
Paul Burns
Perhaps that article was too short to make it clear, but Curthoys and Docker are out and proud self-described postmodernist historians themselves. Their book and articles make this much clearer. But I agree with you that a lot of what people take away from postmodernist writers and scholars is just a reworking of ideas and perspectives that are long established. Younger people obviously have not yet had rthe time or experience to appreciate the history of ideas to realise this
Adrien wrote:
Absolutely, utterly, totally, completely wrong. Please review your grade one reading skills. Nihilism has absolutely nothing to do with belief and everything to do with finding meaning in those things you believe in.
Adrien,
Suggest you read Doestoyevsky’s novels re nihilism. If I recall correctly, because its been a while since I last delved into them, The Possessed aka The Devils would probably be the most fruitful in this regard. I’ve never associated nihilism with atheism (whose theory/ideology I find tiring, even though I’m an atheist myself.) But this may be that I’ve only really connected with nihilism through Doestoyevsky.
Yes, that’s hilarious all right.
Do you mean “implied”? Both meanings are possible here, but “implied” makes more sense. Inferred (or implied) by whom, exactly?
As for this “idea”, the only people who talk about it (to trash it, as here) seem to be the people who think that this “idea” is held (even if only implicitly, something that is, naturally, not susceptible of proof) by any feminist and/or other gender theorist worth a pinch of the proverbial. “sexual difference … all of a social construction”? None of the feminists or other gender theorists I have ever read or heard of have been stupid enough to make such a claim.
A couple of Sokal books are mentioned here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sokal
Reading through that entry, and associated links, I find it interesting (if only marginally relevant to this discussion) that Social Text was not a refereed journal at the time of the hoax. This was a deliberate position designed to encourage unorthodox work. I didn’t know that was the case.
Yes, klaus, and that is relevant to those scientists who “tut-tutted” that a dodgy article should appear in print. Not all journals are refereed; and some refereed journals, even in the hardest sciences, occasionally regret publishing a paper that slips through refereeing, e.g. containing fraudulent “results”.
That was my feeling, also, Ambi. I still think the editors showed poor judgement, and perhaps a certain amount of naivete. I don’t know a lot about the journal or it’s history, although Andrew Ross is worth a read as a controversial figure in the ‘new’ humanities.
It seems that a lot of the antagonism would dissipate if those postmodernists with little to no training in maths/science chose more appropriate metaphors from now on.
“if [they] chose more appropriate metaphors”
Or simply said what they meant with clearly defined terminology.
On the contrary, smiley, I think in the case of Deleuze (and let’s be specific about who I’m offering that defense of), his ‘inappropriate’ borrowings were quite deliberate and ultimately appropriate to what he set out to do in philosophy. I’m not saying that in all other cases this is so, but for Deleuze, most certainly. To properly evaluate his terminology, you’re going to need to know something about his philosophy.
Were he speaking as a mathematician or physicist, then I’d agree that he would need to at least justify redefining key concepts within the terms set by those disciplines.
Well Kluas he clearly failed dismally.
“Or simply said what they meant with clearly defined terminology.”
Let’s be specific: who is this levelled at? Are you saying that Deleuze doesn’t say what he means? Derrida? Lacan? A second year undergrad in a ‘cultural theory’ course? A ‘postmodernist’ architect? What do they mean then? If it’s something other than what they say, then what is it and why do you know better? You’re necessarily imputing motives and intentions in taking this position, so that will require evidence.
And can I have some instances of any of these philosophers, psychoanalysts, students, architects (or whoever it is you are, in fact, talking about) using technical concepts that aren’t defined anywhere in their own work, or in work in which they reference? That’s a very difficult position to take on a body of work.
“Well Kluas he clearly failed dismally.”
Failed at what? I would argue that he succeeded as a philosopher (and will, if somebody can offer a challenge on these terms). You need to make an argument that he did not. In doing so, you’ll have to refer to his philosophy.
P Cat – Do you mean “implied”? Both meanings are possible here, but “implied” makes more sense.
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We’ve been here before. It’s not important.
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None of the feminists or other gender theorists I have ever read or heard of have been stupid enough to make such a claim.
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What was that about the meaning of ‘infer’ and ‘imply’?
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I am constantly being reminded that feminists don’t deny there is a natural aspect to sex difference. However there’s very little consideration of the difference in the rhetoric. In fact I’m often castigated for suggesting that this or that aspect of culture may have something to do with nature not social coercion.
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Paul B – Well I think we’ll have to disagree about the meaning of nihilism. I was actually going to bring in Dostoyevsky (Notes From The Underground) but no. My favourite Russian nihilist is Lermontov anyway.
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It’s not important. But if you can find a nihilist who believes in God let me know.
Like many postmodernists, the problem with a lot of gender studies and academic feminism is misinformed forays into biology and psychology, again which few of them have any training in.
Adrien says:
Try Psalm 22
I should also add that it’s very, very important to understand the RWDB kneejerk application of “pomo, multi-culti” as criticism of the left. They make the same mistake Adrian does (conflating concepts like nihilism and atheism, or nihilism and postmodern thought) sometimes because their definitions are wrong (like Adrians) and sometimes out of sheer intellectual laziness.
Don’t be ridiculous, it completely changes the meaning of what you said.
Really? Whose rhetoric would that be?
Klaus – …the editors showed poor judgement, and perhaps a certain amount of naivete.
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What the editors did is publish an entire issue on science. There was one actual scientist contributing, Sokal. For all the talk here about Dawkins et al sticking their big noses into philosophy and literary criticism (where obviously they’re out their league) there doesn’t seem to be as much vitriol reserved for these people who were caught with their ignorance out.
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Literary criticism and philosophy are generally accessible to a culture where literacy is the norm. True some philosophers are esoteric, elusive or obtuse. Some are discussing ideas in nuance that requires some deep familiarity with philosophy (or literature) in detail to acquire. But at base the only real training required to comprehend this is being able to read.
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This is not true of astrophysics or organic chemistry. There, to be able to have even the foggiest you need specialist training. Constant update. In fact I’m told that the Americans have so neglected their education system that some work being done in China and Korea is beyond the comprehension of the science community there!
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When science came along canonical knowledge, such as that found in a Literature degree, was bumped off its perch. Contrary to what many ’science’ types say, it is still useful, for the same reason it’s always been. But the Humanities, challenged by Science has scrambled for a bad strategy for self-preservation. It has, in certain respects, adopted the hi-tech lingo of science and sought to discredit empiricism at the same time. It should be the other way around.
Are you saying that Deleuze doesn’t say what he means? Derrida? Lacan? A second year undergrad in a ‘cultural theory’ course? A ‘postmodernist’ architect?
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An architect is disciplined by the physical reality, planning regulation and construction industry. It’s not relevant.
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Jacques Lacan is a pain in the arse to read but the mirror phase is a good addition to Freudian speculation. Derrida’s ‘deconstruction’ has a certain utility but it is overused to the point of meaninglessness as well. I don’t know how often I’ve heard the term used when people simply mean interpreting a text ideologically or creating something weird. In Writing and Difference he starts off considering if Structuralism will go the way of the Dodo.
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If? How arrogant. All human endeavors thus far go that way. Literary vogue for sure. The battle between realists and aestheticists in the 19th century was pretty fierce. Now you need to have a fairly deft understanding of the period to bloody well understand what the fuss was about.
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I suspect that intellectuals have some masochistic impulse to regard a text that’s ambiguous as especially deep. Thus Heidegger’s still discussed for some reason and you don’t hear much about Arendt. As far as I’m concerned Heidegger’s only noteworthy because he was Arendt’s mentor and lover (why Hannah why?). Anyone who think he gets Nietzsche and joins the Nazi party has no idea.
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At base if a writer is difficult to read than s/he’s less likely to survive. Being difficult to read is not a virtue. A mangled dog’s meal of obfuscation might not necessarily be totally worthless but it’d be worth more better writ.
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Remember that “the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed” will both soon be dead –
I wonder how long a Humanities course that can’t produce students with excellent writing and reading skills – for the 21st century – will last?
Adrien @ 172: The message I take from this is that we pretty much have to accept your narrative of intellectual history or just not bother trying to discuss it.
Adrien @ 173: you didn’t answer the question at all: it’s about specifying who exactly doesn’t say what they mean. You just commented on the people I mentioned and their utility and supposed difficulty. Why preface it with the question (which was directed at FDB anyway)?
“Thus Heidegger’s still discussed for some reason and you don’t hear much about Arendt.”
You obviously don’t mix with many philosophers. I can’t say I’m tired of discussions of Arendt, yet, but can we talk a little more about Heidegger again, please?
Oh, and if scientists are so worried by the likes of Bruno Latour, they should read Heidegger on science and technology.
Klaus – The message I take from this is that we pretty much have to accept your narrative of intellectual history or just not bother trying to discuss it.
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Really?
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I’m dumbfounded. I can’t find anything there that suggests my argument is authoritative. Please, take it to bits, I want you to.
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you didn’t answer the question at all
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No. I did what you said I did. If you’re allowed to suggest I’m proclaiming my point of view the orthodox and indisputable, which I’m highly disinclined to do, then I’m allowed to use a question as a springboard to make a point without answering it. The question could be classified as an example of that tactic whereby one is required to demonstrate some particular esoterica in order to discuss something more general.
