the post-postmodern

July 27, 2006 7:50 AM

What will replace postmodernism?

Post-structuralist critique dominated academics (or at least literature and film departments) back when I was getting my BA (about ten years ago). I keep hearing it's in decline. What is taking it's place? Or, at the very least, what new theories are the rising stars of academia?

posted by rottytooth to education (55 comments total)

A return to being genuine.
posted by clunkyrobot at 8:07 AM on July 27, 2006 [1 favorite]

clunkyrobots, when was that again?
posted by alkupe at 8:15 AM on July 27, 2006

Prefuturism.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:19 AM on July 27, 2006

Ad Hoc Avantguardism.
posted by DrtyBlvd at 8:27 AM on July 27, 2006 [1 favorite]

yes, that's exactly what I (we?) meant...

We used to make a cartoon called Sealab 2021. It was considered to be "post-modern" along with a few of the others in the original line-up on Adult Swim. We were even once asked to speak at Georgia Tech in a class focussing on post-modernism... that was about as post-modern as you can get.

If post-modernism can be considered to be "relating to art, architecture, or literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles." Then a possible replacement for that would be a return to the giantism whose shoulders we are currently standing on top of.

so I guess that's actually what I mean.
posted by clunkyrobot at 8:30 AM on July 27, 2006 [1 favorite]

clunkyrobot, I think it's kind of unfair to assert that postmodernism is somehow "false" or "insincere." And for that matter, to assume that was came before postmodernism was somehow any more "genuine."
posted by maxreax at 8:39 AM on July 27, 2006

I was halfway through a skeptical reply, Blazecock, before I realized that you were joking.

Anyway, it's true that Postmodernism as a single unified front is no more. No self-respecting grad student would be caught dead using the word "postmodern" to describe what they do. But it's less that the movement has fallen out of style than that many of the myriad critical techniques and visions that used to fall under that heading--Postcolonialism, Feminism, Queer Theory, New Historicism, all the issue-oriented modes of reading--have come into their own as methods. A New Historicist might flinch at being called a Postmodernist in the same way a physicist wouldn't want to be called a natural philosopher.

As for the crown jewel of Postmodern theory--the idea that, in our time, symbols have been jarred loose from their real world referrents in such a way as to make a tangible, communicable reality impossible--the concept is now considered so obvious that it has lost any ability to shock. And shock, as it has been for the past half-century or so, is the currency of critical theory.

As for where the heading, I can't honestly say. There's been some movements towards narratology, but I don't see any major sea changes coming in the near future.
posted by Iridic at 8:42 AM on July 27, 2006 [4 favorites]

I agree, that's not totally fair.

I used "genuine" when maybe I should have said "non-derivative." I consider it to be more genuine because those things did not need previously made art or literature to be built upon or reacted against.
posted by clunkyrobot at 8:43 AM on July 27, 2006

But that's almost entirely false! Modernism didn't arise out of a void. Neither did Romanticism. All literary/artistic/intellectual movements are formed in reaction to those that preceded them. "Postmodernism" is no more derivative than "Modernism" was. (Moreover, there a lot of people who believe that "postmodernism" is simply the "second stage" of the "modernist movement.")
posted by maxreax at 8:46 AM on July 27, 2006

"Postmodern" is meaningless except to mean "after Modernism." Here is David Foster Wallace on the subject:

