scurvyfreedman
Distinguished Member
- Joined
- May 5, 2010
- Messages
- 2,820
- Reaction score
- 4,419
Reading meanings into situations that aren't necessarily there.
I don't regard the term postmodern highly, since many phenomenas considered postmodern did exist earlier.
Think about an alien (from space) sitting in a bus full of people. What it sees is just people sitting still.
But in their heads the people go through numerous conversations and battles with their spouses, friends, parents, bosses etc.
None of those are true, since they happen in their heads. The opponent of their arguments are not there to actually give a response. It's in their imagination only.
The sentences in the quotation are just that, no matter how fancy one formulates them. Some wanker just put them in a book and now people think that's actually.. what? Valid?
"In the specific passage I talked about, Miller goes into how slaves made satirical songs during these parades about white masters. They wore certain clothes and kind of danced around, mocking them."
I don't question this, I question the interpretation of this and what will be made out of it. Whatever you make of it, it's usually not true. A bit like arguing with someone in your head just to realize when meeting the very same person that "oh, it wasn't like that".
If the meaning of this kind of conversation is purely artistic by nature, sort of leaning into aestetics, that's fine.
History as a field of study has the same problem; one always misses something, leaves stuff out, interprets, constructs, makes assumptions and whatnot, not least depending of the decade he or she lives in. Even history studies has trends and seasons.
PS: also of course you could read the terms 'signaling', 'identity' and such into the category of postmodern.
Nobody is an expert because non-experts give their opinions frequently on the same subject. - this is flawed.