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There are many examples of ‘postmodernists’ whose prose is so obtuse as to produce as many ideas of what is said as people who’ve bothered to read it.
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You obviously don’t mix with many philosophers.
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No but I read ‘em heaps. Just because someone’s got a doctorate and writes books or gives lectures on ‘philosophy’ doesn’t make ‘em a philosopher (imho). Fact it ain’t necessary. Say something, write it, if it’s worthwhile in that way – congratulations you’re a philosopher.
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It would of course help, amid this name dropping, if someone who thinks, say, Heidegger, had something useful to add to this discussion would actually add it. For example here I apply something Arendt said on revolution.
P Cat – Don’t be ridiculous, it completely changes the meaning of what you said.
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Both meanings are possible here, but “implied” makes more sense.
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Which is it?
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One of the meaning of infer is to imply.
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Really? Whose rhetoric would that be?
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Well yours for one. Every time I suggest that it’s nature not nurture or force you spit chips.
Just to poke my unwanted nose quite unhelpfully into the mini-debate about “nihilism”…
It seems to me that, the correct taxonomic claims of intellectual history notwithstanding (w/ pride of place to the Russians, Turgenev and Mister D. and so on), the phrase in its commonly-understood usage in our own times denotes not so much the “belief *in* nothing” but rather the “urge *towards* nothing” — the instinct of the gleeful smasher, the unreasoned (or poorly reasoned) urge to dive over the cliff, the childish taste for destroying without building, or maybe, to destroy rather than assume the wearisome burden of maintenance. Johnny Rotten smirking at Malcolm Muggeridge, that sort of thing writ large, and in mostly unreadable prose. There’s various tendrils in different directions which would develop and elaborate this (admittedly simplistic) thought, but that may be too much of a derailment.
Well, carry on then.
[Wanders away, whistling selections from "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight"]
Adrien – you’re wrong. Implication is done by the speaker, inference by the audience. They are opposites.
JPZ – There’s positive nihilism and negative nihilism blah blah blah.
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The dictionary definition of nihilism is “a: viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless b: a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths”.
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You will always find this at the heart of ‘nihilism’.
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Talking of which The Book of Psalms mmm:
Sounds like they’re believin’ somethin’ to me. But you’re right. Belief in God is nihilism. And atheism is not nihilism. It’s a legitimate technique of modern debate.
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The meek shall eat: the hope slogan o’ th’ Cult of the Weak. Nothin’ to contradict that o’ course; except everything. Personally I think The Book of Job is a better ontological allegory. Y’see it’s all God’s little joke. Obvious right?
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I also like
the stupid monkeys blow up the world because of a bookThe Revelation According To St John. That’s a real corker.I don’t think Heidegger has much of use to add, that was the joke.
As for this:
“When science came along canonical knowledge, such as that found in a Literature
degree, was bumped off its perch. Contrary to what many ’science’ types say, it is still useful, for the same reason it’s always been. But the Humanities, challenged by Science has scrambled for a bad strategy for self-preservation. It has, in certain respects, adopted the hi-tech lingo of science and sought to discredit empiricism at the same time. It should be the other way around.”
Philosophy hasn’t been able to legislate a program for science since before Kant. Add to this that the valorised position of ‘literature’ was itself established in the post-Kantian climate, so the idea of it being bumped off it’s perch is dubious. We need to be more specific: intellectual history is not about broad strokes.
As for your description of what the humanities has done in response to science, I don’t think it has much merit, firstly because I don’t think the developments in the humanities that you are so concerned with have had anything to do with a supposedly concerted response science. A better account of the post-1960s humanities (itself too broad a category) would be as a response to scientism of an earlier generation of humanities scholars on the one hand, and to the reified categories of humanistic knowledge on the other. Furthermore, I think that we are talking about developments in the humanities, not about the humanities as in general. There are trends away from some forms of empiricism, and towards others. There are trends away from older vocabularies and toward new ones. None of these trends can be generalised across all of the humanities. There is a much altered intellectual landscape, is as far as I would go.
Klaus – I hadn’t anyone in particular in mind. Much postmodern theory “pushes the limits of language” in such a way as to make it unclear what is being said. My problem’s not so much with using words in a special sense (as long as you make it clear what you mean – hence my reference to “clearly defined terminology”), or using words from outside one’s own area of expertise (ditto), but more with sentence length and structure. Plus the tendency to try for a knockout blow with each and every sentence, packing every clever word you’ve got in there. It’s a style thing not a philosophy thing.
I’m quite sure most postmodernist writers have something to say, and are saying what they mean, but some seem to lack concern for anyone else’s comprehension. This of course leads to the suspicion that they don’t in fact have anything non-trivial to say, a suspicion I occasionally harbour myself.
Of course this could all be taken as evidence of merely my own lack of acumen, and probably will. I’m a big boy and can cope with that.
JPZ – I’m with you. I don’t use the word to refer to someone who believes in nothing unless they also act in certain ways.
Well at least ya got goood taste in music j_p_z.
As a self confessed boring pedant I would like to add that FDB is correct about infer and imply, although in common usage they are often used as synonyms.
Adrien, why do you think Lermontov was a nihilist?
Klaus – intellectual history is not about broad strokes.
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Nonsense.
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History can be read in broad strokes and in tiny bits of cross hatching and subtle washes. You can concentrate on a year, a decade, a century, a millenium. The two-thousand year old history of a city, the development of a single historical incident.
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And you accuse me of authoritarianism.
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The specialized study of literature may be a 19th century artefact, so what? Please go back to the establishment of the early universities, the European ones and you will find they are canonical. That is the students read and discuss and write the Great Books as decided by the Church. Naturally nothing like that goes on in the modern Humanities: there’s no Foucault said it so it must be true. No
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The scientism of which you speak is a likewise dysfunctional response to science. Novelists like Zola posing as scientists when they really mean I do a lot of research. Freud, Marx let’s not go there. Alright so we’ve gone from science is all to science is all bullshit (but we like inventing constructions too)
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Of course that’s my delusion. It comes of considering history in broad strokes. If I knew what I was talking about, what I’d be doing is excluding the science from the scientism. That way when actual scientists come along and point out that I’m full of shit I can arrange my discursive wagons in a circle and the arrows won’t get thru.
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And meantime undergraduates are required to undertake revisionary courses teaching ‘em out to write proper. But of course that has nothing to with the Humanities.
“Klaus – I hadn’t anyone in particular in mind.”
This is the problem I have with the category ‘postmodern theory’. Once you start chipping away at it with some sense of specificity, you’re left with a far less convincing generalisation. Lacan, who is very difficult (and I would agree, unnecessarily so) isn’t a postmodernist. That’s just an example, but arguably neither are many of the difficult Frenchmen.
“Plus the tendency to try for a knockout blow with each and every sentence, packing every clever word you’ve got in there. It’s a style thing not a philosophy thing.”
This is, arguably, a feature of the Anglophone academy taking up poststructuralism, and I tend to evaluate it case by case. I’ll take the example of Derrida. The whole point of Derrida’s difficult style is not to go for the knockout blow. It’s to make the knockout blow – or it’s underlying assumptions – a problem. Ditto Gayatri Spivak or Peggy Kamuf: they’re quite deliberately slowing readers down, but I forgive them because what they’re trying to do means leaping along at a pace set by the reader doesn’t work. But there are plenty of other readers of Derrida whose own style is not as attuned to their purpose, and who are in effect, if not intention, doing exactly as you say. They’re trying to say too much at once and tripping over themselves or unnecessarily challenging the reader.
Another point, though by no means definitive with respect to your objections, is the issue of translation and its ethics. Often academic translators will go for accuracy over readability. Once again, this doesn’t excuse Anglophone critics taking the style and running with it.
The borrowing of terminology between science and philosophy * works two ways. Deleuze most certainly can if he wants to borrow scientific terms to use in the practice of his philosophy. It might be annoying to specialists in the scientific field concerned but they ought to learn a little tolerance and respect too. Lord knows how annoying I found the term “ontology” when applied in information science. But, you know, I learnt to live with it.
* strictly speaking I have to point out that science IS philosophy, albeit a special type of it (like mathematics, which is not science, but like science, a type of philosophical thinking).
Adrien, why do you think Lermontov was a nihilist?
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I’m not sure he was technically. In fact I’m not sure I can say that there was a Lermontov or a place called Russia. I’m beginning to suspect that these are discursive constructions.
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Lermontov was, at least, a member of a very cynical generation. His character Pechorin has nihilisitic attributes. But literary personae, the Byronic anti-hero for example, don’t correspond well to categories even when people agree to stick to the dictionary definition of terms.
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I just dig Lermontov.
“strictly speaking I have to point out that science IS philosophy”
Deleuze would certainly disagree with this. According to him philosophy is about the creation of concepts, science about the creation of functions. Not sure I agree with him on this point.
How about we kick this endless excursion into dictionary gymnastics. We have a tension here between the idea of a Universal Truth. This can be grounded in science, in, law and in religion.
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There is a competition to this, you can call it whatever. Do we need absolutes? How do we decide these? Pragmatism? Can society function without absolutes? Remember the Law must make a decision.
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I’d be interested in your opinion Klaus.
“History can be read in broad strokes and in tiny bits of cross hatching and subtle washes. You can concentrate on a year, a decade, a century, a millenium. The two-thousand year old history of a city, the development of a single historical incident.”
