postmodern primer

[Pye]

(The following will not include references, wikipepeepees, or any other sources of authority, if you would permit me. This is two cups of tea, and one-hour of streaming what-all's been gathered over the years from seminars-in, essays-read, books consumed, passing conversations had, and tidbits from academics and/or writers of a reasonable level of familiarity with postmodernism qua postmodernism - in other words, what follows is some signature ingredients on the subject, collected over time, and baked into a pye.)

Postmodern shall mean a neutral, descriptive term that describes a set of cultural characteristics/features of the given age.
Postmodernist shall mean a person who freely seizes upon and/or utilizes those cultural characteristics/features of the given age.


Some people believe the postmodern age began around the WWI era, when nationalism for its own sake (a feature of modern period values) reached its untenable height, and senseless killing machines came out of these clashing nationalistic narratives. Right then, they say, the most optimistic of values (nationalism) brought forth the most pessimistic view of what it all meant. Take note it's not long after this, western culture is having a flapper age of flipped values, and things like dadaism, the art of meaninglessness, have made it onto the scene. To hell with everything, there's no meaning in it all . . . .

Some people believe that the postmodern age began synonymously with, and because of, the rise of industrial capitalism (which is why some people use the phrase "capital culture" and "postmodernism" synonymously). As soon as the self-subsisting village/fiefdom thing was no longer workable, villagers had to follow the resources and work into the cities, and there, whatever "master narrative" they understood of the world in their self-subsisting culture is now meeting conflicting master narratives from all over the place, and now nobody's narrative seems any more defensible than anyone else's.

This is characterized anywhere and everywhere in postmodernism as "The Death of the Master Narrative." This metaphor is implying an age for humans when collected (i.e. "absolute") beliefs were possible among groups, but then the splintering/regathering of cultures to serve the movement of capital permanently alters that.
The good news: now humans are able to realize that no one can necessarily put forth a "master narrative" i.e. story of the world in order to rule, misguide, abuse.
The bad news: people don't know what the frack anymore.
More bad news: the new master narrative in place of nothing is money. The movement of money becomes culture itself.

Please note that the death of the master narrative is occurring as well in the WWI explanation. Nationalism - a patri-otic absolutism - is a worthy feature of the optimism of the modern age. But it's bad news. All of these clashing narratives from cultures and nationalities seem to cancel each other out in the absurdity of the war and the unravelling of the age.

Wherever people think the thing started, it can be well-understood through the following transitions between modern and postmodern ages:

Because there is no master narrative - no story-of-all-stories for the world :

Truth becomes validity.
Rather than one master narrative of the world, there are 7 billion master narratives of the world, each one occupying a space relative to all; hence, each one valid in its relationship to everything else. Validity become the newly mitigated truth-word to understand a thing through its own relation to things.

Text becomes context.
Without any individual in possession of the god's-eye view (the master narrative), Text - The Word - can no longer be seen for itself. It has to be seen in context - that point of all relations that bear upon the individual message.

The medium is [now] the message.
To understand anything is to look at what is delivering it to you. Text can no longer be trusted as an authority-location in itself, hence, attention is now upon the medium that delivers it to you; in fact, the deliverer IS the message itself. Marshall McLuan coined this in trying to explain that the nine-year old child's view and utterances of the world are as complete and as truthful as anyone else's; His/her story is just as "valid." Witness how media conforms to this understanding in the world of dial-your-bias news.

Form becomes over content
With no content any more authoritative than anyone else's content, all the attention is drawn to the form - the medium, the deliverer - and the shape of that form, its features in thick description - well, these are the things there are to "know" about anything when essentially, all content is now the surface. Postmodern art would be those kinds of expressions that drawn attention on purpose to the form, form for its own sake and delight in same. The features of this age have a significant impact upon architecture, where form breaks away from classical groundedness and symmetrical order and starts confusing inside-and-outside, with glass and mall-features, because . . . .

There is no center anymore
In the wake of the characteristics/features of the age, one cannot find the center that holds - and this is true of our current view of the cosmos and/or multiple universes, because we're set loose thinking this way now. No center just many many points, or nodes on the internet grid, many many forms of narratives. I've heard some interesting comment here why in this state, people are more acutely driven to tribe back up somewhere, get some kind of thing to collect around, maybe sort of some nostalgia for the days of a possible master narrative.

