I liked Margaret's references to John Howard, linked to his criticisms of postmodernism as a tool for the teaching of literature. While I partly agreed with Howard on this, part of me also thought 'he should talk'. The master of spin, moral relativism and I think, the originator of the 'non-core promise' concept, Howard seeks to take the moral high ground when criticising others but bases most of his government's policies and decisions on either crass political expediency or the serving of narrow interests.

If postmodernism is partly a reaction to the uncertainties of modern living, Howard with his spin and his dancing on a pinhead when caught in the wrong has done more than most to add to the uncertainty of modern living.

Thank you for such a lucid description of the development of postmodern thought. We should be making sure that those students at school and university do understand the ideological underpinnings of the texts they read - from high or low culture. We live a world of multiple voices, jostling for recognition, and we all need to be able to distinguish between those voices that are just the loudest and those which are just.

But actually I feel that post modernism appears to have its geographical roots in French culture and and its timing is related specifically to the early decades after the Second World War.

France was one of Nazi Germany's greatest collaborators. It also had a long term and deep seated anti-Semetism, as demonstrated by the Dreyfuss Affair. Even Italy collaborated with the Nazis when it came to killing Jews less than France.

Additionally the French willingly sent workers to Germany to aid that country's war effort. French factories manufactured aircraft and weapons for Germany. The French Resistance was only ever supported by a small percentage of the French population.

The collapse of the French military in May 1940 was an absolute tragedy, compounded by the valour of some units and many individual soldiers in the face of defeatism and a lack of political will.

Post WW2 the 'market' was ripe for a new philosphy that would not only excuse the French for their shameful part in W2, but would also wipe it away.

After all, if there are no absolutes, only narratives, the sending of French Jews to German death camps can be simply explained away by the narrative, after all, no absolutes, no right or wrong, so no harm / no foul.

Post modernism was the way that French academia could simply adopt a type of collective amnesia - as if the occupation / collaboration never took place.

"We live a world of multiple voices, jostling for recognition, and we all need to be able to distinguish between those voices that are just the loudest and those which are just."

Piper, how do you define 'just'?

Sincerely,

Yngnluvnit

Thank you, I wil remain a modernist. Thus I can from a distance in time dream with wonder of that outstanding creature of the French enlightenment, Emilie de Breteuil, Marquise du Chatelet. Oh what a girl !!

PK posits that postmodernism could be partly a reaction to the
uncertainties of modern living.
I suggest that the blind acceptance of a postmodernist rationale may cause many of those uncertainties, by inducing the belief that “anything goes” in modern life, not whether something is worthy, and why.
“Why” demands an ability to measure. Against what?

The most profound knowledge possible of the origins of cultural expression is a valid step in understanding your own standards, and how you intend to apply them.

Teaching should not just be about imposing one’s own knowledge and attitudes on students.
It should be about guiding them to find truth; how to differentiate between fact and opinion.
How can a philosophical approach arise if one has no
wide understanding or appreciation of prior reasoning.

Murder.
Where to start?
Shakespeare, or Channel Ten?