POMO rants (was dfw ... nobel specks)

[still lookin 4 the face i had b4 the world was made]

On Wed, 21 May 1997 MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu wrote:

> Paul York and Max continue the tiresome rant.  C'mon guys.  Insert the
> name of your Dad's profession and the jargon he uses at work into your
> puerile caricatures of *postmodernists* and you;ll see how unfair such
> slams are.  You could demean anybody with such tripe--half-truths, made-up
> terms and names, dismissive snorts and chortles.

*shrug* I'm just describing what I experienced in the English department
at the U. of Fla.  I'm not saying all postmod thought is without
substance...over time I have grudgingly come to respect some of it.  But I
have almost no use for what I have read of, say,  Derrida (except his Tower
of Babel essay).  And what really bugs me--what I was really poking fun at--
are the hordes of derivative hacks who have no original thought at all,
not even creatively destructive thought of Derrida's, et al sort.

> Of course there are cynical elitist morons masquerading as *postmodernist*
> writers or thinkers.  And there are cynical elitist morons masquerading as
> doctors, and cynical elitist morons masquerading as social workers,
> cynical elitist morons masquerading as waiters, or plisters.  Whaddya
> gonna do about that?  Does spreading malice which only further highlights
> the dangerous anti-intellectual streak of our culture help things? 

*sigh* As far as I'm concerned, many post-mod academics are right at the
bleeding edge of our anti-illectualism!  Look at what they're doing:
attacking the possibility of communication, language, thought, everything.
It is intellectual fatalism, but intellectual trends always filter down and
become popular sooner or later.  Our culture is being infected with this
attitude of utter futility, and with the idea that the only way to analyze
something is to debunk and dissect it.

Yes, there are cynical elitist morons in every field, and academia has
always had more than its share.  But IMO, a century of "revolutionary"
thinking, in which each new generation attempts to revolt against the  past
generation's revolts, has produced a sterile and frankly revolting
situation in the intellectual world.  I think PoModism is substantially
problematic.  I'm not just attacking its most ludicrous representatives,
but its whole ethic.

That said, I thought the following was hilarious:

> The scene:  Dr. Fish's School of Devious Postmodern Research 
> In a small room under harsh lights around a large table sit four guys:
> Paul, Max. Bill and Ernie.  A man in a white lab coat enters with an
> armful of books and papers.  He spreads these out on the table.  "Men,"
> he says, "we're going big time these days and we want to make sure that
> we don't miss you, the little guys, or your needs, when we flood the 
> market with new book titles.  What's your net takeaway on these babies?  
> The men inspect the books carefully. 

> Bob:  I like this one--BIG GUYS REMEMBER THE 'NAM
> Ernie:  My wife will enjoy this new Dillard work: TINKER at PILGRIM CREEK
> Max: Got any new Brett Easton Ellis stuff?  He's way cool!

God forbid I ever say such a thing!

> Paul: Hey, what's this, DEONSTRUCTING IMBRICATIONS/OR/THIS-MEANS- 
> NOTHING-TO-YOUNESS--where'd you come up with a sissy pants title like this
> one?  Is this some *French* book or something?  What kinda crap is he
> talking about?  I better not see this book at my local Barnes & Noballs. 

Sometime I should do my rant here about the French revolt against all
metaphysics that has been going for centuries.  :)

> Paul continues:
> >, but Pynchon, as do DeLillo, 
> >Coover, [insert name of author who writes books people don't get] etc. 
> >do have their cadres of hipper-than-thou, see-right-through-it-all, 
> >know-what-fiction's-about, gonna-go-to-grad-school-and-write-a-2000-
> >page-novel-with-parallel-text-in-esperanto types.) 
> 
> Uh, would you say you sound a tad cynical here, Paul?

I call it caricature, of the sort you deploy above.

> Or maybe he said:
> What is it with that silly use of diagrams, circles, slashes, that basketball coaches feel so 
> clever about using these days?  "Half-court trap," "The Rotating Switch-Off," whatever.
> Past  basketball coaches (even pseudo-basketball coaches) were able to make their
> points without this sort of crap. 
> 
> See what I mean?  And at least these are real basketball terms!  You'd
> never let someone *argue* like that, yet when it comes to bashing
> academics, its the same nonsense alla time!  Why?

As you point out, "these are real basketball terms!"  But what are the PoMos
(I know that is an unsatisfactory generalization) talking about & with what
terminology?  Far less substantial theories about criticism about literature
and language.  It does begin to look like highly abstracted but irrelevant
gamesmanship.  So, not so removed from basketball, maybe.  But probably far
less important.

And I don't know about you, but I've seen way too much unoriginal
application of the sort of punctuation nonsense I critiqued above.  I think
your comparison is specious.  I'm not attacking all specialized lingo, just
a certain conceited kind.

> > I know, these bold PoMos are supposed to
> >be deconstructing language itself.  But if so, then nothing they write can
> >convey meaning.  So give up and commit suicide already! 
> 
> No:  If so, then nothing YOU write can convey meaning :-}

Right.  But they write whole books with this thesis.  The contradiction
is obvious (and I believe Derrida addresses it to some degree in _Envois_...
but the Gordian knot of his conclusions are basically a lot of rhetorical
game-playing baloney, IMO).

> Seriously, Max--no one ever claimed language doesn't convey meaning.  
> No one.  

Well, then, your reading of _Envois_ (have you?) is not the same as mine. 
Looked to me like that was pretty much the point that Derrida was trying to
hammer home (using the very written language which he was deprecating).  If
you are going to use hyperbolic rhetoric about the "death of the author" and
such, you will get the reaction you deserve.  I am all for the elucidation
of the subtleties and pitfalls of written and spoken language, and indeed
rational thought.  But plenty of leading postmod intellectuals, and the
legions of their slavish followers (who have learned to deconstruct, without
ever learning to appreciate, literature--I know this, I went to school with
these people, I tried desperately to give myself a good grounding in
literature while most of the dept.'s profs were steering my peers toward
trashing it without ever reading it), present an absolutist, nihilistic
vision of language and thought.  And their techniques are sheer sophistry--
rhetorical game-playing--which ironically is what Derrida spends a lot of
_Envois_ accusing Socrates of having done.

Max

M a x i m u s  D a v i d  C l a r k e | Some ideas are so stupid
         http://www.afn.org/~traveler | that only intellectuals
                "Surrealist-At-Large" | could believe them.
                     traveler at afn.org | --Michael Levine