Yea, verily, on Fri, 28 Apr 2000 05:34:26 GMT , Rob witnesseth the
following to alt.postmodern:
Define and categorize every other work first -- when you get to
something which resists all attempts at definition or categorization,
then you have found a postmodern work.

Cheers,
Tom Asquith,
tasquith-at-hotmail-dot-com
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On Sun, 30 Apr 2000,  mosqu...@canada.com (Tom Asquith) wrote:
  . . . and that would be, "In the beginning, there was the Word . . . ."?

In article <Cp9O4.11867$4w1.147...@typhoon.nyroc.rr.com>,
  "Rob" <xenoc...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
heyia rob;

if i may attempt this "feat" where those more proud and perhaps wiser
than i have good cause to tread with reluctance; but after all, this IS
alt.postmodern, so where else should an attempt to pin down this
elusive Title/Category be more appropriate? I will attempt a semi-
authoritative "short" answer to your query;

To begin with, it should be made evident that any
explanation/equivocation of "Postmodern" must/should be made in terms
of its relative context; that is, the whole project of categorization
of styles/theoretical perspectives/critical description is based on
kinds and degrees of difference based on opposition, influences,
contrasts and similiarities; thus, one can posit Postmodern as lying
along a continuum, sandwiched between Modernism and what-I-shall-term
the NeoPostmodern;

While Modernism embodies the ideals and values implicit in Pre-
millenium infatuation with industrial development, novelty, indulgence,
invention and cultural collusion perpetuating the popularized myths of
evolutionary continuity, NeoPostmodernism reflects an early stage of
Information Revolution's maturity resulting from the emergent phase of
postmillenium reorganization, a modus-operandi to gather the disparate
voices from the moderate edges, to consolidate the resources and the
positional viewpoints under a centrist mandate while relegating the
extreme marginalists to a discredited obscurity, pushing back the
contrarian and subversive forces which refuse accomodation and
theoretical cooperation with the engineer-architects of the grand-
synthesis project, which is itself a reversion to the Classical ideals
of inviolate truths and the unconditional authority of absolute
meaning, in Reactionary opposition to the agonistic and cynical
detachment of PostModernism's radical and incongruous criticisms;

In a theoretical/critical literary context, PostModernism refers to a
panoply, or multiplicity, of valid "voices" in a given text that are
amenable to levels and degrees of "readings"; the embedded and
ethnographically nuanced "meanings" are held in a state of dynamic
tension against a hypothesized polity of informed consents which act as
priveleged states, each of which are accessed by means of a derivative
conflation of oppositional arguments that sacrifice the static
supremacy of a heirarchal value-added order to the ebb-and-flow of
muteable forms that possess a wide range of movements and strategies;

PostModern texts tend to be polyvalent, semi-transparant, and self-
referential, even ridiculously so, utilizing a wide range of devices to
convey trans- or supraliteral referants, including parodic bathos,
self- and -other recriminations, cross-talk dialogue that works to
minimal advantage, the dichotomous incongruities inherant in zero-sum
psychosocial economies,  the reconfiguration of universal myths in
terms of pop-soap-opera vignettes, and, as indicated earlier, an
agonistic and cynical detachment;

One of the more peculiar and baffling predicaments which this
theoretical perspective promotes, however, is the lack of a cohesive
measure by which a text is or isn't uniquivocably considered
PostModern; This occurs since the attitude and focus of the reader,
which is NOT necessarily amenable to the conditions under which a given
text is made accessible or presented for a reading, is a main factor by
which a determination CAN be made; Thus, in this strange accounting, in
a modern context, the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn can
be considered very PostModern, while many contemporary Romance Novels
are not; In short, it is not so much WHEN a text was written that
determines if it is PostModern, but how amenable it is to levels of
meaning by a wide audience of sophisticated and motivated readers;

PostModernism (in a critical literary context) generally refers to
interdisciplinary modalities and methods which inform interpretive
practices and reify subversive discourse; this "project" thus tends to
modify a theoretical "position's" intransigence, in that it adds
another layer to the original text, making it more amenable to a
deconstructive analysis; In addition, it involves a superstructural
assemblage of various (sometimes even contradictory) viewpoints/ideas,
typically marking the collaboration of non-mainstream and semi-aligned
performers/actors in organized resistance to the co-optive tendencies
of the dominant hegemony; Its pro-feminist and post-colonial tenants
refute the contemporary paradigmatic narratives of racism, imperial
corporatism, zero-sum-game sociopolitical economies, patriarchism, and
neo- ethno/eco-colonialism;

Some of PostModern's more evident characteristics are: digressions,
equivocations, and tertiary (tentative) conclusions that provoke
subtended interpolations;

Does this shed any *light* on the subject?

:)regrdz;
skye
NADA MIND PRESS
05/01/00
http://home.earthlink.net/~beatnews/skye-nowhere.html

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