>>To sum up, it is postmodern masters, not Marxists like us, who are
>>neo-ascetics.
>
>This obsession with "postmodern masters" - I'm tempted to say it's a
>symptom. Of what, I'm not sure. Maybe it has something to do with
>Marx having invented the symptom. Maybe not.
It's an occupational hazard. Much of what I have to read in my line of work is written from one postmodernist point of view or another. Many of my colleagues -- even my friends in the department -- are postmodernists. Perhaps also I'm simply sad to find _you_ -- of all people -- stuck with this philosophy. My consolation here is that postmodernism has yet to have any impact upon your economic reporting, as far as I can see. Anyhow, if you are tired of this subject, you are the moderator, you can exclude this topic (along with other tired ones) from conversations here. My online friend Carl Remick should be so happy.
I doubt I'd be interested in criticizing postmodernism were I a peasant woman in Bangladesh.
Now, the question of a symptom. Psychoanalysis becomes a way of bypassing what is said -- arguments made in posts, for instance -- and of focusing attention on the writer's "psyche." With the introduction of psychoanalysis, you make conversation immediately tedious, for while you are apparently interested in what motivated me to write the post, I'm interested in the content of the philosophy in question. The reason why I wrote the post is that late modern philosophers are often neo-ascetics and there is a ground to reject this line of thinking if you don't find neo-asceticism attractive. If my interest were to have my psyche analyzed, I'd go find a professional psychoanalyst. All in all, your post is entirely at cross-purposes with mine.
Yoshie