--- Carol Paltrow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Thanks Dan; but you're not defending the 'postmodern'
> in what you're saying, you're defending a set of ontological and
> rhetorical
> positions. That anyone would give these the label 'postmodern' is
> the
> problem for me.
I'd suggest it's one thing to attack "postmodern" as so imprecise as
to be of little use. But it's another thing to suggest that applying
the term to a particular film is wrong. I believe, in the present
discussion, that it is both an accurate label *and* not a very useful
one.
> if we can't gain something on that film
> by being
> free from the 'postmodern' label I'll eat my hat.
Me too -- if one applies the label without the detailed analysis that
led one to the application of the label. The real danger, and I
think this is what you are getting at, is that "postmodern" as a
label obscures or obfuscates more than it illuminates -- that one
would be better off describing the analyses and leaving the word
"postmodern" unsaid.
This solution, of course, contradicts the institutional tendendy in
intellectual endeavors to require the categorization of "schools of
thought" in a shorthand that implies the thrust of an argument
without the observer/reader having to investigate the particular
argument being presented. "Oh, that's a Freudian analysis of
_Peeping Tom_ so I've got a good sense of what it's about, before
reading it." Trouble is, Freudian is arguably more precise that
"postmodern".
--Nathan Wolfson
http://www.geocities.com/nathan_wolfson/
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