WASHINGTON—The U.S. economy ceased to function this week after unexpected existential remarks by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke shocked Americans into realizing that money is, in fact, just a meaningless and intangible social construct.
The business section of The Onion brings this dramatic report from the US where POMO finally strikes at the heart of the economy.
A few other grabs from the same source.
So when will the rest of the world catch up with the new US insight.
TerjeP (say Tay-a)
20 Feb 10 at 9:16 am
Bloody Hell Rafe I urge everyone to attack those who go in for that PoMo stuff. It is epistemological poison. The other night I even ranted via email at some friends about this and stated:
It[POMO and what followed] can lead to a conceptual nihilism that makes people cynical in the worst possible way because it never provides them with conceptual tools to determine the value of specific knowledge and intellectual domains.
John H.
20 Feb 10 at 2:20 pm
Americans are quite used to their not being real. Remember that French pomo fraud who insisted the Gulf War ‘didn’t happen.’
Peter Patton
20 Feb 10 at 2:21 pm
It[POMO and what followed] can lead to a conceptual nihilism that makes people cynical in the worst possible way because it never provides them with conceptual tools to determine the value of specific knowledge and intellectual domains
I’d be very curious as to whether anybody here can actually define pomo.
THR
20 Feb 10 at 2:38 pm
You are a curious fellow THR!
Rafe
20 Feb 10 at 3:26 pm
THR
Which definition do you want? The epistemological one or the historiographical one? Oh, and just to show my good faith, I know they do not constitute a binary – false or otherwise.
Peter Patton
20 Feb 10 at 3:28 pm
I ask because John H, normally a sober contributor, launched into a spittle-flecked rant about ‘conceptual nihilism’. This sort of thing is very common in certain quarters. So I’m curious as to what this allegedly corrosive pomo is – are we talking Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Derrida, David Lynch, Fed Square, the internet, or what?
THR
20 Feb 10 at 3:30 pm
nomopomo, please.
ken n
20 Feb 10 at 3:33 pm
pomophobic, Ken?
THR
20 Feb 10 at 3:33 pm
THR,
I have long since given up entertaining your perspective. I have much more important issues to think about.
John H.
20 Feb 10 at 3:34 pm
Foshonomopomohomos.
C.L.
20 Feb 10 at 3:35 pm
John, have you ever read Pope John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendour? It treats of moral relativism – with specifically Christic and salvific foci, to be sure – but its application and utility in relation to culture more generally are quite marked.
Vatican online transcript in English here.
C.L.
20 Feb 10 at 3:41 pm
Isn’t everyone these days, THR?
No, I take that back: what’s the verb for believing something to be utterly ridiculous?
ken n
20 Feb 10 at 3:41 pm
THR
I read a lot of philosophers, literary/cultural/whatever, who are generally considered part of the pomo vanguard, and much more pomo-inflected stuff at uni. It always stunk to high heaven of rebranded Marxism and Communism. Now, we all know that the early waves of pomo theorizing was from former Communist academics re-tooling once the writing on the wall became too clear that the proletariat was never going to live up to the revolutionary hopes that Maxist intellectuals had always invested.
These communist academics tweaked that the implications for their relevancy both as academics and as public intellectuals were not rosy, so they’d better get new scriptwriters; and fast. Yes, they all now sneered at Marx as a ‘structuralist’; a misguided product of – what was now – the naivety and presumption of the Enlightenment.
Secretly glad to be rid of the docile proletariat and its ghastly love of cars, television, refrigerators, and electric carving knives, the Pomo Gurus Formerly Known as Communists embraced non-white people as their new proletariat, their new ‘Chosen People.’
Shall I go on? I’d rather not, especially as the tedious fashion has long passed.
Peter Patton
20 Feb 10 at 3:52 pm
Now, we all know that the early waves of pomo theorizing was from former Communist academics re-tooling once the writing on the wall became too clear that the proletariat was never going to live up to the revolutionary hopes that Maxist intellectuals had always invested.
Specifics, please. Which ex-communists were using pomo to rebrand Marxism? It’s true that some of the names asociated with pomo had flirtations with leftist politics, but there are plenty of counter-examples of the opposite.
And the hostility has been from Marxists towards pomo, not the other way around.
THR
20 Feb 10 at 4:02 pm
THR, if you read this critique of various high lit theoriests, broadly under the POMO label, you will find any number of people pushing radical leftwing agendas, whether or not they are communists or ex-communists.
http://www.the-rathouse.com/RC_FreadmanMiller.html
I appreciate that many radical activists deplore the influence of POMO in making people relativistic and apathetic about politics. That is your point, but my counter argument is that leftwing thinking survives in part because so many students get their critical brains blown out by POMO courses so they lose the capacity to tell sense from nonsense.
Rafe
20 Feb 10 at 7:09 pm
PS What are your examples of “counter-examples of the opposite”?
Rafe
20 Feb 10 at 7:10 pm
Next we will be having discussions points based on “Mad Magazine”
Woops, that wont work – Mad is full of Stalinist and Maoist commies, and we all know how many they killed.
rog
20 Feb 10 at 7:26 pm
PS What are your examples of “counter-examples of the opposite”?
Paul de Man, for instance. Heidegger, whilst not strictly a postmodernist, was probably one of the 3 or 4 key influences on pomo.
Your link is interesting, but I’m not convinced that some of the writers you cite show some of the family resemblances you claim. Also, whilst somebody like Derrida did espouse a fondness for some aspects of leftist politics, his writing didn’t advance leftist causes one iota. Also, I find it odd that Saussure and Derrida ought to be thrown together – Derrida’s project is more like an avant-garde Hegel than anything Saussurean. The ‘language creates reality’ hypothesis is not Saussurean at all, and was around long before the era of pomo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
THR
20 Feb 10 at 7:27 pm
In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?
The Onion rules
asf
20 Feb 10 at 8:37 pm
Rog, a few weeks ago you introduced something for discussion from Zoo magazine.
C.L.
20 Feb 10 at 9:44 pm
“Woops, that wont work – Mad is full of Stalinist and Maoist commies, and we all know how many they killed.”
Rog, are you denying that Communist regimes didn’t kill tens if not hundreds of millions?
Semi Regular Libertarian
20 Feb 10 at 9:46 pm
“he U.S. economy ceased to function this week after unexpected existential remarks by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke shocked Americans into realizing that money is, in fact, just a meaningless and intangible social construct.”
Luckily South Carolina is on the case:
http://www2.wjbf.com/jbf/news/state_regional/south_carolina/article/bill_would_ban_federal_currency_in_sc/59440/
AJ
20 Feb 10 at 10:28 pm
Thanks asf, that is great, I will have to circulate that via my agents of influence!
AJ likewise. Lets hear it for South Carolina!!
What a cute little state, with a population approx to Sydney. And the state animals –
State Reptile: Loggerhead Sea Turtle
State Amphibian: Salamander
State Fish: Striped bass
State Insect: Carolina Mantis
Rafe
21 Feb 10 at 12:22 am