Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 17:17:16 -0800
From: hugh bone <hughbone-AT-worldnet.att.net>
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