Postmodernism gets such a bad rap... the problem is that it's like quantum mechanics, where the simplifications are so simplified that they are actually wrong-- the electrons-orbiting-the-nucleus model we are all taught in primary school is straight-up wrong, as is any detailed summary of postmodernism that is shorter than multiple pages. And the version that isn't wrong is very, very complicated and has an extremely technical vocabulary of its own, said vocabulary complicated by the fact that the theorists mostly wanted to repurpose and build on existing words (for which they had their reasons!) instead of just tagging meanings to nonsense syllables... and then, as is not true of quantum mechanics, most of postmodernist theory did not originate in English.
And there are all these huge, vague concepts which demand and deny precise meaning at the same time, too. You can see it creeping into my essay above, phrases like 'what we can amorphously call the world of arts and letters', because I do not mean something specific there necessarily, but something so large that I would probably never be able to specify every exact thing which fits into it, except to say 'I know it when I see it, and you probably do too, so I am making a gesture in this direction'. And, luckily, none of my points rest on having more precise ways to work with that particular concept, because if they did, everything I'd need to say about it would get very much more syntactically complex. But the work of postmodernists means that there are such ways, that I can talk about that sort of thing more precisely if I need to, without actually being able to define it any more thoroughly than I already have.
So yeah, quantum mechanics, the ability to talk about concepts with precision that are too amorphous/large/undefinable in some ways for the human mind otherwise to comprehend; except of course that quantum mechanics reflects physicalities, which literary theory does not need to do. And this, being as short as it is, is a bad analogy and a worse explanation, sigh. Hopefully an at least vaguely useful one, though.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Outstanding essay
Date: 2022-11-30 03:36 am (UTC)Postmodernism gets such a bad rap... the problem is that it's like quantum mechanics, where the simplifications are so simplified that they are actually wrong-- the electrons-orbiting-the-nucleus model we are all taught in primary school is straight-up wrong, as is any detailed summary of postmodernism that is shorter than multiple pages. And the version that isn't wrong is very, very complicated and has an extremely technical vocabulary of its own, said vocabulary complicated by the fact that the theorists mostly wanted to repurpose and build on existing words (for which they had their reasons!) instead of just tagging meanings to nonsense syllables... and then, as is not true of quantum mechanics, most of postmodernist theory did not originate in English.
And there are all these huge, vague concepts which demand and deny precise meaning at the same time, too. You can see it creeping into my essay above, phrases like 'what we can amorphously call the world of arts and letters', because I do not mean something specific there necessarily, but something so large that I would probably never be able to specify every exact thing which fits into it, except to say 'I know it when I see it, and you probably do too, so I am making a gesture in this direction'. And, luckily, none of my points rest on having more precise ways to work with that particular concept, because if they did, everything I'd need to say about it would get very much more syntactically complex. But the work of postmodernists means that there are such ways, that I can talk about that sort of thing more precisely if I need to, without actually being able to define it any more thoroughly than I already have.
So yeah, quantum mechanics, the ability to talk about concepts with precision that are too amorphous/large/undefinable in some ways for the human mind otherwise to comprehend; except of course that quantum mechanics reflects physicalities, which literary theory does not need to do. And this, being as short as it is, is a bad analogy and a worse explanation, sigh. Hopefully an at least vaguely useful one, though.