Hmmm ... Per my messages this morning you started to answer, but then deleted it, Perez?
Could it be that any definition of 'art' you might care to use is entirely subjective?
I was racking my brain last night trying to figure out what objective standards you would use. Couldn't think of one ...
So don't use Christo or Nam June Paik. Use something else.
You said: " I think that is part of the appeal of real art--complexity, surprise, innovation, without becoming too abstract; and it also makes use of themes--violence, politics, injustice, sex-- that can be identified with.."
Well, heh ... almost everything makes use of a theme. And what's predictable for you may be surprising and innovative to someone else. So ... isn't your definition of 'art' necessarily elitist and subjective? The implication is that you, or a critic, will "know" these things when they see them, but the average Joe may not.
I don't think we're beating dead horse, quite yet. I'd respond to you directly, but I think others will be interested in what you have to say.
BTW, the "incompetence" you mentioned earlier -- that identifies the artist (or piemaker), but not the resulting product. The resulting product may still have value.
Zlatko -- you probably have a better idea about this than anybody else. Why not give your opinion?
Nude Art
-
Zlatko Waterman
- Posts: 1631
- Joined: August 19th, 2004, 8:30 am
- Location: Los Angeles, CA USA
- Contact:
Here's a stab at defining Postmodern Art from someone who teaches in your neck of the woods, Cat.
Definitions of "art" and "art intentions" are a little like definitions of "country" music these days. It depends a bit on whether it's played by Hank Williams, Ray Charles, or Keith Jarrett.
Like those exasperating ( and wonderful) French, we ought to come to use " . . .ce depend . . ." a little more.
(paste)
Postmodernism
By Mary Klager, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder
Postmodernism is a complicated term, or set of ideas, one that has only emerged as an area of academic study since the mid-1980s. Postmodernism is hard to define, because it is a concept that appears in a wide variety of disciplines or areas of study, including art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology. It's hard to locate it temporally or historically, because it's not clear exactly when postmodernism begins.
Perhaps the easiest way to start thinking about postmodernism is by thinking about modernism, the movement from which postmodernism seems to grow or emerge. Modernism has two facets, or two modes of definition, both of which are relevant to understanding postmodernism.
The first facet or definition of modernism comes from the aesthetic movement broadly labeled "modernism." This movement is roughly coterminous with twentieth century Western ideas about art (though traces of it in emergent forms can be found in the nineteenth century as well). Modernism, as you probably know, is the movement in visual arts, music, literature, and drama which rejected the old Victorian standards of how art should be made, consumed, and what it should mean. In the period of "high modernism," from around 1910 to 1930, the major figures of modernism literature helped radically to redefine what poetry and fiction could be and do: figures like Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Proust, Mallarme, Kafka, and Rilke are considered the founders of twentieth-century modernism.
From a literary perspective, the main characteristics of modernism include:
1. an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing (and in visual arts as well); an emphasis on HOW seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on WHAT is perceived. An example of this would be stream-of-consciousness writing.
2. a movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators, fixed narrative points of view, and clear-cut moral positions. Faulkner's multiply-narrated stories are an example of this aspect of modernism.
3. a blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more documentary (as in T.S. Eliot or ee cummings) and prose seems more poetic (as in Woolf or Joyce).
4. an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials.
5. a tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about the production of the work of art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways.
6. a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs (as in the poetry of William Carlos Williams) and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories, in favor of spontaneity and discovery in creation.
7. A rejection of the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture, both in choice of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming art.
Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject.
But--while postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history (think of The Wasteland, for instance, or of Woolf's To the Lighthouse), but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense.
Another way of looking at the relation between modernism and postmodernism helps to clarify some of these distinctions. According to Frederic Jameson, modernism and postmodernism are cultural formations which accompany particular stages of capitalism. Jameson outlines three primary phases of capitalism which dictate particular cultural practices (including what kind of art and literature is produced). The first is market capitalism, which occurred in the eighteenth through the late nineteenth centuries in Western Europe, England, and the United States (and all their spheres of influence). This first phase is associated with particular technological developments, namely, the steam-driven motor, and with a particular kind of aesthetics, namely, realism. The second phase occurred from the late nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century (about WWII); this phase, monopoly capitalism, is associated with electric and internal combustion motors, and with modernism. The third, the phase we're in now, is multinational or consumer capitalism (with the emphasis placed on marketing, selling, and consuming commodities, not on producing them), associated with nuclear and electronic technologies, and correlated with postmodernism.
Like Jameson's characterization of postmodernism in terms of modes of production and technologies, the second facet, or definition, of postmodernism comes more from history and sociology than from literature or art history. This approach defines postmodernism as the name of an entire social formation, or set of social/historical attitudes; more precisely,this approach contrasts "postmodernity" with "modernity," rather than "postmodernism" with "modernism."
What's the difference? "Modernism" generally refers to the broad aesthetic movements of the twentieth century; "modernity" refers to a set of philosophical, political, and ethical ideas which provide the basis for the aesthetic aspect of modernism. "Modernity" is older than "modernism;" the label "modern," first articulated in nineteenth-century sociology, was meant to distinguish the present era from the previous one, which was labeled "antiquity." Scholars are always debating when exactly the "modern" period began, and how to distinguish between what is modern and what is not modern; it seems like the modern period starts earlier and earlier every time historians look at it. But generally, the "modern" era is associated with the European Enlightenment, which begins roughly in the middle of the eighteenth century. (Other historians trace elements of enlightenment thought back to the Renaissance or earlier, and one could argue that Enlightenment thinking begins with the eighteenth century. I usually date "modern" from 1750, if only because I got my Ph.D. from a program at Stanford called "Modern Thought and Literature," and that program focused on works written after 1750).
The basic ideas of the Enlightenment are roughly the same as the basic ideas of humanism. Jane Flax's article gives a good summary of these ideas or premises (on p. 41). I'll add a few things to her list.
1. There is a stable, coherent, knowable self. This self is conscious, rational, autonomous, and universal--no physical conditions or differences substantially affect how this self operates.
2. This self knows itself and the world through reason, or rationality, posited as the highest form of mental functioning, and the only objective form.
3. The mode of knowing produced by the objective rational self is "science," which can provide universal truths about the world, regardless of the individual status of the knower.
