Post Modernism
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Joey D
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I admittedly have no idea what postmodernism is, so as @Dotini suggested, I did some research.
It was a whole bunch of ideas, names, and concepts that made little sense to me. Then I got to the part about literature on Wikipedia. Apparently, The Crying of Lot 49 is a postmodern book. The only thing I remember about it was that I hated it so much that it caused me to switch my major in college from English to Archaeology.
At least Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep was on there, which I actually kind of like but that's mainly because it's the basis for Blade Runner - one of my all-time favorite movies.
Venturing on to art, I found that the Spiral Jetty here in Utah is considered postmodern. If you don't know what that is, it's a bunch of rocks in the middle of nowhere on the shore of the most foul smelling lake and surrounded by hippies covering themselves in mud while getting covered in flies. I went to it once, it's probably the worst thing in Utah even trumping our outdated liquor laws and the fact that I can't order a rare hamburger because it's illegal.
Finally, I got to music. It was a long list of people I had no idea who they were, but Michael Jackson was on there and for some reason, the Talking Heads - which I thought was weird because I figured they were just odd because it was the 80's.
After some research, I still don't know what post-modernism is, but I do know it's responsible for changing my major, one of my favorite movies of all time, the worst thing about where I live, and Michael Jackson.
It was a whole bunch of ideas, names, and concepts that made little sense to me. Then I got to the part about literature on Wikipedia. Apparently, The Crying of Lot 49 is a postmodern book. The only thing I remember about it was that I hated it so much that it caused me to switch my major in college from English to Archaeology.
At least Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep was on there, which I actually kind of like but that's mainly because it's the basis for Blade Runner - one of my all-time favorite movies.
Venturing on to art, I found that the Spiral Jetty here in Utah is considered postmodern. If you don't know what that is, it's a bunch of rocks in the middle of nowhere on the shore of the most foul smelling lake and surrounded by hippies covering themselves in mud while getting covered in flies. I went to it once, it's probably the worst thing in Utah even trumping our outdated liquor laws and the fact that I can't order a rare hamburger because it's illegal.
Finally, I got to music. It was a long list of people I had no idea who they were, but Michael Jackson was on there and for some reason, the Talking Heads - which I thought was weird because I figured they were just odd because it was the 80's.
After some research, I still don't know what post-modernism is, but I do know it's responsible for changing my major, one of my favorite movies of all time, the worst thing about where I live, and Michael Jackson.
- 28,805
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- TexRex72
Okay...so, I'm a big Talking Heads fan. I'm deeply offended (not really) by the notion that they were weird (they were), and understand fully (well, a little bit) that what everyone else (everyone else) considers weird (avant-garde) is a propensity to challenge musical norms (top 40) by deftly weaving (sometimes not so deftly) in themes from other musical genres and traditional music, be it spiritual or artistic expression, from other cultures around the globe (or the non-tortoise side for any flat-earthers reading this).
But seriously...Remain In Light is all you really need to know. Is it postmodern? I don't have a 🤬 clue. I call it new wave.
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- Neomone
Everyone knows Marxism/communism is a failed ideology and economic system. Yet when it changes its name to postmodernism, for some it's suddenly fashionable again.
If you want it, go right ahead. But you can't blame me for your decision.
Again, you're making inflammatory statements that are obviously false. Communism is not post-modernism. Communism is communism.
But let's see if we can get something reasonable out of that statement. Communism (at least the old style USSR communism that tends to get held up as the boogeyman) certainly shows a lot of post-modernist style in it's politics. But then again, this whole thread largely came about because of the post-modernism within current US democracy, so that's not exactly something to hold against it. Pretty much all modern politics, regardless of the system, spends a lot of time putting out propaganda to alter their image with disregard for actual facts.
Modern economic systems as a whole could be argued to be somewhat post-modern in the sense that they're based on a collective acceptance that an arbitrary token of some kind has real value. But that's simply how currencies that don't have hard backing work. To call assigning something an arbitrary value based on convenience post-modernism is I think stretching the definition beyond usefulness.
