PoMo Studies Hoax (gets taken seriously)

[Becky Lindroos]

Thank you John.   You always make sense. 

I think pomo has kind of exhausted itself in the 21st century but some of the ideas and techniques are still around - usefully,  imo. Like for Serio de la Pava’s funky chunky little legal crime caper book,  "A Naked Singularity”  (2010?)  
 

Becky
https://beckylindroos.wordpress.com

> On Oct 7, 2018, at 2:41 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> When I first studied a smattering of pomo theory at university I found
> it a wonderfully useful way of sidestepping a bunch of power
> structures that otherwise seemed unchallengeable in our society.
> Later I taught a course in it and found myself much more ambivalent
> about that usefulness.
> A long while later, today, I think the best thinking on postmodern
> theory remains Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism, or The Logic of Late
> Capitalism (which also popularised the term itself). Jameson's was a
> very critical analysis of a network of cultural artefacts he thought
> said something about late capitalism, ie postmodernism is the cultural
> face of hyper-capitalism. I haven't found anything to refute this and
> it's why I think postmodernism is both very troubling and absolutely
> of our times.
> On Mon, Oct 8, 2018 at 1:32 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> yes.
>> 
>> I like the word "real' here in its straightforward, hard-working way. Some
>> say Reality, a real conception of it as real,[sic] so to speak, has been
>> weakened in our understanding because of Po-Mo. I can't judge.   I do like
>> this nuanced statement and only want to accent Kafka on the 'art' of a
>> 'book/novel':  It must be like an axe to crack the frozen ice within us.
>> 
>> "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."
>> 
>> And I think talking about any work of art clearly and with whatever
>> intelligence we can bring to it is what criticism is--or should be.
>> 
>> On Sat, Oct 6, 2018 at 10:41 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> 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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