sadness of america/bad postmodernism

[François Monti]

Otto wrote:

> What era, from your historical knowledge, would you have more enjoyed?
>

This question is unanswerable. Pro and cons for every era. When asked, I 
only answer I'm ok with now.

> one step back:
> Rob has called it "Critical Theory" in his last post, so I assume a 
> postmodernist is someone who is generally critical about what is 
> called the postmodern world, the world he lives in. Many people are 
> living in this world without having any idea of the philosophical 
> construct called postmodernism. Are they postmodernists?


Well, I'd argue that postmodernism being a theory about the world we 
live in as well as being the tag applied to our era (or at least the 
post WWII era), people who live(d) in the era are/were, consciously or 
not, postmodernists. They might have no clue about this "philosophical 
construct", but if this construct bears any resemblance to the "real" 
world, then they are postmodernists.

> By the way, as someone who has been busy with the topic for a while 
> I'm not absolutely sure if we're really still in the era of 
> postmodernism. Too much of what had constituted postmodernism after 
> World War II seems to have gone since 1989/90 and especially 9/11.
>
> To me it sometimes looks like as if we've gone to a new era of 
> pre-modernity. So it fits perfectly that new hocuspocus like ID arises.
>

If you listen to people who seem to have problem with postmodernism as a 
philosophy, they say it's relativist, constructivist, deniying 
scientifical logic, hating modernity, favouring word over anything else 
and glorificating irrationality. Furthermore, scientifics have 
repeatedly criticized the science / philosophy syncretism of people like 
Deleuze, Guattari, Lyotard, etc on the grounds that they didn't 
understand properly the scienctific concepts they were using.
I guess many people would disagree with this interpretation (which 
doesn't represent my views, it's just a summary of what I've read here 
and there over the years in the "con" camp). But if you do, then the 
rise of ID fits right in PoMo world: irrational, anti*scientific, 
constructivist...

F.