post modernism

[Blagsta]

Personally I think Baudrillard has some interesting things to say about the nature of mediated experience in a highly mediated world. Kind of follows on from the Situationists IMO.

 

[rhys gethin]

I don't think that you can just ignore post-modernism, because it marks the point where the rationalist project comes off the rails. From the naive optimism that physics could be finished in a couple of weeks, that history as a whole could be understood as the dialectical progress of some Idea or other, or the notion that man-made formal systems could have a predictive capacity in a deterministic world, instead there is an increasing realisation of the chaotic complexity of the Real, the inherent limitations of both knowledge and representation, and the absence of clear correlation between language/concepts and Truth.

I think that this 'rationalist project' stuff you come out with is a caricature of normal pre-post-modernist thinking. What post-modernism is really all about is the desire of French intellectual careerists to break free of any obligation to working people and any value-system that went beyond simple vulgar selfishness. It stinks of bourgeoisie.

 

[kyser_soze]

I think that this 'rationalist project' stuff you come out with is a caricature of normal pre-post-modernist thinking

Not it isn't - from the Enlightenment onwards, the general direction of the quest for knowledge has been the investigation development and testing of systems, physical and social, in order to understand the world better, but has been conducted under the basic idea that the world is explicable and predictable against theory. One of the criticisms of modernist thinking, much like that that can be levelled against say physics at the turn of the century, is that it is not especially good at accounting for human factors and randomised behaviour in favour of logical consistency.

I think to an extent PM was an attempt by some French intellectuals to regain the philosophical high ground after 2 centuries of German/Anglo-saxon rationalism (not to say that the French weren't important in this regard, but it wasn't 'their' intellectual baby).

Unfortunately, at present either our brains aren't evolved enough to cope with the level of compexity exhibited at the micro and macro levels of society, or we haven't constructed the language to describe it...or maybe much of the discourse takes place in the wrong language - I don't speak French fluently enough to comment, but I have heard that what sounds like bollocks in English when written in French makes more sense, which I could understand since French is in many ways a better language for expressing abstract concepts than English, which could be argued to be a more 'material' language.

The other problem is that unlike many other modes of thinking, PM deals in probabilities all the time, and has no fixed frames of reference other than change being constant and inevitable. I realise that there are many good Marxists on here who think PM is little more than an excuse to do nothing at best, and an 'excuse' for capitalism at worst, and I'm not fan of most of what has been written so far, but the central premise of PM - that while there are patterns within human behaviour there are no overriding narratives and that any that are seen are simply a way to impose one set of views on a situation - is a far more complex way of looking at things then modernism. Only at the moment the actual process of thinking about it comes out as intellectualised gibberish.

 

[nino_savatte]

Following on from postmodernism is post-postmodernism....now it's really getting silly.

 

[untethered]

Post-postmodernism is when you get a job in a call centre selling double glazing because your degree is worthless and you can't yet afford your MA.

 

[rhys gethin]

kyser - In the circumstances I am wary of using an expression like 'objectively', but the effect of all the 'complexity' revealed is, surely, to lead those who could do so much more to attempt NOTHING except write books undermining whatever unacceptable narrative leads us to help others or change things for the better. In other words, it is deeply nihilist and - frankly - useless intellectualising. If the external world is unknowable, or so it seems to me, it would be better to regard it merely as illusion and turn Buddhist: at least the process of seeking enlightenment would suggest that the narrative called 'promotion' was equally meaningless, leading us to some relatively decent behaviour.

 

[Fruitloop]

I think you are confused. Nowhere did I say that the external world is unknowable, as that wouldn't be postmodernism but a throwback to the Descartes/Hegel bollocks that it's trying to escape.

Politically speaking, yes it's im part a reaction to the failure of '68 and that whole mode of resistance, but that failure was not Derrida's (or whoever's) fault, but just the result of the power differential between the antagonistic classes.

 

[kyser_soze]

kyser - In the circumstances I am wary of using an expression like 'objectively', but the effect of all the 'complexity' revealed is, surely, to lead those who could do so much more to attempt NOTHING except write books undermining whatever unacceptable narrative leads us to help others or change things for the better. In other words, it is deeply nihilist and - frankly - useless intellectualising. If the external world is unknowable, or so it seems to me, it would be better to regard it merely as illusion and turn Buddhist: at least the process of seeking enlightenment would suggest that the narrative called 'promotion' was equally meaningless, leading us to some relatively decent behaviour.

