I suppose that given the saturation of media these days, staying underground could in itself almost be an avant-garde gesture. Especially when you're popular enough to 'make it' in the 'mainstream'.

I'm Avant Garde Love Meee

you seem better read in art criticism than i am, and strange things happen when ideas are borrowed from other fields (a "postmodern" idea in itself - the trope or détournement). for example, while most people see postmodernism as a rejection of history, or at least the idea of history, postmodernist architecture is deeply historicist, primarily a reaction against modernist ideologues rejecting all forms of ornamentation as decadent (from which emerged the stark white "international style" most people associate with "modern" architecture). and deconstructivist architecture has so little to do with deconstruction that derrida disowned it, once refusing to speak at a conference on the subject (featuring famous architect and bow-tie wearing wank peter eisenman, with whom he'd already broken off his working relationship) sending in his stead a tape recorded statement detailing his disagreements with the whole idea. the term deconstructivist acknowledges this and more acurately describes the architecture, referencing as it does the russian constructivists.

anyway, my point is that while i agree with a lot of what you have to say about art, it is disturbing that you dismiss the philosophy of postmodernism so readily and so completly. the epistemological implications of the information revolution are quite distinct from the aesthetic concerns you are discussing. and while it is true that a lot of late twentieth century continental philosophy makes heavy use of rhetorical methods traditionally considered to be vices, which could accurately be described as double-speak (particularly catachresis, relying as it does on the slippage of the signifier), that hardly makes it bullshit. deconstruction can be a powerful analytical method, and poststructuralist thought in general has a lot of valuable insight into linguistics. lacanian psychoanalysis picks up on these and examines how language operates at an unconscious level. all are handy tools, despite not being perfectly suited to every job. (ie art criticsim, music criticism, architecture theory) but what tool is? that's why you have a toolbox. ...if i had to critique the idea of the cartesian cogito, i'd hardly pick up some clement greenburg... likewise, just because deleuze and guattari didn't help you describe a painting doesn't mean it's groundless gibberish.




[edit] to answer the question, my understanding of the term avant-garde is primarily the historical one. the collection of movements than begins roughly with the salon des refusés of 1863... actually wrote a paper in undergrad titled "Is an avant-garde act still possible?" ...don't remember what my argument was, though.

my screen name for this board?

whatever I am into

tl;dr version:

why are you assuming that postmodern philosophy originated from a need to describe art? isn't it more likely that art critics borrowed ideas from philosophers who were trying to trying to understand a broader set of socio-economic circumstances having to do with late capitalism and information technology? just as modernism and the historical avant-garde were ultimately driven by the circumstances of the industrial revolution?

STILL tl;dr version (part 1):

postmodernism in the arts

STILL tl;dr version (part duh):

postmodernism in the philosophy

 

...apologies to any board memebers offended by this hand gesture.

Just read through your reply to Atari, Mirror dash, and found a lot of it very interesting. Although I tend to side with Atari on the whole 'lunatics taking over the asylum' issue, I believe that these lunatics better represent those that have chosen to apply ideas put forward by the likes of Barthes, Lacan, etc with almost no regard for their original purpose and/or context. This has led to something of an intellectual cul-de-sac within large areas of the humanities, as over-enthusiastic (but often under-read) academics attempt to apply Deleuze to absolutely anything and everything. Toolbox is right. It's just a shame that universities are increasingly coming to the job armed only with a single spanner.

Damn, Sonic Youth needs some of this cash!

I have to say, I'm looking scarily like a slightly younger Slavoj Zizek these days. Christ, at least he has old age to blame - and a life spent in deep contemplation. All I have is Kentucky Fried Chicken. Thank you Colonel Sanders. Thanks a fuckin' lot.

let's go to mars guys

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/0...ace/index.html
http://www.china.org.cn/english/scitech/69510.htm

although under-read students and graduates are sadly all too common, there are other problems... one of the lacanian professors at UF has the telling e-mail signature, "reading in no way obliges you to understand."

the double-speak bullshit label is one often thrown at derrida, lacan et al. but it oversimplifies while it dismisses. first because they were trying to show you how their philosophy works through their rhetorical methods (puns, triple puns, obscure references, coined words) as much if not more than simply explaining it to you.

and second because before these writings were ever borrowed by other fields, they were borrowed from another language. and puns pose a particularly difficult translation problem, compounded by the fact that the puns and references are just as often in german as in french, and frequently in ancient greek or even aramaic. for this reason the body of work that we have available in english for these authors is often well below half of what exists in the native language. what we know as foucault's madness and civilization is a severely abridged version missing all of the appendixes, and lacan's most well known english work the ecrits is also merely a selection, and some of the more esoteric ones at that. lacan's seminars, in which he attempts to explain his ideas in less flowery language, without the puns and obscure references (or so i've heard, i've read about them, but haven't read them) have never been translated.

