1

Exactly. I mean, when does post- post modernism get here?

2

Ah, this is a subject near to my heart. Modernists believe in something outside human consciousness that we can use as a guiding principal. Shelley's "historical neccessity", Marx's dialectic materialism, even a vague belief in the moral progress of mankind. Postmodernists, on the other hand, believe that everything (including gravity, as Alan Sokal discoveered) is a social construct and there are no absolutes, no guiding spirit, no "narrative" of the world outside of our own nature.

3

No discussion of postmodernism would be complete without a reference to the Postmodernism Generator. It tells us more about the phenomenon than any other source I know. I blogged about it last year and copied the permalink into the comment data if anyone is interested.

4

Sorry. The link doesn't work.
Copy/paste
http://hootsbuddy.blogspot.com/2004/11/deconstructing-constructivism.html

5

Thanks for this wonderful post.

You've just illlustrated why the religious right knows squat about negotiation...

6

Thanks Mumon

That was unintelligible. A non sequitor. An attempt an zen like unscrutiablity. nonsense.

7

OK, I have a rather long response to this on my blog...

It amuses and amazes me that while folks in your religion actually practice postmodern techniques, and while they are perhaps the thing of greatest utility to come out of western philosophy in the past 100 years (maybe excepting existentialism), that it is in its pure form perceived as a threat to some, and irrelevant to others.

It does explain much though. It's hard to negotiate with fundamentalist terrorists.

8

I think a modest definition of post-modernism that renders it existent, if you will, is the self-reflexive discursive turn. I dunno why this example popped into my head, but take the nuclear family: the modernist will rationally investigate the reasons for/against the nuclear family. The post-modern turn is to interrogate the hidden terms that supplement the discourse and render it intelligible (terms like legitimate, natural, etal). And this is where the different schools of postmodern thinkers diverge. A quasi-historical materialist like Foucault will trace the concepts through the history of the discourse; a transcendental philosopher like Derrida will look at the structure of thought as such; a Marxian like Althusser will look at the institutional structures to see how the illusion of "natural-ness" and "legitimacy" is reinforced and reified.

If all this seems banal or obvious that we should do so, that's probably a testiment to the influence of pomo.

9

This post points to a realization that escapes Stanley Grenz, for example, in his "Primer on Postmodernism." In many (if not most) ways, there seems to be continuity between modernism and "post"-modernism. I've had a philosophy prof. refer to various contemporary worldviews as "ultra-modern" and this seems to fit well. After all, if ethics and religion are purely subjective, how much more importance could possibly be placed on the autonomous self (to the extent that each of us individually get to define right/wrong, good/evil, we are like gods)?

10

Let me add quickly: the modernist precedes from certain "founding myths," such as the "naturalness" of the family unit or something. In modernist discourse, this founding myth is left undisturbed, and is simply presupposed.

So one way pomo could be characterized is as the systematic disclosure and unearthing of the irrational founding myths that lie at the heart of ostensibly rational modernism.

11

True Post-modernism is primarily an academic phenomenon, and much of its development should be credited to certain, profoundly insightful French intellectuals. On the other hand, popularized post-modernism, such as regurgitated by the unwashed proletarian masses, is debased and degenerate and is not a true representation of Post-Modernism.

Post-Modernist essays from the bowels from the bowels of Academe may be found here.

12

After all, if ethics and religion are purely subjective....

This question is largely bracketed in real post-modernism philosophy. PoMos are, by and large, local philosophies. These big questions, more often than not, are left untouched.

how much more importance could possibly be placed on the autonomous self

An historical note: the "autonomous self" is one of the big targets of a lot of the Big Dogs, since the autonomous self is one of the most important founding myths of modern philosophy.

13

Blast! Sorry to keep posting these little things. I gotta remember to preview.

Anyways, the myth of the autonomous self is one way in which we can see the pomo influence on the emergent church: if the self is actually an effect of the community in which the self is located, one can see in new light the importance that the emergent church places on community.

A church isn't a conjunction of many little autonomous atoms or monads, it's a space in which selves emerge through community.

14

I agree with quite a bit in your post, Joe, but JPE is correct. There is a useful difference between "modernist" and "post-modernism," which JPE explains well. The trouble is that most folks -- even quite learned and knowledgeable folks -- confuse postmodernism with "relativism". 'Tis true that postmodernism can be criticized as being "relatavistic" (but even this is too simplistic, because most postmodern critiques do viewpoint discriminate, albeit not along traditional lines). This is not the same as being "relativism," however.

