IF a long, opaque passage, whether pomo or from some other school, is intended to argue that such and such is the case then I reject it because to argue that something is the case is a matter of logic. Logic can always be expressed concisely and clearly if one is prepared to work hard enough at it, and failure to do so is often an indicator of laziness, incompetence or arrogance on the part of the author. — andrewk

I've been reading philosophy, most of it analytic, fairly intensively for a few years now. The supposed difference in readability between analytic and pomo philosophy seems to me mistaken. There are hard-to-read analytics and hard-to-read pomos. At the mo', for example, I am stalled in the midst of 'Sameness and Substance' by David Wiggins, because it defies your ideas andrew and makes logic very hard work. Deleuze was a breeze compared to this. Robert Brandom is another whom I have struggled through heroically! Halfway through I thought, come back Baudrillard, all is forgiven. But I made it through acres of repetition and out into the space of my own reason successfully

Still, it's what people say: that pomo is pointlessly complex whereas Brandom and Wiggins are pointfully (a word that needs ushering into life) complex. Some sort of prejudice is lurking even in this.

One area I've become more interested in is the divide between the natural sciences and the social sciences. It's amazing how little social science analytic philosophers know about, and how often their examples of scientific method are drawn from physics, chemistry and biology. Applied sociology is deeply present in all our cultural and personal lives, from how we are managed at work, through how we are governed, to the Facebook/Google toys we play with. But you wouldn't know from analytic philosophy. I have wondered whether the problem is that the analytic world is individualist - the myth of the lone ethicist, thinker, speaker - and it's only those damn Continentals who deal with the human group, social action. So even someone like Habermas, who seems like a bridge-builder between the analytic and Continental approaches, doesn't get mentioned in the corridors where I hear gossip.

how does QM, GR, thermo, etc help you instrumentally? — darthbarracuda

GR helps me whenever I use GPS, which would be hopelessly inaccurate without it.
QM enables me to write these fascinating messages on this computer, and read the fascinating messages typed in by people on the other side of the world.
Thermo helps me whenever I travel by bus or use mains electricity, the majority of which is still produced by steam-driven turbines.

GR is probably the least useful of the three, if we treat it as just the incremental accuracy over Newton's theory, rather than as an entire theory of mechanics, which it really is. But even as only an incremental theory, it gave me the thrill of following the Apollo missions as a child, of which I still have fond memories and some much-loved scrapbooks.

The supposed difference in readability between analytic and pomo philosophy seems to me mistaken. There are hard-to-read analytics and hard-to-read pomos. At the mo', for example, I am stalled in the midst of 'Sameness and Substance' by David Wiggins, because it defies your ideas andrew and makes logic very hard work — mcdoodle

I agree with this mcdoodle.

Obscurity is by no means confined to pomo. I get far more irritated at obscure writing by analytics than I do by Continentals, because I feel that Continentals have an excuse (perhaps 'a justification' would be a better word there).

The part of Einstein's 1905 paper that derives his Special Theory of Relativity is only a few pages, as is John Bell's 1960s paper that changed the world of quantum mechanics. If something as complex and profound as those can be logically derived in a few pages I see no excuse for analytics to embed their arguments in wordy tracts that run for hundreds of pages.

I do love Hume though, even though he was lamentably verbose (500+ pages in The Treatise of Human Nature - what's that about then?). I have to remind myself that they didn't have word processors in those days so editing wasn't as easy as it is now. Perhaps those older analytic texts are more like running commentaries on their own process of exploration, with all the turns, dead ends and realisations that entails.

"Race is a social construct" for instance is neither accurate nor useful, and it by definition discards the genetic reality that modern science holds as the objective differences between races. While it's true a specific distribution of genetic traits exists on a spectrum (i.e: the genetic trends of characteristics which delineate ethnic groups), to ignore that ethnic gene-pools do have different characteristics is to ignore reality. — VagabondSpectre

But if I remember correctly, the American Anthropological Association Statement on Race says:

1.) There are no biological races in the human species.

2.) Race is a cultural construct based on arbitrary characteristics.

3.) Race was created to justify imperial/colonial subjugation of people.

