Talk:Postmodernism
At a Center for Inquiry meeting, someone referred to postmodernism as the enemy of atheism, apparently because it demolishes the idea that morality can exist outside of religion, which is something Christians ALWAYS pin on us-αmεσ (spy) 20:36, 21 January 2008 (EST)
Interestingly, I was studying the rise of the Modernist movement, in terms of the art world. Interesting stuff, and more attractive to me than postmodernism. --Kels 21:04, 21 January 2008 (EST)
[edit] Science Wars
I'm going to add content about this conflict to give the article some context, and also differentiate literary and artistic postmodernism (which were - I think - insightful and valuable) from scientific postmodernism (which was terrible and not science).--
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08:21, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Literary and artistic pomo are also horribly susceptible to bullshit, but the scientific variety is a good example of not even wrong - David Gerard (talk) 09:50, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
[edit] Other hoaxes?
Are there other hoaxes along these lines? I'm thinking of Ern Malley or Piotr Zak, where people deliberately made a nonsensical work and passed it off under a fake name to demonstrate a lack of critical acuity on the part of the editors they were sent to. This sort of thing is harder to fake in art (in both cases, people came along later and pointed out the "hoaxers" may have lied about the works' provenance, but they'd created works that people actually liked, and that is after all the point), but is an obvious precursor. Had anyone actually done this before with science-related matters? - David Gerard (talk) 09:50, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
[edit] Past Postmodernism
Is probably the random plot generator [1]. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 14:57, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
- Though that's based on a Markov chain that will produce recognisable nonsense. ADK...I'll legislate your bread knife! 16:13, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
But 'actual modernist text' (and much 'literary theory') #does# appear to be of a similar nature. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 15:54, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
- I added a post in this Talk about modernism vs. postmodernism. There is no difference in most places XD I think people tend to use postmodernism to refer to extremes that do not involve worshiping rationalism or technology, and that is about it. --Tesseract 20:51, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
[edit] Bullshit?
Why you have to call something bullshit in your articles??? hm maybe its not the "rational-wiki" i expected -.- greets--Ratio-Duff (talk) 00:46, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
[edit] Political artists
... or artistic politicians might be described as first-past-the-post-modernist. (Which literary trope is this btw?). 82.44.143.26 (talk) 15:54, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
- It's called a "joke." And a good one I might add. Wehpudicabok [話] [変] 07:40, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
[edit] Simply trying to understand this is making my head go crazy.
I took a media class last year that referenced postmodernism, and the textbook I had was largely critical. Could you simply define it as examining/questioning cultural norms (which is not a bad thing), but to the extreme that you question the existence of objective reality and scientific fact itself?
And seeing explanations of it on Urban Dictionary is even weirder. You get random bits of political jabs from all over the political spectrum, from "latte-drinking artists" to right-wingers and Hitler. Osaka Sun (talk) 03:47, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- Not all pomo thinkers go so far as to bring into question the existence of reality or scientific fact. Most of them don't. What they do do is talk about how "reality" and "scientific fact" need to be understood in terms of the racialized/gendered/class-based/etc power strutures in which they are produced, and the way that human "realities" and "facts" encode those structures on a number of levels. Western rationality--the dominant mode of thinking behind scientific fact--is but one way that humans have come up with to understand how the universe works. That rationality has a history, and power has a lot to do with that history. The pomos want to talk about how that power works, what its effects are, and who gains and who loses what as it gets exercised. Is that at all helpful? B♭maj7 (talk) Member of the Kara Duhe fan club since 2010 03:55, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- Postscript. You added the word "objective" to qualify "reality" as I wrote my post. I think one tenet of pomo thinking is that "objective" realities aren't really all that objective, and that the subjectivity of the people experiencing "reality" is more important/more interesting. B♭maj7 (talk) Member of the Kara Duhe fan club since 2010 03:58, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- Postmodernism examines and questions the rules by which we do cultural things, and how those rules influence the results.--
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04:09, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- Then it often butts it's head in places where it shouldn't be? Osaka Sun (talk) 04:17, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- I suppose. A lot of fuss is made about that and directed at pomo specifically, but really all modern cultural and literary criticism has been steadily expanding its scope since the sixties, chafing against the idea that a set of tools was useless outside of a small field. In some respects that expansion is nonsense, as is demonstrated with attempts to apply a postmodern uncertainty to the scientific method. But in other respects it's brilliant, like Edward Said's expansion of post-colonial criticism to encompass modern political and historical developments.
