[lbo-talk] Terry Eagleton and the Gospels

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Dec 22 12:37:23 PST 2007


Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>
> even then, when i knew relatively little, being
> really irritated with the straw men he knocked down in that book,
> particularly wrt postmodernism.

Tilottima Rajan, in Deconstruction and the Remainders of Phenomenology, shakes up a lot of loose usage of the terms "deconstruction," "poststructuralism," and "postmodernism." First she uses the third of these in a way which disconnects it from any necessary relation to any particular theoretical position or practice. Then re "poststructuralism" she (a) points out that it was a North American coinage with rather vague reference and (2) it was a useful error/coinage, because (crudely -- my wording) it labels what deconstruction can become in its decadence.

"Postmodern" is as vague (and perhaps eventually as useful but still confusing) as romanticism, classicism, neoclassicism, baroque, modern, silver age, Georgian, Edwardian, Victorian, byzantine, augustan, Elizabethan, "long 16th c.," enlightenment, etc. For the assertion that "Q is Victorian" to mean anything one must add a qualifying paragraph or so, and that is the case with all the other labels.

Carrol



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