Postmodernism and why it has been so controversial in 2006
Associate Professor Nick Mansfield, head of Macquarie University’s Department of Critical and Cultural Studies, talks to MQtv editor David Myton about postmodernism and why it’s been so controversial in 2006
DM: What’s postmodernism all about? Can you give us a shorthand definition?
NM: There are several different key definitions of postmodernism but probably the most influential is by [the French philosopher and literary theorist] Jean-Francois Lyotard [1924–1998]. His line was that European history from the 18th century onwards had been dominated by what he called grand narratives. These had arisen at the time of the Enlightenment in the 17th -18th century when institutional religion had lost its authority amid the growth of the secular educational, intellectual and political culture, and something needed to take religion’s place. These grand narratives were in a sense models of historical progress. The two most famous concern the human spirit and freedom and justice. The one about spirit argued that human society is progressing through time on an ascending evolutionary scale and will eventually reach a point where we fully express the human spirit. The other – the idea of freedom and justice – argues that humans are progressing through time on an evolutionary trend towards a free, open and just society. Lyotard argued that people had used these as measuring sticks about how things would go. So if you needed to say whether something was progressive or retrograde you would say how much it fulfils one of these two grand narratives.
He argues that by the middle of the 20th century we’d lost faith in these grand narratives really because of the twin traumas of Stalinism and the Holocaust, and that these two events had destroyed our belief that human beings were progressing or were capable of attaining ideal goals. So from the middle of the 20th century on we no longer believed in these grand narratives. We sometimes pretended that we did and we might even still talk as if we do, but we don’t really any more. The belief in grand narratives – he called that modernity. When we no longer believed in this we had entered a post-modern state. And in his view postmodernism is a high, serious concept. It’s not a fad, it’s not a moral free for all, it’s not an artistic style or fashion; it’s actually a potentially terminal crisis in western culture. What is frustrating about the critics of postmodernism is that they seem to know nothing of this big picture model of postmodernism, this moral event in western culture.
DM: Do its critics have some sort of cartoon version of postmodernism?
NM: It’s not even that they have a caricature version of the Lyotard position. They seem to be a long way away from being informed about what postmodernism is. They seem to simply think that it stands for a moral relativism in which there are no standards, either artistic, cultural or moral. Now Lyotard believed that the grand narratives, these ideas of moral and ethical authority, were actually a bad thing and the fact that they had been discredited was a good thing. And therefore postmodernism was a kind of liberation from these authoritarian value systems.
DM: I guess that in the late 1960s early 1970s people were looking back at two world wars, the rise of Nazism, Stalinism and Fascism, and they were saying we need a new way of thinking about the world …?
NM: Lyotard was looking back and trying to work out what had happened between the wars – in art in the 50s and 60s there is a lot of reflecting on the Holocaust. It took a long time for events like the Holocaust to be understood. A lot of European writers struggled to understand it, people like the Jewish poet Paul Celan, who actually wrote in German, who was himself a victim of the Holocaust as his parents had been killed by the Nazis - he had intense survivor guilt and eventually committed suicide. His work was largely an attempt to deal with the trauma of the Holocaust. Lyotard was trying to look back at it, assess it and work out what had happened. His theory of post-modernity is really his attempt to come to terms with that.
DM: If you attend a seminar at university and someone mentions the word postmodernism the response from those opposed to it is that it is ridiculous because it is saying everything is relative - and how can that be, there are some moral certainties. Where does this link between postmodernism and relativism come from? And how true is it?