- One nasty bit is that a lot of pomo and modern criticism comes out of the French schools, which pride themselves on (a) poor documentation and (b) sweeping statements clad in new jargon. This is not a necessary component, and recent critics are stepping past it, but it's just the way things happened: the path of least resistance for this line of inquiry was an area known for being avant-guarde and in a form difficult to criticize because of its deliberate density.--
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04:26, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- /ec RE: "Butting its head in places it shouldn't be": Just the opposite. Like I said, lot of postmodernist thinking has to do with how power is created and exercised. While scientists frame themselves and their work as dispassioned and objective, rationality and science are closely tied to the creation and exercise of power. The pomos are interested in how that power is constituted and exercised and reproduced because of its effects on people and societies. How exactly did you read your response into what AD and/or I wrote, anyways? B♭maj7 (talk) Member of the Kara Duhe fan club since 2010 04:27, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- Then it often butts it's head in places where it shouldn't be? Osaka Sun (talk) 04:17, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
I get the feeling you're not reading what I'm posting, 'cause I've said pretty much the same thing three times now. What we get out of it is understanding how power is constituted, how it works, how it reproduces itself. For women, racialized people, queer people, colonized/postcolonial people--the people that the pomos are writing about/for/to in many case--this is seen as a crucial step towards contesting that power. B♭maj7 (talk) Member of the Kara Duhe fan club since 2010 04:49, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- Why is it a snarl word then? I'm a newbie on this, sorry for putting up with me so far. Osaka Sun (talk) 04:57, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- Okay, this is a dramatically simplified and somewhat misleading example. But it might illustrate what's going on.
- Imagine you have a race. The 300-meter hurdle (is that a thing? it's probably a thing). People line up at the starting line and run the distance, leaping the hurdles as they go. The first one to finish wins, the second one gets a silver medal, etc.
- That's sort of traditional criticism: which one is better? Which technique gets you to the end? How fast can you go and how high can you jump? If we're talking about books or art, which is where pomo is most at home, then it's about painting styles or dramatic tension and other such good stuff. Perfectly awesome and amazing, and not at all bad.
- But the postmodernist in this allegory says, "Wait a minute. The guy in the middle is crowded by the people on either side of him, that changes the race. And the starting pistol is different than just shouting, 'Go," so that changes things in some races and makes the outcome different. And why does everyone run just this one way, when some people can keep their arms at their sides and still do well?"
- So he's looking at how the structure of the race - the way it's run - affects the rest of it, and asking questions about that. Some questions have good answers, some have no answers, and some are just sort of, "Well, that's just the way it is." But it's a good thing, a valuable thing, to be asking those questions and looking at the rules.
- Of course, some pomo guys take it too far. They want to know why the runners aren't swimming, or why the hurdles are all made in Wales, or whatever. They can get ridiculous, just like any branch of critics. And some racers and other critics of the race aren't open to any sorts of questioning about the rules. They think that ALL pomo folks are accusing them of Welsh-hurdles.
