What's Postmodernism?

[Roo]

Wednesday and Jeff were talking about postmodernism in the "Ask the Philosophy student" thread.

Could someone summarize what it means?

Here's a link, but it's very long . . . postmodernism.

I'd also like a chance to ask questions since I gave up my question in the "ask the" thread.

[severe delays]

I'll probably come back and answer at greater length at some later point but as a starter I'd advise you to first look at modernism. Once you've got the general idea of the messages about/behind that then start looking at postmodernism. I have no links offhand but I'd say that you'll probably get a reasonable perspective from wikipedia.

[Lucifer]

Postmodernism:

Winston: "Well, the future has arrived and it sucks"
Roo: "What do we do now?"
Winston: "Let's glue a bunch of rubbish together and call it arte."
Roo: "Ok! Can we call it Dystopian Reminiscence Number 6?"
Winston: "You bet!"
Roo: "Yay!"

[WednesdayAddams]

Originally Posted by Winston Smith

Postmodernism:

Winston: "Well, the future has arrived and it sucks"
Roo: "What do we do now?"
Winston: "Let's glue a bunch of rubbish together and call it arte."
Roo: "Ok! Can we call it Dystopian Reminiscence Number 6?"
Winston: "You bet!"
Roo: "Yay!"

Postmodernism is the next school of philosophical thought after existentialism and basically asserts that we cannot truly know anything for certain because everything is perception and everything that we have accepted in the past as factual is really just justification for those perceptions. While it's an interesting theory and has some actual basis for argument, a lot of very silly people have taken it to its extreme end of absurdity. From those people come the questions that are often misattributed to all of philosophy such as 'how do you know you're not really a butterfly dreaming that it's human?' and those annoying people are the reason I have no patience for post-modernism. For an excellent example of this, read anything by Jacque Lacan. Then read this wonderful book by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, which quite nicely skewers some of post modernism's more absurd claims.

[Fenris]

So....wait--what's postmodern literature? Or architecture. How do they tie in with the philosopy?

PS: I know I'm not a butterfly, because if someone tries to step on me, I won't be a smear of wings and antennae, I'll pop the offender in the nose. Let a butterfly try THAT!

[WednesdayAddams]

Post modern architecture as I understand it has to do with aesthetics. Which is fine as far as that goes, architecture should be aesthetically pleasing. It then goes on to attempt to incorporate the ideas of post-modernist philosophy by slavishly following the idea that architecture, like life, is conceptual. Form over function. Form for form's sake.

Post modern literature....Have you read anything by TC Boyle? His fiction, especially his short stories, are really good examples of post-modern literature. Or seen the movie The Chumscrubber? Kind of a cool little art house flick. That's some good post modernism right there. Any message conveyed is purely coincidental.

[Lucifer]

Originally Posted by Fenris

So....wait--what's postmodern literature? Or architecture. How do they tie in with the philosopy?

PS: I know I'm not a butterfly, because if someone tries to step on me, I won't be a smear of wings and antennae, I'll pop the offender in the nose. Let a butterfly try THAT!

Postmodern Lit:

Winston: "Well, the future has arrived and it sucks"
Roo: "What do we do now?"
Winston: "Let's write inscrutable allegory about it and call it arte."
Roo: "Ok! Can we call it Dystopian Reminiscence Number 6?"
Winston: "You bet!"
Roo: "Yay!"

Postmodern Architecture:

Winston: "Well, the future has arrived and it sucks"
Roo: "What do we do now?"
Winston: "Let's build an ugly building that looks like 1930s prison and call it a ground-breaking, progressive design."
Roo: "Ok! Can we call it Dystopian Facade Number 6?"
Winston: "You bet!"
Roo: "Yay!"

[Fenris]

Fenris: Wait--but the future doesn't suck--we have cellphones that are better than Star Trek tricorders and streaming porn on demand. The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.

[Lucifer]

Originally Posted by Fenris

Fenris: Wait--but the future doesn't suck--we have cellphones that are better than Star Trek tricorders and streaming porn on demand. The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.

Sorry, dude. That's NOT post-modernism.

Fenris =

[The Superhero]

Originally Posted by Fenris

So....wait--what's postmodern literature? Or architecture. How do they tie in with the philosopy?

Again, as Wednesday said, you have to understand what modernism means in art/architecture/design terms to get a grasp of what post-modernism means.

