Leggo my Pomo

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

On Fri, 23 May 1997, Craig Bleakley wrote:
> Hi.  My name's Craig and I'm a Postmodernist. [Choral response: Hello, Craig]
[...] 
> But I think one of the big Projects of pomo is to question a lot of the
> assumptions we make about ideas being mutually exclusive.  It's the
> philosophical equivalent of the Theory of relativity in that it admits
> that the winners write history, that everything is contingent, and that
> "master narratives" are to be distrusted. 

But what if I don't "admit" those things?  

It's nothing new to say that winners write a lot of the history...but do
they write it all?  

I don't think everything's contingent, actually.  (I might ask,
what is it supposed to be contingent on?)

And master narratives (and Big Books) are not necessarily to be distrusted,
IMO.  That statement, like the other two you made, demonstrate the
unquestioned, undeconstructed attitudes of many PoMos: that the People have
been Oppressed by the System...i.e., Marxism, with the Big Bad Capitalists
transformed into the Big Bad Linguistic-Rational System.

It is fair to question established truths.  But it is also fair to question
the questioning.  I find most intellectuals (not just postmodernists) these
days are so saturated with skepticism that it never occurs to them that
there could be any other sort of attitude.  We've had 300-odd years of
intellectual "rebellion" against one thing or another.  Now, or so it seems
to me, much of the intelligentsia doesn't know how to do anything else.

> I find it no more cynical or negatory than Einstein.  It just tries to deal
> with multiple constructions of reality in all their complexity and
> intermingling.  No mean feat.    

This sounds far more modest than what you said just above.  There is
certainly a range of attitudes in the "postmodern" academy (I've learned
enough from pomo-ism to be careful about sweeping generalizations).  Some
say they are simply out to examine conflicting paradigms.  Others say they
are out to subvert the dominant one, and pursue this mission zealously and
unquestioningly (blind faith in the power of doubt).  Many, maybe including
yourself, hover somewhere in between.

> It's also the antidote to whatever social/philosophical residue exists of
> the Great Chain of Being, which may be more pervasive than we think.

Again I ask: who said the Great Chain of Being was bad?  I fear that you
assume that "old ideas" are blind and stupid and superstitious, and that
lots of the People are walking around under their spell, but that you have
the light of "new ideas" (however dim and flickering) and are determined to
replace their ignorance with your truth.  What I'd like to see is more pomos
turn their dissectin' scalpels (forgive my continual switching of
metaphorical horses in mid-stream--oops, there I go again) on themselves. 
Let's consider how many academics are walking around with blind,
superstitious faith in their own analytical, intellectual, skeptical
mindset, a faith which _requires_ elitism, since it is not shared by the
majority, and thus if it is true, only the few denizens of the ivory tower
know What's Really Going On. 

Maybe the medieval Christian mystical worldview offers truths that are not
apparent to the "objective" Post-Mod observer, who assumes that _his_
worldview is more privileged than those in the past which he studies.  Or
maybe the classical Islamic worldview...or the Tibetan Buddhist
worldview...or the African animist worldview...or the Lakota Sioux
worldview.  This is the true diversity of paradigms of which I think you
have some understanding (not all the paradigms, necessarily--I don't
either, not having lived within all of them--but the diversity of them).
Too often, though, intellectuals pay lip service to the multiplicity of
Weltanschauungen (I've always wanted to use that word in a sentence...now,
did I spell it right?  :), while retaining their own narrow assumptions.

> So the popular press do no favors for Pomo in their efforts to simplify that
> whose goal is to complicate.  Some Pomo theorists do no favors for Pomo in
> trying to further complicate the already complicated.  

Agreed.

> Frankly, I find advanced calculus unfathomable, but that doesn't mean it's
> not useful.  I think most pomo-folks go along with Ms. Larson's conception
> of these ideas as tools in a toolbox, or a series of different lenses
> through which to view. 

My fiancee has made this observation about deconstruction.  I would agree,
in general.  But I have two caveats:  1) if you are going to pick up the
monkey wrench, be willing to truly and thoroughly use it on your _own_
constructions, and 2) it would be a good idea to think about what you're
going to do after you've taken apart your object of analysis and are
sitting around in a world (or at least, region) of fragments.

Which leads me to my second major problem with pomo-ism--it offers little
that is positive.  Post-structuralism, or post-modernism, or deconstruction,
or whatever you want to call it/them, is/are (uh-oh, I'm starting to play
punctuation games.  I'm also being very self-analytical.  Oh no, I'm
becoming infected!  :) perhaps just a set of tools.  But they tend, IMO, to
be used in an unquestioned (or insufficiently questioned) context of
skepticism.  And the legions of those busy dissassembling and debunking
don't seem interested in what I believe is the equally necessary work of
reassembling and renewing.

Perhaps I am a post-post-modernist.  Perhaps I am what Derrida himself has
referred to as a "hyper-essentialist"...one who believes there may in fact
be an Order, a Truth, an Essence, but that it is difficult to glean, that it
lies beyond easy understanding.  Doubt--skepticism--can be viewed, in a
pscyho-spiritual paradigm, as merely one "drive" or impulse within the self. 
Another that has historically been vital to the lives of individuals and
civilizations is faith.  I personally find it to be key in my own life.  I
submit that Western civilization has become rather hung up on doubt, and
rather ignorant about the merits of faith--I'm not talking here about faith
in any particular thing (though faith always does need an object, however
obscure), just faith as a general virtue.  Maybe it happened with the rise
of science, and the muddle that was caused by science's split with religion.
Maybe it goes back further.  In any case, I think that is the direction that
we must look in as we move beyond postmodernism.  Call it "willing
suspension of disbelief" if you can't get your mind around the f-word.  But
whatever you coall it, become acquainted with it.  We all tend, as human
beings, to develop faith in something or other, even faith in our
rationalistic skepticism.  Better that we know what faith is, and think
carefully about where we place ours.

Max

 M a x i m u s  D a v i d  C l a r k e | The realm of God is dangerous.
          http://www.afn.org/~traveler | You must enter into it and not
                 "Surrealist-At-Large" | just seek information about it.
                      traveler at afn.org | --Anthony Bloom