- And that's kind of how it is, sort of, almost, allegorically. Some guys asking questions about the way the race is set up, other guys being assholes with it, and some folks who group them all together.--
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05:08, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- I don't think it's possible to fully understand post-modernism without understanding the history of 19th-mid-20th century Europe and America. Pomo was a reaction to the extremes of logical positivism, scientism, technocracy, and bureaucracy that developed during the Industrial Revolution and World Wars. It's much easier to explain in terms of its influence on specific fields: Architecture, anthropology, literature, philosophy, etc. It is also heavily laden with bullshit, which unfortunately often gets the enterprise written off as a whole. Said and Foucault are really the only ones I find worthwhile out of what I've read these days. I'm also a fan of Nikolas Rose, though he's more of a fusion of actual science and pomo (avoiding much of the crankery that went under the name "science studies," most likely because he had actual scientific training). Ultimately, it's sort of an "If you have to ask, you'll never know" question (per Louis Armstrong). Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 06:00, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- Hm. I hesitate to be elitist enough to claim privilege by dint of learning in judging postmodernism's utility - to claim to be one of those who "knows" and so doesn't have to ask about pomo - but I will offer that there's a fairly sharp drop-off in people willing to scoff at entire branches of theory between undergrad and grad, and again from MA into PhD.--
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01:03, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
- Hm. I hesitate to be elitist enough to claim privilege by dint of learning in judging postmodernism's utility - to claim to be one of those who "knows" and so doesn't have to ask about pomo - but I will offer that there's a fairly sharp drop-off in people willing to scoff at entire branches of theory between undergrad and grad, and again from MA into PhD.--
- I don't think it's possible to fully understand post-modernism without understanding the history of 19th-mid-20th century Europe and America. Pomo was a reaction to the extremes of logical positivism, scientism, technocracy, and bureaucracy that developed during the Industrial Revolution and World Wars. It's much easier to explain in terms of its influence on specific fields: Architecture, anthropology, literature, philosophy, etc. It is also heavily laden with bullshit, which unfortunately often gets the enterprise written off as a whole. Said and Foucault are really the only ones I find worthwhile out of what I've read these days. I'm also a fan of Nikolas Rose, though he's more of a fusion of actual science and pomo (avoiding much of the crankery that went under the name "science studies," most likely because he had actual scientific training). Ultimately, it's sort of an "If you have to ask, you'll never know" question (per Louis Armstrong). Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 06:00, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
[edit] One illustration
While I think AD's post above about the hurdles is great, I thought it might be worth adding this one in regarding post-modernism and objective reality. Can't remember where I got it from, possibly PZ Myers, Dawkins or someone like that. Basically, a post-modern feminist was at a dinner table with a scientist (these things are always at dinner parties, I've never discussed this sort of thing at a dinner party, get far too wasted far too quickly) and mentions that we need to examine science in the context of how it was developed. Specifically, what would the world be like it Isaac Newton was a woman, surely all his laws would have been different. "Oh really." replies the scientist, which come to think of it I'm sure is Dawkins, "so you're saying that if Isaac Newton had been a woman, force wouldn't have been equal to mass multiplied by acceleration?". To me, that is post-modernism's relationship with reality. ADK...I'll pander your lawnmower! 12:27, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- That's a misuse of postmodern skepticism by that postmodern feminist and a terrible illustration of postmodernism to someone unfamiliar with it.--
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20:26, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- Undoubtedly it's a complete misuse, but when such a thing is remarkably easy you have to wonder where the mainstream of it actually lies. ADK...I'll push your driptray! 23:38, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- That's nonsense. It's not at all intuitive or easy to apply postmodernist critiques (at least the approaches with which I'm familiar) to empirical sciences. It's a wild misuse, just like any literary criticism being applied to empirical science would be a wild misuse (except in certain very narrow ways).
- Cultural criticism of all kinds of prone to mission creep - that's why you see idiots using a few bits of science jargon like "quantum" and "superstrings" to try to justify an unsupported conclusion on a poem or philosophy. There's no real empirical or scientific method approach for these fields, which inherently opens up a lot more leeway in what critics feel they can comment on or use in their critiques. But postmodernism itself is not particularly prone to that - you can perhaps make the claim that postmodernists themselves are more likely to postulate unreasonably, but that's again a function not of the nature of the theory, but of the circumstances under which the opaque original formulations arose. Plus, I don't think that's actually true or backed by evidence. When I look at the field with which I'm familiar, English literary criticism, I see people in all branches of theory going crazy at times.--
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00:53, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
- I have to disagree on that -- it might be true for literary theory, but it gets much worse when you start dealing with fields that actually require collection and interpretation of empirical data like history or anthropology. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 16:28, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
- That's because it seems to me that the utility of postmodernism diminishes directly in proportion to the empirical aspects of any work. Literature, art, etc. can find a great deal of useful tools in that toolbox, but historians should find it useful only in a limited capacity - something like an examination of how the privileged binary of east and west influenced historical accounts, to pick an uninformed example. And by the time you get to biology, postmodernist critiques would seem only relevant to very narrow examinations of the nature of scientific writing, and even then I'd have my doubts.