...to return to the tool analogy, while i agree with you that many academics seem to think of these writers as comprising some sort of swiss army knife that can do anything, the translation issue creates a situation sort of like trying to learn how to use chopsticks, or even judge their usefulness for eating, by going the local chinese takeout place and watching some rednecks use them.


[srsly... up until 2002 the only translation of the selections from the ecrits that were available in english, was done by someone who did not study psychoanalysis, let alone lacan or freud specifically]

Good points regarding the translation issue. Another problem is the way in which figures such as Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze and, in particular, Guattari have so effectively been domesticated by the university system. The true message of books like Anti-Oedipus and Discipline and Punish call into question the entire structure of institutions: structures that the university system relies upon for its very existence. Departments get around this by de-politicizing such books, reducing them to abstract (read safe) theory. The Anti-University in London in the sixties was a good example of an institution that absorbed these ideas into its very structure, rather than simply employing them as a way of sexying up course reading lists. In many ways, it's this very fear of letting the lunatics take over the asylum that stops universities from teaching such writers properly.

"academics attempt to apply Deleuze to absolutely anything and everything"

I was at the annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory a couple weeks ago and here are the names of the papers from a special session:


----7:30-10:30 Deterritorializing Music Theory: Deleuze, Guattari, and
A Thousand Plateaus (Maryland E)

Sponsored by the Music Philosophy Interest Group

Alan Street (Music Analysis/University at Buffalo), Moderator

John Rahn (University of Washington), “Mille Plateaux, You Tarzan: A Musicology of (an Anthropology of (an Anthropology of A Thousand Plateaus))”

Michael Gallope (New York University), “Immanence, Transcendence, and the Musical Work in A Thousand Plateaus”

Martin Scherzinger (Eastman School of Music), “’Deterritorializing the Refrain’: Music As Philosophical Critique”

Amy Cimini (New York University), “Voice, Aurality, Ontology: Locating the Sonic in A Thousand Plateaus”

Benjamin Boretz (Bard College), “On the 1001st Plateau”----


I didn't go to the session. I was tired from a workshop that morning and a bunch of other papers I sat through.

good for you! pure wankery.

how did you like baltimore?

that was priceless comedy

Oh, it was very nice. I had some crab chips and took a nice walk around Federal Hill and downtown. I had some cigars and beer at some Irish pub in the inner harbor while listening to a cover band mangle Smells Like Teen Spirit. Good times.

And I met a bunch of theorists and attended the workshop that I was in, which was a great experience. There were also some really interesting papers--including two on Bartok that were very good. There was supposed to be a paper on Meshuggah, but it was canceled because it had just been published in a journal.

Anyway, yeah, my knowledge of Deleuze, Guattari, and whatnot is limited, and I prefer to stick to more straightforward music theory. In my experience, philosophy ends up being used more for navel-gazing (in terms of the discipline itself), but those are some smart folks up there and I'm reluctant to completely dismiss it. If anybody wants to read the abstracts, the complete program is here:

http://societymusictheory.org/pdf/SM...racts_2007.pdf

MILLE PLATEAUX, YOU TARZAN: A MUSICOLOGY OF
(AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF (AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF A THOUSAND PLATEAUS))
John Rahn
University of Washington
First we critique the philosophy and practice of and around the book A Thousand Plateaus (TP)
by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. We show how its program of dissed organization, nonhierarchy,
transformation, and escape from boundaries at every moment resonates in harmony with some of its
modes of presentation and mentation, but dissonates with others. The Anthropological Gaze which
forms in the name of observation, and re-forms Us as it forms Them, is one of the nodes of TP’s
thought: the erotic, climax-free plateaus of some Batesonesque Balinese orgy. Even the structuralism of
Claude Levi-Strauss permeates TP in the form of a paradigmatic procedure of polar opposites (e.g. raw
vs. cooked in Levi-Strauss, territorialization vs deterritorialization etc. in TP). Is such a Gaze performed
by TP on us, or merely referred to by it? What is the nature of TP’s practice upon us?
Taking off from a series of articles by John Rahn and others, we will then further explore the
nature of this Platonically anti-Platonic practice by TP upon us as it affects the practice of music and
thinking about music.

-----------

^^ see how he refers to himself in the 3rd person? wankery, wankery, wankery