Re: Sam Smith "SIGNS ON THE ROAD TO ABU GHRAIB"

[ravi <gadfly@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect wrote:
>
> full: http://prorev.com/abu.htm
>
> Giovanna Borradori has called post-modernism a "definitive farewell"
> to modern reason. Pauline Marie Rosenau wrote: "Post-modernists
> recognize an infinite number of interpretations (meanings) of any
> text are possible because, for the skeptical post-modernists, one can
> never say what one intends with language, [thus] ultimately all
> textual meaning, all interpretation is undecipherable. . . Many
> diverse meanings are possible for any symbol, gesture, word.".
>
> The semiotician Marshall Blonsky observed, "Character and consistency
> were once the most highly regarded virtue to ascribe to either friend
> or foe. We all strove to be perceived as consistent and in character,
> no matter how many shattering experiences had changed our lives or
> how many persons inhabited our bodies. Today, for the first time in
> modern times, a split or multiple personality has ceased to be an
> eccentric malady and becomes indispensable."
>
> Together, brutal capitalism and post-modernism firebombed principles
> of cooperation, decency, individual ethical responsibility,
> community, and social democracy. In their place came simple brute
> power manifesting itself in whatever guise seemed most useful at the
> time. With hubris rather than horror, America celebrated the collapse
> of its own consensus of conscience.
>

i find it strange that everyone, whether on the left or the right,
unerringly traces the world's problems to 'post-modernism'. does an
obscure field of philosophy/literary-theory really have this much
influence? and irrespective of the answer to that question, are all of
its notions entirely wrong?

what do terms like 'character' and 'consistency' mean? perhaps
post-modernism teaches us to get past such simplistic and naive notions
and learn to deal with the truth of multiple personalities?

"modern reason" is indeed a very appropriate term, since it betrays the
narrow, scientific, reductionist approach of the contemporary style of
reasoning. perhaps a case can be made that this sort of reductionism,
and the single-dimensional growth of technology, have been a lot more
brutal and detrimental to cooperation, etc, than the different theories
of post-modernism, some of which criticize these very notions (narrow
scientific reasoning).

        --ravi