"For me, the last few years of the postmodern era have seemed a bit like the way you feel when you're in high school and your parents go on a trip, and you throw a party. You get all your friends over and throw this wild disgusting fabulous party. For a while it's great, free and freeing, parental authority gone and overthrown, a cat's-away-let's-play Dionysian revel. But then time passes and the party gets louder and louder, and you run out of drugs, and nobody's got any money for more drugs, and things get broken and spilled, and there's a cigarette burn on the couch, and you're the host and it's your house too, and you gradually start wishing your parents would come back and restore some fucking order in your house. It's not a perfect analogy, but the sense I get of my generation of writers and intellectuals or whatever is that it's 3:00 A.M. and the couch has several burn-holes and somebody's thrown up in the umbrella stand and we're wishing the revel would end. The postmodern founders' patricidal work was great, but patricide produces orphans, and no amount of revelry can make up for the fact that writers my age have been literary orphans throughout our formative years. We're kind of wishing some parents would come back. And of course we're uneasy about the fact that we wish they'd come back--I mean, what's wrong with us? Are we total pussies? Is there something about authority and limits we actually need? And then the uneasiest feeling of all, as we start gradually to realize that parents in fact aren't ever coming back--which means "we're" going to have to be the parents."
posted by mattbucher at 8:47 AM on July 27, 2006 [6 favorites]

Iridic is v. OTM w/r/t "postmodernism" being splintered into many different aspects of "critical studies" or "cultural studies."
posted by maxreax at 8:47 AM on July 27, 2006

I see what you're saying max. You're right of course, in regards to ideas being born from older ideas, but it seems to me that postmodernism absolutely hinges on the reaction against previous modernism, instead of simply being informed by it.

Anyway, I think I'm getting out of my league here...
posted by clunkyrobot at 8:52 AM on July 27, 2006

What will replace postmodernism?

Nothing. This is why we can't have nice things.
posted by pracowity at 9:02 AM on July 27, 2006 [10 favorites]

I see what you're saying max. You're right of course, in regards to ideas being born from older ideas, but it seems to me that postmodernism absolutely hinges on the reaction against previous modernism, instead of simply being informed by it.

That is absolutely on the mark. If we consider the case of architecture, modernism relied on new forms and materials, which of course grew out of work that came before. The glass box skyscraper grew from earlier skyscrapers, for example, utilizing new materials (concrete, metals) and old materials in new ways (glass) with variations of form (the eschewing of ornament, exposed structure). Postmodern architecture, on the other hand, moved toward a much more reactionary style, using riffs on previous forms combined with both modern and traditional building materials and a greater cognizance of the past as both abstract and site-specific.

From my perspective, in Anthropology, what Iridic said is pretty on the mark. "Postmodernism" has been fractured into various categories of thought, each very specialized. PM was never actually monolithic, rather it was a composition of various reactions and schools, but now the blanket concept of PM is out of vogue and other fractions are being used by name. There is no overarching popular body of theory, though.

I feel like there is a slow return to the "sincere" or "genuine," as if people are moving away from the nihilism of PM. As Iridic wrote:

As for the crown jewel of Postmodern theory--the idea that, in our time, symbols have been jarred loose from their real world referrents in such a way as to make a tangible, communicable reality impossible--the concept is now considered so obvious that it has lost any ability to shock. And shock, as it has been for the past half-century or so, is the currency of critical theory.

People are accepting this, but then taking a practical approach and moving on. So maybe there's a movement back toward science and practicality in knowledge.

also, maxreax: it's not that PM is "insincere", it's just that sincerity or its absence has no place in PM thought.
posted by The Michael The at 9:29 AM on July 27, 2006

I don't think it's so much that PM devalues sincerity--it's that it privileges irony. Here's Umberto Eco:

The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, 'I love you madly,' because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, 'As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.'
posted by Iridic at 9:46 AM on July 27, 2006 [1 favorite]

Prefuturism

See The Cult of Information for an enlightening review of the waxing and waning of this neo-Humean fad with a mechanismo flava since the late 1940s. One issue with "prefuturism" is that is epiphenomenic upon economic tides - rarely preserving continuity through entire capital cycles because of its unusual sensitivity to busts. This is not the most rewarding or stable ideology upon which to base a long-term academic career. I would describe it as as high-risk.

On the other hand, "postmodernism" and its descendant ideologies have proven more consistently resiliant and are well on their way to becoming embedded orthodoxies after over a generation of concerted labour. There probably is a nascent replacement idea out there, but "prefuturism" (or Gernsbackianism) is not it.
posted by meehawl at 9:54 AM on July 27, 2006

he cannot say to her, 'I love you madly,' because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, 'As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.'