Of course history can be about broad strokes, but the utility of that approach to a discussion of a very specific part of western intellectual history – already ill-defined – is debatable.
You cite Zola as scientistic, I say look closer to home (and by home, I mean the homes of whichever ‘postmodernist’ thinkers you actually have in mind).
“Adrien – you’re wrong. Implication is done by the speaker, inference by the audience. They are opposites.”
That’s right. I can’t say (for instance), ‘Adrien, I imply from what you’re saying that…’ I can say, ‘Adrien, I infer from what you’re saying that…’, because I’m speaking as the audience.
Let’s do a post on personal grammatical bugbears. That’d be a doozy.
FDB — well it may be a hassle to pin down what nihilism is, but at least we know its opposite when we see it.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=blh4agpRS18&feature=related
“we were fucking corndogs.”
God love ‘em.
“We have a tension here between the idea of a Universal Truth.”
I need more information from this sentence. My opinion on what? Great big questions without much to ground them. Leaping, always leaping…
What is a Universal Truth and why the caps? Epistemology is not that simple, and I think that the unicity and universality of truth – whatever it means – is just a straw figure used in anti-pomo polemics. I don’t notice too many people employing such rhetoric taking the time to situate it in a very complex theologico-philosophical tradition or taking the care to explain what they mean by “Universal Truth”.
Just on Deleuze, there’s no way he’s a postmodernist. In many ways he’s a more “traditional” philosopher than other French thinkers of his generation – which a moment’s reflection on Klaus’ correct summation of his view on philosophy as the creation of concepts would suggest. But, then, I and others have already observed on this thread that the two problems we’re dealing with here are imprecision in terminology and Dr Cat’s observation that a lot of people who discuss “pomo” thought just don’t do their reading homework!
Wonder no longer. He wasn’t.
What, you mean categories like “Byronic” and “anti-hero”? How very PoMo of you.
Pechorin, alongside Onegin, is the archetypal ли́шний челове́к, or “superfluous man”, i.e. an over-privileged, over-educated and thoroughly under-employed aristocrat suffering from stultifying anomie and ennui within Tsarist Russia. The cynicism manifested by such romantic characters is often confused with nihilism, but lacks the necessary ideological underpinnings.
I need more information from this sentence. My opinion on what? Great big questions without much to ground them. Leaping, always leaping…
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I’ve tried crawling it doesn’t become me. People keep kicking
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The post is about the ABC and a Religion Show. Let’s just forget the on-purpose ignorance of News Ltd for a minute. The ABC is a public broadcaster yes? Therefore the ABC has an obligation somehow to serve a need for the Australian citizenry entire.
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Let’s consider a hypothetical.
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There’s a proposal for a trans-faith, but highly orthodox, program from various Abrahamic cult members. A Rabbi, an Imam, a Reverend and some mick with his collar on backwards are gonna use the public broadcaster to advocate the fundamental tenets of their faith from an orthodox theological position.
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This means they are going to say homosexuality is sinful, abortion is murder, women must obey men blah blah blah. It’s an hour a week. It uses .01% of the ABC budget and surveys suggest at least 15% of the Australian people want it produced.
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What do you say?
How about we kick this endless excursion into dictionary gymnastics.
How about we don’t.
‘”When I use a word,” said Humpty Dumpty, in a rather scornful tone, “I use it to mean just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”‘
Mark – What is a Universal Truth
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AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Please is there something we can do apart from hairsplitting definitions and saying [insert whatever] is more complex?
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… and why the caps?
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I really like the 17th century man
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Epistemology is not that simple
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No. Empistemology is a big fat pain in the arse guaranteed to clear a room in three seconds. The only thing more painful is early Sonic Youth records the morning after three bottles of North Korean Scotch Whisky. Don’t ask me how I know. It’s a shameful story I can’t remember.
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I think, for the purposes of this discussion it’s pretty fuckin’ axiomatic what is meant by a Universal Truth. God has created us and loves us and wants us to obey His law, for example would be, if true – universal. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Light is another example. Intelligent bits of snot-like protoplasm on a planet near the edge of Maffei 1 would, if this Truth held, have their own snot-like Jesus thru which they’d have to go if they wanted to get to Snot Heaven.
What, you mean categories like “Byronic” and “anti-hero”? How very PoMo of you.
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How is that Po-mo?
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Pechorin: an over-privileged, over-educated and thoroughly under-employed aristocrat suffering from stultifying anomie and ennui within Tsarist Russia.
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Good description. Russian books are stuffed to the brim with these characters. So are French books. The French characters dress better and give cool parties tho’
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The cynicism manifested by such romantic characters is often confused with nihilism, but lacks the necessary ideological underpinnings.
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Johhny Rotten on the other has these in spades.
P Cat – How about we don’t.
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I’m so glad you agree finally. If you want to do this (yet) again sometime, could you please pick a word other than ‘infer’. I’m a little tired of explaining what it means.
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Cheers.
Joke, Joyce, riffing on the subject of lexical subjectivismus relative to, and contextualised within, the post-modernist object. A bit like explaining a word to mean something other than it’s generally accepted to mean. Cf. #198.
Peklorin – Ah. I seem to have trouble gettin’ these hi-falutin’ in-jokes. An
is always a help.
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. Why isn’t he a postmodernist? I have no opinion.
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Socrates would go frothy at the mouth if he could see the internet
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Mark – Deleuze, there’s no way he’s a postmodernist.
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No? Ye better get to work at wikipedia then. They got it wrong
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In many ways he’s a more “traditional” philosopher than other French thinkers of his generation – which a moment’s reflection on Klaus’ correct summation of his view on philosophy as the creation of concepts
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In the advertising industry there are people who get paid heaps o’ dosh to create concepts. I don’t think they’re philsophers.
Klaus – If don’t like the religion show hypothetical how about a straight proposition:
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That – Sokal and Bricmont in their exposé of allegedly meaningless statements about science by recent French philosophers take errors of particular applications of philosophical ideas to science as refutations of the whole general framework utilized.
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And, they:
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…like a number of other physicist and mathematician science warriors, strive to maintain a view of science that preserves the attitudes of the past century by reinterpreting the apparently unsettling developments of twentieth century science.
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From this. Don’t chicken out.
Tyro Rex @ 150,
But what theology is Dawkings expected to know in regards to the existence of god? Eagleton made a similar point and I’m afraid that PZ Myers’ Courtier’s Reply is the appropriate response.
I have my own reservations about Dawkins’ arguments but I don’t see that knowing how many angels can dance on a head of a pin helps any.
Johnny Rotten? Ideological underpinnings? Only if you’re referring to his pinned unders, pal.
Malcolm McLaren, sure. Nihil Sex Nihilio, or so I’ve been told.
muy bueno, Se~or
O Japerz, please don’t go changin’
Thanks for the Minutemen clip. Made my night.
Puts me in mind of that LCD Soundsystem track… ummm… you know the one. Surely, being a Brooklynite.
Don’t chicken out from what? Following you on your merry dance? I’m not sure what I’m being asked.
Losing My Edge!
There, and no google. I swear.
Sorry, inconsistent monikery. Work/life balance eh? It’s a doozy.
Shaun – thanks for the Myers link. I wonder if anyone has attempted a refutation.
What I’ve learnt from the Dusek review (c/o Adrien @ 204) is that I have previously given Deleuze less credit than I ought to have (although I did so based on his own account of his relationship with mathematics and science, as stated in his interviews, and given that I’m not a mathematician or a scientist). I’ve also learnt more about Bricmont through Dusek’s observations about his attitude to Ilya Prigogine. I had speculated earlier on this thread that Sokal/Bricmont would leave Isabelle Stengers alone, but in light of that, perhaps not.
Also, my reading of Whitehead has always jarred with his Russelian adventures, and now I have a better sense of why.
Adrien wrote:
Eh, dude? You started it with a bunch of craptastic definitions (ho ho all nihilist are atheists!) I was merely attempting to correct you. I think you ought to give up philosophy as a hobby, and maybe take up board games. I hear “Mastermind” is quite amusing.
FDB wrote:
Thomas Aquinas did it 800 years ago on the toilet in his lunchbreak, and it probably still makes more sense than morons like H. Allen Orr.
Not yet FDB. I did a search but nothing that caught my eye.
Quelle surprise, Adrien!
For my sins (and actually it was worth it), I spent about three years reading Deleuze in order to write a paper on him. I know that’s terribly old fashioned and not very pomo and all!
Mark, I’ve been reading Deleuze on and off for a while now. My main problem is less with Deleuze than with Deleuzism. Deleuze treats concepts as tools that can be taken from where you find them and used to do different things in other contexts. But I feel like there is too much of a pull towards taking on his system as a whole, and this is reflected in some of the ways that Deleuze is taken up by some as an entire system and vocabulary. It’s like people aren’t willing to do to him what he invites them to do.
Yes, I agree, Klaus, but it’s endemic – cf. Foucault’s comments on specific versus universal intellectuals and not wanting to found a school. What the world doesn’t need is another article comparing call centres to the Panopticon. But a lot of scholarship of any stripe is ordinary – that’s the whole message behind Kuhn’s stuff. While I deplore vulgar post-structuralism, it’s often held to a different standard from poorly thought out and designed (and written – obscurity is not proper to pomo – Derrida, Deleuze and Foucault all write good clear French) research inspired by other scientific approaches.
