posted 03-16-2000 01:43 AM            

What can one say about postmodernism that hasn’t been written or said umpteen times over? In the previous issue of *spark-online (no. 6) two articles addressed the issue, one by Kevin Giovanetto (End of the modern/rise of the postmodern) and the other by Robert Delamar (Post-modernism, electronic consciousness and humanness). I have a rather different view of not only postmodernism and modernism, but of so-called electronic consciousness as well. Then again, I’ve never been exactly sure what “electronic consciousness” is supposed to mean. Maybe my state-of-mind is soaking in it without realising that it’s something quite different from ordinary consciousness; but the way I see it consciousness is simply consciousness, whatever you happen to be doing or thinking at the time. But perhaps I haven’t immersed myself enough in the virtual Internet existence to really know how different and significant it all is. I have no desire to enter chat rooms, for instance, which must give me away as a relic of a bygone age.

I’m equally sceptical of postmodernism, modernism, and any other “ism” which is supposed to make sense of the human predicament. Humanness, however, I can relate to: it’s that indefinable and elusive something which sets us apart, in all our human glory, from the “nasty, brutish and short” lifestyle so typical of those mean-spirited animalian inhabitants of Jurassic Park and similarly primordial environments. So indefinable and elusive, in fact, that sometimes I’d rather take my chances with Tyrannosaurus Rex.

So what sort of axe have I got to grind against postmodernism and postmodernists? Well, just because a whole new breed of academics have established their careers on it, that’s no reason for me to subscribe to it, or like it. We’ve all heard the jargon about deconstructing modernism, a “fascinating task” according to Giovanetto, who continues in similar vein: “we once lived in a modern age where the foundations were solid as rock”. Excuse me? Hey, maybe he and I have been living on different planets for the last God-knows-how-many years! What were Picasso and Braque doing deconstructing visual appearances as early as 1908, when they began their Cubist experiments? What were the Dadaists and Surrealists doing, if not undermining the “solid reality” of the bourgeoisie? What was Karl Marx doing, for that matter, or Nietzsche, or Freud? Need I go on? The truth is that postmodernism constitutes no radical break with modernism whatsoever, just a perpetuation of it by those desperate to come up with something as original and ground-breaking. Postmodernists have achieved in theory everything they’ve failed to achieve in reality. In the end they’ve convinced the educated classes that it makes no difference, that the simulacrum (according to Baudrillard) is every bit as meaningful, if not more so, as the real thing. But where are the Picassos of postmodernism? If there are any, it’s no thanks to the postmodern theorists who have choked the life out of contemporary art with their dense and obfuscating proliferation of theoretical verbiage. Good art flourishes despite postmodern theory, not - as many would have us believe - because of it.

Postmodernists are past masters at accommodating any mere fact to their theories. Remember, these are people who are trained to do just that, in the manner of the sophists of ancient Greece. Why would a postmodern academic question the very theories he or she has been inculcated in, when those theories provide the basis of his or her career? “Deconstruction” is a game which good students learn to play studiously at the feet of their masters. But tell me: where is the room for independent thought in any of this? Again, there is none. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, or get the hell out of there as fast as humanly possible. Ultimately, postmodernism is yet another grand narrative, meta narrative or whatever which denies the validity of any such narrative; postmodernists would be better occupied deconstructing themselves.

Was (or is, for its demise is illusory) modernism any better? Yes, in one regard at least: it is infinitely less pretentious, infinitely less elitist, than this academic clap-trap which pretends to have demolished the divisions between high and low art, while simultaneously excluding anyone but the postmodern acolytes and would-be cognoscenti. Ah, but that is the nature of the game: to masquerade as being “of the people” while removing oneself even further from them. And, too, there was much humour in the most interesting phases of modernism, while you’d be hard-pressed to find an ounce of it amongst the apologists of postmodernism. Where modernists were independently-minded, blazing their own individual trails, postmodernists cluster together in a collective herd mentality, protected by the theories of their star protagonists against the slings and arrows of nasty, ignorant, uninitiated doubters and sceptics like myself.

What I find interesting about humanity is the way so many diverse communities so often fail to communicate with other communities, because the languages they speak are of such little interest to anyone else. This is especially noticeable within academic disciplines which only speak to insiders, but it seems to be equally true of art hierarchies, sporting fanatics, people who love gardening, going to the movies, reading novels, etc. Each community occupies its own centre in its own scheme of things, and perhaps that’s entirely natural, however illusory. As for the concept of “electronic consciousness”, it alludes to the many “virtual communities” which have sprung up all over the Internet and Web, looked at with suspicion and condescension by outsiders. In writing for this Web magazine I have no idea what the people who read my articles are like, assuming there are any, and whether or not they actually understand what I’m trying to put across. It’s not inconceivable that everything I write is misunderstood, by people who share nothing whatsoever in common with me. But actually I quite like the sense of freedom that gives me, because I don’t have to make my views acceptable to anyone at all: I can write whatever I like, thus can remain true to myself. The same cannot be said for academics and others who must write responsibly within the confines of their discipline or field of expertise. Personally, I’d much rather have this freedom than not. It means I’m not obliged to buy anyone’s theories, postmodern or otherwise, just because I belong to a community which subscribes to them collectively.

One of the things I admire most about those early modernist artists was just this spirit of freedom and independence. Picasso gave up exhibiting altogether because he refused to play by anyone’s rules but his own. Ok, I know Picasso’s been deconstructed out of existence by feminists et al., but that had nothing to do with Picasso the man, the person, the artist: basically you just had to be there! He lived his extraordinary life as best he could, in dire poverty in the early years, and eventually died as we will all do (except a lot wealthier than most of us). He lived his creative life courageously, and created an amazingly wonderful body of work out of his inner life which has enriched humanity beyond anything any postmodernist could ever aspire to. Picasso’s work speaks to us, across the barrier of history, without any need for theories to bolster it and make it intelligible. Whether we view it unmediated in museums or via reproductions in books, magazines, in videos, or on the Web, its own authentic power and brilliance communicates directly to us as individuals. (The issue of “electronic consciousness” is entirely irrelevent, a red herring which leads nowhere, for what is communicated is ultimately far more important than how something is mediated or transmitted.) That is the real power of art, against which postmodernism is revealed as a pathetic sham, an empty construct devoid of anything remotely substantial.

