Eve Tushnet<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""'KISS'? WHAT IS 'KISS'?": So today, for the second time in a couple weeks, I came across that definition of postmodernism (Lyotard's?) where it's defined\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2009\/05\/1106.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\""'KISS'? 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{"id":1106,"date":"2009-05-10T02:52:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-10T02:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2009\/05\/1106\/"},"modified":"2009-05-10T02:52:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-10T02:52:00","slug":"1106","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2009\/05\/1106.html","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u201c\u2018KISS\u2019? WHAT IS \u2018KISS\u2019?\u201d<\/strong>: So today, for the second time in a couple weeks, I came across that definition of postmodernism (Lyotard\u2019s?) where it\u2019s defined as the rejection of metanarratives. Here\u2019s why I think that\u2019s unhelpful. These thoughts are even more fragmentary than usual, which I suppose is appropriate\u2026.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m no more interested in a \u201cdefinition\u201d of postmodernism than I am in a definition of conservatism; both terms seem to imply more a tradition of discourse than an orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

And within that tradition of discourse there are authors whose work relies heavily on certain highly-charged terms\u2013words \u201csurcharg\u2019d with wine,\u201d as they say\u2013and if you single out these words as especially important, that implies a metanarrative<\/em>. This is still true even if the author doesn\u2019t attempt to discern or dictate much about the content of that metanarrative. The example I think of is Derrida\u2019s use of \u201cthe other\u201d and \u201cthe avenir<\/em>,\u201d both of which imply, I think, a sort of skeletal Jewish-or-maybe-Christian narrative. (And not, for example, a Platonist one, because of the emphasis on the avenir<\/em>. Some narratives are excluded, which I\u2019m pretty sure you can\u2019t do unless you do have a metanarrative, however parsimonious or covert.) <\/p>\n

There are likely other elements of Derrida\u2019s thought which would conflict with the narrative implied by the other-avenir <\/em>stuff; but it seems to me that you then end up either discerning conflict between narratives, or reconciling them somehow (either of which implies a metanarrative about what constitutes conflict and what constitutes reconciliation). Or, you know, just saying one thing and then saying something else, but at that point you\u2019re just giving up on the self, like when you put your nose right up to a pointillist painting and all the people turn out to be cacophonies of dots; that is certainly one way<\/em> to do postmodernism, but not the only one within this tradition of discourse. And in fact, to my mind it\u2019s the least interesting response to conflicting implied narratives, because it\u2019s the only one where you don\u2019t ever have to change anything at all about yourself. You can just keep \u201cholding Yes and No together in one hand,\u201d in Anne Carson\u2019s terrific phrase, which is the same thing as standing still<\/em>. No choices are required and therefore no sacrifices and no personal transformation. What is the point of a life like that? I mean, I suppose you could be happy<\/em>. If that\u2019s what you really want.<\/p>\n

Back to Derrida and implied narratives, which in turn imply metanarratives. Now, I admit that I\u2019m an extremist here: I think words like \u201cvulture\u201d and \u201csparrow\u201d<\/a> imply a metanarrative. But I don\u2019t think you have to go that <\/em>far (although I wish you would! Didn\u2019t Wilde teach us that we must \u201cgo as far as possible\u201d?) to accept the point that some words which were crucial to actual existing postmodernists do imply metanarratives.<\/p>\n

In fact, I\u2019d argue that the term \u201cpostmodernity\u201d itself, while obviously insufficient and kind of hilariously woozy with indeterminacy, implies a fairly obvious narrative, in which modernity is a thing which it\u2019s important that we\u2019re post-. So by the time you\u2019re pretending to define it, you\u2019re already accepting and\/or creating a metanarrative. (I\u2019m guessing Lyotard, or whoever, knew this and addressed it somehow or decided not to care, so I\u2019m really not addressing him but more his popularizers.)<\/p>\n

And this brings me to John Paul II, whom I consider the greatest postmodernist of the past century, and whose wine-charged word was so often \u201cnuptial\u201d or \u201cgift\u201d or some similar insufficiently-hardcore way of saying \u201ckiss.\u201d Not only in his writings on the \u201ctheology of the body\u201d but also in his writings on faith and reason, and on philosophical practice, he tapped into and further explicated a narrative in which the primary metaphor for our lives is the kiss: both otherness and reconciliation, with neither term conquering the other. So much of his writing is pretty obviously a translation of basic Biblical rhetoric into the new language\/slang\/pidgin of postmodernity.<\/p>\n

My bitter-little-lady thought for the day is to wonder whether existentialist postmodernism is simply Christianity reconceived as intellectual promiscuity: kissing everything in sight in an attempt at self-expression.<\/p>\n

So\u2026 yeah, this was obviously much more of a blog post than a treatise! But then, I reject treatises utterly\u2013if you must write philosophy, write dialogues. My main problem with JPII, on a philosophical level, is that he shoulda just kept writing plays.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"