The more interesting question is whether postmodernism is, in fact, something new or is merely a re-hash and recombination of older principles, some of which are outgrowths of modernism and some of which are not. (FWIW, I tend toward the latter view.)

15

I suspect that the point Joe was trying to make in his post was that post-modernist obscurantism is the natural endpoint of positivism. Ironic finish for a philosophy which began with the promise that it could describe objective facts about a real world.

16

Someone has said that, politically speaking, the Modern Age began with the French Revolution in 1789 and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Soviet hegemony being the most arrogant, philosophically pretentious, utterly centralized form of modernism. Perhaps the real historical markers are not so easy to pinpoint, but the French and Russian bookends seem to fit.

Post-modernism, to me, is simply a decentralizing reaction to modernism, i.e., deconstruction. (I wouldn't see deconstructionism as pervasive in life as Mumon, although your own, er...post was great reading.) PM doesn't know what it is, but merely what it is not. It's just post-something else. In the 70s they called it being anti-establishment.

I agree with you, Joe, that post-modernism (at least in its popular form) is largely the scattered tantrums of modernism's angry children. As for serious post-mod philosophy and its proponents, it isn't hard to believe such a "discipline" would exist, simply because rebels usually wish to dignify their rebellion. They want to be taken seriously.

Eventually, however, the tantrums are collected and sorted into common complaints, various movements and niche cultures form, and finally a more identifiable coalition emerges.

That's why I applaud Grenz, Gene Edward Veith (Postmodern Times), and others for at least attempting to analyze PM. Christians have to take it seriously simply because so many others do.

Two asides: It becomes humorous after awhile how virtually any topic Joe chooses is seized upon as just one more example of evangelical defects. Second, I clicked through Hootsbuddy's post to the Postmodernism Generator, and it is hilarious, if not strongly reminiscent of some of Joe's wordier commenters. We know who we are ;->

17

Joe:

I'm a serious critic of modernism, as anyone at the intersection of "Christian" and "19th-C Brit Lit specialist" is like to be. . . . and I think there's a good reason no one defines this clearly, and that you're part of the problem (this time).

First, the zeitgeisty, breezy use of the term "postmodern" is irritating to the folks who actually want to do the serious work in the field. Second, there are a number of reasons that "post-structuralism" as a rigorous exploding of the conventions of philosophical discourse is "meaningful activity," and it definitely does exist. That the analytic-leaning philosophers don't like it is no more surprising than that those same thinkers don't like Heidegger or any other representative of the Continental strain in the past three hundred years or so.

Here's the matter, Joe: are you going to suggest that those of us who use the critiques of post-structuralist thinkers as ways to encourage modernism to self-destruct are *wrong* to enjoy the dissolution of modernism? Wrong to dance on its grave as moral realities intrude on its proceduralizing, progressive mythos? If so, your critique that postmodernism is just modernism amped-up is going to fall flat.

Let's take your analogy on its face, though. Two things leap out. First, there is no real reason the amp should have stopped at ten, eleven, twenty, or two hundred. The dial's markings are arbitrary; only its physical travel's correlation to the voltage allowed across the rheostat has any real impact on the sound. Second, if the eleven has been just marked on a dial which only goes to ten, then in fact the eleven *is not* merely an extension of the ten; it is a new thing.

And, oddly, I think this is where postmodernism has "reality."

As I've said before, to be postmodern you must first be modern. That is, one cannot arrive at postmodernism from any other position than that represented by modernism.

Postmodernism is *not* a new thing, it is the self-destruction of an old thing. The only thing which makes postmodernism describable is that it is the self-destroying modernist's *becoming conscious of* and *espousing* that destruction. The process of that coming to awareness, of the modern thinker's realizing that the only remaining meaningful modern activity was the willing demolition of modernism, describes an arc through Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida, with stops and digressions aplenty along the way (destruction is not orderly, and does not keep neat maps).

The distinctively post-structuralist turn is to embrace the act of writing as the intrinsically destructive act to modernity, to realize that modernity has always already been doomed by its being written, by the way its very assumptions are framed by the remoteness of human authority, and the pseudo-revelatory representations of the text. Sooner or later, the deferred "reality" of the modernist text may assert itself, and/or the deferrence may become so obvious that people notice the difference.

This is happenning in countless, very practical, ways. When the TV news gives us moral guidance by deciding how we should be enraged today, the manipulation is subject to our not noticing the difference between representation and presence, the degree to which we are eliding the distance between the TV screen and the camera--both literal and contextual distance. The emergence of the blogs and the greater and greater dissonance between the "objective" and the "biased" is, in fact, a *defining* characteristic of our age.