- But again, I'd argue that this is a feature of all contemporary cultural criticism - postmodernism is by far the most dominant of recent articulated strains, which is why it is overrepresented.--
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22:50, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
- I have to disagree on that -- it might be true for literary theory, but it gets much worse when you start dealing with fields that actually require collection and interpretation of empirical data like history or anthropology. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 16:28, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
- Undoubtedly it's a complete misuse, but when such a thing is remarkably easy you have to wonder where the mainstream of it actually lies. ADK...I'll push your driptray! 23:38, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
[edit] Why is it a snarl word then?
As a few people have said; some of it is unnecessarily dense, some of it pushes ideas beyond where they would comfortably go, and some of it is straight-up bullshit. But there's another reason; postmodernist thought is very closely tied to human identities, and identity politics tend to get nasty. Nobody likes to have it pointed out that their race/gender/sexual orientation/place in the colonial/postcolonial pecking order puts them in a position of privilege, and people in positions of privilege tend to react strongly when the subalterns start to get noisy. That said, to AD's list of Foucault and Said, I would add Dipesh Chakrabarty, Partha Chatterjee, Achille Mbembe, Gyan Prakash, and Frederic Jameson. B♭maj7 (talk) Member of the Kara Duhe fan club since 2010 13:17, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- People don't like being told that they're in a "position of privilege" mostly because when people say that sort of thing it's being used as a bullshit excuse to dismiss someone's opinions out of hand - and usually the accuser is also very privileged, if not more so. ADK...I'll run your cable! 13:44, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- I think I have to disagree; to make that argument comes pretty close to saying that race/gender/sexual orientation etc. etc. don't matter. There are reasons why marginalization works the way it does, and the pomos have crafted important critiques about how identity and power work together. And yes, these people are professional intellectuals/academics, which makes them people of privilege. That said, go talk to a female black academic or a queer academic from India and ask them about their experiences within an intellectual/academic establishment that is still in many ways overwhelmingly white, straight and male, and their position of "privilege" gets a little more complicated. Moreover, there is nothing wrong with being in a position of (relative) privilege and using that position as a way to craft critiques that benefit others. There's actually a pretty long history of that sort of thing in activist intellectual circles. B♭maj7 (talk) Member of the Kara Duhe fan club since 2010 13:53, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- I would never say that those things don't matter. I would just hazard that they might be overused in some cases. ADK...I'll confuddle your ax murderer! 14:00, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- And they might. And sometimes they are. But I tend to feel like too much attention gets focused on the times they do go too far, or to try to read stuff in an over-simplistic and over-literal way, than is really warranted. B♭maj7 (talk) Member of the Kara Duhe fan club since 2010 14:07, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- Which is why I brought up the historical aspect -- it's much easier to "get" pomo when you see it as a reaction to the hyper-rationalization (in the sociological sense) of the 19th-20th centuries. Pomo is responsible for quite a lot of garbage, but what's forgotten is that the widespread application of so-called "science" by the elite in overly simplistic and unethical ways produced a whole lot of its own bull plop. Read up on the histories of "scientific" racism, eugenics, Social Darwinism, Taylorism and other such management "science" and industrialist woo, early uses of psychometrics, so-called "psychiatric" practices, etc. Then we'll talk about postmodernism. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 20:56, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- And they might. And sometimes they are. But I tend to feel like too much attention gets focused on the times they do go too far, or to try to read stuff in an over-simplistic and over-literal way, than is really warranted. B♭maj7 (talk) Member of the Kara Duhe fan club since 2010 14:07, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- I would never say that those things don't matter. I would just hazard that they might be overused in some cases. ADK...I'll confuddle your ax murderer! 14:00, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- I think I have to disagree; to make that argument comes pretty close to saying that race/gender/sexual orientation etc. etc. don't matter. There are reasons why marginalization works the way it does, and the pomos have crafted important critiques about how identity and power work together. And yes, these people are professional intellectuals/academics, which makes them people of privilege. That said, go talk to a female black academic or a queer academic from India and ask them about their experiences within an intellectual/academic establishment that is still in many ways overwhelmingly white, straight and male, and their position of "privilege" gets a little more complicated. Moreover, there is nothing wrong with being in a position of (relative) privilege and using that position as a way to craft critiques that benefit others. There's actually a pretty long history of that sort of thing in activist intellectual circles. B♭maj7 (talk) Member of the Kara Duhe fan club since 2010 13:53, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
[edit] But what does it accomplish that traditional scholarship can't?
