Postmodernism: Materialist?

[j laari]

Greetings

Few quickies:

1. Jim asked about 'materialism' in 'postmodernism'. It's a serious
question and should be treated properly. Especially while today some
people are calling Adorno a postmodernist. And whether or not anyone
believes there ever was postmodernism there surely are several
thinkers who has been told to be postmods. It's the English and
North-American publishing industry that almost created postmod in the
1980's.

I'd suggest that there's a person who's been grouped into postmod in
several cases and who was the most important materialist philosopher
of late 20th century. Gilles Deleuze. He surely has sinned but he also
was a knowing, well-read, first-class philosopher. And he was
consistent in trying to tackle the fashionable issues from materialist
standpoint. When I say "a knowing, well-read" I mean that he didn't
confused philosophy to every theoretical discussions; he knew the
phil. tradition very well and was able to discuss with different isms
all the way from phenomenology and kantianism to hegelianism and
heideggerianism.

Be warned: English translations sometimes miss the point, especially
when GD discusses issue tackled by French and German philosophers. For
example issues around phenomenology, existentialism and hermeneutics
have been thought and written originally with these languages,
especially in German, and English translations easily lose the
philological connections between some concepts (that applies to
translations in general, of course, but in the case of Deleuze it
might be more disastrous because sometimes his prose seems to be
nonsensical when the right phil. context can't be seen).

2. Ralph still makes sharp and precise characterisations, provided
that we push him a little. Thanks! I will push him more:

(a) If Marx thought that it's class-based ideologies that provide the
"mental maps" or "conceptual frameworks" - you name it - for us to
sort out all the burning questions and to provide answers to our
questions, then how can our knowledge (also concerning nature) not be
influenced by ideology?

(b) Why should we treat objective knowledge and ideology as
contradictory concepts? - I don't see any necessity for that. I can
think of neutral ideology that's necessary social dimension and
condition for conceptual operations such as knowledge.

3. Then, Lloyd Spencer told that ideologies shouldn't be called
ideologies: "I think it genuinely silly and myopic to think of
Postmodernism as an ideology or school or simply an idea within
philosophy."

I agree that it's hard to think of it as a school, but then again:
also so called analytical philosophy as well as other philosophical
schools deny that they form a school - they think they´re free
individuals and intellectuals and if they happen to share some common
beliefs it's only because these beliefs are reasonable ones and
they're reasonable persons... It's debatable whether there really are
phil. schools anymore but it's quite odd to claim that there aren't
ideology behind the trends of thinking that was called
'postmodernism'.

Is it so that Spencer has progressed into really postmodern thinking:
history has ended and ideology has ceased to be?

I don't value Lyotard much when it comes to substantial phil. issues
(reason for this might be "Libidinal Economy") but I still believe he
had something to say in aesthetics, and I think "The Postmodern
Condition" is a substantial work in sociology of knowledge. We
discussed about it week or two ago with few persons and wondered how
precise his analysis of 1970's was. He was able to track what was
going on. He would have been a great sociologist if he wanted to.

Yours, Jukka L