So is the inability of any number of important and powerful people to see the difference between the propaganda about a Bolton or an Owen or a DeLay and the realities. Similarly, the UN. etc.

And let's not forget the famous "That depends on what the meaning of is, is"--actually, a very modern moment; the *scenario*, though, was illustrative of the demolition of modernism, as the procedures and the facts are trumped *explicitly and without protest* by arguments from polls. Similarly, the voting arguments.

When you look at the rapidly growing irrationality of the Left, and the overall dissolution of our public discourse, you are seeing modernism unravel.

When modernism unravels, the unravelling has a name, and it is postmodern.

When the thinker in the era of modernism's self-destruction embraces that destruction, and signs up to pursue it through writing the modernist text into its grave (i.e., by carrying forward the self-destructive dissoluteness of modernism in every direction), that embrace has a name, and the name of the game is post-structuralism.

When someone sets out to engage with the written text through an understanding that the writing is being done to unwrite the text's apparent meaning, the illusion of self-contained autonomous truth in a bunch of ink marks, that critic is engaging in post-structuralist hermeneutics.

If you will, modernism is like an amp hooked up to an old set of speakers that can't handle more than half the wattage the amp can put out. The guitarist has to remember not to turn the amp up too high, or he'll blow the speakers, so he never goes past ten on a dial up to twenty.

The postmodernist sets the amp at eleven, and enjoys the show.

Enjoy,
PGE

18

pgepps :

Nice.

Jim:

Thanks. PoMo thinking goes back a bit further than 1989, of course, but there's always that kind of lag.

19

"During the 1970’s, p*rn movies were shot on film and, because they aspired to be like real movies, contained a story complete with a rudimentary plot and characterization. But the advent of the VCR made such contrivances obsolete. In a fast-forward world, no one has time for the subtleties of narrative."

Even more interesting than this bit of trivia is the question of how you came to know it. And why you leave the vowel out.

20

Pgepps Second, there are a number of reasons that "post-structuralism" as a rigorous exploding of the conventions of philosophical discourse is "meaningful activity," and it definitely does exist. That the analytic-leaning philosophers don't like it is no more surprising than that those same thinkers don't like Heidegger or any other representative of the Continental strain in the past three hundred years or so.

I think there is a good reason that analytic philosopher are leery of the “Continental strain”: because most of the stuff that comes from Europe is nonsense.

Taking “post-structuralism” seriously would require me to take “structuralism” seriously and that I just can’t do. My tolerance for absurdity is rather limited.

I realize that academics in the social sciences and English departments find it easier to debate about such silliness than to produce genuine scholarship. I also realize that if they want to keep collecting a paycheck in the time until tenure review that they have to play the game. I get that. But that does not mean that the rest of the intellectual universe has to treat such word games as if they made sense, much less were worthy of attention.

Here's the matter, Joe: are you going to suggest that those of us who use the critiques of post-structuralist thinkers as ways to encourage modernism to self-destruct are *wrong* to enjoy the dissolution of modernism?

I’m no fan of modernism so I particularly despise the amped up version that goes by the name “postmodernism.” But anyone who thinks that playing word games with “theory” is going to lead to the dissolution of modernism is sorely mistaken and clearly misunderstands the nature of modernity.

Also – and I mean this with all due respect – sentences like this...

When someone sets out to engage with the written text through an understanding that the writing is being done to unwrite the text's apparent meaning, the illusion of self-contained autonomous truth in a bunch of ink marks, that critic is engaging in post-structuralist hermeneutics.

...come off as the worst form of elitist jibberish. It’s an attempt to create jargon for jargon’s sake in order to create a barrier between those “in the know” and outsiders. But I have to tell you, I don’t think too many people fall for that sort of thing anymore.

Rob: Even more interesting than this bit of trivia is the question of how you came to know it.

I watched the movie “Boogie Nights.”

And why you leave the vowel out.

To keep my blog being blocked by anti-p*rn software.

21

PGEpps:

When modernism unravels, the unravelling has a name, and it is postmodern.

That's a great sentence in a fascinating comment. I didn't even need a translator this time;-> Question: Why are your comments here longer than your own blog posts?

I couldn't resist writing more, so I did it @ here.

Rob Ryan:

Leaving the o out of p*rn also keeps p*rnographers' web trawlers from spamming the comment list. We who comment should probably spell it the same way.

Joe Carter:

Sometimes absurdity is best defined as depravity with its shoes on backwards.

22

Joe Carter:

Re: "naughty films" : you left out the really interesting reason of why "they aspired to be like real movies, contained a story complete with a rudimentary plot and characterization."