Modernism, in brief, is all about functionality. Modernist architects for teh most part eschewed decorative or ornamental elements. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building in New York City is often cited as a pinnacle of modernist architecture. Modernist buildings tend to emphasize the building materials themselves as the most interesting and "decorative" part of the building. The glass, the steel, the concrete. The enormous influence of van der Rohe and his contemporaries, Le Courbousier and Walter Gropius, can be seen in just about any major American city. Any skyscraper you see that's basically a tall, skinny block of dark glass (the UN Building is another Modernist classic, for example) shows this influence.

In the '80s, Phillip Johnson (who had worked with Mies and designed plenty of modernist buildings) was at the vanguard of what came to be known as post-modernist architecture. His AT&T Building (now the Sony Building, also in NYC) is cited as one of the beginning points of the movement. The design evokes images of old-fashioned telephones and Chippendale furniture - which is one of the keys of postmodernism. Borrowing elements from past movements is a big part of what postmodernists do (or did, there's a never-ending debate about whether postmodernism is over or not). Paying attention to context is very important (i.e., how does the building fit into its setting?), and above all, attempting to convey meaning to a viewer through the design of the building. Frank Gehry's famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain might be considered postmodernist - it's meant, in part, to resemble a ship, which ties in with Bilbao's history as a major seaport and ship-building center. César Pelli's Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia were designed with an eye towards Islamic art (Malaysia being predominantly Muslim), but also remind the viewer of much Asian architecture, being reminiscent both of Chinese pagodas and of the Buddhist and Hindu temples of the Khmer style such as Angkor Wat.

That's the quick and easy version, anyway. I don't think it really has anything to do with whether the future sucks or not.

[Fenris]

But the post-modern premise is wrong. The future rocks. We're gonna have 3-D TV in our living rooms in 5 years, tops. We're inches away from The Jetsons.

[Fenris]

Originally Posted by The Superhero

Again, as Wednesday said, you have to understand what modernism means in art/architecture/design terms to get a grasp of what post-modernism means.

That really helped--actually the most helpful part was the contrasting pics of the architecture styles. From this I learn that modernism suxxors (I now know what to call all those ugly glass and steel building blocks*) and post-modernism is interesting--those Kuoala Lumpur towers are super-cool and very art-deco retro.

Thanks!



*Isn't that essentially what Ayn Rand was blithering about in The Fountainhead? That buildings should be functional, not pretty (as if they couldn't be both?)

[The Superhero]

Originally Posted by Fenris

*Isn't that essentially what Ayn Rand was blithering about in The Fountainhead? That buildings should be functional, not pretty (as if they couldn't be both?)

Yeah, Howard Roark is very much a modernist.

[Fenris]

Bleh. Along with his totally weird "I love you so NOW you must destroy me" fetish, another reason to dislike Howie. Hank Reardon? I could get along with him. Dagney Taggert, ditto. John Galt? To a point, yeah. Howard Roark? No.

[WednesdayAddams]

Originally Posted by Fenris

*Isn't that essentially what Ayn Rand was blithering about in The Fountainhead? That buildings should be functional, not pretty (as if they couldn't be both?)

Yes. They can. And prior to modernist architecture there was a wonderful movement called Art Deco that combined both form and function. People confuse shit like Ikea and 70's kitsch for art deco, but the style is really very original and striking and elegant. New York and Chicago have some beautiful Art Deco buildings, as do Miami and even Dallas. Sadly, it didn't last long and we ended up with utilitarian boxes.

[boomerwang]

I've tried to understand postmodernism. Meh. I now subscribe to Moe Syczlak's definition, as explained to Homer and Co.

[Mbossa]

Originally Posted by Postmodern Memory

I've tried to understand postmodernism. Meh. I now subscribe to Moe Syczlak's definition, as explained to Homer and Co.

You could even say your previous attempts to understand postmodernism are now a memory...

[boomerwang]

Originally Posted by Mbossa

You could even say your previous attempts to understand postmodernism are now a memory...

[hajario]

Originally Posted by WednesdayAddams

Post modern literature....Have you read anything by TC Boyle? His fiction, especially his short stories, are really good examples of post-modern literature.

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.

[AHunter3]

Postmodernism is the term used more often in art and literature. Poststructuralism is the term more often used in philosophy and in the theory OF art and lit.

Poststructuralist theory is interconnected with politics and sort of has to be understood in context. If you try to assess and evaluate it in any kind of "pure" sense (i.e., "I am not so interested in who espouses this stuff or what they're up to when they do so, that's all ad hominem distractionary stuff, just let me see what the theory itself says") you end up holding nothing in your hands and going "wha....???"

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).