I think the bit I've emboldened is your key line here, spoken like a true Marxist too ()

My personal opinion on things is that you shouldn't NEED a book or philosophy to tell you to go out and be a good person - that's a similar view taken by religious folks who can't understand how it's possible to be atheist and have morals in your life. The external world is 'knowable' - we just don't know how to do it or have the language capable of expressing that knowledge yet!

The essential problem with energising change, specifically of the kind of Marxist change you're talking about (and there's a whole other argument about the logic that once you get rid of capitalism you'll have something better for the masses) is that it requires rock solid absolutes the same as say religious faith to carry it through change and to ensure that the change sticks; but by it's very nature Marxism cannot become another religion, so you're stuck between knowing what needs to be done, but not being able to safely utilise the emotional tools without the potential of unleashing something far, far worse (i.e. the kind of state-and-philosophy-as-religion seen in Soviet Russia and China).

As I've said, I view much of PM in the same light as you and am extremely cynical of it...but to say that to attempt to analyse something using PM tools and attempting to affect change are mutually incompatible is bollocks - at the end of the day if you can see what you perceive as an injustice being done you can still try and change it, whether you see things in mechanistic metanarratives or in the 'space of flows' (Castenda in 'The Informational City) doesn't stop you deciding to do something does it?

But then again, I'm a fan of Nitz so am very much of the opinion that a greater society can only come about when individuals become enlightened enough to realise that the Will To Power can apply to whole societies, not just 'heroic' individuals.

 

[untethered]

(Castenda in 'The Informational City)

It's Manuel Castells.

 

[kyser_soze]

It's Manuel Castells.

That's the fella - been about 15/16 years since I read it!

Should go back to it really - there was a mention of one of his models being useful when working out internet site connections in any given subject area, which didn't necessarily rely on creating one of those indecipherable 'net' style 3D images that display every link between sites.

 

[rhys gethin]

Ah well - my Mother and my old English teacher always warned me against talking to philosophers! I shall just murmur, 'You are obviously right, Socrates' and quietly put hemlock in their beer while they are shouting 'Bollocks!' I tend to go by what people DO, and all the effects of post-modernism I've seen are calamitous. 'The point, however, is to change it!'

 

[nino_savatte]

But then again, I'm a fan of Nitz so am very much of the opinion that a greater society can only come about when individuals become enlightened enough to realise that the Will To Power can apply to whole societies, not just 'heroic' individuals.

Hammer. Nail. Head.

 

[danny la rouge]

I tried Baudrillard and more obscure writers like Jacques Camatte, but never got very far at all.

I've also had plenty of problems grasping certain science texts, especially ones that use a lot of maths, but at least with those I sensed there was something there to be understood, even if I wasn't up to it intellectually.

And that is exactly the point. It isn't that pomo is difficult, it's just that it's saying very little.

 

[yield]

I don't think that you can just ignore post-modernism, because it marks the point where the rationalist project comes off the rails.

That's right. A wholesale dismissal of Post-Modernism runs the risk of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The split can be looked at as a paradigm shift on the realisation of the deficiencies of rationalism but still a continuation of the Enlightenment.
Not that I have any academic qualification in Post-Modernism but much of the seeming complexity may stem from assumptions of multidisciplinary knowledge.
For example in Psychology and Anthropology when studying Georges Bataille?

I think that this 'rationalist project' stuff you come out with is a caricature of normal pre-post-modernist thinking. What post-modernism is really all about is the desire of French intellectual careerists to break free of any obligation to working people and any value-system that went beyond simple vulgar selfishness. It stinks of bourgeoisie.

Politically speaking, yes it's im part a reaction to the failure of '68 and that whole mode of resistance, but that failure was not Derrida's (or whoever's) fault, but just the result of the power differential between the antagonistic classes.

I agree with you both. As Fruitloop said the change from Modernism to Post-Modernism needs to be seen historically. As you said in your other post, it is nihilistic. Was defeat and the collapse of Empire the cause of the turn of thought in Post WW2 Continental European philosophy? The rise of existentialism a reflection of French collaboration? What was the influence of May 1968?
And bourgeois literary careerism as a symptom of all that.

(I need to come back to this.)

 

[rhys gethin]

That's right. A wholesale dismissal of Post-Modernism runs the risk of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The split can be looked at as a paradigm shift on the realisation of the deficiencies of rationalism but still a continuation of the Enlightenment.
Not that I have any academic qualification in Post-Modernism but much of the seeming complexity may stem from assumptions of multidisciplinary knowledge.
For example in Psychology and Anthropology when studying Georges Bataille?