It had to do with a Supreme Court case: those movies wanted to include the veneer of a "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value," which was often ludicrously displayed in such movies.

In so doing, the makers of naughty films were in effect making a critique of the "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific values" of the time, sometimes intentionally satirically, sometimes not intentionally, but creating naughty classics of le bad cinema in the process.

Or so I've heard. ;-)

Thus, one could say that these smut-peddlers were in effect reversing the privileged/marginalized roles of cinema to achieve, well, smut.

23

Does that make Modern pron PostModern?

(as they have "deconstructed" old Pron?)

24

Also – and I mean this with all due respect – sentences like this...[sentence on hermeneutics]...come off as the worst form of elitist jibberish.

Shorter version: "Reading is hard! Lol!"

25

Th*nk y*o f*r r*sp*nd*ng; * th*nk w* c**ld d* w*th**t v*w*ls *lt*g*th*r *f w* tr**d.

26

Then again, maybe not. That slippery "o" got past me, d*mm*t!

27

Joe, you say "I realize that academics in the social sciences and English departments find it easier to debate about such silliness than to produce genuine scholarship."

In reality, post modernism has had almost no impact on the social sciences in the U.S., and what impact it had died out quickly. I come here about once a month and always end up with the same question: Why do you keep writing about things you know nothing about? If I recall correctly, you are the poor fellow who tried to have a discussion about the likelihood of evolutionary selection and ended up showing to everyone that you didn't even have high school-level knowledge about probabilities. Why don't you just stick to posts about religion?

28

...come off as the worst form of elitist jibberish. It’s an attempt to create jargon for jargon’s sake in order to create a barrier between those “in the know” and outsiders. But I have to tell you, I don’t think too many people fall for that sort of thing anymore.

Heh. But the fact that some use obscuring jargon to describe postmodernism don't necessarily mean that it's all claptrap. E.g.:

I think a modest definition of post-modernism that renders it existent, if you will, is the self-reflexive discursive turn. I dunno why this example popped into my head, but take the nuclear family: the modernist will rationally investigate the reasons for/against the nuclear family. The post-modern turn is to interrogate the hidden terms that supplement the discourse and render it intelligible (terms like legitimate, natural, etal).

Translates to:

Post modernism is the examination of the (largely) unspoken assumptions that govern our description (and depiction) of the world.

Things are not made for words, after all, but words for things.* Post modernism, when done rigorously and without artifice, helps to explain how those words are created. This is not how it's most frequently done, of course, 'cause most "postmodernists" take comfort in the tribalism and exclusion fostered by jargon -- if you'll allow me a postmodern critique of the postmodernists.

von

*A tip of the hat to anyone who can name the (decidedly non- (even anti-) postmodern) source for that paraphrase.

29

von- Do I get two guesses? "Things are not made for words, after all, but words for things" The inversion makes me think it's Chesterton but the phrasing is more like C.S. Lewis. Am I even close?

Joe-If you insist on writing 'p*rn' you will not get listed when a potential reader googles for the version with the 'o'. You're limiting your exp*sure.

30

This is not how it's most frequently done, of course, 'cause most "postmodernists" take comfort in the tribalism and exclusion fostered by jargon

Fair. By the by, I was being unnecessarily harsh and obnoxious, earlier, with the "reading is hard" bit. I think Von is dead-on with the 'tribalism' bit: the jargon is a genre marker of sorts. That said, I think it's fun as all get-out.

The best pomo (Derrida being the best example, when he's "on") is fun as heck to read, and the jargon-ish stuff serves to stimulate thought.

31

a postmodern critique of the postmodernists.

Actually, I think that title has been claimed by Adorno's Jargon of Authenticity, a Frankfurt school screed against Heidegger. It's great, a totally incomprehensible Marxist attack on the incomprehensibility of Heidegger. Genius, I say, genius.

32

Joe, I know you try to guard against comment spam, but that "anxiety disorder" bit above is hilariously ironic considering the convoluted sentence structure of several previous items.

33

Rats, it disappeared already.

34

I think postmodernism and postmodernists exist, and I have posted on it. Nevertheless, I enjoyed your post and found it thought provoking as usual.

Thanks much.

35

>Things are not made for words, after all, but words >for things

Hmmm...I'm guessing you're quoting the bible. "The Sabbath was made for men, not men for the Sabbath."

36

would jesus approve of this discussion of earthy things?

37

@Jim--

Sadly, because I have had such limited time for the blog, recently, that I haven't gotten much up. I find myself more likely to be provoked into a reaction by something I read, than ready to tackle my own writing. I have a pile of non-bloggy writing waiting for me when I do that. It's a weakness.

