TyG - 9/12 - Verisimilitude, dude?
So, like, V-tude is like gnarly, right, dudes and dudettes? Dictionary.com says it's "the appearance or semblance of truth OR something, as an assertion, having merely the appearance of truth." So, for my clunky, wave-addled brain, that means it's like BOGUS, right? I mean if it's got only a semblance or appearance of truth, it's not really truth.
So, like, if we deconstruct that in the classic '70s French style, it means (I think) that Postmodernism is, like, totally tubular -- the big, empty, nothing INSIDE the TRUTH of the WAVE. Or, maybe to boil it down further, reality hasn't really changed - boys and girls still wake up every day in love, or wishing they were in love. The dog still whines and wags his tail 'cause he needs to go potty. People in power with lots and lots of dinero want to stay in power and garner (steal) even more buckolas.
All our PoMo thinkers seem to be doing is putting a frame around someone else's masterpiece. They can't surf, but they sure can tell everyone who'll listen what's wrong with whoever's out there tearin' up the waves.
Another way of looking at it is with the simulacrum definition; postmodernism is an "effigy, image, or representation" of a metanarritive -- though it doesn't claim to have all the answers as is typical of the metanarritive, it, in fact, essentially says there ARE NO definitive answers, that it is impossible to pin anything down firmly, that meaning and truth change with the reader and, perhaps, with each particular instance of reading.
Jewish folklore describes a creature called the golem or homuculus, created out of the four elements, earth, water, fire, and air, "a figure artificially constructed in the form of a human being and endowed with life." Or in more modern terms, a simulacrum having a verisimilitude of life. There seems to be a similar relationship between the metanarratives seen in the world religions and postmodernism's "PoMo is not a metanarrative" stance.
Methinks thou doest protesteth too much.
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