NM: Someone like Lyotard would say, well, once we had religion, then we had the grand narratives – these were the authoritarian systems of judgement that we used to evaluate things. Now they are gone. That sounds as if now, therefore, we have no absolute standards. Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential philosophers in the past 50 years - who rejected the label of postmodernism – he similarly argued that there is no absolute value that exists outside of a particular historical or cultural context. A lot of people interpret that to mean that we now have no values and no standards - but that is not what those thinkers went on to say. What they argued was – and this is the point I think postmodernism’s critics know nothing about – that if there are no absolute moral standards coming to us from outside of the human world then that doesn’t lessen our responsibility; that adds to our responsibility. If you have an authoritarian system which dictates to you – perhaps God or some absolute moral principle – that dictates to you how you ought to live, then you are not being responsible, you are just doing what you are told. To be responsible means that you have to think, consider and come up with your own moral values. Human beings collectively have to come up with their own moral values largely through negotiation and through democracy.
Therefore to be without those absolute standards doesn’t mean that you have a moral free for all. In fact it means the opposite – it means there is an increased burden on you to respond to other people and to think really hard about moral issues. Derrida has this argument where he distinguishes between what he called calculation and decision: if you are just doing what you are told that’s calculation. You are in a moral situation and you’re just applying a principle that comes to you from someone else, then you are not actually making a decision you are applying a rule that is a kind of mechanical thing. But if you are really confronting a moral situation and trying to evaluate it, trying to come up with the moral terms in which you should respond, that’s a fully responsible decision and that’s a heightened moral responsibility and not a lessened one. Morality is not about obedience. It’s about seriously considering your moral position and making some proper moral decisions based on personal responsibility.
DM: One critic has said that in academic circles “a cavalier attitude towards truth has reached epidemic proportions” and that many academics had “reneged on their commitment to truth”. Is that true?
NM: The idea of truth is very complicated and arguments about truth have been going on for 150 years at least, if not thousands of years. The whole argument about truth is coextensive with the history of philosophy. But certainly since Nietzsche there’s been a great problematisation of the notion of truth, but it’s not cavalier, not at all. If you want to present something as being careless and superficial it would be people who aren’t prepared to deal with the complexities of the notion of what truth is. That’s an extremely complicated problem and a difficult one to negotiate. But it’s not that people are wandering around just junking the nature of truth for its own sake. The question is … everyone can believe in truth, but how do you actually validate something as true? Usually the model of the validation of truth is the correspondence model – your representation of something is supposed to match with an existing state of affairs in the world. Now problems arise because a state of affairs in the world and words used to describe it are actually different things. How do you measure when those two things are in coordination? Questions that arise concern the nature of language and the correspondence between language and reality. These are really difficult questions to come to a final evaluation about. Truth is not an easy concept.
DM: Should a university be questioning the idea of truth?
NM: Yes, definitely. That is really the primary role of universities.
DM: Do you see young students coming into your classes from Year 12 as people who have come from school indoctrinated with a postmodernist or leftist view of the world? It’s been said that schools are riddled with postmodernism. Does that mean you’re getting students coming in to study cultural and critical studies who have no moral compass?
NM: No I don’t see that. Probably the thing we notice most is people who have done postmodernism in the English syllabus and they’ve done it in a fairly narrow way, they have done postmodernism as if it’s just a literary style … They are familiar with certain markers of postmodern style but they are not particularly informed about those deeper questions on history, culture and philosophy. I think the problem arises for some people because of the teaching of critical literacy across so many subject areas. The teaching of critical literacy is an extremely important, necessary and valuable thing and it is recognised as that by teachers and by almost all the students I talk to. In fact, in contrast to what’s claimed by its critics, it’s arguable that the logic of critical literacy connects with the most important, even the most essential values in the west’s intellectual tradition: critical analysis, scrutiny and judgement. My understanding of critical literacy is that students are not only being asked to consider the content of a syllabus subject area, they are being asked to consider how that content is determined. So if you are learning about history you don’t only have to consider what’s happened in the past, but how certain things in the past are being represented and why. It’s not only a question of what the content is, but how the content is being determined. And that’s the absolutely fundamental question for history and it always has been since the second half of the 19th century, when what we know as modern historical studies developed in Germany. If you want to talk about events in the past: who determines what they are and why have they been selected? There are very good reasons why revolutions or civil war are being considered, there are great reasons for that, but they have to be explained. It has to be explained what gets identified as history.
