>What I am thinking about is what seems to me a stunning contrast with
>such historical figures as Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and
>Marx. All of the latter seem to me to have changed the world and the
>world of the mind, and the human world in significant ways. Let me
>put it this way. They created the way I think about these matters.
>
>I can say that hard core modern analytic tradition did little since
>they mostly refined mathematical and physical thought. But in these
>realms, it was the practice in math and science that did the most
>work to change the way I thought about the world and not the
>philosophies these fields inspired.
>
>And then lastly, as I look back at postmodern work, it was supposed
>to represent an expression of what people of my generation
>experienced and thought important to develop into thought and method
>about our world. I have to say, I had great expectations that out of
>the wild malay and later struggles, something truly worth it would
>come out of all the smoke and roar. It evidently didn't. On the other
>hand while I can't really define it, that decade and its events did
>change my world at least. I was not the same before and after and
>neither was the general climate of the times. I still can't put my
>finger on it. Maybe the motto to hell with the rules was about it.
>That scofflaw mentality can have as deep a consequence as you can
>force your imaginative skills to discover. Matt's tag line from John
>Coltrane got me to thinking about that ....
>
>I can frankly say that most of the post-60s, postmodern work on the
>whole failed completely on two counts. Did it change the world, and
>did it change the mind? While it was interesting to play with, most
>of what I've read is remarkably banal, when compared to the
>challenges the world presented us at the time and since. Fiddling
>while Rome burns seems appropriate.
isn't this a really self-serving reading? on a couple of counts, at least.
1. you are looking at enlightenment thinkers who wrote 200 years ago, and claiming they've shaped your world view. ok. then, you look at postmodernist/poststructuralist thinkers who wrote and have been writing these past few decades.
2. you are assuming that these thinkers had a goal: to change ideas among the masses and change the world. is that a fair assumption for all of them?
3. wouldn't it be more interesting to ask what each individual thinker had in mind -- in terms of who/what they were hoping to influence.
4. one of the things often remarked on in sociology (say, by Randal Collins, pretty much an enemy of the 'postmodern turn' in sociology) is that its basic findings seem really banal -- which would be because they are so taken up, so embedded in popular thought, that what was once unusual, strange is now ordinary and banal.
5. why is the point of reference "you"? that is, why does it matter that these things have influenced *you*? Older people on this list talk about thinkers that mattered to them and who are often specific to their fields and/or political practice. Carrol has mentioned some language feller who looked at ideologies. And although the name is familiar as someone my diss adviser wrangled with, this thinker wasn't anyone my dissertation advisor had me read and so I never felt it important. I find certain thinkers really influential to me. I read around at what all the cool kids are studying -- e.g., Badiou comes up a lot -- and I think, hmmm should probably read but there are 100 books on my list before Badiou. So.
And even so, here's what I know I will have to be on guard for, if/when reading Badiou: it's a logical fallacy to throw out the guy's work on the grounds that someone else said it before. In other words, my temptation, as it was when I read Foucault and Zizek and Butler, was to say, "oh, so and so already said this. WTF? How exasperating. Can't these people read more widely or at least cite properly. I mean, god, sociologists have said this all before. Why reinvent the wheel?"
My reaction was resentment, a maintenance of disciplinary boundaries, an insistence that some disciplines have X as their object of investigation and these other wankers from philosophy and literary theory and etc. need to get off my turf.
6. You write as if history is over: "evidently it didn't." That's an odd way of going about things. "Lessee, I read these wankers in the mid-90s. I've given them 15 years. Time's up fuckers. You lose. What? You want to be judged on the goals *you* set out for yourselves? Sorry fuckers. But the dealio is: I'm the judge and jury. It's all about what *I* wanted, on the terms I wanted it. Bzzzzzzzzt. You lose."
And with that, Chuck moves the lever, the trap door below the po-moes opens, and they all swing to their broken-necked deaths, eyes bulging and tongues dangling.
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