Are you sure? I suspect those rhizome dudes (oh dear, more suss metaphors from science) have never actually tried to grow fancy irises. But then, some smartarse would no doubt immediately turn up arguing that botany isn’t really a science.
Sheesh … social theory just gives me a headache these days. I haven’t looked back since becoming a shallow empiricist. Best move I ever made!
Do surveys, coupla interviews, maybe a focus groups, gather data – enter it in excel, crank up SPSS, scoob a snifter of PNG gold, and blow my shallow empiricist mind with a bit of chi-square action on correlation street. I’m much happier as a numbacruncha. No longer feel like in some musty room debating the Torah with Chaim Potok. And Ms LE says our love life is much improved!
Mind you, better academics than I can do both at once. I see several of them here. Hats off to you!
Liam — your grammar and spelling are off. It’s “Nihil ex nihilo [veniat],” as explicated here.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=G_DV54ddNHE
But is not the very act of demanding the termination of an analytical system based on how we perceive how cultural perceptions influence our ways of seeing itself tainted by our perception of how much we see what we don’t want to see how we see what we see when we’re not supposed to be looking too closely?
The people who complain about pomo either don’t get it or don’t like others getting it. Or don’t like others getting what they don’t.
The people who complain about pomo either don’t get it or don’t like others getting it. Or don’t like others getting what they don’t.
But even after 221 posts here, including 20 or so making the same claim the LP attempts to reveal the word’s meaning/s and utility is even more confused – in fact, bordering on incoherent.
“But even after 221 posts here, including 20 or so making the same claim the LP attempts to reveal the word’s meaning/s and utility is even more confused – in fact, bordering on incoherent.”
Now you’re not getting what others don’t.
Sweet, JPZ. I’ll cop to grammar and spelling correction if the rhythm stick’s the punishment.
Mind you, like David Rubie, I find meaning in utility. Ahem.
Not unlike that sentence, yes.
Nobody here, not even Adrien as far as one can tell, has made it his or her mission to ‘reveal the word’s meaning/s and utility’ so I’m not sure why you are being snotty about it. You might as well berate a dog for not being a cat (in fact there would be more sense in that). At least half of us are mainly here for the lolz. If you find the discussion incoherent then perhaps that’s because you don’t understand it; as Les Murray once said about something else, ‘Perhaps the poem is setting us a test that we have failed.’
I find meaning in berets Liam
(came for the lolz, wuz disappointed).
You want berray? You can’t HANDLE berray. I dare you to find meaning in that.
Well, perhaps not that ESP, but I always found it hard to watch this unreflective and stupendously stupid scene without throwing up in my mouth a little.
The beret, cause or symptom? You decide.
“You’re what this is all about”. Fuck, I just threw stuff at my monitor again.
Dude, tell me about it. The moofy actually screened on the teev a couple of Sunday arvos ago, so I sat down to watch in gobsmacked wonder as I enjoyed this classic one more time. Spot the renegade Starfleet officer at 8:14 in this choice slice of agitprop. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
Heh. There’s a nice post-modern thesis for somebody, the gay subtext of John Wayne movies. No wonder he walked like that.
David – You started it with a bunch of craptastic definitions
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No man, you started it. You told me my definition is crap and then linked to the wiki page which starts off with a sentence indistinguishable from mine. Golf clap.
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(ho ho all nihilist are atheists!)
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All nihilists are atheists. You haven’t demonstrated any different. Linking to The Book of Psalms and locating despair doesn’t cut it.
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I was merely attempting to correct you.
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You were thinking with your dick – yawn.
Adrien, you are totally incapable of reading for comprehension and display all the insight and reflection of a besser block. When you grow up past merely parroting a bunch of bullshit from people you don’t understand but like to name drop, come on back and we can have a proper discussion.
Beret. Kissing. Tanks.
Mark – I spent about three years reading Deleuze in order to write a paper on him.
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So can you tell me why he’s not a postmodernist then? Like I said, I don’t have an opinion.
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He is very much the flavour of the month.
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Foucault’s comments on specific versus universal intellectuals and not wanting to found a school.
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Well the Foucauldians who taught me went out of their way to not label what they were doing. They didn’t address biology at least then, but they did make it clear that it existed. They were, of course, talking about social relations.
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Didn’t make a difference, they acquired disciples who turned it into a cult
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Derrida, Deleuze and Foucault all write good clear French) research inspired by other scientific approaches.
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Well I can’t speak for Deleuze altho’ he does write clearly. So do Foucault and Derrida but they aren’t scientific. And they shouldn’t be.
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Derrida writes thru the prism of literary theory. Foucault’s work is a series of historiographical speculations in order to establish a theory of power. I don’t think his theory is ideologically specific. One of the best students in the class, they were hard classes, was a bit of a fascist actually.
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In any event professional historians are wont to point out that Foucault’s history, particularly when gets much behind 1700, isn’t much chop. His excavations of the emergence of modern society however, I think, are quite useful; they show the wiring behind the Technocracy.
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Funnily enough Foucault is most popular in the creative arts even tho’ he didn’t really contribute much of significance there. No doubt there are Foucauldian corporate technocrats.
David – Yawn!
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The protocols of this site forbid from proceeding any further. I will respect them.
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Your insults to my intelligence have no bearing on the debate. If you wanna really have some fun, c’mon over here and I’ll oblige you with riposte.
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Espada ropera’s okay? Olé!
I own a labrador who is more capable of insightful discussion Adrien, unless you send me money I’m not going to bother.
In the bullring there’s no riposte, Adrien, it not being a battle of equals. The bull just blunders about while people rile and insult it.
Still, better than fighting a marmot.
Excuse me. Marmot.
The month he was flavour of when I was reading him was something like April 1992, and I was a tad behind the times myself. Does this mean he’s staged a comeback?
Adrien, if you were taught by Ian Hunter I can only assume that you paid about as much attention to him as you do to the commenters here.
To think with your dick,
Implies you’re a prick
Whose brain may be dead
Makes you a dick head.
So Adrien, could you please
When down on your knees,
Refrain from such a slur
To another poster’s honour.
Sorry!
Eek! No he doesn’t, Adrien. He almost never refers to literary theory as such – linguistics, yep, but that’s quite different. He was appropriated in English speaking thought by literary theorists, but just because his philosophical method is textualist (as – in fact – was the prevalent tradition in French philosophy at the time he was trained) doesn’t mean that he “writes thru the prism of literary theory”!
I’ve got about 8000 words of thesis lying around somewhere about why people are doing Derrida wrong!
Heh. Derrida, ur doin it rong!
El Cordobés – In the bullring there’s no riposte, Adrien, it not being a battle of equals.
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Yeah, exactly
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The bull just blunders about while people rile and insult it.
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Well since Jason kicked the Bird off we need a new gimp at Catallaxy. David thinks he can write poetry. Maybe he’s doing an Emily Dickinson with that clinky last. But somehow I doubt it.
Mindy –
There was something of a publishing boom around Deleuze about five to ten years ago – journals, translation of more obscure texts, edited collections – a lot of it beginning in the wake of his death in the mid-90s with people starting to offer assessments of his work as a whole.
He was first taken up in Australia a little earlier than Dr Cat suggests, but was definitely flavour of the month, especially in literary circles, about when she remembers. Many of the first group of humanities scholars interested in Deleuze in Australia were actually taught by him in the 1970s and 1980s. The later interest is of a much more rigorous, but less vibrant sort.
Deleuze’s influences are largely modernists in art and literature, and a particular tradition in continental philosophy, which according to him can be traced from Spinoza through to Bergson. He was interested in building an idiosyncratic philosophical system, including a metaphysics – which put him at odds with those often called postmodernist.
Adrien wrote:
There’s your whole problem right there. It’s $50 a catallaxy comment or nothing. Surely the rugged individualists at Catallaxy can see the logic in that one. You know I’m worth it.
Liam, I could have sworn that was a ferret.
$51.50, David.
It most certainly was, PC.
Still, marmot sounds better. But they’re too vegetarian and shit to scare anyone.
My fave from the whole long thin mammal ouvre: the mongoose.
Well, that’d take a training in biology, or zoology I suppose, to know for sure. I know my humanities-limits.
Honey, they got both kinds o’ philosophy comments there—discipline and punish.
Der yer ‘ave a permit fer that merngoose?
Roll up folks! Roll up, roll up!!
The thread that’s got it all: contortionists, Continental Philosophy [I can see YOU'd be keen on a bit of the Continental, sir! Yes you! Is she your girlfriend, sir?], Definitions Straight from the Dick-shun-ary, yessss! Definitions not so Straight. Stoush, low blows and insults; considered and scholarly commentary – thank you Klaus-me-boy!!
BEST OF ALL, we’re halfway to the 500 plus of the Missy Higgins All Time Great Thread Tally, and nosireee we never did get a straight answer on that one
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lipsniger
Heh.
Know him? Poet. Good chap. “Quadrant”. Deceased. Good fellow. {puff, puff}
FDB (I see you there), thank you for that wonderful if sadistic clip. I adore mongeese, of which I first heard as a small child sitting in the Grade 1 and 2 classroom of Curramulka Primary School on a hot Friday afternoon being read Kipling’s ‘Rikki-Tikki-Tavi’ which I believe contains this very scenario. Am I right in thinking that was most Australian children’s original encounter with the concept of the mongoose?
Pfffft.
