01
4A - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, January 17, 2002
OP/ED
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GEOFFREY GAGNON
Editor in Chief
MICHAEL GRASS
NICHOLAS WOOMER
Editorial Page Editors
We just never
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Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's
editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not
necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily.
- Jamie Levier, spokesman for the state
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What is Postmodemism?
JOSd WICKERHAM ' THiS swemms WORLD
he kids always
come up to me and
say, "Josh, what is
Postmodernism and why
are you so keen on it?" And
I say sit down, because it's
a long answer.
So sit down. It's time
for a bit of retro insanity,
baby!
First of all, Postmodernism is a moniker for
the historic moment we live in. Yet, despite
your first impulse to label the "post" a prefix
for "Modernism," Postmodernism does not
come after Modernism at all. Mostly, the prob-
lem was that theorists thought the new multi-
centered modes of thought associated with this
way of perceiving would replace Modern dom-
inance quicker than it did. No such luck. We're
still stuck playing monkey games, as Mod-
ernism's cocaine snorting, Jesus worshipping
dynasties lay modern, hierarchical ways of
thinking over the newer distributed power
structures (like the Internet) which by their
very nature dissolve boundaries and present
the possibility for collective uplift into a higher
domain of being.
Crap, I'm tired.
This means the current historical moment is
just as much Modern as it is Postmodern. The
sequential ordering of everyday events in our
chaotic world has been only partially displaced
by the connectivity of electric media. Postmod-
ern enthusiasts want that displacement to go all.
the way.
So the postmodern esthete blurs cause and
effect. Instead of thinking about sequence, the
postmodernist sees simultaneity. Instead of the
active, we have the reactive. Our information
comes in droves. And all of these have been
more or less known since the early days of
media theorist Marshal McLuhan, Andy
Warhol's soup cans and the beehive hairdo.
"The past as prologue is dead," wrote Joan Did-
ion in the tumult of the '60s. The mechanical
meathead mentality has been driven under-
ground and organic technologies ride high in the
cerebral cortex, which we've begun to appreci-
ate once again as our center of being. Despite
the loss of effect that most of us feel living in
the Modern or Postmodern historical moment,
the self is supreme. Centuries of individualism,
driven by phonetic alphabets, omnipresent egos
and the fact that we can never be certain that
another person is having the same experience,
we are having, have landed us here. We used to
be tribal, and now we travel.
In order to understand Postmodernism's
coexistence with Modernism, we must grasp
some definition of Modernity to proceed. Soci-
ologist Anthony Giddens describes Modernity
as the "modes of social life or organization
which emerged in Europe from about the seven-
teenth century onwards and which subsequently
became more or less worldwide in their influ-
ence." Christianity, conquest, science and the
pursuit of external truths have been the hall-
marks of Modernity. Postmodernism decon-
structs them.
Observe this Postmodern pedagogy:
The Romantic period: Here comes the bus.
The Modern period: Look, it's...a bus!
The Postmodern period: "There" "goes"
"the" "bus" "."
We've become bored, knowledgeable of the
fact that as soon as something, in the words of
A. N. Whitehead, takes on "the formality of
actually becoming," it is almost instantaneously
out of our control. Things even more quickly
become tarnished, changed, disintegrated.
Whether it's an idea, the latest weapon, or the
newest fashion, repetition is vogue. Beck had it
right, you know. We live in "some dead world
that looks so new." Quite bogue, if you ask me.
I'd almost rather run naked, but it is cold out-
side.
The second mistake people make with Post-
modernism is to say that it is some kind of phi-
losophy. That's like saying consumerism, yourf
job, your television, or your body is a philoso-
phy. These are not constructs to help us come to
an understanding of the world. They are givens
in this space and time. Postmodernism is about
observable effects. It is a sensibility. You either
are or you ain't. You're either happy with power
structures and being left out of the story, or you
make your own identity.
That's not to say you believe in your own
identity, nor do you believe in the identity that
others have lain upon you. Cognizant of the fact
that our political leaders (student government
prez and vice included) go through "political
makeover" sessions and Hillary Clinton credits
her political success with pantsuits, it's easy to
become cynical. We're asked to believe a lot of
bologna. That's why public relations people are
employed. Postmodernism asks you to decon-
struct these narratives to get at the meat. Trust
me. You'll thank me and your therapist will
thank me!
