HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: postmodern knowledge and beauty
Keywords: postmodernism lyotard philosophy kant western margins
Date: 27 Sep 92 14:27:28 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile

kbrooks@ut-emx.uucp (kevin brooks) writes:
| 
| Lyotard's book, _The Postmodern Condition_, is used often as a "source"
| in defining postmodern knowledge.  The interest in knowledge, then, continues
| a long western philosophical tradition, but one that was cast into the
| more familiar terms by Kant.  But Kant also wrote about "Beauty."  However, 
| I don't remember ever seeing any "postmodern" writings on Beauty.  Is there
| "postmodern beauty?"  If so, what do you think it is?

If your question means what I think it means, it might be
interesting, but the first sentence stopped me.  I can't
figure out what you mean by "postmodern knowledge" or why
you put "source" in quotes.  Is "'source'" ironic?  What's
postmodern knowledge?  I think of Lyotard as someone who
gabbled a bit about how things are, with some interesting
ideas, but not an authority.  I mean, if you take some
postmodern attitudes seriously, he's not even an authority
on Lyotard.

As for "beauty", beauty originated in a reaction, a taste,
which was in the eye of the beholder.  At least by the time
of the Classical Greeks, philosophers and other servitors of
the powerful were trying to capture the reaction in a net of
words so they could use it -- to get it out of the eye of
the beholder and into something controlled by the state so
the beholder would have to pay for it.  This effort has
come right down to the present day -- there are people who
will lecture you on what is beautiful and what is not, as
if you had nothing to do with it.  But, to some extent,
postmodern authors have gone around the establishment of
rules for beauty and attacked the political assumptions and
motivations behind the rules.

Or else I'm making the whole thing up.  I couldn't cite
anyone who said any of the above, so I will have to be my
own "postmodern author."  But that's the general idea I
get from the material I've read.
-- 
 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Subject: Re: postmodern knowledge and beauty
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 15:02:14 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile

In article <5364@balrog.ctron.com> mattb@olympus.ctron.com (Matt Brown) writes:
| Just my 2 kopecks, but I'm not seeing some of the distinctions you are making.
| 
| (Gordon Fitch) writes:
| >I think you're right in your criticism of my facile
| >repetition of "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."  If
| >that were the case, I could willfully project beauty onto
| >anything in the universe, and the term would refer only to
| >that act, and would be meaningless otherwise.  Yet I know
| >from experience that some objects are beautiful to me and
| >others are not.
| 
| The way I look at it, beauty is a concept. We each subjectively 
| apply our understanding of this concept to our perception of an
| object (or perhaps to another concept, or to a thought).  ...

This is not the way I experience beauty.  For me, the experience
precedes the conceptualization.  In this way, it is a quality
like "green".    

| >   ...  I'm one of those who would say that, if everyone in 
| >the universe died and "The Mountains above Ste. Remy" were
| >gathering dust in an empty museum, it would no longer be
| >beautiful, in fact, it would no longer be a painting.
| >(Unless there were a god who remembered what it was to be
| >human.)
| 
| I think that the object does not change in the least. It's characteristics
| are just not perceived by anyone. To look at it a different way, we
| may find beauty in a cave painting because it has survived, and because it
| tells us something about man's ancestors, or echoes some urge we still
| possess. The original painter probably found it beautiful for very different
| reasons. It ceased to be beautiful for those reasons, but an understanding 
| of those reasons could re-express or re-capture that beauty. But the painting
| is still the same. We aren't that far apart here, I don't think, but agreement
| isn't total either. But painting is just an identity we forced on the poor
| thing.

I think objects exist in relations to other objects, or 
entities, including their perceivers.  If their circumstances
change, they change; maybe they cease to be objects, because
there is no one to objectify them.  For instance, in the case
of the painting in a deserted universe, even if you _think_
of it, you are providing a human presence.  I am talking 
about a painting no one even thinks of (because the universe
in the thought experiment is deserted).  It seems to me that
in such a universe the collection of particles we now call
a painting would cease to be a painting, and probably would
cease to be an object.  Objectification, as far as I know,
is the act of a perceiving and information-processing being,
probably a conscious being.  No objectifiers, no objects.