At the end of the day, I honestly don't care what postmodernism was a reaction to or where it came from. In my academic work, I'm not interested in such questions of academic pedigree, it's the results that make or break an argument. And at least as it pertains to my field, the results have been dubious at best. It's hundreds of pages of opaque prose pontificating about the author's theory, and then presenting a meagre result that could have been reached by traditional scholarship. Maybe in theory, postmodernism can produce brilliant new insights, but the fact that so much garbage comes out of it can't just be ignored.
Moreover, the question about identity politics was raised above but never really answered. ADK's statement about using identity to dismiss inconvenient counter-arguments is right-on. It's not just an instance of pomos "sometimes taking it too far." It's in the DNA of that particular line of inquiry: someone only argues this because they're this kind of person. Everything is contingent on identity and structures of power, therefore my inability to document what I claim is just because such documentation was long suppressed by those in power who privileged the alternate interpretation. Junggai (talk) 21:27, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- What's your field? That is an important element of information for any response.--
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21:35, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- Musicology, specifically criticism and interpretation. It's right in the humanities area where postmodernists are supposed to be most at home. Perhaps we have different goals. Traditional musicologists try and get closer to how the music might have been understood in its own times, and how a reconstruction of the historical context can enrich how we hear it today; pomos seem only interested in telling us how it's all culturally constructed anyway (a point no traditional musicologist will deny), and that therefore any reading is valid. Junggai (talk) 21:42, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- I can only speak for myself and my research. Postmodernist scholarship has made me realize that the archive is something that is constructed as the result of particular constellations of power/knowledge, and if I want to engage with the voices of people who are marginalized within those configurations (typically because of identity politics), I need to interrogate the archive and archival sources in different ways, or look for historical sources that challenge the standard idea of what the archive is. And that's been a huge element of my own personal intellectual development. Plus, any bit of theory or scholarship that forces me out of my comfort zone and makes me think critically about whatever's at stake can only help my development. B♭maj7 (talk) Member of the Kara Duhe fan club since 2010 21:44, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- BbMaj7, is this a correct translation of what you just wrote?: "The sources which have come down to us do not tell the whole story. Therefore, I should read them critically in light of what might be missing." Isn't your version just traditional source study with knobs on? Junggai (talk) 21:54, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- You're forgetting the part about WHY they don't tell the whole story, and what that has to do with WHO has gotten to tell the story, and, perhaps more to the point, the political and social worlds that are created by the stories that were told, and the relationship between the production of knowledge and the creation and reproduction of relationships of power. At the end of the day, some postmodern scholarship ha been a useful tool for me, one of many intellectual/conceptual tools I might draw on. Nobody is asking anybody to accept anything uncritically, and if you are confident enough in your intellectual development to discount an entire approach to scholarship without giving it a few years of hard work, that's okay, too. B♭maj7 (talk) Member of the Kara Duhe fan club since 2010 22:01, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- BbMaj7, is this a correct translation of what you just wrote?: "The sources which have come down to us do not tell the whole story. Therefore, I should read them critically in light of what might be missing." Isn't your version just traditional source study with knobs on? Junggai (talk) 21:54, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- Oh fucking muisc-fucking-ology... I once sat through and helped write an essay on music and gender. It was painful. ADK...I'll oscillate your igneous protrusion! 23:43, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- Why are you so invested in this question when it seems pretty apparent that you have no respect for the field of study? It's what the guy does for a living and has a fucking passion for, I would imagine. Shit, it's not like you see anybody saying "oh, fucking evo-fucking-lutionary biology" on that talk page....B♭maj7 (talk) Member of the Kara Duhe fan club since 2010 23:50, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- Bflat, this is coming from a person that wrote: "With most humanities you just need to be able to read English and understand what author X said about subject Y, regurgitate it with some sort of "argument" in your one essay per term and that's about it." Don't take ADK too seriously on this topic, the guy has no clue what real work in humanities looks like. --★uːʤɱ sinner 15:24, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