Many critics say that Australian students need to be taught a narrative view of Australian history. Narrative is a really particular cultural practice and has very strong conventions and structures. People are very familiar with narrative from all their experiences of story telling which you are inducted into from the earliest age. You pick these conventions up incredibly quickly. So a child at the age of three is very familiar with how the conventions of narrative work, and because we are immersed in it from such a young age, we take it for granted, and often forget that it is a cultural practice. A narrative is not a natural form. It’s an artificial form; it’s a culturally derived form. Narrative has a specific understanding of what an event is, and especially how events connect with one another. It’s a very beautiful and very rich form, but it’s still located in cultural history. If you are going to teach Australian history as a narrative you’re automatically doing something artificial … you can legitimately do that, but you have to at the same time, consider how identifying it as a narrative, subordinates the events to certain artificial conventions. We are selecting certain events and not others. We are putting certain events in a sequence separate from other events. That’s not something the events do by themselves. It’s the result of judgements, selections and emphases we make, or that culture and politics make through us. The famous example E H Carr gave was that millions of people have crossed the River Rubicon, but only Julius’ Caesar’s crossing is historically important. There are reasons why—to do with political history and the West’s literary culture in general, but the significance of that event only emerges within a certain frame, and according to certain criteria, and we have to be able to explain why those are the criteria we choose and why they’re important. We might have good reason for presenting history in narrative terms, because we want to believe there is progress, or we want to believe there’s been a struggle for rights on behalf of a minority group, but you have to admit that’s what you are doing, and assess it.
DM: What explains the criticism by some politicians - including the Prime Minister - this year that postmodernism is rife in our schools? Are they right?
NM: My view is that a lot of those political figures are not comfortable with so much questioning of Australian values. It’s an attempt to select certain things from history and suppress others. They want to highlight things like the ANZAC story, the sporting history of Australia, the frontier history of Australia, and to give these things really specific inflections and to silence other voices. It’s a cliché but I think we are not supposed to want to know about the history of the conquest of Australia or the genocide of the Aboriginal people. I’m very positive about Australians and Australian culture, and I think we’re strong enough to deal with the moral questions that our history poses to us about those things and we should deal with them. But to me the John Howard approach is encouraging a childlike version of Australian history – and that kind of self-contained, childish narrative of Australian history does not equip us to deal with the complexities of our modern situation.
DM: Is it part of a form of reasoning that says since September 11 2001 we can’t afford to not have certainties?
NM: I think one of the weaknesses behind the invasion of Iraq was a total belief in your own values, in their universal appeal and the very naïve belief that the values that derive from your own culture, from western culture, would be accepted unquestioningly by everyone in the world. In fact it represented total ignorance.
DM: Francis Fukuyama spoke about the end of history and the triumph of liberal-western capitalism, that modern industrial capitalism would inevitably triumph.
NM: Well Fukuyama has retreated from that. The over-confidence of that position was where people believed in their own moral certainties and didn’t understand that other people have totally different perspectives, totally different history – and to have gone into Iraq and not known what happened to the British in Iraq between the wars, or not to have known what Iraq was and what the history of that part of the world was, not to recognise that people in those societies have a long memory … people in that part of the world are very conscious that they have a cultural history that is extremely rich and powerful and sophisticated and goes back a very long time, and they know that they are looked down upon by westerners. Why should they put up with that?
DM: Is postmodernism as a tool of thinking, a mode of thought in universities, has that come to an end?
