At 00:11 3/03/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Well, I think its interesting that questions about discourse come up at
>the same time that one of the (by now) quite familiar POMO trashings is
>posted. I have often thought that someone should write a good
>Foucauldian discourse analysis of the broader discursive formation of
>postmodern publishing. I mean, let's face it, everything Foucault ever
>said about a discursive formation, (the manner in which it maintains it
>coherence by making exclusions, it creates differentiations, it
>presupposes its own continuities, and so on), can be said about
>postmodern scholarship. Postmodern analyses, which take the rhetorical
>posture of ambiguity and evasion as a self-regulating principle, seem to
>constitute a discursive formation that is just as entrenched and
>ossified, and is just as capable of policing its boundaries and
>constituting subordinated, excluded elements as any other=97say, medical
>science, psychoanalysis or positivism. Which, as Foucault would say
>about any of the discourse formations he studied, does not negate its
>"legitimacy".
>
>It has always amazed me that postmodernists have been so reluctant to
>apply their own methods of analysis to their own practice.
If you mean that postmodernism should be critiqued with postmodernism then
I have never heard anything so absurd in my life except of course when,
say, a judge will critique the legal system with the principles of that
legal system. The problem is, of course, that, like existentialism,
postmodernism cannot be critiqued outside of itself. When it is shown to be
contradictory or hypocritical then "that's what postmodernism has been
trying to say all along". One cannot win.
>
>sam b
>
>Darren Smith wrote:
>
>> published in Macquarie University Newspaper, Australia
>>
>> At 19:30 2/03/99 -0600, you wrote:
>> >Exactly what issues has this article from a student newspaper (by
>> >whom? published where?) "raised." I see no issues, merely a tired
>> >and cliched repetition of the standard canards (mostly feeble
>> >and unsupported generalizations about a "class" of people identified
>> >by a pair of labels that mean nothing but "these are people with whom
>> >I disagree and so they are bad and worthy of punishment"). I suppose
>> >the repeated metaphor of the foam is supposed to be evidence of
>> >creativity and wit, but it does nothing but tie together the
>> >article. If there are issues--specify them?
>> >Tom Dillingham
>> >
>> >
>
>--
>____________________________
>Sam Binkley
>Department of Sociology, New School University
>65 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003
>
>Address: PO Box 20202, New York, NY 10009
>phone: (212) 420 9425 web: http://www.erols.com/sbinkley/
>
>
>
>
>Well, I think its interesting that questions about discourse come up at
>the same time that one of the (by now) quite familiar POMO trashings is
>posted. I have often thought that someone should write a good
>Foucauldian discourse analysis of the broader discursive formation of
>postmodern publishing. I mean, let's face it, everything Foucault ever
>said about a discursive formation, (the manner in which it maintains it
>coherence by making exclusions, it creates differentiations, it
>presupposes its own continuities, and so on), can be said about
>postmodern scholarship. Postmodern analyses, which take the rhetorical
>posture of ambiguity and evasion as a self-regulating principle, seem to
>constitute a discursive formation that is just as entrenched and
>ossified, and is just as capable of policing its boundaries and
>constituting subordinated, excluded elements as any other=97say, medical
>science, psychoanalysis or positivism. Which, as Foucault would say
>about any of the discourse formations he studied, does not negate its
>"legitimacy".
>
>It has always amazed me that postmodernists have been so reluctant to
>apply their own methods of analysis to their own practice.
If you mean that postmodernism should be critiqued with postmodernism then
I have never heard anything so absurd in my life except of course when,
say, a judge will critique the legal system with the principles of that
legal system. The problem is, of course, that, like existentialism,
postmodernism cannot be critiqued outside of itself. When it is shown to be
contradictory or hypocritical then "that's what postmodernism has been
trying to say all along". One cannot win.
>
>sam b
>
>Darren Smith wrote:
>
>> published in Macquarie University Newspaper, Australia
>>
>> At 19:30 2/03/99 -0600, you wrote:
>> >Exactly what issues has this article from a student newspaper (by
>> >whom? published where?) "raised." I see no issues, merely a tired
>> >and cliched repetition of the standard canards (mostly feeble
>> >and unsupported generalizations about a "class" of people identified
>> >by a pair of labels that mean nothing but "these are people with whom
>> >I disagree and so they are bad and worthy of punishment"). I suppose
>> >the repeated metaphor of the foam is supposed to be evidence of
>> >creativity and wit, but it does nothing but tie together the
>> >article. If there are issues--specify them?
>> >Tom Dillingham
>> >
>> >
>
>--
>____________________________
>Sam Binkley
>Department of Sociology, New School University
>65 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003
>
>Address: PO Box 20202, New York, NY 10009
>phone: (212) 420 9425 web: http://www.erols.com/sbinkley/
>
>
>
>