You Should Buy Explaining Postmodernism
My friend Stephen Hicks, a professor of philosophy at Rockford College, has written an outstanding book, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. Steve is an incredibly lucid writer, and has a rare talent for making fordbidding ideas accessible. Steve traces the dismal fortunes of reason from Kant’s Copernican Revolution, through subsequent German philosophy, down to contemporary postmodernism. I especially enjoyed the clear explanation of the famously obscure Heidegger. Steve notes that postmodernism isn’t just nihilist or anti-rationalist, but is uniformly leftist. (If nothing’s true, there is no fact of the matter about the quality of reasons to believe things, and belief is just a commitment backed by power, then it makes just as much sense to be a money-grubbing natural rights minarchist as a turtlenecked chainsmoking Trotskyite.) His account of the way the increasingly evident failures of communism in terms of reason and evidence are tracked by the increasingly extreme postmodern rejection of reason and evidence is utterly compelling, and has influenced my thinking since I Steve first gave a talk on the topic to a student group I ran at Northern Illinois way back in 1997. Anyway, it’s a lovely little book, and if you’ve never been able to make heads or tails of postmodernism, or would just like to get a particularly sharp and fresh take on it, pick up Steve’s book.
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March 31st, 2005 00:28
There’s a lot to criticize about post-modernism but when someone tells you that they enjoyed a clear explanation of Heidegger, then there’s clearly something wrong with the explanation. I got the book this week because of Instapundit’s recommendation and I am very disappointed. There are simply too many gross over simplifications in this text. It name checks all the major continental philosophers, but misunderstands several key ideas. It tries too hard to describe a complex, gray world in black and white. It might make folks who are suspicious of foreign ideas happy, but it doesn’t do an adequate job of explaining the ideas themselves.
March 31st, 2005 03:19
I get the feeling that neither Instapundit nor you Will actually read the book. In instapundit’s case, it is just a great seeming book to recommend. In your case, Will, well, it just feels like communal nepotism. It’s also beyond evident that ‘y’all’ aren’t really doing your homework here (seriously); academia hasn’t been suffering “an increasingly extreme postmodern rejection of reason.” In fact, postmodernism’s “extreme” fringes have been on the decline since the late ’80s. Even Derrida’s recent passing wasn’t all that significant to anyone, really. And since no mention is ever made by Hicks or you of America’s great hope - the burgeoning reconstructive postmodern movement (post-post-modernism, guys?) - is made, it’s proof silly that you guys are just toeing the line. Shame!
Here’s a book you’d be much better of recommending your fine audience: Robert Kegan’s *In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life*
Besides, what’s wrong with a little rejection of reason and evidence. You and Steve seem to regularly participate in that dialectic. Another great overview of where post-modernism is taking us (as opposed to where Objectivism hasn’t): http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptD/part1.cfm/
March 31st, 2005 09:13
Pete, It’s a short book aimed at the intelligent layperson. No doubt he left out some of the infinite nuance the continental tradition. But I think he distills things very well.
Farsam, Chill out, man. Aren’t you getting a degree in that or something? It’s a good book. It is! I agree that it would have been more useful in 1988, but its still useful, logically organized, and a pleasure to read. And I didn’t say that “academia” has been suffering anything. And “integral post-metaphysics” doesn’t look very fresh to me. I mean, I see that according to Wilber, “everybody is right,” so why complain?
March 31st, 2005 10:23
What I’m saying is that ‘everybody is right’ - except for you guys. You guys are the only two guys in the known universe that violate WIlber’s principle of nonexclusion. You should be proud! But serioulsy, yes!
Oh, and I’m not currently pursuing any degrees, but thanks for asking. Not only have I gone post-metaphysical and post-ironical, but transrational, postconventional, synareitic, extra-logical and inter-institutional. Still I’m curious, what’s the word on the street?
Do check out Kegan’s *In Over Our Head* (which I mislinked above). Jean Gebser’s classic magnum *The Ever Present Origin* is a great post-objectivist work to de-program oneself with as well.
