Quite a while back now I bought Madness and Civilisation. I had never heard of Foucalt, at least not in any context that would have rendered the name memorable. I was browsing the philosophy shelves of my local bookstore; the title was intriguing, and I browsed the first dozen pages or so, and bought the book.
I never got around to reading it.
Two years ago, at a dot-com startup (remember those?), I worked with a guy who said he was a postmodernist. He may actually have been one; I learned quickly that, whatever his qualifications as a postmodern, he had none as a thinker. I got the impression that postmodern was only another fancy way of saying it's all relative anyway, and lost interest in our conversations.
The Raven's entry from last Thursday reminded me of some of this, and of a curious experience of mine late last summer. I bought and read a little British paperback called Teach Yourself Postmodernism.
I bought it on impulse. Everything important I've ever done in my life – both the good and the bad – was done on impulse.
I discovered, to my surprise, that I am postmodern. This is a little like reading your first psychology textbook and discovering that you have all of the symptoms – in rapid succession – of every neurosis in the book. But when I consider that:
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I never did believe in the premises of “modern” thought;
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I've been rejoicing to see those premises collapse in society at large;
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I don't much care what's coming down the pike – almost anything would be better than the bilge we're shaking off our boots today;
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Human language is the slipperiest ooze of name-stuff you could ever imagine, and everything important that any of us might want to say to another is going to be susceptible right off the bat to uncountable interpretations, misinterpretations, and counterinterpretations;
...then it seems as though Foucalt and I might have something to say to each other after all. Yeah, I know he's dead, but in this context that's not really an impediment.
Well, on the other hand, I don't give a rat's ass about academic philosophy. And wouldn't that disqualify me automatically as a postmodern? Aren't those guys all French and hyper-academic and meta-scholarly and full of weasel-words?
Besides, I get a perverse pleasure out of quoting - to my academic acquaintances - from books with titles like Teach Yourself Postmodernism.
Anyway, I finally started to read Madness and Civilization. So far, I'm impressed.
11:57:35 PM 
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