@jpe & von--

Yes, the sort of winking and inverted use of language that gets used in lit crit these days is definitely a "club tie" of sorts. It is a darn fun game to play, and I do enjoy it--though I try to leave it at the door of the "club." Of course, when someone tries to do the secret handshake on his blog, I find it hard not to trot out the tie and see if he "gets it." I think Joe does, really, "get it" in his way--he just doesn't *like it*, and I don't blame him. I'm just trying to get him to realize that the best way to deal with the enemy is to exploit the cracks in the armor, and not to patch them up. . . .

@Joe--

Disturbing as it is to get a cheer from mumon, I gotta say it was more disturbing to have evoked a dismissive, exasperated reaction from you. I hope I didn't annoy you by taking the tone I did; that would be entirely contrary to my purpose.

I don't think, though, that you've engaged my real argument, here. Maybe I left too much implicit.

I concur entirely with you that modernism is a bad thing, and postmodernism is a part of it. What I don't hear you recognizing is that postmodernism is the *self-destructive ending* of modernism, the realization that the modernist mindset leaves nothing to be done but to unravel it all. There is an important gain when our enemies are undoing themselves.

Again, while I did enjoy some bits of jargon, intended partly to indicate to other "club members" that I didn't miss my dues, I also engaged your analogy squarely and fairly, in the plainest language possible.

I think that, to the extent Christians are faithful to the Christ witnessed to by the Spirit speaking in Scripture, *we are not modern*. Modernism has been the *enemy* of Biblical Christianity, which is why I continue to identify much more strongly with my Fundamentalist forebears (who knew this well) and my evangelical brethren (who have been fishy on the point), even though I am more acculturated to the broader evangelical way of life, now.

As such, we may feel free to *take seriously* the internal convulsions of modernism, for they chart the cracks through which the minds imprisoned may be freed by the Word's ingress.

That is, after all, precisely the course Francis Schaeffer recommends in his main works--to take the modernists (and thus, by extension, the postmodernists) quite seriously, to recognize that the frivolity masks the real convulsions of thought that go on in the mind-against-God in extremis.

Christians who hold to the traditions of Christ and His Apostles are neither modern, nor pre-modern, but are of an order that lies outside the vicissitudes of mortal time. "In earthen vessels," though, we are subject to "culture capture." I think it a worthy object of intellectual Christianity to undermine the cultural bonds which hold us in captivity, and if I must spend considerable "Egyptian gold" to do it--well, it's Mammon, and it doesn't matter to me what happens to it.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to continue to help the (post)modernist sappers inside the modernist stronghold do their work, even as I seek to know the Truth and to confess the Word that alone can really tear down those "strongholds, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God."

And I shall continue to rejoice every time another thinker embraces the self-destruction of modernism, and I shall continue to weep every time one dies before being led to seek something other than destruction, which without Christ they must surely find.

Take care,
PGE

38

oops--"identify more strongly with my Fundamentalist forebears *than* my evangelical brethren"

I hate typos.

Cheers,
PGE

39

Here are some of my beliefs/findings on postmodernism:
1. Much of what is called postmodern is better understood as HYPERmodern - the reductio ad absurdam of modernism.
2. There are many different varieties of postmodernism, many finding their resources in previous movements. Here are just a few:
a. The French People - from Nietzsche
b. Charles Taylor - Hegel, Herder, etc.
c. Alasdair MacIntyre - Aristotle, Aquinas
3. The individualist "Copernican Revolution" of Kant was socialized by Durkheim and the sociologists of knowledge and then taken up again by people like Rorty. In many contexts it is very easy for this move to result in relativism.
4. The aspects of modernism that have been most detrimental to Christian theology are:
a. A centering on epistemology
b. Radical individualism
c. Dehistoricization - a valuing of the universal and abstract over the historical and particular (ex. Lessing's Ugly Ditch).
5. These things (major philosophical transitions) take time.

40

there is nothing more post-modern than the christian right convinced that jesus would support a war.

praise the lord and pass the ammo.

41

Hey, Richard, two points regarding an interesting summary of your findings:

1) "The French People" must comprise an awfully big group. I suspect you're including the Derrideans, the French critics who follow Derrida one way (and who have one reading of Nietzsche through Heidegger), the Yale School (think Paul de Man and Geoff Hartmann), and the J. Hillis Miller variant of that school. I assume you're not including Harold Bloom, as his pomo credentials are somewhat hard to pin down. . . . what else?