Toodles.
March 31st, 2005 10:35
Farsam, The Kegan book looks interesting. I’ll check it out.
March 31st, 2005 10:53
In your case, Will, well, it just feels like communal nepotism.
Isn’t that “cronyism?”
March 31st, 2005 12:53
I haven’t read the book, but the claim that “post-modernism isn’t just nihilist or anti-rationalist, but is uniformly leftist” is plain cartoon. Suspicion of metanarratives isn’t nihilism. Anti-Rationalism isn’t anti-rationalism. And, in its original French context, post-modernism was above all directed against Marxism, which was always the paradigm of a “metanarrative”.
Foucault was fervently anti-Soviet (although naive about China and later Iran) as a result of his experience as a gay man in Poland. Derrida was about as radical as Gerald Dworkin. Lyotard was an ex-Marxist.
Anyway, what does the politics matter? Wittgenstein was the very model of a naive, aristocratic admirer of Stalinism, but that doesn’t seme to bother you.
March 31st, 2005 13:47
Do you mean Gerald or Ronald Dworkin? Who isn’t leftist? Anti-Soviet = not leftist? How about Trostky, was he a leftist? Ex-Marxist =not leftist? How does any of what you said have anything to do with anything I said? If you read Steve’s book, you’ll see that the politics matter because the politics are driving the philosophy. Many postmodernists became anti-Marxists in the sense that they couldn’t be SCIENTIFIC materialists anymore once the norms of science started becoming a problem for the continuing acceptance of their radically collectivist politics. They reaced out to Heidegger, the arch-fascist, because he gave them a way to preserve their commitments in the face of the evidence.
March 31st, 2005 16:26
I don’t read the post-structuralists as saying that there are no distinctions in the quality of reasons to believe things. It’s just that the quality of our reasons has to be judged within an epistemic framework, and we can’t give (non-circular) reasons for the epistemic framework we have.
April 2nd, 2005 11:28
I haven’t read the book, but I like the topic. The most frustrating aspect of post-modernists’ fondness for leftist political sentiments is that it doesn’t follow from their work. Derrida was politically silent until the 1990s, then began inventing exceptions to his prior work in order to be on the Left (”justice cannot be deconstructed” and “we have an ethical obligation to the Other, who is an irreducible singularity”). Old Derrida would have laughed at New Derrida.
Simiarly, Michel Foucault’s statement that he was “firstly a Nietzschean, secondly a Marxist” must have caused him great pains if he ever attempted to resolve the conflicting attitudes.
The only explanation I’ve thus far for why post-structuralists and post-modernists often settle on the Left is from the Big Lebowski - “A nihilist? That must be exhausting.”
(My thesis that leftist tracts are produced by these post-modernists in a gasping moment of weakness reverses the connection between philosophy and politics that Stephen Hicks proposes, so I’ll have to read it to learn more.)
April 3rd, 2005 18:54
German huh? And there, I had blamed it on the Froggies. Maybe its a Franco german product like the EU.
That was a very ugly thought.
April 5th, 2005 01:12
Wait a minute - I thought that some of these big names in theory and postmodernism were some of the few actually rightist academics. Like Heidegger, and Zizek (unless I’m reading him totally wrong). There’s definitely a lot of extreme leftism in the field, but it also seems to include some rightist undertones at times.
April 5th, 2005 04:52
Zizek’s theories could easily be redeployed by the Right, but he himself is definitely on the Left.
Zizek is also a Marx-influenced Lacanian psychoanalyst and cultural critic, not a post-structuralist. He’s written extensively in opposition to some postmodernists/poststructuralists (the most notable being his book criticizing Deleuze and Guattari).
See http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavojzizek.html
April 5th, 2005 12:12
Zizek is always pulling your leg. He was part of some Slovenian liberal movement, until they wouldn’t let him be Interior Minister, but just Minister of Culture. Now he likes to berate New Agey environmentally conscious sensitive identity politics as a betrayal of the revolution, citing Lenin and St. Paul with equal approval.
