Postmodernism Disrobed

Nature Magazine ^ | 9 July 1998 | Richard Dawkins

[Antoninus]

I absolutely love this. I remember this article but could never find reference to it. Simply brilliant.

What Sokal neglects to accomplish however, is a radical re-evaluation of the meta-hypotheses which underpine the post-modern substructure. Had he taken the point of view that feminist critical theory and Gramscian Marxo-centric humanism, when synthesized with Jungian psychoanalytic process and imposed upon a quantum triaxial framework, could actually produce a working model of meaning, I suggest that he may have stumbled across a new and powerful definition of the word "thing." I call this model gastrometacognaphytophonics.

End transmission...

[Antoninus]

The left has "appropriated" the extreme right's literary tradition, I'm afraid. Who are the literary heroes of the postmodernists? Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Paul de Man. None of those men was a friend to liberal democracy. All of them were anti-Enlightenment, anti-rationality, anti-science.

And this is surprising... why? Extreme left and right are actually two sides of the same coin.

[stands2reason]

What would have been my choice of study was the first eaten by the deconstructive cancer: Linguistics. I guess I'm a throwback to the "Age of Reason". I can't well tolerate this "Age of Illusion".

[cornelis]

You have a point. An explanation for historical appearances is a difficult task.

[cornelis]

Anybody read Levinas?

[JMJ333]

Mwhaha...you have a way with words!

[MHGinTN]

Parsi, go to your room! [Refill your glass on the way though.]

[cornelis]

Mwhaha...you have a way with words!

I was going to respond to his post and ask him to take it a notch higher--beyond the rhetoric--and give us a respectable critique. This is where the piece itself by Dawkins is not helpful. Anything, I repeat, anything can be slammed. It is an art to analyze and understand.

[Reactionary]

Yes.

[JMJ333]

lol...I once went that route by proclaiming Dawkins a nazi after reading one of his article. Duly chastized... ;)

[henbane]

Post Modernism and Its Rewards

"Michael Jackson and Bubbles" (1988, from the artist's Banality series), an über-kitsch life-size sculpture of the King of Pop and his pet chimpanzee by Jeff Koons, which sold [at Sotheby's] on Tuesday (15May01) for $5.6 million, a record for a work by Mr. Koons. (NYT, 20May01)

[Kevin Curry]

I was going to respond to his post and ask him to take it a notch higher--beyond the rhetoric--and give us a respectable critique . . . It is an art to analyze and understand.

A "respectable critique" would be wasted on most of the pro-Dawkins groupies here. Why take the trouble of crafting a detailed, careful analysis and posting it only to have them unzip and urinate on it?

Smash-mouth graffiti--not detailed, fine art--is generally all that these zealots deserve.

There is a time and place for everything. This is neither the time nor place.

[general_re]

With any luck, our universities will be forced to drop these empty-headed "disciplines," such as those our good professor specializes in, from their curricula by the time we've won the war on terror, and she can go back to waiting tables where she belongs.

BTTT :^)

[Reactionary]

It is suprising to me because the left applies the "fascist" smear to nearly everyone, yet they demand that Heidegger and de Man be redeemed from it.

And, of course, they never address the question as to whether or not, say, Heidegger's thought had anything to do with his political beliefs. They've completely ignored Richard Wolin on that point, I think.