(it seems like an awfully big group, and there are competing readings of Nietzsche, Heidegger's Nietzsche, and Heidegger--as well as competing degrees of affection for Marxist radicalism--dividing that camp into really distinct schools)

2) You could rephrase "postmodern" as "hypermodern," sure. That's redundant renaming names, though.

Folks aren't quite catching what "postmodern" means. It doesn't mean "modernism was last year, here's what's next and different." It means "modernism has achieved its full scope, here's what's left to do."

It is the "post" of "Post-Romantic," not the "post" of "post-colonial." One refers to the unfolding of the effects of dominance achieved (in poetry, there is *no* escaping the consequences of the Romantic revolution); the other refers to the succession of events *after* the end of something.

The point of the "post" in "postmodernism" is that it is a historically-situated moment of thought that can only occur in the wake of the modern experience. Post-structuralists rejoice in the unravelling, not the view of the unravelled and the task of weaving new clothes.

Anyone who articulates a positive vision for a "postmodern [WHATEVER]" is a fake postmodernist, and it is in *that* sense that the critique Joe's making should be working, if he'd just focus it correctly.

Cheers,
PGE

42

Sorry for the multiplied posts, but this is one of the most interesting discussions I've seen for a long time. If I can, I'll try to blog something else on it, soon.

I have in the past written about post-structuralism and Scripture, and also a very brief sketch of post-structuralism as I see it, from my studies thus far.

I don't claim to be "post-modern" in any sense anyone living in our day can avoid being; if I have to choose a relation to modernity, I am "anti-modern" or at least radically opposed to Modernism in its myriad forms.

I always chuckle when I think of the line in one of Pliny's letters where he advises a governor that unnecessarily torturing the servants of Christians to inform on their masters is "not of our times." :-) mutatis mutandis, and yet maranatha!

Cheers,
PGE

43

pgepps,

"[Postmodernism] means "modernism has achieved its full scope, here's what's left to do.""

I disagree with that. The definition is too broad for the word you are defining. I don't consider myself postmodern, although under your definition, I probably would be. My reason for saying this comes from the wise advice, "An enemy of an enemy isn't always a friend." I think you, too, acknowledge this in a couple of your replies.

______________________

Since Joe hat-tipped me, I thought I'd clarify my position at this point. I don't think postmodernism is a myth (in either sense of the word). There are obviously differences between postmodernists and modernists. When I say that postmodernism is "modernism in disguise" I DON'T mean that they are the same thing, nor do I mean that the former isn't a reaction to/rejection of the latter. What I mean is that the most important, defining aspect of modernity - that of the autonomous, free self - is still found in postmodernity. I just think that in postmodernity, this aspect is combined with extreme individualism and results in the rejection of a lot of the things most people associate with modernism.

To jump on the music analogy bandwagon: Modernism is like a rock band where each member of the band is a maestro on his respective instrument. They all work together to make the best music possible. Postmodernism is what happens when the band members get fed up with other members, the studio execs, etc. and the band dissolves and each member goes on to do whatever they want to do. One heads to Nashville for a new country deal, one starts his own music studio and one buys a ranch in Montana.

44

@Macht--

Sorry, wasn't intending that to be a definition of the term. I was trying to clarify the "post" in post-modernism, as I hoped was clear in the context. It obviously wasn't, so my apologies.

There is a sense in which no one who lives in the age succeeding the world-striding effects of Dewey, Arnold, Marx et al can avoid being "post-modern," and avowed postmodernists are the ones who note this approvingly. There is a more technical sense in which there are post-modern thoughts about late modernity, though, as opposed to other sorts, and that sense is better defined in earlier comments, or in my article (linked in comments above).

We all (Joe included) seem to be agreed that post-modernism is an expression of modernism, that has no meaning as a "something other" than modernism. We mostly agree it's bad, too, only I insist that it is *by no means* bad insofar as it trashes modernism; it is bad (in a more absolute sense) insofar as it *is* modernism, and "good" (in a more relative sense) insofar as it is the modernism which *embraces the destruction* of modernism.

Personally, I stick close to the term "post-structuralist" because I think the meaningful bit in all this chatter is the demolition of conventional philosophical discourse, not so much the cultural swirlie we're all undergoing.

To merge the two analogies and (mis?)read them as they strike me:

Modernism is like a rock band where each member wants to drown the others out, but never sets his amp above ten (of twenty) because any more will blow the speakers; the postmodernist is the first one to give the band the finger and push his volume to eleven. Anything beyond that is "what's next," and isn't postmodern but . . . whatever else is coming.

[best guess: the Apocalypse of the Third Sophistic. Wonder which one I'm rooting for?]