Postmodernism in the academy can be used
by almost any discipline to describe a variety of
phenomena. My first contact with it came when
I was doing an archaeology field school at a
2,000 year-old American Indian site. At our
lunch breaks, "postmodem archaeologists" (as if .
they exist) would always get a chiding from my
professor and the field assistants. "Postmodern
archaeologists don't care about cataloguing any-
thing. It makes no difference to them if the fire-
cracked rock is found two meters or two
centimeters below the surface. The historical
narrative is dead, they say."
What my professor didn't understand is that
the death of a narrative does not mean the death
of history. Postmodern simply realizes that what
is here and now is all that we really know. To
the extent that we can legitimate our own feel-
ings, we can get beyond the schlock served up
by college graduates who have nothing better
than to make things like Billy Bass, the singing
mounted fish. To the extent that we can put our-
selves forward in the face of uncertainty and
fear, perhaps we'll break from the cycles of late
capitalist pastiche that have come to dominate
our lives.
But I am, as I can only assume you are,
exhausted. We're running out of configurable
material space. Form? Function? What's the dif-
ference any more? If you're exhausted like me,
try to imagine something beyond a postmodern
time and space. Then you'll knowwhat post-
modernism is and why we must press its agenda
to the limit, exhausting - whether in our own
minds, or in our physical realities - all that this
sensibility has to offer. Maybe then we can
move on.
Josh Wickerham can be reached
via e-mail atjwickerh@umich.edu.
Y LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Y VIEWPOINT
Be fair but practic
BY RACHEL ROTH
Apparently I was the victim of racial profiling
because I was stopped in the airport. Young,
white, American girl with dirty-blonde pigtails -
an obvious security threat. I was pulled aside
immediately. They took everything out of my
bag. I shed my jacket, vest, long-sleeved shirt,
sneakers, even socks, and stood barefoot in my T-
shirt and jeans as they banged my shoes, frisked
me and ran a metal wand over my body many
times. There was a conference over whether I
would have to go into another room to take off
my pants because the zipper was activating the
metal wand, but they handed me back my now-
scattered belongings and set me free.
Do I resent it? Well, I would rather not have
to arrive at the airport at 5 a.m. for a 7 a.m. flight,
but you do what you have to. I am not sure if
these checks are the best way of guarding against
terrorism - after all, there were no official secu-
rity breaches on Sept. 11 - but we must try to do
something. If trying harder means being random-
ly chosen to have my shoes checked, so be it. It
does seem a little ridiculous that children, fami-
lies, people in wheelchairs, are stopped, but this
has a good reason. We want to make sure as well
as we possibly can under the circumstances that
no people, regardless of nationality feel threatened
or unwanted by the United States. The only rea-
son that everyone agrees that random checks are
not only acceptable but necessary is for this rea-
son.
It is only natural for people to categorize, to
use facial, linguistic, or ethnic characteristics to
place individuals in groups. Compartmentaliza-
tion is a very human way of thinking. This is nei-
ther always good or always bad. When justice is
nhcr rp , by .a m ivcinn_ ha i er; nil an
evil thing. However, now that we are guarding
our country, we must use every piece of informa-
tion which we have about our would-be attackers
in order to defend ourselves. Meaning that a sin-
gle Arab man traveling alone is naturally more
suspicious than a Dutch child.
A few days ago, a Muslim woman was pulled
aside and made to remove her headscarf. This was
offensive to her modesty. If the soldiers made her
take it off right where she was, then they did
something insensitive. In the case I read about,
however, the woman was'lead into a separate
room, and with only her and another woman in
the room, was asked to remove it. That is much
more appropriate. Ideally, I wish that we could let
her just walk through with no hassle, but it is
important to security that any pocket, cloth fold,
or bag that could conceal a weapon must be
checked.
The same day that this woman was stopped by
the airlines, 75-year old U.S. Rep. John Dingell
(D-Mich.) was also pulled into a separate room
and asked to strip down to his boxers. His artifi-
cial metal hip had set off the detectors.
The point is that America is trying not to hurt
anyone's feelings while still being realistic about
protecting its people. Examining Dingell seems
stupid, yes, but it is America's concession that eth-
nic profiling will be used only when it makes
sense. And in the aftermath of Sept. 11, it often
does. To ignore clues we have about terrorist
identities may preserve our total equality and free-
dom ideologically, but it could be signing our
own death warrant. All the equality in the world is
no good if America can no longer safely exist.
