In a capitalist society, debt is not defined by relationship with the government, but is essentially unending because everything requires debt to acquire.
If we took fifty literature postgrads from across the English speaking world, and asked them to explain the sentence, would they give consistent answers?
If they were familiar with the way Deleuzians phrase things then about 80% would, is my guess. Mostly the quality of postgrads is pretty poor because lots of philosophy professors suck, which influences this.
I got the same interpretation as Tim S though. I’ve read some D(&G) stuff before.
“Infinite” is just Deleuzians being overdramatic and imprecise with language. Or, perhaps they’re not trying to convey the logic of the argument so much as the idea or feel of the argument. Deleuzians often have a hard time seeing the division between things like logic and persuasion and bias. They’re right insofar as there is no hard concrete division between those things, but it sometimes makes them lazy.
RE: Below comments: “flows” mean something specific within Deleuzian terminology. It implies interconnectedness and chains of causality with uncountable numbers of variables interacting with whatever it is that they’re talking about. It also has implications related to perceiving objects as dynamic rather than as static.
Once you understand the jargon and have read his arguments a bit it’s actually sort of pleasant to read Deleuze’s stuff. His frequent use of metaphors allows him to make subtle references to other comments and arguments that he’s made in the past. It’s like how jargon is useful, except the benefit is not precision but is rather the breadth of meaning which each phrase can convey. Also, it’s almost never that the associations of arguments invalidate the misinterpretation, but that the misinterpretation overlooks specific shades of meaning. It’s difficult to interpret on some rare occasions but once it’s interpreted there’s a lot of meaning in it.
Most of the Deleuzian secondary authors suck though. They give me headaches.
Even as a post-modernist, I wouldn’t say I’m impressed with the average post-modern thinker. In other words, I don’t know the answer to your question, and am not confident that it would reflect well on post-modern thought.
I will say that post-modern art theory (as opposed to political theory) is least impressive to me. It always seemed to me like art critics have already said all the interesting things that aren’t post-modern, so post-modern literary criticism is the only way to say something new. And if it isn’t new, it doesn’t get published. But this is an uninformed outsiders impression.
In my rock critic days I found it a useful tool in writing about and understanding pop culture. (’80s British pop music is what you’d get if you tried monetising postmodernism, and I don’t just mean ZTT.) It’s the sort of thing you really want to have a use for before you bother with it more than casually.
(I still think in terms of critical understanding of stuff all the time and read books of criticism for enjoyment, even of artistic fields I know nothing about. I realised a while ago that if I were doing for a job the thing I would be best at, I’d be a professor of critical theory and paid a lot less than I am as a sysadmin.)
I chose postgrads because the counterpoint would be asking, say, statistics postgrads what a moderately arcane piece of stats terminology means in context.
We then have the extra avenue of asking professors. The stats professors should give answers consistent with the postgrads, because stats terminology should be consistent in the public domain; the professors may know more about it, but they don’t have any normative influence as to what the terminology means.
Will the literature professors have answers consistent with, but more knowledgeable than, their postgrad students, or will they be something different altogether?
What? That’s not answering my question (at least, why ignore ‘cojoining flows’?). And I get what sovereign means in this context like I get what synergy means among management, but ‘synergy’ is still management jargon.
My bad, I confused TimS with thomblake (because their names are so similar). I wrongly thought TimS was only explaining what sovereign meant even though they interpreted ‘cojoining flows’ somehow. But even so, sovereign could still be jargon unless thom is familiar enough with pomo to say otherwise—it’s not enough that it’s used in other contexts as well (I thought it might be jargon because I’ve heard continental philosophers using it often enough before).
But post-modernism is a type of political theory. Therefore, it borrows some jargon from more mainstream political theory.
It’s also a type of literary criticism theory. As applied to literary criticism, it doesn’t impress me, but most literary criticism doesn’t impress me, so that’s not a very meaningful statement.
Has there been much cross pollination between post-modernism and competing or parallel schools of thought (in say the last couple decades)? (I’d think there would be a language and tribal barrier preventing or largely limiting that.) If not, do you think the latest and greatest of post-modern thought ought to have a significant impact in other areas?
Not really, but maybe. I think (could be a common misconception) you could have added that post-modern thought helped the sciences realize their prejudices (misogyny, ethnocentrism, and so on). And so when I take all those accomplishments together it starts look like post-modernism acts as a meta-critic for the practices or structure of various fields. Does this sound right? If so, has it had any recent accomplishments (i.e., is it decaying)?
And so when I take all those accomplishments together it starts look like post-modernism acts as a meta-critic for the practices or structure of various fields. Does this sound right?
It sounds like the ideal of what it should be. I think it’s got some usefulness in this direction. But even when I defend PM as not being 100% bullshit, I have to take care to note that it’s 99% bullshit. A lot of it is academic performance art.
And so when I take all those accomplishments together it starts look like post-modernism acts as a meta-critic for the practices or structure of various fields. Does this sound right?
I think that this is a very good first-pass definition of post-modernism, or at least of its goals.
If we took fifty literature postgrads from across the English speaking world, and asked them to explain the sentence, would they give consistent answers?
