An Emergent Order

[thirdform]

How would I answer it?

by conceding that the entire premise of this thread is incoherent.

 

[thirdform]

god may be dead, sure enough, but he still doesn't know it. the suppressed is still reflected back into itself.

 

[version]

by conceding that the entire premise of this thread is incoherent.

I did say something along those lines near the start, about not really thinking the znore quote I kicked the whole thing off with made sense.

 

[thirdform]

I did say something along those lines near the start about not really thinking the znore quote I kicked the whole thing off with really made sense.

in general, anything luke promotes doesn't make sense. that's why we love him.

 

[Clinamenic]

I think the first time this sort of thing hit me was when I first heard "I think, therefore I am... ". My first thought was "Why? You've just made up a rule and spoken it like it's a self-evident truth. You can't just say something's true and that's it."

You could also view this sort of thing as an assertion in defiance of its own fallibility. Or, in terms of utility, you can view this as an attitude which can empower one with a greater sense of autonomy. I think in that case its probably a bit more significant in distinction to whatever existing status quo there was, of people thinking they only existed in divine terms as mediated by the church or something. So even if its conceptually fallible, it still can effectively unlock a greater sense of felt autonomy - just as another example of how ideas can have utility despite their conceptual imperfection.

 

[version]

I don't think it helps that the whole thing's ballooned well past what I was mulling over re: that Perry Anderson book on Jameson. That was a bit more specific and to do with how I could get a decent grasp on postmodernism when even the people studying it seem to disagree on its qualities and when it started.

 

[Clinamenic]

I don't think it helps that the whole thing's ballooned well past what I was mulling over re: that Perry Anderson book on Jameson. That was a bit more specific and to do with how I could get a decent grasp on postmodernism when even the people studying it seem to disagree on its qualities and when it started.

Yeah I think postmodernism is an especially weird example of this, because it is so broad and vague in many respects. I do still think there is some utility to be achieved there, in how it lets one understand the world in certain respects. Again, not infallible as a heuristic, nor is it the only way to understand the world. I think part of the issue you're describing, imo, is that people put so much pressure on these ideas to be all-encompassing, and as heuristics they can just buckle under that weight and their utility can become less evident.

 

[version]

Baudrillard's concept of 'impossible exchange' has clearly been unconsciously informing some of this too, now I think about it.

'Working his way through the various spheres and systems of everyday life—the political, the juridical, the economical, the aesthetic, the biological, among others—he finds that they are all characterized by the same non-equivalence, and hence the same eccentricity. Literally, they have no meaning outside themselves and cannot be exchanged for anything. Politics is laden with signs and meanings, but seen from the outside it has no meaning.'​

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Impossible Exchange

Working his way through the various spheres and systems of everyday life—the political, the juridical, the economical, the aesthetic, the biological, among others—he finds that they are all characterized by the same non-equivalence, and hence the same eccentricity. Literally, they have no...

www.versobooks.com

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[version]

Yeah I think postmodernism is an especially weird example of this, because it is so broad and vague in many respects. I do still think there is some utility to be achieved there, in how it lets one understand the world in certain respects. Again, not infallible as a heuristic, nor is it the only way to understand the world. I think part of the issue you're describing, imo, is that people put so much pressure on these ideas to be all-encompassing, and as heuristics they can just buckle under that weight and their utility can become less evident.

Look how much of the discussion ends up being about postmodernism itself though.

 

[Clinamenic]

Look how much of the discussion ends up being about postmodernism itself though.

Yeah, and part of this I think is academia, and how the conversation loses its bearing outside of academia.

 

[thirdform]

I did say something along those lines near the start about not really thinking the znore quote I kicked the whole thing off with made sense.

How to read Lacan – “God is dead, but he doesn’t know it”: Lacan plays with Bobok – Žižek.uk

zizek.uk

 

[Clinamenic]

I think the parts of postmodern discourse which are about how people feel a sense of meaninglessness and existential aimlessness, as a result of society (and our self-awareness) evolving too quickly for us to get a proper footing, is where it can be useful though. Stuff like that.

 

[version]

The first thing the znore quote made me think of was Derrida and his obsession with 'the text'.

 

[version]

I think the parts of postmodern discourse which are about how people feel a sense of meaninglessness and existential aimlessness, as a result of society (and our self-awareness) evolving too quickly for us to get a proper footing, is where it can be useful though. Stuff like that.

There was some interesting stuff in the Anderson book about postmodernism being partly characterised by a blurring and overlapping of things which were separate in modernism.

 

[Clinamenic]

There was some interesting stuff in the Anderson book about postmodernism being partly characterised by a blurring of what were separate practices and fields of knowledge during modernism.

Yeah I think that makes sense, and how when these disciplines are blurred, much of the context is complicated and it takes us a while to re-orient ourselves.

 

[version]

Yeah I think that makes sense, and how when these disciplines are blurred, much of the context is complicated and it takes us a while to re-orient ourselves.

You should read the book. It's pretty short and covers a fair bit of ground. There's a cool bit where he compares the relationship between modernism and postmodernism to the renaissance and the reformation.

 

[Clinamenic]

Yeah I can go for that sort of history of ideas, although admittedly lately I've had less of an appetite for most theory-related discourse. But this book seems to be more about history of the theory than theory itself, no?

 

[version]

There's a cool bit where he compares the relationship between modernism and postmodernism to the renaissance and the reformation.

 

[pattycakes_]

Figured it out yet lads?

 

[Clinamenic]

I've already figured it out, I'm chillin