MSA ignored lack of
information
To THE DAILY:
Wednesday's report ("MSA passes resolu-
tion in favor of detained local Muslim leader"
1/16/02) regarding Tuesday Night's Michigan
Student Assembly meeting grossly misrepre-
sented my comments during constituents' time.
Not only was I not the only constituent who
voiced concerns about the wording of the Had-
dad resolution, I clearly stated that I supported
the resolution in principle, but that I could not
support it on the merits because it had some fac-
tual inaccuracies, much like Tomislav Ladika's
report on my comments. Moreover, I thought
the funding was not a necessary component. His
report only gives further evidence to my con-
cern that many students rely on misinformation
and unfortunately do not have the proper facts
to make the decisions the resolution asked the
assembly to make.
I would like to add that I am very proud of
the event the sponsors put together on Wednes-
day night on such short notice. A deep discus-
sion and education on civil liberties is greatly
needed, and they brought in excellent speakers
to do so. I would like to commend the AADC
and the American Civil Liberties Union for their
hard and speedy work on this excellent pro-
gram.
ERIC FELDMAN
LSA Senior
brutal and were holding two evangelical Ameri-
cans for possible execution. Casting aside that
the Sept. 11 attacks were years in their planning,
and granting Woomer's hypothesis that bin
Laden may have been led by reports of a U.S.
resolve to attack Afghanistan to launch his own
strike on the U.S., why would bin Laden, by no
accounts a stupid man, think that "pre-emptive-
ly" striking civilians in the U.S. would do any-
thing but make an imminent attack on
Afghanistan an accelerated certainty?
Second, the only evidence Woomer offers
of prior U.S. knowledge of Sept. 11 is the
strange suppression of evidence resulting from
the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui. Is there any
reason to believe that the evidence in Mous-
saoui"s laptop would have predicted the Sept.
11th attacks, or even evidence that was con-
tained in that laptop would have made any sense
to investigators prior to the attacks?
I understand that there is some credible evi-
dence that the U.S. government may have
known of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
before it occurred. At least the geopolitical
motives of that era are better understood. Surely
Woomer can appreciate the profound internal
shift that would have to occur for most of us to
accept the notion that our own government
would willingly allow the killing of thousands
of its own citizens for murky policy goals that
could theoretically have been achieved at far
less cost and effort. While Woomer may have
already made this internal shift, most of us have
not and we're going to need far more com-
pelling evidence than what he's presented to us
to even consider it.
RAJA RAGHUNATH
Law student
Pregnancy centers.
provide alternative
To THE DAILY:
Th Tlilv A+, l "Tn,,tA o 1e
cumstances, such as being unwed. And yes,
unlike Planned Parenthood they don't tell
women that they need to have an abortion and
ask for $300-$700 as payment. Crisis Pregnan-
cy Center volunteers do whatever is necessary
in order to help their clients through their preg-
nancy and continue emotional, spiritual and
material support well after the baby is born.
What does Planned Parenthood do? After they
sell the vast majority of their clients an abortion
and take their money they tell them to "have a
nice day." They could care less about women.
And by the way hundreds of millions of dollars
go to Planned Parenthood via federal tax dol-
lars, while nothing goes toward crisis pregnancy
centers.
The other main problem that I have with the
Daily's editorial is its claim that by promoting
"Choose Life" license plates the state of Michi-
gan is tacitly opposing abortion. Is the Daily
pro-"choice" or pro-abortion? If you are pro-
choice then it should have no problem with the
new license plates since "choosing life" is cer-
tainly an option that a woman can "choose'
according to the laws of the state. But, of
course, hard core pro- "choice" supporters,
such as theDaily are only for one choice -
abortion. Choosing life is a valid choice and
women who find themselves in difficult circum-
stances do notralways have to kill their unborn
child, however much you and the greedy doc-
tors and their affluent supporters want them to.
ANDREW SHIRVELL
LSA senior
The letter writer is president ofStudents for Life
LETTERS POLICY
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This 'conspiracy'
lacks content
Roth is a member of the Daily's
editorial board. She can be reached via
e-mail at rmroth@umich.edu.
To THE DAILY:
Nick Woomer ("A conspiracy theory worth
discussing," 1/16/02) is suggesting that high-
ranking elements of our government were so