dilys said... Thinking about your question, what is positive in postmodernism, reminds me that it was said that Derrida converted or returned to Christianity. A lecture by him is not without sense, either. Some of the postmodern ways of thinking and delving into texts are, as auxiliary tools, indispensable. However, motive is everything. If the enterprise is driven with the narcissistic demand to demonstrate that nothing is true or beautiful, and that no work of art has any more integrity than the fleeting moi, then something else has become the tool. I believe Gagdad said elsewhere that sincerity is the key, sincerity in light of communicative integrity and acknowledgement of objective truth. Refusal to stake a claim and develop a territory in positive terms violates basic human agency. To risk a pragmatic and testable outcome is missing in "postmodernism" as she shows up in the ivory-colored hard-steel academic office blocks. It reduces to a barely-camouflaged program to muzzle others, to ridicule and demonize their perceptual "gaze," and to have one's own indeterminate feelings "heard." The leftist motivation is, not to inherit and improve, but to take over structures someone else created [Gramsci's long march through the institutions]. I seem to remember there are crabs and snails that hijack others' shells. However, in nature they mostly postpone seizure until the shell is vacant. Squatters, not thieves. The cuckoo also springs to mind. 4/11/2007 08:14:00 AM
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