to angus
postmodernism is not really a philosophy, so much as an event, spoken
of in its literature as 'the postmodern occasion' - this means that
metanarratives (e.g.: universal-talk about mysticism) are immanently
suspect, so much so in fact, its probably no longer possible to speak
of 'postmodernism' as an intellectual movement at all, because that
(usually-reactionary) practice homogenizes the amazing differance
of philosophers like derrida, foucault, rorty, baudrillard, lyotard,
deleuze, habermas, etc.
alright let's begin with your misintrepretation of derrida, who is
really just an extention of heidegger in the postmodern realm (like
foucault an extension of nietzsche): all western thought isn't 'tainted
with presence,' but it relies on 'objective presence' for its thinking
(logocentricism): this is surprisingly similar, by the way, to pirsig's
critique of objective anthropology in LILA - derrida is not principally
concerned with any kind of 'sociology' but instead in deconstructing
texts
now foucault: he doesn't use story form, though some of this works
begin with literary-like examples (they're historically accurate),
and he doesn't think 'bad ideas' have 'poisoned' us; he studies historical
discursive practices that construct truth in certain ways, (discourse
being not so much writtern or spoken words as the underlying rules
that structure our ways of thinking-acting); for instance, his 'discipline
and punish' looks at the micro-physics of power surrounding the birth
of the prison, the practices of panopticism (the-all-seeing-eye-of-power)
that justifies close surviellance of entire populations, the practices
of correction and normalizing judgement used in factories, skools,
barracks, hospitals, aslyums, etc. that create the carceral machine
that western peoples live in these human-all-too-human times - foucault
does not feel its an intellectual's role to 'awaken' consciousness,
but to assist the masses in expressing themselves and in understanding
the historical context in which they work ('discipline and punish'
was passed out to all french prisoners free-of-charge, and foucault
started the GIP to inject prisoner's narratives into the mainstream)
i can see no conceptual use for the overly-simplistic distinction
between 'saying' and 'showing': we do both whenever we think or act
and thanks to nietzsche, postmodernism is primarily concerned with
questioning domninant forms/instutitions of power - the critical is
the political, and i think you're neutral-sounding reading of both
of these philosopher mistates their ideological aims (cf: 'spectres
of marx' (derrida), 'politics, philosophy, culture' (foucault))
:luvkev
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