COMM 386: Postmodernism / N O T E S

Postmodernism is among other things a sick joke at the expense of ... revolutionary avant-gardism. -- Terry Eagleton, "Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism" (1985).

D R A F T>

(and notes for class 11-17-08)
link here for quote above

Source: Terry Eagleton (b. 1943), British critic. repr. In Against The Grain (1986). “Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism,” Chapter 9 (1985).

Excerpts from Gold article I hand out:

Shtick

"In essence," says Gold, "postmodernism is a shtick -- a fine old Yiddish word with several meanings. When it first entered English, shtick meant an entertainer's routine. ... More broadly, it can describe any human activity that, although possessing some nuggets of truth and authenticity, also partakes Of the antic, the phony and the scam."

"The postmodernist shtick," he adds, "has four elements." They are:

• First, it denies the existence of objective reality, as opposed to saying that reality's out there but we never can get fully at it. To the postmodernist, everything in the universe, from comic books to galaxies, is "text" to be "interpreted" by the "self-referent," that is, people whose only frame of reference ... is themselves."
  
• Second, postmodernism denies the existence of firm boundaries. Everything flows into, affects and becomes everything else. ("The personal is political"; "The planetary is personal"; "Insanity is just another lifestyle"; etc.)
  
• Third, postmodernism denies the validity of standards -- of truth, morality, excellence, competence. All are arbitrary at best and tyrannical at worst.
  
• Finally, postmodernism views all human relationships as power struggles. Words are weapons, not carriers of truth or meaning.

There's no such thing as truth, in other words, and everybody gets to decide for himself. So everything's up for grabs, including the canons of jouralism.

"Now, let's talk shtick in the newsroom," Gold continues. "Three sets of forces drive the media, especially the so-called prestige media, into de facto acceptance of much of postmodernism."

Have I told you about numbered lists? They tend to come up on finals. But the postmodernists would say they're bogus. Right? So what if the postmodernists are right?

Gold doesn't think they're right.

"In the end, our civilization will junk postmodernism," he concludes. "Neither truth, boundaries nor standards can be denied forever, and life is more than power games. ... So, in the short term, perhaps the interesting question is not 'How will journalism escape from postmodernism?' but, 'How will it cover the demise?'"

But in the meantime,