Hi Michael, I'd really rather post here if that okay. I gave up posting on the sydang website years ago... maybe things will be different with the new format? Anyway, its worth people like you giving it a shot.
I think the really interesting idea in your post is the question of what is post post modernism.
To be fair to the smattering of pomo authors I have actually read, very few of them appeared to think that they were playing some kind of epistemological end-game. In fact like the Derrida quote you use, there was often a hint of that "something else" that should / would / might emerge from pomo analysis.
As you suggest, it is possible that we are currently seeing this "space" flooded with various interest groups and their particular meta-narratives, environmentalists and so forth...
If this is the case, and continues to be so, then I think pomo is very passe... an interesting philosophical detour at the end of the 20th century.
If, however, there will be the "something else" that emerges from pomo (I have always loved ricouer's image of a "second naievity") then pomo will still have continuing currency, albeit different to the last 20 odd years.
On a somewhat related theme, the post-colonial theorists (a concept I have an almost allergic reaction to) combined with continuing economic emergence of India and China, and their population growth, and their religious-philosophical heritage probably has more relevance for the next 10 years than a bunch of hyphenated French linguists... (that was probably a bit harsh). But you get the point.
The impression I get in the real world, is that as 'post modernism' and its allies get cultural bite, they end up allowing people, the average person, who seeks a grounded experience (of Christ, of course...our only ground, and I'm not being Tillichian here), to avoid the bare facticity of the real world. Now the conundrum this presents those who sliver the real world into a theological world, and a 'here and now' world, is that they are not able to counter the connection that every man and his dog makes between their experience and what they learn that the world and themselves are due to chance material processes, and not to the love of God wanting to bring relationship through covenant (mind, you don't use this language with the average person). That is the basic parameters of their existence, not making sense in materialist terms, are left to resolve themselves in a rejection of the poor admix of modernism and contemporary experience: post-modernism, which of course and in turn fails. Do they turn to the gospel? No, because the modernism that they have learnt to reject is represented a) as endorsement of its creation myth of evolution (Peter's great mooting of how to read Genesis 1...read? Wrong word, of course) and b) as rejection of revelation that is not filtered by the modernism that...and it comes around again, that they have already learned to reject.
Sad thing is, that without the ability to spring from a concretely interpreted scripture, we have nothing to finally offer those who are without Christ; indeed, we cannot even talk to them becuase we think, not 'after Christ' but after Darwin...as we frame for the gospel a world which is defined materialistically, and not supernaturally, where Christ is reduced to a curiosity and not the Word come to his creation in redemptive anticipation.
So, off my soap box, Michael; what you said is in a way, nice, in my view, but it doesn't give clues through which I might touch the unsaved...
5 comments:
Hi Michael,
I'd really rather post here if that okay. I gave up posting on the sydang website years ago... maybe things will be different with the new format? Anyway, its worth people like you giving it a shot.
I think the really interesting idea in your post is the question of what is post post modernism.
To be fair to the smattering of pomo authors I have actually read, very few of them appeared to think that they were playing some kind of epistemological end-game. In fact like the Derrida quote you use, there was often a hint of that "something else" that should / would / might emerge from pomo analysis.
As you suggest, it is possible that we are currently seeing this "space" flooded with various interest groups and their particular meta-narratives, environmentalists and so forth...
If this is the case, and continues to be so, then I think pomo is very passe... an interesting philosophical detour at the end of the 20th century.
If, however, there will be the "something else" that emerges from pomo (I have always loved ricouer's image of a "second naievity") then pomo will still have continuing currency, albeit different to the last 20 odd years.
On a somewhat related theme, the post-colonial theorists (a concept I have an almost allergic reaction to) combined with continuing economic emergence of India and China, and their population growth, and their religious-philosophical heritage probably has more relevance for the next 10 years than a bunch of hyphenated French linguists... (that was probably a bit harsh). But you get the point.
for more on asia / south-east asia implications, see these two posts riffing off Charles Taylor:
http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2009/02/05/discerning-the-religious-spirit-of-secular-states-in-asia/
http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2009/02/09/embedded-religion-in-asia/
[Jeremy Halcrow said:]
Geoff, It would be great if you could pop over to Syd Ang .. otherwise its not really a proper conversation.
I believe your contribution would be most welcome and valued.
I think the level of conversation so far has been much better than in the previous format.
As one of the section editors - If you have concerns about behaviour, tone etc let me know directly.
The impression I get in the real world, is that as 'post modernism' and its allies get cultural bite, they end up allowing people, the average person, who seeks a grounded experience (of Christ, of course...our only ground, and I'm not being Tillichian here), to avoid the bare facticity of the real world.
Now the conundrum this presents those who sliver the real world into a theological world, and a 'here and now' world, is that they are not able to counter the connection that every man and his dog makes between their experience and what they learn that the world and themselves are due to chance material processes, and not to the love of God wanting to bring relationship through covenant (mind, you don't use this language with the average person). That is the basic parameters of their existence, not making sense in materialist terms, are left to resolve themselves in a rejection of the poor admix of modernism and contemporary experience: post-modernism, which of course and in turn fails. Do they turn to the gospel? No, because the modernism that they have learnt to reject is represented a) as endorsement of its creation myth of evolution (Peter's great mooting of how to read Genesis 1...read? Wrong word, of course) and b) as rejection of revelation that is not filtered by the modernism that...and it comes around again, that they have already learned to reject.
Sad thing is, that without the ability to spring from a concretely interpreted scripture, we have nothing to finally offer those who are without Christ; indeed, we cannot even talk to them becuase we think, not 'after Christ' but after Darwin...as we frame for the gospel a world which is defined materialistically, and not supernaturally, where Christ is reduced to a curiosity and not the Word come to his creation in redemptive anticipation.
So, off my soap box, Michael; what you said is in a way, nice, in my view, but it doesn't give clues through which I might touch the unsaved...
Not meant to give clues - rather to prompt discussion. I think you are right, kinda.
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