Animate a milkshake saying this in a cartoon and you're a millionaire.
posted by clunkyrobot at 9:56 AM on July 27, 2006

clunkyrobot, I think it's kind of unfair to assert that postmodernism is somehow "false" or "insincere." And for that matter, to assume that was came before postmodernism was somehow any more "genuine."

A very postmodernist thing to say. From this unreconstructed modernist, a big pbthhbthth!
posted by languagehat at 9:57 AM on July 27, 2006

Oh, and whatever's going to replace the hyena-gnawed, rotting corpse of postmodernism, we can't predict it, it'll become clear only after it's already started losing impetus. That's what keeps life so interesting!
posted by languagehat at 9:58 AM on July 27, 2006 [1 favorite]

Actually, given the clinically depressed tenor of this thread, I don't know if there'll be time for a new paradigm to take root before the entire literary studies establishment dissolves in its own despair and self-loathing.
posted by Iridic at 10:15 AM on July 27, 2006

Post Post Modernism, obviously
posted by 0bvious at 10:16 AM on July 27, 2006

I was asking this to a professor just yesterday. He believed that philosophy and critique was going from postmodernism to something more analytical and based in mathematical truths (which are themselves being reevaluated as truths) in the tradition of many famous skeptics (Karl Popper, et al). So in a way if you think if postmodernism as a rejection of certain truths of the enlightenment (and the rising of hyperrealism and the likes) then it seems almost like a natural progression that something with no real grounds in reality, mathematics, will come todescribe the world. After all what is a prime number in reality? It's all based on natural reason. I was satisified. Could be pseudo-intellectual bullshit though.
posted by geoff. at 10:31 AM on July 27, 2006

clunkyrobot, I think it's kind of unfair to assert that postmodernism is somehow "false" or "insincere." And for that matter, to assume that was came before postmodernism was somehow any more "genuine."

It's an exaggeration. There are wonderful, truthful objects that came out of post-modernism. BUT there's a large strain of it that is centered around coolness, irony, aloofness and mockery.

And some people -- like me -- can't stomach that stuff. So we're praying for a future time when one CAN say, "I love you" and mean exactly that.

I'm not a big fan of B sci-fi movies, and I'm also not a big fan of Mystery Science Theatre. But what separates me from my peers is the fact that if I HAD to choose, I would pick the bad sci-fi movie WITHOUT the po-mo layering. I would rather confront it as-is, with all of it's naive hokeyness, than remove myself from it. (Please, I'm not saying that people unlike me are bad, wrong or stupid -- I'm just explaining my particular aesthetic.)
posted by grumblebee at 10:32 AM on July 27, 2006

Modernism was basically anti-Romanticism. Postmodernism is, at its core, anti-Modernism. Therefore, the next movement will likely be anti-Postmodernism. Think about what you dislike about Postmodernism, and then think of how people might react against it -- and then I think you'll find that people are already doing it.
posted by reklaw at 10:59 AM on July 27, 2006 [1 favorite]

You might be interested in Stuckism.
posted by reklaw at 11:06 AM on July 27, 2006

I think one of the problems with conceptualizing the narrative of culturally symptomatic events/theories/lenses in a society, in comparison to postmodernism, is the paradox that postmodernism reflects upon, in doing so.

Postmodernism is supposed to be a schism towards the generally accepted historical progression of trends (a la civilization's march towards modernism, it's ultimate failure to materialize a la Nietzche/WWII Nazism and this limboesque description in postmodernism).

Postmodernism does not ascribe to this type of linear western progression, but it is part of it nevertheless (if that makes sense, in a paradoxical sense?)

Postmodernism ascribes to being a trump card, a final, an unsurmountable essence (e.g. terrorism's growth off of conventional warfare, the deconstruction of western philosophy etc...). However, clearly these ideas, as the DFW post alludes to (albeit in a larger scope than sheerly literary endeavors) are more tangible in theory than in practice.