I don't think communism or capitalism are particularly post-modern in any sense; these are just methods of trying to organise a society to achieve certain goals. Ultimately, capitalism values the self over all others and communism values the group. Neither extreme is likely to give a particularly good outcome as extremes rarely do. But these are just people trying to organise themselves and others in useful ways given their situation. There's nothing particularly post-modern about that.
It's interesting that you label communism as a failed ideology and economic system. Early communist societies didn't do super well, but neither did early capitalist societies. Those that survived are the ones that learned from the past and adapted. There aren't very many communist countries left, probably largely in part due to the overwhelming military force that was directed against them, but those that do survive don't seem to be as terrible as people would make out.
I would have been interested to see how communism could have developed if a significant number of countries had continued to use and adapt the system without having to also face military intervention.
Then again, it's not like we have many true capitalist democracies either. The current group of "democracies" are very obviously ruled by a small elite, generally because of the tremendous power that their wealth allows them to exert. That's the entire reason Trump was elected, because people wanted him to overthrow the system that clearly blocked the will of the people from being enacted (unfortunate that he turned out to be just another part of the same system).
And that's why so many people hated Hillary, because the simple fact that she was the democratic candidate was ample proof that the powers-that-be meddle extensively in the process. Hillary was the candidate because it was her turn, not because she was the best democratic-affiliated politician in the entire country.
(If it's not clear, I dislike both of them.)
Arguably the least post-modern societies are monarchies like Saudi Arabia. At least you get what it says on the tin.
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- Simcoeace
Well - to try & shed some light: one of the confusing things about postmodernism is that the term is used to describe a variety of quite different, even contradictory attitudes. The two most important thinkers of the first generation of (French) postmodernist philosophers were Michel Foucault & Jean-Francois Lyotard, both born in the 1920's. There was nothing trivial, or ironic about their writing:
"Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a post-structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels, preferring to present his thought as a critical history of modernity."
But Foucault's deconstruction of modernity opened a pandora's box of consequences which ultimately led to the glorification of relativism & subjectivity which is one important aspect of postmodernism.
In literature, Samuel Beckett is often considered the proto-postmodernist. His most famous play "Waiting For Godot" (1949) explores the essential meaninglessness of life - a theme that is central to much later postmodernist literature. If you haven't read it, I would recommend Joseph Heller's "Catch 22" - another great example of a postmodern attitude, quite different in style from Beckett, but exploring similar themes of meaninglessness in an absurd world & using shifting points of view & a disjointed timeline. The subsequent TV series MASH was kind of postmodernism with a laugh track for popular consumption. Other writers, like Umberto Eco, John Fowles, Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas Pynchon & many others have used similar, shifting narrative points of view, non-linear timelines & the blurring of reality & fiction in their work.
Post modernism in movies? How about Robert Altman? MASH, MaCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Nashville. But Quentin Tarantino has to represent the obvious, final triumph of postmodernism in cinema: "artworks ... entirely vacuous, .. entirely stripped of any politics, metaphysics or moral interest." And he does it all while at the same time self-consciously paying homage to the great movie auteurs of the past.
When it comes to art, I would really question calling Robert Smithson's work postmodern. He was a very serious, driven young man (he died at the age of 34). There's nothing "ironic", or referential about his art. I think his work stands as the "end-game" of modern art - taking modernist theory to it's ultimate point of deconstruction: environmental, minimalist art that could not be compromised by being bought & sold in a gallery. In this sense, it is the complete opposite of an a postmodernist artist like Andy Warhol whose ironic, referential art was designed to be shallow, merchandisable & "popular". It doesn't really make any sense to lump Robert Smithson together with Warhol.
Pop music? Well the whole thing is sort of postmodern, in a mostly unsophisticated way. I can't see why anyone would consider Michael Jackson "postmodern". His music is earnest, overwrought, emotional & without a trace of ironic detachment. Talking Heads, yes. David Bowie. Arcade Fire? Beirut? I'm not that up on what's new, but I'm sure there are plenty of self-consciously referential & ironic young bands.
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- photonrider
Would you say that modern and post-modern readers are having a problem with the meta-modernism that Twitter brings?
Quite often, there are so many layers to communication, that post-modernism has led to a tower of babble - and maybe useless from a utilitarian viewpoint even to the most astute meta-modernist.