I read a fair bit (although not as much as he wrote), and I’m convinced his only sincere belief is that dim sum is gross.
April 5th, 2005 13:09
John Holbo is the Zizek-blogger par excellence.
http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/
April 7th, 2005 09:20
I once asked Zizek, after a talk, if he wasn’t really a conservative. At the time he was criticizing Clinton for bombing in Kosovo. He gave me a nasty look and explained that conservatives are knaves who are really fools, and liberals are fools who are really knaves. Or something like that.
April 7th, 2005 09:28
Certainly rightist undertones in the Heideggerian sense, i.e. Nazi. Just look at Telos. The common denominator seems to be disdain for any variety of (classical) liberalism.
April 25th, 2005 19:50
There’s a market niche for someone on the pro-market right to say, “The po-mos were right, but the Austrians beat them to it.” I still maintain that post-structuralism was, in its context, basically a sound reaction to PCF-style Marxism.
April 25th, 2005 23:47
Gareth, Don Lavoie was an Austrian who pretty nearly made that argument. See his Economics and Hermeneutics.
April 26th, 2005 13:11
Don Lavoie’s book Economics and Hermeneutics approaches some Marxist theories, am I right? I haven’t read it but I have heard a tad here and there about it.
April 26th, 2005 16:53
Thanks for the tip. One more for the “to read” list.
June 13th, 2005 23:39
You Should Buy Explaining Postmodernism
You Should Buy Explain…
July 7th, 2005 16:29
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July 26th, 2006 16:15
Forget Zizek
http://zlomislic.blogspot.com/2006/07/to-beyond-lacan-and-zizeks_115383870544492449.html
October 21st, 2007 23:56
NOTE : The following is a fictitious (though it is an appropro portrayal of relativist/postmodernist thinking) story that depicts a young man (age 24) who supports postmodernist/relativist ANTI-philosophy . He is sent back in time from circa 2007 A.D. to 1855 Oneida, New York (by a University sociology department) to engage in discussion with an abolitionist orator. The young man is called in the story : Pomo kid …’pomo’ being an abbreviation for postmodernist . He is sent back into time with a special hidden video and audio device designed to record sound and image of the discussion that he will have with Benjamin Obadiah Whittaker –an abolitionist and former slave, who is scheduled on that June evening to give a speech on the evils of slavery at the Shaker meeting house during a meeting hosted by the Oneida abolitionist society .
The exchange between Pomo Kid and the abolitionist leader is a cautionary tale presented in a format similar to a one-act play designed to reveal the NON-consistent thought and general murkiness of postmodernist/relativist thinking (i.e. sell-out thinking) . It is designed to show the idiocy of the bizarre, postmodernist notion that claims ambivalence is some so-called “humility” . Ambivalence is NOT humility , and using consistent methods of thought is NOT “arrogance” .
PREFACE :Pomo kid has gotten in the time machine and the controls have been set for June 25, 1855 . Since the machine is the first of its kind and time travel with it expected to be slow going on what the scientists back at the lab call it’s “maiden voyage” , Pomo Kid has taken some magazines: the UTNE reader (bought for him by his limosine- liberal parents who read it themselves ) and Relevant Magazine .
Pomo Kid –having a short attention span fostered by years of chronic MTV watching –has also taken a specially made CD player and some CDs to keep him amused. When he gets to 1855 Oneida , New York he discovers that miraculously the CD players and CD’s work –though he has a hard time getting them to work while riding in the time machine. The CD ’s he has taken are as follows : Jewel’s Greatest Hits, a CD by the musical band Toad The Wet Sprocket, a CD by Jimmy Eat World, The Dawson’s Creek t.v. show soundtrack, a CD from the band Barenaked Ladies, and Rumors by Fleetwood Mac (A CD that he borrowed from his parents) , and a CD from a singer named Dan Hasletine .
