[WednesdayAddams]

Originally Posted by hajario

TC lives in the area. A lot of his short stories have Santa Barbara area references. My gf is a big fan of his and has been for many years. He recently did a reading and answered audience questions in a very small theater downtown and we went to see him. It was the kick off of his book tour for The Women.

Anyway, I don't read a lot of fiction but I did read several of his short stories prior to his talk. My sum total experience is the short stories that I read and one that he read to us from a collection called Wild Child plus an older one that he read to us. What makes his stuff post-modern? His stuff is interesting enough and quite witty but it doesn't seem that different than other fiction that I have read. He's hipper than Irving and less cheesy than Stephen King.

I wouldn't put his historical novels in that context although I'd say they have some post modernist flavor to them (The Women, Road to Wellville), but certainly Tortilla Curtain and Budding Prospects fall under that category. I have not read Wild Child.

I think what stands out most to me is that the wit seems more cynical than humorous, and usually points to some metaphysical concept that the character almost but not quite grasps, and that while each character justifies their reasoning to themselves, they don't really analyze their actions. There's no 'real' involvement between them. Nothing is what it seems, and in the end, no one learns anything from their mistakes or their successes. It's sort of like a Coen Brothers movie. There's no actual point, shit just happens*.

Originally Posted by AHunter3

It is anti-theory theory. It says that it would be impossible to come to any body of theory in any kind of neutral attitude anyhow (you aren't capable of it) and aside from that there CANNOT BE any meaning embedded in any body of theory that can be separated out from the political intentions of those who crafted it, nor any reading of it that is not overdetermined by the attitudes and intentions of the reader.

Everything is a freaking discourse, a sort of semantic tug-of-war in which adversarially poised factions gain or lose power, and do so via the attempt to define things, shape the meaning of things, etc.

And there are no "subjects" (i.e., you are not here; you may think you are but who "you" are is just another such battlefield; you are always already overdetermned by your location in space time and cultural context, totally a product of your environment).

This is in fact a brilliant summation and the exact reason for my deep and abiding frustration with Postmodernism. While it makes points that stand up under scrutiny, as a school of thought it never develops beyond the point of mind wearying semantic argument. Subectivism ad absurdium.

Originally Posted by mswas

What I have read of Lacan, which is admittedly very little, just "How to Read Lacan" by Slavoj Zizek, I didn't get that impression at all. Lacan was a Psycho-Analyst and he seemed to strike some very, very, very strong stances that he didn't budge from.

Having a strong opinion does not preclude one from being a Post Modernist Philosopher (or Poststructuralist with respect to AHunter3). While Lacan was a psychoanalyst, he's credited with inspiring the Poststructuralist movement and Philosophers like Derrida and Beaudrillard, who espoused his ideas and took them even further. He introduced 'The Three Orders;' the imaginary, the symolic and the real, claiming that the third overlays all but transcends language and is therefore impossible to either describe or know, because you can't know what you can't explain.

Very few people deconstruct their own biases, or even make the attempt, or better yet, very few people even understand that it's an option, and when introduced to the option do not understand why it is a desirable thing to do. Most people can get through life just fine without questioning their cognitive dissonance. So why should they?

I generally agree with what I think you were getting at, in that people take what is essentially an elementary observation regarding the limits of perception and twist it into some kind of metaphysical free-for-all, but I don't think one should judge a school of philosophy by its least rigorous adherents.

I don't know that that is the truism we take it to be. We don't analyze all of our own biases or preconceived notions, but I think most people go through a period of self-actualization and engage in some fairly harsh self analysis. Do we justify? Yes. Are we subjective? Of course. Impossible not to be. But we're not quite as unwilling or incapable of questioning and analyzing our motives and actions as Poststructuralism makes us out to be.

It isn't just the more stringent adherents to that school of thought that causes me to reject it. It's that it's incomplete as a Philosophy. It takes a certain amount of logic and then reinforces itself with circular reasoning.

Originally Posted by mswas

Fight Club and The Matrix are probably the two quintessential post-modern films in the mainstream. IMO anyway.

The Matrix is too morally judgmental to qualify (to me) as a post-modern film. I'd probably go with There Will Be Blood or The Big Lebowski. Burn After Reading, too. Agree on Fight Club, though.

*This is not to suggest I don't like TC Boyle or the Coen Brothers. I enjoy a lot of their stuff. I just think they're intellectual wank fests.