Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 01:21:41 -0700
From: Lois Shawver <rathbone-AT-california.com>
Subject: Re: methodology and the differend


Chris,

How do you see postmodernism as destroying the sense of rootedness?  The
aboriginals you talk about are rooted by their mythology.  You see
postmodernism and pulling up those ancient roots? 
Most people, I think, who have studied these things would be putting it
in a little different terms.  They would say that the aboriginals are a
pre-modern people, and that Europe once knew such a culture.  But the
dawn of modernism (science and stuff like that) pulled up those ancient
roots and left us without the traditional foundation in the
mythopoetic.  

Then, with modernism and the death of God and gods.  In its place we had
"faith in the Enlightenment dreams," dreams of making a better future
for ourselves though science and  the scientific, dreams of liberating
humankind, of restoring justice to the disadvantaged.  This dream, the
dream of science reigned for a couple of hundred years. But it was not
so beautiful.  There were the wars and the prison camps, the atom bombs. 

In modernity everyone had an answer, but underneath it all there emerged
a giant doubt.  And this doubt bred postmodern.  Postmodernism, our new
incredulity towards all those glorious metanarratives that had pretended
to show us the way.

And now, the challenge of postmodernism is how to go on, where to turn
and what to do.  What can we do if we no longer believe in the people
who lead us?  How can we find our way?

We can, Lyotard says (or so I read him) become pagans.  We can learn to
listen to pagan voices (it's the game of the just) and we can learn to
speak beyond the evidence, beyond the criteria, and so that someone,
those who will engage in our paralogy, might be able to hear.

..Lois Shawver

q4702564-AT-topaz.cqu.edu.au wrote:
> 
> Lois
> 
> I found your note on the "tribe" and deconstruction of self very
> interesting. Lyotard speaks about the Cashinuau quite a bit in his works.
> Here, in Australia, we have the Aboriginal, a people that have inhabited
> Australia for 40-60,000 years before whites "discovered" them. I believe
> that what you are saying about the deconstructed self as being a state
> whereby people no longer feel alienated or separate from the tribe is very
> similar to the Aboriginal. The Aboriginal has what they call the "Dreamtime"
> an originary myth from which springs all their sense of community and self.
> In contrast we whites have what Lyotard would call a myth lying downstream,
> an horizon toward which we are supposedly progressing. Here in Australia it
> is the case that for the Aboriginal they are struggling with the fact of
> being subsumed under this white myth. This is very destructive of their
> culture and sense of being. I also get the feeling though that we whites are
> jealous of the Aboriginal myth precisely because we are a "rootless" people
> where they appear to be very situated by their myth. I think the postmodern
> is an acceleration of this "rootlessness".
> 
> Cheers
> Chris Summers
> 
> PS In my original post I spoke of EBD students, actually here in Australia
> we talk more of Conduct Disorder (DSM-IV) classification and most of our
> Behaviour Management policies for schools reflects this psychological
> approach to classification and treatment. In looking at the differend I am
> attempting to shift the focus away from the individual and onto the shared
> experience of teacher/student.