NationStates Jolt Archive

For those unfamilar with the term postmodernism I will atempt to put it in context. Modernism started around the time of the rennasicence when science began to rise. It was at this time that for any one problem there was only one answer and that was that, no debate. Where as now we are in a situation where there are many answers to said question all equally right. Here is a website to help you understand more

http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html

the point is, does it need to grow up. Saying "Everyone is absolutely equally right" sounds to me very patronising and ignores the fact that to competing claims may contridict one another. It seems to me the world was far better of under modernism.

It bothers me too. They refuse to judge anything as better or worse, right or wrong. It seems everything is up for debate.

Question-if Post-Modernism "grew up," what would the name be? It can't be post-post-modernism, that sounds bizarre. Neo-post-modernism is just as bad. Therefore the only solution is: Post-Modernism can't grow up, for the good of all of our verbal sanity.

It can't be post-post-modernism, that sounds bizarre. I've actually heard people use that term with a straight face!

Coming from an arts background, I know that the idea that nothing can be novel any more, and that everything has already been thought of does frustrate some younger people working in the creative arts, and I can see that a return to a more Modernist way of thinking is possible in that area.
But I also think that modernity was far from perfect. It was elitist, valuing a white, Western, male, middle-to-upper-class world view above all others. I don't think that we need a return to that way of thinking.

the point is, does it need to grow up. Saying "Everyone is absolutely equally right" sounds to me very patronising and ignores the fact that to competing claims may contridict one another. It seems to me the world was far better of under modernism.

your definition is a little off, what you are saying is either existentialism or realitivism.

post modernism is more along the lines of "Nothing can have any meaning or truth beyond what we give it."

it ASSUMES that all "truth" is equal in being meaningless.

No way does it need to grow up. All these other ideas give such value and meaning to human symbols and tradition. They waste their lives as slaves to their own understanding.

Did you actually read the essay at the other end of the link you posted?

I only ask because it gives a rather good explanation of modernism and postmodernism (as good as one can do in a short essay)... and you would do well to read it, since in your post you seem to have it a bit screwed up.

For those unfamilar with the term postmodernism I will atempt to put it in context. Modernism started around the time of the rennasicence when science began to rise.

I think you are confusing the modern age in philosophy with the school of Modernism itself, which reached its peak around the 1920s with writers such as Joyce and Woolf.

the point is, does it need to grow up. Saying "Everyone is absolutely equally right" sounds to me very patronising and ignores the fact that to competing claims may contridict one another. It seems to me the world was far better of under modernism.

It may be conforting to think that there should be no contradiction between competing claims, but if we face the current situation in epistemology we see that there is no clear and distinct method for coming to absolute certainty as to what constitutes knowledge: thus we are faced with a range of apparently equally valid answers which do not neccessarilly agree with each other. The claim of post-modernism is not that everybody is equally right, but that there is no single definite answer.

The genie is out of the bottle: it is impossible to return to an age of modernism without acknowledging or at least addressing the questions of post-modernism: yes, it is true that you could simply select to return to a set of modernist values, but in doing so you are making the very self-creating affirmation of a particular set of values that is at the heart of pot-modernism. You thus do not escape it, but instead occupy a retro-modernist positon within it.

It may be conforting to think that there should be no contradiction between competing claims, but if we face the current situation in epistemology we see that there is no clear and distinct method for coming to absolute certainty as to what constitutes knowledge: thus we are faced with a range of apparently equally valid answers which do not neccessarilly agree with each other. The claim of post-modernism is not that everybody is equally right, but that there is no single definite answer.

The genie is out of the bottle: it is impossible to return to an age of modernism without acknowledging or at least addressing the questions of post-modernism: yes, it is true that you could simply select to return to a set of modernist values, but in doing so you are making the very self-creating affirmation of a particular set of values that is at the heart of pot-modernism. You thus do not escape it, but instead occupy a retro-modernist positon within it.

I just stole that to use as part of a presentation

I just stole that to use as part of a presentation

It probably reads better when I haven't been drinking all night... but I'll still take that as a compliment. Cheers.