Bah.
“Our voyage was to be a solemn rite,
A passing through the waters to rebirth
In a new world, created in despite
Of the demonic powers that rule the age.
These vanished meanings of our pilgrimage
Trouble my mind and heart now as I write.”
Hmmm. (strokes lip like Bogart)
Yes
James MacA? Yairs, knew ‘im. Or me sister knew ‘im. Got a bit messy there for a bit.
Well, Belmonte may be troubled of mind and heart by the devolution of this thread, but I’m enjoying it. Especially talk of herpestids and mustelids.
*Burp*
Irate Faerret, the Queen: oooohhh, LOVE the costume! Is that a fox head draped over your shoulders, or are you just pleasing to the eye?
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi in a hot, red brick State School classroom, circa 1955 (when the newspapers used to write about “heat waves” and the RedEx Trial outback car dirges used to drone along); or Mowgli, Akela, et al in the Cubs, then Boy Scouts. A time of stories and singalongs round a piano if someone could play. Plenty of radio, no TV.
A time of innocence: Krushchev’s 1956 speech deconstructing Uncle Joe Stalin, still lay in the distant future.
“Mongeese”
I love it.
Jay-sus
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I went away. Pavlov’s Cat hoped in vain (again) that I’d stay away. But no. And it got all po-mo! I think Christopher’s quote at #264 is by far the clearest most insightful thing writ yet.
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David – There’s your whole problem right there. It’s $50 a catallaxy comment or nothing.
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Wow, that’s like so Upper West Side 1957. It’s, like, when people typed insteada wrote. Wow!
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Surely the rugged individualists at Catallaxy can see the logic in that one.
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Ye c’arn o’er tae Cat’laxy laddie n’ repeat that shite viz the definition o’ nihilism. It’s wall tae wall Nietzscheans o’er there (well there’s Jason anyway) and they’ll rip ye ta bits like one of them Christian fooks in Roman times. they dinnae g’t John Calvin tho’ laddie. He as too tough fer the lions tae eat like. They broke their fook’n teeth. Aye!
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You know I’m worth it.
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No I don’t, prove it.
I hadnae itch a
Couldna scratch like
An’ buzz’d as an Orient night
.
In ears n’ eyes’n
Up mah nose like
Coverin’ me fleabites
.
I swished mah hand
An’ stamped th’ Earth, like
Tried shooin’t out th’ door
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But l’amour de bataille; it
Sodded the bug like
‘Twas an insect most cocksure
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So I challenge’d a bug
Come satisfy me like
O’er in the field where it’s done
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An’ ’til it happens
I’ll blot out yer cries, like
Fall to’t yarely boatswain
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‘Tis shad’nfrey me
I fully admit, like
But I needs must get me quota
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Some come o’er the hill
Ta th’ arena sans law like
And I’ll happy rend ye iota
Mark – Eek! No he doesn’t, Adrien. He almost never refers to literary theory as such – linguistics, yep, but that’s quite different.
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It’s been a long time Mark and you may very well be right. I remember my undergrad bull sessions talking about this stuff with science geeks. They were skeptical I recall about Derrida’s relevance to linguistics. Something vague viz Chomsky v Foucault comes to mind. But I think Derrida starts off as a literary critic and goes into linguistics for the purposes of excavation.
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Derrida’s influence on me comes principally from his application in the design of the practical bit of my
trainingstudies. Whether this was a reasonable application or not is something I’ve never considered. There was a practical and viable set of techniques based on ‘deconstruction’ however..
I’ve got about 8000 words of thesis lying around somewhere about why people are doing Derrida wrong!
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I reckon we can assume that everyone gets everything wrong 99% of the time. Well maybe not that bad, but close.
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It’s in the nature of human behaviour to see patterns and resemblances and assume corresponding significance. That’s not a bad thing; a lot of spuriously applied theory has born fruit. The early Sov filmmakers, for instance, and their application of Marx’s dialectic to film editing. It was bullshit but it yielded an advance in montage technique.
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Incidentally viz Deleuze and ‘flavour of the month’: my opinion is based on his pre-eminence in the marketplace. In the smart bookstores he features prominently in philosophy sections. In the Evil Corporate Places it’s Nietzsche.
Yes, Deleuze is a big seller, still. It looks like this will persist for some time to come.
Like Deleuze, Derrida is first and foremost interested in philosophy, not literary theory. He is associated with literary theory mostly because of how he was taken up in American universities alongside the likes of Paul De Man, J Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman et al, scholars who were interested, primarily, in the literary. This has had a profound effect on how he is used and by whom. My preference is for him being taught as a philosopher first and I note that the interesting contemporary applications of Derrida’s thought are in areas like political philosophy.
Well, you may well think that, Adrien, but to do is completely false. Untrue. Wrong. Etc!
That’s the problem with your position on this thread – it’s based on misapprehensions.
That’s the problem with your position on this thread – it’s based on misapprehensions.
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Like my faulty understanding of nihilism?
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Mark that’s the closest anyone’s come to actually locating a misapprehension on my part. It’s a standard tactic, just say: you don’t understand. In fact it’s the meat of the post. These people spewing about postmodernism don’t get postmodernism.
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I have provided, at length, several quotes, with articulated contextualisation, that frame ‘postmodernism’. Whatever its precise contours, postmodernism has to do with a contest between a view that champions universal truths, value, morals, what have you – the classical view – and another which seeks to assert a plurality of these. To date no-one’s seriously challenged it. No-one’s said: well so and so gets it wrong when s/he says such and such for this reason, that.
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I’m still waiting to hear why Deleuze is not a postmodernist. Surely if that was so clear then you’d be able to say why.
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The thing is the humanities are not the sciences for one simple reason: objective data has limited utility. One political system isn’t better than another from a geological point of view. The universe doesn’t give a shit whether we’re socialists or fascist-anarchists. We do. The humanities, the studies of humans, of humanity, the arts by which humanity expresses itself, the way we tell our stories, real and imaginary – none of it is scientific. We make it up.
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When Richard Dawkins declares that Keats was wrong to lambast Newton for reducing rainbows to prisms, it is he that is wrong. Intellectually he understands it but where he fails is that Keats is writing bloody poetry, he’s expressing a feeling common in the 19th century. .
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No doubt when Keats writes:
He articulates smartly what Dawkins objects to. The idea common in theocracies that all we need to know is known is anathema to scientists. To poets however?
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Obviously what applies to poets doesn’t not apply to sociology. But what does apply to sociology and to economics that does not apply to the hard sciences is the appearance of paradigm changes that are the result, not of new discoveries, but of trends. In physics, in biology, in chemistry you don’t get paradigm changes without new discovery. In sociology, economics you do. Just like in literature.
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There is an element of fashion in the arts, even the soft science ones. Yet, in the face of science’s complexity, of the esoteric specialties of its practitioners, of the hi-falutin’ and mind-bendin’ stuff that comes out – of its immense subtlety; the humanities has had a hard time retorting to Science’s contempt for it.
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A maze of errors results. For example your catalogue of 8000 words. The number of the words means nothing. It’s what they say. And, as is the case for anyone who attempts to prove that Shakespeare was a good writer, you will find that the quality of what those words say can be disputed in a way that the findings resulting from the use of the Large Hadron Collider cannot.
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The various notions produced by modern philosophy, the great names with their myriad entangled ideas and argumentative precipitation are all in aid of posing questions and possible answers viz: what is the good life, what does life mean, why bloody bother. These aren’t rigorous examinations of natural phenomena, they don’t discover new things. They simply try to hold the ship together while that happens.
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I agree with the proposition that any so-called One Objective Truth held to by a society will be in aid of propping up whoever’s in charge. I agree likewise that it’s a good idea to switch to a cultural relationship which promotes and encourages plurality and openness. I agree with Nietzsche viz the desirability of a constantly re-evaluative ethos.
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But if there’s no agreement even on the definition of terms something’s going amiss. And Traditionalists prosper by the confusion.
But, Adrien, you just don’t understand. You don’t say whether you ever have read any Derrida, just that you had a view of what his work involved formed many years ago. Well, it’s incorrect. If you’re interested in Derrida, perhaps you should go and read him! I can assure you that I wouldn’t have been writing about him in my thesis if I hadn’t, and if I weren’t able to contextualise him accurately. And Deleuze has already been discussed.
This is the problem – you have a view of postmodernism which is articulated without citing any actual texts or making an argument based on particular works or body of work – where you can be pinned down, you are wrong. So that gives me very little confidence that the discussion is even remotely worthwhile. This is not meant to be a put down, btw, but an observation that it is futile to discuss particular authors without actually reading and contextualising them.
Almost everyone you have cited has specifically disclaimed an affiliation with “postmodernism”, for instance. We could have a discussion of Derrida on truth, but it would be a waste of time if you haven’t read him, though I will observe that his position is not “postmodern”.
I made the point above that you have erected a straw figure of “universal truth” and the same goes for this “classical view”. Whose view? What is meant by universality? These are serious questions, and as I said above @ 195, epistemology cannot be reduced to this polarity, except in the sorts of silly polemics which I’ve made it clear in the post I have zero interest in.
The sort of dichotomy you posit doesn’t exist outside those polemics. I don’t know what you mean by “the classical view” – if any philosopher had been saying something as simplistic as “there is one truth universally graspable” they wouldn’t be in the canon! That certainly isn’t Kant’s position on truth, universality and judgement, for instance.
