U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: Defining "post-modernism" -- WAS--- First define "post-modern"pho

Re: Defining "post-modernism" -- WAS--- First define "post-modern"photography, dammit



Please excuse my unqualified conclusions and suggestions. And I meant Bahktin and Derrida......

Bob


On Nov 19, 2007, at 9:04 AM, Bob and Carla wrote:

for clarification....the post-structural movement that resulted from post-modernism had some very interesting things done by Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco's semiotics....then opening into what is populary referred to as "deconstructionist" field that included Paul DeMann, Noam Chomsky and the French deconstructionists including Michael Baktihn.

My issue with deconstruction is the factor we are addressing here. Reinterpretation of ideas by people outside of the original experience. For example, I've seen comments like this, "T.S. Eliot cannot be taken for his stated interests or intentions because his post-Fruedian expatriation made him pathologically incapable to understand his own thoughts and intentions. Therefore, we will take words as symbols and re-analyze his art. and determine for ourselves what he was saying." For my money, this sounds like neo- Maoist re-education.

Bob


On Nov 19, 2007, at 8:32 AM, Bob and Carla wrote:

I think that this conclusion is pointing more towards post- structural theory and criticism.....which as much followed postmodernism (re-inventing history, etc.)

Bob


On Nov 19, 2007, at 8:14 AM, Katharine Thayer wrote:

On Nov 18, 2007, at 8:33 PM, Don Sweet wrote:

Isn't it more plausible that the rise of PM ideas has directly contributed
to the recent success of war rhetoric ......

I think you're onto something here. Several years ago I read a well-written and well-thought book by a Bosnian academic who had survived the siege of Sarajevo and argued rather persuasively that postmodern thought and literature was in large part responsible for the Bosnian war.

PM education, I believe, also largely responsible for the inability of many on this list to consider issues from a scientific viewpoint, leading to a tendency to misperceive differing observation as personal attack, or to accept anecdote, or even entirely unsubstantiated opinion, as proof. (To bring this back somewhat in range of topic.)
kt