This comes back to the concept of beauty in that beautiful
objects seem to be part of a circuit of which the perceiver
is a part.  In the case of art, there's a producer who is
another part.
-- 
 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
From: Andrew.Robinson@anu.edu.au
Subject: Re: YOU PEOPLE ARE MORONS
Organization: Australian National University
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 92 01:14:59 GMT

In article <1992Oct6.182340.1@cc.curtin.edu.au> rswiftrw@cc.curtin.edu.au
writes:
>In article <BvKxIG.AHL@world.std.com>, kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
writes:
>> In article <1992Oct3.224245.12186@cheshire.oxy.edu> rooney@cheshire.oxy.edu
(Michael Sean Rooney) writes:
>
>>>	Alt.postmodern is a very pluralistic group.  It used to house cascades
>> Salt roast modem is a nary ruralistic grope.  KITT used to have AIDS.
>Mild roast coffee is a very addictive smoke.  Kwit used to clean dishes.
Child roasted toffee; a chary predictive toke.  Don't drink Drive.  It's a
detergent.

regardless,
Andrew

now hit d
From: zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: Trashiness and Banality
Date: 1 Oct 92 00:49:47 GMT
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <1992Sep29.204230.8094@panix.com> 
gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:

>  [...]                      If Delacroix were to paint
>the revolution again, instead of a bare-chested goddess
						 ^^^^^^^
						prostitute

>leading Parisians over the barricades, he'd have to paint a
>fat balding guy with sunglasses waving a videocam while a
>ragged bunch of women and children straggled behind.

We return you to the customary _jailissement_ of  trashiness and banality.

>-- 
> )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
>( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Nous donnons la mort, nous saurons la subir."
From: rswiftrw@cc.curtin.edu.au
Subject: Re: YOU PEOPLE ARE MORONS
Organization: Curtin University of Technology
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 09:23:40 GMT

In article <BvKxIG.AHL@world.std.com>, kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry) writes:
> In article <1992Oct3.224245.12186@cheshire.oxy.edu> rooney@cheshire.oxy.edu (Michael Sean Rooney) writes:

>>	Alt.postmodern is a very pluralistic group.  It used to house cascades
> Salt roast modem is a nary ruralistic grope.  KITT used to have AIDS.
Mild roast coffee is a very addictive smoke.  Kwit used to clean dishes.

Rod
As sick and twisted as everyone else!
--
|            . . .   . . . . .          "It leaves us galloping up Diarrhoea|
|        +  +  +     +  +  +  +  +                  Drive without a saddle."|
|    *   *   *       *   *   *   *   *                                      |
|R    o    d         S    w    i    f    t        -- Kryten from "Red Dwarf"|
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Internet: RSwiftRW@cc.curtin.edu.au               School of Social Sciences|
|PSImail : psi%050529452300070::RSwiftRW                   Curtin University|
|Bitnet  : RSwiftRW%cc.curtin.edu.au@cunyvm.bitnet             GPO Box U1987|
|UUCP    : uunet!munnari.oz!cc.curtin.edu.au!RSwiftRW        Perth  WA  6000|
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
From: Fred Tayback <tbk@halcyon.com>
Subject: Habby
Originator: bbs@halcyon.com
Keywords: Postmodernism, deconstruction, communication
Reply-To: tbk@halcyon.com
Organization: Cal St. Univ. Northridge
Distribution: all
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 03:49:25 GMT
Comments: none

Go Habermas. Go communicative ethic. Go germany!!!
Organization: Penn State University
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 13:35:20 EDT
From: <DXZ102@psuvm.psu.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
Subject: YOU PEOPLE ARE MORONS

