Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 17:17:16 -0800 Subject: Re: PMC: What is Postmodernism: A Demand >> Lois Shawver wrote: > > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Hugh: > I am in substantial agreement with this post, and offer below a quote > from a scientific book which seems relevant. > > In modern laboratories, human subjects are instrumented for brain > activity while they sleep and dream. Their waking narratives of dreams are then correlated with electrical activity recorded by the instruments. > > Like the heart, the brain, in a sense never "rests". It's neurons > fire throughout dreaming or dreamless sleep. > > There are trillions of possible "states" of the brain-mind-nervous > system. No one can visualize trillions, but I think of the on-off > "state" of of the the lights inside/outside of all the rooms of all the > cities. The brain is like a smoldering brushpile - activity of random firings has a potential to burst into the flame of psychosis. As part of a description of a dream sequence: "...the brain is concocting a story to link the random firings of the brain's neurons, in this case not to make sense of images, *but to create images to make sense of emotions*" This, in the language of images, not words, is an attempt of the sleeping, dreaming brain to present "unpresentable" emotions. On waking the dreamer described the images. I don't think such information was available to Lyotard when he wrote PMC, or years before when he was writing "Le Differend". Whether "true" or not, it is useful as a metaphor for trying to understand the unpresentable. Regards, Hugh Bone -AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT--AT- !i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i!i! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > In other words, I believe that he is saying that the > > postmodern is not concerned with that which is forever > > unpresentable (as in pure thought thinking about itself) > > but rather that the postmodern invents new and creative > > ways to uncover what has been previously unpresentable. > > That is why he says (p.79) that "Postmodernism thus > > understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent > > state..." In other words, postmodernism takes an > > undefined context and discovers new ways to make sense of > > it. Once it is made sense of, then this sense can be > > institutionalized through consensus and good taste. In > > this way, we can become "witnesses to the unpresentable." > > (p.82). > > > > ..Lois Shawver
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