NM: Postmodernism was like a bridge people crossed and are now somewhere else. It’s come to an end in that academics don’t talk about it as explicitly, they don’t talk about it as if it’s a crest of the wave thing. Primarily it was seen by most people not as a movement but as a diagnosis of the cultural and social situation after modernity, hence the name. In a sense, where we are now is after the postmodern rupture or crisis. You wouldn’t call where we are postmodern now. That’s not to say there’s been a reaction against it, or that it’s been reversed, not at all. In fact the opposite. People have developed beyond the postmodern rupture towards other things. That’s why it is ridiculous to hear people bemoaning postmodernism now. The term itself really refers to cultural events from between 20 and 50 years ago. It’s like complaining about the Renaissance, or about modernity. Postmodernism is an historical event. It’s not a fad or a style or ideology. Contemporary culture is absolutely saturated with the consequences and remnants of the postmodern crisis, but academics would never call it postmodern now. It seems odd when people do. It’s not at all clear what some of the so-called critics of postmodernism think it is, or whether they’re informed about it at all, which is ironic considering they often claim to be defending traditional academic values. The most important academic value is that you need to be intelligently informed about what you’re talking about and discuss it in a considered manner. Unfortunately, in the public discussions, I don’t see much evidence of that.
DM: How do you determine that you are not indoctrinating students as opposed to giving them tools to think about the world and reach their own decisions?
NM: The way I try to do that, and I think it’s true of all the staff in my department, is that we provide a variety of points of view and encourage people to make up their own minds. I think it is really important for us to be provocative and challenging. On the other hand the students are not passive. They are not passive at all. They usually have a level of sophistication and that takes away the idea that they are just empty minds waiting to be brain washed. I don’t feel worried that students are going to be brainwashed. They are very sceptical. They are not just vessels waiting to be filled with whatever content we choose. Anyone who is worried about today’s students being manipulated and having their world-views taken over by academics, or in fact anyone, hasn’t had much to do with today’s young people.
October 22nd, 2007 at 3:21 pm
NOTE : The following is a fictitious (though it is an appropro portrayal of relativist/postmodernist thinking) story that depicts a young man (age 24) who supports postmodernist/relativist ANTI-philosophy . He is sent back in time from circa 2007 A.D. to 1855 Oneida, New York (by a University sociology department) to engage in discussion with an abolitionist orator. The young man is called in the story : Pomo kid …’pomo’ being an abbreviation for postmodernist . He is sent back into time with a special hidden video and audio device designed to record sound and image of the discussion that he will have with Benjamin Obadiah Whittaker –an abolitionist and former slave, who is scheduled on that June evening to give a speech on the evils of slavery at the Shaker meeting house during a meeting hosted by the Oneida abolitionist society .
The exchange between Pomo Kid and the abolitionist leader is a cautionary tale presented in a format similar to a one-act play designed to reveal the NON-consistent thought and general murkiness of postmodernist/relativist thinking (i.e. sell-out thinking) . It is designed to show the idiocy of the bizarre, postmodernist notion that claims ambivalence is some so-called “humility” . Ambivalence is NOT humility , and using consistent methods of thought is NOT “arrogance” .
PREFACE :Pomo kid has gotten in the time machine and the controls have been set for June 25, 1855 . Since the machine is the first of its kind and time travel with it expected to be slow going on what the scientists back at the lab call it’s “maiden voyage” , Pomo Kid has taken some magazines: the UTNE reader (bought for him by his limosine- liberal parents who read it themselves ) and Relevant Magazine .
Pomo Kid –having a short attention span fostered by years of chronic MTV watching –has also taken a specially made CD player and some CDs to keep him amused. When he gets to 1855 Oneida , New York he discovers that miraculously the CD players and CD’s work –though he has a hard time getting them to work while riding in the time machine. The CD ’s he has taken are as follows : Jewel’s Greatest Hits, a CD by the musical band Toad The Wet Sprocket, a CD by Jimmy Eat World, The Dawson’s Creek t.v. show soundtrack, a CD from the band Barenaked Ladies, and Rumors by Fleetwood Mac (A CD that he borrowed from his parents) , and a CD from a singer named Dan Hasletine .