4. The knowledge produced by science is "truth," and is eternal.
5. The knowledge/truth produced by science (by the rational objective knowing self) will always lead toward progress and perfection. All human institutions and practices can be analyzed by science (reason/objectivity) and improved.
6. Reason is the ultimate judge of what is true, and therefore of what is right, and what is good (what is legal and what is ethical). Freedom consists of obedience to the laws that conform to the knowledge discovered by reason.
7. In a world governed by reason, the true will always be the same as the good and the right (and the beautiful); there can be no conflict between what is true and what is right (etc.).
8. Science thus stands as the paradigm for any and all socially useful forms of knowledge. Science is neutral and objective; scientists, those who produce scientific knowledge through their unbiased rational capacities, must be free to follow the laws of reason, and not be motivated by other concerns (such as money or power).
9. Language, or the mode of expression used in producing and disseminating knowledge, must be rational also. To be rational, language must be transparent; it must function only to represent the real/perceivable world which the rational mind observes. There must be a firm and objective connection between the objects of perception and the words used to name them (between signifier and signified).
These are some of the fundamental premises of humanism, or of modernism. They serve--as you can probably tell--to justify and explain virtually all of our social structures and institutions, including democracy, law, science, ethics, and aesthetics.
Modernity is fundamentally about order: about rationality and rationalization, creating order out of chaos. The assumption is that creating more rationality is conducive to creating more order, and that the more ordered a society is, the better it will function (the more rationally it will function). Because modernity is about the pursuit of ever-increasing levels of order, modern societies constantly are on guard against anything and everything labeled as "disorder," which might disrupt order. Thus modern societies rely on continually establishing a binary opposition between "order" and "disorder," so that they can assert the superiority of "order." But to do this, they have to have things that represent "disorder"--modern societies thus continually have to create/construct "disorder." In western culture, this disorder becomes "the other"--defined in relation to other binary oppositions. Thus anything non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic, non-rational, (etc.) becomes part of "disorder," and has to be eliminated from the ordered, rational modern society.
The ways that modern societies go about creating categories labeled as "order" or "disorder" have to do with the effort to achieve stability. Francois Lyotard (the theorist whose works Sarup describes in his article on postmodernism) equates that stability with the idea of "totality," or a totalized system (think here of Derrida's idea of "totality" as the wholeness or completeness of a system). Totality, and stability, and order, Lyotard argues, are maintained in modern societies through the means of "grand narratives" or "master narratives," which are stories a culture tells itself about its practices and beliefs. A "grand narrative" in American culture might be the story that democracy is the most enlightened (rational) form of government, and that democracy can and will lead to universal human happiness. Every belief system or ideology has its grand narratives, according to Lyotard; for Marxism, for instance, the "grand narrative" is the idea that capitalism will collapse in on itself and a utopian socialist world will evolve. You might think of grand narratives as a kind of meta-theory, or meta-ideology, that is, an ideology that explains an ideology (as with Marxism); a story that is told to explain the belief systems that exist.
Lyotard argues that all aspects of modern societies, including science as the primary form of knowledge, depend on these grand narratives. Postmodernism then is the critique of grand narratives, the awareness that such narratives serve to mask the contradictions and instabilities that are inherent in any social organization or practice. In other words, every attempt to create "order" always demands the creation of an equal amount of "disorder," but a "grand narrative" masks the constructedness of these categories by explaining that "disorder" REALLY IS chaotic and bad, and that "order" REALLY IS rational and good. Postmodernism, in rejecting grand narratives, favors "mini-narratives," stories that explain small practices, local events, rather than large-scale universal or global concepts. Postmodern "mini-narratives" are always situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary, making no claim to universality, truth, reason, or stability.
Another aspect of Enlightenment thought--the final of my 9 points--is the idea that language is transparent, that words serve only as representations of thoughts or things, and don't have any function beyond that. Modern societies depend on the idea that signifiers always point to signifieds, and that reality resides in signifieds. In postmodernism, however, there are only signifiers. The idea of any stable or permanent reality disappears, and with it the idea of signifieds that signifiers point to. Rather, for postmodern societies, there are only surfaces, without depth; only signifiers, with no signifieds.
Another way of saying this, according to Jean Baudrillard, is that in postmodern society there are no originals, only copies--or what he calls "simulacra." You might think, for example, about painting or sculpture, where there is an original work (by Van Gogh, for instance), and there might also be thousands of copies, but the original is the one with the highest value (particularly monetary value). Contrast that with cds or music recordings, where there is no "original," as in painting--no recording that is hung on a wall, or kept in a vault; rather, there are only copies, by the millions, that are all the same, and all sold for (approximately) the same amount of money. Another version of Baudrillard's "simulacrum" would be the concept of virtual reality, a reality created by simulation, for which there is no original. This is particularly evident in computer games/simulations--think of Sim City, Sim Ant, etc.
Finally, postmodernism is concerned with questions of the organization of knowledge. In modern societies, knowledge was equated with science, and was contrasted to narrative; science was good knowledge, and narrative was bad, primitive, irrational (and thus associated with women, children, primitives, and insane people). Knowledge, however, was good for its own sake; one gained knowledge, via education, in order to be knowledgeable in general, to become an educated person. This is the ideal of the liberal arts education. In a postmodern society, however, knowledge becomes functional--you learn things, not to know them, but to use that knowledge. As Sarup points out (p. 138), educational policy today puts emphasis on skills and training, rather than on a vague humanist ideal of education in general. This is particularly acute for English majors. "What will you DO with your degree?"
Not only is knowledge in postmodern societies characterized by its utility, but knowledge is also distributed, stored, and arranged differently in postmodern societies than in modern ones. Specifically, the advent of electronic computer technologies has revolutionized the modes of knowledge production, distribution, and consumption in our society (indeed, some might argue that postmodernism is best described by, and correlated with, the emergence of computer technology, starting in the 1960s, as the dominant force in all aspects of social life). In postmodern societies, anything which is not able to be translated into a form recognizable and storable by a computer--i.e. anything that's not digitizable--will cease to be knowledge. In this paradigm, the opposite of "knowledge" is not "ignorance," as it is the modern/humanist paradigm, but rather "noise." Anything that doesn't qualify as a kind of knowledge is "noise," is something that is not recognizable as anything within this system.