Production become reproduction
(In both industrial and technological capitalism)
In image, word, deed, cover tunes, consumer items, prequels and sequels, everything about our age speaks more toward reproduction - re-doing, re-copying, re-peating those cultural configurations that have best moved money. It's now the successful form we pay attention to, so you can plug Lady Gaga into Madonna, you can repeat one successful formula after another, just switch up the form of the delivery. Think of Andy Warhol's Marilyn. It's really marilyn marilyn marilyn marilyn marilyn ker-chunck, ker-chunk, like an assembly line. Anything that moves money gets a new and improved form. Someday a distant species will dig up all the chia pets from our archeology and think they must have had a very important symbolic role in our society. Oh, but they did. They moved money, and that's all that's needed.

In summary, the postmodern age is a fractal age, since the death of the master narrative. We can feel it in our computers and computer life, in our consuming lives, in the culture at large, a free-for-all that has now for its only authority the ability to grab your attention with its appealing form and the capacity to move your money (away from you:). There is no center anymore and anybody's story is a self-story and any content to be had is wearing on the sleeve; it's the sleeve itself. The postmodernist is happy about the features of this age - free to explore form for its own sake, free from repressive master narratives, free to see the entire human marketplace of narratives at the corner of everyone's blog. It is the flapper age of surface, relativity, and for some, an occasion to dance free of all foundations but one's own; a chance to dance with others over theirs.

[Pye]

Now Diebert, with all this out there for anyone to push off of in dialogue, I did this mostly so I could ask you how you might be distinguishing the postmodern from modernity, as you wrote elsewhere. Do you mean modernity as a cultural pathology specific to now, or do you mean the general phenomenon of that in any age? How is it different from the outcome of the postmodern features above? and stuff like that.

[brad walker]

Untangling Modernism and Postmodernism

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Hi Pye, thanks for the write-up. Would take me two days and at least six large espresso's to write anything like it!

Unlike you I will give some reference to paint the picture faster. My introduction to hardcore descriptions of the postmodern came through Jean Baudrillard and some of your post reminded me again of his analysis of the Pompidou Center in Paris, which since I once visited there was the best visualization possible for me of the postmodern in architecture and in general perhaps. With all the piping, stairs and wiring, brightly colorful placed on the outside with mostly empty large spaces inside, and the high-tec atmosphere, it signifies something about the postmodern ideas on lack of center and form over content.

This "turned inside out" phenomenon in much of postmodern stuff has given me the idea that it's all about, in somewhat grotesque style, reflecting back what always have been the mechanics but never was spoken about much or at least not that loudly. And isnt' it true that any master-narrative is just as much defined by what it's not saying and is agreed on being forbidden to say, as it's about the specifics of the content and the rejection of alternatives? The postmodern age then as the age of exposure and explicits.

This way I see the new master narrative of "money" as just the explicit form of the exchange which formed the older narrative. It's the skeleton version as it were.

Anyway, now to your question on distinguishing postmodern from modernity, since I'd define the postmodern as an over-exposed and cut-loose replication of the modern, I'd say it won't be easy to distinguish. Many criticisms I heard on the postmodern are just as well applicable to the modern. Perhaps it's just the extension of modernity, the age that wouldn't die and keeps cloning itself (with a price). My language already indicated I'm using it mostly in a contemporary cultural pathological sense (I'd like to sign up for that course any time: Cultural Pathology!).

But I'd like to hear more about this notion of "the given age". Could you show me how to use the term for other ages? And is there a link with Nietzsche's use of decadence, which he places near the end of couple of cultures or civilizations (using these terms loosely here).

[Cathy Preston]

Can it be reduced? This age versus that age, all masking the underlying problem that reason does not motivate, past the age where devils lurk in the dark, passion alone is the prime motivator.

[Pye]

I meant 'given age' only in reference to the one one is currently referring to!

Diebert suggests: This "turned inside out" phenomenon in much of postmodern stuff has given me the idea that it's all about, in somewhat grotesque style, reflecting back what always have been the mechanics but never was not spoken about much, or at least not loudly. And isnt' it true that any master-narrative is just as much defined as what it's not saying and is agreed on being not allowed to say, as it's about the specifics of the content and the rejection of alternatives? The postmodern age then as the age of exposure and explicits.

This way I see the new master narrative of "money" as just the explicit form of the exchange which formed the older narrative. It's the skeleton version as it were.