Since nothing can be known (everything you think you know is a product of your own overdetermined preformed perspective in conjunction with the loaded political slantings of every presentation by every participant in the discourse) there is no inherent meaning to BE known. Nothing is intrinsically "better" in any shape way fashion or form, whether the venue be artistic, political, moral, gastronomic, or even raw nerve endings ("does this feel good or bad when I jab you with this poker? well that's an outcome of your location in social spacetime... ").

So at this point you should be seeing what I mean when I say it all slides through your hands and that you'll end up saying "But... but there's no THERE there in this 'theory', it's empty!"

So, on to those who espouse it. Which (in theory) is a line of inquiry that they'd approve of since their own theory SAYS their own theory HAS to be empty (since everything is), so with their blessing...

They are for the most part post-Marxist academic lefties, and the name of the game is to pry open the established "canon", i.e., whatever body of collected wisdom or repository of long-recognized Great Works, to make room for artists, musicians, poets, authors, and etc who come from the "margins", the left-out folks. It's all one massively verbose argument that amounts to "NO inherent 'best of class' for ANY category of ANYTHING exists; it is ALWAYS ONLY what You, and People Like You, happen to like; and that has more to do with who you are than what the thing is". With me so far? Can you see the utilitarian value for someone trying to get Toni Morrison or Aboriginal Dance or the culinary accomplishments of the Inuit entered in alongside of Shakespeare, classical ballet, and French/Continental cuisine?

Now, you may be thinking "But that's a rather stupid way of going about it. It lets you argue that the works of Toni Morrison is as much a great body of world-class literature as Shakespeare's plays, but at the expense of not being able to argue that Toni Morrison's writing is any better than whatever the worst student in Freshman English 101 has written ABOUT her work as a term paper". And you would, of course, be dead-on correct.

They don't care. This theory is not accidentally opaque and hideously godawful to parse. It is deliberately that way. Remember, they do not believe that their own theory has any content. They USE their theory TO WIN AN ARGUMENT and it bothers them not in the least that to be true to their own theory they would be unable to grade one student's crummy essay any different than any other, or to choose to teach Toni Morrison instead of having the whole class study last semester's freshman term papers as works of great lit. Their students can't plow through the theory well enough to figure OUT that this is what it says, and the purpose to which the theory was put to use was to attack Allan Bloom and folks of his ilk who wanted students to be receiving a classical education and wanted excellence to be acknowledged and pointed to, and mediocre efforts (as they saw it) by less excellent (but, ahem, pretty good for One of their People you have to admit) authors and artists, etc. And to win control over what gets taught to the freshmen.

There was room to argue that excellence exists, but that perhaps we can't easily detach ourselves from our cultural background to see excellence produced from other backgrounds; there was room to ensconce Toni Morrison as a great author (without an invisible tip of the hat to blackness or femaleness being better represented by shoehorning her in). They don't care. In by the good door, in by the bad door, who cares as long as you get in? Those moldy academic arguments are just posturing and bullshit and everything is power struggle anyhow.

I could go on at great length (as if I hadn't already) about what else these folks don't care about (theory itself, for example) but you can probably take it from here on your own.

[boomerwang]

Originally Posted by AHunter3

Postmodernism is the term used more often in art and literature. Poststructuralism is the term more often used in philosophy and in the theory OF art and lit.

Poststructuralist theory is interconnected with politics and sort of has to be understood in context. If you try to assess and evaluate it in any kind of "pure" sense (i.e., "I am not so interested in who espouses this stuff or what they're up to when they do so, that's all ad hominem distractionary stuff, just let me see what the theory itself says") you end up holding nothing in your hands and going "wha....???"

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).

Since nothing can be known (everything you think you know is a product of your own overdetermined preformed perspective in conjunction with the loaded political slantings of every presentation by every participant in the discourse) there is no inherent meaning to BE known. Nothing is intrinsically "better" in any shape way fashion or form, whether the venue be artistic, political, moral, gastronomic, or even raw nerve endings ("does this feel good or bad when I jab you with this poker? well that's an outcome of your location in social spacetime... ").

So at this point you should be seeing what I mean when I say it all slides through your hands and that you'll end up saying "But... but there's no THERE there in this 'theory', it's empty!"

So, on to those who espouse it. Which (in theory) is a line of inquiry that they'd approve of since their own theory SAYS their own theory HAS to be empty (since everything is), so with their blessing...