It probably reads better when I haven't been drinking all night... but I'll still take that as a compliment. Cheers.

lol

it'll help me outline a intro to Rorty

it'll help me outline a intro to Rorty

I never really felt I got a good handle on Rorty: he just seemed too interested into turning philosophical inquiry into a performative act to me.

Blame Laboyeski... damn non-Euclidian geometry! Now nothing is sure anymore!

I never really felt I got a good handle on Rorty: he just seemed too interested into turning philosophical inquiry into a performative act to me.

lol, touche

he would call himself a pragmatist anyways

Blame Laboyeski... damn non-Euclidian geometry! Now nothing is sure anymore!

Lobachevsky, shurely?

Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -
Only be sure always to call it please 'research'.


...

And who deserves the credit?
And who deserves the blame?
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name.

Would it be mischievous to now introduce Baudrillard?

No, I don't want to discuss him. I have just been proof-reading a relative's essay on his work on whether the Gulf War did take place, so I have encountered him only at third hand. And that's as far as my contact with him is going to go! I will keep my mind firmly closed so that one day I can take my putative grandchildren to a real, existing, in-the-present-time Disneyland.

Would it be mischievous to now introduce Baudrillard?

No, I don't want to discuss him. I have just been proof-reading a relative's essay on his work on whether the Gulf War did take place, so I have encountered him only at third hand. And that's as far as my contact with him is going to go! I will keep my mind firmly closed so that one day I can take my putative grandchildren to a real, existing, in-the-present-time Disneyland.

Now, Baudrillard I have time for: even if we do not go as far asserting with him that the Gulf War never took place, it remains clear that the media event which was broadcast around the world in 1991 as 'the Gulf War' was a very different event from what may (or may not) have actually happened in Kuwait and Iraq at that time. If nothing else, we cannot argue with him that the potency of the hyper-real media event far outstrips the actual banality and casual evil of bulldozing troops in their bunkers or of infantrymen impaling each other with bayonets as they fight for strongpoints or of saturation bombing of enemy positions. We were sold on the idea of a press-button war, a clean war, a good guy/bad guy confrontation like a four colour superhero cartoon strip, but the disguised reality was a case of shades of grey and the same institutionalised fuck-ups and mistakes that have always been part and parcel of warfare.

What images spring to mind of the Gulf War? Not the tedious mucking about of logistics or waiting or the common lot of the footsoldier, but rather the media friendly events like the bombing of Baghdad on the night after the deadline. As one reporter inadvertently summed it up as he sheltered in a Baghdad hotel - "its like the fourth of July out there" - the only way we have left pof describing reality is through recourse to metaphors which speak of simulated, recreated hyper-real events.

Anyone for Virilio? Deleuze & Guattari?

Lobachevsky, shurely?

Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -
Only be sure always to call it please 'research'.


...

And who deserves the credit?
And who deserves the blame?
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name.

Err, so what are you saying/implying?

I, for one, am in favor of consigning epistemology to the dustbin.

The true profundity of epistemology lies in its irrelevence.

Epistemologists, in their endless circular reasoning are quite a bit like a dog which chases its own tail.

Err, so what are you saying/implying?


That 'Laboyeski' is more commonly rendered into English as Lobachevsky.

The rest of the post were lyrics from Tom Lehrer's song 'Lobachevsky', which by coincidence had the words "And who deserves the blame?/Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name", which seemed like a suitable response to your 'Blame Laboyeski' post.

The full lyrics can be found here, by the way:

http://wiw.org/~drz/tom.lehrer/revisited.html

I, for one, am in favor of consigning epistemology to the dustbin.

The true profundity of epistemology lies in its irrelevence.

Epistemologists, in their endless circular reasoning are quite a bit like a dog which chases its own tail.


And upon what epistemological framework do you base this rejection of circular reasoning, now that you have decided to cast epistemology into the dustbin of hsitory?


I believe this counts as kicking the ladder out from under yourself while still only halfway up it...