One man's animal is another man's meat, no?
👍
Everyone knows Marxism/communism is a failed ideology and economic system. Yet when it changes its name to postmodernism, for some it's suddenly fashionable again.
If you want it, go right ahead. But you can't blame me for your decision.
That's jordan petersons interpretation. He says marxism is about power struggle and post modernism is about power struggle so post modernism is marxism with a new name. He also claims this is due to marxism not being deemzd ok by society at that time. While when post modernism started there where quite a few marxist philosophers.
Marxism and post modernism goes further then a power struggle they're not the same.
Jordan peterson isn't as honest as he makes us out to believe he is.
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Bilderbergers meet to discuss "post-truth" and other pressing global issues.
JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images
I guess we can look forward to the usual swarm of conspiracy posts around what appears to be a perfectly sensible agenda. If only governments were taking as much account of "post-truth" effects as big businesses sensibly are. Except America of course, their leadership is arguably defining that post-truth appeal to emotion over fact.
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The capacity of some to use entirely too many words to say absolutely nothing--often in response to subject matter that it doesn't actually address (beyond nothing being said, of course)--is fascinating, but I've been wondering for a while now if it might actually fall under the heading of "postmodernism".
Now...I'm given to understand that an aspect of postmodern thinking is a distrust of the sort of grand theories that I've frequently seen touched upon in the aforementioned ramblings, so perhaps it doesn't, but if it doesn't, how might it be categorized? Is it the opposite? What is the opposite? I'm also given to understand that among many criticisms of postmodernism is the assertion that it promotes obscurantism ("the practice of deliberately presenting information in an imprecise and recondite manner, often designed to forestall further inquiry and understanding"), and that's also the sort of thing I've observed a great deal of in such postings.
To put it simply...I'm confused.
Now...I'm given to understand that an aspect of postmodern thinking is a distrust of the sort of grand theories that I've frequently seen touched upon in the aforementioned ramblings, so perhaps it doesn't, but if it doesn't, how might it be categorized? Is it the opposite? What is the opposite? I'm also given to understand that among many criticisms of postmodernism is the assertion that it promotes obscurantism ("the practice of deliberately presenting information in an imprecise and recondite manner, often designed to forestall further inquiry and understanding"), and that's also the sort of thing I've observed a great deal of in such postings.
To put it simply...I'm confused.
Dotini
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Now we are saved. Rightfully, the highest power determines the highest truth.
Washington (AFP) - Technology firms and academics have joined together to launch a "deepfake challenge" to improve tools to detect videos and other media manipulated by artificial intelligence.
The initiative announced Thursday includes $10 million from Facebook and aims to curb what is seen as a major threat to the integrity of online information.
The effort is being supported by Microsoft and the industry-backed Partnership on AI and includes academics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, University of Oxford, University of California-Berkeley, University of Maryland and University at Albany.
It represents a broad effort to combat the dissemination of manipulated video or audio as part of a misinformation campaign.
"The goal of the challenge is to produce technology that everyone can use to better detect when AI has been used to alter a video in order to mislead the viewer," said Facebook chief technical officer Mike Schroepfer.
Schroepfer said deepfake techniques, which present realistic AI-generated videos of people doing and saying fictional things, "have significant implications for determining the legitimacy of information presented online. Yet the industry doesn't have a great data set or benchmark for detecting them."
The challenge is the first project of a committee on AI and media integrity created by the Partnership on AI, a group whose mission is to promote beneficial uses of artificial intelligence and is backed by Apple, Amazon, IBM and other tech firms and non-governmental organizations.
Terah Lyons, executive director of the Partnership, said the new project is part of an effort to stem AI-generated fakes, which "have significant, global implications for the legitimacy of information online, the quality of public discourse, the safeguarding of human rights and civil liberties, and the health of democratic institutions."
https://news.yahoo.com/deepfake-challenge-aims-tools-fight-manipulation-213239657.html
Dotini
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Nowhere is this more true than in the world of politics. Please do not open the spoiler, because it will reveal a video in which two opposing views of political reality are revealed, and almost everybody viewing it could become emotionally threatened. I have taken a pledge to not deliberately provoke adverse emotional responses (it is my responsibility to protect you from being offended), and I want to make clear that by opening the spoiler, you are releasing me in this instance from my pledge.