4.) The genetic variation within racial groups that we have constructed is greater than the genetic variation between those groups.


The American Anthropological Association is a scientific organization, not a postmodern theorist.

In the political context, it does mean outright maliciousness in many cases. What else can we call killing those who think differently to you to hold power? Or systematically devaluing a particular sort of person so you can just take whatever they own? Or closing a border to people fleeing conflict? Power is maliciousness a lot of the time. Do people realise at the time? Not necessarily, some just think they are doing God's will, helping savages or stopping terrorists, but that doesn't change its cruelty and malicious goal. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Wasn't that malicious behavior around before anybody ever heard of "postmodernism"? Wasn't it around as part of pre-modernity and modernity?

Weren't Manifest Destiny, colonialism, etc.--the kinds of things that postmodernists criticize, not facilitate, it seems to me--direct or indirection products of modernist ideas and values? How was the removal of Native Americans--something before "postmodernism"--any different from any other "killing those who think differently to hold power" or "systematically devaluing a particular sort of person so you can just take whatever they own"?

I have heard it said that postmodernism is "modernism on steroids". Maybe that is saying the same thing that you are saying in fewer words.

It's hard. My first post in this thread was dismissive, and I feel bad about that.

I think in some ways it's mainly a difference in attitude toward logic and science. Do you see them as liberative or oppressive? There's a touching passage in Tarski's little Introduction to Logic that I'll quote in full here:



I shall be very happy if this book contributes to the wider diffusion of logical knowledge. The course of historical events has assembled in this country the most eminent representatives of contemporary logic, and has thus created here especially favorable conditions for the development of logical thought. These favorable conditions can, of course, be easily overbalanced by other and more powerful factors. It is obvious that the future of logic, as well as of all theoretical science, depends essentially upon normalizing the political and social relations of mankind, and thus upon a factor which is beyond the control of professional scholars. I have no illusions that the development of logical thought, in particular, will have a very essential effect upon the process of the normalization of human relationships; but I do believe that the wider diffusion of the knowledge of logic may contribute positively to the acceleration of this process. For, on the one hand, by making the meaning of concepts precise and uniform in its own field and by stressing the necessity of such a precision and uniformization in any other domain, logic leads to the possibility of better understanding between those who have the will to do so. And, on the other hand, by perfecting and sharpening the tools of thought, it makes men more critical--and thus makes less likely their being misled by all the pseudo-reasonings to which they are in various parts of the world incessantly exposed today.

That's Tarski writing from Harvard in 1940, having fled Poland before the German invasion.

Some of us still cling to the hope and the heritage of the Enlightenment. And for us, clarity is itself a value. — Srap Tasmaner

My observation is that the one thing people who ridicule or dismiss postmodernism almost invariably leave out is this context: postmodernism is a response to modernity / the Enlightenment.

Without that historical context everything anybody says about postmodernism is a distortion, in my opinion.

It all seems to be a big symbiotic relationship. Without the Enlightenment postmodern theory would not exist. Enlightenment champions/sympathizers are galvanized by the attacks postmodern theory makes against their beliefs, values, institutions, etc. The latter and former increasingly feed off of each other, it seems.

Truth is a social construct? What "truth" is that statement referring to? Truth as a concept used by prehistoric hunter-gatherers? Truth as a concept used by the first Christians? It is referring to truth as an Enlightenment concept, is it not? Context matters.

1. For those that like pomo, do you think these features are fair characterisations of pomo writing? If so, do you think they are related in any way or is it just historical happenstance that they both occur in the same movement? — andrewk

I think that they are related.

But the way that I would characterize the second feature is this: if a point that you are making is that the rules of literature, art, architecture, etc. are a repressive Enlightenment/modernist relic, what better way to reinforce that point than intentionally breaking the rules in your own writing?

The discussion is inane. Postmodernism describes a period.

No, Postmodernism also describes an artistic aesthetic that includes Frank Gehry in architecture, John Cage in music, the films of Charlie Kaufman, and (in literature) a more unresolved, ontologically-emphasized form of writing that includes works by:

Philip K. Dick
William Faulkner
Don DeLillo
Phillip Roth
Toni Morrison
William Gibson
Thomas Pynchon
Cormac McCarthy
Flannery O'Connor

and others.

