If I do, I lose the ability to reflect intelligently and critically on myself, on traditions, and on power. I lose even what it means to reflect intelligently and critically. Yet if I fail to enter Postmodernism, I cling to the past like a blanket, even while it no longer exists. Living with the postmodern paradox is easy, really. I always wish I had taken my post dox.
Postmodernism is about an old world dying and a new world unable to be born.
At least it cannot just sit there to be oohed and aahed over, and indeed a new era can never be born without contradiction, cynicism, and despair. Baudelaire's prose poem was in a book sometimes called Le Spleen de Paris . A spleen can be an organ, suffering in life's contagious hospital. It can be righteous anger. Take your pick, but strategically.