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If this abstract is anything to go by, what he finds interesting is that Hicks is calling out leftists for hypocrisy. "Intellectual history with a polemical twist"... sounds riveting if you're a fan of vanity-published objectivism.
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- Ridley-X4
I think post-modernism is both a legitimate concept but also a term that gets abused by people (both ostensibly in praise of it, and in condemnation) who don't know what it means. I think it's too complex, and much like most of what I understand of philosophy (and philosophers), it seems like something made up by people with too much time on their hands, in a vain attempt to sort out the chaos demonstrated by human behavior on a broader scale.
I often don't understand philosophy, and it's this confusion that makes me dislike it. It just seems like a bunch of people trying to find the key to how humanity works. May as well be searching for Atlantis, or the Akashic Records.
I often don't understand philosophy, and it's this confusion that makes me dislike it. It just seems like a bunch of people trying to find the key to how humanity works. May as well be searching for Atlantis, or the Akashic Records.
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- Simcoeace
I earlier posted a quote about Foucault which succinctly summarizes the important aspect of post-modernism:
Pre Post-Modernist thinking tended to present "truth" as an absolute, ignoring the social constructs & power structure that set the ground rules. The serious part of post-modernism was the attempt to analyze & deconstruct those social constructs & power structures to show how they dictated what was accepted as "truth". It's a pretty fundamental & important shift in understanding about human thought & activity. Unfortunately - & I suppose inevitably - the whole exercise has delved into a bit of free-for-all.
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"All I have done...is dominated by the thought of a virus, what could be called a parasitology, a virology...the virus is in part a parasite that destroys, that introduces disorder into communication. Even from the biological standpoint, this is what happens with a virus; it derails a mechanism of the communicational type, it's coding and decoding. On the other hand, it is something that is neither living nor non-living; the virus is not a microbe. And if you follow these two threads, that of a parasite that disrupts destination from the communicative point of view—disrupting writing, inscription, and the coding decoding of inscription—and which on the other hand is neither alive nor dead, you have the matrix of all I have done since I began writing." - Jacques Derrida.
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Boring boring boring.
Let's talk about the real post-modernism, particularly it's finest Maestro - Ricardo Bofill.
From Robert Venturi:
Let's talk about the real post-modernism, particularly it's finest Maestro - Ricardo Bofill.
From Robert Venturi:
- 6,047
- Simcoeace
I would think that perhaps the most obvious example of Post-Modern architecture would be Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao Museum.
But ... great examples of Modernist architecture can be equally stunning. Like I.M. Pei's beautiful East Wing extension to the National Gallery in Washington
... or Richard Meier's High Museum in Atlanta.
But ... great examples of Modernist architecture can be equally stunning. Like I.M. Pei's beautiful East Wing extension to the National Gallery in Washington
... or Richard Meier's High Museum in Atlanta.
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I wouldn't really categorize what Gehry does as post-modernism. It is technically "post" in the sense of after-modern, but it's not in the intellectual spirit of that actual movement. It's more deconstructivism. Frank Lloyd Wright took cues from modernism, but he kind of charted his own course - he was far less concerned about building-as-machine versus the true modernists like Mies Van Der Rohe or Le Corbusier. Orthodox modernism's (I'd call it Internationalism) ultimate form was the glass skyscraper whereas the strain of modernism that FLW pioneered ultimately became suburbia - the glass box vs the ranch house.
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- Simcoeace
I don't know. Frank Lloyd Wright is such an individualist it's hard to know how to classify some of his work. I'ver never visited the SC Johnson building, although I am in Wisconsin twice a year & pass by Racine. It looks pretty amazing.
I think Gehry is the ultimate Post-Modernist ... in a way. As we've discussed before in this thread, it's really hard to pin down what exactly Post-Modernism is, as it takes on so many different personas. I have to say, I think Gehry's transformation of the Art Gallery of Ontario is a bit of a disaster.