Lyotard says (and this is what Sarup spends a lot of time explaining) that the important question for postmodern societies is who decides what knowledge is (and what "noise" is), and who knows what needs to be decided. Such decisions about knowledge don't involve the old modern/humanist qualifications: for example, to assess knowledge as truth (its technical quality), or as goodness or justice (its ethical quality) or as beauty (its aesthetic quality). Rather, Lyotard argues, knowledge follows the paradigm of a language game, as laid out by Wittgenstein. I won't go into the details of Wittgenstein's ideas of language games; Sarup gives a pretty good explanation of this concept in his article, for those who are interested.
There are lots of questions to be asked about postmodernism, and one of the most important is about the politics involved--or, more simply, is this movement toward fragmentation, provisionality, performance, and instability something good or something bad? There are various answers to that; in our contemporary society, however, the desire to return to the pre-postmodern era (modern/humanist/Enlightenment thinking) tends to get associated with conservative political, religious, and philosophical groups. In fact, one of the consequences of postmodernism seems to be the rise of religious fundamentalism, as a form of resistance to the questioning of the "grand narratives" of religious truth. This is perhaps most obvious (to us in the US, anyway) in muslim fundamentalism in the Middle East, which ban postmodern books--like Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses --because they deconstruct such grand narratives.
This association between the rejection of postmodernism and conservatism or fundamentalism may explain in part why the postmodern avowal of fragmentation and multiplicity tends to attract liberals and radicals. This is why, in part, feminist theorists have found postmodernism so attractive, as Sarup, Flax, and Butler all point out.
On another level, however, postmodernism seems to offer some alternatives to joining the global culture of consumption, where commodities and forms of knowledge are offered by forces far beyond any individual's control. These alternatives focus on thinking of any and all action (or social struggle) as necessarily local, limited, and partial--but nonetheless effective. By discarding "grand narratives" (like the liberation of the entire working class) and focusing on specific local goals (such as improved day care centers for working mothers in your own community), postmodernist politics offers a way to theorize local situations as fluid and unpredictable, though influenced by global trends. Hence the motto for postmodern politics might well be "think globally, act locally"--and don't worry about any grand scheme or master plan.
(end paste)
Two nice quotes along with a voluminous gallery of the nude as subject can be found here:
http://www.ocaiw.com/galleria_nudo/index.php?lang=en
Fascinating also is the reaction of the public to photographers like Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989):
http://www.sabine-mag.com/archive/ar06009.htm
My opinion?
I suppose, like the French, I am the wrong person to ask for any clear definition.
I have personal favorites from Rothko and Guston to Wyeth, from Brice Marden
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/sit ... 101_0.html
to Claudio Bravo:
http://www.puc.cl/faba/ARTE/MUSEO/MuseoExpoBravoI.html
and Antonio Lopez Garcia:
http://www.epdlp.com/pintor.php?id=297
I also draw little or no distinction between artists who work from a "commercial" motive and those somewhat more isolated laborers like Arshile Gorky
http://artscenecal.com/ArticlesFile/Arc ... Gorky.html
and Ivan le Lorraine Albright
http://www.butlerart.com/pc_book/pages/ ... t_1897.htm
who never become as famous as the Wyeths and the Rothkos, even though Hollywood used one of Albright's paintings in "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
I also adore the work of American illustrators, particularly of the Forties and Fifties ( see my interview on Doreen's art site):
http://www.studioeight.tv/artists/norma ... llory.html
These include extraordinary draftsmen like Austin Briggs:
http://www.askart.com/artist/B/austin_b ... p?ID=28596
and Robert Fawcett:
http://www.illustration-house.com/bios/fawcett_bio.html
Since life is short (Hobbes!), I try to sample the whole banquet. I am thoroughly immersed and happily splashing away.
I am willing to look at Nam June Paik or Bill Viola:
http://www.billviola.com/
or Roni Horn who describes herself in an interview as "androgynous" :
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/sit ... _66B_0.htm
lhttp://www.ifas.org.au/index.cgi?article=conte ... at_is_menu
or Al Held:
http://www.artnet.com/artist/8072/Al_Held.html
or even Robert Ryman:
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/ryman/
On Ryman's art, the essay by Anne Rorimer is particularly interesting, since Ryman's works sometimes consist of "blank" canvases.
Here are some additional Ryman images:
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/sit ... _140_0.htm
and:
http://www.artnet.com/ag/fineartthumbna ... ?aid=14749
Zlatko
Definitions of "art" and "art intentions" are a little like definitions of "country" music these days. It depends a bit on whether it's played by Hank Williams, Ray Charles, or Keith Jarrett.
Like those exasperating ( and wonderful) French, we ought to come to use " . . .ce depend . . ." a little more.
(paste)
Postmodernism
By Mary Klager, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder
Postmodernism is a complicated term, or set of ideas, one that has only emerged as an area of academic study since the mid-1980s. Postmodernism is hard to define, because it is a concept that appears in a wide variety of disciplines or areas of study, including art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology. It's hard to locate it temporally or historically, because it's not clear exactly when postmodernism begins.
Perhaps the easiest way to start thinking about postmodernism is by thinking about modernism, the movement from which postmodernism seems to grow or emerge. Modernism has two facets, or two modes of definition, both of which are relevant to understanding postmodernism.
The first facet or definition of modernism comes from the aesthetic movement broadly labeled "modernism." This movement is roughly coterminous with twentieth century Western ideas about art (though traces of it in emergent forms can be found in the nineteenth century as well). Modernism, as you probably know, is the movement in visual arts, music, literature, and drama which rejected the old Victorian standards of how art should be made, consumed, and what it should mean. In the period of "high modernism," from around 1910 to 1930, the major figures of modernism literature helped radically to redefine what poetry and fiction could be and do: figures like Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Proust, Mallarme, Kafka, and Rilke are considered the founders of twentieth-century modernism.
From a literary perspective, the main characteristics of modernism include:
1. an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing (and in visual arts as well); an emphasis on HOW seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on WHAT is perceived. An example of this would be stream-of-consciousness writing.
