'Postmodernism' as Existential Threat.

[woops]

i haven't proposed a universal and i'm not upset or called edwin

 

[constant escape]

And arguably the compulsion to attain certainty is the engine by which matter hastens its own organization. But I don't think we are necessarily strapped in to a car heading off a cliff.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

my bad I thought that was your name

@woops

 

[luka]

my naive sense of the philosophical project is a search for a secure platform to kick out from

 

[constant escape]

That is where the optimal psychic state may deviate from the optimal physical state. The former may involve an affirmation and embrace of uncertainty, whereas the latter depends on a drive towards organization that is largely fueled by the compulsion to Know.

 

[constant escape]

So the reconciliation of those two, hypothetically, would be a sort of enlightened embrace of the illusory realm, so to speak. Non-renunciative.

 

[luka]

looks like it"s over for tonight so to reiterate im very happy with the discussion. very very happy. we all did great.
we'll pick it up again next time. padraig, stan, edwin, vim. fantastic perfrmances. very proud of us

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

to @woops then I would say - I internally have some frame of reference on which to base value judgements

some way of deciding for myself what I think to be better, preferable, more meaningful, whatever word you want

that is informed by my particular context - genetics, individual history, impersonal historical context, etc

what I question is the existence of an external universal morality (or truth, or good) existing outside of an individual and their context

I don't absolutely deny it. I question the ability of any finite being to know if it exists or not, or what it is.

 

[luka]

quite strange exiting that kind of of sitiuation too... like pulling out without orgasm

 

[luka]

you relinquish the exicitement wihtout the pay off

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

this would be a less important question if finite beings claiming to know universal truths weren't responsible for so many terrible things

("terrible" being, before someone says it, based on my own noted contextual frame of reference for value judgements)

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

shit, Edmund, not Edwin

you can see how I made that mistake

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I think what I was getting at is that postmodernism (as a condition) seems unable to bring about new ways of living (as you mentioned, modernisms obsession with newness, finding new ways of living re: marxism and etc. being a huge part of that). You can look at the current tumult as a rebellion against this limit, the inability to escape the current moment, in accordance with a rebellion against any specific oppression. (not to undermine the extent of the oppression)

thinking about this from a different angle - this post and one @version made that I can't find (possibly deleted)

a phenomenon I find very interesting is the existence of what you might call postmodern fragments in cultural production predating postmodernism. Las Meninas - possibly my favorite painting ever - is a very famous example. Foucault wrote about it in great depth in The Order of Things, as symbolizing the transition from a Classical to a Modern episteme. Another example is Diderot's This is not a story, a kind of precursor to This Is Not a Pipe (which Foucault also wrote about), and I'm sure there are others.

if we take postmodern thought, at least initially (before it developed a canon, became a career pathway, etc), as a reaction to a condition, what moved Velasquez to insert himself watching us watching him paint the painting into the painting? like anything there's a specific historical context - I'm sure an expert could talk at length about technical elements, relevant trends in European art, the dynamics of the Spanish royal court, etc - but at the same there's Velasquez staring back at you across the centuries so that as Foucault put it "subject and object...reverse their roles infinitely".

what similarities can find in the postmodern condition (or our own post-postmodern condition)? why exactly does postmodernism "fail to bring about new ways of living"? is bringing about new ways of living the purpose of thought? is it the purpose of being (I would say no)? what is the relation between a "condition" and the episteme that arises from that condition?

obviously postmodernism can't simply be undone, no matter how much blame is heaped on a caricature of "postmodernism". once God is dead, it can't be resurrected. so, to paraphrase one of my favorite Camus lines - is there a way to find within postmodernism the means to proceed beyond (whatever that means) postmodernism?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

the relevant Foucault passage - or, one of several - at greater length

We are looking at a picture in which the painter is in turn looking out at us. A mere confrontation, eyes catching one another's glance, direct looks superimposing themselves upon one another as they cross. And yet this slender line of reciprocal visibility embraces a whole complex network of uncertainties, exchanges, and feints. The painter is turning his eyes towards us only in so far as we happen to occupy the same position as his subject. We, the spectators, are an additional factor. Though greeted by that gaze, we are also dismissed by it, replaced by that which was always there before we we were: the model. But inversely the painter's gaze, addressed to the void confronting him outside picture, accepts as many models as there are spectators; in this precise but neutral space, the observer take part in a ceaseless exchange. No gaze is stable, or rather in the neutral furrow of the gaze piercing at a right angle through the canvas, subject and object, the spectator and model, reverse their roles infinitely."

