The Rage of The Modern Post

It is annoying to go into a Borders and find only three books of Korean history (and none on literature) in the whole place. I mean.. with all the Koreans in Santa Clara and San Jose? I know I sound like any grumpy old dude (GOD) going into a bookstore and not finding the books that they want, but really? And three rows on American Indians and their nobility and loss? I thought that, as old Winston said, “History is written by the victors.”

Hey.. they lost… we know the history there.

Well, really, we don’t know the history there, because before the White Man landed they didn’t have a freaking history. They had a series of vague stories, most of which focused on how they had been outwitted by coyotes.

Then the White Man came along to demonstrate what a real outwitting (featuring killer technology, literally) looks like. On the plus side, we gave them yellow fever, government cheese, and written language. So they could write all of those histories.

I'm willing to call it a wash and move on...

But 300 years (give or take) of history of failure and they rate about 50 times the bookstore space of a country with a 5,000 year history? All of this rage is only because I know have a paper to present in October and have no idea what this kind of paper looks like or should include. So, instead of Korean History I bought a book on post-modernism. My theory is I will only have about 30 minutes of presentation time at MCAA and therefore if I can loot about 30 “clever’ critical phrases to lard (an appropriate word) into my speech I will come across as au courant, or some other kind of nut.

Imagine my increased rage when I open POSTMODERNISM: OR THE CULTURAL LOGIC OF LATE CAPITALISM (obsessive all-caps theirs) and this is the first sentence:

“It is safest to grasp the concept of the postmodern as an attempt to think the present historically in an age that has forgotten how to think historically in the first place.”

Now that sentence, simple for postmodernism, sucks. It either needs an “of” before “the present” or some explanation of HTF you can think of the present age “historically?” Perhaps my modernism is not ‘post’ enough?

On the other hand I’m still in the introduction and I already have 6 excellent terms to throw into my paper and talk. Some of these are old friends and one is completely new to me:

DOXA (I had to look this one up)

CONSTITUTVE

MIMESIS

UTOPIAN

NON-SPATIALIZED CULTURE

BINARY OPPOSITION

So that’s a start, anyway….