For convenience, I’ll link to my comment here:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/11/20/lets-ban-postmodernism/#comment-565512
This is the problem – you have a view of postmodernism which is articulated without citing any actual texts
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Excuse me? That is not true.
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You are attempting to use my gaff on Derrida, a gaff I have not conceded and you have not demonstrated to be thus, to discredit my entire argument. One of the texts I supposedly didn’t cite argues that Sokal and Bricmont “take errors of particular applications of philosophical ideas to science as refutations of the whole general framework utilized”.
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where you can be pinned down, you are wrong.
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Please. I haven’t been pinned down? I don’t play such games. My meaning is clear. Please cite an example of something I’ve written where the meaning isn’t clear. And the closest you, or anyone else, has come to pointing out my errors is this Derrida thing on which I have to take your word.
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It seems the list of authors and quotes I’ve supplied above does not exist, but your conclusive case viz Derrrida does. I’m still waiting to hear what makes Deleuze not a postmodernist, still not forthcoming, and now I’m to take it that Derrida is not a postmodernist even tho’, along with Foucault, he is cited ad nauseum in scholarly and public discussions of postmodern philosophy. Yet he isn’t a postmodernist? Why? Because (Soon to be) Dr Bahnisch says so.
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And also he says that’s it all silly and he isn’t interested.
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I’m sorry Mark but I can’t count how many times, in discussions within this general field, someone has responded to hard questions posed with “I’m bored now”. It might work here but it won’t work in the World.
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Eventually you will have to come up with something better than simply throwing doubt on concepts like the ‘classical’ (Enlightenment? hello?). And what does universality mean? The quality, fact, or condition of being universal.
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If you want to find where this sort of talk occurs outside the silly circles for which you have so much contempt try Prof Himmelfarb upstairs.
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The thing is that simply writing off meaningful polemic as not worth it, evading simple requests to back up your assertions, pretending that I haven’t backed up my assertions and constantly sidebarring into endless semantic ping-pong will simply do nothing for your argument in the arenas that matter except relegate you to the footnotes.
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What is really fascinating about this discussion and similar ones is the lengths to which people will go to not discuss reality. In the end all this will do is render you impotent when the inevitable great conservative backlash finally attains high momentum and washes anything remotely postmodern out of the system.
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And what you don’t see is that many people who’d normally be disinclined to be so, will be on their side. Not yours.
From where I sit, there’s a lot of tu quoque going on there, Adrien. And I am bored now. Or rather, I’m having dinner with a friend and I’d like to go and have a shower – I don’t feel obliged to endlessly discuss these matters on this thread. And that takes me to my point – the protocols for discussion here are uncertain. In academia, one begins a discussion of a particular thinker after her or his work has been read, parsed, critiqued and absorbed. I happen to have spent over ten years reading Derrida and the literature on his thought. I do feel myself obliged to intervene here and correct obvious errors, but I don’t believe that it is possible to have the sort of discussion here that would be productive of anything – with an interlocutor who has not read his texts.
And by the way, this exemplies the objections I have to your mode of discussion:
Circularity.
And universality of values, morals and truth? Are they the same thing? What are the relations between these terms and/or concepts? If you are unwilling to even define what is supposedly key to the dichotomy you posit without clarifying the confused nature of the elisions you have made and without circularity, well what’s the point? Questions of epistemology, moral philosophy and value just are complex and saying there’s one “classical view” does not make it so.
For what it’s worth, I have previously written on Derrida in the blogosphere:
http://clubtroppo.com.au/2004/12/09/deriding-derrida/
http://clubtroppo.com.au/2005/02/16/theses-on-jacques-derrida/
And there’s a conference paper I wrote on his political thought at the ANU website from 2002:
http://arts.anu.edu.au/sss/apsa/Papers/bahnisch.pdf
However, I have no intention here at this time of elaborating on any of this, for the reasons I have given.
But just by the by:
Both Derrida and Foucault explicitly stated in public interviews that they were not postmodernists – and Derrida repeats that in Limited Inc. as well as other places. If you are genuinely interested, I can find a citation. But this stuff is not online for easy linking – understanding these authors takes hard work – but there are university libraries which hold their texts as I’m sure you know. I’ll also note that Foucault further explicitly stated that he didn’t even understand what postmodernism might mean.
Klaus has already traced the reception history which has led to the assimilation of their thought to “postmodernism” and I have something to say about that in the posts to which I’ve linked. But I am now going to take my leave from this discussion.
I have read Derrida btw, I cited the beginning of Writing and Difference above. In any event I booted up a bit of Of Grammatology which was such a thrill way back when:
This is just a chunk. Taken out at random but I remember two things now. One is that Deridda doesn’t always write well. Writing and Difference is much better than Of Grammatology in the strictly poetic sense. Indeed when one reads Writing and Difference there is an apparent contrast. Why does someone capable of writing clearly in one book not do so in another? Is it true that:
I know the feeling buddy.
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The second is Derrida’s tenuous relationship with linguistics. Now maybe I could go into this and try and fish out what he’s actually saying. However it appears that many better have tried and failed. Chomsky himself has said his stuff viz linguistics is twaddle.
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Of course that’s because he didn;t understand it. And the proof’s in the opuding after all, Derridda’s immensely influential in linguistics and Chomsky’s just some left ratbag.
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Oh wait.
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Like Barthes, Derrida had a fetish for Saussure. Lots of these dudes did. I reckon if I spent thirty minutes pokin’ about I’d be able to generate several quotes that says Derrida’s main claim to fame is thru the literary conceit.
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Feel free to write me off. I’m sure you will. The trouble is that, as I say, the techniques you use won’t wash in the hard places. One day some kid’s gonna yell out: that guy’s naked! And you’ll look a bunch o’ right berks.
Because he wrote in French and different books have been translated by different translators into English! Spivak’s transation of Of Grammatology is not flash.
Indeed.
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That’s often said. Sometimes it’s even true. There’s only one problem. What language did Foucault speak?
Adrien wrote:
We’ve already established you want me to humiliate you for money (I’m sure it’s a hobby many libertarians share), now we’re just negotiating the price. The bid is $51.50.
Winston Churchill rules!
I already made some preliminary comments on why Deleuze isn’t ‘postmodernist’ @ 245. There I suggest that: firstly, his literary and philosophical touchstones are modern or pre-modern; secondly, he is a system-builder with a metaphysical project, unlike those who are usually cited as postmodernists. I can expand on this if this isn’t enough, but we’re going to have to get specific about who he’s being compared to, which means agreeing on who definitely is postmodern. Which is also one of the basic problems here.
BTW I disagree with Kim about Spivak’s translation, because I think Spivak is doing the classically Nabokovian thing of emphasising accuracy over readability.
Fair point, Klaus. I was thinking in terms of style and readability. Certainly Alan Bass’ translations are good clear prose.
I suppose Lyotard is the obvious candidate. Has he been mentioned? But, in a way, the postmodernism book is a sort of sociological diagnosis, not a philosophical manifesto, as indeed one would expect from the circumstances under which it was commissioned. But if we’re talking about truth, his thing with differends isn’t exactly the pomo stock standard view. Note anyway that Kant talks about truth and conditions of possibility… in many ways Lyotard is a Kantian.
As to morals, what’s with that, Adrien? Horrible word for a start. But again taking Kant as an example, he is very far from stipulating a “universal morality”. And btw Derrida is a reader of Plato (and many canonical others) and explicitly discusses the question of “how to live”. One has to read a lot more than his early work which engages with a particular context.
But I’m also wondering what this so-called classical view is – were Aristotle and Plato in agreement? Hardly. How was universalism framed in Greek thought? Cosmically? Is Greek universalism the same as Christian universalism? Paul didn’t think so. Etc, etc.
And I think it would be quite impossible to construct an argument that Foucault is postmodern.
Adrien 272
“No doubt when Keats writes:
Truth is beauty, truth beauty – that is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know
He articulates smartly what Dawkins objects to. The idea common in theocracies that all we need to know is known is anathema to scientists. To poets however?
Actually John Keats was a doctor and bloody well knew a lot about science and scientific method. And I don’t believe he would ever have been much of a poet if he had no knowledge of the blood and guts of the realities he was portraying in his poetry, particularly the feverish highs inherent in his own mortal illness – tuberculosis.
Honestly the way this ‘truth and beauty’ line has been flogged to death in the name of wishy-washy sentiment about the supposed magical mysteries of the cosmos is criminal. And you aren’t the only one. That new age celebrity quack artist Deepak Chopra used exactly the same line in his ridiculous argument against Richard Dawkins. Keats would turn in his grave – or maybe some people ought to go back to studying HSC-level English literature.
by James McAuley
Heh.
Pfffft.
Bah.
*Burp*
There’s a Melbourne band called “The Black Swan of Trespass” Ive been meaning to see, on the basis of the citation alone.
The Black Swans of Trespass.
(The plural is vital in the Googleverse.)
I fear that Ern Malley would be appalled by this mutilation of his most famous metaphor.
“Fair point, Klaus. I was thinking in terms of style and readability. Certainly Alan Bass’ translations are good clear prose.”
I like the Bass translations also. It’s audience specific too, I suppose, with a book-length study being for a specialist audience. To approach the early Derrida, there’s about half a dozen key shorter pieces you can read before you need to look at ‘Of Grammatology’. Although, if I recall, Spivak’s long-form introduction was kind of useful for context.