The time machine soon arrives in a dairy cattle field in 1855 Oneida,
New York . He steps out of the time machine with his CD head set over his ears –and hidden minature camera recording device cocked and disguised as one of his piercings . As he steps out on to the farm field of Ezra Howell Drummond –no person sees the machine land nor him emerge. The dairy cows give him monentary glances of dull suprise and then return to to crunching and grazing down the vast green verdure . He looks at a minature digital map device and proceeds to walk to the shaker meeting house to hear the speech by Obadiah Whittaker .
He arrives on time and sits down . Some of the abolitionists and interested town folks noticed Pomo kid as he arrives and are somewhat baffled by his odd appearance –as his clothes , hairstyle and general demeanor do not look period, but do not approach him . They are more interested in the speech by Mr. Benjamin Whittaker . Benjamin Whittaker presents a cogent and eloquent indictment of the evils of chattel slavery in the antebellum south. He especially highlights the treatment of slave women by slavemasters, overseers, and their cronies and acquaintances who from time to time rape the slave women on the plantations .
Pomo kid allows his CD headspeakers to droop a little so he can hear the speech —and gives a skimming of the main elements . As the speech draws to its close Pomo kid hears the anti-slavery orator sum up the directive set before good citizens everywhere in a way that does NOT mince words .
‘ And so good citizens of Oneida , we can send forth the clear message …both to posterity , to others who have shared and will share the North American continent, and to all nations and every town and village abroad , that we will no longer accept, nor even partially accept, a wicked commerce of bodies and souls that treats marriage and kinship as makeshift gambits in some sordid game , where transgression of the convenants between man and women is done with impunity . We will stand with the men , women, and children who long to have the stability accorded to man and wife by civilized society. We make no caveat to the forces of darkness and depravity that would settle for anything less! ‘
There is a roar of applause and even a few Amens from the audience .
Soon the speech is then over and there is time for handshakes and entreties from the audience .
Pomo Kid then approaches the abolitionist orator .
POMO KID : “Hey Mr.Whiitaker , dude . I, like, enjoyed your speech . I can see that feel quite passionate about racial oppression and all , but there’s some stuff I’d like to discuss with you . I know that slavery is a bad scene and it’s kinda bogus how slaves are treated , but you gotta learn to respect the opinion of those who want to rape their slave women and sell their kids to other plantations too and look at it from their perspective some too . You are like so judgemental, so preachy , dogmatic …so one-sided towards the opinions of those who want to rape slave women, beat them some, and sell their children downriver . It’s like you want to preach instead of discussing…you preach. You got to learn to look at it from other perspectives. What you are doing is the us versus them approach towards people who oppress and exploit slaves . The us versus them approach isn’t good . It’s fanatical to take the us versus them approach . The us versus them way is, like, so yesterday . Everything is connected . it’s all connected. Really the slavowner and the oppressed slaves are really part of the same thing . Making distinctions is so passe /so yesterday . It’s all one . It’s all how you look at it .
You know there’s many sides to every issue. Stuff like slavery is not all black and white there are shades of grey. It’s not totally bad being oppressed as a slave . You got to look at it from other points of view . Learn to accept that problems are part of life…a growing experience . You know, getting raped and being sold away from your family just goes to show that life is give and take . If nobody ever got raped or exploited then you wouldn’t have give and take …and so you wouldn’t have reality ; it would be all idealistic . We can’t have stuff being idealistic all the time. Life is supposed to be a mixture of things . People are a mixture of things. It’s all the duality of man . In the time period I come from, we study deconstructionism and post-structuralism at my college and I’ve been getting into Michel Foucault , and Lyotard, and Richard Rorty. They teach us not to totalize . what your are doing is totalizing …making people out to be villans if they don’t agree with rigid moral constructs . It’s all just language games –the divisions of beliefs that people have . There aren’t any absolute truths …or if there are, there aren’t very many…or we can’t be sure what they are .
You got to learn something Mr.Whittaker: don’t be so single-minded ….
(Pomo kid pauses for an extended period of time and fiddles with his CD player and changes the Jewel CD for a Dawson’s Creek CD . He turns it down slighly so he can somewhat hear Mr . Benjamin Whittaker speak .)