They are for the most part post-Marxist academic lefties, and the name of the game is to pry open the established "canon", i.e., whatever body of collected wisdom or repository of long-recognized Great Works, to make room for artists, musicians, poets, authors, and etc who come from the "margins", the left-out folks. It's all one massively verbose argument that amounts to "NO inherent 'best of class' for ANY category of ANYTHING exists; it is ALWAYS ONLY what You, and People Like You, happen to like; and that has more to do with who you are than what the thing is". With me so far? Can you see the utilitarian value for someone trying to get Toni Morrison or Aboriginal Dance or the culinary accomplishments of the Inuit entered in alongside of Shakespeare, classical ballet, and French/Continental cuisine?

Now, you may be thinking "But that's a rather stupid way of going about it. It lets you argue that the works of Toni Morrison is as much a great body of world-class literature as Shakespeare's plays, but at the expense of not being able to argue that Toni Morrison's writing is any better than whatever the worst student in Freshman English 101 has written ABOUT her work as a term paper". And you would, of course, be dead-on correct.

They don't care. This theory is not accidentally opaque and hideously godawful to parse. It is deliberately that way. Remember, they do not believe that their own theory has any content. They USE their theory TO WIN AN ARGUMENT and it bothers them not in the least that to be true to their own theory they would be unable to grade one student's crummy essay any different than any other, or to choose to teach Toni Morrison instead of having the whole class study last semester's freshman term papers as works of great lit. Their students can't plow through the theory well enough to figure OUT that this is what it says, and the purpose to which the theory was put to use was to attack Allan Bloom and folks of his ilk who wanted students to be receiving a classical education and wanted excellence to be acknowledged and pointed to, and mediocre efforts (as they saw it) by less excellent (but, ahem, pretty good for One of their People you have to admit) authors and artists, etc. And to win control over what gets taught to the freshmen.

There was room to argue that excellence exists, but that perhaps we can't easily detach ourselves from our cultural background to see excellence produced from other backgrounds; there was room to ensconce Toni Morrison as a great author (without an invisible tip of the hat to blackness or femaleness being better represented by shoehorning her in). They don't care. In by the good door, in by the bad door, who cares as long as you get in? Those moldy academic arguments are just posturing and bullshit and everything is power struggle anyhow.

I could go on at great length (as if I hadn't already) about what else these folks don't care about (theory itself, for example) but you can probably take it from here on your own.

You, sir, are a genius! You got me to understand that I already (kinda) understood Postmodernism, but was being 'neurotic' about it (2+2=4 making me angry, sorta thing). Thanks heaps!

[mswas]

Originally Posted by WednesdayAddams

Postmodernism is the next school of philosophical thought after existentialism and basically asserts that we cannot truly know anything for certain because everything is perception and everything that we have accepted in the past as factual is really just justification for those perceptions. While it's an interesting theory and has some actual basis for argument, a lot of very silly people have taken it to its extreme end of absurdity. From those people come the questions that are often misattributed to all of philosophy such as 'how do you know you're not really a butterfly dreaming that it's human?' and those annoying people are the reason I have no patience for post-modernism. For an excellent example of this, read anything by Jacque Lacan. Then read this wonderful book by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, which quite nicely skewers some of post modernism's more absurd claims.

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.

Such as, "It is worse to indulge a rape fantasy of someone who claims to want it than it is to rape someone who doesn't have such a fantasy.", not saying that one is ok while the other isn't, but that the person with the rape fantasy has a deeply rooted pathology that in the fulfilling you send them even deeper into their pathology. That's hardly the sort of thing that someone who says you cannot believe 'anything' gets into.

My personal favorite Post-Modern philosopher would be Robert Anton Wilson with his obsession with General Semantics. Liebniz touched on the idea back in the day that all of human conflict was a Grammar problem, that all conflict arose from a misunderstanding. Now, I don't think that Wilson takes it so far, he's not quite the starry-eyed Romantic that Liebniz seems to have been, but he does get very deeply into the idea of tunnel realities and the general detail of what we know and what we don't know. An example he gave in one of his books was teaching a class. Halfway through the semester he put up a poster in the Hall, and left it up for several sessions and finally asked people to describe it. The answer was, "What poster?", this was meant to illustrate that people live within their models of reality rather than within actual empirical reality. This is a pretty fundamental observation and I would go so far as to declare it 'true'.

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.

[mswas]

Originally Posted by WednesdayAddams

Post modern architecture as I understand it has to do with aesthetics. Which is fine as far as that goes, architecture should be aesthetically pleasing. It then goes on to attempt to incorporate the ideas of post-modernist philosophy by slavishly following the idea that architecture, like life, is conceptual. Form over function. Form for form's sake.