One day, when I have French sufficient to do so, I’ll be able to decide for myself whether Spivak is just grumpy that the other translations have been more influential, or whether her rendering is, in fact, more accurate (or whether or not ‘Of Grammatology’ is just more difficult). At the moment I’m inferring from her own discussions of translation that this is the reason.
I’m a little hesitant to jump back into the “post-moderenist” debate …. but here goes.
Truth with a capital ‘T’. All I can say is that the very idea causes any good historian to burst into mocking laughter. There’s no such thing.
Oh, I dunno. Nice ter get a bit o’ recognition. I mean, some folk, after the kerfufflew, like, were cruel enough ter say I stopped modernist poetry in its tracks downunder. That wasn’t me game. Misunderstood. Always bloody well misunderstood.
So Katz, does that mean you won’t be catching my new prog-funk-jazz outfit, ‘Soul Arabian Tree’?
I don’t know how you can all bear to go on
Why, laura, quite easily, at least until that moment when the pelvis explodes like a grenade. Pow!
http://www.inuitimages.com/masterworks/detail/woman_bear.jpg
Oh but we do go on, Laura. We must. It is a cross we must bear, the goingonness. We bear it and grin. Some are tempted to bare it, but the law would take a dim view. Ex Nihil Omnia.
More like the Carpenters singing “we’ve only just begun” at Jesus and Mary Magdelene’s hidden marriage?
That’s quite a good bear to go on, FDB. I can imagine them both racing secretly over fields of little hills.
Megan – Honestly the way this ‘truth and beauty’ line has been flogged to death in the name of wishy-washy sentiment about the supposed magical mysteries of the cosmos is criminal.
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Well I don’t know about ‘criminal’ but this flogging of sublime concepts is wishy-washy; a kitsch traditionalism most often. But in Keats’ time they weren’t so much. It’s no accident that the term ‘post-modern’ was first coined to describe painters who came after the impressionists. In a globalized world, in the democratic part of it, in those places effected by the 60s’ cultural watershed; the terms mean whatever you want them to mean. And they’re optional.
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And you aren’t the only one.
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I’m not one at all; I haven’t said that anywhere.
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You’re mistaking me for a right-wing Cultural Warrior. I’m not. I actually agree with existential assertions that lie at the heart of postmodern philosophy. I endorse Nietzsche’s suggestion that we should adopt re-evaluative moral system. I just don’t think those range of activities, opinions, attitudes and policies associated, accurately or otherwise, with ‘postmodernism’ are the way to go.
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The Keats thing was by way of illustrating an opposition that’s existed since the early 19th century – between Reason and Romance – this is still in play today. But cultural ‘theorists’ aren’t looking in the right directions. Their noses are still stuck in books that have limited utility for a variety of reasons.
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Doctors, btw, don’t necessarily have a string science methodology. Many of them support all sorts of batshittery. I used to have a biochemist friend who liked going to the doctor to expose their ignorance. Childish yes, But he was a great source of Acid.
Hydrochloric, sulphuric, or phosphoric, Adrien??
“I can imagine them both racing secretly over fields of little hills.”
Is that a quote Liam, or are you just
happy to see mecoming over all lyrical?Me, I reckon bear and rider are following the pack, and will shortly turn the white snow red as strawberries in the summertime.
Speaking of bears, has anybody read this? I read a review a couple of weeks back and thought I might be interested, but haven’t talked to anybody yet whose picked it up. The review implied it was for grown ups, but it’s being marketed young adult.
It’s an old proverb, FDB.
video clips at 10 paces
I accept the challenge.
Been a bit of loose talk down in the township. Gel by the name laura. Just carry on, chaps, OK? Don’t be put off. Loose talk. Nothing in it. Harrumph.
After all these years – what would it be? best part of sixty? – blokes still delving into me private past. That Maxie Harris, I told ‘er not ter ‘ave nuthin’ to do with ‘im. I mean, penguins. Nice little birds. Ever seen an angry one? That’s my point!
Now an angry cat, on the other hand. Yes, I grant you that. Cats can get right bloody cross. An angry dog, you say, Mr MacAuley? Yairs.
But not, heavens to betsy, an angry penguin. Very unlikely, stands to reason.
Ah Kim – And I think it would be quite impossible to construct an argument that Foucault is postmodern.
. And the House of Rutledge, a fly-by-night dodgy bunch of publishers if ever there was one.
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So now Foucault isn’t a postmodernist either! Wow. Derrida’s not a postmodernist, Deleuze is not a postmodernist and neither is Foucault. Poor dumb me. See I only get this stuff from wikipedia. Trouble is, it seems to be catching.
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In The Routledge Guide To Postmodernism, the usual collection of essays and a glossary, the editor one Stuart Sim informs us that, in his essay “Postmodernism and Philosophy” certain names “appear in bold type such as Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. 15 years ago it was Foucault, Derrida, Lacan. The Postmodern Holy Trinity’s only been 66% decided it seems.
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Maybe Lyotard will get in but I think he’s already had a go on the bike. Sim cites old John-Frank and thinks the proposition that “we should reject Grand Narratives (that is universal theories of Western Culture) because they have now lost all their credibility sums of the ethos of Postmodernism”.
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But what does he know? He doesn’t even have a wikipedia page
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As to morals, what’s with that, Adrien? Horrible word for a start.
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I thought you were a Christian? Interesting this labeling a word horrible. Isn’t Derrida’s point that philosophy is writing and that the forms, styles, formats even of writing help creates, frame, discipline its meaning. What power play is in operation when you label a word horrible. Why horrible? Wherefore horrible?
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Are we Rimbaud? Do we believe that morality is the disease of the mind? Interesting how you context-obsessives feel free to label morality a ‘horrible’ word without explaining what you mean.
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Kant as an example, he is very far from stipulating a “universal morality”.
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So what? Institutions like the Catholic Church have much more to do with creating universal morality then Kant. Postmodernism as a wide cultural milieu likewise has little to do with [insert whoever actually is a postmodern philosopher here]. It’s not that important. Please don’t bother to remind me that the Church never quite succeeded in producing absolute moral homegeny.
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One has to read a lot more than his early work which engages with a particular context.
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The old ‘you don;t get it cause you haven’t read enough’. Well you and Mark have read enough. Mark’s read it so much, he’s so bored, he’s been counting the words. I think he needs a holiday. So do you. After all, given your learning, it’s a little puzzling why neither of you have been able to back up your assertions that Foucaultderridawhoever is not a postmodernist.
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Is anyone?
But I’m also wondering what this so-called classical view is – were Aristotle and Plato in agreement? Hardly. How was universalism framed in Greek thought? Cosmically? Is Greek universalism the same as Christian universalism? Paul didn’t think so. Etc, etc.
Adrien, Now is the time to stop digging. Either that or go back and read the overly patient responses you elicited.
I deny everything.
I’ve offered you citations, Adrien. To their own words. I’m sorry they’re not accessible on wikipedia and you would need to open a book or two. Let me know if you’re interested. Otherwise, since you prefer to cite online sources or some sort of pedagogically oriented overview (and it’s been pointed out that “postmodernism” – implying the appropriation of certain aspects of French thought – is not the same thing as assimilating those thinkers to the status of postmodernist), we don’t appear to have the basis for a conversation, as I said before.
But I’m also wondering what this so-called classical view is – were Aristotle and Plato in agreement? Hardly. How was universalism framed in Greek thought? Cosmically? Is Greek universalism the same as Christian universalism? Paul didn’t think so. Etc, etc.
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Yes Mark said that as well. Interesting games that get played hey? I speak of the Universal and I’m accused of building a straw man. Derrida refers to:
And? It appears that perhaps Jacques built the straw man. I’m just pointing at it. Jacques of course is arguing that what he calls this sovereignty is illusory:
Somewhere above I quote Eric Hobsbawm. His statement viz the view that “there can be no such thing as a purely objective and value-free science” pertains here. Essentially the only being capable of objective perception, of seeing everything, everywhere at once is (perhaps) the Supreme Being. In the event of this Being’s non-existence such an omniscient view is impossible. In any event no writing, no matter how authoritative, approximates such a view.
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Stuart Sim says:
He speaks of the religious fundamentalists (pre-modern) and the Bretton Woods Institutes (modern) as the perpetrators of Grand Narratives. To be sure the BWIs have their narratives dependent on the economists in vogue, fundamentalists have their fascist storybook versions of scripture, and resistance can be quite futile if you’re beholden to them. There are other grand narratives at play: the Grand March or Progress adhered to in different versions by various socialists and liberals; they have their function.
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In American Empire Andrew Bacevich’s assessment of Postmodern America is summarized as follows:
Now Bacevich is an historian. As he himself says, he was trained in the grand narrative/great man school of history. But the facts have led him to conclude that this mode of history has severe limits. His work is grounded in the understanding of historical forces and his polemic addresses the Imperial Presidency both as a dangerous myth and an erosion of the legislative branch’s function in US governance.
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As he says the unifying principles, what he calls the ‘moral consensus’, extant ’til the 60s has gone. There are no unifying principles in their place. I’m glad they’re gone. And with qualification Bacevich endorses many of the social changes since the ’60s and, refreshingly for a conservative, gives the Left its due in agitating for them. However he sees, as I do, that without unifying principles things start to fray, the centre cannot hold, she’ll ne’er take it Cap’n!
