Date: Tue, 10 May 1994 14:14:40 -0700
Sender: pen-l@ecst.csuchico.edu
From: SONDHEIM@newschool.edu
Subject: Re: Politics and Postmodernism
 
I came to this debate late, but there are a number of texts combining
postmodernism and traditional geographis studies that are highly
useful such as David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity, Mike
Davis' City of Quartz, Ed Roha (sp? don't have it on me at the
moment) Postmodern Geography. I would also include Ronell's The
Telphone Book and Mark Poster's The Mode of Information, which takes
off from the mode of production and combines it with postructuralist
thought in a highly Useful way. Another concrete example is Ann
Kaplan's book on MTV, Rocking Around the CLock (? - still at the
computing center) which offers concrete analyses of MTV Culture using
all sorts of postmodern toolkits.
 
I find this work and similar useful for a number of reasons - first,
it embraces the epistemology and psychology (psychoanalytics?) of
telecommunications and their effect; second, it offers analyses of
"nomadic" geographies in the midst of permanent nodes (i.e. think
about Juarez above/beneath bridge traffic); third it correlates
effects of popular culture and its imaginary with concrete social
analysis; fourth, it is useful for considering phenomena such as GIS
(Geographic Imaging Systems), the Internet itself, satellite
location, and the effects of all of this on development/underdevelop-
ment and modern warfare. Certainly there's a vulgar postmodernism,
usually based on a distorted textuality plus art and architecture
styles - all higly problematic; there's also a vulgar marxism, psycho-
analysis, etc. But to "recover" from any one of these areas is to
imply a sort of belief in the first place, nothing more...
Alan Sondheim