Oh, I don’t know, I must be into pain or something because I decided, for no reason whatsoever, to read an old book I had once picked up (and not read) on Postmodern Theory as bed-time reading. My conscious life-span coincides with the period of time in which Pomo also became "self-consscious", I’ve studied it and absorbed its lessons, and... it’s over right (?)- hah- so why trudge through it “one more again”. Why spend time with theories that always seem to dead-end in cultural determinism; and which, when I am being ornery, I tell my students that had we “believed” in when we were tree-dwelling hominids, we would still be clinging to tree branches discussing our different interpretations of the “reality” of the ground below and how going down there would affect power relations.
I had been thinking of Adorno and was interested in what these authors, Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, had to say about him in the context of their book. And instead of just reading the one chapter, I decided, “What the hell, let’s see how the authors fit all of these guys together.” At five pages a night before passing out, it has been slow going and I am one half a Lyotard chapter and one Feminism and Marxism chapter away form what I set out to look for in the first place. But on my way, after revisiting Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, I got to the chapter on Baudriallard; and I can’t help myself, full of shit or not, and a lot of the time he is, the man is extremely exciting to read! No matter how hyperbolic his pronouncements, they seem to resonate with present experience...information dissolves meaning and the social into a sort of nebulous state leading not at all to a surfeit of innovation but to the very contrary, to total entropy...
I don’t seem to be the only one thinking of Baudriallard at this end of year. In the “On the Ground” section of December’s Art Forum, where authors write concluding thoughts about the year in different cities, both Wahlead Bashty and Emily Pethick invoke his name to help describe the scenes in LA and London respectively... One wonders where else he will crop up.
I had been thinking of Adorno and was interested in what these authors, Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, had to say about him in the context of their book. And instead of just reading the one chapter, I decided, “What the hell, let’s see how the authors fit all of these guys together.” At five pages a night before passing out, it has been slow going and I am one half a Lyotard chapter and one Feminism and Marxism chapter away form what I set out to look for in the first place. But on my way, after revisiting Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, I got to the chapter on Baudriallard; and I can’t help myself, full of shit or not, and a lot of the time he is, the man is extremely exciting to read! No matter how hyperbolic his pronouncements, they seem to resonate with present experience...information dissolves meaning and the social into a sort of nebulous state leading not at all to a surfeit of innovation but to the very contrary, to total entropy...
I don’t seem to be the only one thinking of Baudriallard at this end of year. In the “On the Ground” section of December’s Art Forum, where authors write concluding thoughts about the year in different cities, both Wahlead Bashty and Emily Pethick invoke his name to help describe the scenes in LA and London respectively... One wonders where else he will crop up.
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