Post modern literature....Have you read anything by TC Boyle? His fiction, especially his short stories, are really good examples of post-modern literature. Or seen the movie The Chumscrubber? Kind of a cool little art house flick. That's some good post modernism right there. Any message conveyed is purely coincidental.

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

[Chacoguy]

Originally Posted by mswas

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

[Moe Syzlak] Weird for the sake of weird[/MS]

[boomerwang]

Originally Posted by Chacoguy

[Moe Syzlak] Weird for the sake of weird[/MS]

AHunter3 has added some to my opinions of PMism. Still, this is quite succinct.

[Roo]

Originally Posted by mswas

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.

OK, I think we may be getting somewhere.

My question in the OP started because Wednesday/Marissa used the theory of postmodernism (that she claimed I was using) to basically handwave my points away in this thread. And while I don't mind being wrong about the points she's making, I'm not understanding the points she's making in return. Could you go into that thread Truth, Fact, and the conflation thereof and weigh in on the OP please? And if you agree with her, could you lay out a little more about why and perhaps add some references? Thanks.

[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.

[mswas]

Originally Posted by WednesdayAddams

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.

Ok. I am not entirely sure I know what you are accusing Lacan of. I tend to agree with him that language cannot fully describe the real because language is based on definition, de-fine, or set limits to. Reality is not so limited as the architecture of language. Reality is fully empirically integrated in a way that language does not have the facility to compensate for.

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.

I am not saying incapable so much as generally unwilling. I do believe some people can go through a full self-deconstruction, and that many people do go through self-deconstruction to a point. Anyone who dabbles in philosophy must do so, but there are so many people who do not dabble in philosophy at all. Though you are probably right that it's something that most people do. Most people are confronted with the limitations of their own personality to some degree or another, but it's a very small percentage of the populace that makes a point to deconstruct as such.

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.

I hear that a lot, 'incomplete philosophy', what does it mean exactly? That statement always strikes me as being pregnant with the presentiment of expecting the philosophy to fulfill something that is isn't intended to fulfill. How are you using it? I think post-modernism is useful to the degree that it gets us to its core lesson regarding the limits of our semantics. Past that it's a lot of angels dancing on pins, just as are most philosophies that had millions of words written about them but can be distilled in a few paragraphs.

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.

Fair enough about the Matrix. I don't know about There Will Be Blood, because the protagonist is explicitly the devil, and it's a story about a Christian falling from grace and receiving his reward for his fall. As for The Big Lebowski and Burn After Reading, I just don't see what you're getting at. Not that I am saying you're wrong. I'm just not getting it.

[mswas]

Originally Posted by Roo

OK, I think we may be getting somewhere.

My question in the OP started because Wednesday/Marissa used the theory of postmodernism (that she claimed I was using) to basically handwave my points away in this thread. And while I don't mind being wrong about the points she's making, I'm not understanding the points she's making in return. Could you go into that thread Truth, Fact, and the conflation thereof and weigh in on the OP please? And if you agree with her, could you lay out a little more about why and perhaps add some references? Thanks.

I'll try to take a look at it shortly. I have only a limited attention span for Post-Modernism in any given day.

[Khampelf]

Originally Posted by WednesdayAddams

While it's an interesting theory and has some actual basis for argument, a lot of very silly people have taken it to its extreme end of absurdity. From those people come the questions that are often misattributed to all of philosophy such as 'how do you know you're not really a butterfly dreaming that it's human?'

I'm one of those very silly people. What is real, that I drove Tom Petty's Ferrari into a ditch, shat whole cobs of corn crawling with worms, then threw eggs at that tow truck driver, or that I escaped from that reality by dreaming I'm a desert rat living in an RV who torments people on internet message boards for fun? Both are equally surreal from an unobtainable objective viewpoint.

That said, no discussion of Postmodernism is complete without discussion of the shift from the Hero - nobly defending and protecting the system or state with clean living and handsomness, to the Anti-hero, the rebel, the subverter of the system. Frank Miller's 'Dark Night Returns' is an admirable example of this paradigm, with the noble hero Batman transformed into a Dark, Tormented creature of the shadows.

[hajario]

Originally Posted by WednesdayAddams

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*.

That makes sense. Thank you.

*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.

I love the Coen Bros but I do see your point. Their dialogue is usually brilliant and they get great performances out of their actors. I also really like Charlie Kauffman. He seems to be in the same category. I hated The Matrix and Fight Club.

