Aesthetic Materialism

  Postmodernism is often presented as a universal condition.  But I want to suggest an unrecognized cultural specificity, that postmodern culture is marked by a certain undeniable Frenchness.  As much as it would attempt to deny any cultural influence, the mark of Frenchness is there.  The trace remains. I'm not writing about postmodern theory here.  I've written elsewhere about Wittgenstein as the most important source of postmodern theory, and he was obviously Austrian-British.  Nor am I particularly talking about postmodern architecture, or postmodern art, or postmodern television, etc., etc..  I'm writing about postmodern culture, in the sense of a set of social relations and practices and institutions based on shared cultural values and narratives.  Culture, in this sense, is a pervasive, yet elusive thing - it is something you feel in your bones.  Postmodern culture has obviously spread through many areas of the world, at least in c...

Oh, so you like to think of yourself as "incredulous" toward metanarratives.  Very well.  But don't think that just because you are incredulous towards a metanarrative that this necessarily means that that metanarrative no longer has any power over you.  Still less does it mean that the reality that the metanarrative describes has no power over you.  Indeed, it may have even more power over you, now that you are unwilling or unable to confront it.