The time machine soon arrives in a dairy cattle field in 1855 Oneida,
New York . He steps out of the time machine with his CD head set over his ears –and hidden minature camera recording device cocked and disguised as one of his piercings . As he steps out on to the farm field of Ezra Howell Drummond –no person sees the machine land nor him emerge. The dairy cows give him monentary glances of dull suprise and then return to to crunching and grazing down the vast green verdure . He looks at a minature digital map device and proceeds to walk to the shaker meeting house to hear the speech by Obadiah Whittaker .
He arrives on time and sits down . Some of the abolitionists and interested town folks noticed Pomo kid as he arrives and are somewhat baffled by his odd appearance –as his clothes , hairstyle and general demeanor do not look period, but do not approach him . They are more interested in the speech by Mr. Benjamin Whittaker . Benjamin Whittaker presents a cogent and eloquent indictment of the evils of chattel slavery in the antebellum south. He especially highlights the treatment of slave women by slavemasters, overseers, and their cronies and acquaintances who from time to time rape the slave women on the plantations .
Pomo kid allows his CD headspeakers to droop a little so he can hear the speech —and gives a skimming of the main elements . As the speech draws to its close Pomo kid hears the anti-slavery orator sum up the directive set before good citizens everywhere in a way that does NOT mince words .
‘ And so good citizens of Oneida , we can send forth the clear message …both to posterity , to others who have shared and will share the North American continent, and to all nations and every town and village abroad , that we will no longer accept, nor even partially accept, a wicked commerce of bodies and souls that treats marriage and kinship as makeshift gambits in some sordid game , where transgression of the convenants between man and women is done with impunity . We will stand with the men , women, and children who long to have the stability accorded to man and wife by civilized society. We make no caveat to the forces of darkness and depravity that would settle for anything less! ‘
There is a roar of applause and even a few Amens from the audience .
Soon the speech is then over and there is time for handshakes and entreties from the audience .
Pomo Kid then approaches the abolitionist orator .
POMO KID : “Hey Mr.Whiitaker , dude . I, like, enjoyed your speech . I can see that feel quite passionate about racial oppression and all , but there’s some stuff I’d like to discuss with you . I know that slavery is a bad scene and it’s kinda bogus how slaves are treated , but you gotta learn to respect the opinion of those who want to rape their slave women and sell their kids to other plantations too and look at it from their perspective some too . You are like so judgemental, so preachy , dogmatic …so one-sided towards the opinions of those who want to rape slave women, beat them some, and sell their children downriver . It’s like you want to preach instead of discussing…you preach. You got to learn to look at it from other perspectives. What you are doing is the us versus them approach towards people who oppress and exploit slaves . The us versus them approach isn’t good . It’s fanatical to take the us versus them approach . The us versus them way is, like, so yesterday . Everything is connected . it’s all connected. Really the slavowner and the oppressed slaves are really part of the same thing . Making distinctions is so passe /so yesterday . It’s all one . It’s all how you look at it .
You know there’s many sides to every issue. Stuff like slavery is not all black and white there are shades of grey. It’s not totally bad being oppressed as a slave . You got to look at it from other points of view . Learn to accept that problems are part of life…a growing experience . You know, getting raped and being sold away from your family just goes to show that life is give and take . If nobody ever got raped or exploited then you wouldn’t have give and take …and so you wouldn’t have reality ; it would be all idealistic . We can’t have stuff being idealistic all the time. Life is supposed to be a mixture of things . People are a mixture of things. It’s all the duality of man . In the time period I come from, we study deconstructionism and post-structuralism at my college and I’ve been getting into Michel Foucault , and Lyotard, and Richard Rorty. They teach us not to totalize . what your are doing is totalizing …making people out to be villans if they don’t agree with rigid moral constructs . It’s all just language games –the divisions of beliefs that people have . There aren’t any absolute truths …or if there are, there aren’t very many…or we can’t be sure what they are .
You got to learn something Mr.Whittaker: don’t be so single-minded ….