Benjamin Whittaker stares at Pomo Kid with a look of utter incredulity and disgust at the weirdly pusillanimous , and convoluted statements that have poured forth from the young man’s mouth . He then speaks
BENJAMIN WHITTAKER SPEAKS : Young man, I scarcely know where to begin to disabuse you of the false , and weirdly ludicrous statements you have put forth here. You claim I must respect the vile opinions of those who support the exploitation and tyrrany which oppresses persons of African descent–and , moreover, exploits women whose virginity has been taken from them by force! What on earth have such opinions done to merit such respect, or to even almost halfway earn such respect .? Young man I can scarcely help wondering if you have fallen in with revelling hooligans in Manhattan that smoke opium in houses of ill repute and, that such riotous living has altered your febrile brain to such an extent that you find it a habit to talk nonsense . Young man, I do not know where you are from —
(Pomo Kid then interrupts Mr. Whittaker in mid sentence . Pomo kid is, after all, a postmodernist of the MTV generation and considers being fair and waiting till someone is finished talking to be passe and old fashioned communication practice, which he wants nothing to do with . Pomo kid favors a more edgy , open ended approach .)
POMO KID SPEAKS : (Decides to start out with circular thinking ) . Dude, the idea that it’s wrong to rape slave women , or brutally beat and exploit slaves and sell their children away from them …that’s wrong to us , but not to the people who support exploiting and raping slaves… Doing that’s right to them . Morals and truth are relative and subjective. What’s true to you may not be true to them . It’s all just different perspectives. If you go and say that its absolutely wrong for people to exploit and rape their slaves instead of saying that it’s wrong to us, then …you’re like Hitler. Now you probably aren’t familiar with who Hitler is …but in the 20 Century there’s gonna be this guy called Hitler, who takes over and takes away people’s rights. And if you say that some belief is totally wrong and another belief is totally right then you’re like Hitler . Just like these holocaust survivors that the nazis put into concentration camps and came out being all bitter and one sided and preachy and say what Hitler and the nazis did was wrong and don’t respect the nazi point of view a little—well they’re like Hitler too ! Just like a person who always stops a bully from bullying people and won’t look at it from a bully point of view a little…well that makes that kind of one-sided person who is against bullying, a bully too and just as bad as the real bully . Furthermore, just by saying that some belief or practice is wrong— just by verbally calling that belief wrong you violate their right to free expression to say that opposite belief…even without any physical violence against them …without a single shot being fired .
You got to understand also that if somebody says that some belief isn’t absolute , then that right there prooves that it isn’t . Take the proposition that says that 2+2=4 . Well as long as somebody disagrees with the idea that 2+2=4 then that automatically shows that the idea that 2+2=4 isn’t absolute, otherwise every person would have to say they agreed with 2+2 being = 4, otherwise it’s not absolute .
In the time period of history that I come from (which is the late 20 th and early 21 Centuries ) there’s this show called the Real World . Now since television hasn’t been invented yet in 1855, you probably aren’t familar with that word. Television in the time I come from is a lot like what plays are on stages in the time you’re in . Television is kind of like a play —only more fun . So in the time I come from there is a show called ‘The Real World’ …and people on that show sometimes have different beliefs and so they can come together and get real and talk about the issues that bother them . The show teaches people to come out of their comfort zone (Pomo Kid runs through memory banks to come up with more newspeak words and phrases and finds some) and therefore they can have an impactive, impactful affect on each others lives and give each other feedback about what they think. Now the people who are being raped , beaten , or exploited by masters and overseers down on those slave plantations they got to stop being so one-sided and look at from another perspective and come out of their comfort zone and stop portraying rape and exploitation as something totally bad. They can then get together with the slave owners and overseers and tell them about the way they feel and then get the slave owners and overseers to come out of their comfort zone too , and maybe tone down the rape and exploitation a little . That way you don’t have an us versus them .
