Pomophobia

[robinturner]

I've just set up a new community, pomophobia. Here's the blurb:

This is a commmunity for all those who are irritated, exasperated or driven to despair by postmodernism. It is a place to post the most incomprehensible pomo sentences and the most ludicrous pomo claims you can find. If words like "deconstruction" and "phallogocentric" make you grind your teeth, this is the place for you.

It is not a forum for right-wingers to moan about the "liberal intellectual elite" or for students looking for someone to write their essay on Derrida for them. If you signed up for a course called "Degendering the sensuous: postmodern perspectives on love-toys," it's your own problem.

Comments

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

"Pomo"--and the ppl who espouse its existence--annoys me to no end. Oh, I'm fine podering the few presentable concepts the "movement" has produced (hell, just figuring out how this school came to the conclusion that some of its theses are presentable is sometimes amusing enough), and I'll freely admit that to anyone trying to publicly cause reaction in the world it matters b/c it is a part of the world, but *come on*, just the name of the school of thought "post-modern[ist]" makes me cringe. "Postmodern"? Are these ppl morons? Do they even know what "postmodern" means? Why don't they just call themselves "anti-temporal" or "elitist pseudointellectual fucks w/very little inking of the world around [them] much less the continuum of time and [their] place in it"?

And if anybody tries to defend them by "explaining" that "modernism" is the period of development that followed "imperialism" and "postmodernism" is therefor the period of development which followed that, but may or may not still be going on, now (some ppl like to call this period of development "technocratic" or "neaveaux imperialism") I will personally give them a digital tongue-lashing.

Bah, I'm exhausted, already....

ready for my e-lashing

[blorky.livejournal.com]

Uh...what are we supposed to call a time period following modernity?

Re: ready for my e-lashing

[solri.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with the idea that there was a culture or ideology (I prefer those terms to "paradigm" or "metanarrative") which we can term "modernism", and a crisis in that culture which could be termed "postmodernism". At the risk of playing around with words and punctuation in the same ways that postmodernist theorists do, I have no problem with post-modernism, it's postmodern-ism that I don't like.

Hmm, that was about as clear as the bottom of a barrel of scrumpy. Here's an example. The music of composers like Philip Glass and Michael Nyman is postmodern, in that it deliberately rejects the musical ideology (and no, "ideology" is not too strong a word here) of avant-garde music (atonalism, denial of a biological basis to music etc.). It also draws eclectially on previous musical styles, and particularly in the case of Nyman, this could be seen as a kind of "postmodern irony" (the "I know you know I know" thing - there again, Stravinsky used to do the same thing in his neo-classical period). On the other hand, there isn't much here to imply a specific postmodernist ideology. Glass once described his music as "postmodernist", but I think that was just because he was fishing for a label, and an answer to questions like "Why does your music sound like Bach without the tunes?"

[blorky.livejournal.com]

"On the other hand, there isn't much here to imply a specific postmodernist ideology. " In other words, Glass/Nyman rejected the musical ideology of the modern era, but that rejection doesn't necessarily imply that they were trying to create or forward their own ideology? This stands in contrast to the bunches of deliberate pomo philosophy/ideology that is trying to Make a Postmodern Statement.

Am I following you correctly?

[solri.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

...I have no problem with post-modernism, it's postmodern-ism that I don't like.

I'm just so annoyed by it sometimes that I must begin with the simplest pieces, first... like the name of the school. I think a lot of what's annoying about what "they" produce is a result of the same kind of thinking which created the name....

Re: ready for my e-lashing

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

For one, by calling "modernity" over and calling the period after it something else, and then sayign the period we're in, now, is after that second period is to say that we are not living in a modern period.

[[ from Dictionary.com
mod·ern Audio pronunciation of "modern" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (mdrn)
adj.

1.
1. Of or relating to recent times or the present: modern history.
2. Characteristic or expressive of recent times or the present; contemporary or up-to-date: a modern lifestyle; a modern way of thinking.
2.
1. Of or relating to a recently developed or advanced style, technique, or technology: modern art; modern medicine.
2. Avant-garde; experimental.
3. often Modern Linguistics. Of, relating to, or being a living language or group of languages: Modern Italian; Modern Romance languages.
]]

Which, clearly, is idiotic, b/c we're certainly not living in the past or the future.

Further, for all the words/terms that the "pomo" school enjoys credit for generating/coining, they very well should have come up w/something more appropriate than "post-modern" to name themselves, which is just lidicrous b/c there can never be a "post-modern" period b/c time just doesn't work like that.

Its very simple, really. Call apples apples and oranges oranges, and call post-imperialism (modernism) post-imperialism, and call the period after that something more sensible than "post-modern", which doesn't exist anyway; something like "intersessionary" since, really, "post-modernism" is just a really stupid name for the time btwn empires and globalism. Oooh, or if you want to be realy humorous about it: intercessionary.

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

I believe that should be "De/gendering the (Sense)uous: postmodern structuralism and the love-toy."

[solri.livejournal.com]

Excellent! I have updated the userinfo page accordingly.

[tristan-moore.livejournal.com]

Why does the development of such a community from you seem so unsurprising?

You are still one of my favorite folks to read ;) and one of the few that can truly make me laugh!

[aguirre.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't it be Degendering the sensual?

[fei-hong.livejournal.com]

amen. sign me up!

[ironed_orchid]

Have I mentioned that you rock?

Keep up the good work.

A plea for causes

[ankh156.livejournal.com]

It is not a forum for right-wingers to moan about the "liberal intellectual elite"

Is it any better if a 'left-winger' wants to do the same thing ?

To quote Dylan :

"I'm liberal to a degree, I want everybody to be free,
But if you think I'd let Barry Goldwater,
move-in next door and marry my daughter,
You must think I'm crazy !
I wouldn't do that for all the farms in Cuba !"

I'll join - if you'll have me.