2. a movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators, fixed narrative points of view, and clear-cut moral positions. Faulkner's multiply-narrated stories are an example of this aspect of modernism.
3. a blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more documentary (as in T.S. Eliot or ee cummings) and prose seems more poetic (as in Woolf or Joyce).
4. an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials.
5. a tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about the production of the work of art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways.
6. a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs (as in the poetry of William Carlos Williams) and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories, in favor of spontaneity and discovery in creation.
7. A rejection of the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture, both in choice of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming art.
Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject.
But--while postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history (think of The Wasteland, for instance, or of Woolf's To the Lighthouse), but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense.
Another way of looking at the relation between modernism and postmodernism helps to clarify some of these distinctions. According to Frederic Jameson, modernism and postmodernism are cultural formations which accompany particular stages of capitalism. Jameson outlines three primary phases of capitalism which dictate particular cultural practices (including what kind of art and literature is produced). The first is market capitalism, which occurred in the eighteenth through the late nineteenth centuries in Western Europe, England, and the United States (and all their spheres of influence). This first phase is associated with particular technological developments, namely, the steam-driven motor, and with a particular kind of aesthetics, namely, realism. The second phase occurred from the late nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century (about WWII); this phase, monopoly capitalism, is associated with electric and internal combustion motors, and with modernism. The third, the phase we're in now, is multinational or consumer capitalism (with the emphasis placed on marketing, selling, and consuming commodities, not on producing them), associated with nuclear and electronic technologies, and correlated with postmodernism.
Like Jameson's characterization of postmodernism in terms of modes of production and technologies, the second facet, or definition, of postmodernism comes more from history and sociology than from literature or art history. This approach defines postmodernism as the name of an entire social formation, or set of social/historical attitudes; more precisely,this approach contrasts "postmodernity" with "modernity," rather than "postmodernism" with "modernism."
What's the difference? "Modernism" generally refers to the broad aesthetic movements of the twentieth century; "modernity" refers to a set of philosophical, political, and ethical ideas which provide the basis for the aesthetic aspect of modernism. "Modernity" is older than "modernism;" the label "modern," first articulated in nineteenth-century sociology, was meant to distinguish the present era from the previous one, which was labeled "antiquity." Scholars are always debating when exactly the "modern" period began, and how to distinguish between what is modern and what is not modern; it seems like the modern period starts earlier and earlier every time historians look at it. But generally, the "modern" era is associated with the European Enlightenment, which begins roughly in the middle of the eighteenth century. (Other historians trace elements of enlightenment thought back to the Renaissance or earlier, and one could argue that Enlightenment thinking begins with the eighteenth century. I usually date "modern" from 1750, if only because I got my Ph.D. from a program at Stanford called "Modern Thought and Literature," and that program focused on works written after 1750).
The basic ideas of the Enlightenment are roughly the same as the basic ideas of humanism. Jane Flax's article gives a good summary of these ideas or premises (on p. 41). I'll add a few things to her list.
1. There is a stable, coherent, knowable self. This self is conscious, rational, autonomous, and universal--no physical conditions or differences substantially affect how this self operates.
2. This self knows itself and the world through reason, or rationality, posited as the highest form of mental functioning, and the only objective form.
3. The mode of knowing produced by the objective rational self is "science," which can provide universal truths about the world, regardless of the individual status of the knower.
4. The knowledge produced by science is "truth," and is eternal.
5. The knowledge/truth produced by science (by the rational objective knowing self) will always lead toward progress and perfection. All human institutions and practices can be analyzed by science (reason/objectivity) and improved.
6. Reason is the ultimate judge of what is true, and therefore of what is right, and what is good (what is legal and what is ethical). Freedom consists of obedience to the laws that conform to the knowledge discovered by reason.
7. In a world governed by reason, the true will always be the same as the good and the right (and the beautiful); there can be no conflict between what is true and what is right (etc.).
8. Science thus stands as the paradigm for any and all socially useful forms of knowledge. Science is neutral and objective; scientists, those who produce scientific knowledge through their unbiased rational capacities, must be free to follow the laws of reason, and not be motivated by other concerns (such as money or power).
9. Language, or the mode of expression used in producing and disseminating knowledge, must be rational also. To be rational, language must be transparent; it must function only to represent the real/perceivable world which the rational mind observes. There must be a firm and objective connection between the objects of perception and the words used to name them (between signifier and signified).
These are some of the fundamental premises of humanism, or of modernism. They serve--as you can probably tell--to justify and explain virtually all of our social structures and institutions, including democracy, law, science, ethics, and aesthetics.
Modernity is fundamentally about order: about rationality and rationalization, creating order out of chaos. The assumption is that creating more rationality is conducive to creating more order, and that the more ordered a society is, the better it will function (the more rationally it will function). Because modernity is about the pursuit of ever-increasing levels of order, modern societies constantly are on guard against anything and everything labeled as "disorder," which might disrupt order. Thus modern societies rely on continually establishing a binary opposition between "order" and "disorder," so that they can assert the superiority of "order." But to do this, they have to have things that represent "disorder"--modern societies thus continually have to create/construct "disorder." In western culture, this disorder becomes "the other"--defined in relation to other binary oppositions. Thus anything non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic, non-rational, (etc.) becomes part of "disorder," and has to be eliminated from the ordered, rational modern society.
The ways that modern societies go about creating categories labeled as "order" or "disorder" have to do with the effort to achieve stability. Francois Lyotard (the theorist whose works Sarup describes in his article on postmodernism) equates that stability with the idea of "totality," or a totalized system (think here of Derrida's idea of "totality" as the wholeness or completeness of a system). Totality, and stability, and order, Lyotard argues, are maintained in modern societies through the means of "grand narratives" or "master narratives," which are stories a culture tells itself about its practices and beliefs. A "grand narrative" in American culture might be the story that democracy is the most enlightened (rational) form of government, and that democracy can and will lead to universal human happiness. Every belief system or ideology has its grand narratives, according to Lyotard; for Marxism, for instance, the "grand narrative" is the idea that capitalism will collapse in on itself and a utopian socialist world will evolve. You might think of grand narratives as a kind of meta-theory, or meta-ideology, that is, an ideology that explains an ideology (as with Marxism); a story that is told to explain the belief systems that exist.