Now that I have  your photoreceptors....I have been reading this group's stuff
for a few weeks now,  and I have concluded that very few of you actually know
what "postmodern" means.  Not to read like an asshole,  but many of you have
been using the alt.postmodern forum to blather on about politics or personal
mindcrap and I'm sort of bored. I liked questions like,  "is there a postmodern
conception of beauty?" At least that person kept to the Newsgroup's theme.
   Now,  Postmodernism started as a literary movement in the early 60s and has
continued until the present.  It was an extension of modernism,  the literary
movement of the early 20th c. which began to break with fiction's form.  It
also served as a form of social criticism (i.e. Hemingway and Fitzgerald).
   Postmodernism,  as a literary movement, held that all the old stories had
been told and that nothing could be done to "make it new." So authors like
Barth and Craine decided to make fiction self-reflexive,  that is,  fiction
about fiction.  The stories dealt with the authors themselves, and their
attempts to change the way ficion is written (i.e William S. Burroughs telling
his audience about heroin experience by writing in a fashion that simulated
being strung out on the drug).
   Other artists began to relate to this self-reflexiveness; after the minimal-
ists had taken every symbol off the canvass, essentially leaving it bare,  they
concluded that nothing new could be done with it.  Throughout the 80s the
neo-realists got back at the minimalists by making exceptionally photorealistic
paintings which spoofed and satired the deconstructionists and minimalists.
Thus painting became self-reflexive.
   The television medium,  like the canvass went through the same process.
Remember "Moonlighting?" It essentially became a postmodern expression: as the
series winded on it became more and more self-reflexive.  Television about
televsion; double-takes, the personal lives of the actors spilled into the
scripts and shots.
   Now my question to anyone who recognises this working definition of post-
modern, is: how does the concept of self-reflexiveness,  the essence of post-
modernism, translate into other mediums of expression?; politics?; philosophy?;
daily life in general?
   I'm very interested in postmodernism because I feel that we're in the midst
of a very interesting and open-ended conceptual movement. If you agree,  take
what I've asked seriously and lets teach one another.  I still have much to
learn.
From: kbrooks@ut-emx.uucp (kevin brooks)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
Subject: postmodern knowledge and beauty
Keywords: postmodernism lyotard philosophy kant western margins
Date: 27 Sep 92 02:09:57 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas


Lyotard's book, _The Postmodern Condition_, is used often as a "source"
in defining postmodern knowledge.  The interest in knowledge, then, continues
a long western philosophical tradition, but one that was cast into the
more familiar terms by Kant.  But Kant also wrote about "Beauty."  However, 
I don't remember ever seeing any "postmodern" writings on Beauty.  Is there
"postmodern beauty?"  If so, what do you think it is?


Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
From: yasmin@midas.demon.co.uk (Michael Damiani)
ReplyTo: yasmin@midas.demon.co.uk
Subject: Re: YOU PEOPLE ARE MORONS
Distribution: world
X-Mailer: cppnews $Revision: 1.16 $
Organization: 
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 16:07:43 +0000


In article <92276.133520DXZ102@psuvm.psu.edu> DXZ102@psuvm.psu.edu writes:

>   I'm very interested in postmodernism because I feel that we're in the midst
>of a very interesting and open-ended conceptual movement. If you agree,  take
>what I've asked seriously and lets teach one another.  I still have much to
>learn.
>
>

There doesn't appear to be a consensus on what post-modernism is. It seems 
to vary according to the particular medium/art-form used. For example, many 
philosophers see post-modernism as focusing around the "death of the subject",
whilst in the realm of architecture, post-modernism is sometimes perceived as 
reconstituting the subject. Here, the "death of the subject" concept is 
equated with modernism. As well as all this, some people think that
post-modernism represents a rupture with modernism, whereas others see it as
an assimilation of modernism with other styles.

Confused? So am I.

Yasmin
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
From: pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU (Stephen Grossman)
Subject: Faith
Reply-To: pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU
Organization: UMASS DARTMOUTH, NO. DARTMOUTH, MA.
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 14:28:17 GMT



I want to congratulate the subscribers to this newsgroup. Your rejection of
subjectivist jibber-jabber is noteworthy. After all, who wants to go around with
your head up your ass, checking out your belly-button, and playing with your
pud. I'm an American. We don't do things like that. We're on the straight and
narrow. Mind fastened to reality like a wad of gum to a desk. We need Ross
Perot. I have faith in this. I'm opposed to the return of TV's "Sgt. Bilko,"
with its negative attitude toward government institutions.
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
Organization: Penn State University
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 20:18:49 EDT
From: <DXZ102@psuvm.psu.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
Subject: YOU'RE A FIND BUNCH OF HUMANS

