Good one, Eric. I assume some familiarity with this one too:
Postmodernists on Jerry Springer
Todd: Hi, Jerry.
Jerry: (reading from card) So, Todd, you're here to tell your girlfriend
something. What is it?
Todd: Well, Jerry, my girlfriend Ursula and I have been going out for three
years now. We did everything together. We were really inseparable. But then
she discovered post-Marxist political and literary theory, and it's been
nothing but fighting ever since.
Jerry: Why is that?
Todd: You see, Jerry, I'm a traditional Cartesian rationalist. I believe
that the individual self, the "I" or ego is the foundation of all
metaphysics. She, on the other hand, believes that the contemporary self is
a socially constructed, multi-faceted subjectivity reflecting the political
and economic realities of late capitalist consumerist discourse.
Crowd: Ooooohhhh!
Todd: I know! I know! Is that infantile, or what?
Jerry: So what do you want to tell her today?
Todd: I want to tell her that unless she ditches the post-modernism, we're
through. I just can't go on having a relationship with a woman who doesn't
believe I exist.
<natural break> read further at:
<
http://home.tiac.net/~cri/1999/springer.html>
--On 27 July 2006 10:05 -0700 Eric Sorenson <eric@explosive.net> wrote:
quoted 226 lines Po-mo discussions get my juices flowing. It's a weakness held over
>
> Po-mo discussions get my juices flowing. It's a weakness held over
> from my heady collegiate days (those I remember, anyway).
>
> But the final words on the subject belong to Mark Leyner for the
> following text. Reprinted without permission, because ownership
> is a null-value construct anyway.
>
>
> December 21, 1997
>
>
> Geraldo, Eat Your Avant-Pop Heart Out
>
>
>
> By MARK LEYNER
> HOBOKEN, N.J. -- JENNY JONES: Boy, we have a show for you today!
>
> Recently, the University of Virginia philosopher Richard Rorty made
> the stunning declaration that nobody has "the foggiest idea" what
> postmodernism means. "It would be nice to get rid of it," he said. "It
> isn't exactly an idea; it's a word that pretends to stand for an idea."
>
> This shocking admission that there is no such thing as postmodernism
> has produced a firestorm of protest around the country. Thousands of
> authors, critics and graduate students who'd considered themselves
> postmodernists are outraged at the betrayal.
>
> Today we have with us a writer -- a recovering postmodernist -- who
> believes that his literary career and personal life have been
> irreparably damaged by the theory, and who feels defrauded by the
> academics who promulgated it. He wishes to remain anonymous, so we'll
> call him "Alex."
>
> Alex, as an adolescent, before you began experimenting with
> postmodernism, you considered yourself -- what?
>
> Close shot of ALEX.
>
> An electronic blob obscures his face. Words appear at bottom of
> screen: "Says he was traumatized by postmodernism and blames
> academics."
>
> ALEX (his voice electronically altered): A high modernist. Y'know,
> Pound, Eliot, Georges Braque, Wallace Stevens, Arnold Schönberg, Mies
> van der Rohe. I had all of Schönberg's 78's.
>
> JENNY JONES: And then you started reading people like Jean-François
> Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard -- how did that change your feelings
> about your modernist heroes?
>
> ALEX: I suddenly felt that they were, like, stifling and canonical.
>
> JENNY JONES: Stifling and canonical? That is so sad, such a waste. How
> old were you when you first read Fredric Jameson?
>
> ALEX: Nine, I think.
>
> The AUDIENCE gasps.
>
> JENNY JONES: We have some pictures of young Alex. ...
>
> We see snapshots of 14-year-old ALEX reading Gilles Deleuze and Felix
> Guattari's "Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia." The AUDIENCE
> oohs and ahs.
>
> ALEX: We used to go to a friend's house after school -- y'know, his
> parents were never home -- and we'd read, like, Paul Virilio and Julia
> Kristeva.
>
> JENNY JONES: So you're only 14, and you're already skeptical toward
> the "grand narratives" of modernity, you're questioning any belief
> system that claims universality or transcendence. Why?
>
> ALEX: I guess -- to be cool.
>
> JENNY JONES: So, peer pressure?
>
> ALEX: I guess.
>
> JENNY JONES: And do you remember how you felt the very first time you
> entertained the notion that you and your universe are constituted by
> language -- that reality is a cultural construct, a "text" whose
> meaning is determined by infinite associations with other "texts"?
>
> ALEX: Uh, it felt, like, good. I wanted to do it again. The AUDIENCE
> groans.
>
> JENNY JONES: You were arrested at about this time?
>
> ALEX: For spray-painting "The Hermeneutics of Indeterminacy" on an
> overpass.
>
> JENNY JONES: You're the child of a mixed marriage -- is that right?
>
> ALEX: My father was a de Stijl Wittgensteinian and my mom was a
> neo-pre-Raphaelite.
>
> JENNY JONES: Do you think that growing up in a mixed marriage made you
> more vulnerable to the siren song of postmodernism?
>
> ALEX: Absolutely. It's hard when you're a little kid not to be able to
> just come right out and say (sniffles), y'know, I'm an Imagist or I'm
> a phenomenologist or I'm a post-painterly abstractionist. It's really
> hard -- especially around the holidays. (He cries.)