Lyotard argues that all aspects of modern societies, including science as the primary form of knowledge, depend on these grand narratives. Postmodernism then is the critique of grand narratives, the awareness that such narratives serve to mask the contradictions and instabilities that are inherent in any social organization or practice. In other words, every attempt to create "order" always demands the creation of an equal amount of "disorder," but a "grand narrative" masks the constructedness of these categories by explaining that "disorder" REALLY IS chaotic and bad, and that "order" REALLY IS rational and good. Postmodernism, in rejecting grand narratives, favors "mini-narratives," stories that explain small practices, local events, rather than large-scale universal or global concepts. Postmodern "mini-narratives" are always situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary, making no claim to universality, truth, reason, or stability.
Another aspect of Enlightenment thought--the final of my 9 points--is the idea that language is transparent, that words serve only as representations of thoughts or things, and don't have any function beyond that. Modern societies depend on the idea that signifiers always point to signifieds, and that reality resides in signifieds. In postmodernism, however, there are only signifiers. The idea of any stable or permanent reality disappears, and with it the idea of signifieds that signifiers point to. Rather, for postmodern societies, there are only surfaces, without depth; only signifiers, with no signifieds.
Another way of saying this, according to Jean Baudrillard, is that in postmodern society there are no originals, only copies--or what he calls "simulacra." You might think, for example, about painting or sculpture, where there is an original work (by Van Gogh, for instance), and there might also be thousands of copies, but the original is the one with the highest value (particularly monetary value). Contrast that with cds or music recordings, where there is no "original," as in painting--no recording that is hung on a wall, or kept in a vault; rather, there are only copies, by the millions, that are all the same, and all sold for (approximately) the same amount of money. Another version of Baudrillard's "simulacrum" would be the concept of virtual reality, a reality created by simulation, for which there is no original. This is particularly evident in computer games/simulations--think of Sim City, Sim Ant, etc.
Finally, postmodernism is concerned with questions of the organization of knowledge. In modern societies, knowledge was equated with science, and was contrasted to narrative; science was good knowledge, and narrative was bad, primitive, irrational (and thus associated with women, children, primitives, and insane people). Knowledge, however, was good for its own sake; one gained knowledge, via education, in order to be knowledgeable in general, to become an educated person. This is the ideal of the liberal arts education. In a postmodern society, however, knowledge becomes functional--you learn things, not to know them, but to use that knowledge. As Sarup points out (p. 138), educational policy today puts emphasis on skills and training, rather than on a vague humanist ideal of education in general. This is particularly acute for English majors. "What will you DO with your degree?"
Not only is knowledge in postmodern societies characterized by its utility, but knowledge is also distributed, stored, and arranged differently in postmodern societies than in modern ones. Specifically, the advent of electronic computer technologies has revolutionized the modes of knowledge production, distribution, and consumption in our society (indeed, some might argue that postmodernism is best described by, and correlated with, the emergence of computer technology, starting in the 1960s, as the dominant force in all aspects of social life). In postmodern societies, anything which is not able to be translated into a form recognizable and storable by a computer--i.e. anything that's not digitizable--will cease to be knowledge. In this paradigm, the opposite of "knowledge" is not "ignorance," as it is the modern/humanist paradigm, but rather "noise." Anything that doesn't qualify as a kind of knowledge is "noise," is something that is not recognizable as anything within this system.
Lyotard says (and this is what Sarup spends a lot of time explaining) that the important question for postmodern societies is who decides what knowledge is (and what "noise" is), and who knows what needs to be decided. Such decisions about knowledge don't involve the old modern/humanist qualifications: for example, to assess knowledge as truth (its technical quality), or as goodness or justice (its ethical quality) or as beauty (its aesthetic quality). Rather, Lyotard argues, knowledge follows the paradigm of a language game, as laid out by Wittgenstein. I won't go into the details of Wittgenstein's ideas of language games; Sarup gives a pretty good explanation of this concept in his article, for those who are interested.
There are lots of questions to be asked about postmodernism, and one of the most important is about the politics involved--or, more simply, is this movement toward fragmentation, provisionality, performance, and instability something good or something bad? There are various answers to that; in our contemporary society, however, the desire to return to the pre-postmodern era (modern/humanist/Enlightenment thinking) tends to get associated with conservative political, religious, and philosophical groups. In fact, one of the consequences of postmodernism seems to be the rise of religious fundamentalism, as a form of resistance to the questioning of the "grand narratives" of religious truth. This is perhaps most obvious (to us in the US, anyway) in muslim fundamentalism in the Middle East, which ban postmodern books--like Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses --because they deconstruct such grand narratives.
This association between the rejection of postmodernism and conservatism or fundamentalism may explain in part why the postmodern avowal of fragmentation and multiplicity tends to attract liberals and radicals. This is why, in part, feminist theorists have found postmodernism so attractive, as Sarup, Flax, and Butler all point out.
On another level, however, postmodernism seems to offer some alternatives to joining the global culture of consumption, where commodities and forms of knowledge are offered by forces far beyond any individual's control. These alternatives focus on thinking of any and all action (or social struggle) as necessarily local, limited, and partial--but nonetheless effective. By discarding "grand narratives" (like the liberation of the entire working class) and focusing on specific local goals (such as improved day care centers for working mothers in your own community), postmodernist politics offers a way to theorize local situations as fluid and unpredictable, though influenced by global trends. Hence the motto for postmodern politics might well be "think globally, act locally"--and don't worry about any grand scheme or master plan.
(end paste)
Two nice quotes along with a voluminous gallery of the nude as subject can be found here:
http://www.ocaiw.com/galleria_nudo/index.php?lang=en
Fascinating also is the reaction of the public to photographers like Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989):
http://www.sabine-mag.com/archive/ar06009.htm
My opinion?
I suppose, like the French, I am the wrong person to ask for any clear definition.
