ix 08/29

Yet another fun interesting class that has placed many new thoughts and ideas in my mind that vie for singular attention. The primary idea that has caused me to lose some sleep--not really, though i have caught myself staring at nothing while i reflect on it--is whether or not thought can exist without language. Here is where you get into the notion of words and their meaning(s) as being unstable. What is meant when they say language? A quick internet search yields an Encarta definition of "communication with words" and/or "nonverbal communication between animals" and/or "nonverbal communication between humans." The key operative word here seems to be communication; words/sounds are not necessarily a requirement. Can thought then exist without communication? Which came first: the grunt and then the thought association (as was illustrated in class with the example of the caveman and the boulder) or did thought first exist as a "vague, uncharted nebula," as De Saussure posits, which elicited meaning in abstractions (such as configurations of sound) and related them to a corresponding physical surrounding.

Just a thought.

The other ideas/images that kept penetrating my mind were the image-definitions for Jenks' Emergent Rules.The image association lecture on the definitions to the 11 rules definitely helped to concretize the reading for me. For example, the slide of Disharmonious Harmony immediately made me think of the new "multiplex" building currently being constructed diagonally across from the Suntrust building. Both the Orlando building and the pictured building share the same facade effect where traditional concrete cubes along the side of the building slowly disappear to create an effect of disintegration/molting that reveals, in its metamorphosis, a completely new creature/creation made delicately of glass.
The best aspect of the lecture for me was being able to see that tmesis is not just merely a tool used on the pages of theory books but also an applicable concept in the physical three dimensional world.

JOH 8/29

Great session!
Now, in an effort to truly ground myself in what Barthe sets forth, I will not say many of the intriguing things that I have planned and so dedicatedly constructed in my thoughts/nonthoughts. It is up to you, in readerly fashion, to assemble a magnificent realization from the mere ramblings of my half-confused, nervous, virgin-PoMo mind.

The concept of tmesis is what stuck the deepest from our second session together. Upon reflection of our exercise "a short story," and our discussion of the theorists, as well as our tour of architecture, I can't help but return to Barthes' notions of the insertion of meaning and its relationship(s) to the absent or the malleable. Disappointingly, I have yet to experience jouissance, truly, but I do believe its there. Hidden. Behind my clouded mind. I feel a bit like the kid on the outside of really appealing game. I want to get in, I want to get involved, cause I'm sure I'll dig it true, yet I wander around the fringe, among the spectators - unable to penetrate to the insulated goodness.

******* PENETRATE HERE *******

So, tmesis. We know that it's applied in literature and in architecture - still to be explored for me. Remember ... on the fringe. But isn't it the same property that triggers the rumors, heresy, and automatic listening in many relationships, workplaces, churches, cafes, schools, PoMo classrooms, large white houses, and back room massage shacks?
Narrative + my version = TRUTH. No? Irritating? I would agree. But we're social creatures man! There often seems to be a negative connotation attached to the act of assigning one's own meaning to others business. At least such a vibe escapes from my ego more than I hope it does in the future.

What makes tmesis in fictional narrative (the intentional, artistic type) and in architecture so exciting, so PoMo? And what is it about the rumor, heresy, auto-listening version that makes so many people grit through potentially damage causing clenched jaws? It would seem that the writer/creator's intention(s) play a vital role. Does it sting when it's your business, others business, or any business that is being violated? When a person massages a narrative text, slips it a velvet bookmark, and has their way with the structure - should they feel remorse? Should the passerby intervene? Should the creator care?

Great second session, great words, great pics, great discussion - I am glad to be involved.

Mayo 8/29

From "empty signifiers" to our introduction to different types of Post-Modern architecture, one word kept popping into my head this past Tuesday; "Qee". For those unfamiliar, a Qee (pronounced "key") is a 2.5 inch tall plastic bear, cat, or dog, (although there have been a few minor deveations), manufactured by the Hong Kong-based company Toy2R, founded by Raymond Choy in 1995.

They were unleashed upon pop-culture with the tag line, "Everyone wants to collect more Qee", establishing the fact that, even though you may not now what the word means, or what it represents, everyone wants more.

What becomes interesting to me, and the cause for obsession and questionable priorities in many, is how this very basic toy has been marketed, re-invented, and embodies much of what we have contemplated to this point in class, leaning heavily on the architectural concepts of Radical Eclecticism, Anthropomorphism, Double-Coding, divergent Signification, etc.

Artists, designers, and even commercial entities across the spectrum have been given the basic form to use in what ever way they see fit, with a limited release of any given single design. Toy2R borrowed from collector's cards of the past by sealing these toys in "blind assortment" boxes. This has effectively created a rare, "instant" secondary market.

They are, in essence, theory, art & commerce made one, while remaining unstable and without any deeper explanation or meaning outside of itself. Late Capitalism at it's most playful? The evolution of branding? Pocket-sized Post-Modernism for less than ten bucks? Entertainment and distraction without a doubt.

STEVE-O 8/29

So what stuck out to me in class this week.....

Take a guess...

No, your wrong...

just joking, you're right...

Sike, I lied.....

The concept of intentional fallacy is one that I find very intriguing. I think as English majors, and human beings in the 21st century, There is a subliminal push to figure out what an author, architect, ad executive, director, producer, artist..ect. ect. is "REALLY" trying to do or say or express.There may be definitive answers for say commercials or movies, but when it comes to creative works, like art and fictional writing, there might be a direction or implicit goal of the creator and yet just as Barthes said,
"The pleasure of the text is that moment when my body pursues its own ideas-- for my body does not have the same ideas I do" (C. pg#111). Does this not apply to the writerly text as well as the readerly text. This phenomenon must occur in the creation process just as it does in the...recreation process-- congruent with Jencks' unlimited semiosis concept found in rule #10.

Dr. Casey gave us a simplistic comapirison between Theory and Philosophy. Philosophy tries to nail down an idea as finite where, in class this semester, we will try to understand and apply ideas without the need of determining there validity in an absolute manner. There won't be a so called right or wrong answer to Postmodernism...just a vast "ununified view". In order to keep this open mind we mustn't give way to our humanistic impulse to conjure up intentional fallacies... of even the theorists themselves.

I finally had an opportunity last semester to explore my creative inner being by writing a piece of fictional literature. What I discovered is that although I had a direction or idea for the story, I hit a "zone" in my writing when my body (or as Dr. Laws calls it, My Black Box) took over and it was as if I was just along for the ride. When reading these theorists I can't help but think they too entered this fog...or enlightenment...of creativity. A place where you know exactly what your doing but have no clue how or why it's happening...No intention...just a feeling of being alive.

Perfection Is Perfected In My Land Of Understand


1

sardine 8/22

The concept of Postmodernism I have encountered in dinner parties. I think I tried to hide in the corner. Or I sat with babies in my lap. Now I am stuck with here with Postmodernism. I think it is following me. It is interesting collection of theories, none of which I understand yet. I understand I few vague terms. But at those dinner parties, maybe I wasn't alone. But I am far from comfortable with bantering about concepts I barely comprehend. Some people are not. If anything, at the end of this course, maybe I will progress in my understanding enough not to hide behind the potted palm, and join in the soap boxing.

Yet I have a very low threshold for the religiosity people apply to theories. It seems to me so many of those people at those dinner parties needed a theory to apply to themselves to create an identity. They are afraid of the not knowing. They are afraid of the void.

The void is what people disappear into without an identity. I don’t know if Postmodernism will explain, or decipher this void? People are comfortable with labels. We want to say, “I am __________! We fill this void by buying crap. We watch the commercials that say dress this way and you will be in the know, cool, young, beautiful and loved. And those dinner party Intellectuals were applying the latest theory to define themselves. Maybe, they are me? We bought the book. We attended the lecture. We bought the movie about Chomksy or Derrida. Voila! A new identity. Gee wiz, I am a CHOMPER!

Monica- In the well.

After the first few readings, I feel like I have fallen into a well, similar to baby Jessica, and need some EMT to rescue me pronto. De Saussure, Barthes, and Macherey's writings were all really hard to process. I struggled. I found myself reading one sentence five times. I don't know if this discourse/ way of thinking is way above me, or if it just takes time to learn how to digest it all. I keep repeating what Dr. Casey said about it "one day just clicking" and this has helped me to continue. I hope that this day comes soon. Here is my best shot anyway...

Saussure's section on lingiustics helped me to remember the magic involved in the transactions between thoughts and the role of language, and the difficulties involved in connecting the two. I had these realizations quit frequently when I lived in Switzerland. Daily, I would witness how French words got lost in it's own language, or as Saussure put it " all words used to express realted ideas limit each other reciprocally, and yes, "the value of any term is accordingly determined by its environment". I was trying to grasp this language while over there, and it seems that every time I attempted to express the correct word, my brain would never correspond the right word by its reations with other terms. Needless to say, I never really grasped the French language.

I also enjoyed Jencks' spotlighting postmodernist art and architecture, and the constant "disharmonious harmony" in the works. I love the list of the formal terms associted with this: "assymetrical symmetry, unfinshed whole, and fragmented purity". I have to say that Jencks' examples are observant and honest, when it comes to these works. This section was pretty interesting.
I hope that next weeks critical approaches seem to prove for an easier read. Until then...