Postmodern art is nothing so much as a corrupted, bankrupted and attenuated version of modernism. Contemporary art will start to flourish again when artists emancipate their thinking from the shackles of postmodern theory, the new ubiquitous academy, and rediscover some of that freedom, optimism, and joie de vivre that characterised so much early modernist art. It is necessary to learn from, to seek out precedents from, the past; to realise that one is part of a continuous living tradition even while fiercely rejecting much of that tradition. The tradition is part of you, as much as the rejection of tradition is: both are opposite sides of the same coin. The past gives meaning to the present, as the present gives meaning to the future. Above all, artists must value their individual authenticity, irrespective of careerism, and art will be regenerated and reborn anew.

Create your inner world, make the invisible visible, and leave the sycophants of postmodernism to wallow in their own theoretical mire where they belong. The tide will turn.

posted 03-16-2000 01:23 PM            

There have always been artists fighting the norm, deconstructing ideas. Take Bosch with his cryptic Garden of Earthly Delights, or even his Haywain Triptych. Last semester I was intrigued to find that very little attention is given to the whole narrative theme of the Haywain Triptych which perhaps most clearly elludes to his response to the degrading nature of carnival activities and the degradation of the clerical society within these festivities (by no others than themselves!) This theme came through clearly upon researching the history and themes of folly very apparent in his work, and then lead to further understanding of the manipulation and use of folly themes in carnival, and then firmly into the world of carnival practises at the time.

My point? I studied Bosch in a class titled "Northern Renaissance" which in nature has some arguments as to what is considered Northern. It was generally considered the "Netherland Renaissance." Renaissance, periods of enlightenment? Or returning to the past "ideals" of the classics? Does it matter?

Perhaps it matters in that it feeds a good number of historians and aret historians and can educate us in many different areas of the past. However, the title of the period that made Picasso respond in his manner does not neccesarily say anything about his work at all, nor the period, nor our current period.

Art has been a response to surroundings, whether political, religious, technological, or simply evolutionary, for thousands of years. It has not labled itself so much as the critics have labled it.

Thus, perhaps post modernism is not a period of artistic change so much as it is a period of intellectual change (as I believe Delamar elludes to in his article). The artists have not changed so much as their medium and choices in subject have.

Now as to the true nature of post modernism as an intellectual movement. . .I can't truely discuss this because I do not feel I am in any way postmodern. I do not really lable myself as any period. Perhaps I am simply a 20th century era girl. I believe if nothing else we are in a period that is moving so quickly through periods that it is hard to ascribe to one or the other. Are we minimalists for ten years, then are we the internet explosion? Who are we?

With some existentialist leaning, it seems that as we try to define ourselves, we negate the self we are and become the self we have defined. Thus it lableing ourselves is an evolutionary act that can not be settled.

Perhaps the true question is, should we try to lable ourselves? I believe it is more important what we do, as opposed to how we lable it.

Just some stream of consciousness thought there. . .

posted 03-16-2000 06:37 PM            

yours,

posted 03-17-2000 01:16 AM            

Who is the "we" we're supposedly trying to define? In truth there is no "we", only the fiction of "we". Labels are fictions that stick, tyrannies that dominate the individuals who choose to subscribe to them. (Fauvism, for instance, was a term of derision that stuck, as has been the case with so many artistic movements.)

There is a large dose of deterministic historical inevitability here, which presumes that individuals have no choice but to swim with the tide, to go along with the prevailing school of thought, because individual autonomy is politically incorrect.

It is the proper role of artists to subvert intellectual orthodoxies, to resist them, not to illustrate them. That includes official postmodernism just as much as official modernism or socialist realism, or any other "ism". Trouble is, too many artists are still too busily engaged in deconstructing the straw man of modernism, as if it hasn't been done to death already. What they should be doing is demolishing the myth of POST-Mo, only it's too well entrenched and defended and confusing for them to get a grip on. They wouldn't know where to start, and avoid the issue by just such a statement as: "I can't truly discuss it because I'm not in any way postmodern."

posted 03-17-2000 11:22 AM            

"It is the proper role of artists to subvert intellectual orthodoxies, to resist them, not to illustrate them. "

Truely, do we have a "proper role" are we now the revolutionaries? The flag bearers, the torches of every revolution.

I found alot to be said in Oscar Wilde's Preface for The Picture of Dorian Grey which has such sayings to quote:

To reveal art and concel the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

My point in that? Some artists simply respond outside of being modernist, post modernist, etc. Again, I never saw myself as anything beyond myself and my collective experience. Thus I respond personally in such a way that I make beautiful things in art and do not go beneath the surface for meaning often.

Of course, I am not every artist out there. Indeed many artists fill their head with deconstructing modernism. With doing something "new" "inventive" "refreshing." However, we stand on the backs of giants, truely we stand upon the backs of tradition.

Is this electrical consciousness leading us to new thoughts? Or simply new descriptions of old thoughts?

posted 03-17-2000 02:07 PM            

If modernism is supposed to be a thing of the past, but I continue to see myself as a kind of modernist artist, does that mean what I'm doing is outmoded, hence of no consequence to "Art History" at this point in time? Very likely - but despite that I go on doing it, and have no desire to try to turn it into something "postmodern" to render it seriously fashionable (or vice versa). To be currently labeled "modernist" seems to be almost as contemptible in some quarters, but perhaps not quite, as being labeled an impressionist or a surrealist, i.e. a throwback to an earlier age.

I have no doubt that the vast majority of artists simply want to make art as they desire to make it, regardless of whatever isms are currently in vogue. It is the job of art dealers, critics, historians, teachers, etc. (i.e. the art world's gatekeepers and tastemakers) to focus only on artists they believe are deserving of recognition, and to politely ignore the rest. How do they do this? By justifying their choices by quoting from current theoretical discourse, to show that their chosen artists are doing something much more significant than simply "doing their own thing in their own time", or making pretty saleable pictures.

posted 03-17-2000 08:52 PM            

1) To get a real definition of what 'modernism' is I'll point you to Terry Eagleton, a [semi] Marxist who's been at the forefront of this (which is tied in with literary critical theory). Look him up, read. Understand what he means when he says that history and modernity play 'cat-and-mouse'.

2) Art, and it's definition is always about 'truth'.

I'm going to shread a couple of your postings in a hope of provoking debate. If you want to flame, go ahead, it don't hurt.
[yours are in italics]

but the way I see it consciousness is simply consciousness, whatever you happen to be doing or thinking at the time. But perhaps I haven’t immersed myself enough in the virtual Internet existence to really know how different and significant it all is. I have no desire to enter chat rooms, for instance, which must give me away as a relic of a bygone age.

Consciousness is always fundamentally changed by modernistic thought which means either you don't get it [unlikey] or current interent isn't the new modernism. It can be but~~ see my previous arguments on (M)IRC ;p

I’m equally sceptical of postmodernism, modernism, and any other “ism” which is supposed to make sense of the human predicament.