[mswas]

Originally Posted by Khampelf

That said, no discussion of Postmodernism is complete without discussion of the shift from the Hero - nobly defending and protecting the system or state with clean living and handsomness, to the Anti-hero, the rebel, the subverter of the system. Frank Miller's 'Dark Night Returns' is an admirable example of this paradigm, with the noble hero Batman transformed into a Dark, Tormented creature of the shadows.

Can you expand on that?

[mswas]

Originally Posted by hajario

I love the Coen Bros but I do see your point. Their dialogue is usually brilliant and they get great performances out of their actors. I also really like Charlie Kauffman. He seems to be in the same category. I hated The Matrix and Fight Club.

It really depends on the Coen Brothers movies. Some are silly character driven romps like The Big Lebowski and Burn After Reading. Those are comedies.

Their tragedies tend to be of a different nature, such as Blood Simple. But still they are always examinations of character.

Whether or not you like the Matrix or Fight Club I was using them as examples of, "What is real?" or more specifically, "What is meaning?", in mainstream cinema. In the Matrix it questions reality fundamentally, in Fight Club it talks about how easily people can be lead around by a crazy person.

Weddnesday Can you give us examples of character driven works you do not feel this way about? I am wondering if you might have an antipathy toward character studies in general. What is it specifically about the Coen Brothers character studies that turns you off?

[WednesdayAddams]

The thing is, as I said, I enjoy a lot of their work. I liked The Big Lebowski. Burn After Reading was okay. Interesting but on the whole not my cup of tea. The conversation at the CIA (FBI?) between the director and his assistant was IMO the best part of the movie and summed it up really well:

'What did we learn from all this?'
'I don't know, sir.'
'Me either. I guess we learned not to fucking do it again. Whatever it was'
(am paraphrasing from memory)

As you said, it was mostly character driven. I didn't mind that it was disjointed; I thought that was actually a plus for this film. I found them pointless, was what I was trying to convey. There was no actual narrative, and what you take away from the movie is entirely subjective. Same with Big Lebowski. Directors usually want to convey something with their movies; the Coen Brothers seem to enjoy dicking with their audiences' heads (again, not a bad thing...audiences [especially US audiences] should be challenged occasionally to do a little thinking). It feels too much like work, though, when I have to sift through all that symbolism.

[hajario]

Originally Posted by WednesdayAddams

The thing is, as I said, I enjoy a lot of their work. I liked The Big Lebowski. Burn After Reading was okay. Interesting but on the whole not my cup of tea. The conversation at the CIA (FBI?) between the director and his assistant was IMO the best part of the movie and summed it up really well:

'What did we learn from all this?'
'I don't know, sir.'
'Me either. I guess we learned not to fucking do it again. Whatever it was'

HA! I was going to come here and cite that very bit of dialogue. It is the very definition of postmodernism as I now understand it.

[mswas]

Originally Posted by WednesdayAddams

The thing is, as I said, I enjoy a lot of their work. I liked The Big Lebowski. Burn After Reading was okay. Interesting but on the whole not my cup of tea. The conversation at the CIA (FBI?) between the director and his assistant was IMO the best part of the movie and summed it up really well:

'What did we learn from all this?'
'I don't know, sir.'
'Me either. I guess we learned not to fucking do it again. Whatever it was'
(am paraphrasing from memory)

As you said, it was mostly character driven. I didn't mind that it was disjointed; I thought that was actually a plus for this film. I found them pointless, was what I was trying to convey. There was no actual narrative, and what you take away from the movie is entirely subjective. Same with Big Lebowski. Directors usually want to convey something with their movies; the Coen Brothers seem to enjoy dicking with their audiences' heads (again, not a bad thing...audiences [especially US audiences] should be challenged occasionally to do a little thinking). It feels too much like work, though, when I have to sift through all that symbolism.

Well yes, that's why I asked you about character driven works. Character driven works are often disjointed for the specific reason that in real life narratives are post hoc rationalizations as to why people do things. Most of the time it's people's personalities in conflict. How often in your life are your actions a succession of meaningful events leading to the culmination and achievement of some goal after which the drama that lead up to it becomes superfluous? The very notion of Western Narrative structure is a put-on.

This is not to say that I don't know what you mean. You actually encapsulate my feelings about such things too, but I have a limited taste for character driven stories. I like the films in question but I don't 'love' them. They are lacking telelogically, and part of the societal pathos that drives us to the cinema is the need for a narrative because such purpose is generally lacking in our day to day lives. I've experienced such purpose in small spurts, but generally they events would have to be cleaned up to suit any story I might want to tell to make it seem more interesting or more important or less like a cobbling of events meant to drive a story.

