There is no such thing as “true post-modernism”, not only because the label is applied to many unrelated things, but also because most of the best candidates are inherently impossible to pin down for Gödelian reasons.
If you need to chose one meaning, I’d say the literary one, but really only because I personally enjoy it. TV troopes “post modernism” page describes it better than anything else I know really, although they don’t make it clear enough it only applies to literary post-modernism. If you do this none of the things discussed in this thread are post-modernism at all.
Though I suppose that having a unifying term for a collection of distinct, non-overlapping ideas is a postmodern idea in and of itself, so I guess you may be onto something there.
Anyway, if, as you say, “there is no such thing as “true post-modernism”″, then why would people be offended when I apply this label to a particular philosophy ?
I believe this discussion, which is itself becoming post-modern, illustrates one of the weaknesses of post-modernism. We are now arguing about the applicability of an ill-defined (or, perhaps, entirely undefinable) term to a variety of subjects, while at the same time agreeing that the term is mostly (or perhaps even entirely) subjective. In other words, we’re just pushing around some syntax which has little (or perhaps none at all) semantic content. We could be talking about almost anything else, and that discussion would be more productive.
You asking this question.
There is no such thing as “true post-modernism”, not only because the label is applied to many unrelated things, but also because most of the best candidates are inherently impossible to pin down for Gödelian reasons.
If you need to chose one meaning, I’d say the literary one, but really only because I personally enjoy it. TV troopes “post modernism” page describes it better than anything else I know really, although they don’t make it clear enough it only applies to literary post-modernism. If you do this none of the things discussed in this thread are post-modernism at all.
Yes, I did foreshadow that a bit:
Anyway, if, as you say, “there is no such thing as “true post-modernism”″, then why would people be offended when I apply this label to a particular philosophy ?
I believe this discussion, which is itself becoming post-modern, illustrates one of the weaknesses of post-modernism. We are now arguing about the applicability of an ill-defined (or, perhaps, entirely undefinable) term to a variety of subjects, while at the same time agreeing that the term is mostly (or perhaps even entirely) subjective. In other words, we’re just pushing around some syntax which has little (or perhaps none at all) semantic content. We could be talking about almost anything else, and that discussion would be more productive.
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Personally, I think the exhibitionist aspect is the best part of intellectual masturbation.