Fredric Jameson's "The Condition of Postmodernity" is AFAIK still definitive on postmodernity. He tackles the question of why postmodernism is hegemonic in the universities. Crucially, he explains to the left that postmodernism is not a policy, but is something much more deeply ingrained than that - a *condition*. Unfortunately the left - e.g. Callinicos's book "Against Postmodernism" - has completely failed to understand this crucial point.
If postmodernism were a policy it could be easily reversed by reversing the policy. But Jameson instructs us - or those of us that are willing to think - that deep problems at the level of human psychology and interpretation and the structure of contemporary life (low attention spans, passive nihilism, etc) mean that postmodernism is a deep-seated *condition*. How to fight it is a very big question. I think Hegel has most of the answers. Phil Walden -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of CeJ Sent: 13 March 2008 00:48 To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] the insights of post-modernism I believe the terms 'post-modernist' and 'post-structuralist' can be used to refer fairly specifically in the history of design and architecture. 'Post-' is a pre-fix that means 'coming after'. Extending that to other areas, post-structuralism in the case of social and formal sciences means coming after the structuralists (basically, coming after Levi-Strauss in anthropology and Saussure in linguistics). The structuralists were comprised, in part, of several prominent 'schools of thought' (including one in the US) mostly working in linguistics and anthropology in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century. Since they had many disagreements amongst themselves and across the schools, is it any wonder some emerge as 'post-structuralists'? In the case of the English departments of US academia, one might say: oh well, at least it got us out of that modernist rut, which produced 1 million masters' theses with the title of 'A Freudian--or Jungian-- Approach to Joyce's Ulysses'. One of the off-list discussants (CB more or less 'spams' the MT list by cc-ing it when he posts to such execrable wastelands --sorry, that was the modernist in me-- as PEN-L) zeroed in on Heidegger and Husserl, and that is a good starting point to get a grasp of this. These were philosophers (although I don't think it is too much to say that at least Husserl thought he was doing groundbreaking work in the 'philosophy of non-natural science', such as how is epistemology even possible in psychology, etc.) . Early Derrida makes heavy use of Heidegger, so if you want to understand the Derrida that so interested the English departments of US universities in the 1970s (who were trying to keep up with and compete with De Man's), it would help to have read Heidegger. But also Husserl, Meinong, Brentano (if you want to understand what Heidegger read). There are even points where the so-called 'Anglo-analytic' tradition touches with the so-called 'Contintental' tradition--such as the exchanges between Frege (really a German philosopher, but influential on Russell) and Husserl, or Russell's unfair treament of the concepts of Meinong. Or the influence of Brentano on Wittgenstein (and again, Wittgenstein is another continental identified more closely with the Anglo-analytics, as was Popper). Other post-structuralist philosophers and thinkers and seem to have been drawn to Spinoza (Negri, Deleuze & Guattari). One thing to remember about French and Italian intellectuals with academic training (outside the natural sciences I mean) in is this: they don't read the same things that Americans do; for one thing they tend to produce 'high-level' work in more than one speciality . Another thing to remember is this: they don't use APA or MLA style, and expect you to know who and what they are talking about without such specificity of reference. Especially when it comes to what are considered source texts and standard works when they are 'doing philosophy'. I think ultimately the post-modernists and post-structuralists who had the biggest impact on the English departments were those who actually worked in literary criticism. For example, Paul de Man. He was essentially an American academic (with posts at Cornell and Johns Hopkins and Yale), and so much of his influence flowed out of his entrenched position at Yale University, after he had met Derrida in 1966 and produced so much of the post-structuralist stuff in the 1970s. I think an interesting question for epistemology would be to try and fit such an influential linguist as Chomsky with all these categories. He really comes out of structuralist linguistics, mid-20th century, and seeks to psychologize linguistics (since structuralists were largely behaviourists in their approach to 'mind' and 'cognition'). The problem with his approach is that he tried to psychologize linguistics with the psychology of a computer. Ultimately, his later work is largely a repudiation of the schools of thought he founded in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Has he become America's ultimate post-modern? CJ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
