File spoon-archives/bataille.archive/bataille_1999/bataille.9904, message 35


From: "jfoster" <borealis-AT-mail.wellsgray.net>
Subject: How to Speak POMO
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1999 12:44:53 -0700


> HOW TO SPEAK AND WRITE POSTMODERN
>
> by Stephen Katz, Associate Professor, Sociology, Trent University,
> Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.
>
> Postmodernism has been the buzzword in academia for the last decade.
> Books, journal articles, conference themes and university courses have
> resounded to the debates about postmodernism that focus on the
> uniqueness of our times, where computerization, the global economy and
> the media have irrevocably transformed all forms of social engagement.

> As a professor of sociology who teaches about culture, I include
> myself in this environment. Indeed, I have a great interest in
> postmodernism both as an intellectual movement and as a practical
> problem. In my experience there seems to be a gulf between those who
> see the postmodern turn as a neo-conservative reupholstering of the
> same old corporate trappings, and those who see it as a long overdue
> break with modernist doctrines in education, aesthetics and politics.
> Of course there are all kinds of positions in between, depending upon


> However, I think the real gulf is not so much positional as
> linguistic. Posture can be as important as politics when it comes to
> the intelligentsia. In other words, it may be less important whether
> or not you like postmodernism than whether or not you can speak and
> write postmodernism. Perhaps you would like to join in conversation
> with your local mandarins of cultural theory and all-purpose deep
> thinking, but you don't know what to say. Or, when you do contribute
> something you consider relevant, even insightful, you get ignored or
> looked at with pity. Here is a quick guide, then, to speaking and
> writing postmodern.
>
> First, you need to remember that plainly expressed language is out of
> the question. It is too realist, modernist and obvious. Postmodern
> language requires that one uses play, parody and indeterminacy as
> critical techniques to point this out. Often this is quite a difficult
> requirement, so obscurity is a well-acknowledged substitute. For
> example, let's imagine you want to say something like, "We should
> listen to the views of people outside of Western society in order to
> learn about the cultural biases that affect us". This is honest but
> dull. Take the word "views". Postmodernspeak would change that to
> "voices", or better, "vocalities", or even better, "multivocalities".
> Add an adjective like "intertextual", and you're covered. "People
> outside" is also too plain. How about "postcolonial others"? To speak
> postmodern properly one must master a bevy of biases besides the
> familiar racism, sexism, ageism, etc.

> For example, phallogocentricism (male-centredness combined with
> rationalistic forms of binary logic). Finally "affect us" sounds like
> plaid pajamas. Use more obscure verbs and phrases, like "mediate our
> identities". So, the final statement should say, "We should listen to
> the intertextual, multivocalities of postcolonial others outside of
> Western culture in order to learn about the phallogocentric biases
> that mediate our identities". Now you're talking postmodern!

> Sometimes you might be in a hurry and won't have the time to muster
> even the minimum number of postmodern synonyms and neologisms needed
> to avoid public disgrace. Remember, saying the wrong thing is
> acceptable if you say it the right way. This brings me to a second
> important strategy in speaking postmodern, which is to use as many
> suffixes, prefixes, hyphens, slashes, underlinings and anything else
> your computer (an absolute must to write postmodern) can dish out. You
> can make a quick reference chart to avoid time delays. Make three
> columns. In column A put your prefixes; post-, hyper-, pre-, de-,
> dis-, re-, ex-, and counter-. In column B go your suffixes and related
> endings; -ism, -itis, -iality, -ation, -itivity, and -tricity. In
> column C add a series of well-respected names that make for impressive
> adjectives or schools of thought, for example, Barthes (Barthesian),
> Foucault (Foucauldian, Foucauldianism), Derrida (Derridean,
> Derrideanism).

> Now for the test. You want to say or write something like,
> "Contemporary buildings are alienating". This is a good thought, but,
> of course, a non-starter. You wouldn't even get offered a second round
> of crackers and cheese at a conference reception with such a line. In
> fact, after saying this, you might get asked to stay and clean up the
> crackers and cheese after the reception. Go to your three columns.
> First, the prefix. Pre- is useful, as is post-, or several prefixes at
> once is terrific. Rather than "contemporary buildings", be creative.
> "The Pre/post/spacialities of counter-architectural
> hyper-contemporaneity" is promising. You would have to drop the weak
> and dated term "alienating" with some well suffixed words from column
> B. How about "antisociality", or be more postmodern and introduce
> ambiguity with the linked phrase, "antisociality/seductivity".
>
> Now, go to column C and grab a few names whose work everyone will
> agree is important and hardly anyone has had the time or the
> inclination to read. Continental European theorists are best when in
> doubt. I recommend the sociologist Jean Baudrillard since he has
> written a great deal of difficult material about postmodern space.
> Don't forget to make some mention of gender. Finally, add a few
> smoothing out words to tie the whole garbled mess together and don't
> forget to pack in the hyphens, slashes and parentheses. What do you
> get? "Pre/post/spacialities of counter-architectural
> hyper-contemporaneity (re)commits us to an ambivalent recurrentiality
> of antisociality/seductivity, one enunciated in a
> de/gendered-Baudrillardian discourse of granulated subjectivity". You
> should be able to hear a postindustrial pin drop on the retrocultural
> floor.
>
> At some point someone may actually ask you what you're talking about.
> This risk faces all those who would speak postmodern and must be
> carefully avoided. You must always give the questioner the impression
> that they have missed the point, and so send another verbose salvo of
> postmodernspeak in their direction as a "simplification" or
> "clarification" of your original statement. If that doesn't work, you
> might be left with the terribly modernist thought of, "I don't know".
> Don't worry, just say, "The instability of your question leaves me
> with several contradictorily layered responses whose interconnectivity
> cannot express the logocentric coherency you seek. I can only say that
> reality is more uneven and its (mis)representations more untrustworthy
> than we have time here to explore". Any more questions? No, then pass
> the cheese and crackers.

Superficial eloquence!!! No one but egg heads talk like this let alone
write like this. What ever happened to oatmeal porridge? Isn't that the
remedy for falling hair? Well that is it "the fall". We egg heads are
more worried about our follicles than about the world in general and its
phenomena.

"This 'not going along with' the thesis of the material world and of
every transcendent world is called epoch, refraining."

Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: prolegomena. trans. T.
Kisiel.

"Authenticity here must be understood in the literal sense of 'having
itself for its own in intimacy with itself'."

"All fleeing is grounded in fearing. But not every falling back before
something is necessarily also already a fleeing and so a being afraid."
MH, Hist. of the Concept.



   

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