File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9802, message 280


Date: 	Fri, 13 Feb 1998 14:11:56 -0500
From: Kenneth MacKendrick <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Zen and the Art of Postmodern Self Maintenance? (was ethics and intentions. Footnote.)


On Thu, 12 Feb 1998 21:09:45 -0500  Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

> Ken wrote:
> >And I doubt very much that Utah is equating aesthetics and
> >politics.  Geez - it's a story.
> 
> I happen to like his music, and my comments on "Zen and 
the Art of Postmodern Self Maintenance" is mainly about the 
postmodern context in which you sought to incorporate his 
words.

This is a guilt by association charge.  I didn't put Utah is a 
postmodern context.  Poststructuralism is not postmodernism. 
 Deconstruction is not postmodernism.
 
> >You might also want to note though that the absolute
> >distinction between aesthetics and politics means, 
logically, that they cannot speak to one another - an idea that 
swallows wholesale the bourgeious mentality of the always 
already free, independent, and autonomy self - something 
which covers up, ideologically, the sadistic entwinement of the
> >individual and society.  In other words the entire dialectic 
of enlightenment is wiped out in such a rigid distinction - 
siding with the liquidation of subjectivity altogether - 
something far more insidious than a simple story about 
resisting the urge to act on violent impulses.
 
> I don't make a "rigid distinction" between politics and 
aesthetics. I only object to the postmodern moves to 
substitute ethics and aesthetics for politics. A big difference.

Then we are not in disagreement about this.  I object to the 
same bait and switch - which is actually a highly modern thing 
to do anyway.  This charge, in any event, is problematic 
because it itself presupposes that the distinctions between the 
spheres in modernity are valid.  To charge this one already 
has to believe they are radically separate.  The 
aesthetic-political critique of postmodernism is incoherent 
from where I stand.  In other words the critique itself is based 
upon some pretty totalitarian assumptions - which slide into 
the same fate as those who deliberately blur the distinctions 
via assimilation.  Both the critique and the object of the 
critique end up in the same junk pile.
 
> >The postmodern self doesn't make any sense and I don't 
think there is anything in my post that warrants this kind of red
herring critique.

> I happen to think that postmodernism is not much of a threat 
to good old bourgeois individualism. By saying this, I don't 
meant to imply that anything and everything that has been 
said by those who are said to be postmodernists are 
worthless. I merely question the idea that postmodernism
as a school of thought subverts "the bourgeious mentality of 
the always already free, independent, and autonomy self"; as 
you say, "Hell - if that's the case then I guess the Titanic
> eliminated class struggle eh?"

Do you have a class list of the postmodern school?  I would 
be interested in seeing the reading list (wink).  And, get ready 
for the irrelevant association, when did the postmodern turn 
occur?  I was dizzy after the linguistic turn, the interpretive 
turn, and the hermeneutic turn... I'm tired of spinning. 

ken




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