Terrorism perhaps will quake western civilization into shit, but I think that good old fashion military force might not take kindly to that. Poststructuralist thoughts of Derrida might collapse academic institutions into post-cynic and nihilistic chaos, but it probably wont.

Why you ask? It really comes down to money, in my opinion. Our society's conventions are still regulated by antiuqated capitalist conventions, never really toppled by marxism or socialism. Our thought processes are still guided by basic human instincts towards pseudo-stability, reproduction, family, purpose. Capitalism has been a very successful meta-structure for facilitating this and postmodernism has had a hard time really chipping away at it.

What is beyond post-modernism? In my opinion, if we "move past" such a fractured and splintered archetype, it will be a result of its success (lifestyle, ecosystem, consumerism, terrorism, economics) in that if the global confluences that embody postmodernism are defeated, it will be a lump in our western progressive narrative. If they succeed, then our world will be turned around, probably in a vastly jarring but cyclical nature.

My 2 cents
posted by stratastar at 11:22 AM on July 27, 2006

it'll become clear only after it's already started losing impetus

I guess that's the question. I was under the impression that this was already underway with postmodernism, but it sounds like there are no solid candidates yet for its replacement. The links that Iridic and reklaw posted were interesting, but Narratology looks like the same hodgepodge of different ideas that anti-postmodernists clung to while I was in school, and Stuckism looks strictly reactionary. Is this all we have? (please correct me if I missed something, this is based on a quick scan of the links)
posted by rottytooth at 12:40 PM on July 27, 2006

What is beyond post-modernism? In my opinion, if we "move past" such a fractured and splintered archetype, it will be a result of its success (lifestyle, ecosystem, consumerism, terrorism, economics) in that if the global confluences that embody postmodernism are defeated, it will be a lump in our western progressive narrative. If they succeed, then our world will be turned around, probably in a vastly jarring but cyclical nature.

Example A of why postmodernism is laughable: it's disconnect from the practice of the everyday.


emotion is beginning to matter more than intellectual analysis

So you want to get rid of science too? Fucking theory of gravity, I never trusted it anyway. Onward to intelligent falling, people!
posted by The Michael The at 12:53 PM on July 27, 2006

Grammarians: please replace "it's" in my second paragraph with "its." Thank you, that is all.
posted by The Michael The at 12:54 PM on July 27, 2006

it'll become clear only after it's already started losing impetus

We're basically talking about "epistemes," a notion thought up by Michel Foucault. He was himself somewhat of a postmodernist, so you could see this as pomo's self-reflexive realization that it won't be current forever. However, episteme goes to the heart of human thought and is talking in far broader terms than a relentless march of critical theory frameworks. One of their traits, however, is that it's impossible to concieve of future epistemes since they must already be active on a huge scale (reworking discourse, meaning) to be observed.

In other words, we won't know until it is possible to know.

(personally, I'm hoping for quasi-irony. Inauthenticity without the guilt!)
posted by cowbellemoo at 1:13 PM on July 27, 2006

people are tired of pretentious assholes telling them what to think and want to go back to something simpler, instinctive and genuine. emotion is beginning to matter more than intellectual analysis.

But emotions are painstakingly constructed social actions.

Modernism was basically anti-Romanticism. Postmodernism is, at its core, anti-Modernism.

reklaw is on to something deep here. Postmodernism basically carried forward the Enlightenment project of "modernising" the human animal into a rational being after the mid--century revanchist diversion by several competing socially conservative ideologies that fought for supremacy during the Great European Civil War.