I agree with you both. As Fruitloop said the change from Modernism to Post-Modernism needs to be seen historically. As you said in your other post, it is nihilistic. Was defeat and the collapse of Empire the cause of the turn of thought in Post WW2 Continental European philosophy? The rise of existentialism a reflection of French collaboration? What was the influence of May 1968?
And bourgeois literary careerism as a symptom of all that.

(I need to come back to this.)

Yield - That is interesting. There's a very good book waiting to be written about the social and career background to philosophical ideas, unless some swine has already written it. Stone's 'The Trial of' ( that chum of the kaloskagathos) 'Socrates', suggests - without working out the detail - that his trial was by no means the stitch-up it is always made to appear, and Koestler's 'The Sleep-Walkers' puts the point that Platonism is the product of a slave-owning class terrified of any change. I shall convey to Mrs Rhys, Britain's sole surviving Existentialist, your suggestion that her views are a reflection of Collaborationism - which I find immediately convincing!

I was brought up on the idea that, in Britain, Philosophy had somehow got itself replaced by literary criticism, an idea I always found comforting, since I could understand literary criticism. Part of my loathing of post-modernism arises from its replacement of what seemed to me central with a 'critical practice' that seems more and more to be devoted to disappearing up its own fundament. If I'm pushed to it, I supposed I'd argue that language is simply not adapted to the examination of final realities, being, as it is, totally dependent on metaphor and retaining every kind of false idea ('common sense', 'human nature', 'I' and so on) from our early ancestors. What it can do is tell relevant stories, perhaps.

I find I'm retreating, therefore, to ancient ideas myself, and 'by their fruits shall ye know them' seems to me not a bad one to apply to the post-modernists. Sloes, at best!

 

[Squatticus]

the central premise of PM - that while there are patterns within human behaviour there are no overriding narratives and that any that are seen are simply a way to impose one set of views on a situation - is a far more complex way of looking at things then modernism.

It is also itself an overriding narrative.

If someone tells you that there's no such thing as truth, they're inviting you not to believe them, so don't.

 

[milkymoo]

Or as some prefer to call him, Lacan't.

 

[exosculate]

I think post-modernity has some interesting strands of thought within it. Its a very very big area. It is rather good at de-constructing overly simplistic grand narrative ideas, in an often thought provoking way.

I have some sympathy for the its a load of old bollocks type arguments. Why? Because in some respects it doesn't offer a very good explanation of the real world.

To its credit though, it does offer good criticism , I think therefore its often the thinking man/womans bollocks.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

what exactly is it?i'm confused! or is it just a load of bollocks?

A term that made sense in architecture, but not in many other places.

 

[nosos]

Only at the moment the actual process of thinking about it comes out as intellectualised gibberish.

This is one of those memes that spreads virulently but I’ve rarely seen substantiated. There’s a huge difference between gibberish and opacity. Don’t get me wrong, I think any sort of knee jerk defence of PoMo (to say that theorists never obfuscate and never engage in intellectual masturbation) is as misguided as the sort of knee jerk dismissal of it that is unfortunately common. However our theoretical habits and the grand narratives PoMo is incredulous towards (in my view the closest you can come to giving an adequate definition thereof) aren’t separate things: one leads into (has led into) the other.

Theorists are trying to avoid the movement towards totalization which is an ever present feature of western intellectual history and part of how they go about doing this is breaking/bending/playing with the rules of discourse and theoretical practice we’re used to. Particularly in the case of Heidegger and those who followed after him, they’re trying to introduce a radically different notion of what being is and what beings exist in the world. To do this they have to fuck around with language and it can certainly made it seem (to say the least) unclear. However if you go and look at a technical work of metaphysics, you’ll find stuff which is much more difficult (as well as much less interesting). Opacity in philosophy isn’t a recent trend and it’s not something in any way confined to PoMo. Some of it is explainable by technical complexity and some of it by terminological short hand. Why write a sentence when you can write a word?

 

[nosos]

Plus if you just take the whole thing as a critical movement, parasitic on totalising modernism(s), it makes so much more sense . . .

 

[nosos]

If I'm pushed to it, I supposed I'd argue that language is simply not adapted to the examination of final realities, being, as it is, totally dependent on metaphor and retaining every kind of false idea ('common sense', 'human nature', 'I' and so on) from our early ancestors. What it can do is tell relevant stories, perhaps.

This is a characteristic postmodern position. I really think a lot of the difficulty that can be found in postmodernist work comes at least partly from translation. Have you come across Richard Rorty? One of my favourite books (contingency, irony and solidarity) is by him and it puts forward the sort of narrativism you seem to advocate.