Cheers!
PGE

45

dang typos: "the Apocalypse *OR* the Third Sophistic"

*that* would be a significant bit of slippage. :-)
PGE

46

The inversion makes me think it's Chesterton but the phrasing is more like C.S. Lewis.

Well, this will surely disappoint. "Things are not made for words, but words for things" is a paraphrase of a line from a seminal patent law case, Autogiro. Patents are all about describing things (a product, an apparatus, etc.) that have never "been" before, and Autogiro has a quite perceptive lament regarding the limitations and difficulties of language. Part of it goes as follows:

An invention exists most importantly as a tangible structure or a series of drawings. A verbal portrayal is usually an afterthought written to satisfy the requirements of patent law. This conversion of machine to words allows for unintended idea gaps which cannot be satisfactorily filled. Often the invention is novel and words do not exist to describe it. The dictionary does not always keep abreast of the inventor. It cannot. Things are not made for the sake of words, but words for things.

The notion of "idea gaps" in discourse is one that postmodernism -- like patent law -- tries to explore. (Never thought of patent law having something in common with postmodernism, didja?)

47

By the way, my "tribalism fostered by jargon" point wasn't meant as an insult; believe you me, us lawyers created "tribalism fostered by jargon." We're the masters, baby.

48

Like with many discussions today, we are not even all on the same page of basic understanding of what post-modernism is.

I for one, don't understand it.

I must admit that I find the idea of NO absolutes and people thinking that there are no absolutes as a bit scary as well as not making sense.

On the other hand a problem in the past is that people have considered some things absolute that should not be. So I can understand some people's fear of absolutes.

I would be able to participate in a much more fruitful discussion, if there was a basic agreement that absolutes exist. This would leave us on the same foundation to discuss what is in fact absolute and what is not.

There is one thing that may be unfair about being "against" postmodernism as an actual fact rather than a myth. I don't know enough to try to explain what I mean here except to leave an example. Joe may not be railing against postmodernism, it may be a reaction to what I would call pop-postmoderernism. The equivalent would be if Joe spoke against the science of psychology using the examples of pop psychology to prove his point.

Am I making any sense here?

Even if I am making any sense (I doubt that), am I way off base?

49

Francis Schaffer predicted that society would drift from fact based words to conotation based words. Conotation words are those that are trite and vague yet can elicit posative emotion in a broad range of people.

Example; "Education should be a mainstay of our society". Who would disagree with that. But when you come down to defining what "education" is, then you get thousands of differing opinions. Post modernism means nothing but it elisits good feelings in most humanists. Touchy feely blah, blah, blah.

50

Francis Schaffer predicted that society would drift from fact based words to conotation based words. Conotation words are those that are trite and vague yet can elicit positive emotion in a broad range of people.

Example; "Education should be a mainstay of our society". Who would disagree with that. But when you come down to defining what "education" is, then you get thousands of differing opinions. Post modernism means nothing but it eliscits good feelings in most humanists. Touchy feely blah, blah, blah.

51

Schaeffer was right, RA, and some of that has to do with visual culture's disruption of the verbal culture, too. It's not *all* bad, but it's definitely caused some problems.

"Post-modernism means nothing" is (wait for it) both true and false. A strategy of writing that disrupts the system of oppositions among signs in order to destroy the perception of fixed meaning is, in the simplest possible sense, a way to produce writing which means nothing and anything. On the other hand, the term "post-modernism" resides within the system of oppositions among signs as that term which denotes the strategy of writing . . .

Tim, a post-modernist *begins* from where the pluralism and relativism of modernist place him. To the extent a post-modernist gives you any "fixed meaning," he's not being a "good" post-modernist.

That said, I begin from the God who spoke to the prophets, chose Israel as the people from whom His Son would be born, came among us as Christ, lived, died, was buried, rose again, and lives now while His Spirit witnesses to Him in Scripture and calls those to Him who will rise up with Christ at the last day, when we shall all stand together on the Earth in transformed, immortal bodies. I regard all this as absolute truth, including the inerrancy of Scripture as it was penned by the original writers.

What I do not regard as absolute truth are any words of mine which attempt to restate the truth of Christ, including these here.

Cheers,
PGE

52

Joe's essay and this thread remind me of the old line from "Alice's Restaurant" about Officer Obie:

And he talked for 45 minutes and nobody understood a word that he said.

My goodness, you people like to hear yourselves talk.

53

Wow, Steve, aggressive ignorance. Never saw *that* routine on a sitcom . . .

Cheers,
PGE

54

Is it possible to be neither modern nor postmosdern?

55

Yes, but quite difficult if you were born in the last century or so.