I know I'm going to regret this, but ...

That's a really strange list. DeLillo and Pynchon, sure. But not Dick, Faulkner, Gibson, McCarthy, or O'Connor. (Roth and Morrison I haven't read.)

Calvino's the other obvious choice. Maybe Vonnegut? Maybe John Barth. Maybe DFW?

As to the second point: I believe it is possible to be timeless, relevant and transparent in simplicity. Some of my most favorite stories and philosophical ideas come from Greek mythology and Aesop's Fables as well as ancient Eastern literature. The trick is not to simply break rules but to tap into the archetypes of human existence. To this end, Groundhog Day has probably done more to advance philosophical thinking than most (if not all ) post-modernist philosophers for the reasons I've stated.

That's a really strange list. DeLillo and Pynchon, sure. But not Dick, Faulkner, Gibson, McCarthy, or O'Connor. (Roth and Morrison I haven't read.)

Calvino's the other obvious choice. Maybe Vonnegut? Maybe John Barth. Maybe DFW?

I don't know if you're going to regret this, but you just made an erroneous correction of my correct claim giving no aesthetic or literary foundation to justify it. Not only that, you took an erroneous shot at it by calling it "really strange" without explaining that. That's not polite discourse.

Dick's Borgesian work is considered by traditional scholars from Bloom to Jameson as Postmodern in its refusal to congeal or finalize its realities like the early Postmodern author Borges, and Ubik is a paragon of Late Capitalist criticism so relevant to Jameson's definition of Postmodern fiction. Gibson is the Shakespeare of Cyberpunk, as Postmodern/Deleuzian a genre that is out there, deconstructing notions of human and mechanized existence. Brian McHale, in his seminal, Postmodern Fiction, identifies Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom as the beginning of Postmodern narrative fiction where the intertextual narrative itself deconstructs ontology and epistemology, undoing the stability of the former often found in Postmodernism. The same dynamics are found in both McCarthy's The Crossing and Morrison's Beloved, not surprising, since both authors are very Faulknerian. O'Connor's work represents the embracing of chaotic spirituality in Modernist fiction, a Postmodern quality moving away from HIgh Modern deep skepticism of relgion, as seen in Postmodern texts like Roth's The Counterlife, Ozick's The Messiah of Stockholm and the films Blade Runner and The Proposition.

Barth is definitely a "High" Postmodern author, Vonnegut is a PKDick & Pynchon copying hack.

To this end, Groundhog Day has probably done more to advance philosophical thinking than most (if not all ) post-modernist philosophers for the reasons I've stated.

This statement only has value if you identify which Postmodern philosophers, and which of their works, you have read.

You seem to have taken what I said as a claim to know for a fact that, for instance, Phil Dick is not a postmodernist writer, rather than an expression of my opinion that he is not. Perhaps instead of saying your list was "strange" I should have said it was "surprising," to me at least.

Given a precise definition of "postmodernist," I suppose it could be a fact that Dick either is or isn't a postmodernist. By and large literary criticism does not achieve this level of precision. For example, it has never seemed to me that Blake and Wordsworth and Keats and Byron have all that much in common. I don't particularly care if someone wants to call them all "Romantics," but I remain largely skeptical of "schools" of art except where a group of artists are demonstrably self-conscious about it (as with the Surrealists, say). Even then, differences regularly overwhelm similarities.

So you are working with a definition of "postmodernist" broad enough to encompass these diverse writers, and given this definition and your method of applying it, it is a fact that the authors you mention are postmodernists. If I could be compelled to embrace this definition and the method of applying it, then I would be compelled to accept it as a fact that Phil Dick was a postmodernist. We would be doing literary history as science.

But part of the point of any science is what it cares about and what it doesn't. If you're doing orbital mechanics, the color of the bodies involved is irrelevant. If you want to select particular features and ignore others, you can of course classify authors however you like, and those classifications are objectively right or wrong, relative to the criteria of classification. What do you choose to ignore about a writer's work? Not only is there room for debate on what to count and what to ignore in a given artist's work, it is clearly acceptable to ignore nothing at all, and forego doing science here at all.

