XPost: alt.postmodern
From: Alienthe@hotmail.com
Kevin Calder wrote:
> In message <402FF009.9000902@hotmail.com>, Alienthe
> writes
>> Kevin Calder wrote:
>
>
>> I hope to get broadband soon; that might increase my frequency...
>
> Broadband is great! Pr0n for everyone!
Rah! Rah! Rah! And a new machine too. Bliss.
>
>
>>>>> Sokal clearly had a pretty pomo sense of humor, wouldn't you say?
>>>>
>
>>>> I am not sure if it is late POMO or early Post-POMO. Still I
>>>> would agree there is something here. If we go sufficiently
>>>> retro will we reach plain modernism?
>>>
>>> I'm not sure if that's how it works, or even if it works at all. It
>>
>> I thought that was one of the very few things one could never say
>> in a POMO world. Shurely workage would be subject to interpretation?
>
> &
>
>>> wouldn't help us much if it did though, Modernism is every bit as
>>> slippery, if not more, than pomoism, IMHO.
>>
>> After POMO made itself known there has been less talk of Modernism.
>> Is there for instance a newsgroup called alt.modernism?
>
> Im not sure that there would have been even if the Internet had existed
> in the 1920's. The impression I get from reading period discussions of
> High Modernism is that it was even less well understood than pomoism. T.
Perhaps I am being too sceptical here but could it not be less well
understood at the time because people spent more time doing things
rather than talking about the doing of things?
> S. Eliot et al have all kinds of ideas that they seem to have difficulty
> actually putting down on paper, so you get lots of talk of things like
> the "Mythical Method", but im not sure if anyone actually settles on a
> stable definition. Pomoism, perhaps by virtue of its sheer verbosity,
> does IMHO seem to settle a little bit more distinctly. I mean this in
> the sense that as an undergraduate I found that summary texts on
> Modernism seemed to have less definite content than the ones on pomoism
> (!).
Well, then again an era is rarely understood in its own time; noone
surely called their own era classical, medieval, baroque etc? I am
therefore a bit sceptical when people declare this or that current
event as being POMO, such as for instance a POMO marriage. How long
did it take to name past eras? And how long then until we determine
what is now called modernism into something that will settle in the
history books?
> That said, many more recent commentaries maintain that pomoism does not
> constitute a significant break from the project of Modernity, and the
> whole thing is still very much a debate in progress.
Perhaps then we have to wait until we get it all at a distance
and get to analyse the woods rather than single trees.
> Also, any question dealing with historical outlooks and postmodernism
> will run into all kinds of problems associated with the various forms of
> historicism attached to the term.
>
> Which is why I say I am not sure if it "works" at all :)
Agreed; only time will tell.
> And yes, in sufficiently sceptical "world", perhaps like some flavour of
> pomo one, "workage" is very probably subject to interpretation.
>
>>>>> And pomoism is well known for validating humour, parody and pastiche,
>
>>>> It does?
>
>>> Maybe not well known then.
>>> However, if you were to ask me (and I should know) to pick out, from
>
>> Just curious here, just how should you know?
>
> Lol.
>
> Good question.
>
> I was mostly joking.
>
> But a portion of my honours work was concerning 'narrative forms in
> contemporary poetry' which is really just a sly way of titling an essay
> on pomoish stuff.
>
> You would probably be pleased to learn that there wasn't very much open
> talk of pomoism during my whole degree, and that the course for which I
> produced the above mentioned essay had 3 other students in it.
Isn't the word "narrative" a giveaway that a POMO plot is brewing?
> I have to wonder sometimes where the leftist-cultural
> relativist-pomoistic conspiracy that rules non scientific departments in
> higher education in the UK is actually taking place.
I thought the whole conspiracy was out in the open. At one place of
higher eucation the chancellor asked for (paraphrased) "more Marks
and Spencer and less Marx and Engels", and he was not thinking of
Groucho either.
>>> I realise that by admitting that I think that some poetry is funny
>>> that I run the risk of looking like the English teacher that laughs
>>> at the jokes in Shakespeare productions when on school outings to
>>> the theatre, but... ah well...
>>
>> Ah, that kind of humour.
>
> See! I knew you'd make fun of me!
Actually I wasn't, it is just that British humour can get
excessively subtle. It is easier to handle Ben Elton at
full tilt.
>> I have just finished the Tempest and a
>> number of comments on it and it seems to be full of people
>> congratulating themselves with the cleverness in determining the
>> alleged jokes. The word "natural" appears to be a trigger word
>> to start laughing.
>
> Hrm I don't remember laughing much while reading the Tempest to be quite
> honest. Ah well, humour at least is pretty relative isn't it?
It certainly is and the kinds of humour appreciated as well
as the humour produced around the world differ much too. To
take one extreme: have you heard of Finnish humour? (This one
is sure to shake out any Finnish lurkers around here).
>> It is amazing how the fun evaporates under scrutiny.
>
> Well, stop scrutinising then! Take back the fun!
I do. And compensate with low brow humour too.
>>>> I can agree that humor has these qualities and more but as
>>>> for POMO I am not sure. WmG, to bring this writhing thread
>>>> briefly close to things cyberriffic,
>>>
>>> We are on topic now? Crap.
>>
>> Quoting Keanu Reeves: Whoa!
>
> Whoa there's a bomb in the matrix dude!
>
> Seriously though. Seen as how we are on this xposting excursion I'd
> like to invite the inhabitants of alt.pomo to comment on William Gibson,
> and the produce of the ""cyberpunk movement"", and perhaps science
> fiction in general. Pomoism seems to come up periodically in alt.cp,
Judging by the non-response I'd say we have them stunned already
and that was even before the inverted commas started multiplying.
> not least perhaps because ""cyberpunk"" literature comes up occasionally
> in scholarly discussions of pomoism. This is not necessarily to say
> that cyberpunk texts are postmodern, but rather that some of the threads
> in pomo literary criticism seem sympathetic to some of the features of
> said texts. IMHO this has something to do with the fact that cp is a
> pulped up jumbling of 'beat' stuff, noir detective fiction, bleak,
[continued in next message]
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