I have personal favorites from Rothko and Guston to Wyeth, from Brice Marden
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/sit ... 101_0.html
to Claudio Bravo:
http://www.puc.cl/faba/ARTE/MUSEO/MuseoExpoBravoI.html
and Antonio Lopez Garcia:
http://www.epdlp.com/pintor.php?id=297
I also draw little or no distinction between artists who work from a "commercial" motive and those somewhat more isolated laborers like Arshile Gorky
http://artscenecal.com/ArticlesFile/Arc ... Gorky.html
and Ivan le Lorraine Albright
http://www.butlerart.com/pc_book/pages/ ... t_1897.htm
who never become as famous as the Wyeths and the Rothkos, even though Hollywood used one of Albright's paintings in "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
I also adore the work of American illustrators, particularly of the Forties and Fifties ( see my interview on Doreen's art site):
http://www.studioeight.tv/artists/norma ... llory.html
These include extraordinary draftsmen like Austin Briggs:
http://www.askart.com/artist/B/austin_b ... p?ID=28596
and Robert Fawcett:
http://www.illustration-house.com/bios/fawcett_bio.html
Since life is short (Hobbes!), I try to sample the whole banquet. I am thoroughly immersed and happily splashing away.
I am willing to look at Nam June Paik or Bill Viola:
http://www.billviola.com/
or Roni Horn who describes herself in an interview as "androgynous" :
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/sit ... _66B_0.htm
lhttp://www.ifas.org.au/index.cgi?article=conte ... at_is_menu
or Al Held:
http://www.artnet.com/artist/8072/Al_Held.html
or even Robert Ryman:
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/ryman/
On Ryman's art, the essay by Anne Rorimer is particularly interesting, since Ryman's works sometimes consist of "blank" canvases.
Here are some additional Ryman images:
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/sit ... _140_0.htm
and:
http://www.artnet.com/ag/fineartthumbna ... ?aid=14749
Zlatko
-
abcrystcats
- Posts: 619
- Joined: August 20th, 2004, 9:37 pm
I think I just got a mini-course in postmodernism -- thanks, it was much needed and that is a very good article.
I prefer the absolutes of previous eras and lean heavily towards them -- especially when it comes to art and literature. I just do not see how we can apply those standards (or any standards) as universal qualifiers for admission to the realm of 'art.'
I kept thinking of the medieval uses of pictorial art -- it was primarily a means of communicating with an illiterate underclass. Symbolism was paramount and each individual detail of a picture contributed towards telling the story. Consider commemorative battle pictures, or the Lindisfarne Manuscripts or even the bizarre paintings of Hieronymous Bosch. Every tiny detail "signified" something. I can appreciate that, and even admire it. I do admire it, but I cannot apply those standards to art in today's world. That's what I like, because I like absolutes, standards, and art in the context of history and myth and realism.
I don't know. I'm still struggling with it, but I have yet to see anyone come up with objective criteria that determine what "art" is and what it isn't.
And, Mnaz, I think there will always be sections of society that embrace philosophical absolutes. There will always be people who will look for leaders, for boundaries, for scriptures that will replace the demand for free thought. Thought is hard work. By contrast, faith in the words of gods and saints requires only obedience. I do not think this is something new to the 21st century, or even a backlash against modern society. Look at any point in history and you will find rigid dogmatists everywhere.
I prefer the absolutes of previous eras and lean heavily towards them -- especially when it comes to art and literature. I just do not see how we can apply those standards (or any standards) as universal qualifiers for admission to the realm of 'art.'
I kept thinking of the medieval uses of pictorial art -- it was primarily a means of communicating with an illiterate underclass. Symbolism was paramount and each individual detail of a picture contributed towards telling the story. Consider commemorative battle pictures, or the Lindisfarne Manuscripts or even the bizarre paintings of Hieronymous Bosch. Every tiny detail "signified" something. I can appreciate that, and even admire it. I do admire it, but I cannot apply those standards to art in today's world. That's what I like, because I like absolutes, standards, and art in the context of history and myth and realism.
I don't know. I'm still struggling with it, but I have yet to see anyone come up with objective criteria that determine what "art" is and what it isn't.
And, Mnaz, I think there will always be sections of society that embrace philosophical absolutes. There will always be people who will look for leaders, for boundaries, for scriptures that will replace the demand for free thought. Thought is hard work. By contrast, faith in the words of gods and saints requires only obedience. I do not think this is something new to the 21st century, or even a backlash against modern society. Look at any point in history and you will find rigid dogmatists everywhere.
-
Dave The Dov
- Posts: 2257
- Joined: September 3rd, 2004, 7:22 pm
- Location: Madison Wisconsin which is right here
- Contact:
Last edited by Dave The Dov on March 3rd, 2009, 2:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-
perezoso
Nice spam work, Padre Zlatko, but I know Mary Klages of old Mork and Mindy U, and, though she can scribble a bit, even in french, she can be safely dismissed. I don't think her definition of "Enlightenment" thought is that effective either. Having read some Jameson I will agree he has some decent insights into finance capitalism. But his is a marxist approach, so why don't we just debate the validity of marxist concepts before moving to Jameson and Adorno etc.?. Post-modernism of the Derrida school I refuse to discuss. (Before we begin guessing about Derrida lets finish Of Grammatology and then decide if its useless pseudo-anthropological blather, a dadaist mindphuck, or insanity).
Miss Kat: funny you did not address any of my points. Perhaps because you do not know what an inference is, or Aristotle 's distinctions between formal and thematic qualities . I happen to think Aristotle's Poetics is still fairly relevant in regards to writing and aesthetic issues. And I do think Wittgenstein's notions of language game, and other concepts of his, are perhaps relevant as well. Yet it's debatable whether Wittgenstein is a subjectivist in regards to meaning and use: he does put forth a criteria for linguistic meaning, but saying a word is defined by its use in the language is not very helpful; as philosophy dweebs say, that's tautological. So If we are going to talk about Witt. I prefer the Witt. of the Tractatus, but the positivistic elements in that book pretty much would eliminiate any language, including art, that does not refer to specific objects. It's not an easy read.
And really I think that is a better debate: if art is too subjective ( though I claim the "initiates"--say classical music lovers--speak a shared language which is more or less objective) then perhaps art is to be tossed aside. Rites of Spring is marvelous, but is it better than say Keynes analysis of economic disasters, unemployment, macroeconomics etc. ? That is the debate I am interested in. Marx himself often questioned the institution of "belle-lettres": does the poet or painter provide something of real benefit to humanity? Isn't a good history of the 16th century as valuable as Shakespeare? The history is "truer" and indeed I think Shakespeare prevents many from seeing the truth of the times, which was plague-ridden, disastrous, with wars, schisms, etc.
