# postmodernism, OTism, continent-ism *The Urth list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 29 Oct 1997* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Tony Ellis *28 Oct 1999, 10:27* > Daniel Fusch wrote: > By the way, I'm MUCH more familiar with modernism than postmodernism, so if > anybody can clarify or correct my explanation here, I won't mind! I suspect that there are as many explanations of postmodermism as there are postmodernists, but my own pet in-one-sentence definition is to say that postmodern art is self-aware art. It's art with a built-in awareness of its own artificiality. For modernists art was a way of trying to get as close as possible to the 'Truth' (eg: Joyce's epiphanies): the characters, the sensations, were all supposed to seem as real as possible, while the art that brought them to you remained transparent. In postmodernism the art itself is the subject of the art. Thus in Ben Marcus's fascinatingly bonkers 'The Age of Wire and String' you can have a chapter that begins: "Sky Destroys Dog. Air days, in the Western Worship Boxes, traditionally the Wednesday, Friday, and Half-Man Day following the first Sunday that a dog has suffocated the weather." You're not supposed to look beyond the words for some higher meaning, you stop at the words themselves and their arrangement. > Alga wrote: > the stone town is Athens (and that when you go back a million years [say] at > that lattitude and longitude you find yourselves not in Greece but in South > America), That is such an ingenious sleight-of-hand! But... but... if the stone town is Athens, how can Severian, the Cumaen and co. be sitting on the roof of Apu-Punchau's house, when that was built a million years ago in South America? "When the building was completed, I recognized the roof upon which Jolenta would die, and I knew I would be buried beneath it." TUOTNS, chapter L. --- ### JMCAzurin *29 Oct 1999, 17:26 · follows Tony Ellis* This is just an idle observation. I'm not certain if it's been brought up before but....Wolfe translates 'Apu-Punchau' as 'Head of Day'. In Tagalog, at least, and possibly other languages spoken here in southeast asia, the word 'apo' means leader. Before I discovered this list, I was trying to find reasons for Nessus being somewhere south of here. Given that Nessus is supposed to be somewhere in a huge land mass, that would mean that the oceans would have receded by the time of the first empire. Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Guam, Borneo - all landlocked, the northern parts of which would be 'the hot lands of the north' (near the equator). That would put the Ascians in a not-so-hot area north of the equator: China, the former USSR. Both communist countries, which is more or less what the Ascians are. (Ascians=Asians?) I intend no racial slurs here - I'm a Southeast Ascian myself. (Yes I know this is a crazy theory *g*) Does anyone speak native south american languages? Those people crossed over into the Americas over the land bridge at the Bering Strait, and are of Asian descent too. Perhaps there is a similar word for 'leader'? Mikah > From: "Tony Ellis" > Subject: postmodernism, OTism, continent-ism > Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 10:27:49 -0700 > > Alga wrote: >> the stone town is Athens (and that when you go back a million years >> [say] at >> that lattitude and longitude you find yourselves not in Greece but in >> South Am. > That is such an ingenious sleight-of-hand! But... but... if > the stone town is Athens, how can Severian, the Cumaen and > co. be sitting on the roof of Apu-Punchau's house, when that > was built a million years ago in South America? --- ### Ian C Smith *29 Oct 1997, 20:05 · follows JMCAzurin* ----- Original Message ----- >> From: JMCAzurin >> To: >> Sent: Friday, October 29, 1999 5:26 PM >> Subject: (urth) RE: postmodernism, OTism, continent-ism >> Mikah wrote: > This is just an idle observation. I'm not certain if it's been brought up > before but....Wolfe translates 'Apu-Punchau' as 'Head of Day'. In Tagalog, > at least, and possibly other languages spoken here in southeast asia, the > word 'apo' means leader. > > Does anyone speak native south american languages? Those people crossed > over into the Americas over the land bridge at the Bering Strait, and are > of Asian descent too. Perhaps there is a similar word for 'leader'? Ian wrote: My wife is Brazilian (which contains a lot of words from amerindian languages) but she just look at me blankly when ia sked her about Apo, Apu, apu-punchai or any similar words for 'leader'. One point to the SE asia theory! >> From: "Tony Ellis" >> Subject: postmodernism, OTism, continent-ism >> Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 10:27:49 -0700 >> >> Alga wrote: >>> the stone town is Athens (and that when you go back a million years >>> [say] at >>> that lattitude and longitude you find yourselves not in Greece but in >>> South Am. >> That is such an ingenious sleight-of-hand! But... but... if >> the stone town is Athens, how can Severian, the Cumaen and >> co. be sitting on the roof of Apu-Punchau's house, when that >> was built a million years ago in South America? works ---