Perhaps because you haven't lived through it? The 20th century has been the century of the ideology- the century of dissasociative violence for a cause. However, getting back to p-m and modernism, I don't think you really get the true meaning (?)

Humanness, however, I can relate to: it’s that indefinable and elusive something which sets us apart, in all our human glory, from the “nasty, brutish and short” lifestyle so typical of those mean-spirited animalian inhabitants of Jurassic Park and similarly primordial environments.

There you go- you've already admitted a p-m influence on your life. 'Jurassic Park' is a perfect example of p-m movie history. It's not based on any real science [cloning etc is more limited] and it ironically tunes into the 'adventure/camp/shock/child/betrayl/humour etc base of films. The very fact that it's special effects seem a little old now is it's crowning glory.

So indefinable and elusive, in fact, that sometimes I’d rather take my chances with Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Ah. Human Nature. I'll say more about this, but wait on.

So what sort of axe have I got to grind against postmodernism and postmodernists? Well, just because a whole new breed of academics have established their careers on it,

Which? Are you talking about the 60's structuralists or the previous modernist writers of the 1920-30's?? Basically, it ain't that simple, and in reducing it so you're obeying one of the fundamental precepts of p-m. Conrad, Woolfe etc defined Modernism, the 60's thinkers branched off and you prove the p-m point by ignoring them completely.

that’s no reason for me to subscribe to it, or like it. We’ve all heard the jargon about deconstructing modernism, a “fascinating task” according to Giovanetto, who continues in similar vein: “we once lived in a modern age where the foundations were solid as rock”.

He's not actually that talented or insightful. sorry. Kinda like quoting the 'boyband' where a true musician is available.

Excuse me? Hey, maybe he and I have been living on different planets for the last God-knows-how-many years! What were Picasso and Braque doing deconstructing visual appearances as early as 1908, when they began their Cubist experiments?

Yes, that was the beginnings of modernism.

What were the Dadaists and Surrealists doing, if not undermining the “solid reality” of the bourgeoisie?

Ahh. different targets each. I'm not against you, I just feel that taking 'artist' out of context from their fellows is wrong. Dada is deffinately different from surrealism in tone, form and belief.

What was Karl Marx doing, for that matter, or Nietzsche, or Freud?

You're getting excited now. Don't mish-mash different schools/centuries. Shaw, Wilde and the aethestics were more their contemporary modernist thinkers.

Need I go on? The truth is that postmodernism constitutes no radical break with modernism whatsoever, just a perpetuation of it by those desperate to come up with something as original and ground-breaking.

So far you haven't quoted or alluded to any post modernists. If you can, let's talk.

Postmodernists have achieved in theory everything they’ve failed to achieve in reality.

Ok. *ho-hum* What about the death of modernism? The end to the cat-and-mouse? The 'End of History' so popular?

In the end they’ve convinced the educated classes that it makes no difference, that the simulacrum (according to Baudrillard) is every bit as meaningful, if not more so, as the real thing. But where are the Picassos of postmodernism?

The interent prooves their point. I rarely see such genius on the net because their point has been made: no longer is humanity striving for something better.

If there are any, it’s no thanks to the postmodern theorists who have choked the life out of contemporary art with their dense and obfuscating proliferation of theoretical verbiage. Good art flourishes despite postmodern theory, not - as many would have us believe - because of it.

Seen the art world recently? Oh, I apologise, idiots all. The UK has a particular flourish of artists...

Postmodernists are past masters at accommodating any mere fact to their theories.

Actually, they're masters of seeing fact relate their theories. But see later.

Remember, these are people who are trained to do just that, in the manner of the sophists of ancient Greece. Why would a postmodern academic question the very theories he or she has been inculcated in, when those theories provide the basis of his or her career? “Deconstruction” is a game which good students learn to play studiously at the feet of their masters. But tell me: where is the room for independent thought in any of this? Again, there is none. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, or get the hell out of there as fast as humanly possible.

*yawn*. You've provided the standard anti-establishment rant without any true insight, perhaps the best example of post-modernism so far. You disagree? Then rephrase your rant substituing your words for those of the pre-raphelites or enlightenment artists. You're not covering new ground like a true modernist.

Ultimately, postmodernism is yet another grand narrative, meta narrative or whatever which denies the validity of any such narrative; postmodernists would be better occupied deconstructing themselves.

Wrong. Post-modernism is the 'end' of narratives. It is the 'end' of the human struggle....a negative one, but an end.

Was (or is, for its demise is illusory) modernism any better?

Which one? All modernism means is the attack of the new. I'll take yours to mean 1902-1934.

Yes, in one regard at least: it is infinitely less pretentious,

For fucks sake, spare me. Surely you jest and miss the point of true modernism, the 'inventing of something different'. Pretentious? You seem to forget that Derrida, Lacan et al were modernists.

infinitely less elitist,

Ok, ignorance gets a beating. You obviously don't even realise that the real modernists thrived on elitism whilst the old '15 mins of fame' came from one of p-m's godfathers. ]and yes, I know his name, and his works]

than this academic clap-trap which pretends to have demolished the divisions between high and low art,

May I point you to modernist thinkers? or Architects?

while simultaneously excluding anyone but the postmodern acolytes and would-be cognoscenti.

Ok. How old are you? Is this a personal thing? Sure sounds like it.

Ah, but that is the nature of the game: to masquerade as being “of the people” while removing oneself even further from them.

Post-modernism isn't about that. It's about becoming the reality that people experience. thus, everything becomes post-modern and ironic. Jesus Xt, see a few movies or read the papers.

And, too, there was much humour in the most interesting phases of modernism, while you’d be hard-pressed to find an ounce of it amongst the apologists of postmodernism.

I don't see much humour in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness', Woolfe's 'Bewteen the acts' or any number of war artists. I'd see the opposite, and why modernism failed.

Where modernists were independently-minded, blazing their own individual trails,

Most were also pro-eugenics.

postmodernists cluster together in a collective herd mentality, protected by the theories of their star protagonists against the slings and arrows of nasty, ignorant, uninitiated doubters and sceptics like myself.

hmm...you're a victim of post-modernist irony and you don't even realise it ;p

Ok, we go on, and on, onto your next piece. Btw, feel free to ask pertinent questions in return

What I find interesting about humanity is the way so many diverse communities so often fail to communicate with other communities, because the languages they speak are of such little interest to anyone else.

Actually, you'll find their 'desires' are different, not the common language. [culture comes into this]

This is especially noticeable within academic disciplines which only speak to insiders,

Bitter? Don't be.

but it seems to be equally true of art hierarchies, sporting fanatics, people who love gardening, going to the movies, reading novels, etc. Each community occupies its own centre in its own scheme of things, and perhaps that’s entirely natural, however illusory.