Let me say that I get exactly the coalesced thing you're describing here - the insides being out, the what-it's-all-about attention to the reductionism of both structure, mechanics, and money, that which dialectically moves the material. What's "off," though, is the abstract nature of money itself, a kind of magnetically lateral attraction bound to be empty in itself, well, abstract that it is. Of course it's meant to buy things with, but its actual movement is its cultural value (thing-buying being part of that). So the movement of an abstraction doesn't sound as cheerful as this simple unmasking of the honest armature you characterize above.

I'm not sure about the decadence thing, Diebert - you'll have to tell me. What I'm still interested in is your characterization of modernity, not historically positioned, but its features (sicknesses or foibles), for I wonder if you see modernity the way a fair few others do: as a malaise of sorts in present and recent history, and not-experienced in other ages . . . . in other words, what's one experiencing in it and why only now?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

IOf course it's meant to buy things with, but its actual movement is its cultural value (thing-buying being part of that). So the movement of an abstraction doesn't sound as cheerful as this simple unmasking of the honest armature you characterize above.

Pye, I didn't mean to sound cheerful but I guess it might help addressing this dark toned subject matter as some kind of preemptive countermeasure. You are right about the movement of money as cultural value, more so than any supposed culmination of "capital", but I'm not sure if a term like "honest" and "dishonest" would still apply. We could perhaps more gravely describe the shopping center as religious temples where people, not only money, move about to keep its engine running. Not money but exchange of signs and signals like the advertisement industry runs on (making profit on all the reverb).

What I'd like to explore is the relation between armature and center. By exposing the inner workings it's then being transported to the outside, becoming the superficial where signs are breeding more signs. But where is the center now? Decentralized? Or did it hide even further away and remains just invisible to us? This is for me about the rather strange relation between secrets and openings. The more we aim to explore the secret, the more it splits into a superficial part and a different even deeper lying secret. It's a strange dance that way.

Your question about my characterization of modernity seems quite involving. I'll have to think a bit on that but perhaps you can provide more angle in the mean time. Although I might have already hinted at my view on this above.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

[Note: this is perhaps starting to look like typical postmodern conversations. Is it actually about something or just a string of common keywords and some tentative pairing of bad metaphors?]

[Pye]

Diebert writes: Pye, I didn't mean to sound cheerful but I guess it might help addressing this dark toned subject matter as some kind of preemptive countermeasure.

I find you uncharacteristically coy here, Diebert, in that dark tone or countermeasures have never been excuses for you. I think I've been asking you to go straight to that dark tone, countermeasures be damned. In the past, I have found you quite affecting when you hint after whatever it is we're trying to get at here - decadence, modernity, postmodernity, darkness, modern malaise, etc. - and have rather always wanted to hear more waxing forth.

Anyway, 'cheerful' was really in the foregoing context a synonym for logical, forthright, and well-reaching explanation you gave for the pomo phenomenon of inside-out, as though it has been well-sorted, understood. that kind of cheer. and this kind of skepticism :)

I seem to be expressly headed away from cheer . . . :)

Diebert writes: What I'd like to explore is the relation between armature and center. By exposing the inner workings it's then being transported to the outside, becoming the superficial where signs are breeding more signs.
[then]
But where is the center now? Decentralized? Or did it hide even further away and remains just invisible to us?

You just answered your own question, yes? - these inner workings transposed to the outside. That would basically be a core understanding from the postmodern point of view. It would show that armature is the center; form is the content; the medium is the message, and where is your center now? The center can't be located. More to the postmodern point, it's never been there. It's always been form.

[relationship to any buddhist-think here? hmmm...]

As you say,

[Note: this is perhaps starting to look like typical postmodern conversations. Is it actually about something or just a string of common keywords and some tentative pairing of bad metaphors?]

If you're analytic, it's just language motion, all to itself.
If you're not, it's trying to refer to reality.

What do you think?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

The center can't be located. More to the postmodern point, it's never been there. It's always been form.

[relationship to any buddhist-think here? hmmm...]

Buddhism for sure or even pataphysics. But there's a question mark lingering here; perhaps it is too simple to declare emptiness and all the hearts of things a play of light and shadow. The mystical and rather generic approach is to invoke spirit, god or tao, nature and way, to account for all the binding, the type of "fulfillment" which postmodernists only seems to approach with some degree of fascination and part-time analysis.

