Responses to this message:
Discord: What is this?
gdog: A basic literary theory history class at the University of Colorado. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense.
Discord: Sounds too deep for me. I wish I had your ENORMOUS BRAIN!
gdog: I wish you did too... Because modernity is about the pursuit of ever-increasing levels of order, modern societies constantly are on guard against anything and everything labeled as "disorder," which might disrupt order. Thus modern societies rely on continually establishing a binary opposition between "order" and "disorder," so that they can assert the superiority of "order." Lyotard argues that all aspects of modern societies, including science as the primary form of knowledge, depend on these grand narratives. Postmodernism then is the critique of grand narratives, the awareness that such narratives serve to mask the contradictions and instabilities that are inherent in any social organization or practice. In other words, every attempt to create "order" always demands the creation of an equal amount of "disorder," but a "grand narrative" masks the constructedness of these categories by explaining that "disorder" REALLY IS chaotic and bad, and that "order" REALLY IS rational and good.
Discord: I've been saying that for years, and I think it's fabulous.
gdog: Yeah. We're postmodernists. Richard is a modernist. We're one better.
Discord: We're one higher.
gdog: What did I say?
Discord: I wasn't listening. So, Wulfgar just told me I've not been offered the honor of being his sword brother. I may cry.
gdog: This is why, in part, feminist theorists have found postmodernism so attractive. I might add, however, that postmodernist do not find many feminists to be all that attractive.
Discord: You're a funny guy. Hey, but looks aren't everything.
gdog: This double-shifting required of girls--from clitoris to vagina, and from a female body as erotic object to a male body--creates the potential for a lot of neurosis. And that's part of Freud's overall view of femininity--that women (those who are "properly" women, i.e. adult non-incestuous reproductive heterosexual women) are pretty neurotic.
Discord: It's hard to argue with that.
gdog: The girl then decides that, if she can't have a penis, she'll have a baby instead, and takes her father as her love object with the express purpose of having a child by him; her mother then becomes solely the object of jealousy and rivalry.
Discord: Penis envy sucks, dude. Trust me.
gdog: The consequence of having a weaker or less-formed superego, according to Freud, is that women are not as moral or just as men (they go by their feelings and not their sense of justice). Freud is also not quite sure how women form their unconscious, since they don't have the castration anxiety as the motive to repress their incestuous wishes; some sort of repression happens, but Freud isn't entirely clear on how it happens. This means that women's unconscious may be less well anchored than men's, that their unconscious wishes are less firmly repressed, and more likely to rise up into consciousness. For Freud, this too explains why women aren't as suitable as men are to be the rulers and shapers of civilization.
Discord: I wish I knew so I could finally get some sleep around here.
gdog: You wish you knew what?
Discord: How to repress women's desires...
gdog: How to repress your womanly desires?
Discord: God dammit!
gdog: What now?
Discord: Well, I'm trying to be all clever and shit and you're pulling a goddamn Kris on my ass.
gdog: pull a kris?
Discord: You know, when you're stupid and it frustrates everyone else.
gdog: You mean like wulfgar?
Responses to this message:
Post a response to this discussion thread