@unforth-ninawaters replied to your post
I mean we’re historian types of course it’s meaningful to us. (I actually gave up pursuing my masters in history because the department I was in insisted that we had to use exclusively post modern approaches, like, “political history is dead long live social history!” And since I’m primarily a military historian…fuck that…but the intersection of the “old” way of doing history and the “new” way is producing really fascinating reexaminations. I wouldn’t want to take a
Post modern approach but that’s a choice. Before condemning
it one still has to know what it is.My thought on people who unilaterally condemn things like
post modernism and “author is dead” kind of lit critique is that
these are not their fields and they’re in fields that are filled with
meaningless jargon. Since they’re used to that they assume every other field is
filled with meaningless jargon, and that if you spew that jargon you’re just
part of a brain washed mass.I think it has truly never crossed their minds that some
fields, even non-science fields, have specialized terminology that actually
means shit.Like, I’ve worked in education. There’s so much bullshit
jargon in ed, and people who work in that field learn to not only tune it out
but also to think less of the people who use it, because they tend to be
self-promoters who want to disrupt shit to make themselves look better and then
leave the regular teachers to clean up the mess. (This is a gross
oversimplification but it’s what I’m familiar with, so). So if you go to
someone in a field like that and start throwingAround technical social science or liberal arts language,
they think you’re full of it. They just here, “here’s an over educated
asshole with no real world experience who thinks they know better than me and
I’m going to have to pick up the pieces and repair the damage they do.”
Whether they’re right or wrong is incidental; it makes then disinclined to
trust terminology they don’t know coming from ANY field, especially a non
science field (were all conditioned at this poiPoint to accept big mystery words in the sciences so I
haven’t found it provokes quite the same negative reaction.) But when we say,
“post modernism” they hear “blah blah blah leverage the
coefficiences to increase student performance blah blah.” It means
nothing. That’s the kind of background I’d guess a lot of these folks come
from. And they can’t be bothered to learn the nuances of the fields to find out
what DOES mean something.(…sorry that got long, I’m done now. đ )
No, but you hit it on the head here. Thereâs this weird strain going on (mostly on the internet) where if you discuss things that are mostly theory to explain real world events, youâre told to âprove itâ with hard sciences or completely dismissed as an elitist moron. Like, hell, you canât talk about feminism on the internet without some asshole spouting shit like ârape culture isnât a thing⌠blah blah blah reasonsâ. Like, no, asshole, rape culture is a thing itâs a shorthand to discuss the ways in which society regards rapists and rape victims and doesnât mean that society says âitâs okayâ just that there is a systemic way in which perpetrators and victims are treated. Same with Patriarchy Theory and Gender Theory.  Itâs the same with words like âsocial constructâ which drives me fuckinâ crazy because debt and money are a social construct but no one argues that debt doesnât exist because that would be asinine.
Like, I get it, not everyone is educated to the degree that some of us are. I havenât finished college at this point and while I would very much like to, my lack of completed education doesnât mean I have no idea what the fuck Iâm talking about. It also doesnât mean Iâm too âelitistâ because I know about and enjoy literary theories, feminist theories, and historical perspectives.
But I think a huge part of this, too, is that people donât know what the words theyâre using actually mean. Like, okay, if weâre talking about postmodernism, âthe author is deadâ doesnât mean âI can do whatever the hell I wantâ, it means authorial intent doesnât matter. That is absolutely useful for examining some texts and using other literary and critical theories to discuss them. I always think of Fahrenheit 451 in that respect, because Bradbury was pretty adamant that his book was about mass media reducing interest in literature and NOT the Red Scare or McCarthyism. So does that mean the interpretation that Fahrenheit 451 is about McCarthyism is valueless and should be discounted because the author told us not to look at it that way? Hell no! What Bradbury meant doesnât matter because if I can make a well thought out argument based on the text and possibly the historical context of his novel, Iâm right. Heâs also right. There are multiple interpretations of a text across time. What Bradbury says about what he intended does not matter and neither do Orwellâs real-world thoughts on Communism if Iâm reading Animal Farm or 1984. Thatâs postmodernism (well, one aspect at least). Itâs not about ârightâ or âwrongâ itâs about finding meaning. But thatâs just how itâs applied to literature. There are other aspects applied to history and social theory.
But by the same token, there are schools of thought that argue we should take into account what the author means. There are people who argue that authorial intent and historical context matter so when discussing Fahrenheit 451 we should only discuss the rise of mass media. Thatâs okay, though. That is useful as well, and knowing historical context and literary tradition is important, too. Modernism is just as interesting and important as postmodernism is.
(Now, as you said, postmodernism doesnât always work. I had a class a few years ago about World War One in which the professor focused on social history in lecture and all of our readings were military history. It was jarring as hell and hard to keep up with, but it did provide a lot of interesting insight into the technical aspects of the war and the personal aspects. It was really interesting but also hard to follow. I donât think postmodernism works with some history, especially from a military perspective. I also donât think it works for analyzing certain texts, like religious doctrines, either.)
But the outright dismissal of jargon is ridiculous. I do think there is an issue in some people who discuss things on the internet are not experts and donât completely know what theyâre discussing (hell, Iâm not an expert, either) so terms get muddied and arguments become âthis is what I understand of postmodernism based off what so-and-so said so itâs all bullshitâ but thatâs not helping anyone either. Just⌠I dunno. I donât know how to fix it or how to make it all make sense but then again, I donât know if itâs worth it. I will continue to go on my rants and scream into the void while everyone else circles the drain.
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