June 9:

"Trance Restoration"

www.box.net/shared/a1441up3t3

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June 4-6:

"Angry Woman Leaves"

www.box.net/shared/4b7lft0sro

Middle-Eastern-tinged swamp funk blues, I suppose. MOTU Ethno and ZebraCM* softsynths front and center. (*Computer Music/Urs Heckman collaborative freebie available with recent edition of CM.)

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May 20: New fragment in process:

"Walking it out"

www.box.net/shared/84a4borc5z

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May 4-5:

Extended but still incomplete version of Malkauns-ish:

www.box.net/shared/967vtgryf5


May 3: latest incarnation:

www.box.net/shared/r96yb57fos

May 2nd-3rd:

newer version of Indian-African piece:

www.box.net/shared/ibpvi14yv3



May 1st: Newer version of Gulf is So Wide:

www.box.net/shared/n0l84x56z8

The instrument that comes in soon after the beginning is the Chinese bowed instrument the erhu, which I love the plaintive quality of. My reason for including it here is very personal.

April 28th: Another new one in process - The Gulf is So Wide:

www.box.net/shared/avodxg7oeo

April 22nd (Every Day is Earth Day):

New tune code-named Beau Soir - inspired by a bunch of DJs at a CD release party at a tea house downtown, especially DJs Aeon, Semira and Longstocking. (Furthur's dubalicious set was good too.) I left before midnight to come home and write this. Saw some good folks again; met some new ones.

Vocal sample is the late Salamat Ali Khan.

www.centerverse.org/fretless...ir224.mp3

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I've begun to be able to make music again.

Started this; it's called "Lost it":

www.centerverse.org/fretless/Lost_it.mp3

The vocal samples in the background are Riffat Sultana. (See the link to my MySpaz page and look in my Top Friends section if you're interested.)

UPDATE (le 9ième avril):

www.centerverse.org/fretless...dev.2.mp3

Further developed. Still need to add some guitar parts. Overall I think it reflects the process (bland word for an ordeal) I went through this winter - especially the tensions, the constant going over and over the same ground, and the increasing noise-to-signal ratio that marred my communications with her. All the crossed signals... If I had it to do over again... But I never will. It's lost.

"Love, love without your wounds closing" - Federico Garcìa Lorca

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April 11th:

Third update now up in my MySpaz player: www.myspace.com/csharporchestra

A vid posted to AlterNet:

www.alternet.org/blogs/video/58284/

He's useful as a barometer of the liberal side of average joe awareness. A bit too much emphasis on Shrub as dimwit and not enough on the machine behind the, ahem, shrubbery, but otherwise...

Oldie but goodie.

blogfiles.wfmu.org/KF/2006/...sener.mov

Man covered in microphones walks into a roomful of speakers.

www.metafilter.com/mefi/50712

Various comments on it here. (Best ones, IMO: "Needs more cowbell"; "'emo art fag contortions.")

In case you're wondering why I had the word in my nick...

courses.nus.edu.sg/course/e...aneur.htm

I was responding to a muso friend's question about music notation software (Finale? Sibelius? freeware?) and I referenced the last thing I had actually printed out as a score, a piece for string orchestra and Oberheim synth that I wrote back in the spring of '92. I'd forgotten how good even my rough all-synth approximation of it was:

www.centerverse.org/fretless...wards.mp3

I've never gotten it played by a real orchestra. (Too many great composers, not enough orchestras, methinks.)

Now that the deadline has passed I can post my final paper for Mo 2 Pomo (my abbreviation) here:

Question: To what extent can we detect the idea (though not the phrase) of postmodernity as incredulity toward metanarratives in Rorty and Derrida?

Jean-François Lyotard characterizes the condition of postmodernity as “incredulity toward metanarratives”, a “metanarrative” being a master history which is the touchstone and ultimate justification for all theory and systems of science, art, moral-political and social structures, or anything else which a group of human beings seeks to explain and justify. I think of this “incredulity” in general as a refusal to subscribe to any totalising theory, any system of thought which purports to explain everything for everybody, everywhere (or at least close to it): any system with claims to universal application to human activity, any system which claims to be grounded in universal truth or truths, and indeed, any system which asserts that such truth exists or can be known by human beings. Such a refusal is evident in the writings of both Richard Rorty and Jacques Derrida. Each has his own way of identifying the problematics of totalising systems, and each has his distinct areas of concern in which he asserts the need to free their discourses of the presumptive grandiosity, the often destructive overreach of the modernist metanarratives against which postmodernity stands. But each has this general stance against metanarratives. Each, in his own way, says: enough – the modern world is littered with the debris left by those who were so sure they knew. Each says: I propose a more skeptical and cautious approach, one which avoids grand conclusions.

For Rorty, the aspect of the modernist metanarrative he finds most problematic is found in the Kantian liberal tradition, in what he refers to as the “realist” stance: the idea that there is a universal reality and a universal truth that is knowable and which would enable anyone possessing knowledge of it to stand outside the constraints of his or her own particular cultural background and come together with others from other cultures in a common, neutral rationalist overlook. This Kantian realist view, in his opinion, assumes that there is something universal in human nature that strives toward rationality, that it will manifest eventually in any and all cultures, regardless of their historical contingencies, and that this rationality forms the culture-transcending, God's-eye-view stance from which all men can understand and reconcile their differences. In his view, the realists take the particulars of European post-Enlightenment history and generalize them outward to all human cultures and assume an overarching history for all humanity that is the story of this drive to rationality – in short, what Lyotard calls a metanarrative. The Kantian metanarrative assumes that all cultures are converging because all are driven by this common impulse toward rationality.

