One Man's Meat

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Not a big fan of George Will, and I think he's a bit over
the top here, but I think his argument reflects a swinging
of the pendulum of disillusionment with post-modernism
similar to those swings away from the New Critics and swing,
swing, swing. I think another swing that may be backing away
is not the biographer as Will Suggests, but  the reader's
place on the stage?? We will see. 

TF

s~Z wrote:
> 
> >From George F. Will
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/29/047l-092999-idx.html
> 
> Down from the academy has trickled the poison of
> postmodernism, defined by a non sequitur: Knowledge is
> conditioned in complex ways by the contexts in which
> facts are encountered. Therefore facts hardly matter, only
> interpretations are real. Regarding literature,
> postmodernism elevates the critic over the author, whose
> meaning the critic does not merely discover, he creates
> it. Regarding history, postmodernism invests the
> historian with the heroism of an artist, creating reality
> rather than fulfilling the mundane role of describer and
> interpreter of reality. Facts are dissolved by the radical
> indeterminacy of our relationship to reality. Thus a
> biographer can sever the tether that ties him -- how
> tiresome -- to his subject, and can strut to center stage.