Weez Blog

The methodology of modern/postmodern/post-postmodern analysis is flawed. Seems to have more to do with seeing categories the analyst is already looking for, rather than trying to understand what the artist is actually trying to do.

My stories are not postmodern in any sense. I don't know how they could be when I don't write from that worldview. They establish just as much universiality as Plato's "Symposium." It's just that the grand narrative they tell isn't a happy one.

I'm often assumed to be black and marginalized and subversive, and I'm none of those things. I grew up poor, and because of my own dedication to "order, rationality, and creating order out of chaos," I was able to change my life. I'm trying to expose the stupidity and injustice of streetlife, and I'm convinced it was stupid and unjust precisely because most of the participants had a worldview that is best labeled "postmodern". Their ethics were "situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary, making no claim to universality, truth, reason, or stability." There was no universal concept of fairness or justice. And that's why such horrible things happened. Postmodernism represents the worst in human beings, and I've seen it manefested firsthand in the streets as a kid. It'd be a great irony for those stories, who rail against postmodernism, to be given that label.

sometimes, i think, it is better to think of modernity, post-modernity, hypermodernity, amodernity, post-post as threads of culture/politics/aesthetics/etc. that all exist to some extent cotemporaneously, because upon examination of historical evidence, there are times and places throughout history, such as now, that seem to have groups and cultures which manifest all the elements in some heterogeneous contruct, and while it might be fun to try to 'purify the concept' and thus historicize it in a specific context and time, we may be doing a disservice to the overall ability to understand the complicated relationships of their modes and tropes to our lives

It was interesting to be in art school trying to wrap my head around the various ...isms.

First off, D - your writing is brilliant. And I agree that it doesn't send the message that it comes from a narrowly defined group - or other. What makes the writings powerful is that they are very human. These are not alien creatures. It's first person. I'm you when I read them. (Thanks for stopping by).

Tangent: That cultural relativism, the lack of a sense that a certain right and wrong exist, is part of the problem is heavy. So counter to the liberal feel-good, you'd do it too if you were in their shoes attitude.

Back to isms: What I'm suggesting is that we're in a place where small narratives -- I'm not sure if they are grand simultaneously (got to do more reading) -- but these stories are the antithesis of "other".

Jeremy is right that these ...ities, these ...isms don't have distinct beginning or ends. They are attempts to classify and label. Perhaps, trying to do so misses the moment.

I am just aware that the isms that I know, don't match what I'm experiencing now.

Postmodern was cerebral and self-conscious.

The writings are not. They're amazingly sincere. They're not omniscient - and that may be a function of blogs, but the sense that we don't necessarily know where we're going seems to be part of it as well.

Came across your blog via my referrer logs. Was highly amused to be described in your link text as 'some regular guy looking for a job'. I took this as postmodern irony.

There was a time when 'being postmodern' meant turning up at parties in lumberjack shirts, these days it's all getting a little difficult to get the head around, now we've lurched into post-post-modernity. I think I stopped following the trend intellectually after reading Ezra Pound's brilliant 'Guide to Kulchur', a wonderfully developed mind but probably a tad irksome to sit next to at a dinner party.

Why is it that academics who write on modernity and postmodernity lapse into a kind of turgid prose style that invites the eyes to glaze over? I'm sure many of them have something exciting to say, but postmodernity for many seems to consist of a kind of impenetrable scab of language formed over the gaping wound of modernity, but they use too many Latin-based words to ever make that sound at all interesting, which of course it is once wrung out of their possessive little expert hands.

I have long thought juxtaposition, as you have picked up on, is a real key to understanding and seeing inherent pattern ('li' in Chinese philosophy). Certainly lately meaning has fragmented right from the grand scale of the world and also drained from many people's personal lives, but most people don't appear to have noticed, lulled into a coma by TV etc. I have a few ideas how this will manifest when and if this becomes more widely conscious, but not sure the philosophical framework of postmodernism is fully equipped to deal with it. This after all is just a template figure-hugged to society. The map is not the territory and all that.

What am I whittering on about. Just wear a lumberjack shirt to parties, it's incredibly post-modern these days.

Hey, Joel, welcome too. I found your blog through blogshares. Got sucked in. As I got sucked in by D. By my sister's post.

The disparate folks that inhabit the blogroll are all hanging together based purely in my-sucked-in-ness. The literary landscape terrain is broad.

And I'm not alone in making these fantastic maps.

btw - Am out of lumberjack shirts. But am favoring retro low-rises and sheer paisleys- does that count, or am I just a wannabe?...Hard to tell now that I'm old (er)

Like D, Joel, and Jeremy I share some suspicion towards these broad historical concepts: this coming from a dyed-in-the-wool reader of Fred Jameson. I think my fear is that "pomo" has become a tool for catgorizing, something to explain all of the contradictions of contemporary existence when in fact these complications have existed for some time (as we see in the decidedly "modernist" writings of Benjamin). Still I think one aspect of Jameson's postmodernism (as opposed to Lyotard's) might apply here: those are the contradictions inherent to an increasingly and globally capitalist culture, where income disparities are higher than ever, and despite the rhetoric of equality and prosperity, equal access to education and participation in the US economy is not necessarily the case. I think that's why I originally made the comparison to Tim O'Brien (a favorite of Jameson's) in the first place. D's stories feel like tales of survival to me (escaping the ghetto, street life in general). Lots to think about here.