If they were familiar with the way Deleuzians phrase things then about 80% would, is my guess. Mostly the quality of postgrads is pretty poor because lots of philosophy professors suck, which influences this.
I got the same interpretation as Tim S though. I’ve read some D(&G) stuff before.
“Infinite” is just Deleuzians being overdramatic and imprecise with language. Or, perhaps they’re not trying to convey the logic of the argument so much as the idea or feel of the argument. Deleuzians often have a hard time seeing the division between things like logic and persuasion and bias. They’re right insofar as there is no hard concrete division between those things, but it sometimes makes them lazy.
RE: Below comments: “flows” mean something specific within Deleuzian terminology. It implies interconnectedness and chains of causality with uncountable numbers of variables interacting with whatever it is that they’re talking about. It also has implications related to perceiving objects as dynamic rather than as static.
Once you understand the jargon and have read his arguments a bit it’s actually sort of pleasant to read Deleuze’s stuff. His frequent use of metaphors allows him to make subtle references to other comments and arguments that he’s made in the past. It’s like how jargon is useful, except the benefit is not precision but is rather the breadth of meaning which each phrase can convey. Also, it’s almost never that the associations of arguments invalidate the misinterpretation, but that the misinterpretation overlooks specific shades of meaning. It’s difficult to interpret on some rare occasions but once it’s interpreted there’s a lot of meaning in it.
Most of the Deleuzian secondary authors suck though. They give me headaches.
Even as a post-modernist, I wouldn’t say I’m impressed with the average post-modern thinker. In other words, I don’t know the answer to your question, and am not confident that it would reflect well on post-modern thought.
I will say that post-modern art theory (as opposed to political theory) is least impressive to me. It always seemed to me like art critics have already said all the interesting things that aren’t post-modern, so post-modern literary criticism is the only way to say something new. And if it isn’t new, it doesn’t get published. But this is an uninformed outsiders impression.
In my rock critic days I found it a useful tool in writing about and understanding pop culture. (’80s British pop music is what you’d get if you tried monetising postmodernism, and I don’t just mean ZTT.) It’s the sort of thing you really want to have a use for before you bother with it more than casually.
(I still think in terms of critical understanding of stuff all the time and read books of criticism for enjoyment, even of artistic fields I know nothing about. I realised a while ago that if I were doing for a job the thing I would be best at, I’d be a professor of critical theory and paid a lot less than I am as a sysadmin.)
Should the test be done by asking postgrads or professors? Why one or the other?
I chose postgrads because the counterpoint would be asking, say, statistics postgrads what a moderately arcane piece of stats terminology means in context.
We then have the extra avenue of asking professors. The stats professors should give answers consistent with the postgrads, because stats terminology should be consistent in the public domain; the professors may know more about it, but they don’t have any normative influence as to what the terminology means.
Will the literature professors have answers consistent with, but more knowledgeable than, their postgrad students, or will they be something different altogether?
Is there a good pomo vocabulary guide somewhere? (I’m assuming ‘sovereign’ and ‘conjoining flows’ are pomo jargon)
I’m not aware of any special meaning for “conjoining flow.” I assumed it was a metaphor and interpreted it in light of the next sentence in the essay.
Post-modernism loves metaphor and hyperbole, for better or worse. I readily acknowledge that frequent use of those styles impedes readability.
Not pomo jargon. It just means the supreme authority, like the King or the State. Used extensively in Political Science.
What? That’s not answering my question (at least, why ignore ‘cojoining flows’?). And I get what sovereign means in this context like I get what synergy means among management, but ‘synergy’ is still management jargon.
If you ask two questions in one comment, and someone knows the answer to one of the questions, what would you like that person to do?
My bad, I confused TimS with thomblake (because their names are so similar). I wrongly thought TimS was only explaining what sovereign meant even though they interpreted ‘cojoining flows’ somehow. But even so, sovereign could still be jargon unless thom is familiar enough with pomo to say otherwise—it’s not enough that it’s used in other contexts as well (I thought it might be jargon because I’ve heard continental philosophers using it often enough before).
But post-modernism is a type of political theory. Therefore, it borrows some jargon from more mainstream political theory.
It’s also a type of literary criticism theory. As applied to literary criticism, it doesn’t impress me, but most literary criticism doesn’t impress me, so that’s not a very meaningful statement.
Has there been much cross pollination between post-modernism and competing or parallel schools of thought (in say the last couple decades)? (I’d think there would be a language and tribal barrier preventing or largely limiting that.) If not, do you think the latest and greatest of post-modern thought ought to have a significant impact in other areas?
Is this a partial answer to your question?
Not really, but maybe. I think (could be a common misconception) you could have added that post-modern thought helped the sciences realize their prejudices (misogyny, ethnocentrism, and so on). And so when I take all those accomplishments together it starts look like post-modernism acts as a meta-critic for the practices or structure of various fields. Does this sound right? If so, has it had any recent accomplishments (i.e., is it decaying)?
It sounds like the ideal of what it should be. I think it’s got some usefulness in this direction. But even when I defend PM as not being 100% bullshit, I have to take care to note that it’s 99% bullshit. A lot of it is academic performance art.
I think that this is a very good first-pass definition of post-modernism, or at least of its goals.