{"id":25730,"date":"2020-02-06T08:04:47","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T16:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=25730"},"modified":"2020-02-06T08:04:47","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T16:04:47","slug":"whatever-that-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/whatever-that-means\/","title":{"rendered":"Whatever That Means"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another week, another Canadian!\u00a0 Stephen Hicks, who teaches at Rockford University has put together a dense and highly critiqued tome Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, <\/em>which argues that postmodernism is a rhetorical strategy, created and kept aflame mainly by academics and elites on the far left, in response to the downfall of socialism and communism.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Marx is discussed heavily throughout the piece and, I must say, it has been a long time since I have even thought of the word \u201cproletariat.\u201d[2]<\/a> Though his scholarship is criticized by many, \u201cExplaining Postmodernism<\/em> is full of misreadings, suppositions, rhetorical hyperbole and even flat out factual errors. Moreover, these problems aren\u2019t limited to Hicks\u2019 interpretation of postmodern authors, who are really only the focus of the beginning and end of the book. It extends across much of the modern Western canon,\u201d[3]<\/a> says one review, \u00a0and another completely dismisses his analysis on modern philosophy when Hicks gives this stirring analysis, \u201cWhatever that means,\u201d[4]<\/a> his account on the environment was what drew my eye.<\/p>\n

Hicks writes about the interplay the environment has with both capitalism and socialism, and in particular the Marxist notion \u201cof exploitation and alienation\u201d[5]<\/a> that bears itself out on environmental issues.\u00a0 According to Hicks, in the eyes of the postmodern environmentalist, capitalism became bad because \u201cwealth . . . was no longer good.\u00a0 Living simply, avoiding producing or consuming as much as possible, was the new ideal.\u201d[6]<\/a>\u00a0 Alas, Hicks and the Lord\u2019s prayer are incongruent on this point.<\/p>\n

Numerous scholars from Amy Jill Levine, to Hal Taussig, to David Carr, discuss the line \u201cGive us this day our daily bread\u201d[7]<\/a> found in the Lord\u2019s Prayer to imply that the way Jesus taught us to pray for sustenance and blessings would be proportional to what was physically necessary.\u00a0 In other words, not an overabundance, but \u201cjust the right amount.\u201d\u00a0 This harkens back to the Old Testament story that tells of the miraculous manna from heaven, provided to the recently liberated wandering Hebrew tribe.\u00a0 The Hebrews would find this manna fresh on the ground overnight, gather it up, eat their daily portion, but then any that was saved for the next day would rot and spoil overnight.\u00a0 God knew the people needed food and the food was provided daily, with the only day there was in fact an overabundance being the day before the Sabbath.[8]<\/a>\u00a0 This was intended to work within God\u2019s plan of keeping the Sabbath day holy, allowing the Hebrews the opportunity not to gather manna that day, but instead focus on their relationship with the God who was liberating, protecting, and now feeding them.\u00a0 Therefore, we have two Biblical texts, one from the Exodus, one from the time of Jesus, clearly teaching that living simply and the avoidance of over production or consumption are the best ways to live out one\u2019s faith.\u00a0 Neither text strike me as particularly postmodern.\u00a0 Both arise from societies that were not capitalistic or socialist by any stretch of the imagination.\u00a0 And though we can read later developing economic analysis into the Bible, it is hard to see Jesus as either a capitalist or socialist himself either.<\/p>\n

Of course, the problem with postmodernism is the overall rejection of main, core metanarratives that have tied societies and peoples together over long periods of time.\u00a0 (And in my humble opinion, the best film to exemplify postmodernity cinematically is Memento<\/em>.) This \u201cfragmentation\u201d has created a world in which people often feel out of sync with the sacred rhythms of the earth.\u00a0 Perhaps a return to the divinely intended \u201cdaily bread\u2019 model is exactly how to ground someone in both their faith and their societal role, a person that is important to the whole, and at the same time, beloved, divine, and entirely and supremely unique.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> \u201cStephen Hicks,\u201d Wikipedia<\/em>, accessed February 4, 2020, https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stephen_Hicks<\/a><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> The word is used 32 times throughout the piece!<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Matt McManus, \u201cA Review of Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks,\u201d Areo<\/em>, accessed February 4, 2020, https:\/\/areomagazine.com\/2018\/10\/17\/a-review-of-explaining-postmodernism-by-stephen-hicks\/<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Stephen Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, (<\/em>Tempe: Scholargy Publishing, 2014), 40.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Hicks, Postmodernism<\/em>, 155.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Hicks, Postmodernism<\/em>, 156.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Matthew 6:11.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Exodus 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another week, another Canadian!\u00a0 Stephen Hicks, who teaches at Rockford University has put together a dense and highly critiqued tome Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, which argues that postmodernism is a rhetorical strategy, created and kept aflame mainly by academics and elites on the far left, in response to the downfall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1321,1765,1764,1767,1766],"class_list":["post-25730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp9","tag-explaining-postmodernity","tag-hicks","tag-memento","tag-stephen-hicks","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25730"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25732,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25730\/revisions\/25732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}