A true modernist would smile and say 'My new adpation of the human condition can, and will speak to them all'. Most of the time they'd be correct, as most people are a sucker for interested newcomers. [ooh..p-m?]

As for the concept of “electronic consciousness”, it alludes to the many “virtual communities” which have sprung up all over the Internet and Web, looked at with suspicion and condescension by outsiders.

Actually, they're viewed as rather tawdry. V-C's [ooh, p-m reference there] are largely tribalistic based and of no significant interest to the psychologist.

In writing for this Web magazine I have no idea what the people who read my articles are like, assuming there are any, and whether or not they actually understand what I’m trying to put across. It’s not inconceivable that everything I write is misunderstood, by people who share nothing whatsoever in common with me.

Maybe I'm in that small minority of people who don't agree with any of it. I just feel you misunderstand what true p-m's is and the dangers it actually brings to our world. Nut hey, I'm the one flaming, I expect no less.

But actually I quite like the sense of freedom that gives me, because I don’t have to make my views acceptable to anyone at all: I can write whatever I like, thus can remain true to myself.

Now, sir, you're getting closer to true p-mism. Anthing you do and everything you say can be true. You're forgetting the major metaphysical barriers of 'truth' or maybe even 'logical thought'.

The same cannot be said for academics and others who must write responsibly within the confines of their discipline or field of expertise.

You don't say why? Why? I'm sure they believe the same as you, and have better peers to back it up, no?

Personally, I’d much rather have this freedom than not.

What freedom? Oh, yes- the freedom to say whatever relitivist stuff I want and not get censured. This has existed since man wrote on bark- it's called a diary.

It means I’m not obliged to buy anyone’s theories, postmodern or otherwise, just because I belong to a community which subscribes to them collectively.

I don't buy into many 'theories' of the human condition. I do, however, have the luxury of an intellect that can take them on board.

And If you get p-mism, then that last sentence isn't a flame.

One of the things I admire most about those early modernist artists was just this spirit of freedom and independence.

I'll say this for the second time- modernists are a common histological entity. Think about the renaissance.

Picasso gave up exhibiting altogether because he refused to play by anyone’s rules but his own.

Picasso was a bit of a sexist, lazy pig. But hey, he was still a genius.

Ok, I know Picasso’s been deconstructed out of existence by feminists et al., but that had nothing to do with Picasso the man, the person, the artist: basically you just had to be there!

Were you? I've read his lover's/friends accounts. Brilliant, but not such a nice man.

He lived his extraordinary life as best he could, in dire poverty in the early years, and eventually died as we will all do (except a lot wealthier than most of us).

Ok, you 'dream' of greatness but come out with such cliches? *sigh*

He lived his creative life courageously,

Ask his lovers about that.

and created an amazingly wonderful body of work out of his inner life which has enriched humanity beyond anything any postmodernist could ever aspire to.

Picasso- the God. Is this your title? I might add that his style changed from the earlier work n'cest pas?

Picasso’s work speaks to us, across the barrier of history, without any need for theories to bolster it and make it intelligible. Whether we view it unmediated in museums or via reproductions in books, magazines, in videos, or on the Web, its own authentic power and brilliance communicates directly to us as individuals.

The same can be said about the renaissance artists, or even some closer to our century. P-mist artists aren't just the 'formelyde cow cross cut' [I hope you've heard of Hirst....and more importantly his contemporaries. Sorry to say this, but art is still centered in Europe]

(The issue of “electronic consciousness” is entirely irrelevent, a red herring which leads nowhere, for what is communicated is ultimately far more important than how something is mediated or transmitted.)

Ok big boy. So.....oh yes. Canvas and paint is the only medium of true artists.

That is the real power of art, against which postmodernism is revealed as a pathetic sham, an empty construct devoid of anything remotely substantial.

I really, really, really suggest you read.....say. Ok, taking one of four examples-
Iris Murdoch- Metaphysics as a Guide to morals. chapter 1. Beleive me, it says a lot more about the experience of art than you do.

Postmodern art is nothing so much as a corrupted, bankrupted and attenuated version of modernism.

It's not that at all. It's the anti-experience, the acknowledgement of transitory futility.

Contemporary art will start to flourish again when artists emancipate their thinking from the shackles of postmodern theory,

I guess you ain't seen the London scene.....or the Glasgow/Ediburgh one.

the new ubiquitous academy, and rediscover some of that freedom, optimism, and joie de vivre that characterised so much early modernist art. It is necessary to learn from, to seek out precedents from, the past;

There we have it Modernism dilberately ignored and spat on the things you suggest. Think bigger, tadpole.

to realise that one is part of a continuous living tradition even while fiercely rejecting much of that tradition. The tradition is part of you, as much as the rejection of tradition is: both are opposite sides of the same coin.

Is a cliche going to pardon your mediocre lines? I think not.

The past gives meaning to the present, as the present gives meaning to the future.

Read. Terry. Eagleton.

Above all, artists must value their individual authenticity, irrespective of careerism, and art will be regenerated and reborn anew.

You've just actually championed post-modernist art by your own words. Modernist art was highly elitist, scorned those too ignorant to appreciate it and looked forward to a time that all would be on their level. You position is post-modernist without you even knowing it----perhaps it's greatest triumph.

Create your inner world, make the invisible visible,

*Yawn* Modernists hate cliches, and so do I.

and leave the sycophants of postmodernism to wallow in their own theoretical mire where they belong. The tide will turn.

Yeah......but not with you. Ahab bespokes better prey.

I've cut the rest, as I grow board.

Artist? I suggest you get a grip.

posted 03-18-2000 09:38 PM            

Look, I'd love to engage with every sledgehammer point you take such ironical relish making - if I didn't have a life to live, that is. Couldn't you have put it all more succinctly? Of course, I forgot: post-modernists, unfortunately, have to justify everything they say by recourse to however many texts. But even you, maybe, would have found it tedious quoting an entire book by Terry Eagleton.

Fact is, we could dispense with the word "postmodernism" altogether and it wouldn't make a jot of difference to anyone - except, of course, to sophisticates like yourself. Gosh, how do you manage to communicate with ordinary people (and I count myself in that category)? Do you command them ALL to read Terry Eagleton first, before any discussion is possible? You must be such a FUN person to live with! Yep, PoMo is such a down-to-earth, anti-elitist phenomenon: are you typical of all postmodernists, or a unique life-form unto yourself?