I don't have any such science. I think of certain authors as postmodernists, and have some rough and ready reasons for doing so: there was a cohort of authors coming up in the late fifties and sixties who began taking the conventions of fiction as something they could play with within their works of fiction. They produced fiction that was noticeably odd by the usual standards. I call those guys "postmodernists," not least because John Barth did, and because some of them were self-conscious about it. It's also the point in history when most writers become academics. Since then, this reflexivity has itself become a sort of convention. I don't see Phil Dick doing anything remotely like that, despite being a contemporary, so I don't think of him as a postmodernist. That's about the depth of my interest. I don't claim there's a fact of the matter here.

Btw, have you read D. H. Lawrence's book about American literature? He describes Poe in terms that would strike the contemporary ear as "deconstruction." Might be up your street.

You seem to have taken what I said as a claim to know for a fact that, for instance, Phil Dick is not a postmodernist writer, rather than an expression of my opinion that he is not.

But not Dick,

You literally said "but not Dick." You did not say "possibly" not Dick or "it's my opinion it's not Dick." So, either avoid making such affirmative corrections or don't deny making them when you do.

Given a precise definition of "postmodernist," I suppose it could be a fact that Dick either is or isn't a postmodernist. By and large literary criticism does not achieve this level of precision. For example, it has never seemed to me that Blake and Wordsworth and Keats and Byron have all that much in common. I don't particularly care if someone wants to call them all "Romantics," but I remain largely skeptical of "schools" of art except where a group of artists are demonstrably self-conscious about it (as with the Surrealists, say). Even then, differences regularly overwhelm similarities.

This paragraph is entirely disingenuous of you since you initially corrected my list and even called it "really strange." If you didn't think there was a somewhat stable definition of "Postmodernist," you wouldn't have done so. And Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, and Byron have a lot in common since they all focus on Poetry of the self, hence they are Romantic like the Medieval Romantic tales. And you know very well that genres like "Romantic" and Postmodern are no different than "Blues" or "Punk" or "Science Fiction: while they have malleable, not entirely definable borders, they do have accepted and recognizable ones. So, one can say PKDick is Postmodern while Nathaniel Hawthorne is not.

So you are working with a definition of "postmodernist" broad enough to encompass these diverse writers, and given this definition and your method of applying it, it is a fact that the authors you mention are postmodernists. If I could be compelled to embrace this definition and the method of applying it, then I would be compelled to accept it as a fact that Phil Dick was a postmodernist. We would be doing literary history as science.

You clearly read my post poorly. My definition isn't broad, it's just better informed than yours. And I made It clear that I wasn't the only one considering these authors to be Postmodern, scholars as noted as Jameson, Bloom, and McHale did so, too. I'm sorry you've never heard of them. And I never said anything about clear "facts." You don't speak about clear facts with genres, but you can make solid arguments for the inclusions of works in them as I did. You can't say it's a fact Frankenstein is Science Fiction, but many, including myself, make solid arguments for it being such. I did the same with my novels in the Postmodern genre. You have yet to counter that.

But part of the point of any science is what it cares about and what it doesn't. If you're doing orbital mechanics, the color of the bodies involved is irrelevant. If you want to select particular features and ignore others, you can of course classify authors however you like, and those classifications are objectively right or wrong, relative to the criteria of classification. What do you choose to ignore about a writer's work? Not only is there room for debate on what to count and what to ignore in a given artist's work, it is clearly acceptable to ignore nothing at all, and forego doing science here at all.]

This paragraph doesn't address anything I said, so it's irrelevant to the discussion. It's amazing how you have failed to address my reasons for including my texts in the Postmodern genre at all. Considering that is the subject of the discussion, you really should.

I don't have any such science. I think of certain authors as postmodernists, and have some rough and ready reasons for doing so: there was a cohort of authors coming up in the late fifties and sixties who began taking the conventions of fiction as something they could play with within their works of fiction. They produced fiction that was noticeably odd by the usual standards. I call those guys "postmodernists," not least because John Barth did, and because some of them were self-conscious about it. It's also the point in history when most writers become academics.