- Why are you so invested in this question when it seems pretty apparent that you have no respect for the field of study? It's what the guy does for a living and has a fucking passion for, I would imagine. Shit, it's not like you see anybody saying "oh, fucking evo-fucking-lutionary biology" on that talk page....B♭maj7 (talk) Member of the Kara Duhe fan club since 2010 23:50, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- I can only speak for myself and my research. Postmodernist scholarship has made me realize that the archive is something that is constructed as the result of particular constellations of power/knowledge, and if I want to engage with the voices of people who are marginalized within those configurations (typically because of identity politics), I need to interrogate the archive and archival sources in different ways, or look for historical sources that challenge the standard idea of what the archive is. And that's been a huge element of my own personal intellectual development. Plus, any bit of theory or scholarship that forces me out of my comfort zone and makes me think critically about whatever's at stake can only help my development. B♭maj7 (talk) Member of the Kara Duhe fan club since 2010 21:44, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- Musicology, specifically criticism and interpretation. It's right in the humanities area where postmodernists are supposed to be most at home. Perhaps we have different goals. Traditional musicologists try and get closer to how the music might have been understood in its own times, and how a reconstruction of the historical context can enrich how we hear it today; pomos seem only interested in telling us how it's all culturally constructed anyway (a point no traditional musicologist will deny), and that therefore any reading is valid. Junggai (talk) 21:42, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
- This is a claim I've heard before, Junggai. And it's possible that postmodernists in musicology haven't produced much of note. Certainly it wouldn't be the only case of a bunch of theorists launching out a lot of jargon with a trendy theoretical push to disguise insights that are really of mediocre, unpublishable quality. I think the more arcane manifestations of a lot of recent theory are subject to that, like the articulations of trauma theory. But I would warn that it's also a common reply to any new theory: to skip to the conclusion and scoff that the method was unnecessary. When the early work was done on the phenomenon of "bad quartos" in the beginning of the twentieth century, for example, some rebuttals focused on how Alfred Pollard's use of bibliographic techniques was too number-focused and his conclusions followed from "traditional" criticism (also note that bibliographic criticism would go crazy a few decades later, swamping into "science").
- So while I can't comment on what you're mentioning specifically, just a word of warning of about the same quality as B-flat's bemusement at your willingness to dismiss a whole branch of theory.--
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01:00, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
- I take it that references to the Courtier's Reply would not be relevant?--BobSpring is sprung! 15:46, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
- No, that's very relevant. A lot of snide theorists sniff that critics just don't understand the issues. It's extremely aggravating and a way to avoid reasonable criticism.
- I am emphatically not saying that the problem is that Junggai doesn't understand it. I am saying that I don't know enough about musicology to comment on whether postmodernism has significantly contributed to the field, but that I'd advise caution before coming to such a conclusion.--
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00:16, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
- I take it that references to the Courtier's Reply would not be relevant?--BobSpring is sprung! 15:46, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
[edit] Most importantly, Ken is following this discussion.
[Best article on a postmodern scholar yet]. B♭maj7 (talk) Member of the Kara Duhe fan club since 2010 13:19, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
[edit] ARJ
Does someone want to review an Answers Research Journal article on postmodernism? I'm ignorant. steriletalk 16:03, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
- Ok.--
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00:17, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
[edit] A handy book for those looking to get a handle on pomo
David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity. Smart because it starts with modernity, and tries to analyze postmodernism in terms of what it is meant to be a reaction to/move away from/comment on. And Harvey is a really smart guy and a great writer who presents stuff in a really accessible way. B♭maj7 (talk) Anachronistically anachronistic 21:58, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
[edit] Maybe I am just ignorant...
...but most of the time and in most cases, modernism and postmodernism are basically the same to me. I prefer to look at the individual movements in art and philosophy instead. I added the boldface below.
