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I am posting this as a benchmark, not because I think I'm playing very well yet.  The idea would be post a video every month for a ye...

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Dumb Postmodernism / Smart Postmodernism

In wanting to study Lorca through the prism of the postmodern "death of the subject" I have to distinguish between dumb postmodernism and the smart kind. Essentially, the dumb kind just sort of asserts the death of the author, the intelligent kind works through the entire process, showing exactly how biographical constructions oversimplify, and how a more complex reading works.

We have to distinguish between plural subjects and ones that are diminished, fractured, and reduced in other ways. In Vallejo, for example, it is the presence of pain, an emotional pain felt almost physically, among other things...

Quevedo's "Presentes sucesiones de difuntos." Being alive means being a different, soon-to-be-dead person every day. I think Borges must have been a very astute reader of Quevedo, despite his suspicion of writers who are primarily stylists.

2 comments:

Thomas said...

The problem in my area is that "dumb postmodernism" has crowded out even simple readings. Spurred by your post, I just posted one I've been working on that compares the situation to math instruction in which students learn about the higher orders of infinity before they learn how to do simple sums.

Jonathan said...

Nice post. I wouldn't give Foucault to 3rd graders, so you point is well taken.