[Students granted permission to post these as part of the web site.]
"We were volunteers - we could stick with it despite work, etc., because the crux of things we were dealing with were really important to my life. It's a question of finding balance. "
"I felt like PM explores the war between reason and the a/irrational (intuition, etc.) - a struggle that is always close to the surface for me. Intuition is very important and valid - but it doesn't speak as loudly as rationality does. Intuition is not constructed to defend itself, while reason has all kinds of ways to defend itself. So I was searching in our readings for ways to defend the a/irrational. The postmodern readings were somewhat helpful, but the arguments were so cloudy. Nietzsche, however, was more helpful, especially his move away from the dualistic split between reason and poetry. We can see this split and understand the jump - but we tend to still see it in dualistic terms."
"Self vs. other, reason vs. poetry, reason vs. intuition - find the dualisms people are struggling with and include these as examples, themes."
"I came in not knowing what postmodernism was; who are they, what are they saying, what do they want, where do they fit in with what earlier philosophers were saying? What were their arguments against earlier philosophers. It sounded neat - but the more I've seen of it, the less impressed with it I've become - but we shouldn't throw it out the window, either. The kinds of questions - e.g., in Derrida - are important questions, even if I don't necessarily agree with his answers or how he goes about answering them. The process is valuable - deconstruction seems more apparent as a method than earlier philosophical criticism."
All of the Plato stuff was good, especially the speech of Diotima. I'm also clinging to the stuff in pm (Belsey) - breaking away from the idea that meaning is out there and you can label it; rather, that through language we create meaning. Helps break the hierarchy of authority - there's not necessarily one big Truth that a few have access to, but rather a more symbiotic relationship.
Ess described this as "This was a taste, planting some seeds" - it was good to feel that I didn't need to totally figure out pm, Nietzsche, Plato, etc. This was liberating: I could explore ideas without getting frustrated.
More attention to language, including Wittgenstein's idea of language games. As much as I like Plato, he doesn't seem to focus explicitly on the role of language in constructing reality and meaning. Find a good text that would help with this theme - plus Nietzsche's account/s of language.
PM has filtered down into American pop culture - it would be interesting to discern and document these - along with Nietzschean, Platonic images.
Add the interrelation between postmodernism and capitalism: how much are contemporary senses of fragmentation, the voyouristic interest in other people's dirty laundry, etc. a result of pm influence - and how much is pm itself an artifact of the destructive impacts of late capitalism?
Pm and feminism should be made more explicit, perhaps by using the Weedon text.
We liked the interdisciplinarity of it - e.g., Skye's contribution from architecture; it would be good to have all the students contribute from their disciplines. Also add other faculty's views from the faculty summer reading group - e.g., discussion of positivism, quantum theory (Callen) vis-a-vis postmodernism.
Postmodernism sources: Lyotard and Belsey were difficult but good choices - and more time is needed for reading and discussion (rather 1 read/1 discussion).
Postmodernism is still quite foggy - I have a better handle than when we started. But to really know what's at stake and what the questions are takes a lot of study.
(Pm is foggier than Plato for someone already familiar with Plato.)
Recommendation: _What is Postmodernism?_ Gave a more linear/chronological view - More secondary texts would be helpful rather than jumping straight into Lyotard, e.g., McCarthy/Hoy would be better way to start, using pieces of the primary texts.
Really liked the diagrams, other materials prepared for us - geneologies of the people, frameworks for Nietzsche, etc.
Liked reading the things for myself, knowing that I was going to be partly responsible for keeping the discussion going, questions to raise, etc. _before_ I saw the outlines.
Web pages are also helpful for providing outlines: students could go to it when they needed to - but could choose to use it when needed, access it at their own pace. (Reiterated)
Pretty little pictures would be really neat - including diagrams.
Motet was also useful, especially for off-periods (weekends, vacations, etc.). Students _should_ be required to log on and post.
The "m&m" pedagogy is reiterated as a good idea - pm at the beginning, then move to Nietzsche and Plato, then return to to pm. (This leaves open the question as to how much of pm at the beginning: new pm stuff at end or review old?)
I came into it with questions about how to defend the irrational, the spontaneous, etc., which I knew pm to be doing. I think I have a better sense of pm - but I never quite found the defense I was looking for in pm., but rather in Nietzsche.
Time is a factor - perhaps more time with pm would make it possible to better discern such defenses in pm than we were able to do.
Dr. Ess had a strong opinion about postmodernist critiques of Western philosophy. Rather than conceal this, by articulating it early on, it inspired the students to find alternative readings, views which would challenge and contradict Ess's views. This approach should be done for the Honors course as well.