From Wikipedia:
"Differences between modernism and postmodernism
By the early 1980s the postmodern movement in art and architecture began to establish its position through various conceptual and intermedia formats. Postmodernism in music and literature began to take hold earlier. In music postmodernism is described in one reference work, as a "term introduced in the 1970s".[41] while in British literature, The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature sees modernism "ceding its predominance to postmodernism" as early as 1939.[42] However dates are highly debatable, especially as according to Andreas Huyssen: "one critic's postmodernism is another critic's modernism".[43] This includes those who are critical of the division between the two and see them as two aspects of the same movement, and believe that late modernism continues.[44]
Modernism is an encompassing label for a wide variety of cultural movements. Postmodernism is essentially a centralized movement that named itself, based on socio-political theory, although the term is now used in a wider sense to refer to activities from the 20th Century onwards which exhibit awareness of and reinterpret the modern.[45][46][47]
Postmodern theory asserts that the attempt to canonise modernism "after the fact" is doomed to undisambiguable contradictions.[48]
In a narrower sense, what was modernist was not necessarily also postmodern. Those elements of modernism which accentuated the benefits of rationality and socio-technological progress were only modernist.[49]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism#Differences_between_modernism_and_postmodernism
The word postmodern can also mean whatever you want it to mean. Using words to mean whatever you want them to mean is very postmodern.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism#Contested_definitions
--Tesseract 20:47, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
- It is indeed sort of blurry. The difference is, approximately, "modernism" assumes progress is (a) possible (b) happening (c) in need of defending; "postmodernism" is looking at the results of modernism with more or less acerb. Compare modernist science fiction, as started by John Campbell, and the New Wave SF of the late '60s - David Gerard (talk) 21:25, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
[edit] Re-org
Thinking about a re-organization of the page, since it's grown and acquired that wiki-jumble effect as folks insert paragraphs, caveats, and comments. I propose a fairly simple sort of organization:
- Definition, with a sub-section for history and utility.
- Criticism, with sub-sections for general criticism, courtier's reply, and religious.
- Relationship to science, with sub-section for pseudoscience
Sound good?--
talk
01:44, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
- Looks good to me. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 01:47, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
- Disagree. The article on postmodernism should be more of an incoherent mess to better reflect its subject matter :-)
Radioactive Misanthrope 01:50, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
- I kid, I kid. You're right, it's a tad scattered currently.
Radioactive Misanthrope 01:50, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
- No, you're right, we need to reject the meta-narrative of this hermeneutic reanalysis of our hegemonic encroachment onto the marginalized voices of the totalistic deconstruction of Hegelian dialectic and binary oppositions into a reformed practice of pluralistic and relativist notions of the emotive sense inherent in the signified rather than the signifier and the vulgar and common fuck-shit assholes! Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 02:07, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
- I moved stuff around a bit to reach a mid-point; greater changes will require some serious rewriting, which I will get to eventually.--
talk
02:52, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
- Yuh. We also need to note that postmodernism as it's usually thought of is a creature of its times. The sudden advent of cheap paperback everything in the '60s (Fred Vermorel has written extensively on this), the Freudian stuff from Freudian psychoanalysis still being acceptably mainstream in the '40s and '50s ... the substance of postmodernism is dated.
- BTW, saying "you need to understand the modernism they are kicking against" is not something they say as a courtier's reply, it's something that's simply the case - the gibberish only makes sense in context. The usual failure mode of postmodernists is expecting readers to understand it without context - David Gerard (talk) 08:50, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
- Of course. That part of that section lays that out as a hedge to the courtier's reply. The section takes the form of initial assertion, then hedging, then fuller statement of the criticism and demonstration, and then a final contextual explanation. Maybe it's too confusing now, actually.--
talk
08:58, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
- Of course. That part of that section lays that out as a hedge to the courtier's reply. The section takes the form of initial assertion, then hedging, then fuller statement of the criticism and demonstration, and then a final contextual explanation. Maybe it's too confusing now, actually.--
[edit] modernism?
Whilst I am sure this article is all very enlightening to all you well read and educated scholars, I feel sure that my understanding of post modernism is hampered somewhat by not really having a clue as to what modernism is. AMassiveGay (talk) 05:19, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
[edit] Funspace request
'The joys of premodernism' (urban cavemen, stoneground bread wearing your teeth away, and 'theories sometimes making sense' etc) 82.44.143.26 (talk) 15:48, 12 August 2014 (UTC)