To be serious for a moment: contemporary artists and art writers quote from theoretical discourse without understanding it. Whether you call this discourse literary or cultural or postmodernist or modernist or whatever matters not a whit. If they don't understand it completely, can they be said to understand it at all? Why are so many analytic philosophers so scathing about it, if not because most of it is high-sounding gobbledy-gook which makes no sense when analysed?

You claim to completely understand modernism and postmodernism because you've read so-and-so's book, but how can you be sure you really do understand any of it? Maybe your understanding is warped by whoever you read: how do you KNOW they understand it? You can only claim to understand it on the basis of what you BELIEVE on the strength of those writers.

This is the situation that all artists etc. find themselves in when they quote from the fashionable continental or whatever theorists. And I will now give you one example: just one, I know, but at least this artist has the guts (unlike most, I strongly suspect) to be honest about his lack of understanding. This artist is Thomas Hirschhorn:

"The people who really give me stuff to think about also make me feel implicated in the world. I get this feeling primarily from writers and philosophers, not so often from other artists. Sometimes I don't quite understand what these thinkers have written, maybe because I don't have the right education. For example, I can't understand Nietzsche completely. I grasp maybe fifty percent, or perhaps only thirty percent of what he's saying. But he really gives me stuff to think about. Sometimes what's most interesting is what you can't really understand or accept. Deleuze also gives me this sensation. And Bataille's ideas about human values, how values are created, is something that makes me relate to things in a new way...." [Artforum International, March 2000, p. 109]

So here's one artist quoting "stuff" which he values because it gives him some "sensation". As I said, at least Hirschhorn is honest about it, and I value his honesty. What I am disparaging, fundamentally, is the pretentious use of current theoretical discourse because it is fashionable to do so, because it sounds like the person using the jargon must be au fait with the work of the names being quoted, despite the fact that even professional philosophers can't understand it. Now THAT'S a postmodern phenomenon, I'm with you there!

posted 03-20-2000 11:56 AM            

Really? None of them at all understand it? What basis lies underneath this remark.

I agree that I have often found those who "discourse" with other people's words (ie continously referring us to this or that book) over responding through their own "sensation" becomes tedious and annoying.

However, as I read the discourse between you and Steppenwolfe and find I actually do have some grasp on modernist versus post modernist concepts due to my background (reading: philosophy, literature, art history, visually experiencing art), I must also agree with Steppenwolfe.

On an interesting note, I recently saw an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of art in New York. The exhibit featured Parisian artists such as Matisse, Picasso, etc. You get the idea. A nice cross browsing between cubist, impressionist, and other modes of expression such as abstration contemporary at the time. Now, I had seen many such works before by the "great" artists. Every time I see them though I really wonder. . .

Were they great artists with great ideas? or where they poor artists who were able to convince the masses that their work was valid?

Oddly enough Whistler comes to mind. He has a lovely collection of his critics analysis of his work and his rebutals. "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies."

To quote from a trial:
The Attorney-General is questioning Whistler on his painting "Nocturne in Black and Gold".

"Then you mean, Mr. Whistler, that the initiated in technical matters might have no difficulty in understanding your work. But do you think now that you could make me see the beauty of that picture?"

The witness then paused, and examining attentively the Attorney-General's face and looking at the picture alternately, said, after apparently giving the subject much thought, while the Court waited in silence for his answer:

"No! Do you know I fear it would be as hopeless as for the musician to pour his notes into the ear of a deaf man." (Laughter)

(James Whistler, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies)

Perhaps this whole discussion is similarly as hopeless!

posted 03-20-2000 03:32 PM            

This randomly generates completely meaningless postmodern-sounding texts. Sounds very impressive, but fundamentally rubbish. So much postmodern writing is exactly that: high-sounding but meaningless when you get down and analyse it.

How can mere artists and art writers understand it if professional philosophers can't? They may THINK they understand it or partially understand it (e.g. Thomas Hirschhorn), and good luck to them if that's what stimulates their thought processes and creativity. But ultimately it is the allure of those impressive names they're basking in, not cognizance of the ideas. That's a postmodern phenomenon which will look even sillier a few years down the track than it does now.

Camille Paglia writes the following in a recent article ("The North American intellectual tradition", in her Salon Column, March 4, 2000): "The cultural vacuum would be filled in the 1970s by jargon-ridden French post-structuralism and the Frankfurt School, which dominated literature departments for a quarter century.... Education must be purged of desiccated European formulas, which burden and disable the student mind. We must recover North American paradigms and metaphors, to restore the North American idiom to academic discourse." In place of Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, at al., whose "system has been imposed on acolytes", she champions McLuhan, Leslie Fielder and Norman O. Brown who "liberated a whole generation of students to think freely and to discover their own voices."

posted 03-20-2000 03:59 PM            

Thanks for that link... everyone should check it out. It's hilarious...

I printed out a couple 'essays' and passed them off to buddies as the real thing. heh, if only I would have had an application like that when I was doing my undergrad.

posted 03-20-2000 05:24 PM            

When I read Nietsche I was struck more over by his large amount of arrogance. This of course made me smile, being similarly arrogant. There were many, who shocked that I did not bow before the great man, felt that I obviously did not understand his words. Yet in discussion I would agree with many philosophers who had tackled his work without having read those authors. Of course then I was accused of being brought up in a society that had exposed and digested Nietzsche, and thus naturally could understand because it was engrained in me.

I simply think I didn't fight with the ideas. I read, I analyzed, I compared notes. Sometimes I agreed, sometimes I didn't.

By saying it is impossible for any artist to understand what even philosophers can't, well that limits the exploration of many topics to a minor few.

Is reading understanding? Is understanding half not understanding at all?
Well likewise, is seeing art knowing? Is seeing art in half its light not knowing or understanding at all?

what is so mere about artists that seperate them from philosophers? Some of the greatest philosophers were artists. Some of the greatest artists astounding philosophers?

You say that things sound lofty with no foundation. But where is the foundation for what you yourself are saying? Do you (as an artists I believe you stated) hold so little esteem in your own knowledge and mental capabilities to believe it is impossible for you to understand what another mere philosopher, mere human, says?

I could easily take on the rhetoric of my "career" or rather "education" in art history and pull many lofty words that are only lofty sounding in that you may have to pull out a dictionary to understand them. (I have even been accused by Steppenwolfe of using rhetoric! This has pleased my family and english teacher to no end. It is something I have never before been acused of!) But using are large vocabulary and a large mass of books to back up your theory is not neccesarily a bad thing. It is a bad thing when you can not simply state your point and then say, for others who agree check out so and sos book. We obviously don't all have time to read every book suggested to us on the spot.