It's a topic I'm only recently exploring. At this stage it's even not clear yet which breed of terms the questions could be best described in. All notions of "center" have been exposed as illusions at best: soul, truth-of-the-matter, genus, ghosts, thing-in-itself, single cause and so on. But my observation has shown me a form of exhaustion of the possibilities of the postmodern exteriors. This is not about stressed and tired people (although some get caught in this) but exhaustion of concept, of connection, of meaning, of reality itself. Is that possible: "exhausted reality"?

The question central to this I believe: what is power? Where lies the battery of reality making? Illusions, secrets, temptations, desires, fueled by imagination - are they the real power source of world creation? Now we reach perhaps the dark underbelly of postmodernism: the inability to address this very thing but in analytical way, which in this case might also mean dis-empowering. Lack of power leads to weakness, weakness leads to diseases and finally the (fertile?) rotting. Forms multiplying indeed but not the advanced forms you'd like to see.

This is one of the things I'm of one mind with Baudrillard and it's best to quote him as it translates well. It's from the essay "On Nihilism' analyzing basically the postmodern discourse:

• The dialectic stage, the critical stage is empty. There is no more stage. There is no therapy of meaning or therapy through meaning: therapy is part of the generalized process of indifferentiation. The stage of analysis has become uncertain, random: theories now float. Analysis is itself perhaps the decisive element of the immense process of the freezing over of meaning. ... One must be conscious that, not matter how the analysis proceeds, it proceeds toward the freezing over of meaning, it assists in the precession of simulacra and of indifferent forms. The desert grows.

Perhaps this is the darkness I was being coy about. Not the gloom but the notion that analyzing the postmodern is also postmodern. And all the critique, postmortems or pathology becoming automatically increasingly critical, dead or pathological. It's a possibility which needs to be falsified before going much further.

[Cathy Preston]

A mind which must "know" and be relevant has to have the answer, nihilism is a consequence of a mind unable to live with doubt. It's basically a tantrum, a well fuck you if I can't have the answer nobody fucking can. Meaning, objectively and "frozen through time" is easily understood and provides security, a back drop of certainty. People are motivated by their desires, the pleasure pain push pull, so they disregard reason as meaningless because it works against their own motivations. But in a society where perspective and context do matter, reason is necessary and SHOULD be primary.

I suggest that because perspective and context make pat answers null and void we've switched our focus off the message on to the medium or form and in this way we once again have our pat answers. MSNBC is liberal, FOX is conservative, messages are no longer information but rather emotional triggers to elicit an emotional response. This way critical thinking is again not necessary.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

... messages are no longer information but rather emotional triggers to elicit an emotional response. This way critical thinking is again not necessary.

Messages might have been originally, in the context of evolution, developed to trigger fast responses mostly on the level of motion, evoking reaction like the startling roar of a lion or the quick face-to-face signaling of a group of primate hunters. Messages are here conveying instruction how to move or not to move at all. The emotional system is then more like a virtualization of the primal motion, as the body still responds somewhat to the feeling but does rarely act (plain anger versus banging the wall versus banging the subject).

Signals could in a deeper sense be seen as motion triggers or change facilitators (or inhibitors). Dry information itself does not seem to carry that kind of power, it's at most raw material which only functions in a context of a modulating signal. Critical thinking as change facilitator I therefore would classify as working as well in the emotional realm, as a cooling agent more than a heating agent but in itself, like all forms of will to truth, it cannot be separated from all the emotional triggers and responses - it's part of the same domain.

[Pye]

Diebert writes: Perhaps this is the darkness I was being coy about. Not the gloom but the notion that analyzing the postmodern is also postmodern. And all the critique, postmortems or pathology becoming automatically increasingly critical, dead or pathological. It's a possibility which needs to be falsified before going much further.

Okay then. Perhaps we can return to the subject when some of the ambivalence and fear regarding it can be dealt with; when some of the reactivity to its label qua label recedes in favor of a square look at the dynamics. I know a lot of people here have been inoculated against anything the word “postmodern” might touch, including Alex. I don’t get vaccinations. I let my immune system handle it on its own. Makes one stronger, you know.

Anyway, there are deep and intricate overlaps between what are so-called postmodern features and some of the other thinking pathologies put forth here. Vice versa, as well. Just thought maybe with it all on the table, folks could approach sanely; analyze the same way.