(Pomo kid pauses for an extended period of time and fiddles with his CD player and changes the Jewel CD for a Dawson’s Creek CD . He turns it down slighly so he can somewhat hear Mr . Benjamin Whittaker speak .)
Benjamin Whittaker stares at Pomo Kid with a look of utter incredulity and disgust at the weirdly pusillanimous , and convoluted statements that have poured forth from the young man’s mouth . He then speaks
BENJAMIN WHITTAKER SPEAKS : Young man, I scarcely know where to begin to disabuse you of the false , and weirdly ludicrous statements you have put forth here. You claim I must respect the vile opinions of those who support the exploitation and tyrrany which oppresses persons of African descent–and , moreover, exploits women whose virginity has been taken from them by force! What on earth have such opinions done to merit such respect, or to even almost halfway earn such respect .? Young man I can scarcely help wondering if you have fallen in with revelling hooligans in Manhattan that smoke opium in houses of ill repute and, that such riotous living has altered your febrile brain to such an extent that you find it a habit to talk nonsense . Young man, I do not know where you are from —
(Pomo Kid then interrupts Mr. Whittaker in mid sentence . Pomo kid is, after all, a postmodernist of the MTV generation and considers being fair and waiting till someone is finished talking to be passe and old fashioned communication practice, which he wants nothing to do with . Pomo kid favors a more edgy , open ended approach .)
POMO KID SPEAKS : (Decides to start out with circular thinking ) . Dude, the idea that it’s wrong to rape slave women , or brutally beat and exploit slaves and sell their children away from them …that’s wrong to us , but not to the people who support exploiting and raping slaves… Doing that’s right to them . Morals and truth are relative and subjective. What’s true to you may not be true to them . It’s all just different perspectives. If you go and say that its absolutely wrong for people to exploit and rape their slaves instead of saying that it’s wrong to us, then …you’re like Hitler. Now you probably aren’t familiar with who Hitler is …but in the 20 Century there’s gonna be this guy called Hitler, who takes over and takes away people’s rights. And if you say that some belief is totally wrong and another belief is totally right then you’re like Hitler . Just like these holocaust survivors that the nazis put into concentration camps and came out being all bitter and one sided and preachy and say what Hitler and the nazis did was wrong and don’t respect the nazi point of view a little—well they’re like Hitler too ! Just like a person who always stops a bully from bullying people and won’t look at it from a bully point of view a little…well that makes that kind of one-sided person who is against bullying, a bully too and just as bad as the real bully . Furthermore, just by saying that some belief or practice is wrong— just by verbally calling that belief wrong you violate their right to free expression to say that opposite belief…even without any physical violence against them …without a single shot being fired .
You got to understand also that if somebody says that some belief isn’t absolute , then that right there prooves that it isn’t . Take the proposition that says that 2+2=4 . Well as long as somebody disagrees with the idea that 2+2=4 then that automatically shows that the idea that 2+2=4 isn’t absolute, otherwise every person would have to say they agreed with 2+2 being = 4, otherwise it’s not absolute .
In the time period of history that I come from (which is the late 20 th and early 21 Centuries ) there’s this show called the Real World . Now since television hasn’t been invented yet in 1855, you probably aren’t familar with that word. Television in the time I come from is a lot like what plays are on stages in the time you’re in . Television is kind of like a play —only more fun . So in the time I come from there is a show called ‘The Real World’ …and people on that show sometimes have different beliefs and so they can come together and get real and talk about the issues that bother them . The show teaches people to come out of their comfort zone (Pomo Kid runs through memory banks to come up with more newspeak words and phrases and finds some) and therefore they can have an impactive, impactful affect on each others lives and give each other feedback about what they think. Now the people who are being raped , beaten , or exploited by masters and overseers down on those slave plantations they got to stop being so one-sided and look at from another perspective and come out of their comfort zone and stop portraying rape and exploitation as something totally bad. They can then get together with the slave owners and overseers and tell them about the way they feel and then get the slave owners and overseers to come out of their comfort zone too , and maybe tone down the rape and exploitation a little . That way you don’t have an us versus them .
