From: Jon Rubin <j_rubin-AT-hotmail.com> Subject: Re: modernity/post-modernity Date: Thu, 08 Oct 1998 08:20:27 PDT One question . What point in the history is the begining of the Post Modernity?" "In a sense, everything we attribute to an age was already present in the preceding age ... These ... ages ... should not be interpreted as an evolution, or as structures separated by signifying breaks. They are assemblages enveloping different Machines, or different relations to the Machine." -Deleuze & Guattari, "Of the Refrain", A Thousand Plateaus 30th September, 1784: Konigsberg in Prussia. "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!" Although I agree totally with the quote Unleash cites I think Lyotard makes an interesting point about this which can be thought of in DnG terms. How after all are we to characterise "modernity"? which assemblage (for there is a multiplicity) should we start with? Lyotards point is that post-modernity begins with the realisation of the failure of the "project of modernity" but that this failure is (practically) co-temporaneous with its start. (_What is Enlightenment_, 1784; the Terror 1892ish) sapere aude! to me is the most deterritorialised/ing component of the Enlightenment-assemblage - not least because it is on the most deterritorialsed componenet that reterritorialisations take place; it is simultaneously pass-word out of unpragmatic-mysticism (det) and order-word into power/knowledge apparatuses (ret). post-modernity is a reterrotorialising assemblage but it functions against both tendencies of the sapere aude! component. Jon ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
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