A causal relationship from economic and social factors (late capitalism, Empire) to cultural and intellectual ones (the postmodern)

Anderson Joined: 17 Oct 2007 Posts: 6 Location: DC Metro
Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 4:35 pm Post subject: The PoMo issue.

Or set of issues. I think it would be useful to sniff around and in between the following questions, to see where the trails lead:

• What is the postmodern, as a phenomenon, and in terms of what postmodern writers or thinkers may think about it?
• How does the reality of the postmodern condition (if there is such a thing), or the conditions of the postmodern (whatever those may be, if they are) compare to Wilber's interpretation (or polemic) regarding the postmodern?

This is a useful way to frame the issue of what the postmodern may have to offer integral--to figure out what it is (if it is), how it works or is worked upon, how it circulates as a meme, and finally how it arose as a historical phenomenon (that is out of concrete historical phenomena) and to what purpose. And it leads to a bit of speculation that I've been entertaining for a while: is integral, at bottom, a postmodern phenomenon in and of itself? It's not an accident that it arose when it did, where it did (under the same subjective conditions that produced the postmodern). If so, then the hypersensitivity about the postmodern in some integral circles is a bit ironic, or more precisely, anxious. Like a man with a big nose trying to innoculate himself against big-nosedness. (Full disclosure: I have quite a horn on the face of me.)

I think this is an integral way to approach the question of the postmodern, even though it may look a bit reductive, in that I'm positing implicitly a causal relationship from economic and social factors (late capitalism, Empire) to cultural and intellectual ones (the postmodern). I'm not trying to reduce one to the other; I'd like to emphasize that. Instead, I'm trying to get a snapshot of the whole picture all at once, the subjective and the superstructure, &c, and to figure out where the flows go and what regulates them (with "flows" referring specifically here to Deleuze as well as to Roy's Process Model).