So I was curious if you saw this as a critique of character studies in general or if you thought it was something specific to the Coen brothers? That's why I was asking if there are any character studies that do not make you feel this way.

[Roo]

Originally Posted by WednesdayAddams

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.

At what point does the subjectivism that you're saying everyone engages in turn into the Poststructuralism that you're rejecting?

Originally Posted by WednesdayAddams

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.

Wouldn't you be able to point out the circular reasoning. . particularly in an internet discussion where everything is written? Because then it would be easy to point out the flaws in the reasoning rather than pointing to a concept that seems to cover a lot of territory.

[Roo]

Originally Posted by Khampelf

I'm one of those very silly people. What is real, that I drove Tom Petty's Ferrari into a ditch, shat whole cobs of corn crawling with worms, then threw eggs at that tow truck driver, or that I escaped from that reality by dreaming I'm a desert rat living in an RV who torments people on internet message boards for fun? Both are equally surreal from an unobtainable objective viewpoint.

I don't see the point of this. Whether you could be something else or somewhere else, you're still having to deal with what's in front of you, so when or how does this make a difference in your life?

And could you explain that last part? What's an unobtainable objective viewpoint?

[mswas]

Originally Posted by Roo

OK, I think we may be getting somewhere.

My question in the OP started because Wednesday/Marissa used the theory of postmodernism (that she claimed I was using) to basically handwave my points away in this thread. And while I don't mind being wrong about the points she's making, I'm not understanding the points she's making in return. Could you go into that thread Truth, Fact, and the conflation thereof and weigh in on the OP please? And if you agree with her, could you lay out a little more about why and perhaps add some references? Thanks.

K, I looked it over, and I have to say essentially I agree with Wednesday. You are making a pretty common mistake related to the fact/value dichotomy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-value_distinction

Personal truth - I am a Christian. Fact - h2o is the most abundant molecule in my body. If you were to die right now h2o would still be abundant in your body, but you would no longer be a Christian in any meaningful sense.

Or if you want to take it even further. We could say, Personal Truth - I am in Love, Fact - My Serotonin levels are currently above normal.

[Uthrecht]

I was suspecting Wed was getting at the character-driven concept with The Big Lebowski. A lot of hard-boiled detective fiction does the same thing (look at Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler): the point of the story is more an investigation of people and places, and not about the actual plot (in fact, the plot is often not resolved, or outrightly dispensed with somewhere along the story).

So with The Big Lebowski. Except that everthing seems even more cavalier and a bit more random. Yet on top of that, it's given a bit of a grandiose feeling, as if it's About Something, and has Secrets to Impart (particularly due to the narration). I think that sets it apart a bit.

As for postmodernism and poststructualism, I've always thought they work best as a tool in your kit, not as the sum total of what you use to look into yourself and the world. It can really only break things down, not help chew the results.

[mswas]

Originally Posted by Uthrecht

As for postmodernism and poststructualism, I've always thought they work best as a tool in your kit, not as the sum total of what you use to look into yourself and the world. It can really only break things down, not help chew the results.

QFT

[Roo]

Originally Posted by mswas

K, I looked it over, and I have to say essentially I agree with Wednesday. You are making a pretty common mistake related to the fact/value dichotomy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-value_distinction

Yay! This is helping, or at least giving me something to think about. Thanks.

Could you point out where I'm doing this in that thread?

[WednesdayAddams]

Originally Posted by hajario

HA! I was going to come here and cite that very bit of dialogue. It is the very definition of postmodernism as I now understand it.

More or less sums it up for me too.

Originally Posted by mswas

So I was curious if you saw this as a critique of character studies in general or if you thought it was something specific to the Coen brothers? That's why I was asking if there are any character studies that do not make you feel this way.

I just typed and deleted a huge response. I don't want to detract too much from the discussion on postmodernism/structuralism in general; would you mind starting a thread in A&E so we can confine our discussion to movies? I think it's a great topic.

Originally Posted by Uthrecht

As for postmodernism and poststructualism, I've always thought they work best as a tool in your kit, not as the sum total of what you use to look into yourself and the world. It can really only break things down, not help chew the results.

Indeed, and that's why I feel it's 'incomplete' as a philosophy. Very succinctly put.

[Khampelf]

Originally Posted by mswas

Can you expand on that?

I'm not sure how I knew it was Tom Petty's Ferrari, he wasn't with me or anything. I woke up from the corn part thinking I needed to go to the bathroom, but I didn't. Oh, and I didn't so much throw the eggs as drop them from where I was standing on the side of the car that was tipped over in the ditch.