Chuck, when I last left off in my ism readings, there was talk of post post modern. Jeremy mentions hyper- and a-.

Can any of you give me a bead on where else to look at this stuff? (Other than lumberjack shirt wearing folk at parties I am not likely to frequent).

I confess to be more of a practitioner of media making, than analyser, and am feeling the need to step outside of just doing for a bit. Ten years ago while painting, I was informed that I was po mo, and told why. "Hrmmm...", I said. Then went back to painting.

Now I am blogging, and testing the labels.

And they don't fit.

I'm not really sure about those two terms. Bruno Latour has the book "We Have Never Been Modern," (a-modernism? I'm guessing here...) which I believe is a meditation on scientific explanations, hence a critique of Lyotard from reverse, so to speak. I'm not sure about hypermodernism...best not to speculate too much. In ways, I think your account of gangstories fits some defintions of pomo; my suspicion is with the categories themselves--my tendency is to privilege the economic as a central explanatory figure for historical conditions (which would also explain narrative production), but that has a tendency itself to limit the agency of idnividual authors acting within those conditions. I'll keep thinking and asking. Certainly Jeremy would be a good soucre for this info, too.

weez, I confess to not understanding Blogshares, don't know how I got listed as I didn't submit my site, but if I gather right you show good sense in buying shares in BIROCO, given time I will surely shoot through the roof.

Re: sucked-in-ness. I've been surprised that sites I've come across just because they linked to me are actually sites I have found interesting. There does seem to be some sort of natural synaptic networking going on.

Amodern is from Latour's book yes, the argument is that we never arrived at modernism for a wide variety of reasons. It isn't a critique of lyotard, or maybe I just don't think about it like that, but i could be wrong. I think that this book is more about the post-kantian metaphysics and the problems it poses for the world, namely that it doesn't seem to be related to how humans relate to the world. I use this book for two concepts usually the quasi-object and the parliament of things, you've probably seen those terms used elsewhere.

Hypermodernism is from Virilio and to a lesser extent (in my opinion) Borgman. Hypermodernism is the purification of modernism to its barest most efficient logics, and the application. Fascism is a form of hypermodernism. It fits significantly with the Frankfurt School critique found in Dialectic of Enlightenment, though that too is my opinion. In architecture, this is called supermodernism, and is a rejection of postmodernism to some extent, but is also much more about the perfection of form.

the one person not mentioned much above so far, who plays a significant part in this debate, is Habermas and his essay 'the unfinished project of modernity' which might be something worth looking at if you haven't already.

Chuck says he sees "gangstories" as tales of survival in the capitalist system. But the truth is, they're tales of moral failure. Capitalism didn't make us that way, and blaming our bad behavior on an economic system (one that really isn't even a "system" because it's decentralized and no one plans or controls it) is just an excuse. We could easily have worked our way out of that life, which I eventually did, once I realized it was mostly my own fault and I alone was responsible for how I spent my days.

I don't think it's a coincidence that every smart person I know who made it out of that neighborhood is polically libertarian today, and are radical supporters of free markets and skeptics of government -- given what welfare and lax criminal penalties did to destroy initiative and responsibility our neighborhood.

There are couple of discussions going on here. (Good stuff).

D, where did you learn that you controlled your destiny and that you were responsible for your own actions? Where did I? How is it some people get that lesson and some never got the notice?

There have been waves of folks of different monies, sexes, orientation and races going by me, and for while it seemed like a lot had an attitude of give-it-to-me because you owe me just because I was born.

Now that I think about it, the largest wave was in the era of political correctness mine fields,

of chants of "What do you want?!" "--insert some group here-- Rights!!" "When do you want it?!" "NOW!"

of entitlement,

of post modernism.

But there was crime before that. And gangs too. It does beg the question of how does it get changed? (I was going to say, how do WE change it...but I don't want to be presumptious). I live in the city (Rochester, NY), in a thoroughly mixed neighborhood, and I can see the potential for some of the kids going in different directions. I can corrale the charges in my immediate area. I have no answers for homicide rates in my neighborhood.

It's a huge question. Gang Stories is a great place to bring it to the surface. It doesn't answer it. Will you answer it? (Just reviewed my post, last question is not rhetorical or meant to be a challenge - for real, I want to know).

Fascinating conversation about a fascinating blog...

D - It's interesting how you disclaim 'capitalism' as a driving force in your (fictional) neighborhood, but then turn around and speak of welfare and lax criminal penalties at the end of your comment. Likewise, in one of your posts (sorry, do not recall which offhand), you talk about how drug money only makes you seem rich, because of the need to either launder or 'invest' the money into non-traceable commodities (cars, TVs, etc). Seems like economic systems play quite an important role in your vision of the (fictional) neighborhood? Which, of course, doesnÌt cease to make them Îtales of moral failureÌ Ò on a micro or macro level÷

Certainly there can be some ÎtruthÌ (lower case ÎtÌ, in quotations, in attempts to avoid all dangerous implications of *that* word) in (post/neo/proto)Marxist theories of capitalist culture as well as in a sense of agency and responsibility on the part of the so-called "common" wo/man (or, us ÏprolesÓ)?

if you are interested in capitalism and culture, i'm part of this group called Language in the New Capitalism, which you can find at http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/lnc/ interesting work all in all.

Jeremy,

Thanks for the link. Between the various writers listed here today, and the publications at LNC site, I think my brain will explode shortly...maybe not that soon.

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is a man who has so much as to be out of danger?

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.