Your comment re the quotation presumes that consensus, authority, aesthetic criteria are universal and measurable properties. They have never been universal but have always been presumed as such in superficial thinking. The only truth to the statement is that in the past various cultures have relied on that presumption without testing it. But with the era of modernity it has been recognized that no universal conditions apply to what people subjectively about anything , including art. Art is a property of the human mind and is therefore subjective and whatever is subjective has no universal, measurable properties except under strict conditions (thus: social 'science').
Both of your offerings below below are empty: the one you quote and your own comment. The first one, the quotation, is striking for its silly wordiness. It is nothing but a pretentious rehash of the old cliche, "we agree to disagree". Further, is is false because, as mentioned above, it treats subjective notions as if they were measurable objective objects. Your comment adds to the silliness because it boils down to "See, that's what I've been saying". Postmodernism is the catchword for new discourses in art but as a term it is merely an exaggerated appendage to the term modernity and the term modernism, meaning the ongoing explications of modernity. There really is no postmodernism because modernism relies on self-critique and self-denial for its own continuation. The more it critiques its own principles the more it furthers its own life. Some call this a "false critique" and it is, but it does not need to be regarded as cynical or ironic any more than is the case with nature. Nature consumes itself in order to continue. Berg, when you offer quotes here I think you are intellectually obliged to examine them. It offers nothing to simply post something taken from the popular media simply because it strikes your fancy and seems to support the vapid idea that art is not what it used to be . Everybody, even kids playing ball in the corner sandlot, knows that art is not what it used to be. What counts is what it can be today, for whom, and why, and how it meaningfully reflects, if it can, human thought , feeling, and experience. There is something sharply anti-social, antagonistic, and disturbing about your modus-operandi, almost like a fanatical religionist who only speaks from scripture or answers all questions with another Biblical quotation. This is quintessential anti-intellectualism. It may impress the bar stool crowd but it's yesterday's stale beer for me, at least. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, July 9, 2012 1:40:11 AM Subject: "What is striking is precisely the degree of consensus in postmodernist discourse that there is no longer any possibility of consensus, the authoritative announcements of the disappearance of final authority and the promotion and recirculation of a t "What is striking is precisely the degree of consensus in postmodernist discourse that there is no longer any possibility of consensus, the authoritative announcements of the disappearance of final authority and the promotion and recirculation of a total and comprehensive narrative of a cultural condition in which totality in no longer thinkable." If that means that art cannot exist without a consensus, without an authority and without an aesthetic criteria, then isn't that what I have been saying all along? (The following is the source of that quote): http://www.amazon.com/Postmodernist-Culture-Introduction-Theories-Contemporary/dp/0631200525/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341815633&sr=1-1&keywords=connor+postmodern+culture#reader_0631200525