Modernism was not without its discontents. During the early part of the 20th Century these neo-Romantics were called various names: fascists, national socialists, and monarchists. They rejected the idea of a rational human being and instead agitated for the creation of a sensational being. These Völkisch tendencies emerged quite strongly during the 1960s and 1970s in the guise of "New Age" spirituality and ethnic politics. The current US fad for "authentic" displays of public emotion and declarations of faith can be seen as a typical expression of a narrative strain within a culture more predisposed than many to Great Awakenings.
posted by meehawl at 1:14 PM on July 27, 2006

I can't see a great deal of difference between modernism and post-modernism. I view the distinction as:

Modernism: "Is there no objective truth? Gaah! *weeps"
Post-modernism: "There is so no objective truth, just ask this imaginary number eight."

The post-modernists have just learnt to live with it.

The pendulum between objectivity and subjectivity goes vaguely like this: The Enlightenment, Romanticism, Realism, Modernism/Post-modernism.

We're due a swing back towards objectivity.
posted by greytape at 1:18 PM on July 27, 2006

Example A of why postmodernism is laughable: it's disconnect from the practice of the everyday.

Grammarians: please replace "it's" in my second paragraph with "its." Thank you, that is all.

A postmodernist would say your text has deconstructed itself...

...Count yourself lucky, then, that I'm an existentialist, and generally agree with the criticism. (Everything deserves a little laughing at).
posted by cowbellemoo at 1:22 PM on July 27, 2006

What came after my stint with postmodernism was a family and a full time job, that is, realism.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 1:34 PM on July 27, 2006

Hey! The pro-emo rant I referenced got deleted. Silently. That is, like, so simulacrously poignant.
posted by meehawl at 1:58 PM on July 27, 2006

"Postmodernists" will never replace postmodernism - it'll be some other group that comes along and displaces them with a better, fuller, richer idea. The world is slowly becoming a richer, more dynamic, more dangerous and more furious place - the perfect conditions for large scale paradigm shifts to take place.

I have no professional or academic experience of critical theory or "lit", but I skirt around your world all the time. A lot of my friends and colleagues are A-list ultra-hard-nosed rational realist analysis guys. Insofar as they (hell, I'll say it, we!) have a lenticular theory of everything, it's a deep belief that what ties history, reality and epistemology together is Technology with a capital T. The story of life, the universe and everything, and our knowledge of it, is the story of technology.

Put simply, what on Earth will postmodernism mean when you have the total output of human literature perma-wired into your brain?
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 2:09 PM on July 27, 2006

The story of life, the universe and everything, and our knowledge of it, is the story of technology.

And here I thought that Life, the Universe, and Everything was the story of Arthur Dent.
posted by Iridic at 2:23 PM on July 27, 2006

More seriously, hoverboards, why and how do you anticipate that technology will trump every other aspect of human experience--culture, society, philosophy, emotion--that literature deals with?
posted by Iridic at 2:26 PM on July 27, 2006

I just want to take issue with the idea that postmodernism=image/coolness/"irony" and whatever else=reality/emotion/whatever (I mean, come on, read a Barthelme story and tell me that it lacks emotion or reality). Irony has been around forever, and just because postmodernists use it doesn't mean it hasn't been done before.
posted by maxreax at 3:12 PM on July 27, 2006

The world is slowly becoming a richer, more dynamic, more dangerous and more furious place

The notion that progress exists, and is framed as is inevitably "further up and further in" is a classic Enlightenment/Modernist notion. I'm personally surprised it survived the Lisbon Quake reasonably intact.

See also: technological determinism, teleology, orthogenesis, intelligent design.
posted by meehawl at 3:49 PM on July 27, 2006

More seriously, hoverboards, why and how do you anticipate that technology will trump every other aspect of human experience--culture, society, philosophy, emotion--that literature deals with?

I don't expect it to, er, trump human experience. I do expect it to radically change the way we experience culture, society, philosophy and emotion. Singularity-worshippers go way too far, but they have the right idea - technology is capable of rendering a way of life incomprehensible to those who lack it.

For my first example: as I understand it, post-modernism is all about reference, so what might post-modernism mean if, for example, the hyperlink structure was part of our very way of knowing, and as apparent and easily accessible as the words themselves?

