While giving my lecture on the clarity of scripture on Wednesday, a man asked me: 'is the whole postmodernism thing now old-hat? Can we now say we have moved on?'
I found it a hard question to answer - partly because any of those zeitgeist questions are impossible to give an answer to I guess. As a lay person, I think his frustration was with popular pomo: pomo as it has been filtered down through newspapers and education departments and so on. Derrida for dummies...
I guess also that the term postmodernism is itself used to describe a variety of things: from a high-blown francophone post-Nietzchean linguistic turn to the fact that Pulp Fiction has several narratives in a non-linear fashion. It is a style as well as a philosophy.
So: how should I have answered his question?
16 comments:
Yes, my feeling is not that postmodernism has disappeared: it has just morphed and splintered and shifted etc. I don't see whatever is happening as a return to bad ole modernity...
I think the term postmodern, like Christian, has many meanings for many people.
Some of the are helpful productive others are not.
I don't know any serious philosophers who define themselves as postmodern. Although a lot of people blame/praise philosophers for the "post-modern movement". It is often outsiders who define them as such.
Here is a quote from Rorty (the devil himself):
Insofar as 'postmodern' philosophical thinking is identified with mindless and stupid cultural relativism - with the idea that any fool thing that calls itself culture is worthy of respect - then I have no use for such thinking. But I do not see that what I have called 'philosophical pluralism' entails such stupidity.
I think the term is often mis-applied which makes it easy to pronounce its impending death.
I haven't read the book but Carl Raschke believes that postmodernity is The Next Reformation. So he for one doesn't think it (the philosophical/theological project) is dead.
Modernity (philosophical/theological/scientific) certainly isn't dead or even dying so I think it is too early to admitt post modernity into the sick ward.
You gave a lecture on the clarity of Scripture? Any transcripts available?
Were we ever really pomo in the first place? Have met/read many people who were consistently modernist. Those who are truly postmodern tend to prove it by killing themselves.
I am inclined to think that it is actually modernism that is passing and talking about it's passing becomes less and less necessary since it has passed! (like the fascinated witches who put the scintillating stitches in the britches of the boys who put the powder on the noses of the faces of the ladies of the harem of the court of king Caractacus)
You should have said: "whose old hat?"
It's interesting to hear the reports of postmodernism's death knell over the past three years or so. However, I don't think it was ever well understood, the most obvious being the equivocation of postmodernism with relativism and individualism. Unsurprisingly, the theorists we have associated with 'postmodernism' have disassociated themselves with the term. It seems to be an amorphous bogeyman that many people have projected their worst fears on.
If this popular pomo-ness is on the wane, then it might actually serve to clean up the thoughtscape. Perhaps then we can properly assess the contributions of say, Lyotard or Derrida, without the alarmist effect.
In academic thought, postmodernism seems to me to have at least four [very crude and broad] interrelated meanings: postmodernism as a period of capitalist history (a la Frederic Jameson); postmodernism as a condition (a la JF Lyotard); postmodernism as a method or style (a la Charles Moore, Gilles Deleuze and Umberto Eco); or postmodernism as critical approach (postmodern lit-crit).
Most of the abovementioned seem to be moving on or away from their original positions, but were they ever supposed to be static?
Which postmodernism or what, exactly, is supposed to be dead? It's a toughie... good luck
or, what is a hat, really? and what is old?
(oh no wait, you answered that already, = >21!)
yes, but also in a funny way postmodern can include quite conservative figures like McIntyre and Taylor now...
one of the things that drives me nuts is how pomo literary theory has been dished up half-baked to high-school children - it has been popularised by those who don't really understand it...and treated like it is some kind of dogma...
I studied postmodernism at uni - mainly literature.
I think that postmodernism is just too stupid for its own good. The world, I think, is realising this.
I think that the world will move into a "neo-modernist" phase over the next century, which will result in a swing back into scientific rationalism and a growth in atheism.
It's evident to many people that placing your trust in "feelings" rather than verifiable facts based upon research is starting to fail us. Global Warming and Peak Oil have been ignored because people don't want to believe the science. The invasion of Iraq was based upon faith rather than hard evidence and people are not going to forget it. There will be a strong push in society to respect a more scientific way of thinking.
Global Warming and Peak Oil have been ignored because people don't want to believe the science. The invasion of Iraq was based upon faith rather than hard evidence and people are not going to forget it. There will be a strong push in society to respect a more scientific way of thinking.
This all sounds like Modernism to me...at least we may finally get those jet-packs and live in Jetson-like houses
I don't think pomo was anti-science per se. Not at all. Lyotard for example was very pro-science, but very pragmatic. THat was the issue: science's authority comes because it works (through medicine and technology) to help us master the world. It is when it claims some metaphysical or universalist reference or status that it becomes 'modernist'...
pomo literary theory has been dished up half-baked to high-school children - it has been popularised by those who don't really understand it...and treated like it is some kind of dogma...
This is well-spoken, but in talking about attitudes to science one has a related problem identifying what's actually being discussed. I'd distinguish at least the following: science the practice, science the body of knowledge, Science the idealisation of these things that scientists like me aspire to, Science the false god, and "science" as understood on the street via the mass media.
(Cf. the greenhouse effect, which I've been concerned about for several decades; global warming, which seems to be an emerging problem; and "global warming" the cultural phenomenon. One can reasonably be 100% persuaded on the first, mostly convinced on the second and hence very worried indeed, yet deeply sceptical of the third.)
Pragmatic respect for science can only take one so far. Certainly, the mastery of the world which science gives us (via technology) earns the various kinds of s/Science a store of public credibility; and (in the first three senses) this is not unreasonable, as the technological mastery makes the conceptual mastery tangible.
But General Relativity is science in a pretty pure sense, rather esoteric and more-or-less without practical application (at least, until GPS satellites; and people on the street are mostly ignorant of the connection). Yet I would call it a classic case of an authoritative theory. We really do believe it, and we really should. We know more about the world since GR than we did before it, and accounts-of-things that have trouble accomodating this are I think deficient to that extent.
If it's metaphysical to claim that certain great and well-attested theories truly (even if incompletely) speak of the structure of the world, and to stand in some awe of them as a result, then I think there should be more metaphysics. But this doesn't mean I want the world ruled by Richard Dawkins (who deals in science in all five senses, simultaneously ...)
Maybe Post-modernity never really existed? That's my view anyways. Not REALLY. I think it was something that was generated by hype, a hype that christians in particular contributed to.
Maybe a better term is "late modernity", i.e. - Modernity turned on itself.
Also, let's not forget that it is only a very small part of the world that ever really entered this so called "pomo": the developed west. Most of the developing and third world countries have never been "modern" to begin with, or not totally.
Giddens would agree with you!
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