:-)

OK, I'll be less cryptic--it's quite possible to affirm views completely contrary to the modernist mythos, that have the effect of gradually moving one in a direction utterly contrary to one's culture; and it's possible to do that in a non-post-modern way.

The trick is, that most folks who reject certain features of modernism still tend to use modernistic argumentation: as when folks argue foundationalism (an early stage of modernism) against relativism (a late stage); or when folks argue in favor of analytical thought (a la Frege or Quine or Moore) against Continental thought (a la Heidegger or Nietzsche); or when folks argue capitalism (early economic determinism) versus communism (late economic determinism), etc.

Folks who argue from modernism against postmodernism, *or vice versa*, are not escaping modernity.

There is, however, one real sense in which there is a difference: those who are claiming to affirm truth *outside* the modernist schema entirely are, I think, legitimately allowed to use post-structuralist arguments *within the scope of modernist discourse* to demostrate its always self-defeating tendencies. I do believe those are intellectually sound in a way that modernist arguments about verificationism, etc. are not . . . that is, modernist anti-modernism is self-defeating; but post-modernist anti-modernism is *admittedly* self-defeating, and opens the way to *non-modern* affirmations, provided we do not claim that those are *in any way* justified from within either post-modern or modern frames of reference.

Hope that helps,
PGE

56

"Post-modernism means nothing" is (wait for it) both true and false. A strategy of writing that disrupts the system of oppositions among signs in order to destroy the perception of fixed meaning is, in the simplest possible sense, a way to produce writing which means nothing and anything. On the other hand, the term "post-modernism" resides within the system of oppositions among signs as that term which denotes the strategy of writing . . .

That didn't actually mean anything.

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@Josh S--

Wow, clever one-liner. I could say you're right, but . . . I won't bother. You didn't take the effort to show *why* the ambiguity is equal to meaninglessness, so you don't get a cookie.

@All--

I rounded up links to a number of parts of this discussion over at my place, with a few more comments of my own.

@Josh S--

It meant you get to think over it next time before you post.

@All--

"system of oppositions among signs" means "a light is not alight because they have different spellings" and "a cat is not a dog because they don't sound the same."

The way we know what you mean when you make a new noise we haven't heard before is that we look for the thing not described by a noise that you and we both know. That is, we set up a "it's this because it's not that" opposition between two signs--noises or shapes--that marks off the difference between things.

The signs, though, are in many cases (especially in philosophical discourse) the only or the primary way in which the differences are marked off, and if we're being sloppy about those, we find ourselves faking it on meaning, just like Josh S did by not working out the sense of the above passage.

The post-structuralist approach to the language of philosophy is to undermine this approach to meaning by noting the ways in which the "things" pointed to by the "words" tend to overlap with or become the "things" that the "words" try to say they aren't.

"I am entirely human" would, if taken in the sense some philosophical statements are, be subject to the counter that "I am in part non-human" is equally true, and in fact that the distinction "human/non-human" here turns on the assumption that "I" excludes those elements of my body that are transitory (like the food I eat) or the states of my body that are found, for instance, at death or after some part of me is amputated. Is each segment of me human? If I cut off a fingernail that was entirely human, is it still human? Which parts of me, exactly, are *not* transitory? The consequence of rigorously pressing this logic will be the gradual elimination of all concrete content except, perhaps, the merest assertion of "identity" or "spirit," from the definition of "I"--the result being that the "I" who is entirely human seems to be considerably *less* than a human, and completed by the superaddition of a shocking number of "non-human" transitory elements. (This is, BTW, not entirely unrelated to the zombie problem Joe brings up elsewhere.) The elevation of the generic *description* "I am human" to the rigors of "entirely" begs the deconstruction of the opposition between "human/non-human" that is assumed in the statement.

That's a straw man, of course, because I set up the opposition in a way that made it intentionally easy to knock down. There are better examples, of course, but they're usually written in heavy jargon to begin with, and then (un?)scrambling them requires the generation of yet further jargon.

BTW, for those who think modern crit is full of jargon, uh, er . . . ever try to read Coleridge? Or how about Isaac Watts' Logic (which is actually fairly pellucid for the times)? Or the works of any major analytic philosopher? Or, heaven forbid, the debates among the Dominicans and Scholastics and the Spiritual Franciscans?

The exception is when a major philosophical undertaking is *not* heavily laced with jargon, and the reason is the need to paper over reality with words--that's what the deconstructors are getting at, and that's why they spin the jargon fast and furious back at the guys who invented the stuff.

Take care,
PGE

58

John

59

John

60

hgh