Against this, Rorty propounds a “pragmatist” stance which denies that there can be any higher neutral ground of meta-truth from which people can gaze down upon the particular backgrounds they have transcended. He proposes we recognize that human societies are more likely diverging than converging in their various aspects, and proliferating in their respective developments. A pragmatist accepts that each and every one of us necessarily must be aware of his or her own “ethnocentricity” - that all of our discourse is inescapably shaped by our own particular historical-cultural contingencies. In place of the Kantian-liberal desire for objectivity achieved by universal rationality he proposes solidarity within our own groups as the practical place to begin: solidarity around our own structures of justification, since that is where we actually begin in any case: with those who already have enough beliefs in common with us to make discourse meaningful, for there to be a point in attempting justification. And it is precisely because each of us is inevitably enmeshed in a particular culture in this way that the charge of relativism levelled against Rorty (and other postmodernists) makes no sense: there is no way anyone can have the stance that “it's all good” because of his abandonment of objectivity; only someone with no cultural baggage - could such a human being exist? - could actually think that any culture, any system of belief is as good as any other. The danger is not some nihilistic moral relativism, it is that one can take one's own culture too seriously. Everyone is ethnocentric to begin with, each of us inevitably has a stance, and fruitful dialogue with others is only possible once one recognizes it.

Rorty feels that the neo-Kantian resistance to the abandonment of objectivity, which is behind these charges of relativism, originates in their fear that the liberal values originating in the Enlightenment – values which in large part he shares - would not survive if they weren't grounded in some universal truth about “human nature”, and their fear that the predictive optimism of this Kantian view of human nature would thus prove to be a phantom. (“You mean history isn't headed toward ever greater rationality?! Horrors!”) He thinks these values should be defended for their own sake, and not because they are justified by some grand modernist metanarrative. Otherwise, they really do run the risk of extinction, as they are foisted upon the rest of the world in the presumption of their “objective” superiority and meet the resistance of other traditions: “Who the hell are you to tell us how and why to live?”

Derrida's particular manifestation of a incredulity toward metanarratives is evident in a number of ways; I won't pretend to be aware of or to be able to articulate all of them this early in my acquaintance with his thought. One has to read between the lines a bit more than with Rorty to discern Derrida's revulsion against totalising systems. But two examples stand out for me so far:

First, there is his articulation of a principled leftist stance while distancing himself from the orthodoxy of French Marxism, which, like nearly all if not all forms of Marxism, holds fast to a modernist, totalising conception of history and not merely justifies but excuses the brutal, murderous excesses of Marxism's 20th century manifestations, particularly Stalinism and Maoism, as part of the (Long) March of History. Second, there is Derrida's concept of justice as something that can never be formulaicized, never be reduced to mere legalism. This is of a piece with his concern for the Other, for that of which we cannot conceive, of that which we cannot anticipate, but to which we can only leave ourselves open. This precludes subscribing to grand theories and metanarratives, since by their very nature they presume to be explanatory and predictive. Derrida's stance is profoundly conservative in the sense that it backs away from such arrogance and says hold on, there is a duty to the Other and to the individual which impels us not to reach hasty conclusions, but to remain open, to question everything, via what's termed Deconstruction. One imagines French Communist party members nodding sagely when Mao made his comments about breaking eggs to make an omelette; it's hard to imagine Derrida being anything other than horrified at such an abstracting, dehumanizing sentiment, with his concern for the Abrahamic exception at the heart of the practise of justice. (Would a peasant about to be shot by a Red Guard think “oh, I'm just an egg serving History”?)

===============

Question: What are the differences beween the modern and postmodern relation to the future?

There is a profound difference between the modern and postmodern relations to the future, as exemplified by Kant and Marx on the modernist side and by Lyotard, Foucault, Rorty and Derrida on the postmodernist side (though not all of the latter would accept the postmodern designation per se.) This difference holds despite the differences within each “camp”, which are particularly acute in the case of Kant and Marx. Each camp has significant commonalities which override their particular disagreements.

The modern relation to the future assumes progress, albeit not without setbacks, and so a modernist develops extensive explanations of that in which progress consists. (For Kant, it is the ever greater rationality of human society and thus the ever greater achievement of liberty; for Marx it is the tension of class struggle, primarily economic in nature, moving through various stages.) This process is informed by a conviction that there is some basic motive force driving that progress. (For Kant, that force is the tension between the social and antisocial urges inherent in human nature; for Marx, it's the struggle between labour and capital.) Knowing what that force is and how it operates enables one to predict the eventual outcome of history – to anticipate the future accurately in at least broad outlines. (For Kant, it's the institutionalization of rational endeavours in both science and politics, leading eventually to a peaceful world federation of constitutional states; for Marx, it's the moving through the various stages of capitalism until it destroys itself through its contradictions and a classless society is achieved.) The assumption that the future is predictably progressive is central to modernism.

For the postmodernists, on the other hand, all bets are off. Their incredulity toward metanarratives, toward theories with grand, universal predictive powers, their sensitivity to differences, to exceptions, to plurality and multiculturalism, their re-examinations and deconstruction of the narratives of history, psychology, science, and much else, and their caution in the face of all the destruction that grand metanarratives have visited upon the modern world in the form of socio-political movements that have seized whole countries and started many of the modern era's wars, have caused them to consider the future as open-ended, malleable by us in myriad ways, and thus ultimately unknowable. This is not to say that they are necessarily pessimistic or optimistic about whatever notion of “progress” it may still be useful to hold. It only means that they do not believe in Grand Forces of History, but instead wish to pay attention to a much finer granularity of interacting factors in human societies. They respect the awesome complexity of the world, including all that goes into and has gone into making us as we are now, and they do not presume to understand it to anywhere near the extent that would be required for confident predictions of the future.

Copyright © 2007 by Kai Matthews