Thus, it does not matter if I am post modernist, modernist, impressionistic, dutch renaissance, high classical greek, or simply myself. Again, these are all lables that were given after the fact and not during. If we wish to have a campaigne of calling ourselves Post modernist, it truely does not mean anything until people look back and define themselves as modernists. Existentialists did not walk around saying, "I am existentialist!" They discussed the concepts of existence, negation of existence, and meaning in existence. it was later when others coined themselves existential that they become that.
(In fact had they defined themselves as existentialists they would have in turn negated themselves)

Your argument Max, seems to stand upon the idea that post modernism is merely a trend of elitest conversation used by the common people in such a way that they have no understanding of what they are truely saying thus making it all gibberish.

I agree with Steppenwolfe. Grab a book and figure out what post modernism is. It may not be defined the same way by everyone, and it may not "validly" even exist yet, but saying that all post modernist theory is unfounded haughty jibberish and there for post modernism doesn't even exist, is not a strong argument.

posted 03-21-2000 02:19 PM            

You urge me to "grab a book and figure out what post modernism is". Thanks for that suggestion, sounds like you as well as Wolfman Jack have a genuinely altruistic concern for furthering my education! I'm touched by that, in this cynical day-and-age, and in return will suggest a book that you can read too, to show that I'm also deeply caring regarding your education in turn. The book I've chosen is by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, and it's entitled Fashionable Nonsense (Picador, 1998, U.S. edition) or Intellectual Impostures (Profile Books, 1998, U.K. edition) You'll find an intriguing review of it by Richard Dawkins (originally published as "Postmodernism Disrobed" in Nature 394, 9th July 1998) at: vest.theorysc.gu.se/vest_mail/1765.html

The authors, both professors of physics, analysed some writings by Guattari, Deleuze, Lacan, Irigaray, Baudrillard, et al. They deliberately chose texts containing concepts from physics and mathematics, because those are their areas of specialisation. The point being, if these post-structuralists or whatever are credible writing about scientific subjects which are validifiable and refutable, then perhaps their non-scientific writings are also credible, even if incredibly difficult to understand? Or vice versa, of course. I will next quote at length from the review because I couldn't put it better myself, and will take a leaf out of your book Alexis: as you say, "using a large vocabulary and a large mass of books to back up your theory is not necessarily a bad thing" (though I'm not quite as arrogant as to put any of this forward as "my" theory). The reviewer writes:

"No doubt there exist thoughts so profound that most of us will not understand the language in which they are expressed. And no doubt there is also language designed to be unintelligible in order to conceal an absence of honest thought. But how are we to tell the difference? What if it really takes an expert eye to detect whether the emperor has clothes? In particular, how shall we know whether the modish French 'philosophy', whose disciples and exponents have all but taken over large sections of American academic life, is genuinely profound or the vacuous rhetoric of mountebanks and charlatans? … [The authors'] summing up of Baudrillard could stand for any of the authors criticised here, and lionised throughout America:

"In summary, one finds in Baudrillard's works a profusion of scientific terms, used with total disregard for their meaning and, above all, in a context where they are manifestly irrelevant. Whether or not one interprets them as metaphors, it is hard to see what role they could play, except to give an appearance of profundity to trite observations about sociology or history. Moreover, the scientific terminology is mixed up with a non-scientific vocabulary that is employed with equal sloppiness. When all is said and done, one wonders what would be left of Baudrillard's thought if the verbal veneer covering it were stripped away.

"But don't the postmodernists claim to be 'playing games'? Isn't it the whole point of their philosophy that anything goes, there is no absolute truth, anything written has the same status as anything else, no point of view is privileged? Given their own standards of relative truth, isn't it rather unfair to take them to task for fooling around with word-games, and playing little jokes on readers? Perhaps, but one is left wondering why their writings are so stupefyingly boring. Shouldn't games at least be entertaining, not po-faced, solemn and pretentious? More tellingly, if they are only joking around, why do they react with such shrieks of dismay when somebody plays a joke at their expense? The genesis of Intellectual Impostures was a brilliant hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, and the stunning success of his coup was not greeted with the chuckles of delight that one might have hoped for after such a feat of deconstructive game playing. Apparently, when you've become the establishment, it ceases to be funny when somebody punctures the established bag of wind.

"As is now rather well known, in 1996 Alan Sokal submitted to the American journal Social Text a paper called 'Transgressing the Boundaries: towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity.' From start to finish the paper was nonsense. It was a carefully crafted parody of postmodern metatwaddle. Sokal was inspired to do this by Paul Gross and Normal Levitt's Higher Superstition: the academic left and its quarrels with science (Johns Hopkins, 1994), an important book which deserves to become as well known in Britain as it already is in America. Hardly able to believe what he read in this book, Sokal followed up the references to postmodern literature, and found that Gross and Levitt did not exaggerate. He resolved to do something about it. In Gary Kamiya's words:

"Anyone who has spent much time wading through the pious, obscurantist, jargon-filled cant that now passes for 'advanced' thought in the humanities knew it was bound to happen sooner or later: some clever academic, armed with the not-so-secret passwords ('hermeneutics', 'transgressive', 'Lacanian', 'hegemony', to name but a few) would write a completely bogus paper, submit it to an au courant journal, and have it accepted … Sokal's piece uses all the right terms. It cites all the best people. It whacks sinners (white men, the 'real world'), applauds the virtuous (women, general metaphysical lunacy) … And it is complete, unadulterated bullshit - a fact that somehow escaped the attention of the high-powered editors of Social Text, who must now be experiencing that queasy sensation that afflicted the Trojans the morning after they pulled that nice big gift horse into their city."

posted 03-21-2000 09:33 PM            

Ok. To answer the basic first, there is a definition of modernism, and more loosely pm'ism. I refered to Terry Eagleton because he both explains it in simple terms, and enters 'higher thought' to justify himself to the 'academic hegenomy'

A quotation:,
[btw, a claim that all p-mist thought is up it's own arse etc is do ignore the context. Ever tried Kant? Heidigger? All you're really saying is 'I can't/won't/cannot be bothered to take the time]

Anyhow, Eagleton in Capitalism, Modernism and Post Modernism:
'As with all such anarchistic or Camusian revolt, modernism can thus never die- it has resurfaced in our own time as paralogical science- but the reason why it can never be worsted- the fact that it does not occupy the same temporal terrain or logical space as its antagonists- is precisely the reason why it can never be defeat the system either...History and modernism play a ceasless cat-and-mouse game in and out of time, neither able to slay the other because they occupy different ontological sites'

Now, (and I feel it coming) you could snort, and say 'Well, hey that's a load of pseudo academic nonsense that the average bear can't understand'. Well, yes and no. Simply put: modernism isn't merely one particular set of artists/writers/thinkers at one period in time, it's the continual period of the new challenging those preceeding them.