Some people would say that what I’m saying doesn’t make much sense …that it’s inconsistent /ambivalent thinking (which is another way of saying sell- out thinking ) but I don’t call it selling out . I call it “looking at it from another perspective” . And about the people claiming that postmodernism like I’ve been trying to get you to support, doesn’t make much sense, well it doesn’t have to make sense. Making sense is so passe …so yesterday . Distinctions are just so passe . I don’t bother with rigid distinctions. I ‘ve gotten into a sort of thinking called lateral thinking …that doen’t get all hung up on distinctions . Lateral thinking doesn’t have to always make sense.
You Mr. Whittaker are a linear thinker …that consistent thinking is so out of style….so outmoded . Lateral thinking, that postmodernists such as me go for doesn’t bother with having to make sense …it tolerates ambiguity . You mr. Whittaker are so rigidly consistent /so single-minded …a fanatical ideologue that goes to extremes of consistent thinking. You aren’t conflicted about anything !!!!
In the time period I came from, there was a singer called Moby—who used to be so dogmatic and one-sided about the animal rights cause, but lately he learned not to be so judgemental towards opinions of people who don’t support animal rights . He respects the outlook of the people who are against animal rights now –even though he’s for animal rights .The same flexibility applies to any social cause. After all, a professor I had once in a classroom, quoted the quote, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds” .I’ve learned that selling out is not so bad . ‘
(Pomo kid having temporarily dropped the Dawson’s Creek soundtrack picks it up and puts in the Toad The Wet Sprocket CD . He changes CDs about as quickly as a chain smoker replaces cigarettes)
BENJAMIN WHITTAKER : (Still flabbergasted, begins to speak) ‘Without consistency of thought human affairs descend into meaninglessness….
POMO KID SPEAKS : Not if you think they have meaning for you . You know, by the way, in 1855, the people who exploit and rape slaves are doing what was thought right at the time. We shouldn’t be so chauvanistic as to try to harshly criticize people who own slaves by the morality of later periods. If you say that people who exploit slaves are doing something totally wrong then you’re just as bad as they are . Morality is different from one period to another …some people say that people in different periods might call different actions moral …and it not be a case of inherently different morals …but that’s all the same anyway …since I don’t bother with hair-splitting distinctions like that .
(Pomo Kid’s CD jams and stops playing temporarily. He pauses from speaking and, in so doing, ejects that CD and puts in the machine a CD of music by musician Dan Hasletine) .
BENJAMIN WHITTAKER SPEAKS : How are you so sure that people who exploit slaves are unaware that what they are doing is fully wrong ? (The good abolitionist has managed to put aside being shocked by the weirdly insipid statements presented by Pomo Kid long enough to get the composure to ask him that question .)
POMO KID REPLIES : Well if they thought it was wrong to exploit and mistreat slaves then they wouldn’t do it .
BENJAMIN WHITTAKER SPEAKS : So let me get this straight, young man…you allege that the mere willingness of somebody to do some act is in of itself some ad hoc proof that in every such case they must be sincere in doing so.? Where do you arrive at such a facile conclusion– if that is what you are alleging ?
(Pomo kid, who does not know a specific response to the question that can save face for how facile the previous statement he has just put forth has been…then searches his memory banks for the word he likes to bandie about whenever somebody presents an argument that is elaborate , doesn’t have postmodern cliches, and one which , moreover, he doesn’t want to slow down and bother to analyze . He finds that word …. the word “pseudo-intellectual” which he uses to lambast elaborate arguments from people who refuse to sell out and entertain his lazy mind . )
POMO KID SPEAKS : Dude, I realy don’t have time for pseudo-intellectual questions and statements like you have been making. Mellow out, Dude . You are so single-minded . You just need to get laid .