I'm sorry, but your definition is incomplete as Postmodern is used in the field. You correctly address the temporal part of a certain class of Postmodern writers, but you completely ignore Postmodernism's aesthetic aspects as defined by such notable scholars as Fredric Jameson, Harold Bloom, Linda Hutcheon, Brian McHale, and Roland Barthes. Postmodernism is a strain of Modernism, so it shares and builds off of many of its aesthetics. To ignore or reject that aesthetic component of Postmodernism as you have done is failing to recognize Postmodernism.

I don't see Phil Dick doing anything remotely like that, despite being a contemporary, so I don't think of him as a postmodernist.

And my initial response to you and my passage above shows why that's a mistake.

corrected post

↪Thanatos Sand
Btw, have you read D. H. Lawrence's book about American literature? He describes Poe in terms that would strike the contemporary ear as "deconstruction." Might be up your street.

I haven't, but Poe is definitely at the Postmodern spectrum of High Modernism, particularly with his emphasis on the irrational uncanny, preventing the return to the autonomy of the self High Modernism likes but Postmodernism abhors. The fact both Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida have written famous essays on his "The Purloined Letter" affirms that connection.

And Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, and Byron have a lot in common since they all focus on Poetry of the self, hence they are Romantic — Thanatos Sand

See, this is the sort of thing that makes sense if you want to do literary history or cultural history as a science. From my point of view, reading Don Juan is about as different an experience as you could hope to have from the experience of reading The Prelude. From that point of view, lumping together Wordsworth and Byron is bizarre. That's not a critique of your approach; it is a statement that my purposes in reading and discussing poetry are different.

For your purposes, everything you said may make sense. I have no doubt that it makes sense to someone like Jameson. But I am not interested in doing literary history or criticism as a science. That's why I'm not rebutting each and every one of your points. I'm not doing science. I explained my historically based usage of the term "postmodernist" and it is avowedly unscientific, but it provides, I think, a complete explanation of why I don't apply the term the way you do. My usage has a certain provenance. Pre-Jameson & friends it was the standard way to use the word. It may not work in your circles, but you're not claiming some sort of "ownership" of the word, are you?

Btw, do you really think Barthes couldn't have given Hawthorne a postmodernist reading if he had wanted to? I'm betting he could have. Guy was a magician.

P.S.: It is not a good habit to assume that the people disagreeing with you just don't know what they're talking about, haven't heard of or haven't read certain authors, etc. Sometimes people might just disagree with you.

Strap Tasmaner--See, this is the sort of thing that makes sense if you want to do literary history or cultural history as a science. From my point of view, reading Don Juan is about as different an experience as you could hope to have from the experience of reading The Prelude. From that point of view, lumping together Wordsworth and Byron is bizarre. That's not a critique of your approach; it is a statement that my purposes in reading and discussing poetry are different.

No, It makes sense if you know literary history well; you clearly don't. There's nothing scientific about it. To reject Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, and Blake as Romantic poets makes as little sense as rejecting Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis as Jazz musicians. In other words it makes no sense.

For your purposes, everything you said may make sense. I have no doubt that it makes sense to someone like Jameson. But I am not interested in doing literary history or criticism as a science. That's why I'm not rebutting each and every one of your points. I'm not doing science. I explained my historically based usage of the term "postmodernist" and it is avowedly unscientific, but it provides, I think, a complete explanation of why I don't apply the term the way you do.

Again, I'm not doing literary history/criticism as science, and you haven't shown I have. You, however are doing it as bad science, as you take an incomplete notion of the term "Postmodernist' and incorrectly apply it as if it were true. And you haven't rebutted any of my points, and you haven't even addressed my field-supported reasons for including my novels in my list. So, since you are not engaging that, I won't be reading or responding to any more of your posts on the matter. And you only gave a complete explanation of your misuse of the term "Postmodernist." That was pointless. You don't just not apply the term the way I do; you apply it incorrectly and ignorantly of the term's aesthetics and history.