Some people would say that what I’m saying doesn’t make much sense …that it’s inconsistent /ambivalent thinking (which is another way of saying sell- out thinking ) but I don’t call it selling out . I call it “looking at it from another perspective” . And about the people claiming that postmodernism like I’ve been trying to get you to support, doesn’t make much sense, well it doesn’t have to make sense. Making sense is so passe …so yesterday . Distinctions are just so passe . I don’t bother with rigid distinctions. I ‘ve gotten into a sort of thinking called lateral thinking …that doen’t get all hung up on distinctions . Lateral thinking doesn’t have to always make sense.
You Mr. Whittaker are a linear thinker …that consistent thinking is so out of style….so outmoded . Lateral thinking, that postmodernists such as me go for doesn’t bother with having to make sense …it tolerates ambiguity . You mr. Whittaker are so rigidly consistent /so single-minded …a fanatical ideologue that goes to extremes of consistent thinking. You aren’t conflicted about anything !!!!
In the time period I came from, there was a singer called Moby—who used to be so dogmatic and one-sided about the animal rights cause, but lately he learned not to be so judgemental towards opinions of people who don’t support animal rights . He respects the outlook of the people who are against animal rights now –even though he’s for animal rights .The same flexibility applies to any social cause. After all, a professor I had once in a classroom, quoted the quote, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds” .I’ve learned that selling out is not so bad . ‘
(Pomo kid having temporarily dropped the Dawson’s Creek soundtrack picks it up and puts in the Toad The Wet Sprocket CD . He changes CDs about as quickly as a chain smoker replaces cigarettes)
BENJAMIN WHITTAKER : (Still flabbergasted, begins to speak) ‘Without consistency of thought human affairs descend into meaninglessness….
POMO KID SPEAKS : Not if you think they have meaning for you . You know, by the way, in 1855, the people who exploit and rape slaves are doing what was thought right at the time. We shouldn’t be so chauvanistic as to try to harshly criticize people who own slaves by the morality of later periods. If you say that people who exploit slaves are doing something totally wrong then you’re just as bad as they are . Morality is different from one period to another …some people say that people in different periods might call different actions moral …and it not be a case of inherently different morals …but that’s all the same anyway …since I don’t bother with hair-splitting distinctions like that .
(Pomo Kid’s CD jams and stops playing temporarily. He pauses from speaking and, in so doing, ejects that CD and puts in the machine a CD of music by musician Dan Hasletine) .
BENJAMIN WHITTAKER SPEAKS : How are you so sure that people who exploit slaves are unaware that what they are doing is fully wrong ? (The good abolitionist has managed to put aside being shocked by the weirdly insipid statements presented by Pomo Kid long enough to get the composure to ask him that question .)
POMO KID REPLIES : Well if they thought it was wrong to exploit and mistreat slaves then they wouldn’t do it .
BENJAMIN WHITTAKER SPEAKS : So let me get this straight, young man…you allege that the mere willingness of somebody to do some act is in of itself some ad hoc proof that in every such case they must be sincere in doing so.? Where do you arrive at such a facile conclusion– if that is what you are alleging ?
(Pomo kid, who does not know a specific response to the question that can save face for how facile the previous statement he has just put forth has been…then searches his memory banks for the word he likes to bandie about whenever somebody presents an argument that is elaborate , doesn’t have postmodern cliches, and one which , moreover, he doesn’t want to slow down and bother to analyze . He finds that word …. the word “pseudo-intellectual” which he uses to lambast elaborate arguments from people who refuse to sell out and entertain his lazy mind . )
POMO KID SPEAKS : Dude, I realy don’t have time for pseudo-intellectual questions and statements like you have been making. Mellow out, Dude . You are so single-minded . You just need to get laid .