(Pomo Kid pauses and then speaks again )
POMO KID SPEAKS : You want to know something ? If you judge a belief or lifestyle that somebody supports …that’s the same as judging them, because an emo-singer I like said so, in an interview I read about in Spin magazine . He later said the same stuff about that on a VH-1 documentary . He said that the beliefs a person supports are the person themself —so by judging the belief your judging the person . Beliefs are people . (Pomo Kid gets oddly quiet all of a sudden )
BENJAMIN WHITTAKER THEN ASKS : So to take such preposterously silly statement to its conclusion , do you then allege that if someone no longer believes the beliefs they once supported …they are no longer themselves .?
POMO KID ASKS : Yes , why not say that ?
BENJAMIN WHITTAKER SPEAKS : Well young man, I hope that you will reconsider those murky notions you have given a voice to . Slavery is quite ugly and the others here know that .
(Pomo Kid then takes out the Hasletine CD and puts in a CD of Rumors by Fleetwood Mac in his CD player and adjusts the headset .) .
POMO KID SPEAKS : (Takes on the weirdly petulant snippness that young postmodernists sometimes adopt) ‘You know what dude, you just don’t understand . I’m starting to think that it’s just a waste of time explaining this to you …since you have a close mind. I can see you have a closed mind because you keep having to take everything apart and you keep insisting on consistent distinctions . That’s very anal retentive of you Mr. Whittaker . That’s also a power play on your part . It shows that you have control issues and will not look at anything a different way . You just don’t understand. You got all that deductive reasoning …but that’s a defense mechanism . Since you refuse to come out of your comfort zone and become conflicted about anything there’s probably no point in having a discussion .You just don’t understand …all you want to do is be a true believer and stereotype the lifestyle of other people . So, like WHATEVER , dude …that’s not my problem !
(Pomo Kid then speaks again )
You probably don’t think I identify with oppressed people but I do . My girlfriend and life partner Jasmine and me have gone to a lot of take back the night rallies . We’ve protested date rape on campus. I’ve known oppression and been a victim of oppression myself . The year before last I went to go stay with my aunt Veronica because parents were using their house as a meditation center for married couples and me being kind of high maintence …we figured I’d get in the way and so I went to go live with Veronica . But my aunt is an old school Mennonite –and so she’s like real rigid , dogmatic , and puritanical and so she wouldn’t let me and Jasmine’s ex boyfriend (he’s a real kewl guy who pierced my belly button when we went to Woodstock 94) and her ex boyfiriend ’s cat all get together and have group sex games together in her house . She’s real dogmatic against sex (if you ask me she has some real issues if she’s against group sex games) . Sex is like my identity . Also i understand oppression because people sometimes look at me funny because I have a lot of piercings …so I know what it’s like to be oppressed too . ‘
BENJAMIN WHITTAKER SPOKE : ‘Young man, I pity someone with such a murky , ridiculous attitude as you have . If you excuse me, now myself and the other people here are going to march to the town hall where we will make the protest of slavery public … ‘ (He then turns away and walks toward the others who have gathered at the far door of the Shaker meeting house ) .
POMO KID SPEAKS (Runs up ahead to meet up with them): ‘ So you guys are going to a protest down town. Kewl ! For shizzle …that’s the shiznic ! I’ve been to protests with my girlfriend and our boyfriends …we’ve been to take back the night …and we’ve been to rallies at Lillith Fair too, so I know the routine . I once met Michael Stipe at a protest !
(Mr. Whitakker and the other abolitionists have begun already begun to file out signs en hand . They cast backwards glances of disgust and perplexity at Pomo Kid )
Pomo Kid then runs out after them , “Let’s do it . End oppression now. Oppression is f–ked up . The people united will never be defeated …the people united will never be defeated ! The people united will never be defeated ! ‘
(He then hearing the onset of a track on the CD playing the Fleetwood Mac song ‘ Don’t stop thinking about tommorrow’ then begins to sing in unision to the song —as if it were a marching chant …As he runs out into the starlit roads of 1855 Oneida, New York he soon finds he wishes he had a latte to round out the day)