My usage has a certain provenance. Pre-Jameson & friends it was the standard way to use the word. It may not work in your circles, but you're not claiming some sort of "ownership" of the word, are you?

Your usage has no provenance as Jameson was the first scholar to establish Postmodernism as a genre. Your ignorance of the field and the term "Postmodernism's" history is showing again. And "my circle" is the academic English field and the field of Modernist and Postmodern lit scholars, of which I am one. That has much more provenance than what your circles think.

Btw, do you really think Barthes couldn't have given Hawthorne a postmodernist reading if he had wanted to? I'm betting he could have. Guy was a magician.

Again your ignorance of the term "Postmodern" and what it means shows. We're not discussing the reading of the literature but the literature itself. So, whether or not Barthes could give a text a "postmodern reading," whatever that may be, is irrelevant.

P.S.: It is not a good habit to assume that the people disagreeing with you just don't know what they're talking about, haven't heard of or haven't read certain authors, etc. Sometimes people might just disagree with you.

P.S., it's a good habit not to correct someone who clearly knows more than you about the subject, and the only one who showed you don't know what you are talking about is you. Maybe you should stop showing that and show some humility in a field in which you are not well-versed. So, as I said, we are done. If you are not even going to address my reasons for including my texts, our discussion is pointless.

Have a good one.

Should also have mentioned Donald Barthelme. Maybe Robert Coover. I never read Gaddis. John Hawkes is the same era but it always seemed to me he had his own fish to fry. The Blood Oranges and Second Skin were two real favorites of mine, beautiful novels. It's too bad nobody reads him anymore.

The AAA aren't the one's looking into the verifiable genetic mechanisms which actually produce the trends of characteristics we call "race", they're not geneticists...

The idea that race was invented to subjugate people is just misplaced anger or something...

Further society's interest in, and considerable investment in, science is principally driven by its instrumental value, not by any philosophical beliefs about Truth. We invest in science because it brings us useful things. — andrewk

So you've adopted Landru's beliefs about science. *sigh*

Are you really interested in QM, GR and thermodynamics because of their instrumental value? I'm not. I'm interested in them because I think they reveal something true about the world. Now this isn't absolute truth in that all things in science are subject to revision. But neither is it merely social construction, because these are theories about how the world works.

I really don't understand the view that people are only interested in science because it has instrumental value. No doubt that's true, but it seems awfully apparent that the majority of people think science is approximating the truth about the world, best as we can get at it. And so we're often fascinating by all sorts of discoveries that have no real insturmental value for our lives.

I think Black Holes are fascinating, but they have zero instrumental value for my life.

Are you really interested in QM, GR and thermodynamics because of their instrumental value? — Marchesk

No, I was musing about why most other people are interested in those subjects. My primary reason for loving those topics is neither instrumental nor about truth, but aesthetic. I love the beautiful patterns they make. I feel like a child lying on the grass looking at the clouds, saying 'Oooh, look at that one!'.

So you've adopted Landru's beliefs about science. *sigh* — Marchesk

Where is Landru? I fervently agree with half he says and fervently disagree with the other half. I haven't heard from him in ages. I miss him.

Where is Landru? I fervently agree with half he says and fervently disagree with the other half. I haven't heard from him in ages. I miss him. — andrewk

Agreed on both accounts. I don't know that he ever made it over here.

I think you've misread me. My point about the maliciousness of power at any time. This is not a truth brought about in the development of postmodernism, it's just identified and made explicit in postmodern analysis of society and values. I was giving the postmodern critique of power in the context of society-- it's the postmodernist's criticism I am speaking here.

I think Landru was part of the initial group of posters here or pretty close to it; he's got over 200 posts here. If I remember correctly, his posting dropped off and he stuck mostly to the original PF, till it imploded.

What happened? How did it implode?

I don't know exactly. After the site was sold, it ran pretty smoothly for a while. I don't know whether it was just because there were no problems or because the owners were maintain it.

Then the forums broke, I can't remember exactly how, but it was serious, like trouble logging in/database issues/not displaying content properly and the owners just didn't fix it. The site became unusable. Someone else here probably knows more about it than I do.

Thanks for the response.