Showing posts with label Queer Theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Queer Theory. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Timing Is Everything (Missed Connections)










        All of us have probably had occasion to feel or say that “it’sall a matter of timing, ” and fortunately we probably care in unequal degrees aboutthe many things we may have “missed” through our inattention, miscues, missedcues, etc.







Peter Griffin, Example of "Post-Modern Architecture," Zhengzhou Green Fair, China


    I think I missed (am currently missing and will continue to miss) post-modernism.  The only thing the term has ever meant to me(that is to say, the image that forms in my mind whenever I hear it) is ofthe Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan becoming overfull (even after its porcine over-expansion), over-capacity, and artmarketers desperately meeting in secret committees to coin a new term to promote and sell subsequent "art events" and so-called "art developments."  Branding, after all, is everythingthese days.




 

      Today, while engaging in research concerning theweird and deplorable "human microphone" (the people control device/exercise being used atcontemporary political rallies), I learned that I really must have missed "queer theory"  too (although I knew of its existence) because it is apparently in the process of being supplanted by "post-queer theory" (skip to end of linked article).






 

Scully and Mulder.  For some reaon, Mulder is identified in this photo as the "Post-Modern Prometheus." 


        I can survive without regret both of these losses or deficiencies.  Generally I am able, when I need or want to,to understand complicated, even insanely prolix, pieces of literature or technicalwriting, provided their authors are sincerely trying to communicate, are making a palpable effort tomake themselves understood







M.C. Escher, Relativity, 1953.  Modern? Post-Modern? None of the above?  Queer, certainly, and proudly so.


        I cannot accomplish this, however, nor can I abide reading self-involved,neologism and jargon-filled academic or pseudo-academic writing thatclearly seeks to impress, but is nothing more than grotesque and distorted Fun House mirrorfare.

         I sincerely believe that this kindof work is intentionally self-deceptive and that it also seeks to deceive readers based on the authors' contempt, anger and fear.







Post-modern Chinese surgical needles (Actual caption label)








Mrs. Danvers must fit in here somewhere.  The rest is silence, except for:





(Bonzo Dog Band links from Keynsham, 1969)


[Please Note 3 links in Paragraph 3]