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How we get unifying principles that don’t institute authoritarian dogmatism and entrench ‘universals’ way after their use-by date is a good question. Perchance it has something to do with utility and reliable knowledge? (Oh! But’s that’s sooo 19th century). I don’t have the solution but I reckon that it probably doesn’t lie in the endless disputation of categories and definitions, the playing of games that shoulda got tired in high school And the constant refusal to look beyond the faculty room for information.
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Authority is not always bad. Authority can be good. A dictionary has authority for a reason. But anyway I’d still like to know why Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze are not postmodernists.
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These are statements that are grounded in nothing but (assumed) authority. Seeing as how I’ve had it said to me time and time again that I’m building strawmen, have problems with my conceptualization, haven’t read enough of the books, what books I have read have been badly translated and don’t back up my assertions with anything and oh it’s all so boring…
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If you can back up that one of these three assertions, it might go some ways to gettin’ to the Land of Credibility.
Ambi – Hydrochloric, sulphuric, or phosphoric, Adrien??
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Now what kinda fun would they be? Ergoline alkaloids are more to my taste. If you like swallowing mineral acids I won;t stop you. But if you are gonna do that I guess I’ll just say good-bye, nice knowing you.
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David Rubie – We’ve already established you want me to humiliate you for money (I’m sure it’s a hobby many libertarians share), now we’re just negotiating the price. The bid is $51.50.
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I have made a counter offer.
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I don’t get any money out of humiliating you. You (supposedly) get paid to take it. But, as you keep telling me, I’m a real dummy and you easily beat me with your nihilists go to Church doctrine. So you’d be getting paid to humiliate me right? And if it gets tough put your labrador on. Arf!
Gladly, so much theology on such small shoulders.
WHOOPS STUPID PAWS MESSING UP POSTS AND CANT FIX CAPSLOCK AGAIN.
THIS DOG SEZ CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER SEZ UR DOIN IT RONG.
BUT THEM ISLAMOFASCISTS BELIEVE IN A GOD? SAY IT AINT SO!
Hey, over on the Mumbai list it says “Mark, Antonio”, how postmodern groovy and transgressive is that?? “Lend me your ears”! Anticipated little Vinnie van Gogh by millenia. Gotta go. Army’s on the march again. Regards to the Angli.
#314 – David, Cambira’s right, you are a funny guy.
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The tendency of American conservatives to belabel Jihadists as ‘nihilist’ is well worn. I’ve read Krauthammer, no doubt I’d know what he’ll say. For a much better explication of this metaphor see Derek Leebaert’s The Fifty-Year Wound. The AmeriCon’s take on it is that the Islamofascists’ behaviour and rhetoric has nothing to do with basic tenets of Abrahamic faith. They’re making the mistake of equating Jihadists with previous enemies like Communism and Fascism which were not, as they maintain, nihilist either.
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Nietzsche’s use of the term viz Christianity was to highlight the poverty of a spiritualism that ingrains a detestation of
sexualitythe material. After all God’s not really there, and since you lot are determined to forsake this world for one that does not exist, you are nihilists: you believe in nothing..
Give it up old bean. Or c’arn over to the Cat, they love this sorta stuff.
UR CONFUSIN EXISTENTIAL NIHILISM WITH THE MOAR COMMON POLITICAL NIHILISM ADRIEN BUT ITS DINNER TIME WHERES MY PAL. CARNT POST ANY PLACE THAT HAS CAT IN ITS NAME.
The bird’s eye view can miss a lot of detail. Even more so if you’re a footslogger. A large slice of the general public has likely tuned out. Heads down for a lot of folk and crossed fingers that the economy doesn’t go arse up too badly for them and their mortgages, income and general peace of mind. Speaking of which a swathe of large employers are now identifying depression, mental illness and stress as a major problem in their workforces and instructing managers to deal with and forestall it. Needless to say the suggested forestalling mechanisms are sweet but doomed.
Now Kim and Mark and Klaus as you know, I’m so dumb. And I’m making men outta straw and I haven’t read Derrida ‘cept the early stuff that’s not enough and badly translated at that. And of course I haven’t cited anything at all, all those articles in my ‘lecture series’ don’t exist.
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So….
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I went to the bookstore and picked up Derrida for Dummies (Pavlov’s Cat, don’t say I never gave you anything) to find out a. what he really said and b. why he’s not a postmodernist.
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The book starts off by saying that Derrida was going to receive some award from Cambridge in the days when cop show soundtracks mandated a wah-wah peddle. There was a bit of a stink what. Apparently “Cambridge traditionalists in both disciplines (note: English and Philosophy)saw Derrida’s thinking as deeply imporper, offensive and subversive”.
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Egad! It’s deeply improper. Call the ol’ bill and sort it out. Smartly.
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Hang about! Innit funny that the Cambridge English department wants to award Derrida? He’s got nothing to do with English (or postmodernism) don’t you know. Soon-to-be Dr Bahnisch says so. I asked him why but he just said: I can’t tell you, you’re not qualified. Does Mark make use of the machine that goes ‘ping!’?
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But anyway, deeply improper.
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Unlike a lot of these guys this writer actually gave some examples:
Henry Erskine-Hill
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Harumph, harumph.
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Well ‘theory’s’ not proper. Doubtless the man is evoking some authoritative credentialism. Was Nietzsche proper? Another critic says:
David-Hillel Ruben
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My God there’s a lot of hyphenated names here. Notice it’s his first name. Jews, they always have to be different don’t they. But he’s not evoking authoritative credentialism he’s saying the Frogs are slack. Slack he tells us. And:
Peter Lennon
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Well he doesn’t have a hyphenated name. And maybe he’s related to John. Anyway he’s saying the same thing as Dave-Hillel there: the Frogs are charlatans. What did the Quaility Press say, one wonders:
The Times
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Ouch! And so unfair too. When Derrida says that ‘the writing of sovereignty places discourse in relation to absolute non-discourse’ he’s speculatin’ about a hypothesis. And that hypothesis will be rigourously tested. As soon as those testing it figure out what the fuck he means by that.
Err, wrong place, sorry. Was referring to Judith Brett’s piece over yonder, adjacent paddock.
The Derrida for Dummies dude writes off the critics. They’re offering a ‘meagre argument from authority’. After all no-one believes in these Western Universal Strawman Grand Narratives anymore, except nihilists of course. They believe in Star Wars. And they believe in Derrida.
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He’s right. And The Guardian rightly says that he’s written a masterpiece of précis. Précis as High Art, says they. But, hang on, aren’t The Guardian making an authoritative pronouncements? And isn’t Derrida for Dummies? By what standard are the traditionalists wrong and the (not) postmodernists right? Is it because they’ve now flooded the Academy? So maybe now they’re the traditionalists?
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I’m just colonized. I’m a slave to internal hegemonic codes. See I’m not hip to the New Wave. When that old fuddy-duddy Sym chides his colleague for ‘not appreciating the destuction of words’ for looking forward to the time when:
Orwell
1984
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He just didn’t get it did he? The road to Orthodoxy is not thru the destruction of words. Newspeak doesn’t mean reducing the dictionary each year. It means expanding it. Words can mean whatever you want them to. And everyone has their own personal dictionary. Then we’ll be free. Free to be perpetually self-assured in our unconscious confusion.
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And meantime the Right will economically rationalize and lots o’ people who are qualified to be told why Derridafoucaultetal aren’t postmodernists will be contemplating the hegemony of ‘welcome to McDonald’s can I please help you?’
Thanks for heh-ing, Pav!
I’m quite obsessed with the Ern Malley hoax, if the truth be told.
LE, have you read Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake? If not, do read it (essential for Malley buffs) but not before you have also read Frankenstein if you haven’t read that yet either. There’s also one scene in it that I could swear is a direct steal from, erm, sampling of P.D. James’s An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. Carey was having even more fun than he usually does.
Postmodernism does not exist. It is just the continuation of modernism by other means
Actually I prefer the French realist school epitomised by the Ingres Penguins.
The new book by Philip Mead is worth a look LE. There’s some Malley related stuff in there (though I’m not up to that bit yet).
I have indeed, Pav! In fact I read it in Malaysia when there in 2003, which worked quite well with Carey’s reworking. I always try to integrate appropriate reading into my work travels – which Im sure you’ll agree is an essential part of the travel experience!
I dont have the breadth of knowledge of literrature to trace it back further – thanks for the tips. I have read Frankenstein – but I was in early teens!
I guess you’ve read Michael Heyward’s book in the hoax? Its terrific. Also saw Sid Nolan’s original Angry Penguins cover last year at Fed Squared.
Katz, that was worthy of Mots d’Heures: Gousse, Rames.
I’ll check it Mead out, ta!
Ah, “Les Pingouins” d’Ingres. Ces sont tres magnifiques! bert now eez moved to ze Musee des Animaux, surch a shame, quelle horreur!
A number of posters above have made the utterly erroneous claims that Foucault and Deleuze are (were) not postmodernists! As many impressionable undergraduates read this blog, these claims are so wrong it would be irresponsible for others not to speak up. For now, probably the most powerful quote that shows not only Doucault and Deleuze’s alliance in the same intellectual project, but also that project is postmodernism.
Foucault in fact wrote the preface to Deleuze and Guattari’s classic Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1983):
This art of living c