So I was reading this book called Making Sense of Media the other day, and stumbled upon an essay called “A Postmodern Perspective on Madonna” by a professor at Amherst. It starts off, “In the works of Madonna, a predominant concept is the concept of textual consciousness. It could be said that the primary theme of the works of Madonna is not, in fact, discourse, but subdiscourse…” I’m reading the article as I usually read things with the word “postmodern” in their title and I’m thinking, hmmm… yeah, I guess I can see that, wait, let me read that one more time, hmmm, maybe once more, yes, I agree with that, what is she saying here? Ok, let’s figure it out. Ohhh, right right right. I get to the end of the article though, and I see I have been completely duped!!! It wasn’t even a real essay. It was written by something called a “Postmodern Generator” which apparently “creates essays that seem, at first glance, reasonable, but turn out to be unintelligible”. So I guess it turns out that what I thought were just incredibly convoluted sentence structure and ideas (a bad habit that all postmodern authors just so happened to have a habit of) is actually a systematic form of backward, unintelligible writing that they are TRYING to achieve! The essay I read is just making fun of the fact that a few philosophers, media theorists, cultural critics, etc. have created such a ridiculous form of writing that a generator can produce a “postmodernist” essay just as easily. Go to http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo and the first thing that pops up will be an essay created by a postmodern generator. Here’s the one I got:

Something that interested me in the hooks essay (ahh, the sweet ease of not having to hit the shift button to type author's names) was her description of the postmodern "condition". hooks describes this condition as "many other groups now shar[ing] with black folks a sense of deep alienation, despair, uncertainty, loss of grounding, even if it is not informed by shared circumstances." Wow. Though a somewhat common description of the plight of "black folk", it's kind of intense to see hooks extend it to all of contemporary culture.

This gets me thinking about postmodernism, its emergence in critical theory, and its roots outside of academia.

In her article “Postmodern Blackness,” bell hooks shows that the largely avant-garde concept of postmodernism is not only interesting in theory, but potentially progressive in application. She refers to its “deconstruction of ‘master’ narratives” (point 9) and its “critique of essentialism…to affirm multiple black identities” (point 11). Stereotypes can be redefined, and marginalized voices can be heard. That is the ideal application of postmodernism.

I wanted to address two ways in which these ideas have impacted me. First of all, I did a research project this summer that involved the creation of an online biography. As my subject, I chose my grandmother, and in my academic analysis of my project, I described the importance of presenting previously silenced perspectives on history. Because she is a Mexican woman who was dealt with stereotypes of gender, religion, etc., her voice is marginalized. In writing this explanation, I had no idea that it connected so directly to the heart of postmodernism, that elusive word that always get tossed around in high circles of culture in the ivory tower of academia. Reading bell hooks’ article has helped me to feel more of a personal connection and interest in this concept. (The online biography of my grandmother is at http://abuelitarosita.com/ and the academic discussion is located under the “Discussion” tab.)