Postwhateverism for Dummies
Final Examination (15 October 1998)
Sorry, the header is just a lie, because this isn't the final exam
at all, it's more like Lesson Two.
In Lesson One, you learned (didn't you?) that nothing people do is
natural. That phrasing is mine, not the PoMos', but if you mean
to pursue the subject at all, you'll have to put up with a certain
amount of jargon, which can hopefully be minimized. I say
"nothing people do is natural." The PoMos themselves say
"antifoundationalism."
While we're at it, when Blake and I say "to generalize is to be an
idiot," we're talking about what the PoMos call
"detotalizing."
Now although this page is not an exam, if it were, one of the
questions would be whether you saw without my pointing it out that
speaking about grasping the Total Foundation of Postmodernism had
to be a joke, because both totals and foundations are major no-
nos.
Assuming you are clear so far (and it's still really just fourteen
words, even if two of them are monstrosities!), you should think
again whether you see anything promising in the directions we're
headed. Can you still be interested in PoMo now that you're aware
it isn't based on anything like a foundation and isn't ever going
to add up to anything like a total? (Neither is anything else, of
course, but it is PoMo we're talking about just at present.)
I'm not trying to put you off, rather the opposite!, but honesty
requires me to make clear that PoMo is not hard only because of
the jargon. To some extent it collides head-on with Common Sense,
and if you're not prepared to think about PoMo maybe being right
and Common Sense maybe being wrong, you might do better to forget all about it.
I don't think PoMo has to be phrased in High Gibberish
and I don't think it has to be phrased so as to drive Common Sense
up the wall unnecessarily, but it would be flat-out deceit to
pretend that it is really just what everybody believes already.
Not at all. It really is new, so new that quite a number of its
own practitioners either don't understand it or don't believe it
themselves. Since these unhappy people always think about it in
High Gibberish, though, they're not likely to notice that they
don't understand or don't believe.
In the opposite direction, the Postwhateverism-for-Dummies project
risks making things so clear that a response like "but that's just
insane!" emerges prematurely. So if you think it would be insane
to be interested in a doctrine admittedly based on nothing and
adding up to nothing, I suggest that you suspend judgment. If you
can't do that, I suggest you leave PoMo alone altogether. What I
above all do NOT recommend is that you pursue it with a prurient
interest in the insane things people can talk themselves into
believing, raking over the rubbish heap for outstandingly asinine
quotations. They're very easy to find, but not worth the
finding. And what sort of a person would seek them out?
Procede, if at all, then at your own risk via the links below.
Nothing People Do Is Natural
To Generalize Is To Be An Idiot
This Way to the Rubbish Heap