My perspective is then contra-aesthetics, though I realize a decent artist can show people something about politics and psychological reality. Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow presents a massive absurd spectacle regarding WWII, rockets, and the nazis which is sort of history with a twist. He shows something which traditional history does not, but I am not sure what that is; to me its sort of the psychopathology of a country and its intellectual leaders such as engineers and chemists (IG Farben). However my inclination is to rate history and economics above art and aesthetic issues: Apollo over Dionysius, Es Tut Mir Leid.
Miss Kat: funny you did not address any of my points. Perhaps because you do not know what an inference is, or Aristotle 's distinctions between formal and thematic qualities . I happen to think Aristotle's Poetics is still fairly relevant in regards to writing and aesthetic issues. And I do think Wittgenstein's notions of language game, and other concepts of his, are perhaps relevant as well. Yet it's debatable whether Wittgenstein is a subjectivist in regards to meaning and use: he does put forth a criteria for linguistic meaning, but saying a word is defined by its use in the language is not very helpful; as philosophy dweebs say, that's tautological. So If we are going to talk about Witt. I prefer the Witt. of the Tractatus, but the positivistic elements in that book pretty much would eliminiate any language, including art, that does not refer to specific objects. It's not an easy read.
And really I think that is a better debate: if art is too subjective ( though I claim the "initiates"--say classical music lovers--speak a shared language which is more or less objective) then perhaps art is to be tossed aside. Rites of Spring is marvelous, but is it better than say Keynes analysis of economic disasters, unemployment, macroeconomics etc. ? That is the debate I am interested in. Marx himself often questioned the institution of "belle-lettres": does the poet or painter provide something of real benefit to humanity? Isn't a good history of the 16th century as valuable as Shakespeare? The history is "truer" and indeed I think Shakespeare prevents many from seeing the truth of the times, which was plague-ridden, disastrous, with wars, schisms, etc.
My perspective is then contra-aesthetics, though I realize a decent artist can show people something about politics and psychological reality. Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow presents a massive absurd spectacle regarding WWII, rockets, and the nazis which is sort of history with a twist. He shows something which traditional history does not, but I am not sure what that is; to me its sort of the psychopathology of a country and its intellectual leaders such as engineers and chemists (IG Farben). However my inclination is to rate history and economics above art and aesthetic issues: Apollo over Dionysius, Es Tut Mir Leid.
-
Zlatko Waterman
- Posts: 1631
- Joined: August 19th, 2004, 8:30 am
- Location: Los Angeles, CA USA
- Contact:
It's "Rite" ("Le Sacre" . . .) , not "Rites", my saturnine friend, or "Spring the Sacred" if you're Russian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rite_of_Spring
Like what you like.
I prefer to debate Marx in finer company, whether it's Groucho, Chico, Harpo or Gummo whose theory I'm parsing..
You're not ready to carry Mary's groceries home from the Speed-O-Mart.
Your version of venom, a kind of leitmotif insult threaded through your sentences for whomever you seek to wither with your cleverness, grows tiresome too.
I don't want to play.
The stale spray of Pynchon with a sprig of quasi-academic dither in each of your messages doesn't make it, either. Archives of images are not spam. You're the galoot who talks all the way through the slide show.
I know, I've been him.
Perhaps that's something you, with your mastery of inference, can't Colorado-ate.
Be friends and play nice.
Peacefully,
--Z
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rite_of_Spring
Like what you like.
I prefer to debate Marx in finer company, whether it's Groucho, Chico, Harpo or Gummo whose theory I'm parsing..
You're not ready to carry Mary's groceries home from the Speed-O-Mart.
Your version of venom, a kind of leitmotif insult threaded through your sentences for whomever you seek to wither with your cleverness, grows tiresome too.
I don't want to play.
The stale spray of Pynchon with a sprig of quasi-academic dither in each of your messages doesn't make it, either. Archives of images are not spam. You're the galoot who talks all the way through the slide show.
I know, I've been him.
Perhaps that's something you, with your mastery of inference, can't Colorado-ate.
Be friends and play nice.
Peacefully,
--Z
-
perezoso
Zlatko, one can say the same about your rhetoric: your quasi-jesuit beat-lite prose is patronizing and often inaccurate. I doubt you know anything about the labor theory of value, and that is where marx starts. Whether you enjoy my "style" or not you again refused to engage in the real debate, which is that one's ethics and aesthetics , however we define them, depend on the chosen "ontology." Like most aesthetes, either of left or right wing, you mistake style and rhetoric for argument; and refuse to see your own irrationality and mysticism. You take a soul or spirit for granted; yr another ghost salesman, man.
Since you pasted in writing by Klages, and Klages often makes use of marxist or post-marxist writers (Jameson for example, and Lyotard also makes use of marxist themes) then don't you think intelligent people have to decide whether Marxism is correct ot applicable or relevant? You provided the outline of post-modernism and various "taxonomies" ( which if post. mod is "right" are just as subjective and useless as any other categories), but then refuse, so far, to defend them. And I hold that most of post-mod is predicated on Marxist theory. There are valuable aspects to Marxism but there are also flaws and shortcomings. So that is where the debate begins. Perhaps Darwin should be thrown in this little fracas as well ., And since Klages also referred to Wittgenstein (though I know Mary would not know her Wittgenstein from her victuals) I thought I would mention the Tractatus, which everyone talks about but no one reads. But like its descendent "computationalism" positivism is not good for the lit., or art biz so lots of belle-lettirsts like Klages ignore it or downplay it.
Since you pasted in writing by Klages, and Klages often makes use of marxist or post-marxist writers (Jameson for example, and Lyotard also makes use of marxist themes) then don't you think intelligent people have to decide whether Marxism is correct ot applicable or relevant? You provided the outline of post-modernism and various "taxonomies" ( which if post. mod is "right" are just as subjective and useless as any other categories), but then refuse, so far, to defend them. And I hold that most of post-mod is predicated on Marxist theory. There are valuable aspects to Marxism but there are also flaws and shortcomings. So that is where the debate begins. Perhaps Darwin should be thrown in this little fracas as well ., And since Klages also referred to Wittgenstein (though I know Mary would not know her Wittgenstein from her victuals) I thought I would mention the Tractatus, which everyone talks about but no one reads. But like its descendent "computationalism" positivism is not good for the lit., or art biz so lots of belle-lettirsts like Klages ignore it or downplay it.