CC Saussure-Language and God

Oh Saussure, how I love thee!
I especially love your unusually effective drawings of waves, and your concise examples (signifier being a gust of wind and signified being a body of water- two entirely separate entities that make something new when they collide, just like language), because most of the time you are too damn smart to be understood without a picture aid.
“There are no pre-existing ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language.” Ah! The words I’ve wanted to say to every Jehovah’s Witness that has come knocking on my door over the years. Saussure is so eye-opening, to me, mainly for this reason. He takes an idea that I’ve vaguely felt throughout my whole life, one that I’ve attempted to communicate over and over (but usually fell short), and supports it with an insanely complex argument about the ways in which language works. Yes, debating the existence of God is made much easier now on account of Saussure. But don’t worry, I don’t limit his effect and genius to my own childish desire to point out the inconsistencies of faith. But this is the connection, the leap that I make, from language to faith. I see an irresistible parallel between systems of language, as Saussure describes it, and faith. For example, Saussure states that “each linguistic term is a member, an articulus in which an idea is fixed in a sound and a sound becomes the sign of an idea.” Therefore, each signifier has the signified embedded into it but it is not a universal law. The connection between the signified and the signifier is “arbitrary”, and it only gains its significance by virtue of what surrounds it, and by the “contract” made between a community and the system of language it upholds. Furthermore, this also means that the signifier “becomes the sign,” or the thought or idea, but it never actually IS the thing or the idea.
When speaking about faith, I see it operating on a similar level. There are several religions to choose from (just as there are several languages). Each religion is very similar, but different based on the culture that it originates from (just as the signifiers that are used to express ideas differently from language to language). For humanity, there is a definite need to understand what is beyond explanation. Just as we attempt to “order nature” and ideas with language- give it some coherence, we also attempt to order things beyond our realm of experience (god, cosmology, etc.). With the idea of God implanted deeply into our minds we are meant to believe that language is a nomenclature, which Saussure convincingly disapproves here (or so I believe). When language and experience becomes too much, too difficult to order, too malleable for our compartmentalizing minds, we turn to God and wipe our hands clean of all blame. “a dog is named a dog because Adam said so, and Adam’s thoughts are from God” or something along those lines. But when we consider that there is no concept of “dog” before the language which allows the term to come into existence, that, in fact, there is NOTHING before the human mind attempts to wrap itself around “it” and define” it”, the idea of God becomes yet another signifier. It varies from culture to culture, person to person, it is not universally stable.

So, I guess I did kind of use Saussure in this mini blog as a way to push religion into the background. Yet, I hope this doesn’t offend anyone’s sensibilities. After all, the system is held up by what everyone contractually agrees upon, and God is something most people agree upon, so it is a part of the system. Thus the contract is set, and as Saussure points out, “the community is necessary if values that owe their existence solely to usage and general acceptance are to be set up; by himself the individual is incapable of fixing a single value.” So, I haven’t killed God and neither have all these exciting postmodern theories (which all basically seem to link back to the idea that we are all alone. Victims or valiant queens and kings of our own linguistic mess, you decide. But regardless- indefinitely alone and trapped within system upon system upon system intended to keep our thoughts and actions in place).

Rosabelle Meagan Saussure

A jolt in the brain, programming in motion, a blank stare as the windows of the soul closes, OR rebels back with it’s own insistently critical daring stare…

A blank stare, a look of hate in her eyes, never of love, never even spoken of, the closest was, “A child should know it is loved, it shouldn’t have to be told!” “It”, was confused because what was said, was not actually is, it did not exist, not even accepted through her discourse provided, for it conflicted with what was seen, felt, heard in and between the words she only chose to speak, the real experience was just on the other side of them. Understood! That within “it”-self is liberation! Ferdinand de Saussure, as a scientist would dissect a specimen, dissects the sectional interest of human societies through the use of language. After reading his theory of semiology, it is quite difficult to take what is heard, said, and especially read at just face value. Individual words are no longer simple composition of letters with rote definitions, instead they become little mini signs that convey intricate messages within its own context of construct. Saussure proposes that, “The characteristic roles of language with respect to thought is not to create a material phonic means for expressing ideas but to serve as a link between thought and sound, under conditions of necessity bring about the reciprocal delimitations of units” (5-6). Furthermore he explains, “The arbitrary nature of the signs explains in turn why the social fact alone can create a linguistic system”.

Toni Morrison’s Sula demonstrates how a town with its’ own linguistics in place can create a hierarchy for the citizens of the community with the use of one word, “Bottom”: “It stood in the hills above the valley town of Medallion…, but that part of town where the Negroes lived, the part they called the Bottom in spite of the fact that it was up in the hills” (3-4). The subjective production of meaning due to the usage of the word “Bottom” in the community of Medallion is, even though “the top of the hill” is at the highest point possible in town because of the natural physical geographical location; the social construct of reality is that it’s at the bottom since “negroes” live there.

Since language is the largest and most intricate verbal or written contract. The usage permits people to express innumerous amounts of thoughts and ideas that strongly influence and impact one another. Signs can permit society to pay attention to particular elements which portray partial bias images of people and their environment, instead of the actual existent of physical tangible human entities or the situation that is objectively occurring at hand. The study of semiology can obviously expand on understanding the operation of the written and spoken language amongst societies.

AM Barthes

Phew! If only Balzac and Tolstoy knew!
Why do I feel like a lab rat that just ran a through a maze? Barthes (sure has) a way with words, doesn't he? If the (parenthetical) comments weren't distracting, then his italics sure were. Gees! Who was his editor? I feel like I couldn't get his point without reading his passage from, "The Pleasure of the Text" a few times. So, according to Barthes, I utilized his "applied" reading technique; slowly. In doing so, I admit I felt as though I was gaining comprehension, but somehow missing the warmth and humanistic quality of the piece. I would rather consider some other perspective on the categorization of reading. Partly because I am not otherwise familiar with Barthes and question his sources. Who is he and who ordained him the holier-than-thou word god? And why do I feel like he would judge me upon completion of reading his essay? Regardless of my insecurities, I think Balzac and Tolstoy would be less than happy if they knew their art were to be broken down and labeled like the bones of a skeleton.

RB, Saussure

Ali G* says he’s not a homosapien. He “ain’t got nothing against it,” he says, but when called one by a scientist on an episode of Da Ali G Show he makes physical gestures of disgust. The subject came up during a roundtable discussion about science.

According to Ali G’s concept of the sound “homosapien,” he is right: He’s not a homosapien. Ali G’s concept of the sound “homosapien” is different than the sound’s concept as established within the English language. Ali G’s negative reaction to the scientists’ insistence that he is a homosapien is based on his personal concept of the sound.

One of the scientists observes the discrepancy. “It’s the homo that threw him off.” By this time the scientists’ concept of the sound “homosapien” has expanded to include Ali G’s. Sounds and concepts are arbitrary, Saussure writes. Sounds are not attached to their concepts, and consensually-determined concepts do not precede language. In the case of Ali G's homosapien, one familiar sound has acquired the English-language concept of a similar familiar sound.

One of the scientists uses a principle of Saussure’s to determine value in order to help Ali G understand the discrepancy. The scientist contrasts homosapien with two other sounds of similar concept: hominoid and hominid. Each has a more satisfying value when in relationship with the others (all three fall underneath the same genus). The scientist is demonstrating that similar things can be compared in order to determine value.

Ali G says, “Yo, whatever, there is different names for it.” The names to which Ali G now refers acquire value by contrast: homosexual, gay, queer and their prejudice slurs vary significantly in relationship to each other.

Later, Ali G’s value of homosapien changes when one of the scientists says that his wife is a homosapien.

*Ali G is a fictional wannabe gangster, played by Sacha Barron Cohen, who in Da Ali G Show interviewed people under the impression that he was really his character.

SF - Barthes

The light bulb above my head has flickered off and I feel alone here in the dark recesses of postmodernity. In both Barthes and Macherey I detected an emphasis on absence (both placed an importance on what is not revealed rather than what is). So, perhaps it is not what I blog about, but what I don't blog about that matters the most? Please keep this in mind while grading my posts…

I managed to drudge through Barthes The Pleasure of the Text without extreme mental anguish, and I did find the first page to be rather interesting (and perhaps the only thing from our readings that I understand enough to discuss at length comfortably). I liked the way he compared the pleasure of text to nudity and nightclubs. It's always good when one can make a metaphor out of a stripper.

Moving past the metaphor, Barthes explains that "we do not read everything with the same intensity of reading," noting that we “skim or skip” certain (boring) parts of the text in anticipation of the anecdote and articulation (108). Indeed while preparing for Tuesday’s class I found my eyes wandering across the page while my brain struggled to catch up. Shortly after completing our assigned readings I found myself huddled in a corner rocking back and forth while mumbling words that would put even the craftiest neologist to shame. However, I am confident that Tuesday night the light bulb will begin to flicker as Dr. Rog illuminates that which I have thus far found to be puzzling and obscure.

STEVE-O Jencks

WOW...So after attempting to tackle the "Emergent Rules" as seen by Charlie, I have to admit that me and the Jenckster don't see quite eye to eye. There is definitely some good stuff in these personal observations by a well educated scholar, yet as he says "One has to look elsewhere to find a clearer expression of a unified view" (p. 285). Jencks is obviously a smart man, a Harvard educated English major turned European architect extraordinaire. In this Ivey league education there seems to be a need to break from the rules instilled in his learning, "The only escape from a rule-governed art is to suppress from the consciousness tha canons behind one's creativity - hardly a comforting liberation" (p. 281). Well that depends on how and where these canons were embedded in ones "insulae". As I read his rules, I tried to understand the perspective and spirit behind the 11 Canonical idea--ls.

1) "Disharmonious Harmony" matches quite well with the concept of binary oppositions discussed last week in class. The need or comfort in the Ying and Yang, I'm surprised he didn't mention Feng Shui. He goes on to say that "art and architecture must represent this paradoxical view" (p. 282). But, does it "Have To " Anything? Do we need a "Hierarchy" of meaning in order to define PostModernism in society?

The prevelant Post Modern theme throughout the Essay is the widespread contradiction within the rules themselves.

2) I do agree with Jencks idea of heterogeneity. We must have a diverse spectrum of inputs to have a Post Modern output. But what does he mean by "weak eclecticism" (p.283)? wouldn't it be more of an unintended "Anamnesis", and a so called "Radical" eclecticism being just an intended one. In fact I see the unconscious use of eclectic material as much truer or real then the calculated use thereof. Jenck goes on to define plural metaphysics as a state which entails frustration and its binary oppositon, withheld gratification. The reality today is that men can't withold gratification (P.E.) and get so frustrated because pills are the only way to reverse their E.D. What could be more Post Modern than that?

3) Urbane Urbanism..Can we say"Baldwin Park" or "Celebration". These two Planned communities reflect my interpratation of Post Modernism to the "T". Big houses packed tight enough so you can spit on your neighbors window from the bathroom, with colonial architecture, public parks and everything needed so a resident doesn't even need to leave...ever. This Colonial architecture is in opposition to the Spanish Villa look that 98% of all new home construction in adjecent Winter Park. Got to keep up with the Jones' and there....Commentary. The contradiction here is in Jencks view that a neighborhood fiiled by RULES is better than that of its binary opposite and unruley City concept.

