From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Fri Jan 30 2004 - 21:40:41 GMT
Just in case anyone takes Platt seriously,
Platt said:
Another nail in the [post-modern] coffin is provided by an article in the Jan. 27 edition of the Christian Science Monitor....
Matt:
I saw Platt's post on Eagleton's "reversal" a while back and brushed it off because anyone who knows what's going on wouldn't take it that seriously.
Platt's got another one, so I thought I'd take the time to add a little context to the remarks made by some of these "post-modernists."
Terry Eagleton:
Eagleton was always a half-cocked "post-modernist" because he was too fervently tied to Marxism. As a Marxist critic, he took too seriously the prospect of theory having a large impact on cultural and political change. Also, being Marxist as he was, he never really eschewed the notion of absolutes. When Eagleton says that "cultural theory has become increasingly irrelevant," my favorite "post-modernists," Fish and Rorty, respond, "Yeah, well, cultural theory never really became relevant in the first place."
Fredric Jameson:
Jameson falls into the same boat as Eagleton. Another Marxist critic, he took theory too seriously.
Stanely Fish:
Fish, like Rorty, never really liked the appelation "post-modernist" applied to him because he didn't enjoy being in the same boat as Eagleton, Jameson, and de Man who thought we needed more theory. One of Fish's most famous and bombastic clarion calls to the academy was his, "if academics want to affect political change, get out of the academy." In other words, don't expect to have a big political impact by writing literary/cultural/theoretical books like "Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," "Marxism and Literary Criticism," or "The Location of Culture."
Homi Bhabha and Henry Louis Gates Jr.:
I don't know much about either of these two, but I dug up a little which sheds some light. Bhabha has written that, "there is a damaging and self-defeating assumption that theory is necessarily the elite language of the socially and culturally privileged." (found at http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/landow/post/poldiscourse/bhabha/bhabha1.html) Bhabha is right, theory isn't _necessarily_ an elite language. However, _practically_ it currently is and that's why it won't have a very large general political impact outside of academia. (To think that the MoQ isn't a theoretical language, and so somehow escapes this criticism, I think, is to misunderstand what is meant by "theoretical language.")
In a quick scan, I couldn't come up with anything from Gates saying how great theory is for politics, but if he did, then he falls into the same boat. I did, however, find some stuff about his contributions to African-American studies. Gates is said to have "been instrumental in changing the literary canon in U.S. education." (found at http://www.galegroup.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/gates_h.htm) This is a good idea of the kind of change that academia can have and it is a good one. But this isn't the kind of political change that the theory-obsessed cultural Left typically thinks it can have.
Platt said:
Since the MD is outside the world of academe, postmodernism is no longer relevant to our discussions....
Matt:
As I said before, to think that the MD escapes the criticism that people like Fish and Rorty level at cultural theory is to miss their point (or, at least the criticism that would be leveled at those in the MD who have the same pretension as Eagleton, Jameson, and Bhabha).
Besides, if one takes Platt's stance seriously, what would you think of Anthony's efforts?
And aren't Platt's diagnoses of current academic taste a lot like saying that, because a couple of notable atheists recanted on their deathbed, atheism is on the decline?
Matt
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