Then why do I get all hot under the collar?
Because, quite simply, the internet obeys all the 'psuedo intellectual' ideas of the p-m'ists'.

Here's a link:
Sceptical" TARGET=_blank>http://www.socio.demon.co.uk/rhizome.html">Sceptical but on the ball

Interesting stuff.

I also brought up the English artists (such as D.Hirst, T.Ulman etc) who've been using p-m'ism to break boundaries in art. And this point was ignored~ so be it.

The artist, in the historic context, has always had a school or ideological position to revolt against. However, the new artist [taking on board the points made] has to make his own representation of the world in order to challenge it and by doing so he, of course, becomes a self-parodist.

Anyhow. I'm back to the 'revolution' Tell me what I think

posted 03-22-2000 12:41 AM            

I knew you'd pick up on my phrase "mere artists", Alexis. What I was alluding to in that context is that artists - in the traditional sense before postmodernism collapsed all boundaries and distinctions - have been engaged in creating art, not acting as quasi-philosophers and studying, writing, analysing and critiquing philosophical texts. As a rule it is still true to say that artists at university primarily study fine arts, albeit with some art theory thrown in, with a view to specialising in that activity as their profession. If if we're talking about textual analysis, we think of those best equipped by means of their education - whether philosophers, lawyers, theologians, or whatever - to do the task. We don't expect professional philosophers or theorists to create works of art, at least not in their professional capacity, just as we don't normally expect professional artists to specialise in critiquing texts. Of course there are always exceptions, multi-talented people such as Goethe, those with a wide range of interests and plenty of time to spend on all of them, that goes without saying. I was not intending to imply, as you have obviously inferred, that artists are in any way inferior to philosophers: just that their fields of specialisation suit them to different tasks. Even when artists make 'philosophical art', their work is usually embodied in physical artifacts (such as Duchamp's urinal) which generate meanings written about by other people rather than themselves.

You urge me to "grab a book and figure out what post modernism is". Thanks for that suggestion, sounds like you as well as Wolfman Jack have a genuinely altruistic concern for furthering my education! I'm touched by that, in this cynical day-and-age, and in return will suggest a book that you can read too, to show that I'm also deeply caring regarding your education in turn. The book I've chosen is by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, and it's entitled Fashionable Nonsense (Picador, 1998, U.S. edition) or Intellectual Impostures (Profile Books, 1998, U.K. edition) You'll find an intriguing review of it by Richard Dawkins (originally published as "Postmodernism Disrobed" in Nature 394, 9th July 1998) at: http://vest.theorysc.gu.se/vest_mail/1765.html

The authors, both professors of physics, analysed some writings by Guattari, Deleuze, Lacan, Irigaray, Baudrillard, et al. They deliberately chose texts containing concepts from physics and mathematics, because those are their areas of specialisation. The point being, if these post-structuralists or whatever are credible writing about scientific subjects which are validifiable and refutable, then perhaps their non-scientific writings are also credible, even if incredibly difficult to understand? Or vice versa, of course. I will next quote at length from the review because I couldn't put it better myself, and will take a leaf out of your book Alexis: as you say, "using a large vocabulary and a large mass of books to back up your theory is not necessarily a bad thing" (though I'm not quite as arrogant as to put any of this forward as "my" theory). The reviewer writes:

"No doubt there exist thoughts so profound that most of us will not understand the language in which they are expressed. And no doubt there is also language designed to be unintelligible in order to conceal an absence of honest thought. But how are we to tell the difference? What if it really takes an expert eye to detect whether the emperor has clothes? In particular, how shall we know whether the modish French 'philosophy', whose disciples and exponents have all but taken over large sections of American academic life, is genuinely profound or the vacuous rhetoric of mountebanks and charlatans? … [The authors'] summing up of Baudrillard could stand for any of the authors criticised here, and lionised throughout America:

"In summary, one finds in Baudrillard's works a profusion of scientific terms, used with total disregard for their meaning and, above all, in a context where they are manifestly irrelevant. Whether or not one interprets them as metaphors, it is hard to see what role they could play, except to give an appearance of profundity to trite observations about sociology or history. Moreover, the scientific terminology is mixed up with a non-scientific vocabulary that is employed with equal sloppiness. When all is said and done, one wonders what would be left of Baudrillard's thought if the verbal veneer covering it were stripped away.

"But don't the postmodernists claim to be 'playing games'? Isn't it the whole point of their philosophy that anything goes, there is no absolute truth, anything written has the same status as anything else, no point of view is privileged? Given their own standards of relative truth, isn't it rather unfair to take them to task for fooling around with word-games, and playing little jokes on readers? Perhaps, but one is left wondering why their writings are so stupefyingly boring. Shouldn't games at least be entertaining, not po-faced, solemn and pretentious? More tellingly, if they are only joking around, why do they react with such shrieks of dismay when somebody plays a joke at their expense? The genesis of Intellectual Impostures was a brilliant hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, and the stunning success of his coup was not greeted with the chuckles of delight that one might have hoped for after such a feat of deconstructive game playing. Apparently, when you've become the establishment, it ceases to be funny when somebody punctures the established bag of wind.

"As is now rather well known, in 1996 Alan Sokal submitted to the American journal Social Text a paper called 'Transgressing the Boundaries: towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity.' From start to finish the paper was nonsense. It was a carefully crafted parody of postmodern metatwaddle. Sokal was inspired to do this by Paul Gross and Normal Levitt's Higher Superstition: the academic left and its quarrels with science (Johns Hopkins, 1994), an important book which deserves to become as well known in Britain as it already is in America. Hardly able to believe what he read in this book, Sokal followed up the references to postmodern literature, and found that Gross and Levitt did not exaggerate. He resolved to do something about it. In Gary Kamiya's words:

"Anyone who has spent much time wading through the pious, obscurantist, jargon-filled cant that now passes for 'advanced' thought in the humanities knew it was bound to happen sooner or later: some clever academic, armed with the not-so-secret passwords ('hermeneutics', 'transgressive', 'Lacanian', 'hegemony', to name but a few) would write a completely bogus paper, submit it to an au courant journal, and have it accepted … Sokal's piece uses all the right terms. It cites all the best people. It whacks sinners (white men, the 'real world'), applauds the virtuous (women, general metaphysical lunacy) … And it is complete, unadulterated bullshit - a fact that somehow escaped the attention of the high-powered editors of Social Text, who must now be experiencing that queasy sensation that afflicted the Trojans the morning after they pulled that nice big gift horse into their city."

posted 03-22-2000 06:21 PM            

I think the best point that Wolf is making is simply the revolutionary...in that it revolves and returns...issue of modernity, thus making even post modernism modern( all right. . .that is stretching it further then he stated and not his words at all). The Renaissance was followed by the Baroque. the enlightened by a different enlightenment. Perhaps what is needed is a completely different term. I must admit I have a hard time not being modern when in context I have always read modern as being current, up to date, and perhaps even cutting edge.

