the postmodern condition

[Otto]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "pynchonoid" <pynchonoid at yahoo.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 10:07 PM
Subject: Re: the postmodern condition


> Get over it.  For good or ill, "postmodern" has
> escaped the grasp of jargon-horading specialists and
> is used widely in many contexts.
>
>
> "Postmodernity goes to war"
> http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA554.htm
>
> ... & etc., see:
>
> =====
> http://pynchonoid.org/
>

This article is the only one worth reading:

"A more convincing argument about the nature of 'postmodern war' could be
made by recalling Jean-Francois Lyotard's declaration: 'I define
postmodernism as incredulity towards metanarratives.' (13) It is perhaps the
absence of metanarratives today that explains the unique features of
contemporary warfare." (Philip Hammond)

I agree to Lyotard but disagree to Hammond. As far as the latest Iraq-War is
concerned there were a lot of meta-narratives presented to us by
professional fairytale-storytellers like Tony B-liar.

"Michael Bibby argues that 'the Vietnam War can be seen as foundational to
the emergence of postmodernity': 'It took the Vietnam War to give rise in
the United States to the notion that the Enlightenment project of modernity
and humanism could have its own horrors.' (18) The US Left's reaction to
Vietnam paralleled the earlier French reaction to Algeria. As Douglas
Kellner puts it, 'the Vietnam War was a highly modern war that showed the
pretensions and flaws of the project of modernity'. Vietnam, he suggests,
'revealed the limitations of the modern paradigm of technocratic domination
of nature and other people through the use of science, technology, and
cybernetic control systems'."

Here I agree. We just have to read "Gravity's Rainbow" or "Mason & Dixon" to
see that Bibby is right in asserting that the project of Enlightenment
itself had come under suspicion.

"Contemporary terrorism also seems to lack a grand narrative. In the past,
acts of terror were acts of political violence, linked to a definite
programme or a specific set of demands, and carried out by close-knit
organisations with an explicit ideology and a clear objective, often that of
national liberation. Today, by contrast, acts of terror are carried out by
amorphous and disparate groups with no clear aims, and are about image
rather than political content. In that sense, the spectacular destruction of
9/11, targeting symbols of US prestige and power, was an act of postmodern
terrorism. Emptied of political content, the image becomes an end in
itself."

Which is why Bin Laden's boyz are trying to hi-jack the Islam for their
purposes, to have the meta-narrative they lack.

Otto