 

[118118]

language is simply not adapted to the examination of final realities, being, as it is, totally dependent on metaphor and retaining every kind of false idea

Just to un-pack ths (I have not read any Saussere (sp?) so bear with me) - you think that 'human nature' and 'I' is immanent to an utterance oif 'hello'.

I don't see language parasitic on metaphor or indeed common sense more than any other institution. What about the possibility of a "savage" language?

 

[118118]

I doubt that words even carry the rules of their use in them, let alone every kind of false idea.

Eta: Maybe just so that we can't w3ork them out tho.

 

[nosos]

I doubt that words even carry the rules of their use in them, let alone every kind of false idea.

The rules of use consist in the necessity of being understood. Language doesn’t have rules intrinsic to it but the context and purposefulness of language (use) establishes these rules.

 

[Balbi]

Plus if you just take the whole thing as a critical movement, parasitic on totalising modernism(s), it makes so much more sense . . .

Aye, we spent a good month on it when discussing historiography.

By the end of it I was both informed about PM, and completely and utterly cynical about every element of it. History for people who don't want to do the leg work

 

[Brainaddict]

Roughly.

Modernity - "At last free from the shackles of nature. No more must we toil on the land. Science has triumphed."

Postmodernity - "Why am I working in a call centre?"

Brief but to the point.

I haven't read the thread yet, but my idea of postmodern thought is that it's what you get when enlightenment thought gets to work on itself. One of the results of that is that when you attempt to abandon modernism altogether, postmodernism makes no sense. But equally modernism makes no sense without a postmodern perspective.

 

[rhys gethin]

This is a characteristic postmodern position. I really think a lot of the difficulty that can be found in postmodernist work comes at least partly from translation. Have you come across Richard Rorty? One of my favourite books (contingency, irony and solidarity) is by him and it puts forward the sort of narrativism you seem to advocate.

nosos - Yes, I know, and it bothers me. My own feeling is that there were all sorts of 'antithesis' reactions within subjects and that Postmodernism has gone round like a sort of vacuum-cleaner collecting them all up into a nihilistic bag which it uses to destroy solidarity and 'value'. It seems to me that, as kyser said, individuals can act decently without a book, so to speak, but that all experienced value is collective, as is any 'reality' at all.

It was always part of my understanding of language that, following Saussure, words stand not for 'things' but for ideas in heads. That was hardly a startling breakthrough; whatever I've read about such things as 'the oceanic feeling' and the like suggests that there are human experiences language can't deal with; I've come across similar ideas in the little philosophy I've looked at, particularly the suggestion that Greek philosophy, for instance, is essentially about the Greek language. Then I read Lakoff and Johnson's 'Metaphors we live by'. Those who haven't done that seem seldom to grasp what the statement that 'language is essentially metaphorical' actually means.

For those who haven't grasped the notion (understanding=physically taking hold of) that language is basically (human things=constructions on foundations which dominate the later building ) a means whereby we translate new experiences into very simple physical concepts, like 'in February' (time is a container). We are comparing modern experiences, all the time, with very simple, primitive kinds of experience ('Post-modernism is a pain in the arse').That, it seems to me, takes nothing away from the effects of poetry, the novel or drama but DOES make it dubious as a vehicle for philosophy or science. I haven't read Rorty yet, but I'll do so.

What strikes me very strongly is that it is hopeful narratives such as socialism that get undermined: it remains quite possible, apparently, to attack powerless minorities like 'Muslims'; it is fine to profit from capitalism, naivety to fight it; it is sophisticated to be a jounalist, folly to be a trade-unionist. And so on.

I think we are all facing the same problem as post-modernism becomes the orthodoxy: it makes effective opposition, difficult enough before, close to impossible except on a small-scale, almost individual basis - and the implications of that are horrific!

 

[118118]

The rules of use consist in the necessity of being understood. Language doesn’t have rules intrinsic to it but the context and purposefulness of language (use) establishes these rules.

So its not that speaking is cannot be adequate to some truths, more that (purposive) behaviour cannot? And purposive behaviour is not structured as a language?

 

[kyser_soze]

powerless minorities like 'Muslims'

Despite what you might think Muslims are not 'powerless' - not to any appreciable degree more than anyone else in the general public anyway.

What strikes me very strongly is that it is hopeful narratives such as socialism that get undermined:

Why do you think this is? Why does PM automatically mean that a hopeful narrative is undermined?