the first time I saw Las Meninas - in my early 20s, in an art history class at a community college - it absolutely blew my fucking mind

that being long before I really know who Foucault even was, tho I think I intuited most of what he says there, tho obv I couldn't have articulated it as well

it is a work of cultural production that continues to blow my mind, to haunt me anew every time I like at it

it gives me a similar feeling to the one I get staring intently at a Rothko, tho I guess abstract expressionism is more on the modern/postmodern cusp than "postmodernism" proper

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

is there a way to find within postmodernism the means to proceed beyond (whatever that means) postmodernism?

this is also I guess a fancier way of asking if there's a way to get past the relativism/universalism problem

 

[linebaugh]

if we take postmodern thought, at least initially (before it developed a canon, became a career pathway, etc), as a reaction to a condition, what moved Velasquez to insert himself watching us watching him paint the painting into the painting? like anything there's a specific historical context - I'm sure an expert could talk at length about technical elements, relevant trends in European art, the dynamics of the Spanish royal court, etc - but at the same there's Velasquez staring back at you across the centuries so that as Foucault put it "subject and object...reverse their roles infinitely".

Haven't read too much of Order of Things, the argument is that the switch from the classical to modern regime saw the episteme of individual man? Similar arguments put for Discipline and Punish, transitions from the classical disciplinary units of the King vs. The People to a diffuse system that creates individual dossiers. Meninas could be Velasquez's attempt at taking charge of his own individuation

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

the switch from the classical to modern regime saw the episteme of individual man?

basically yeah, which heads towards why he picked Las Meninas to symbolize that switch in "discontinuities" in European thought

but I'm not super concerned with Foucault's reading tho so much as postmodernism as response to a condition

i.e. what does it say about that condition when we can find traces of it in works predating "postmodernism" by hundreds of years

what were Velasquez, Diderot, etc responding to in their own conditions

or - if postmodernism fails to bring about new ways of living, how did prior conditions succeed in bringing about new ways of living?

not that I have the answers to any of these questions - if they have answers - just seeking a different way into the topic

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

not that Foucault's reading is uninteresting, but it's the one you intuitively arrive at (or its basic thrust) anyway, as mentioned

it's more of a happy coincidence that it dovetails with the topic here

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

if "the current tumult is a rebellion against...the inability to escape the current moment"

then what is a productive way to seek to "escape the current moment"?

 

[linebaugh]

i.e. what does it say about that condition when we can find traces of it in works predating "postmodernism" by hundreds of years

what were Velasquez, Diderot, etc responding to in their own conditions

or - if postmodernism fails to bring about new ways of living, how did prior conditions succeed in bringing about new ways of living?

I was originally thinking post modernism as Jameson's 'cultural logic of late capital,' so social atomization, low point of collective power, high point of labor alienation, all consuming nature of the market and etc. Deleuze is always talking, in ways I haven't completely parsed through yet, that the era were in was always just on the horizon, always pushed back and resisted against by previous societies. Relevant bit here in the Baudrillard article vimothy posted the other day:

The “end of history” thesis was a triumphant one because it saw no available political justifications except for liberal democracy. Baudrillard cautioned, however, that the political dissolution of the East, because it came about for internal reasons, presaged a period of further destabilization rather than the consolidation of liberal democracy. Democratic values had not suddenly become triumphant, for there had been no new battle or victory to make them “held dear and dearly bought.”13 The seeming inevitability of democratic values was instead a sign of their cheapness, their liquid and easy availability—a frenzy of democratic speculation that foretold an eventual crash.

I've tried to put this together eloquently but I cant. But there is a sense that the way we are living now is the easiest way to run a state, and its predicated on an atomized population (.... which in turns necessitates vast information technologies, the proliferation of images and etc... then the subsuming of social/cultural productive capacity from material action by seemingly self automated image production... Big Other... ) maybe Velasquez and Diderot sensed that.