>
> JENNY JONES: I hear you. Was your wife a postmodernist?
>
> ALEX: Yes. She was raised avant-pop, which is a fundamentalist
> offshoot of postmodernism.
>
> JENNY JONES: How did she react to Rorty's admission that postmodernism
> was essentially a hoax?
>
> ALEX: She was devastated. I mean, she's got all the John Zorn albums
> and the entire Semiotext(e) series. She was crushed.
>
> We see ALEX'S WIFE in the audience, weeping softly, her hands covering
> her face.
>
> JENNY JONES: And you were raising your daughter as a postmodernist?
>
> ALEX: Of course. That's what makes this particularly tragic. I mean,
> how do you explain to a 5-year-old that self-consciously recycling
> cultural detritus is suddenly no longer a valid art form when, for her
> entire life, she's been taught that it is?
>
> JENNY JONES: Tell us how you think postmodernism affected your career
> as a novelist.
>
> ALEX: I disavowed writing that contained real ideas or any real
> passion. My work became disjunctive, facetious and nihilistic. It was
> all blank parody, irony enveloped in more irony.
>
> It merely recapitulated the pernicious banality of television and
> advertising. I found myself indiscriminately incorporating any and all
> kinds of pop kitsch and shlock. (He begins to weep again.)
>
> JENNY JONES: And this spilled over into your personal life?
>
> ALEX: It was impossible for me to experience life with any emotional
> intensity. I couldn't control the irony anymore. I perceived my own
> feelings as if they were in quotes.
>
> I italicized everything and everyone. It became impossible for me to
> appraise the quality of anything. To me everything was equivalent --
> the Brandenburg Concertos and the Lysol jingle had the same value.
> . . . (He breaks down, sobbing.)
>
> JENNY JONES: Now, you're involved in a lawsuit, aren't you?
>
> ALEX: Yes. I'm suing the Modern Language Association.
>
> JENNY JONES: How confident are you about winning?
>
> ALEX: We need to prove that, while they were actively propounding it,
> academics knew all along that postmodernism was a specious theory.
>
> If we can unearth some intradepartmental memos -- y'know, a paper
> trail -- any corroboration that they knew postmodernism was worthless
> cant at the same time they were teaching it, then I think we have an
> excellent shot at establishing liability.
>
> JENNY JONES wades into audience and proffers microphone to a woman.
>
> WOMAN (with lateral head-bobbing): It's ironic that Barry Scheck is
> representing the M.L.A. in this litigation because Scheck is the
> postmodern attorney par excellence. This is the guy who's made a
> career of volatilizing truth in the simulacrum of exculpation!
>
> VOICE FROM AUDIENCE: You go, girl!
>
> WOMAN: Scheck is the guy who came up with the quintessentially
> postmodern re-bleed defense for O. J., which claims that O. J. merely
> vigorously shook Ron and Nicole, thereby re-aggravating pre-existing
> knife wounds. I'd just like to say to any client of Barry Scheck --
> lose that zero and get a hero!
>
> The AUDIENCE cheers wildly.
>
> WOMAN: Uh, I forgot my question.
>
> Dissolve to message on screen: If you believe that mathematician
> Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's last theorem has caused you or a
> member of your family to dress too provocatively, call (800) 555-9455.
>
> Dissolve back to studio.In the audience, JENNY JONES extends the
> microphone to a man in his mid-30's with a scruffy beard and a bandana
> around his head.
>
> MAN WITH BANDANA: I'd like to say that this "Alex" is the single worst
> example of pointless irony in American literature, and this whole
> heartfelt renunciation of postmodernism is a ploy -- it's just more
> irony.
>
> The AUDIENCE whistles and hoots.
>
> ALEX: You think this is a ploy?! (He tears futilely at the electronic
> blob.) This is my face!
>
> The AUDIENCE recoils in horror.
>
> ALEX: This is what can happen to people who naïvely embrace
> postmodernism, to people who believe that the individual -- the
> autonomous, individualist subject -- is dead. They become a palimpsest
> of media pastiche -- a mask of metastatic irony.
>
> JENNY JONES (biting lip and shaking her head): That is so sad. Alex --
> final words?
>
> ALEX: I'd just like to say that self-consciousness and irony seem like
> fun at first, but they can destroy your life. I know. You gotta be
> earnest, be real. Real feelings are important. Objective reality does
> exist. AUDIENCE members whoop, stomp and pump fists in the air.
>
> JENNY JONES: I'd like to thank Alex for having the courage to come on
> today and share his experience with us.
>
> Join us for tomorrow's show, "The End of Manichean, Bipolar
> Geopolitics Turned My Boyfriend Into an Insatiable Sex Freak (and I
> Love It!)."
>
> --
> - Eric Sorenson - N37 17.255 W121 55.738 - http://eric.explosive.net -
> - Personal colo with a professional touch - http://www.explosive.net -
----------------------
Alan Lockett (Senior Language Co-ordinator - EFL)
Language Centre, University of Bristol,
30-32 Tyndall's Park Road, Bristol, BS8 1PY, UK
tel: +44 (0)117 3310914 e-mail: Alan.R.Lockett@bristol.ac.uk
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