(Pomo Kid pauses and then speaks again )
POMO KID SPEAKS : You want to know something ? If you judge a belief or lifestyle that somebody supports …that’s the same as judging them, because an emo-singer I like said so, in an interview I read about in Spin magazine . He later said the same stuff about that on a VH-1 documentary . He said that the beliefs a person supports are the person themself —so by judging the belief your judging the person . Beliefs are people . (Pomo Kid gets oddly quiet all of a sudden )
BENJAMIN WHITTAKER THEN ASKS : So to take such preposterously silly statement to its conclusion , do you then allege that if someone no longer believes the beliefs they once supported …they are no longer themselves .?
POMO KID ASKS : Yes , why not say that ?
BENJAMIN WHITTAKER SPEAKS : Well young man, I hope that you will reconsider those murky notions you have given a voice to . Slavery is quite ugly and the others here know that .
(Pomo Kid then takes out the Hasletine CD and puts in a CD of Rumors by Fleetwood Mac in his CD player and adjusts the headset .) .
POMO KID SPEAKS : (Takes on the weirdly petulant snippness that young postmodernists sometimes adopt) ‘You know what dude, you just don’t understand . I’m starting to think that it’s just a waste of time explaining this to you …since you have a close mind. I can see you have a closed mind because you keep having to take everything apart and you keep insisting on consistent distinctions . That’s very anal retentive of you Mr. Whittaker . That’s also a power play on your part . It shows that you have control issues and will not look at anything a different way . You just don’t understand. You got all that deductive reasoning …but that’s a defense mechanism . Since you refuse to come out of your comfort zone and become conflicted about anything there’s probably no point in having a discussion .You just don’t understand …all you want to do is be a true believer and stereotype the lifestyle of other people . So, like WHATEVER , dude …that’s not my problem !
(Pomo Kid then speaks again )
You probably don’t think I identify with oppressed people but I do . My girlfriend and life partner Jasmine and me have gone to a lot of take back the night rallies . We’ve protested date rape on campus. I’ve known oppression and been a victim of oppression myself . The year before last I went to go stay with my aunt Veronica because parents were using their house as a meditation center for married couples and me being kind of high maintence …we figured I’d get in the way and so I went to go live with Veronica . But my aunt is an old school Mennonite –and so she’s like real rigid , dogmatic , and puritanical and so she wouldn’t let me and Jasmine’s ex boyfriend (he’s a real kewl guy who pierced my belly button when we went to Woodstock 94) and her ex boyfiriend ’s cat all get together and have group sex games together in her house . She’s real dogmatic against sex (if you ask me she has some real issues if she’s against group sex games) . Sex is like my identity . Also i understand oppression because people sometimes look at me funny because I have a lot of piercings …so I know what it’s like to be oppressed too . ‘
BENJAMIN WHITTAKER SPOKE : ‘Young man, I pity someone with such a murky , ridiculous attitude as you have . If you excuse me, now myself and the other people here are going to march to the town hall where we will make the protest of slavery public … ‘ (He then turns away and walks toward the others who have gathered at the far door of the Shaker meeting house ) .
POMO KID SPEAKS (Runs up ahead to meet up with them): ‘ So you guys are going to a protest down town. Kewl ! For shizzle …that’s the shiznic ! I’ve been to protests with my girlfriend and our boyfriends …we’ve been to take back the night …and we’ve been to rallies at Lillith Fair too, so I know the routine . I once met Michael Stipe at a protest !
(Mr. Whitakker and the other abolitionists have begun already begun to file out signs en hand . They cast backwards glances of disgust and perplexity at Pomo Kid )
Pomo Kid then runs out after them , “Let’s do it . End oppression now. Oppression is f–ked up . The people united will never be defeated …the people united will never be defeated ! The people united will never be defeated ! ‘
(He then hearing the onset of a track on the CD playing the Fleetwood Mac song ‘ Don’t stop thinking about tommorrow’ then begins to sing in unision to the song —as if it were a marching chant …As he runs out into the starlit roads of 1855 Oneida, New York he soon finds he wishes he had a latte to round out the day)
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