Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey

leveling postmodernism

Finally, a blog entry, neither too ranting nor too fawning, on postmodernism. Got there [via Stumbling Tongue via Ad Usum Delphinorum].

If I were forced to make a choice between the postmodern stance and the high modernist stance, I'd choose the postmodern, and I'd do so very quickly. Why? Because there's much about the postmodern stance I find useful. It can be a way of keeping your poise in the midst of media chaos, and a way of opening up to the various sets of terms these realities present too. It reminds us to take things for what they are -- to identify the category a work belongs to before judging it rather than measuring all works against a single standard.

I like the distinction made between prescriptive and descriptive postmodernism, but I don't think that academia has any particular rights to this turf. In fact, ideology is just a human condition.