Thankyou for answering some of my questions....you've certainly broadened my
perspective on postmodernism. Thanks to a couple of you I think I have a work-
ing defintion of PM:
"postmodernism" is a recognition of the limits of form.  Subject, as it were
usually remains constant,  only to be examined in a new light by the new medium
of expression (form).  A form becomes "postmodern" when its expressive
potential has been exhausted.
In other words, we been dealing with the same basic aspects of humanity,  only
looking at them anew with a new set of "glasses," dig?
Please respond and blow this defintion out of the water....I don't want PM to
become PM this soon! Peace.
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Subject: Trashiness and Banality (was: Re: Madonna (was: Re: Curriculum changes))
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 05:45:04 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile

I may respond at greater length, but I feel it's urgent to
say that _trashiness_ and _banality_ are two different things.

Trash can be quite interesting, but the banal is by definition
boring.  Network television could be vulgar and trashy and
still be exciting, but this isn't what's wanted.  Instead, a
treaty has been worked out between viewers who want a safe
throbbing of their nasty parts and sellers who want to sell.
The banal repetitiousness of the obvious is a kind of
hyperpornography.  The banality, the ennui, is in the safety.

Not that I know anything about it.  I don't even own a
television set.  If I studied it, and knew things about it,
I'd probably be as befuddled as everyone else.

-- 
 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )
Xref: sparky alt.postmodern:2404 alt.is.too:217 alt.cascade:2123
From: dliebman@terapin.com (David Liebman)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: Deconstructing bullies and wimps
Date: 30 Sep 92 10:48:58 GMT
Organization: BBS

In article <k63uRB2w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM>, rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM
(Richard Carlson) writes:
>
>But the thing I had in mind had to do with the "essence" of the
>narrative itself.  Post-structuralists have presented narrative as
>a center-less play of surfaces.  But maybe there really is an
>invariant kernel. That's the question I was considering.  It's one
>of those times I wish I were really well-connected.  I'd really
>like to hear what Jacques Derrida would have to say on the matter:
>are there at least _some_ narratives, maybe inferior "formula" or
>"popular" or pornographic or propagandistic ones, which have a
>statable and invariant center, with the surface being a spin or
>transformation of this invariant center?  I don't think anyone has
>asked Derrida that question in exactly that way.

the question you are asking has little to do with post-structuralist
theory.  any act of communication resides in a series of interdependent
signs.  the signification of 'a threat of physical violence', for
instance, in a particular narrative invokes an 'endless' chain of
associations for the listener, pieces of which may be reconstructed
through an examination of the listener's culture.  etcetera.

with this handy reminder, the question does not properly concern
itself with geometric metaphors.  we, not necessarily needing
post-structural theory to tell us so -- we simply recall the recently
fashionable sort of cognitive-psychology experiments on the
semantic recall priming effect -- agree that ultimate signification is
at best elusive.  it follows that an ur-narrative would imply an
ur-listener.  freud makes that journey in both directions, which is
one of two ways to get there.

never mind all that.

what's the point of your question, anyway?  why not compile a
massive amount of data on the (lack of) existence of bully-wimp-type
situations in as many human cultures as you can manage, then
if you find that the myth-type is statistically universal you can
come back here to alt.postmodern and tell us whether you feel
it best to characterize your aggregation as a series of superficial
variations on a unique archetypical theme, or instead as a collection
of unique narratives that are related in a superficial manner, phrasing
the debate as an abstract theoretical matter -- that is, resolutely
unspecifying any particular _raison d'etre_ for either model --
and see if any of us end up feeling enlightened.

regards,
dave

french grammar irritates me.
From: rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richard Carlson)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: Trashiness and Banality (was: Re: Madonna (was: Re: Curriculum c
Date: 27 Sep 92 16:51:42 GMT

gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:

> I may respond at greater length, but I feel it's urgent to
> say that _trashiness_ and _banality_ are two different things.
> 
> Trash can be quite interesting, but the banal is by definition
> boring.  Network television could be vulgar and trashy and
> still be exciting, but this isn't what's wanted.  Instead, a
> treaty has been worked out between viewers who want a safe
> throbbing of their nasty parts and sellers who want to sell.
> The banal repetitiousness of the obvious is a kind of
> hyperpornography.  The banality, the ennui, is in the safety.