To add, when I think of art of the "modern" period, I tend to think of minimalist art, expressionistic art, and pop art, to name a few sub genres. Infact, in the context of art history (perhaps the only form of the term modern I have really had any true "education" being an art historian), modern rnages through art deco, abstract, etc etc etc etc....It just goes on and on through a large number of interplaying however seperate movements. You could easily find examples of "post modern" thought in many of those "modern" movements.

Although I must admit must of the modern art period is on scholastic training. Saying that before post modernism they were simply making art, and not analyzing text, is not correct. For instance, many of the artists in the 17th century netherlandish art were high standing states men, guildsmen, and educated men who did more then just make art. they were business men with all the education that goes along with that. Infact, if you wish to study Basoch, whom I mentioned before (I spent way too much time researching this man) you find an intricate layering of textual allusions, social imagery, and witty commentary within his works.

Must art be created with a body of text or in a revolutionary way? Nope. Can it be? yes, and very often it is!

Likewise, do philosophies form outside of the moment? Do they pull from visual imagery that has been passed down through the ages? Did the image of the fool change as it was written about? or was it written about as it changed (c.f. look through The Ships of Fools and other plays from the 16th to 17th century discussing Fools and Folly and watch the changing meaning behind depiction and concept.)

I can not say that the writers who wrote on topics they knew nothing about such as physics have a foot to stanbd on. They don't. However, there are surely "post modernists" out there who do have a foot to stand on, in not too feet, a block on concrete, and a building underneath them. However, how can you be after the now? after the recent current. After the modern?

~Alexis P.

posted 03-23-2000 04:05 PM            

Too easy to keep diffusing the pomo terrain, to avoid being pinned down. Typical deconstructionist tactics for avoidance and subverting modernist and any other texts include: pushing generalizations to the limit to render them absurd; interpreting arguments in their most extreme form; denying the legitimacy of any dichotomies whatsoever; never expressing a clear viewpoint or argument; employing obscure and dense jargon to protect themselves from scrutiny; and leaving oneself open to as many interpretations as possible.

Let's look at Derrida and deconstruction. Derrida says that the reality of 'differance' excludes the realm of identities, the metaphysics of presence whereby an author's intention is identified with his or her text. There is only the text itself, a text being equivalent to virtually anything, independent of whoever may or may not have brought it into existence. Furthermore, there is no objective reality or objective knowledge of that reality, so nothing external whereby literal meanings can be privileged, authenticated. Deconstruction is held up as a tool which enables formerly marginalised readings of texts to be given equally valid weight along with literal or hegemonical meanings, the meanings which have been deconstructed. Yes, there is more than one way to read a text, nothing exceptionable in that. Postmodernists seem to gloss over the fact that even marginalised readings, even deconstructionists' readings, are equally asking to be deconstructed, as really there is no end, no limit, to the process. It is one thing to say that alternative readings are possible, but quite another that the only valid reading must be ambiguous, as Derrida says.

It is a mistake to confuse the aesthetic with the metaphysical, though that is just what deconstruction does, symptomatic of 'the linguistic turn' in philosophy. Any type of reading may be valid in aesthetics, but not in metaphysics. Aesthetic interpretation hinges on artworks, metaphysics on reality. Deconstruction bypasses reality by treating everything as an aesthetic text, and gets mired in the problem of relativism.

An interesting question is whether it is possible to deconstruct a text 'incorrectly'. Apparently it is, because there must be some correlation, some link no matter how marginal, between the text and the deconstructionist reading of it. In other words, any reading is subjective, but depends on some objective element of the text itself to be legitimate. Otherwise Derrida would be allowing free reign to completely subjective fantasy, an undesirable situation of reductio ad absurdum. Thus, if there is a right way and a wrong way to read texts, then some readings are preferable to others, which implies degrees of proximity to some level of objective truth. Which contradicts Derrida's and his followers' assertion that there is no objective reality beyond texts, only an infinite play of equally valid meanings.

That is, deconstructionists are epistemological and moral relativists, holding that all knowledge and actions are right for you so long as you believe them to be. If, however, the deconstructionists' own readings are somehow more legitimate than other readings, then their own knowledge and action is closer to objective truth and on the morally higher ground: but how can it be possible, according to their own theory, for some readings to be privileged over others?

If, on the other hand, all readings are genuinely equal, then the deconstructionists' assertions have no more validity or legitimacy than any other, so what possible reason would there be for privileging their own? Well, there is the sophistication, the sophistry, of their obfuscating jargon to wade through first, and their claims to political correctness to contend with. Not to forget the fashionable allure. Apart from that smokescreen, they have no convincing reason, just a circular argument (if I can call it even that) which succeeds by dint of being repeated so often in all the right places. Of course they would prefer to have it both ways: to claim that all readings are equal but their own are somehow 'more equal', more legitimate than any other. And that even if there are logical inconsistencies in their theories, that doesn't prevent them from being right in any case, because it is they, after all, who are disputing the validity of logic in the first place.

If Derrida's own work can be deconstructed, as he has claimed, then he cannot mean that someone can reach entirely different conclusions by doing so; only that his own conclusions about 'differance' could be arrived at via a different route. In other words, he asserts a monopoly on the truth, a set of fixed ideas which prevents anyone from going further. This is akin to a theological, medievalist position, the direct opposite of the free spirit of enquiry which characterises the scientific pursuit of truth. Easy to see why Derrida et al. deride (deconstructionist pun intended) the scientific method. If there are only texts to be interpreted, at what point if any do they intersect with the empirical reality beyond those texts? Derrida and his followers seem to be too entangled in their own signifiers to care.

Postmodernism in general exhibits a number highly contradictory and inconsistent tendencies, such as claiming to be anti-theoretical while owing its entire existence to structuralism, poststructuralism, deconstruction, etc.: all densely theoretical. While it stresses the irrational, it freely employs reason whenever it suits, in the attempt to demolish reason. While modernism is attacked for its inconsistencies, postmodernists apparently don't think this charge can possibly apply to them, which means their writings must be somehow exempt from attack or 'privileged' (the term they use to castigate the so-called hegemony of modernism). And they claim to be expressing a 'truth' about the impossibility of all truth claims.