Widdershins:

(sometimes withershins, widershins or widderschynnes) means to take a course opposite that of the sun, going counterclock-wise, lefthandwise, or to circle an object, by always keeping it on the left. It also means "in a direction opposite to the usual," which is how I choose to take it in using it as the title of this blog. We're all in the same world finding our own way.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

May 25, Summary of Class Notes:

Part of postmodernism is a reaction to modernism. In ways, it subsumed aspects of modernism into the dominant culture so that what was once fairly radical has become regularized.

But prof started this discussion with the distinction that:
  • Modernism = ~1914-1960
  • Postmodernism = 1945 or 1960 - Present
  • But the present isn't quite postmodernism. Postmodernism has been around for a while and with advances in culture/society and technology our current situation could better be better described as digital culture, media & technology, atemporality or even post-postmodernism
If this last statement is true, then how has postmodernism or the ways in which it interacts with society/culture become regularized? How is our current situation reacting against postmodernism?

To be honest, pomo is kind of a downer a lot of the time. I respect it, but I think part of the reaction has been a yearning for praxis, how do you live or performatively enact this discourse? Yes, there's a lot of writing but when does this become practice?

I know this is happening, with Queer Theory when I go to events by the LGBT/Queer groups on campus we inevitably introduce ourselves and our preferred gender pronouns. This conception of gender as being separate from sex, attempting to subvert assigned, socialized assumptions of gender prescribed onto living bodies by performatively announcing our preferred gender, finds its origins in a Butlerian model of gender that questions the construction of a binary gender systems and "compulsory heterosexuality."

Or as was brought up in class, the entire construct of "hipster culture" is uniquely (ha) postmodern. It is based in a kind of nostalgia while maintaining a false pretext of being hyper-individualistic and original.

Often, it's subtle, but we've found aspects of that application. It's just the discourse used to describe it has to catch up, which is hard when you're working with what I would call a kind of meta-theory.

I'm sure I'll have more on this later, but this is a start.

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