Reflexive Deconstructivism
rough draft
So we deconstruct the deconstructivists. Our culture has become obsessed with breaking things down to there smallest elements. Consider the critical analysis of linguistics, gender studies, the recent Genome Project, and the Superstring Theory that hypothesizes that tiny vibrating strings make up the quarks that make up the universe.
It is as if the Western world has decided that we cannot build from the rubble and decay of the old until we detach every piece of it, and analyze its worth in terms of color, utility, popularity, size, age, history, connotations, associations...
After the Second World War, to overcome the huge void of loss, people built and rebuilt to create something more than we've ever had before. In the United States, the Baby Boom took place simultaneously with an intense turn towards consumerism. Every family was expected to have a lot of babies and a lot of stuff. It was a swelling of consumption, with a centralized agenda called the American Dream.
Post-modernism was a decentralized reaction to this cultural swelling that had built itself upon a questionable foundation of 19th century values. After the 90's economic bubble burst, it seemed that the American public was more receptive to voices that had previously been margianalized, who proceded to pick apart the swollen culture by elucidating the nature of their marginalization. Values of multiculturalism continue to raise awareness and write scholarly criticism of inherent racism, Orientalism, homophobia, sexism, pollution, and so on. There are institutional critiques of the institution that facilitate them.
More than academia, culture is fragmenting apart. It used to be that a select few were the "taste makers" of society, who decided what was fashionable. Now, as media becomes more ubiquitous and accessable, more individuals can assert their own authority in what to wear, do, read, watch, et al. And it seems the only thing my generation has in common is the aversion to the "main stream".
The great exodus to the suburbs after WW2, facilitated with the advent of the affordable automobile, was part of a great paradigmatic shift towards privatization. As technology adapted to the shift, it became more particularized and adaptable for a unique experience. It has become easier for the individual to situate himself comfortably through choices to be privatized. The individual has a greater ability to filter what they will and will not take part in. The internet is the chiefest in this fragmenting tendency, because it has become the main social arena of the postmodern American culture.
Just as it becomes easier to filter information and refine personal ideologies, it becomes more important to establish those ideologies due to the nature of internet identity. Popular blogging and networking websites ask new users to list their interests in the very first steps. It particularizes advertising and more interestingly, to allow for people to search for other people with their same interests. This asks a potentially dynamic person to confine themselves to an identity of interests and inhibits serendipitous discovery.
Marketing has had to reflect this growing fragmentation, by playing on the endless see-saw of bricolage and counterbricolage. In contrast to the greater particularities, a few large companies are in the process of absorbing all smaller companies, or joining forces. The drive for individualized consumption satisfies itself with the facade of differentiation or has to sacrifice some effort and money of themselves to support the few last bastions of local business.
Politics play the exact same games. Solidarity is no longer possible when authority to have a point of view becomes so easily asserted. The Baby Boomers did not hand down the centralized American Dream to its children. The 20 somethings of the late 1990's and 2000's are cynical and resigned to their fate of debt incurred from a college education that may or may not cover its own cost but is necessary, at least, to survive. The price of higher education keeps rising as jobs are outsourced to developing countries such as India, China, and Mexico.
Interestingly, these countries have a culture that encourages a centralized ideology. The culture of China, for example, encourages the consideration of what is best for all before what is best for the individual. These are the countries whose power is on the rise, as the power of the Western world declines.
as we have talked about a few of these issues already im not sure how much i can offer you. but there are a few things i may be able to give some criticism. firstly, while your opening statement and even the whole work seems more like an epitaph, while there are other areas that are more critical of what you see. im not sure if agree with ure linking of sciences search for the truth of how the world works, i.e. string theory, with the cultural problems set out by post-modern theory.
overall i can see where your taking things, but do be careful about how you talk about china, i think the nature of their ideology is a bit dubious to say the least. although arguably ideologies while they are meant to persuade the many are not lived by all. when it comes down to the line i am really no sure about the actuality of their solidarity, their love for everyone. im pretty sure there are a few sweatshops over there. last time i checked communism didnt really succeed.
so that leads us on to what is the solution. post-modernism offers us nothing, this is why it has a paradoxical nature, as a closet meta-narrative. perhaps you do not wish to pose a answer or even a suggestion of a way of finding the path, but my criticism there would be what is the point in talking about the plight of western civilisation if we are not going to try to save it, or at least preserve it?
the crusades of the 10th and 11 and 12 centuries were basically the period in which the west supplanted the middle east as the leader in culture. up til that point islam had been the most sophisticated civilisation, with baghdad and other cities along the euphrates being the cradle of all civilisation. so the west along with internal factions and the mongols, possibly one of the most savage and merciless peoples of time destroyed islams dominance. it inverted and became particulary literal inist reading of the holy scriptures, thus leading in some respects to the problems we face now.
so we must find a way to co-exist with the emerging power of china and india, both are on the rise fast industrialising, and sure to out compete the old world of the west. but does it have to be this way? whatif our cultures could merge succesfully, use each others talents, trade fairly, and live a bit more happily with a little less war.
i hope this helps -jack patient
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