>
>I think pomo is seen as difficult to engage because it's core concept is that
>there is more than one truth. If one can't preach the ultimate truth, then
>one can't be a hero. If one can't be a hero, one will take her/his toys and
>go home.
>
Maggie said the above.
the trouble with truth and relativism it that it is too easy to descend into
absurd depths to avoid argument. using structure to avoid engagement.
relativism is perfectly consistent with marxism - historically specific modes
of prod after all.
i also agree with some ideas of post modernism which emphasise the relation of
self to what might be truth. is there an absolute truth? we will never know.
how would you recognise it if you got there. as a reaction against christianity
and god-based fetters on individuals i think this is useful.
but on the phenomena level that we operate day to day and which is the starting
point of political struggle there is surely truth - and although i see what i
see b/c i am me - objectivity. the obvious example is comparing me to the young
child being macheted to death by barbaric savages in say rwanda. that is truth.
i am not and the child is being slaughtered.
just to remind my self that the phenomena might have
impacts on "me" (as a relative entity in space which i define myself), i
occasionally cut my self shaving.....it hurts. the machete is a fact.
so for me i am not looking for heroes. but i am also not looking to hide things
which we can agree are beyond our own subjective entities. what we think of
these things, of-course, depends on our ideology and so ultimately our
interpretations are subjective.
i also don't think it is an argument to list a heap of authors that somebody
says are post modernists and then demand that any one who wishes to criticises
post modernism as a "paradigm" must individually address the writings
and provide detailed line by line critiques. i have read some (majority) of the
writers so far mentiones but certainly not all nor even 70 percent. it is to me
tortured prose for the cogniscenti. it doesn't embrace me at all. fine.
there is an aesthetic which those within it appreciate. but even the bloody
opera (in OZ) now has by the stage big screens explaining everything as it goes
with simple english translations for the "common folk" to entice them to come
along and to demystify it a bit (of-course, dare i say it has probably helped
all the snobs who pretended they knew what was going on anyway!!). (BTW, i
haven't witnessed this first hand - no way! - i've been reliably informed as
they say).
but the point must be that a paradigm forms and many strands operate within it.
in that sense there is a definable theory and praxis. it is legitimate to
criticise a paradigm at that level without disaggregating it. one might say
there is not such level of generality. okay lets argue that.
kind regards
bill
--
#### ## William F. Mitchell
####### #### Head of Economics Department
################# University of Newcastle
#################### New South Wales, Australia
###################* E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
################### Phone: +61 49 215065
##### ## ### +61 49 215027
Fax: +61 49 216919
## http://econ-www.newcastle.edu.au/~bill/billyhp.html
"only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned
and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money."
(Cree Indian saying...circa 1909)