4) Subliminal Anthropomorphism ,I though he just called it Enigmatic Allegory,.. promotes explicit detail and ornamant? Can anything be more opposite than that? This really bothered me, " In an age when architects and artists are often at a loss for LEGITIMATE subject matter" (p.286). Did he really just say that? WHo is he to make such a claim. An English major turned architect....Homey Don't Play That!

5) Ah Yes...The Retroism of the 21st Century. No better example of this than that of the Nike Fanatic Sneaker Addict. Did anyone go to the mall two Saturday ago just as they opened? Well if you did you would have seen 100 Sneaker "Pimps" camped out waiting to be the first to run in and claim a pair of Air Jordan Retro V's (fives) in a new colorway. The hottest shoes out are the remakes of the original joints. Yes, the ones that came out SIXTEEN years ago! And you know what? They really are HOT!....anyone got a size 12??????? Charlie uses the idea of revitalization to explain our conscious or unconscious way of related the new with the past..or perceived past...or whatever...lol (can I do that in a blog?)
He postulates,"It is in this harmonious aura which becomes the subject matter of this paradoxical genre--a narrative without a plot" (p. 287-288). This statement makes me think about the TV shows Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Two brilliant and highly successful shows which are basically narratives without plot.

7) The renovation rule, "Present style and technology are accepted as valid realities, but not required to overassert themselves" (p. 288). Disney personified this rule in the construction of The Contemporary Resort. Its interior was as modern of its kind at that time and the exterior was modern but yet at the same time almost egyptian pyramid-like. a subtle yet definite mix of old and new (see 11). Once again this rule demands no clear unified view, "It acknowledges the simultaneous validity of opposite approaches" (p. 289).

8) MULTIVALENCE, "reaches out to the rest of the environment, to many adjacent references, and to many different associations" (p. 289). Let's go Disney one more time. The Globe at Epcot is the image that pops into my mind while reading this definition. It is definitely inclusive and symbolic simultaneously. Jencks argues that modification during the creation of such works is key to it maintaining this "organic unity". There needs to be some improvisation...similar to rhetoric without a plot? Rule 8 continues, "The great advantage and delight in multivalence is the continual reinterpretation it prompts" (p. 290). This reiterates the No unified view concept.

9) "A complex relation to the past" (p. 291), I have to do it...can you think of the most Post Modern place on earth....How about Tommorrow Land...yes I'm making my third and hopefully final Disney reference. Ironically The Contemporary Resort looks right into this area of the park..coincidence? I think Not. It is in Tommorrow land that you will find an attraction that epitomizes this rule. The Carousel of Progress. If you have been through this ride/experience you might have come across the same feelings as me. There is something warm and fuzzy reliving the last 100 years of advancement in modern society. It is in this "Historical continuum that I feel...safe, secure, and at home. It also is amusing both to rehash the past and to reinterprate what it means to us in that moment. I have been on that ride a dozen times, and every time there seems to be a slight change in emotional impact. Whether throught the advancements that have come into fruition since the last visit or the growth of my inner being, there always is some change in my "anamnesis".

10) all I'm going to say about rule ten is "AIRY INSUBSTANTIALITY"!!! WHAT!...Is very much of us?? This is getting too Theoretical now!

11) The Missing Center, and yes I have to go Disney for the fourth and FINAL time. Back to the Contemporary Resort, guess what is in its center...Nothing! that's right. In its pyramidal frame rooms the rooms are place on either side of the triangular building leaving the center empty, and the ingenius Imagineers decided to run the monorail straight through this absent place..thus giving it a presence or "presence of the absence"!

Wow...I'm going to end this edition in exclamation as well. I think I have a headache!

I hope I went Deep enough this time..
I thought I might leave ya'll with some OUTKAST lyrics

D.E.E.P. you want to go D.E.E.P., I'll take ya D.E.E.P.
You know you f#@$ed up when you let my mind creep
Deeper than the page of a book let me look
You let me hit the stage, that's when I got my folks hooked like..
DEEP

1

TYG - Barthes

My brain hurts.

And I am liable to go off into a rant about how frustrating and stupid this all seems, so bear with me. I am only able to continue with this assignment because during our first class Dr.Not.Rog. said something like "if you just do the readings and stick with it, something will 'click' about half-way through the class and understanding will come." I don't really believe it, but I will take it on face value and continue; maybe I have a masochistic bent, I don't know, but I do need the course.

So, why am I writing about what Roland Barthes had to say in "The Pleasures of the Text" instead of one of our other illustrious authors? Probably because his opening paragraph describing the "intermittence of skin flashing between two articles of clothing" grabs my attention and actually gave me some idea of what he was trying to say: meaning lies between the lines.

I understand that picture much better than Saussure's sparse diagrams and redefinitions of words -- I learn best visually and hands-on -- and Macherey's discussions about recognizing "the area of shadow in or around the work" and "the silence that is doing the speaking" were almost understandable; I can relate these concepts to a piece of art in which the white space is at least as important as line and use (or not-use) of color.

The fog is still quite thick all around me, but I see occasional glimpses of light and form: subtlety is almost essential in poetry, and those things in dialog that are left unsaid paint at least as much of a picture of the characters as do the words they "speak." Perhaps there is meaning behind all the static; I'll keep watching the screen.

And I still want to hack up the vast hairball of most of what postmodernism (-ity?) appears to be selling. First, I object to unnecessary jargon and gravitate to simple explanations. The concepts behind Shaker furniture have always seemed near-perfect to me; I eschew the rococo. And these PM philosophers appear to glean far too much pleasure from the obscurity of their snake-oil recipes -- like Macbeth's witches, they seem to all be parading around the monstrous PM cauldron, each tossing in their own various poisons.

Mmmm. Tasty.

AS, Macherey and Jencks

So the theme of this blog shall be “dig deep.” The problem is I don’t know where I’m digging to. I’m actually quite nervous about hitting a sewer line. Then of course we’d have something to discuss…the artful splatter of feces and what the absence of cleanliness reveals about the presence of immorality in our culture. Or something.

So we love the past while we run from it -- constantly revisiting the traditional while furiously developing the new. Be that in art, architecture, literature, journalism, whatever. Old fashioned and quaint are bad words for ten years until someone remembers the charm of old fashioned ice cream and quaint bed and breakfasts and there we are again, eating a sticky strawberry cone while rocking in a vintage inspired swing on the little white-washed porch of an overpriced B&B. I can’t say I’m crystal on Saussure, Barthes, Macherey, and Jencks (especially Saussure). Maybe I’m just used to lazy compliance. Maybe I just see a soup can instead of art. Maybe my binary opposition is awareness. Maybe paradox just pisses me off. Anyway, I’ve gleaned more from my classmates’ responses then I did from the readings themselves. So, thank you guys, your mis-readings have helped shape my own.

As I’m struggling with the concepts of signifier and signified, presence and absence, pleasure and bliss, implicit and explicit, I’m drawn most frequently to how integrated everything is – or as Jencks summarizes: “no centre, but connections.” You can’t find an independent subject anywhere. Language to literature to architecture, everything means something, and endless connections reveal endless truths.

The Week is a magazine comprised of media compilations from the proceeding week (spot-on title, don’t you think?). It is published under the tagline, “All you need to know about everything that matters.” Hybrid and ironic, it is a weekly print publication that presents a collage-account of the biggest stories of the week. The reader is guaranteed “the best of the U.S. and International media.” That’s a tall order to fill in only 38 pages. These articles, reviews, and commentaries – ranging from the latest terror plot to the remarkably “grounded” Ivanka Trump – supposedly highlight the most important news of any given week. My favorite magazine does all my thinking for me. A given concern, issue or topic, a counter argument, and a lively debate are all provided to me, a member of the discerning public, in 500 words or less. Only one hitch, I have to actually read it myself.

The love affair is over; the excitement of what I could learn all in one place has paled in comparison with the inclination of all that I’m missing. I’m now interested in the discarded world events – the thousands of stories that didn’t match someone’s idea of “best.”

JOH Saussure

Heavy things ...
The study of linguistics seems super fascinating, while dynamic and intimidating . I am not very experienced at such a study, however, I recognize the utility in being at least familiar with the concepts and the impetus for related exploration. Dipping in, I found some interesting aspects of Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (1916).

The discriminations made between name sets were a good warmer, opening me to thinking about words, terms, signs, and names as more than the labels I have been programmed to receive, digest, and regurgitate. Connected to Voloshinov's statement that 'Signs can only arise on inter-individual territory,' the notion that "the sign is not autonomous and self-sufficient but always determined within ideology and in relation to subjectivity" pointed my thoughts in the direction of reflection - on known words and labels, terms and their relationship to human interaction and correspondence, the origin of language and the state of human thought prior to language, and the impact of language on all things experienced (related specifically to the PM themes discussed in our first session last week). Great calisthenics for the Saussure excerpt...

The quote, "Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula" induced an aural hallucination of a Carl Sagen narration of "billions and billions of signs ..." Really, it's interesting to consider that the all powerful human mind could be, as Saussure asserts, a messy scoop of thought-pudding. Vanilla? I should hope not. The statement stirred me to question just what went on in the mind of early man when, a few million years ago, his brain grew to unprecedented size, causing him to be born into the world the least developed of all mammals. Growing into his head, did he lack the ability to organize his images, desires, fears, and what not? And what of his ego? Did it (his ego) play a similar role in the thought and action process that it does for me now? Wow, if he was dealing straight pudding, his ego must've really been irritated. How does one cry me, me, me! when the thoughts scatter about in Cosby's sugar-soup?

Moving on, I found myself drawing little diagrams in the margins of one "cloud form," labeled T, and another a space to its right labeled S, with -----> labeled L = Communication (to aid in my understanding of the SOUND/THOUGHT/LANGUAGE relationship.

WHAT?

On a final note, as to not miss the 5PM deadline, the statement that "by himself the individual is incapable of fixing a single value" lends so much to my understanding of humans as social creatures. Much like the reliance of sound upon thought, and visa versa, human verbal communication is reliant upon interaction. Now what of nonverbal communication and its relationship to reliance? Oh, so much ... I look forward to tomorrow's session.

We shall see.

ginny t., Macherey

Ok. Culture of fear? I understand. Faster is better? I understand. Madonna? I understand. Macherey? Not so much.

I realize that Dr. Rog warned us from the beginning that this class was going to be challenging, and the reading difficult, but.... I honestly had no idea what I was reading when I sat down this weekend with the texts from Hell. None. I felt (feel) like I was (am) missing something--three years as an English major already under my belt, perhaps? Though I could understand the words on the page, I could not make (much) sense of what those words actually meant when strung together in sentences. Suddenly, I knew what it must feel like to have some kind of degenerative brain disorder...mmm...word salad!

Thankfully, being stuck in the car on an interminable drive from Western North Carolina to Orlando, I 've had some time to digest those bitter, bitter sentences. Just as Barthes said, I did not (could not) read these passages word for word. Instead, I let my brain and eyes skip over sentences, trying to comprehend as much as I could. And just like his reference to reading Proust (not that I have ever read Proust,) I did indeed discover passages in the text upon rereading (and sometimes, re-rereading) that I didn't even notice the first time around. These passages from Macherey are ones that I discovered hiding in the word salad: "...the work is revealed to itself and to others on two different levels: it makes visible, and it makes invisible." (p 19) and "Speech eventually has nothing more to tell us: we investigate the silence, for it the silence that is doing the speaking." (p 17) While I'm not quite ready to apply these theories to Literature (with a capital L,) I think I can apply it to life (operating on the assumption that "reality is text.")

As we were driving into town this afternoon, I saw a billboard on I-4 advertising loud and proud that Cocoa Beach is "Orlando's Closest Beach!" Not Orlando's cleanest beach, not Orlando's nicest beach, but Orlando's closest. Two days ago, I would have laughed off that sign and its lack-luster enthusiasm for Cocoa Beach; I would have chalked up the dubious "Closest!" campaign to a lazy ad exec. Now I realize that the PR person wasn't lazy, they're brilliant! That sign silently screams "Faster is better!" The advertisement perfectly encapsulates the "Whatever" attitude of most people living in Postmodern America. Who cares if the beach is clean, safe, or even fun? As long as it's convenient, we'll take it. We'll be too busy talking on our cell phones, thumbing through our Us Weeklys, listening to our iPods, and texting on our blackberrys to even really enjoy that we're at the beach in the first place.

We are so distracted by what is being said, that most people don't ever notice what isn't being said. For most American's, our entire lives revolve around media and television; most people are so distracted by the deluge of information, that we lose touch with ourselves and the people around us. If we could extract ourselves from the constant barrage of media and language and tune in to the whisperings around us (environmental crisis, civil rights violations, foreign policy nightmares, etc...), maybe there is hope for Us yet.

Captain PMS, Jencks

Captain’s Blog Stardate 8/28

I lived in New York once. It was over a decade and several dreams ago but I lived there nonetheless. For a small town girl the city was an overload to the senses. I ate foods I had never heard of, saw shows that never make it here, and walked myself into a size two. I loved New York and when I left I felt like I had really made the most of my experience there, but after reading Jencks it occurs to me that in a lot of ways I saw nothing.
New York has some great architecture, which at nineteen, meant nothing to me. The eleven canons of post-modernism that Jencks describes reveal themselves a thousand times over in the city. I cannot tell you which buildings best illustrate dissonant beauty only that I’m certain there are many. I don’t know which neighborhoods combine history and modernism but in my memory it seems like most function in a state of urbane urbanism. What I do remember is this office building across from my apartment that had a decorative circle on the ground in front of it. The circle was surrounded by marble benches and columns, a sort of gazebo without the roof. I sat on those benches most afternoons, eating vendor food and reading. That circle was of great comfort to me on some of my loneliest days.
The eleventh canon that Jencks discusses is the “return to the absent centre.” He describes this return as a “paradox,” a “desire for communal space… and then the admission that there is nothing quite adequate to fill it.” Looking back I think I can see what the architect imagined when he or she designed the building. I think they pictured tired office workers out for a breath of fresh air or maybe just a break and a snack. I think they pictured them talking and laughing together. I’m sure they thought it was a nice balance between art and functionalism, this gazebo with no roof, this strange design on the ground in marble where a fountain should have been. The truth is, however, that in the two years I lived there the only person I ever met in this absent centre was myself.
Perhaps post-modernism, as Jencks suggests, is “schizophrenic” about the past. I believe the architect who built the circle saw it as the next big thing but also loved that it looked like something straight out of Rome. They probably thought they were brilliant and that soon roofless gazebos would sweep the nation. Instead the place was filled with too much sunlight and bird crap. But, to a nineteen year old girl alone in the city, it offered solace and rested her mind when there was nothing adequate to fill it.

E.M. 8/28/06 Pre-class post.

As I read the text for this week's reading assignment, I felt like Alice down the rabbit hole. If I bit this piece of mushroom my brain felt very small or the other side of the mushroom it felt very very large. I must put things within a frame of reference to better understand them. The class that precedes this class on Tuesday is 19c. British lit. Examining how the use and meaning of words have changed over the span of time from Jane Austen's Emma to the present. This is exactly what I am doing every Tuesday. Study the somewhat out of date quaint terms found in Austen's Emma and then take a huge leap into the new 21st Century and study the evolution of words in on our modern culture. De Saussure's stance that the text is a microcosm of the whole i.e. the macrocosm. Now of course I could have bitten off more of the mushroom than I could chew and gotten that completely wrong.Do the three writers’ theorize that each thought or belief is built on the preceding generation of thought and theory? Does the next generation of philosophy construct or deconstructs the existing theories concepts or ideas. To pretend that I understood all of what I read would be a lie. I am hoping that the lecture will provide some sort of insight into what I've read. Right now I feel like the Cheshire cat is grinning at me, mocking my inability to understand higher thought.

Mayo Humbert's intermission.

I've said enough already, and if you go here and here, you can form your own opinion about Godard and Burroughs, and what I wanted to address.

Oh, and sorry for all the grammatical errors, I hate them just as much as you do.

Deep Thunder- Macherey

Thank you, Macherey, for your lack of parenthetical distractions, your palatable syntax, and your solid hypothesis- I love you for that. What I cannot love you for, however (but do not hate you for) - Oh my god, now I’m doing it- is failing to point out that sometimes there is not a subconscious meaning in a work, or at least not a cookie cutter self fulfilling prophesy for every reader who insists on imposing their own context or ideology on a work (and fellow students). As an English Major, sitting in on roundtable discussions of literature are commonplace. Many evenings I have sat and listened as my colleagues form legitimate hypotheses on the implicit meanings of a work we have just digested. Many others, I have dug my heels into the carpet to avoid slipping down the slope of someone who is flat out stretching it. Although some literature is widely translatable, and meaning can sometimes be open to interpretation, this is not a carte blanche for manipulating the text in order to adapt the author’s implicit theses to their explicit ones. It is important, I think, not to impose your context on literature, and further, not to then attempt to impose that opinion on fellow students. And then there’s this: sometimes we think too much and flat-out read too much into literature (and many other forms of aesthetic art). At this point, at the point of reading-in, we are going beyond misinterpreting the silence to manipulating the voice. There is a universality to literature, don’t get me wrong here, its just that the universality is not absolute, and there is perhaps more danger in over or misinterpreting (or interjecting) a message than in just failing to not find it in the first place.

ix--Macherey's unifying theory

Upon looking at our (dis)ordered reading assignment--De Saussure on pages 3-11, Barthes on 108-111, back to pages 15-23 for Macherey--i fleetingly wondered if there was any reason to such seemingly disparate jumping around. I mean, i'm already on page 11, it is simply far more easy for me to go to page 15 than flip all the way to page 108--only to accidentally pass it, of course, and have to flip back a few pages. Fortunately, i did not give way to temptation and did not believe the hype that says a straight line is the easiest way to anyplace, physical or mental. So in a way, you can say, the form of our reading assignment was deconstructed by Rog. And just as when you deconstruct any text, very difficult but sometimes achievable, new insights arise. After reading the assigned texts in their assigned order i begin to see the "why" of the aforementioned arrangement. Pierre Macherey synthesized, or so it seems to me, the concepts of De Saussure and Barthes and used them to go further and come up with his own thesis of the "two questions."

Two statements Macherey made immediately reminded me of what De Saussure was talking about, and having already read Saussure prior to this reading, understood it through him (Saussure). When Macherey asked "are there books which say what they mean, without being critical books, that is to say, without depending directly on other books?"i instantly, and resoundingly answered "No." because my thoughts went back to De Saussure and his assertion that text has no inherent value, that "[i]ts content is really fixed only by the concurrence of everything that exists outside it." To me this made perfect sense, the book is merely a macro-extension of the text and though containing many units of text, the book itself is a singular Text, and only when viewed as "part of a system,"is it then, according to De Saussure,"endowed not only with signification but also and especially with a value."
The second statement, "to reach utterance, all speech envelops itself in the unspoken," has significant De Sauserre tones. Though i did not thoroughly dissect this Macherey statement, i could not help but see the parallel with De Saussure's argument that "[w]ithout language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula."
Barthes' influence on Macherey's A Theory of Literary Production is also quite evident, especially on the subject of tmesis, or what is not read. This idea that meaning, Barthes describes it as pleasure, can be found in the gap(e)s, is not unlike Macherey's "the spoken and the unspoken" where he asserts that "the speech of the book comes from a certain silence...a certain abscence, without which it would not exist.
Having priorly read both authors, De Saussure and Barthes, did not only help illuminate Macherey's text for me but also reciprocally helped me understand the former authors' text in a clearer light.

Bloggrokker (Scott) de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure goes on about the signifier and the signified and I muse away about a potential, fantastical, and, hopefully, implausible method for destroying the universe.
Yes I know--time for the backtrack boogie.
In relating his linguistic theory regardig signifiers and the signified, specifically concerning the inherent nature of their differences, de Saussure states "in language there are only differences without positive terms." Then he follows up with "but the statement that everything in language is negative is true only if the signified and the signifier are considered separately; when we consider the sign in itstotality, we have something that is positive in its ow class."
Sound all very well and academic? You bet.
And although I don't exactly understand all of it I beleve I get the gist of things here--negatives and positives within the framework of a sign's totality.
And the destruction of the universe thing?
Well, de Saussure's deepmindedness got me thinking about atomic theory. He got me thinking about the negative and positive charges atoms carry. His words made me think of language possessing similar properties, electrical charges. And why not? We humans possess electricity in our grey matter, the very biological regions where language asserts itself in terms of signifiers and the signifed.
Destruction of the universe? Don't worry, we're gettin' closer. There'a postmodern hitch, I promise. Kind of.
I found this analogy rather cool. Electrical charges in language just like electrical charges in the electron cloud, charges to keep language operating just like charges to keep reality intact.
Then de Saussure hit me again. Linguistic systems, systems of differences, systems of sounds and ideas, systems postmodern megalomaniacs like to turn inside out, take apart, rearrange--reverse.
Reverse?
Ready for the Big Bang?
Here's where de Saussure took me. Electron clouds carry a negative electrical charge; these chares repel each oter and keep the universe from falling to subatomic smithereens. What if someone (feel free to choose your preferred ne'er-do-well: disillusioned ex-Soviet nuclear physicist, billionaire pop-star armageddonist, partice-theory jihadist, etc.), somewhere, somehow reversed this electrical charge?
I believe we'd need to create a new word for the result, go neologo, if you will:
KKKKKRRRRRRXXXXXXXXKKKLLMMMMMMMIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSIIIISSSIISSSSOOOOOOOAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH
Somewhere in there, methinks, lies a great sf story idea.
Please refrain from idea-snatching. Thankyou.
Oh yeah, and the kinda sorta postmodern angle I kinda sora promisd?
Simply this:
Postmodern theorists are at their happiest when their destroying language.
If the fear of death has any weight in the Points of Postmodernity ideologicl canon, then destruction of langage--call it misreading if you like--is a justifable aspect of such fear.
Absence of language, absence of communication--appearance of death.
And many years from now, hopefully a great many, I'll go with the assurance that my headstone is made from the same atoms as my toenail clippings.
Cicle of life, yes?

Gary-Saussure

Please toss me a stick....I'm up to my neck in quicksand and I'm only on page one! Fortunately my language has developed enough for someone to understand my cry for help. Saussure says that "Without language, thought is a vague uncharted nebula". I agree, but I feel that there are many extraneous differences that create language.

Saussure says that "Language is a system of independent terms in which the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous presence of the others". I agree somewhat but I feel that language can be conveyed by other factors besides the comprehension of individual or groups of words.

A simple example would be with the use of tone. The tone of our speech can be used to convey ideas. For example, lets assume you are addressing a dog, who for the most part is incapable of comprehending human language. If I ask him softly and gently, "Why did you chew up my postmodern culture book?", he will tilt his head and look confused. If I yell the same phrase with the chewed remains in my hand, he will receive the "signified and signifier" directly and tuck his tail between his legs and run. Same words, but a different tone, and as Saussure points out, the phonic differences make this word distinguishable from all others.

Saussure says that "it is impossible for sound alone, a material element, to belong to language". Is this true of today's developed languages, or does it reflect an idea for the early stages of language? Our words today are basically formulated sounds. When I speak to another person, they usually understand what I am saying. In essence, they can comprehend my sound since they are trained to receive the same sounds. Sound is what makes up our language for most basic conversations. If we were standing next to each other, we may be able to use sight and smell to interact with what we are talking about. A good example for this point is the cell phone. The only thing that we have in common on the phone is sound. Again, these sounds are common between us, because they are formulated into a language that we understand, but they are still basically sounds.

Early portrayals of human interaction shows one caveman grunting or shrieking at another. This is a series of sounds that represented their language. Even though hundreds of years has passed, if a guy has a big wooden club and begins grunting at me....I'm sure that I can guess what it means. Many animals communicate with growls or barking. These sounds make up their language, and the tone and level of these sounds express their intensity. We as humans tend to do the same as we change our tone to reflect our intensity or mood. Although many elements form language, I agree that a sound alone cannot be a language, but it can certainly be an intricate member of the language. It just has to be connected with a particular action. Throw me a stick, I'm drowning in postmodern theory!

Cindy- In repsonse to the previous Sassure post

While reading MC's post in response to Saussure, I was one idea stuck out to me:

"While speaking and thinking seem simple enough, the process in which we think, speak and translate signs are not."

This made me consider the idea of how, in our postmodern culture, every idea we have is affected by outside sources. Whether we want to or not, simply exsisting in our culture forces certain connotations between ideas, things, and people. For example, love it or hate it, because of the television show LOST whenever an American with who watches any t.v., reads the newspaper, surfes the internet, listens to the radio, or overhears conversations in line at their local Starbucks boards a plane travelling over the ocean, they cannot help but think what would happen if they crashed on a possessed island.

All of our thinking is affected by what is going on around us. Such as in the example of LOST, it does not matter whether the person likes or dislikes this show, it still penetrates their thoughts. This is our postmodern culture.

On a side note, I would like to add that I typed this while drinking a GRAPE slurpee.

MC - Saussure

Reading Ferdinand de Saussure's excerpt from "Course in General Linguistics" felt like analyzing the tiny dots that compose a Seurat piece. Saussure's section on language and sound was extremely difficult to absorb yet incredibly engaging. While speaking and thinking seem simple enough, the process in which we think, speak and translate signs are not.

Saussure attempts to analyze the system in which we put an abstract idea or thought into another abstract form: sound. Sausurre explains that,

Phonic substance is neither more fixed nor more rigid than thought.

This is obvious when one thinks about foreign languages. To the untrained ear, foreign languages merely sound like meaningless gibberish, lacking substance or value. But since Saussure thinks ideas are as abstract as sounds (and I agree with him), how then can you attempt to analyze how they work to create a cohesive sentence?

Saussure presses on anyway with his explanation of the signified/concept, the signifier and the complete sign. His methods are very mathematical; his argument creating an equation that should produce the completed sign. But I'm still stuck on the uncertainty of concepts and signs. Signs, I think, are affected by social opinion and/or commentary and therefore, how can we really rely on the meaning of our language?

When Saussure considers the value of language from a material viewpoint, I am relieved to move on to a more tangible approach. It makes sense to me that the value of the word relies on the differences in sound that convey different meanings. I visualize the game of poker to help me understand Saussure's section: Each card possesses a symbol and holds a specific value. Only a proper composition of the cards can increase their value and produce a winning hand. Essentially, the value of words and sounds can only be determined and developed into substance after composition.

Saussure attempts to end his section with the idea that ultimately,

In language there are only differences.

This notion in itself isn't difficult to swallow. However, it is complex to think how these differences (temporal ones, at that) work to create essence in language and meaning.

Cindy 8/26

I had a little computer trouble this week, so I am very sorry for posting a day late. I promise it wont happen again. Moving on, I found the first class very interesting. I also see this semester as a challenge as well. I am very interested in the idea of culture building on top of itself. And also about how each part of society adds to the general culture. I find it fascinating how we each contirbute to the culture, even if it is just how we live our lives. I am looking forward to this class because everyone in it brings a unique persepctive and life expierences to our discussions. From what I understand, this is a huge part of postmodernism.

1st class. 8/22. Monica

After the first class, I had to sit down and process my thoughts throughly. After a few hours, I did, and ended up consuming tremoundous amounts of "po-mo vino" and chatting with some" po-mo" oriented friends. We discussed the images and titles I saw and class, and even more so. We disscussed how each one of the topics plays a part in our actions today, and why they do.
It is easy to forget the issues of the present when you are so caught up in your daily actions. Last Tuesday's class reminded me to keep paying attention and to bitch about it at what ever cost. I always pride myself on being aware, and the first class has allowed me to re-focus and re-postion myself in this story documenting ourselves. I can't wait to discuss more issues and the theories that break them down into understandable points.

SF 8/25

Look at me! I'm blogging! This is a practice I've been opposed to since its inception. Blogging is a product of our postmodern culture in which the only opinion that matters is your own, and the otherwise apathetic sputter mindlessly on about how creamy peanut butter is fundamentally superior to crunchy in both form and function. Well, that and the twelve-year-old girls who steal my photos to plaster all over their MySpace next to photos of their dog, Nicole, and their idol Paris Hilton. But I transgress.

I will admit that somehow in class the practice of blogging seemed so much easier than actually doing it. Perhaps I shouldn't have read everyone else's blogs before posting my own? Talk about intimidating! On the other hand, what else should I expect from a class of (largely senior) English majors? I somehow feel the need to weave in some very large words now that I don't quite understand, but yet feel will elevate the intellectual level of my post. So here is my Prodigious Locution. Done (and I feel better for it).

On a happier note, it seems that soon the days will be gone in which I could mindlessly veg in front of the television without thinking (or needing to think) about the ways in which the media and advertising influence my thinking. And so a change is underway. Just the other day I was watching television during my lunch break, at a job that is more meaningless than God (how’s that for a postmodern statement?), when Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report started talking about how we as a nation do not have any great advertising campaign to bring us together (citing Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef” as the last great advertising campaign that every American enjoyed). He chose Kraft’s new commercial, “It’s Crumbelievable,” advertising their new cheese crumbles (“when shredded cheese is too shredded and block cheese is just too blocky”) as America’s next great advertising campaign. He then applied the same concept to our culture, saying that we were Crumbelievable (breaking off into parts with nothing strong to unite us). He went on to make some striking critiques against our Postmodern culture for which I do not remember. Unfortunately, as a product of our Postmodern culture I have developed a severely short memory and more than a little ADD.

Which brings me to my final point: crunchy peanut butter rocks.

Captain PMS 8/22

Captain's Blog Stardate 8/25:
Today I watched the first of several shows saved to my TiVo that I have recorded throughout the week. I like to start with the least intellectual programming and work my way up. This chronology dictates that I start with Who Wants to be a Superhero, a contrived and over-scripted nightmare of reality television. Eventually I will end the weekend with something more mind-friendly like Jeopardy or The Daily Show but for now, after one of the longest first school weeks in history, I am but a vegetable, and shows like Who Wants to be a Superhero are about all I can handle. The show, if you haven't seen it, centers around comic book legend, Stan Lee, and his attempt at finding a hero for his next comic book series. This means that for one hour a week grown men and women run around in private-cupping spandex while crying and hugging each other a lot. It seems that these days most superhero movies are more about special effects than story and this may be why the contestants on the show seem so dated and out of place. The show is obviously not that high up on the network's funding list and the special effects have been reduced to the occasional bolt of lightning and some strange green smoke. That said, I couldn't help but think about our first class while I watched Fat Momma, Feedback, and Major Victory race to an anti-climatic finish.
Superhero, like a lot of "reality" television touches on many of the themes surrounding postmodernism. Absurdity, meaninglessness, and surrealism are apparent in every frame of the fake challenges the contestants are sent on. At times the earnestness of the characters seems so absurd that it becomes painful to watch. The move from universality to plurality that postmodernism exhibits is evident in the fact that the entire point of the program is for one person to be immortalized as a comic book hero. Each week a contestant is removed and challenges are completed in rapid time and so, like most shows, speed is of importance (and I might add, aided to by my fast-forward button each time I see a tear welling up in some poor saps eye.) I can't even get into all of the comparisons to be made when you talk about the theme of reinvention, but the rise of comic book popularity as of late and the fact that a comic book hero is essentially a reinvented man or woman are two that come immediately to mind. The point is, Superhero, like most shows in its genre, embodies the themes of postmodernism in ways I am just beginning to see after our first meeting. A week ago I would have laughed at the bad editing and overacting that Superhero illustrates but now I find myself pondering deeper ideas which pisses me off in a way. I beleive I mentioned my vegetable status and here comes the Notorious R.O.G. to mess with my head. I have come to the conclusion that like a computer generated bolt shot from Feedback's hand, this class is going to explode my mind.

Deep Thunder 8/22

According to Casey, the notorious Dr. Rog, in postmodern culture "Commentary supplants authority." This idea can seem unnerving at first. After all, shouldn't the people go to authority to find truthful information, and isn't this the way it has always been? Well, for our lives to date, and through most of history, it would appear so. However, historically, the withholding of knowledge, or, the stockpiling of knowledge in the bins of the elite, has contributed to the oppression of the lower classes and less fortunate. But is it as big a danger as it sounds to let commentary supplant, or is this a part of human evolution? Is this, in some manner, a socialist, or, more comfortably for us Americans, a democratic movement? During some of the most oppressive times in civilized history, knowledge was restricted, and one had to be knighted, in a way, in order to be considered worthy of attention. But with commentary on the rise, is the power of this knowledge being returned to the populous? Are we now more open to varying opinions and viewpoints than in the past, and if so, is that a bad thing?
Take reality shows, for example. We, as a culture, seem to now be more interested in watching people locked in a house together lately than a good work of fiction. This, at first, would appear to be a decline in the interest of story. But looking a bit harder into these shows could show that we are more interested than ever in story, but we want that to be the human story, not the fantasizing of an author. How would one react, we wonder, if forced to eat gruel for a week? How far are the people on Big Brother, for example, willing to go for money? Perhaps by watching these shows we are trying to see more of who we really are, rather than who we would like ourselves to be and does this bring us closer to understanding each other. In some ways, this modern day coliseum full of eager volunteers may be bringing us closer to a higher state of evolution, a natural step on the way to a compassionate and intelligent society as we allow our data to come from the people around us instead of only the people above either in power or intellect.

E.M. After Class Post

I believe this class is going to make me think. In-fact I believe it will require me to think about things I would rather not give too much deep thought. Such as just how manipulated we are as consumers. Or how often politicians work off of our fears. Our channels of information each day are cut up into neat sound bites. We (society) are spoon fed information like pabulum. Our information age has made us lazy due to the vast amounts of information at our finger tips.As readers, we become the arbiters of what is valid or valuable information. Sometimes I feel like a tsunami of information is flooding over me each and every day. I must pick and sort though what is being offered up. I am hoping this class will give me the tools to be a better sorter. I will value or devalue information with a better lens. I did not think I could possibly get more cynical about the media or our modern world, but I'm open to the challenge. This is one class I can and will not allow myself to get behind in the required reading. As it seems to be rather demanding. I am glad that I have several friends in this class. This will allow me ample opportunity to discuss our lectures and reading assignments. Another post mentioned the man behind the curtain - We are now getting that peak at the mechanism which propels the machine.

Rosabelle Meagan August 25, 2006

Hi, my name is Rosabelle Meagan and I am a postmodernist! If postmodernity is like alcoholism, I want to be inebriated for the rest of my life. Postmodernity, one word, revolution! I felt like applauding after the first night in class after Rollins own MC (Mike Checker), DJ Dr. Notorious Rog, whom instead of spinning records with hip hop beats, rapped about the intriguing theories of postmodernism. Ironically, I felt like I was in a movie, amidst an actual counter-society. Postmodernism equals a counter-society where individuals can broaden and define their own realities. It counterattacks the hegemonic hypnosis of pop culture society. Unlike the patriarchal ran society, Roger and the theorists that preceded him such as Saussure and Derrida, do not give us a mask and says, “Here put this one, you are a man, woman, girl, boy, black, white, blue or green.” Postmodernism gives all human beings the key to unlock the interlocking systems of oppression created by patriarchal society, such as racism and sexism, freeing both men and women. Postmodernist theorists guides and directs individuals to their own unique identities, rather than fit a mass societal role already in place for them. The only thing I regret about this class is that it was not available to me sooner, from the beginning; before the first grade, where all the programming of mass and sub-masses of society took place.

CC Response to Day 1

The first time I was really introduced to literary theory was in 2001. A friend of mine was studying film and became very interested in these mind puzzles. I guess he had the foresight to see that this was something I would enjoy (either that or he just had to share it with someone- as I often shove it in the faces of my friends and loved ones only to get ugly, sour, terrible looks for destroying their fun.). So we ventured to Borders and he presented me with Angela Davis’ Women Race and Class. The book was evidently so problematic and controversial to some human-like entities that Borders taped many of the pages together. Immediately I knew I was getting into something that I would never be able to turn away from. I took it home- entirely filled with anticipation to read these “secrets” that one perceptive woman had collected to set the record straight. Of course, I was baffled. I read the thing front to back and immediately afterward my brain felt soggy, my heart felt incensed, my eyes certainly burned from words I didn’t really understand, but oh yes- I felt SOMETHING.
Since that time I have read a few more books, takes a couple classes, and I think, despite being looked at like I’m green when I say this, this is what I love. I love looking at our little “club” of humanity and picking it apart, opening it up (always was interested in medicine but too afraid of handling guts), TRYING to figure it out. I love watching how we repeat mistakes, create things we didn’t even understand a few years back (or don’t understand even now), communicate, learn, love, hate, all the hoards of good stuff that separate us, to some degree, from the rest of the animals on this planet. And when it comes down to it, our biggest difference from those animals is our ability to create and think abstractly. Well, that’s theory for me.
I took the class because postmodern theory is where I really start to get excited about things. The skepticism that is inherent in the minds of these great thinkers really appeals to me. Not because of some banal need to rebel, but in a truly scientific sort of way. Pulling each little (or big) word/sentence/paragraph apart, like a flower, to get to that core where all the action is. It’s like that. It’s about a refusal to allow things be so black and white. It’s about paying attention- something which, sadly, has fallen out of fashion in recent times. Today’s culture is saturated with meaningless, vacuous, mind-numbing, entertainment. It has dulled many of our youth to a soft, rounded, nub. There is no such thing as rebellion anymore, or so it seems. No one wants to ask questions. No one wants to fight the malaise. No one wants to seek out different, new, or exciting culture. And when I say no one, I realize there are exceptions, but this is what the future looks like to me. Most of us are numb and hegemony is working at its best. Most people would rather have comfort and efficiency in their lives than see through the façade of that comfort. As Eliot said, “this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.” Well, this class is a way for me to sharpen myself. To at least make a few explosions along the road before even the whimper starts to fade away- and then we are gone.
I am really excited to be doing it with such a curious and intelligent group of people. Roger’s lecture got me ready to dig in after an embarrassingly restful summer. I agree that postmodernism is certainly an “aura and not an era.” It’s an aura that, once you know about it, will never fully leave your brain. And really, that’s the way it should be. Although I have many questions about how postmodern theory can be used for political action, how we can take these terrifying ideas and apply them to the world to actually change it, a wise woman named Jennifer Henton once told me to “let it simmer first.” That is exactly what I intend to do here. Commence the simmering.
CC

Bloggrokker (Scott) 8/22

Pluralism? Television? Fear of death? 9/11?
Oh, these take me back--take me back a few years ago (I'd like to say 2002 or 2003, I don't know for sure) and to the fall schedule of the ABC (and for our purposes here, the almighty acronym might stand for the Althusser-Barthes Corporation--Ha!) network and a little exercise in prime-time broadcast fearmongering called Threat Matrix.
I never saw this show. Then again, I don't think I needed to. Postmodernwise, we can judge this book by its title, methinks.
From what I culled from the ads sandwiched between raging bouts of cathode-ray oxymoronitis, i. e. reality tv, TM concerned itself with anti-terrorist tech-quads.
And hot on the heels of that po-mo post-millenio boogeyman 9/11, too. A bad idea? It's easy to think so, what with TM already a victim of ratings evaporation. Hang on, though.
Don't forget--marketing engineers (and yes, they ARE engineers) are skewed postmodern gods, of a kind. They know of the plurality of words.
And they know of The Matrix trilogy.
Hence Threat Matrix.
And so they did a slapdash job of counterracting cultural fears of smoldering skyscrapers and anthrax-o-grams with popular images of Keanu Reeves as Neo kicking the binary butts of anthropomorphized computer viruses wearing Ray-Bans. Such whiz-bang wonders and word-associations certainly seem like the breed of disposable quick fix Americans crave for all of our fears and problems.
Still, Threat Matrix failed. Despite the all-too desirabe postmodern symptoms as fear of death and a thinly-veiled deceptive stab at market-driven plurality, Threat Matrix failed.
What went wrong?
Nothing. If Threat Matrix owes its origins to postmodern symptoms, just like everthing else that flickers its way along the airwaves, then it owes its demise to these same symptoms.
Absrdity and meaninglessness, also of postmodern genes, kicked in. Absurdity and meaninglessness killed the show and turned the houselights down low.
Not low enough, though. Postmodernity seems to recycle. Call it a cultural graverobber-esque. And if i'm wrong, well, does any medium truly die in what we might identify as our curent geological time, the Frankencene Epoch?
Perhaps the Karloffic Period?
What? No good?
I know, I know--meaninglessness.

Gary 8/22 I'll pass on the Grape Koolaid

Postmodernism.....cool word. Did the person who coined it decide when and where postmodernism began? The opening lecture was great, but it left me with many questions. Is our super high speed, best of the best society really postmodern, or is the beginning of something on a much larger scale?
Many laugh at the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's, but didn't our culture experience significant change during these periods also? Were the building blocks placed into position to create what we have today? If we are living in the "post", when did the modern begin? Was the invention of television, the Chevrolet V-8, the turbine jet engine, the Boeing 747, the hybrid engine the beginning of the "postmodern" era? Each past generation may feel that their contributions or intellect may have started or fueled what we have today.
I'll ask this under the protection of a "no flaming" blog site....Is postmodernism really that bad? Every year our science becomes further advanced and we begin to prevent problems rather than scramble for a cure. Is it better to sit and wait for avian flu, or should we proactively develop a plan in case it reaches our country? Paranoia overcomes our society, but is that a reason to shut our eyes to a serious problem, or is it a cry for better education?
The solution is not to slow down postmodern ideology, but to mold and refine it into a valuable tool for everyone's benefit. Why would we want to stifle creativity? Should we encourage our scientists and research centers to back off or slowdown, or should we guide them in the right direction while we support their zest and creativity? My ideas may differ from many others, but that is what I cherish about this country; the right to express my ideas on this tool of the postmodern society-the blog page.
I love TIVO, high speed data, satellite and the ability to view sixteen football games at the same time. I love the technology that extends the life of my car well beyond 200K miles, and the ability to speed through a tollbooth at eighty mph with my speedpass. Give me my cell phone, my IM, my PM, whatever....as long as it gets the job done quicker and more efficient. If this is postmodernism....bring it on. I'll take my micro-brew, my microwave popcorn and my laptop......but no koolaid for me Jim Jones.

ginny t. 8/22

eep! I had no idea what I was really getting myself into when I registered for this class (and still don't, really.) Like several of our classmates, I was wooed by the course description but I didn't really give much thought to what a "Critical Approach to Postmodern Culture" would actually entail. Since our first meeting, I have had plenty of time to ponder, and now I find myself in the midst of my very own binary opposition: my feelings about this class are oscillating between terror and wonder.

I'm terrified for several reasons...first and foremost, this is arguably the most complex and intellectually challenging course I have endeavored to take, and I'm not really looking forward to making a fool out of myself in front of not only my class, but also of any number of the 6 billion people on the planet who may happen across our blog. So the pressure is on to actually have something intelligent (or at the very least, interesting) to add to the class. Secondly, I am a natural procrastinator, and as far as I can tell, cramming 9 weeks worth of reading into the day before the exam is just not going to cut it in this class. And then of course there is the brilliant, yet devious, task of divvying up the points values for my own grade...talk about pressure!

Despite the shadow of failure and world-wide humiliation hanging over my head, I am still hopeful about this class. I am relieved and intrigued to know that the issues and ideas I worry about are actually shared by a myriad of others...Postmodernism...it even has a name! (Who knew?)

I read (or maybe heard) somewhere that "it took centuries between man's invention of the wheel and the automobile, and mere decades between the car and space travel." This statement really grabs me, because I often find myself contemplating the "explosion of language" and innovation that we see in the world today; I'm honestly a little unnerved by this lightening-fast progress, and I can't help by wonder if we're not all careening towards a fiery end. The gap between innocence and cynicism; new and old; right and wrong is ever narrowing and that disturbs me. I want answers. I don't know if finding truth (if there is such a thing, though my heart would like to believe there is...) is even possible, but I look forward to trying to figure it out with you all.

AS 8/22

Postmodernity is not a dirty word. Postmodernity is not a dirty word. There, I feel better now. I’ve been comfortably insulated in ignorance and am pretty sure this class will be as rude a wake up call as an annoying, red-eyed alarm clock buzzing at 5am.

What struck me most from the first class was the idea that language is dead, that words have lost meaning, that maybe (GASP) they had no meaning to begin with. A concept deeply disturbing -- and strangely titillating -- to an English major like me. There is not one second of silence in this world – every moment of every day there is noise. Most of this sound pollution is comprised of human voices attempting communication. If there is no meaning, if the words are dead on our tongues, how has commentary formed reality? Commentary requires words. I think commentary has hijacked words and radically altered their stability, their reality. Nothing is as it seems, everything can be explained away – even DNA – commentary has supplanted authority (thank you, Dr. Roger) by murdering communication. Is that possible? Is that reality? Is reality just a myth and we simply have no words to reveal the truth?

My head is spinning right now and there are no words for it. Can’t wait for the proverbial light to go off, I’m tired of tripping in the dark.

JOH 8/22

Whew!
Neologism, new words indeed.
Our first session was a treat. Though undoubtedly daunting and heavy on impact, I am encouraged by how remote the language and application seem to be from my current set. This means I must learn something. The content, however is quite comfortable. Having developed within this culture, I, we, are well suited to approach this stuff from the front with warm curiosity.
Same life, different angle - no need to sneak around.

It's interesting that, at least initially, Hassan's statement regarding "instability " mirrors the apparent themes: capacity to destroy humanity, revolution, assassination, indeterminacy, speed, collapse, re-everything, and the fearing of fearful fears that are scary and likely to kill you. Hop on the jello then?

And to follow with binary oppostitions is just too perfect- for the above mentioned themes, when examined together within the context of ENG 335, strike me as exciting, vital, and humorous. Quite the opposite response I typically experience when considering the state of things.
Expand -- contract -- expand -- contract. To dip into such a rhythm, one of cyclical growth, deterioration, growth ... appears to be both fun and challenging.

We shall see.

TYG - 8/22 - Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain...

My impression of PoMoCult after our brief jaunt Tuesday night is that it bears a great resemblance to a traffic circle I travelled in Rome (Italy, not Georgia) some years ago; at first glance it is a free-for-all -- chaotic, energetic, loud, dangerous, and exciting. The control elements -- white-gloved, whistle-blowing policeman standing on raised platforms safely above it all -- are mere tokens, present only to counter any complaints that the "government did nothing" in the event that serious tragedy ensues. But if you watch the confusion for a little while, the order and symmetry become apparent; all the traffic enters and goes in the same counter-clockwise direction; the traffic circle is a circle, not a convoluted oblong; the road surface is at roughly the same level throughout the course, and the aforementioned law officers are guarded from the kamikaze drivers by virtue of NOT being on the motor-level.

Further study may counter this initial picture of postmodernism’s hidden order, but I somehow doubt it; whether one accepts the modernist idea of a creator God or agrees with Nietzche that "Gott ist todt," it is all too plain to anyone with the slightest powers of observation that the universe in which we live is an orderly place. From the atomic level to the galactic, there exists physical coherency that must logically follow through into philosophy. The idea propounded by the Notorious One in class, that the postmodern era is one "in which commentary supplants authority," seems like a rehash of situational ethics, whereby the lunatics are running the asylum.

Wikipedia was brought forth as something that validates this definition of postmodernism, as these encyclopedia entries are created from the commingled ideas of a plethora of interested parties. But Wikipedia is a moderated discussion -- "About Wikipedia" includes a section on "Who Keeps Order" that explains "several hundred Wikipedia administrators have the power to protect (lock) articles, and to block individual editors. These administrators are elected by the community to enforce the site's policies and guidelines" -- commentary must bow down to the authority of these uber-wikians.

On a lighter note, the discussion on the “Cult of the New” and Chris Rock’s “pills to make us feel differently” (legal antidepressants instead of Cheech-and-Chong’s “Up in Smoke” solution) reminded me of an old song; “In the Year 2525”, by the nearly unknown Zager and Evans, made it to number one on the charts in late 1969.

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive (Nuclear threat; global warming, pollution)
They may find........

In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, or say
Is in the pill you took today (Prozak? Zoloft? Zanax?)

In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing to chew (Big Macs? Most Fast Food!)
Nobody's gonna look at you

In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine, doing that for you (The Matrix?)

In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube (way too real...)

In the year 7510
If God's a comin' he ought to make it by then
Maybe he'll look around himself and say
``Guess it's time for the Judgement day''

In the year 8510
God's gonna shake his mighty head
He'll either say ``I'm pleased where man has been''
Or tear it down and start again

In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man's gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing...

Now it's been 10,000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man's reign is through
But through the eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday...

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find.......



The song is a remarkably prescient picture of American society today, though the process hasn't taken nearly the centuries that the lyrics outline.

And the jury's still out on the Second Coming.


Mayo Humbert "Gaps and Jump Cuts" (part 1 of 3) or "My feeble attempt to explore and introduce my own perceived reality up to this exact moment...

