{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2037",
    "note": "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.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2037,
    "subject": "postmodernity",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-12-17T11:28:30+00:00",
    "last": "1999-12-17T11:28:30+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0637@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jonathan Laidlow",
        "address": "laidlojm at hhs.bham.ac.uk"
      },
      "date": "1999-12-17T11:28:30+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) postmodernity",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Jeremy wrote:\n\"While I'm looking at Jim, I have to disagree with this wretched label\"postmodernity\" \nagain and always, I think certainly Fouc. would have aproblem with that label, as do I. \nAccording to Perry Anderson (the Thunderbirds guy, no not really) the first idea of a \npostmodernism arose inthe 1930s in Hispanic America (Federico de Onis; Borges was \nan \"ultramodernismo\"), and has had many incarnations since then, none of whichhave \never circulated around F. I can handle poststructuralist since that's at least historically \naccurate. (Bit tetchy about this as just came fromweekend meeting in downtown DC \nwhere all sorts of critical theory wastarred and dismissed as bugaboo pomo.)\"\nI dunno  - sounds a bit reactionary just to dismiss the whole shebang. I think its worth \nremembering the root of the phrase: post-modernity, and recognising its roots as a \nreaction against modernism. And then to recall that there is a difference between \nModernism (capital 'M') and modernism. The former describes a specific type of artistic \nproduction mostly in the first half of the century which presented itself as a reaction \nagainst prior forms of representation. The latter is similar except we are allowed to have \nmultiple modernisms - all of them reactions against  the old and finding a way of \nrepresenting something 'new' in our culture. I know there was one around the beginning \nof the eighteenth century (probably more).\n\nI think Foucault feeds into post-modernist thought, but that post-modernist thought too \noften descends into plurality and indecision. P/m does, after all, tend to describe certain \naspects of late 20th century life rather well. I like Jameson on changes in art based on \nchanges in late capitalism, Baudrillard is wordy but interesting on simulations and changes \nin the nature of what we define as 'real' and how we represent it. Note that I'm not trying \nto follow the argument that reality itself has changed in some ineffable way, but that our \nmethods of representing it have.  The most important theme for me is the way that p/m \nallows plurality, and for repressed discourses to have their own space and identity. Many \nwould doubtless disagree with me.\n\nFave excellent post-modern novel: Don Delillo, White Noise. Read it.\n\nNot likely to suggest that Wolfe is post-modern. But William Gibson is.\n\nJonathan\nVisit Ultan's Library - A Gene Wolfe web resource\nhttp://members.tripod.co.uk/laidlow/index.htm\nJonathan Laidlow\nUniversity of Birmingham, UK"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}