----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
Carrol Cox wrote:
>My impression from reading the last two or three years of the journal is
>that "postmodernism," whatever it is, is gradually entering the stage
>where it can be laid aside.
I keep forgetting - is "postmodernism" scandalous, fraudulent, obvious, or passe?
Doug
================
To answer dialectically-cum-paraconsistently, it's all four, at the same time!
"Postmodernism aspires to the condition of ...what? Nothing in general, because it does not believe in timeless generalities. At most it aspires to a civilized conversation among equals, what the German sociologist Jurgen Habermas 'the ideal speech situation' and what British political philosopher called the 'conversation of mankind'. The chief problem with modernism, say the postmodernists, is its loony aspiration to speechlessness. Shut up: I have proof. Shut up: this is avant garde painting. Shut up." [Deidre McCloskey]