Greg Egan writes well about such alterations of personhood, in science fiction form, no less!

Ah, though I see you specifically said "human" experience...
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 5:32 PM on July 27, 2006

[what if] the hyperlink structure was part of our very way of knowing, and as apparent and easily accessible as the words themselves

You mean, like Finnegans Wake?
posted by meehawl at 5:51 PM on July 27, 2006

But emotions are painstakingly constructed social actions.

What crap. This is why people with any sense got sick of postmodernism long ago. "Dude, everything's constructed!" is fun for freshman-year bull sessions but gets old remarkably fast, unless of course you can build an academic career repeating it over and over and over in slightly differing contexts.
posted by languagehat at 6:33 PM on July 27, 2006

Ah, though I see you specifically said "human" experience...

Yeah--I'm afraid that that's still what I look for and enjoy in my reading. Maybe that's why I was a little disappointed by Greg Egan's Diaspora, a story about artificial intelligences in the middle-range future. I was all set for an engaging exploration of what it means to exist without the limits of flesh or mortality, but I found that all questions of character took a back-seat to the novel's main conflict: the question of whether or not a fictional physics theory was correct.

There were some interesting Alterations of Personhood on offer, but there was no conflict associated with those transformations. Pretty much the only unusual or problematic choice that any character made was a grieving A.I.'s decision to program religion into his mind. And Egan made it very clear that that this one instance of irrationality in a very rational novel was nothing but a Stupid Mistake.

So I dunno--maybe once I've ascended into the Transhuman Unibrain I won't be able to get enough of Egan. Until then, I'm still a human. Human struggles are still deep enough for me.
posted by Iridic at 6:33 PM on July 27, 2006 [1 favorite]

meehawl: Modernism was not without its discontents. During the early part of the 20th Century these neo-Romantics were called various names: fascists, national socialists, and monarchists. They rejected the idea of a rational human being and instead agitated for the creation of a sensational being.

The "fascists were neo-Romantics" thing certainly has some truth to it, but I think it oversimplifies things- many of those reactionary 20th century movements were staunchly supported by certain circles of Modernism. Futurism, for example, has always struck me as being basically the polar opposite of Romanticism, and yet a lot of the Futurists were enthusiastic supporters of Italian Fascism. Ezra Pound is considered one of the major Modernist poets, and he was certainly pro-Fascist. T.S. Eliot described himself as a monarchist.

Meanwhile, reading the leaflets of the anti-Nazi White Rose group, they seem to be very neo-Romantic to me indeed- a pervasive mystical, non-rationalistic worldview, quotes from Goethe and Novalis, and lines like "a new Europe of the spirit". And yet, they were about as anti-fascist as you could get. I think Romanticism gets more of a bum rap than it deserves, in general, but it wasn't the topic so I won't go on.

As for postmodernism, all I can say is that I hope something does replace it soon, because I'm sick of irony. Unfortunately, I'm afraid pracowity's right. Since all of these movements are reactions against what came before, and part of the premise of postmodernism, as I understand it, is that everything has been done, anything that could replace it would have to both value sincerity and do something entirely new(or else by postmodernist standards it's just a reactionary return to the past, which never tends to go anywhere). I don't see much of anything around now that really seems to fit that bill. It's possible it will indeed be a technological/Transhumanist/Singularity oriented thing, though from my experience with transhumanists in general, I have to say that I hope it isn't.
posted by a louis wain cat at 8:30 PM on July 27, 2006

What crap. This is why people with any sense got sick of postmodernism long ago. "Dude, everything's constructed!" is fun for freshman-year bull sessions but gets old remarkably fast, unless of course you can build an academic career repeating it over and over and over in slightly differing contexts

Of course, but you are somewhat pressing the boundaries of what the theories lay out. An understanding of post-structuralist thought it really all the pomo people are pushing for, even the crazy ones like Baudrillard who will claim that reality is escaping us. Just as the movement is ascribed as reactionary, it's greatest proponents will champion that cause to the death.

