BAKER: Yes. And Honi Haber, in a different way, echoes a sense of dissatisfaction with Lyotard, Rorty, and Foucault. "Bitter" may be too strong a word. But she is sorry they can't give us an acceptable rationale for the political process she wants to find.
CHARLIE: Wait a minute! None of them is DECLARING a feeling of "bitterness." As for Honi, she is in the cold realm of the rational. She clearly stands with her three musketeers. She wants to go beyond them, not reject them. Far from being bitter, she is committed to a postmodern belief. Read her introduction, which very personally presents the faith of a poststructuralist.
ABLE: Leave Honi out of the argument, then. We still have to explain why postmodernists embrace a destructive excess in their expressions.
CHARLIE: It might be more accurate to say they are "cool" rather than "bitter." Are they cynical, rancorous, pained, grieving, regretful? We think not. Maybe they are showing poise in the face of the admittedly novel state of affairs.
BAKER: Yes. The state of affairs is beyond total understanding. No system hands them a full explanation. They feel there is none; indeed, we might even suggest that they would find it morally unacceptable to seek one. That leaves them in a momentary and contingent situation. How can they deal with that? What will get them through? Remember, we insist upon their ability to suffer and their need for comfort. That ability and that need operate even as the hyperreality in which they find themselves advances.
CHARLIE: So they say: "I'll stay cool; I'm going to describe the craziness that I don't understand as a way of dealing with it for now. I'll talk my way into an acceptance of it--or I'll blow it off with a snort."
ABLE: The "bitterness" of the description then may be the "snort" of evaluation.
BAKER: Whatever we call the attitude, we know that we run across a deep unease about the postmodern settlement wherever we read.
CHARLIE: Not so fast. Remember, the shift to a postmodern basis for the public dialogue has in fact led to the empowerment of many who didn't count before, those who used to be at the edges, on the margin. Their move into space where they have some say has caused celebration, not bitterness. They're not even cool about it.
ABLE: This is true. But we need to look further at more creative expression in the postmodern before we put "bitterness" away.