Postmodernism: Sublime, or Over?

is a posting of what was previously a comment. by request. some will have read this already, in which case, surf elsewhere.]

jeffrey, liberation, or a return to ethics, would be fabulous—would that it were so.... and as to your analogy with regard to definitions of beauty and sublime, i *do* have sublimely dark brown eyes....

and lance, with regard to _american book review_, yeah, jeffrey di leo in houston may take it over---if he did it would be in great hands---but i have heard *nothing* to indicate that this deal went through so i hesitate to name names (too late!).

but that's a side bar to jeffrey's interesting nudge. i like lance's seconding nudge to recall that with pomo sublime we

>put forward the unpresentable in presentation itself

terrific!, and just say no to "consensus of taste"; say yes to "openness"—it all sounds lovely. i don't think it's happening much, but it all sounds lovely.

should i say it's not happening much "any more?" are we ("we") going to grapple at some point with the ... consensus ... that pomo has come and gone and we should be investing in something known as "now what"? i love lytotard too and we need to be conscious of such constructs (is there a collapse that needs to happen between “next” and “now”? are we getting too linear?). presenting the unpresentable is certainly my goal, but we're also going to have to strike out a bit on our own. talk about "open"—unknown territory!—or so i HOPE. i feel like i'm seeing a lot of rehash, even DOING a lot of rehash—maybe all of that is even necessary—but what now? what next? beyond? please not between. to think that we are all writing between movements is just too disabling to me.

what comes beyond presenting the unpresentable? of course, some folks are telling me that the logical next step is presenting the presentable. duh. backwards much? where is *forward*? it's like i can't find the gears on the drive shaft. but forward could be too...linear. where is “the third way”? given a choice between forward or backwards, i would like to see what’s behind door # 3.

which door i do not intend to imply would be a hybrid of representation (realism) and nonrepresentation (the meta- stuff lance suggests). not a hybrid---a THIRD WAY.

sorry to get all buddhist on everybody’s asses. i’m not one, really, i just groove on some of the ways pomo can be very zen....

but what do we think? is pomo over, or what?

thanks,

kass