Oh, you mean the Anti-Hero thing? Well, just as Postmodernism brings about a distrust of the senses, it brings about a distrust of the government, dominant systems and paradigms. So the hero is not the one who upholds and defends these, but seeks to bring them down. (Am I the first to use the word 'paradigm'? It's actually in context here.) Postmodern literature also embraces a rejection of 'the real', and often involves the process of writing into the text, or directly addresses the audience. This is also seen in postmodern visual media, where the 'fourth wall' of traditional theater is often broken by an actor directly addressing the audience.

[Khampelf]

Originally Posted by Roo

I don't see the point of this. Whether you could be something else or somewhere else, you're still having to deal with what's in front of you, so when or how does this make a difference in your life?

It doesn't. In the postmodern paradigm, what 'matters' doesn't matter as much. I behaved rationally (for me) in the dream, just as I behave in real life, so which is the real? You can't prove it either way, and this ambiguity is the heart of postmodernism.

Originally Posted by Roo

And could you explain that last part? What's an unobtainable objective viewpoint?

There is no 'objective viewpoint', there is no 'real', only our subjective impressions, imperfect and unreliable.

Lily Thomlin summed it up well. "What is reality, anyway? Nothing but a collective hunch."

[WednesdayAddams]

Originally Posted by Roo

At what point does the subjectivism that you're saying everyone engages in turn into the Poststructuralism that you're rejecting?

Where it asserts that there is no such thing as objective fact and uses pseudo science to do so.

Wouldn't you be able to point out the circular reasoning. . particularly in an internet discussion where everything is written? Because then it would be easy to point out the flaws in the reasoning rather than pointing to a concept that seems to cover a lot of territory.

Sure, but it isn't merely internet discussion. Deleuze, Lacan, Derrida, Kristeva; these are all Postmodern Philosophers who engage in circular reasoning None of them would know a straight line even if they stood on one.

Originally Posted by Roo

I don't see the point of this. Whether you could be something else or somewhere else, you're still having to deal with what's in front of you, so when or how does this make a difference in your life?

And could you explain that last part? What's an unobtainable objective viewpoint?

I think what Khampelf may be saying is that he enjoys the kind of theoretical exercise that asks questions like 'how can you be sure you're not really a butterfly dreaming you're human?' Thought experiments like 'what does the color purple taste like?' aren't my bag, but it sounds as though he enjoys them.

As for your second question: there is no such thing as 'an objective view point.' Human beings allow their opinions and experiences color everything. It's possible to strive for objectivity, but there will always be a slight flavor of the subjective in anything that we say or do. This does not mean that there's no such thing as objective reality. Merely that we view it through a subjective lens.

[Khampelf]

Originally Posted by WednesdayAddams

This does not mean that there's no such thing as objective reality. Merely that we view it through a subjective lens.

Is there a reality, if there's no one around to perceive it?

It's forest to trees out an answer.

[WednesdayAddams]

Yes. Reality exists independent of perception. When I die, I will no longer be able to perceive anything. The world and universe around me will not cease to be just because I do.

[Khampelf]

Originally Posted by WednesdayAddams

Yes. Reality exists independent of perception. When I die, I will no longer be able to perceive anything. The world and universe around me will not cease to be just because I do.

You can't prove that to my satisfaction. I'm a solipsist. Like the Bokononists in Vonnegut's 'Cat's Cradle', with my death comes the end of the universe.

Like facts, 'truth' is local and mutable. To me, and I've never trusted anyone else's perceptions.

P.S. I'm only hanging on to this to help establish the antagonistic differences between 'modernism' and 'postmodernism'. Like a Socratic dialogue, I am sticking to a postmodern, mutable view, while you argue the empirical modern viewpoint.

It's like watching the left and right halves of a brain during an epileptic seizure.

[WednesdayAddams]

I know. Because you're stuck on the perception thing (That's not an accusation or an insult, btw, just an observation).

As I believe I have said elsewhere, science has eclipsed philosophy in such a way as to help us understand life in ways that were impossible in civilizations that considered philosophy a true calling to 'the love of knowledge.' For Socrates to say 'We cannot truly "know" anything' was appropriate at that time, but it's no longer true. We know there is a universe beyond our world. We know this because it is reported back by machines which have no motivation or emotion whatsoever; they cannot show us a subjective view of anything. Rather, how we view that objective information is colored by our subjective thoughts. The universe is there, whether we subjectively reject or accept it. It is an objective fact.