...So my mother calls me and asks me if I have been following the latest instance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict... How can one avoid it; although a (pathetic) constant, it seems to invariably show up (again and again) as news. The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to be exactly what these two (again, pathetic) groups of people have come up with: this killing, rocket launching and rock throwing is obviously a state of equilibrium. Faced with this clear example of unbridgeable differences I feel like quoting from Lyotard (p. xi) : As distinguished from a litigation, a differend (‘scuse the invented word, but anybody who has ever tried to read a postmodern text knows that they are inevitable and that their definition becomes comprehensible in the reading) would be a case of conflict, between (at least) two parties, that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule of judgment applicable to both arguments. One side’s legitimacy does not imply the other’s lack of legitimacy. However, applying a single rule of judgement to both in order to settle their differend as though it were merely a litigation would wrong (at least) one of them (and both of them if neither side admits this rule). Happy New Year...a voice of reason : they exist, they're just are never heard
Banhart is also quintessentially postmodern in that he's almost completely derivative... came across a book of poetry and prose at Dia:Beacon by the almost totally forgotten writer Kenneth Patchen-- when he is remembered, he's classified under the Beat generation, but maintains a pretty isolated and unique stance even from those guys-- he wrote faux naive, deceptively childish, and incredibly political poems that were accompanied by outsider arty drawings of creatures, comfortably at home in the literary nonsense genre championed by edward lear and lewis carroll. Banhart did the preface, citing patchen as his most influential influence, and it's easy to see why: his songs could pass off as patchen poems, theme and style and all, and his faux outsider arty drawings that were recently snapped up by the MoMA for their permanent collection and included in Phaidon's Vitamin D survey, are easily dependent on Patchen's drawings from the forties and fifties.
ReplyDeleteHe never hid the fact that he loved musical genres, but I used to think his content was at least his own... c'est la postmodern era.
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ReplyDeleteHey Katarina- love the comment! It is showing under my Israel blog (I’ll go try to figure out how to move it- though doing crap in “blogspot” is not self evident--- but hey, that fucking place (the middle east) is postmodern enough (or is it just stuck on anciently primitive)--- Seriously, Banhart’s faux drawings were snapped up by Moma? Holy shit, the man is sure doing alright for himself--- will all this fame seriously be the end of his music I wonder... I mean how does a one keep producing in the same vane when the landscape of one’s life changes so radically?! The Stones never did...
ReplyDelete...no can move...