| I have mixed feelings about "postmodernism." For one thing, no one seems too sure of what it is -- but that's a good thing. For another, I don't like all the bullshit about how "nothing is really true" (is this statement true?) or "nothing is really right or wrong" -- especially from people who race to the bank if their balances are off by a penny. I also know that dismissals of people like Shakespeare and Mozart on the basis of their "whiteness" and "maleness" are ludicrous.
Yet there is something to the idea of an essentially literary quality to the self, to identity. And I like all of the criticisms of Western societies today as "carnival cultures" and a semiotic "hall of mirrors." That stuff is O.K. too.
Also, I am told that it is easier to get laid by a female grad student if one is a postmodernist. |