“As an orthodox Puritan, Bradstreet could not adumbrate the French symbolists by arguing that her words created meaning; the meaning of the sensible world was in the things of the sensible world themselves. It had been put there by god before all time; it was seen and uttered by the poet. To follow the latter …
And Which Explains Why Some People Still Like Heidegger
“To react against the modern is in many ways to revert to the primitive, the barbaric. The fascism of the 1930s was never a conservative movement (despite Marxist propaganda), but it was a reaction against the objectivity, rationalism, and alienation of the ‘modern world,’ a reaction structurally parallel to that of the postmodernists. Fascism, like …
And In Their Case, Badly Told
“When postmodernists say that life is a story, they do not mean, as the Christians did, that a story can be true; they mean that truth is only a story” (Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times, p. 130).
It’s Just That We Don’t Have a Screen That Big At Home
“Ironically, concerts today usually feature giant video screens so that fans can see the live performance up close by means of TV! Reality and reproduction are thus, in the postmodernist way, hopelessly confused” (Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times, p. 105).
A Local Deal
The Moscow School Board voted yesterday to hold an election in March to increase their supplemental levy by $1.97 million. Now there are a number of questions that normally swirl around levy issues. (Is the money used wisely? Why is MSD more expensive than other districts? Voters who pursue other education options being less inclined …
Art is Whatever an Artist Can Get Away With
“The significance of the work of art often inheres not in the work itself, but in the chutzpah of the artist” (Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times, p. 101).
God’s Own Metaphor
“Puritan poets . . . knew that part of their work in this world was to wean their affections from the unmixed love of it. But they also knew that this world was God’s metaphor for His communicable glories and that another part of their duty was to see and utter that metaphor, to use …
Flat On Purpose
“Whereas modern artists assume that the artist, like all human beings, is a unified personality, postmodernists work from the assumption that self-identity is itself an illusion. Modernists, believing the artist is a unique individual, strive for a unique style. Postmodernists work with a collage of different and often recycled and mass-produced styles. Modernists are ‘deep,’ …
The Hollow People
“Since style, surfaces, and group identity are so important in contemporary life, postmodern society is highly geared towards fashion. The postmodern social scene is preoccupied with what’s ‘in’ and what’s ‘out.’ Being on the cutting edge becomes an obsession. Fashion, of course, must be in a state of constant chance. Otherwise it cannot serve its …
How the Postmodern Giant Cooked and Ate Itself
“The contemporary academic world is busily deconstructing the human. Modernism took as its project the death of God. David Levin shows how postmodernism takes the next step. Keeping the idea that God is dead, postmodernism has as its project the death of the self” (Gene Edward Veith, Postmodern Times, p. 73).