"Understand Postmodernism" by Glenn Ward (Hachette, 2010)

I found this book useful. I think I'm a postmodernist, albeit reluctantly. I'm happy with the arbitrary sign. I think word meanings aren't trivially deduced, that they depend on other words (I believe in Wittgenstein's idea that the meaning of a word is how it's used). However I don't see why that leads to assuming that language can't point beyond language or that there is no world beyond language, or that translation is impossible. Language isn't neutral/transparent (though it's often sensible to treat it that way). I think that language can affect thoughts (e.g. our traditional use of "he" isn't helpful). It may give rise to thoughts (in maths, a new notation can spur development) Our thought patterns easily end up as binaries which may not be explicit in our writing.

I can believe that "the self is an effect, and not a cause, of the facade", and that "You are "a peg on which something of a collaborative manufacture will be hung for a while"" (Goffman). Who we are depends on who we're with.

There are many similacrums around, each an addition to reality. A painting might not be a depiction of something that existed, though it may look so. It's an additional object or event. And yes, we might be living in "The Matrix". Equally we might be in need of a job, and a lectureship in this sort of stuff might be our only hope.

The author points out that architecture (its rejection of modernist failures) and literature were particularly important at the start of po-mo. Developments in other arts were generalised from these. Its mixing of past-styles could be seen as nostalgia.

Whatever one believes about the truth of science or quantum mechanics, your mobile works whatever the discourse. Lyotard's observations about science seem fair enough (and nothing new) but from them one can't conclude that science "can no longer be valued for the contribution it makes towards human progress" (p.223). If "Lyotard ... argues that scientific truth-claims can only be legitimated by reference to the specific language game in which they are made. There are no absolute or universal facts, only stories that 'work' at particular times for their particular 'speakers'."

Here are some quotes -

• "Images are vivid but shallow, and meaning is in crisis. There are no truths, only interpretations. 'Meanings' occur between audiences and signs; they do not emerge directly from authors or 'reality'", p.ix
• "The 'self' is replaced by 'identity', and identity is a collage of cultural scraps" p.ix
• "Postmodernism breaks with some aspects of modernism but continues or extends others" p.17
• "Postmodernism theory sees Enlightenment values as, at worst, excuses for imperialism, social control and the exercise of power" p.17
• "For many critics, Baudrillard's work became increasingly silly after the early 1980s" (p.97)
• "German and Italian neo-expressionist painting, once threatening to New York art, was foundering, and young Americans ... were ready to take charge. Baudrillard's Simulations arrived right on time to buttress these artists' claims and give an aura of theory to what was, for the most part, a shrewd move by art in the direction of the media and advertising industry", Sylère Lotringer (Artforum, 2003)
• "According to Greenberg, every historical age has a 'dominant art form', and between the seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries the dominant art form was literature. This means that literature became the prototype which all other art forms tried to imitate. For example, nineteenth-century salon paintings tried to tell sentimental, melodramatic tales and, in doing so, they were aspiring to the condition of literature" p.57
• "anyone who reads deconstructive texts with an open mind is likely to be struck by the same phenomena that initially surprised me: the low level of philosophical argumentation, the deliberate obscurantism of the prose, the wildly exaggerated claims, and the constant striving to give the appearance of profundity by making claims that seem paradoxical, but under analysis often turn out to be silly or trivial" John Searle, NYR of Books, 1984
• "Foucault [...] has a tendency to romanticize emotionally disturbed people as subversive elements in society" (p.202)

What about the production of testable hypotheses. If language creates reality, and flies crash into windows, is it necessary to posit that flies have language?