Should we discount all of it accordingly? Of course not.

-----------


We're basically talking about "epistemes," a notion thought up by Michel Foucault. He was himself somewhat of a postmodernist, so you could see this as pomo's self-reflexive realization that it won't be current forever.

Although I agree with you, Foucault's theories on epistemes and temporal discontinuities are historically specific, dealing with specific transition periods. His specific qualifications for these epistemes, in their respective periods, makes it rather perilious to ascribe it as an umbrella theory for any transition.

Nevertheless, I've done some scholastic work (with very little support from the academic community) on expanding upon Foucault's theories in a specific temporal lens (the transition from high modernism in art/lit/arch to postmodernism circa 40s-60s).
posted by stratastar at 9:09 PM on July 27, 2006

After postmodernism, the workers will have taken control of the means of production and their theoretical framework will be...I don't know that part, sorry. Very genuine I'm certain.
posted by Aghast. at 10:32 PM on July 27, 2006

You mean, like Finnegans Wake?

I've never read it (like everyone else, I gather...), but I know about it, and the answer is yes! But being like it is not the same as being it. If you want to read Finnegans Wake as sci-fi, that may be useful, but it's not going to fundamentally change anything.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 3:49 AM on July 28, 2006

What crap.

You're pretty emotional there.

Physiological states are biologically inherent in all people. How they are modulated and expressed depends for their normative concordance on similar neurological components (cingulate gyrus, amygdala, hippocampus, olfactory bulbs, and so on) and processing - when these are not present or distorted we get abnormal states and pathologies.

However, how these physiological states are experienced and presented to others depends to a great deal on individual acculturation, societal norms, and media representations. When I want to read about emotions from a strict social constructionist perspective I go to Norbert Elias. When I want to think about them as essential and totalising, I check out Ekman. Both approaches have merits, and demerits.

Do you have anything beyond your argumentum ad populum "Crap!" to add? This is, of course, a very basic and visceral emotion, one that we learn at a very early stage of development and share with many of our poo-flinging primate relatives.
posted by meehawl at 5:46 AM on July 28, 2006

You're pretty emotional there.

If you think calling something crap indicates one is "pretty emotional," no wonder you think emotion is some social construct. You don't understand it at all.

When I want to read about emotions from a strict social constructionist perspective I go to Norbert Elias. When I want to think about them as essential and totalising, I check out Ekman. Both approaches have merits, and demerits.

You sound like someone trying to understand humor by reading Freud. Try telling a joke, or having an actual emotion.
posted by languagehat at 6:57 AM on July 28, 2006

But emotions are painstakingly constructed social actions.

Add me to the "what crap" school. As someone who has studied both history and psychology, I'd say that emotions are very stable across time and culture. Which is why we can understand and be affected by "King Lear" or "The Oresteia."

I don't doubt that culture has some affect on the way we present our emotional responses to others. To see that this is true, you just have to compare the average (lay it on the table) American with the average (reserved) Brit. But the FEELINGS themselves are innate. And even with the cultural baggage added, there are more similarities than differences. Despite growing up in America, I can generally tell when a British man is happy. I can also tell when a Chinese man is happy, sad or scared -- even though I can't speak a work of his language.

And anyway, who cares? What we're talking about here is one's subjective response to literature. I read to affect the way I feel. I may or may not present those feelings to other people. The bottom line is that I read a story, the hero is in peril, and I feel scared for him. And it seems that most other readers of the same story -- throughout time and space -- also feel scared.
posted by grumblebee at 7:01 AM on July 28, 2006

If you think calling something crap indicates one is "pretty emotional

You've never had a monkey fling poo at you then? Or had an infant decide *right* at that moment to void their bowels in your general direction? Or witnessed a blanket protest?

You used a rhetorically disgusting word to attempt to marshal a visceral response within the reader to encourage a positive alignement with your perception of a statement. Attempting to short-circuit an intellectual response by cross-wiring it with an instinctive, physiological response (and one of the few invariant emotions across cultures) is a familar, simple way to actually avoid having to contribute anything substantive or logically refutational. This method has been used throughout history. You're in good company.

You still haven't advanced anything substantive, although you have progressed from ad populum to ad hominem. This is beneath your usual standard of engagement. Maybe you are off your game? Additionally, you failed to recognise a fairly obvious introductory joke, instead dragging Freud's Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious into the "argument". I can't help but think that something significant is going on there.
posted by meehawl at 8:09 AM on July 28, 2006

As someone who has studied both history and psychology, I'd say that emotions are very stable across time and culture.

I do appreciate that point of view, and it is certain that certain specific body states are largely invariant in their expression across time and human physiology. However, the way we act on them or can act on them, our social expression of emotion, varies dramatically across time and space, and is also dependent on our social, ethnic, and class composition. Some emotional states and actions have become largely inaccessible to us today, while other new ones, unavailable to our ancestors, have become quite accessible for many.

I referenced Elias earlier. His Civilising Process explores the issue of ancient versus modern emotional states and expressions in great detail. What we share with our ancestors, what we have lost access to, and what we have gained.

For a different perspective, possibly less optimistic, I'd check out Fromm's Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.

For an interesting perspective on some ancient emotional states that are now completely alien to most of us, check out the description of the state of opsophagoism in Courtesans and Fishcakes. And then tell me that all Hellenistic emotional states are comprehensible to us on gut level, rather than through an intellectual mapping operation.
posted by meehawl at 8:21 AM on July 28, 2006

meehawl, I think we're largely in agreement, and I'm not a big "everything must be 100% on-topic" person, but ARE we still on-topic? Are you saying anything about studying/appreciating literature?

Regarding that, I'm making two claims:

1) Stories can, if you let them, affect your emotions powerfully. Po-mo seems to largely ignore that or despise it. Which, as someone who LOVES having his feelings tweaked, is why I've never liked or connected with Po-mo. I don't get its aloof stance.

2) Despite any cultural/temporal difference, there's a large component of emotion that's stable. Which is why I can read stories from all times and still be affected by them. I suppose it's possible that "Hamlet" affects me differently than it affected the average Elizabethan -- and, if so, that's interesting -- but in the end, I'm still affected by it strongly, even though it was written in a different time, in a different culture.

I'm sure this varies from person to person, but I've NEVER read a story and felt like I couldn't connect to it because of the time period, location or culture. NEVER. Why is that? If I'm unaffected by a story, it's generally because it's poorly constructed.

Here's an example. I don't believe in ghosts. And I REALLY don't believe in them. I'm an uber-skeptic atheist who is sure that there's no afterlife. Yet I'm strongly affected by the ghost scenes in "Hamlet." Why? I'd say it's because they traffic in human psychology, which I CAN connect to.

I also connect with "The Scarlet Letter," even though adultery (in my culture) is no longer shocking. But there are OTHER things that are shocking, so my mind just connects the novel with those. I understand the FEELING of doing something taboo and getting caught doing it. The specifics of the taboo (and the specific reactions to it) don't matter that much -- at least to me.
posted by grumblebee at 10:59 AM on July 28, 2006

Yet I'm strongly affected by the ghost scenes in "Hamlet."

I recall reading a diary entry from a Dutch? visitor to London, describing how much he enjoyed seeing one of the original Hamlet performances, especially the jigs between acts and the jolly big cast jig right at the end.

The emotional content of that play has, I feel, been somewhat re-purposed -- one might even say, modernised --- for future consumption.

IMHO, Hamlet and The Scarlet Letter are quite proto-modern. Go back to something older, like Gilgamesh, or the creation myth of Shangdi or the Gathas hymns, and while I can read translations that are by all accounts quite semantically accurate, the motivations and desires expressed within are very foreign and almost unrecognisable.
posted by meehawl at 8:08 PM on July 28, 2006