-
Zlatko Waterman
- Posts: 1631
- Joined: August 19th, 2004, 8:30 am
- Location: Los Angeles, CA USA
- Contact:
The Tractatus is old hat. LW himself grew out of it, and said so. See Ray Monk's book.
The Deconstructionists picked it up, a rotten grapefruit, and ran with it.
Knock on the door of the Philosophical Investigations, or the Blue and Brown Notebooks.
May the spirit of the Wholly Ghost rest under your fallen arches.
Debating Marx, Wittgenstein or Ted Williams' batting average is boring. The state used to pay me to do that stuff.
Go back to graduate school and straighten your ass out. Uncle Sam needs you!
And yes, when I'm condescending ( having been condescended to), I am condescending, to paraphrase Whitman broadly.
--Z
The Deconstructionists picked it up, a rotten grapefruit, and ran with it.
Knock on the door of the Philosophical Investigations, or the Blue and Brown Notebooks.
May the spirit of the Wholly Ghost rest under your fallen arches.
Debating Marx, Wittgenstein or Ted Williams' batting average is boring. The state used to pay me to do that stuff.
Go back to graduate school and straighten your ass out. Uncle Sam needs you!
And yes, when I'm condescending ( having been condescended to), I am condescending, to paraphrase Whitman broadly.
--Z
-
Zlatko Waterman
- Posts: 1631
- Joined: August 19th, 2004, 8:30 am
- Location: Los Angeles, CA USA
- Contact:
-
perezoso
It's only old hat to those who object to positivism and logic on principle and not on rational grounds. Yes there is an academic cliche that the TLP was rejected and surpassed by the Witt of the PI but many people, even fairly respectable ones ( Russell and Popper ring a bell?) disagree with that assessment.The Tractatus is old hat. LW himself grew out of it, and said so. See Ray Monk's book.
I have read Monks "Poker" book too and Ludwig W. does not come off too well when Popper, Russell, Toulmin all say he was acting like a selfish bastard if not a psychotic nutcase. And I tend to think he was a nutcase, if occasionally brilliant . Many of the ideas in the TLP lead to artificial languages, to Turing's stuff on codes, to programming, and thus to the computational model. So when you turn on your computer and the OS works thank early positivists such as LW , Russell, Carnap, Turing. Turing, gay and an atheist, also was directly responsible for saving Britain and the US with his crack of the nazi radar codes. Lit. types may dismiss logic and the analytical philosophers, but they have no problem using computers and the rest of the techological marvels which the positivists and yes the scientists invented and built, with no assistance from Plato or Jesus or Rimbaud.
Last edited by perezoso on November 29th, 2004, 9:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.
oops i hit the wrong post list...fascinating white water rafting tho....
Last edited by jimboloco on December 7th, 2004, 9:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.
-
Zlatko Waterman
- Posts: 1631
- Joined: August 19th, 2004, 8:30 am
- Location: Los Angeles, CA USA
- Contact:
-
Zlatko Waterman
- Posts: 1631
- Joined: August 19th, 2004, 8:30 am
- Location: Los Angeles, CA USA
- Contact:
Perezoso:
Do you know the play and film about Alan Turing?
I saw the film and it's quite good. Jacobi gives a strong performance:
http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/scrapbook/btc.html
Peace,
Zlatko
Do you know the play and film about Alan Turing?
I saw the film and it's quite good. Jacobi gives a strong performance:
http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/scrapbook/btc.html
Peace,
Zlatko
wow, sorry i missed this polemical explosion!
i think both Cat, Zlat, & Pere make interesting points.
my two cents: the sharp contrast Perezoso draws between lit/art types and scientific/positivist/economics types is bogus. obviously people can dig it all and n any case draw moerw value-relavant divisions within distinct disciplines. the idea that painting and macroeconomics are in competition, such that you have to decide which is better, is silly.
about Wittgenstein: he is a fucking genius, and it is strange that Zlatko finds him boring but, whatever. he was also a bit depressive and ecentric but i don't think "nutcase" is the right term, perezoso, but then again, i am not a doctor. I have read the Tractatus and while the logical innovations were groundbreaking at the timwe, you can learn more from a contemporary logic textbook of today; as far as the view of language goes,i have to say that Phil Investigations and the Blue&Brown Books and On Certainty arwe much more interesting. but, it should also be said that the last sections od Tractatus are almost "mystical" which would cause trouble for the rigid positivist vs. mystical/artsy division perezoso portrays. funny also the comment that computers emerged "no thanks to Plato" but thanks to Russell via Turing. Apply the same reasoning. No Aristotle, no Russell. No Plato, no Aristotle. So Plato is relevant. Indeed, no Socrates, no Plato. No Homer, noSocrates. Therefore...
i think both Cat, Zlat, & Pere make interesting points.
my two cents: the sharp contrast Perezoso draws between lit/art types and scientific/positivist/economics types is bogus. obviously people can dig it all and n any case draw moerw value-relavant divisions within distinct disciplines. the idea that painting and macroeconomics are in competition, such that you have to decide which is better, is silly.
about Wittgenstein: he is a fucking genius, and it is strange that Zlatko finds him boring but, whatever. he was also a bit depressive and ecentric but i don't think "nutcase" is the right term, perezoso, but then again, i am not a doctor. I have read the Tractatus and while the logical innovations were groundbreaking at the timwe, you can learn more from a contemporary logic textbook of today; as far as the view of language goes,i have to say that Phil Investigations and the Blue&Brown Books and On Certainty arwe much more interesting. but, it should also be said that the last sections od Tractatus are almost "mystical" which would cause trouble for the rigid positivist vs. mystical/artsy division perezoso portrays. funny also the comment that computers emerged "no thanks to Plato" but thanks to Russell via Turing. Apply the same reasoning. No Aristotle, no Russell. No Plato, no Aristotle. So Plato is relevant. Indeed, no Socrates, no Plato. No Homer, noSocrates. Therefore...
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest