THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF THE POSTMODERN: AN INTRODUCTION
In the life of rhizomes, one thing leads to another as time goes on, in no neat
pattern. After we
declared that there is no "ten commandments of postmodernism," we talked
ourselves into one. It came about because we were frustrated by the attempt to
create a list of critical concepts in postmodern theory. At this writing, that
file is in bad shape. It started with single words. These proliferated and
began to overlap, causing us categorical distress. We decided that sentences
were needed instead of words to itemize the key postmodern critical concepts.
That led to the start of an ESSAY on postmodern concepts. That new start
helped little. An organizing principle cried out for discovery. We set aside
the postmodern distaste for organizing principles and looked around. Browsing
through our "genesis" document, we found the declaration against a "ten command
ments." An idea was born. Off of the shelf came a tattered old Gideon Bible.
Licensed by the spirit of parodic play in the postmodern sensibility under
review, we wrote a new
decalogue for the postmodern. We designed it to provide the seeds of everything that
we can hope to say about postmodern critical theory. From it we hope our
critical theory project will wander as far as its rhizomatic impulse can take
it.
That, at any rate, is the state of developments on this wintry day. Any day is
a good day for rhizomatic nomadry. THE TEN
COMMANDMENTS OF THE POSTMODERN may make good reading as the snow comes
down. And we are expecting them to endure into the season beyond, at least.
14 December 1995
Return to THE PROGRAMME contents page.