Post-Modern Paper

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This sentence, like post-modernism, can mean anything.  It can mean that to a person outside of this class the sentence has no particular meaning except what is written.  However, to a person in Honors 101, this sentence and the way they interpret it can mean the difference between a good paper and a bad paper.  On the other hand there are people like the author of this paper who think this sentence and the whole post-modern movement mean nothing.  On short this sentence can mean anything, everything, and nothing. 

First of all this sentence could mean anything at all.  In a conversation it could mean that a person is trying to change an awkward subject or break the ice.  This sentence could mean that it is indeed a superfluous set of words that was thrown together in the spur of the moment.  This would be the definition of the sentence that would most relate to post-modernism.  Post-modernism seems to be a movement that was thrown together on the spur of the moment.  The original term was used for a movement within the artistic world, but the meaning now seems to have been discussed in a large group that could not come up with one definition and so compromised and put many of their ideas together and called it a definition. 

According to that definition everything falls under the category of post-modernism.  A piece of art can still be post-modern, but there is also a new dimension to the definition.  Now knowledge, reason and truth can be put under a post-modern microscope and be judged as good or bad according to the people it marginalizes.  Therefore, post-modernism can be the assumption that a friend's shirt looks pretty. A post-modernist would say that is marginalizing the people who may not looks as pretty in the shirt as a friend does and so the statement uttered would not be a truth.  There is no relative truth because while something may be true in relative to something else the truth could marginalize another and so the truth cannot be true at all.  In these terms post-modernism applies to absolutely everything everyone says or does because it may marginalize another person.

Finally the sentence could in fact mean nothing at all.  That is this author's opinion anyway.  This is how she feels about post-modernism too.  In her opinion the people who came up with post-modernism in the first place were merely trying to keep themselves from the truth.  Truth can be relative, subjective, objective, or absolute.  The way post-modernism tries to make these void is bothersome.  The truth cannot be denied simply because it is not advantageous to a group of people.  Going with that as a stipulation then saying that terrorism is bad would not be a truth according to post-modernism because it does not cast terrorist in a fair light.  Rather a post-modern person would have it said that terrorists are merely misguided in their sense of justice, or that terrorists are people who are being used because they are under educated and do not know any better.  While this may be true it does not mean that terrorism is not still bad.  That is why to this author post-modernism means nothing.  It has no place in her mind and she does not accept it as a truth, absolute or otherwise.

"This sentence serves no logical purpose" is a wonderful illustration of post-modernism because it can mean anything, everything and nothing.  It can mean anything to a person who just happens to read it over the shoulder of an honors student who is doing their paper.  It could mean everything to an honors student who is trying his or her best to relate the sentence to the meaning of post-modernism.  Lastly, it can mean nothing at all to anyone.  To further illustrate the point a picture that most resembles this author's definition of the relation between the sentence and post-modernism has been added.

 

 

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This page contains a single entry by published on September 29, 2008 7:53 PM.

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