Postmodern Cover for Gitlin's 'Yes'

t byfield tbyfield at panix.com
Sat Oct 16 11:45:29 PDT 1999



> Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 13:56:02 -0400
> From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
> Subject: Re: Postmodern Cover for Gitlin's 'Yes'

<...>
> Postmodern cover = "what's particularly loathesome is that he found a
> potentially fascinating moment absolutely oozing ambiguities but
> glossed over it in order to get to the 'meat' of the story" (t). Todd
> Gitlin is just a leftcon, the undead of cold-war liberalism. The
> postmodern cover helps because without it what's being sold may look (to
> some) too old to be sold.

ah, yes, damn the ambiguities and complexities of ex-yu politics, full speed ahead with your imaginary-counterworld 'principles'-- and toss in mummery about postmodernism and gitlin to lend what's otherwise lacking in coherence a simulacrum of gravity. the fact of the matter is that you forwarded a (properly speaking) bizarre excursus whose sole innovation was rhetorical hogwash i couldn't ever aspire to match--and now you discourse on 'postmodern cover'? heh.


> Postmodern obsession with "a potentially fascinating moment absolutely
> oozing ambiguities" is a rhetorical defense mechanism so as to prove, "hey,
> i'm left, but I aint that kind of leftist...". This rhetoric merely
> provides air cover for Gitlin's troops, even though t, Angela, and others
> like them don't know its effect.

if by leftist you mean someone who would publish a sentence like (e.g.) 'a nonsmoker like hitler,' then you're damned straight i ain't that kind of leftist.

that you would call them 'gitlin's troops' suggests just how blinkered and myopic your view of the situation in ex-yu is.

cheers, t



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