PoMo Studies Hoax (gets taken seriously)

[Joseph Tracy]

While I find Morris's insults juvenile and unnecessarily troll-like. I remember when I first joined the list and Post Modernism was used by most participants as hip and insightful and descriptive of Pynchon.I was openly dubious. I tried to get a grasp on what it was and found strains of thought that were important: cultural and personal context as needed to understand a phenomena, deconstrution as a tool, the rejection of isms you mention, and to a lesser degree the difficulty or in some arguments the impossibility of all communication mediated by language or symbols. I just never saw the value or intelligence of the term itself, which seemed mostly a way to seem hiply contemporary. It has the same obvious flaw as the term modernism; it just can’t last. It also became obvious that people meant different things when they used it.

 At the time I had come to the conclusion in thinking about the labels applied to art history that there was something misleading about these labels. Can a “modern” artist be inspired by ancient tribal arts? But more than such anomalies it is the individual nature of making art, the uniqueness of artists and their work that is the problem. Often a single one or 2 two artists or artist fit the label  and others are ineptly crammed into the package. If these labels were really needed and helpful they would be more justified but they seem to be a by-product of a cultural obsession with labels rather than a clarifying and informing use of language. Some such terms are more useful than others. Art nouveau was a style movement affecting many products and buildings and evokes a useful image to anyone who has seen some of the work. Of course if you tranlate it into English it would be called new art and no-one would know what you are talking about.

For me the problem with these “conservative” thinkers is that they apply what could be called post modern analysis to Post Modernism but they refuse to apply this same critical thinking to their own meaningless labels and cultural blind spots. They themselves want to be associated with “traditional” values, but they are not Christians, they are not capitalists, they are not constitutionalists, they despise other people’s “freedom”, and it is virtually impssible to tell what the fuck they want to “conserve”. Do they really love the flag in some bizarre symbolic relationship or is it the ultimate representative of their violent embrace of conformity and the identity politics they claim to despise?  

The real issue with all arts is the degree to which it generates genuine awe, insight, laughter, enjoyment, and the degree to which it stirs the waters and compels us to think and question and see in fresh ways. 


> On Oct 5, 2018, at 1:24 AM, Matthew Taylor <matthew.taylor923 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> You: David Morris
> Me: Matthew Taylor
> 
> (Did I do that right?)
> 
> My point was that postmodernism is as misunderstood as it is denigrated,
> and Jordan Peterson—who is (unfortunately) extremely popular and
> influential right now—has popularized the term as a bogeyman among a bunch
> of people who have confused and contradictory ideas about what it means.
> You can't really talk about contemporary popular understandings of
> "postmodernism" or "myth" or "archetypes" without at least mentioning him.
> I was responding to John Bailey, agreeing with his point that it is now the
> "catch-all term encompassing everything despised by the conservative
> neolibs who follow Jordan Peterson and the like."
> 
> Peterson himself politicizes the term, trying to associate it with things
> like Marxism. My post also argued that whatever postmodernism may or may
> not be, it sure as hell *isn't* that. I wasn't talking about politics to
> "ignore" postmodernism, I was saying that a great deal of the popular
> discourse about postmodernism politicizes it in a way that is flat-out,
> demonstrably wrong. I think any discussion about contemporary understanding
> of postmodernism has to contend with Jordan Peterson—he is a force to be
> reckoned with even if he's a dummy. Writing a bestselling book and getting
> ~$80k/month on Patreon means he has a hell of a platform, and I think a lot
> of the misunderstanding of what postmodernism might mean can be attributed
> directly to him.
> 
> "Like" it or not, I think it's probably important to at least have an
> accurate understanding.
> 
> On Thu, Oct 4, 2018 at 9:24 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> You: I genuinely don't know what you mean by saying that my post "confirms
>>> PoMo school to be drowning in politics."
>>> 
>> 
>> Me: your post focused on a political asshole, and ignored anything about
>> what PoMo is/was.
>> 
>> David Morris
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>>>> 
> --
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