GeekinthePink

“…every position on postmodernism in culture . . . [is] an implicitly or explicitly political stance on the nature of multinational capitalism today.” The issue of the post modern and position of capitalism is like the issue of terrorism in the media. If the media did not exist in the second age media Poster and Baudrillard describe, would America be suffering from terrorism in the same degree as we have been in the past 5 years? The reason, you see, for postmodern culture has to be the invent of capitalism. Accordingly, a position on postmodernity is a stance of mulitinational capitalism. To me, it's hard to tell how some of these theorists feel about capitalism. They speak of the breakdown of it, and they show the derogatory effects, but hard to tell if they would change it if they could. Except for Marx and Benjamin. I should think that was quite obvious.

Looking at the slides in class, the idea kind of struck me that Jameson would be on team Habermas were he to have to make a choice between Habermas or Lyotard. Habermas blames society (even though he does not agree it is a postmodern society but modernity that is an incomplete project) and calls it a hedonistic culture, desiring a revival via neoconservatism. With the slides, it is easy to see the desensitized society and what is deemed inappropriate. I would imagine Habermas nodding his head up and down to this. And then, we see him state one of Habermas' favorite phrases (in a more verbose way of course): "frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods” In other words, we see the disease of the cult of the new: we always need the newer solutions, the better, the different. And through this viewpoint, sometimes we get real art and sometimes we get a toilet seat. Unfortunately, when we are in the "cult of the new mentality," we have to go with what the ruling class says is the new edge. Hopefully, though, that new edge doesn't reveal too much of the underbelly of culture. If it were to get to this point, we would find out the true meat behind the driver seat of culture--the ugliness of it, the "blood, torture, death, & horror"--which I think just translates to the superficiality of it; that actually, nothing of significance subsists behind it, just the inherent need for money and perversion to get it.

GeekinthePink

"The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently also controls the means of mental production." Ah, we are still debating control over society socially and economically (as we still are today, read GM's post). Is this not the same thing as Poster? Who controls the switches? Except, in this case, Marx has an answer--the ruling class. In Poster ideology, we have the decentralized second age media with an absent center and with Marx we have a tangible hand draped in gold poised over the controls. After all,he who "has the gold, rules!"

I know I commented on Marx in my pre-class blog, but I have such a fascination with him that I had to comment on him in my post. Marx doesn't strike me as post modern. I know the term post modern entails many different ideas (just try to look the definition up on the internet, you cannot even get a comprehensive one), but Marx overwhelmingly pushes a more political agenda--to overcome this class struggle and eliminate capitalism. In many ways, I can understand this viewpoint as it does appear capitalism makes up our social and intellectual DNA and overrrides individuality with the ideas of the masses. However, capitalism also allows individuality to be possible. It is also the framework of our society; without our fundamental values, we would be sitting ducks for communism and socialism. Ahem. I don't want to make anyone angry, but haven't we witnessed this with extreme liberals? I'm thinking something as simple as smoking. I heard one liberal talking about trying to make it illegal to smoke and drive (tobacco...obviously). Now, I actually don't smoke, but I am appalled. How dare they take personal liberties away from us because it has been "researched" that it could "hinder" driving techniques; well, so could stupidity, but you don't see people being tested for that. Also, there was a woman trying to ban trans-fat in California from restaurants. Why? To make people healthier. Well, in a capitalist society, we have to take care of ourselves. If we are fat and unhealthy, that's our own damn fault. This is the whole point of capitalism--there is the popular choice, but it is possible to go with your own ideas. There may be a mainstream, but we are still allowed to live within our personal choices. At least for now.

GeekinthePink

The whole participatory culture idea concerned me. The idea that anybody and everybody can actively sway culture to his or her agenda--well, to say the least, it is disturbing. I saw a Dr. Phil show on the guys who were involved in the "Jena 6" and of course, Dr. Phil found the most extreme guests to juxtapose eachother. He had a member from an African American right group (which, in this case, was more of an anti-white group than an African American right organization) and he had a member of a white supremacist group. So he had conflict about how the boys were treated between two minority opinions in the culture. He didn't have your average citizens on the show. Of course not. Now, this is an example of participatory culture. Dr. Phil (sorry I think he is an exploiter anyway, I don't like him)found two sides that were sure to vehemently oppose one another. He utilized his own power of creating conflict to flame the fire of racism behind this small-town controversy.

Further discussing this idea, I can't help but think the average person being able to participate in culture is going to lead to the breakdown of society. A couple of steps past post-modernism. Yeats' "The Second Coming" keeps coming to my head--"The best lack all conviction, while the worst/are full of passionate intensity." In this postmodern society, every voice can be prominent--including the voice of ignorance. If the ignorant are given a voice, and people regurgitate these ideas, culture would continually take a beating. Thus, the sane voice would be drowned out. Can you argue with a fool? Well, you can, but I don't think you want to because most of the time, you can't change the mind of a fool. (what are you thinking? They are a fool! Reason is not their tool! It's their emotion thy use!) Ooh. This really reminds me of Ayn Rand but I won't go there. I'm not trying to sound all didactic like her. The whole idea of average joe shmoe billy bob hilly billy (phew what a name) taking pictures with his camera phone from nowhere, Alabama and putting them on CNN just really bothers me for some reason. Go figure.

GeekinthePink

I think the whole debate we had between Habermas and Lyotard further confuses the subject. It's as if both sides are not thoroughly defined. Habermas is so busy saying modernism is not thoroughly finished that I feel like he doesn't see that he is going beyond the definition of modernity. And the fact that he doesn't believe anyone is not conservative; that's interesting. I implore some attention toward the media.
See what I was thinking about Habermas is that he refuses to accept things as they are--meaning, if our society is viewed as postmodern, he seems to want to twist the meaning of modern so that it fits the description rather than admit that it's something else. He does that with neoconservativism as well. By saying that everyone is a conservative, what is he changing? Is he changing that big groups of people have very different politics? No--he's just changing the definition to suit his purpose, in my opinion.
Don’t get me wrong—I actually like Habermas and his ideas—but I feel like he’s too stubborn to accept that modernism has changed; and by changed, I mean to a whole different concept. Habermas seems less comfortable with the idea that sometimes you cannot define things. Lyotard describes postmodern as letting us be philosophers and as “presenting the unpresentable”—Lyotard, even though he seems to employ lots of rules and regulations in his writings (which reminds me more of a modernist than a postmodernist) at least is accepting that we cannot put a definable meaning on everything.
Oooh. You know one of the things I was thinking during class? Someone tell Hilary Clinton that Habermas says everyone is a conservative. I would really love to see her face. What would she say? Ooh. And Obama. Yea. That would be too fun.