...after immediately injesting roughly half of the required reading, upon the three basic conceptual paradoxes, and under the definition of Post-Modernism, thereby supporting the (un)philosophical (non)movement of which we speak, the first being "truth", after making some rather (hopefully) clever points and (presumed) relevant reference points, resulting in a very brief introduction to some key individuals, who will neatly fall into a concept that I will state as my own, but under the simultaneously negating and supporting definition of stated first topic, some other long-winded, asshole "intellectual" thought of before I was born, but as far as we are concerned is wholly my concept, and will speed us along to the topic of part 2, hereby acknowledging the tried and true, arguably over-used to the point of banality, "TRINITY", (3 act play, or, more relevantly in the given context, the preferred 5 part essay structure that we are all expected to dutifully adhere to throughout our scholarly careers, which stands in place for one or more of the following reasons, {a.It's pretty damn simple, b.It both forces us to adhere to a sort of collegiate conformity, while challenging us to find our own independent creative voice within a set of rules, c.It saves a lot of time on the grader's part because the 1st paragraph states what you are about to state, the last paragraph states not only what you have just stated at length, but stated prior to that in the 1st paragraph, leaving the points and connections inbetween, which is what counts, and with practice and some intuition, the grader doesn't even have to read to know if it holds water or not}, and by these assumptions the primary may be supplanted by a well thought out title, (like the one you are reading now, provided you don't mind run on sentences and my rapidly developing, almost text-book example of megalomania, of which I'm really trying to work on, honest Injun), and the later can be eliminated out of sheer disgust, being that it is redundant on two, (TWO!), accounts, and completely superfluous, not to mention really doesn't naturally lend itself to "we", the students, getting our "money's worth", out of our collectively structured re-arrangement of ideas that run the gamut from, at worst, plain as the nose on your face, to, at best, genuinely engaging on several levels, and the one we are all shooting for here is CEREBRAL, but on either extreme available to us all equally provided our access to the current virtual representation of a concept of a well outdated form of communication, which is open to all sorts of misinterpretation, due to the limits of our language, which is another socially conceived construct that we all voted on one day to collectively believe in, hence, rendering it "true", and to put the cherry on top of this really, really long sentence of which I have already brought up on two occasions examples of an idea that you have to get through the 1st part of this never-ending stream of crap that I am convinced you have all stopped reading at this point, the virtual representation, blah-blah, of the thing that is only reality because enough of us believe it to be, doesn't exist either, because you are not "reading" text, (although hopefully gleaning the sub-, which supports the short version title to the thing I haven't really begun talking about, STILL, and am currently wrapping up the long, (read; overly-self-indulgent), version, but in fact looking at little colored dots, which due to the aforementioned (non)concept, you have deeply ingrained within you, and therefore the representation of what you are pre-conditioned to (mis)understand, as words are actually agreed upon signifier of "words", (which, consequently by way of Sartre, by establishing in our collectively agreed upon reality, destroys the essence of the thing that we have been trying to think of a really good "word" for), and beyond that, aren't really colored dots, but a whole lotta ones and zeros, which brings up a subset of what we already know by way of it's existence, doesn't exist, not to mention according to Mr. Nausea, destroys the thing that it attempts to define by use of a crude social construct of something that doesn't exist, thus, destroying the only "real" thing in the first place, (i.e. that tree over there that conceptually should have a much broader frame of reference, thereby a more refined personal reality and understanding of, or at least have final say, given it's probable age doubling the combination of the both of us, lending it seniority, by default, but it doesn't "talk", so who cares what that tree thinks, if in fact it does, which get's us close enough to my first point/problem, the idea of truth, reality, and what the hell I just wrote."

Okay, if you made it this far, thanks and stuff for indulging me, prior to most of you even knowing me, which isn't really me but you're own, self-created reality or truth or constant or whatever. Further more this "me", that by contemplating momentarily, have brought into some form of existence, namely, yours, likely has more to do with every thing that you have experienced up to this exact moment, and could arguably be equally influenced by seemingly un-related, meaningless prior events, like if it was raining when you where born or what you had for lunch January 10, 1993, than the "me" that I believe to be "me", which, (and this next bit should be no big shocker, given our "collective" assumed frame of reference, given you actually volunteered to take a course on Post-Modern Theory, which could lead me to any number of assumptions about you a varied as, the idea of your neural transmitters literally bursting into flames is some how comforting, no matter how disturbing that thought may be to everyone you have ever dared speak such an idea aloud to, or, You like to be challenged, and enjoy reading text that has probably been poorly translated, from some other language, by someone who's own native tongue is Swahili or something ridiculous like that, and is pretty heavy shit for someone of your equivalent level of intelligence, that happens to be reading it in the language it was written, and given the already slippery slope we have established was is essential a series of mindless grunts and howls, and because of all this other, individual reality formed by everything you have experienced, (and if I may, and having already alluded to the really unnerving concept of what living in the age of information means on a deeper level, and how this is, right now, already caused you to re-contexturallize, and lots of other 50 cent words you could tack "re-" in front of, and perhaps, just perhaps, has already allowed you to determine an inter-contextuallization, or tear an extant connectedness apart, but ultimately, rendering you in what Sartre refers to as "continually making ourselves who we are", at every moment and with each new idea or experience we have, thereby constantly grasping at what in eternal flux between truth and non-truth, dependent on all this other stuff we've been over, to paraphrase a person who is a literary invention and leader of a fictional terrorist/mind control/religous cult based on the brain being exposed to television waves, Dr. Brian O'Blivion, "the mind precieves what it sees on television as experience, therby, creating experience through it suggestion", or something like that. "Videodrome" look it up.), or finally, you want to impress a pretty girl.

Now, since by all this yammering on, I am going to assume that the ideal has happened, from a journalistic standpoint, being about half of you think this is all complete bullshit and the other half are so convinced that not only what I am stating and presenting and giving example of, is not only true, but has shaken you to the core of your belief system, instantly causing you to place me at near God status, rendering you hopelessly enamored with, (regardless of my sexual identity, yours, or any body else's individual idea of any of it. I DID say TO THE CORE, just keep humoring me for another 1500 words or so. Not really 1500. Besides you are looking at something that does not exist and by the loose rules that we have tethered to that concept, proves the opposite through it's negation or replacement, thereby creating a seriously big paradox. Anyway, 1500 or 15 they don't exist. So it doesn't make a difference either way.

Oh, almost forgot, 2 cats that fall under that concept of mine that I mentioned, way back in what you are still grappling with as the "Full Title to a 3 part blog entry", which I have, by the way given you what I believe to be true, hopefully causing you to at least wonder if it's true, according to all your personal hub-bub and stuff, and fitting somewhere in there either now or in ten years when you realize you were actually privileged with being in my, again, really pushing the megalomania issue, and even making half-hearted attempts to make you BELIEVE it to be TRUE, or at least self-centered in an above average way, which brings about another "dissonant unity" thing that I'll get through as soon as I finish the other 27 things I've yet to bring together.

Right, both of these individuals, thereby, a multitude of ideas of those "actual" individuals determined by anyone's given point of reference, subject to constant revision, thereby creating even more ideas of that individual depending upon the moment you think about them, (for example, and the sake of simplicity, (I have the gall to have typed that word in the middle of all this), remember how you felt and believed to be true about Jim Morrison when you shoplifter a book of his, er, poetry, when you were, like, 14. Okay, just get that clear. Now think about the Jim Morrison that you have (with any shred of ability to determine the difference between "relevant" media or art, and whiskey-driven dribble vomited forth by a man who managed to become a parody of himself in about 1/4 of the time it took Elvis, which actually, on some level, is a valid achievement.) come to believe to be real by the hopeful broadening of your little world since you were just barely a teen. These, by any sense of the word truth, should be two COMPLETELY different people, created by you, in your personal reality, that may or may not have anything to do with the actual entity "Jim Morrison".), William Burroughs and Jean-Paul Godard, both made big contributions to the Post-Modern concept of truth, by essentially taking one set of rules, confirming them as real by detsroying them, and then, conceiving of a totally new, more individualistic, set of rules, that aren't by the old rules standards rules at all, feeding back onto itself by confirmation through denying, or getting mad about and writing nasty letters to whatever big-whoop artist journal of the moment was.

I see this as a problem inherent in everyone directly or indirectly involved in the process of creating a new movement or belief or set of rules or anything that ends with -ism. Imagine you are about 50 years old, really involved with your environment, on multiple levels. The thing is, your environment is a 25 foot square room that is occupied by things that you have come to believe as true because that is all you know, for 50 years, one room. Now, one day, someone comes along like Burroughs or Godard, and this know it all finds a door that for your entire life you have never noticed in this room that you are by know, fully convinced you understand fully, or at least really damn well. So, the wise guy that finds the door, here we go with my fancy concept, is an anomaly. He or she not only understands the world that we all currently believe to be true, by our own reasonably similar idea of truth, but can not only find the door to a new "truth", or structure, etc., but that individual falls into the Origin & Oracle category, like the human "entity" equivalent off a four-leafed clover, and already has a pretty firm grasp on the room on the other side of that door, that everyone else, mostly, cannot even begin to comprehend. The end of one world and the beginning of the next. This because we all have our own idea of reality, causes a lot of problems, that tend to not be resolved until someone can live in that new room long enough to help define it, by negating the prior rooms existence.

I'm really close, bear with me. Put that last thing somewhere safe cause you're going to need it next time. Here is the paradox of all of this. Believing something to be true or untrue, not only negates and confirms that this is black and this is white at the same time, and a whole bunch of really smart people have been going back and forth on this for a long time, because according to the old rules a new system can ONLY negate the prior, and if Post-Modern, by putting the Post- in there, confirms the old system, while claiming to only partially negate it, because as good Post-Modernists we all want to pick and choose what we want to keep and re-whatever the hell we want to with, or, dare just leave as nostalgic distraction, (and think about how many people born AFTER 1980 watch "That 70s Show" for the nostalgic distraction of a time that they can have only other conceptions and truths about, informing there own, creating a 1970's that exists in some 12 year old in China. Think about the first time your Grandma tried to wrap her head around Halo or whatever cutting edge game. By her frame of reference she is incapable of arriving at the same truth as you or me or our ideas of each other, which are just as real, because to me, YOU DO NOT EXIST IN REALITY UNTIL I CONJURE YOU OUT OF THIN AIR BY BEGINNING TO THINK ABOUT YOU A SPLIT SECOND BEFORE THE NEXT TIME I DO, intentionally or not. Because "truth" is whatever we want it to be to serve whatever purpose we intend it for, in relation to our understanding of what we want to convey to our momentary belief of our intended audience.

Chew on that for a bit, and then assume that there are all these individual realities being created perpetually, feeding back and into, creating other realities that are further from the "real" thing, because by claiming to confirm or deny anything that we encounter, we prove it by disproving it, creating a whole bunch of really, really big, but, get this, SOMEHOW co-related on some level in the past present or future, paradoxes that create them selves by you thinking. At all.

Now, apply that to everything, sleep tight, and on Monday I'll write a bout paradox. And the best part, in true form and adherence to the rules, no matter how absolutely perfectly comprehensive yet impossible, thus proving Post-Modernism as a "real" thing by using it's own conflicting rules to prove itself, I will begin to tear apart at the familiar structure that took so long to get through because it needed to framed in a reality that no longer exists, but does, because it can't.

Now honestly, one other thing, given the fact that I have been feeding you all this stuff, at what point was I speaking with "my" "true" voice, "my" "self-negating and conflicting" voice, and the voice I made up, just for you, whatever I imagine you to be as you read this, and every conflicting and thereby proving shade of grey inbetween. Because I have been thinking about all this from the exact moment I was informed of the assignment, and I didn't sleep last night, because, knowing what I was about to (un)convince you of being "truth", setting up the frame work of Post-Modernism and in my own way doing a little mini-thesis, have, naturally not only been thinking about what ideas I would present to the world, but also create a new me, based on a me that is by design, intended to (mis)lead or present (un)truths.

But ultimately, I'm just trying to impress some girl.