Accepted.  Even the New York Times Book Review section talks about
such things as "a good trash wallow," by which they mean the kind
of exciting trash you allude to.  I've even thought that books
like _Valley of the Dolls_ and _Peyton Place_ are so good that
they almost don't deserve to be called trash.

You are also right about television. It is _both_ banal _and_
trashy.

> Not that I know anything about it.  I don't even own a
> television set.  If I studied it, and knew things about it,
> I'd probably be as befuddled as everyone else.

I got interested in it nearly 50 years ago because it _defines_
our _reality_.  In England reality is still largely defined by
Shakespeare.  In France, Maupassant.  In America it's Diane
English and Stephen Bochco.

--
Richard Carlson
Internet:              rc@depsych.gwinnett.COM
Bangpath:              {rutgers,ogicse,gatech}!emory!gwinnett!depsych!rc
CompuServe:            76605,470
Voice:                 (404) 881-6877
From: blz1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Betsy L Zucker)
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: YOU PEOPLE ARE MORONS
Keywords: history, philosophy, the meaning of life, deep things
Date: 4 Oct 92 15:45:20 GMT
Reply-To: blz1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Betsy L Zucker)
Organization: Columbia University


Perhaps literary criticism can afford to define postmodernism as
simple self-reference; philosophy and social analysis can not.

In the first place, let's distinguish between self-reflexion,
self-reference and narcisism.  There's a difference between an
art work which proclaims 'look at me, I'm making art -- I know
it, you know it, aren't we wonderful' and one which uses its own
form to meta-comment on the limits of the form as a communication
tool.  If postmodernism is self-reference, let's not stop at
Parsifal, heck, the Homeric Hymns continually invoke the Muses'
aid and call attention to the poet's plight of attempting to
convey the sacred in mere words.

The ultimate insult is to suggest that products of the commercial
newsertainment industry could be postmodern in any deep sense.
The entire thrust of the industry is to blur the distinction
between advertisement, news and entertainment.	On one side,
there are the half-hour commercial programs with "real people"
talking about baldness, love and real estate.  On the other are
the fact-based dramas.	In the center are Hard Copy,
conversational anchorpersons and the true videos shows.  The Dan
Qualye/Murphy Brown/Woody Allen as news trend is not a
metacomment -- it is a further blurring of important
distinctions.  We're in sad shape if we let Jessica Hahn prove to
us that even our fantasies are fake.

Perhaps Altman's Player would have acheived postmodernism if it
hadn't been met by newsertainment's most succesful ploy --
cooption.  The commercial success of the movie and its coy (if
belated) acceptance by Hollywood turn it into just another slick
package half-mocking slick packaging.

The preceding message has been an unpaid thought-vertisement.
The names have remained the same to pinpoint the guilty. Are we
having postmodernism yet?


	%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
	  Jeff Zucker  c/o  <blz1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu>
	%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
From: 6092ch@gmuvax.gmu.edu
Newsgroups: alt.party
Subject: PARTY LOCATIONS
Date: 28 Sep 92 22:13:29 GMT
Organization: George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.

PARTY LOCATIONS
Newsgroups: alt.party
From: watpod83@alfred.carleton.ca (Robert Telka)
Subject: Re: Party Locale!!!!
Organization: Carleton University
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 13:22:11 GMT

In <1992Oct5.182424.1@vaxa.strath.ac.uk> cebp01@vaxa.strath.ac.uk writes:

>Thers's a party in my apartment on Saturday night.

>anyone wnat to come?

>My address is 

>               Flat B1
>               Thomas Campbell Crt.
>               61 Rottenrow
>               Cathedral Precint
>               Glasgow G4 0NG
>               SCOTLAND

>               041-552-2973


Well, If I start walking now, I should be there in about 6 weeks! ;->
Oh, have a blast!

Chow for now!

Robert Telka

Carleton University
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Newsgroups: alt.party