Monday, June 24, 2019

quick-and-dirty note to self

I thought I had slapped up a link to my friend Steve's "quick and dirty" notes on PoMo, a.k.a. postmodernism, but I guess I hadn't after all these years. I've found Steve's writeup to be the clearest and most useful summary of PoMo I've ever read. Agree with PoMo or not (longtime readers know I don't, although I think PoMo has its place—as one perspective among many—within the narrow confines of art and literary criticism), but it helps to have a simple breakdown of PoMo as a philosophy, an artistic style, and a historical period.

Here's that Google Docs link.

And here are some keywords:
Stephen doCarmo, Dr. d, Dr. doCarmo, quick and dirty, notes, PoMo, postmodernism



2 comments:

Charles said...

Good stuff!

There are honestly elements of PoMo that I agree with, to a certain extent--I am also wary of essentializing (or totalizing) arguments, for example. At the same time, I also recognize the utility of categories in research, as long as we see them for what they are. I find PoMo taken to extremes tiring, and I absolutely despise the way most PoMo thinkers write--it seems deliberately obfuscatory.

Kevin Kim said...

You're a nicer man than I am; I have a much less charitable view of PoMo, but I won't rehash my perspective in any detail here since I've already written quite a bit about where I think PoMo goes wrong. In brief, it mainly boils down to the self-undermining nature of its grander claims that, when gathered together, make PoMo hard for me to take seriously.