[FRA:] Marcuse question

[James Rovira]

I should probably spell out how I view the US political landscape.

1. Dominated by the principles of enlightenment liberalism: the autonomous
individual is the primary political unit.
2. "Liberals" and "conservatives" in US politics are both shades of
enlightenment liberalism: leftliberalism and rightliberalism.
3. The political spectrum is not fully represented by leftliberalism or
rightliberalism -- in fact, the image of a "political spectrum" doesn't
quite work.  We need more than a simple linear model to represent different
political views -- at least on two axes, perhaps three.
4. Postmodernism is most intelligibly understood as a critique of
enlightenment liberalism.

You're right that most who self identify as "postmodernists" are "liberals"
in the US political sense.  That's largely because most of what passes for
postmodernism is really very stupid, or because you have to cast your vote
somewhere and people tend to be pragmatists -- vote for the side that will
give you most of what you want for now, happy with it or not.

The following link is an interesting assessment of the relative positions of
postmodernism, the enlightenment project, and humanism from a
neotraditionalist perspective.  The approach is literary-historical.

http://www.newpantagruel.com/2006/01/placing_the_ear.php

Jim Rovira

On 2/21/06, Ralph Dumain <rdumain at igc.org> wrote:
>
> While your response is more intelligible than Fred Welfare's, I'm still
> having trouble making sense out of it.  Is the problem the many meanings
> attaching to the term liberal?  And is not pomo the province of political
> liberals as we term them in the USA?  There's certainly nothing radical
> about pomo.
>
>