Reading Comprehension for Dummies or: Help a biggirl fight her ignorance

Cafe Society
1

I like to read and I read a lot. When I come across a phrase I don’t understand I can usually figure out the meaning from the context. Usually. But there are some things I just can’t figure out.

Damn-your-eyes– I just read that Bertrand Russell was a damn-your-eyes aristocrat and I have no idea what this means. I’ve seen the phrase “Damn your eyes!” before and I assumed that it meant something like “don’t look at me and see me as I really am” or “you’ve figured me out and I ain’t that good”. Was I close? And if I am what is a “damn-your-eyes aristocrat”?

Pomo– This is a shortened version of “postmodern” except I always thought postmodern was a reaction to modernism in the arts that had a retro feel to it. I’ve been seeing “pomo” used a lot in a vaguely disdainful way: “That restaurant with the pomo mango vinaigrette” or “He’s such a pomo deconstructionalist.” Huh?

Dog in the mangerish– Does this mean “I can’t have it and nobody else can have it either”? That’s what I’ve gotten from the context I’ve seen it used. If so, how did this meaning come about. If not, what in the hell does it mean?

Laughing up one’s sleeve– I’ve seen this so many times I should know what it means, but I don’t. Smirking behind someone’s back? Relishing in someone else’s misfortune?
There, I have exposed a small part of my ignorance. Please help me before I misread again!

2

It’s pretty much the same thing as saying “damn your hide!”

It means that you have something that you don’t necessarily want, but don’t want anyone else to have it.

It’s snickering behind someone’s back.

Don’t feel dumb . . . I read a lot, and I have no idea what “pomo” means, either.

3

Well, I can help with a couple of them:

There is an Aesop’s fable about the Dog in the Manger. The dog wanders into the stable and finds a soft bed of straw in the manger. So he goes to sleep in it, and he’s still there when the Ox comes into the stable for dinner. The dog gets all threatening and hostile toward the ox, who just wants to eat. The ox eventually gives up, and laments about how the creature who couldn’t use the food was so adamant about preventing someone who could from getting a meal. About the way you’ve been interpreting it.

Laughing up one’s sleeve is finding humor in the fact that one is the only one aware of the true significance of a situation (and sometimes benefitting from it), while others are focussing on some irrelevent aspect to derive a meaning or to turn it to their benefit. Sometimes, a character will be laughing up his sleeve, while receiving expressions of sympathy from people over what they see as a bad thing happening to the character, not realizing that he has orchestrated an appearance of disadvantage to himself. So, while he buries his face in his hands in a attitude of despair, he’s not reallyweeping; he’s laughing up his sleeve.

Pomo, I haven’t encountered, and I don’t claim to get.

“Damn your eyes” just strikes me as a generic epithet. Could you perhaps reproduce the paragraph where Bertrand Russell has it applied to him? Context might help.

4

I’d heard it that the straw was not comfortable for the dog, being rather prickly, but he still didn’t want to move so the ox could it.

I always thought “Dog in the Manger” meant, “I don’t want it, but you can’t have it either.”

I have to admit, I never understood “chip on the shoulder” until very recently. I thought your shoulder was actually missing a piece of bone, but I still didn’t understand what that had to do with a pugnacious attitude.

5

I dare you to call it a regular battery. I dare ya.

6

Sad to say, tracer, I’m old enough to know what you’re talking about.

7

“pomo” is indeed “postmodern”, i.e., “we know the rules that dictate the traditional, we just choose to use them ironically”

pomo, because it has that taint of the “aren’t we special”, is often used by people who don’t like it to slam on attempts to be overly sophisticated…

8

From a NYT book review of The Education of John Dewey:

I almost had dog in the manger right. It’s not so much “if I can’t have it you can’t have it either”; it’s more “I have it, I have no use for it but I don’t want you to have it either.”

I’ve seen pomo used most extensively in The Village Voice. But anywhere there is a Arts or Lifestyles section of a newspaper or magazine this word will pop up.

9

Ah. Aahhh!

10

So where does the use come from? I understand its use in context, but where does the phrase “chip on your shoulder” orginate from?

And sadly, I’m old enough to get tracer’s reference, too. :wink:

11

Moe the Bartender: “Pomo. Y’know, weird for the sake of weird.”

12

I saw biggirl’s question on postmodernism and said “Oooo, I know where I can find the answer to that,” and I run off to get my book. When I get back, wordguy has done an excellent job of answering it. Much better than what I found. Sigh.

Since I wasted my time, I’m wasting yours now. From Terry Eagleton Capitalism, modernism and postmodernism .

God, I’m glad I’m done with that class. Sorry to hit you all with that, and no doubt killing the thread.

But, you have to admit it sounds a whole lot like Madonna.

13

Ow. Ow! I think I have injured myself. This isn’t actually English, is it? Right. That must be the problem.

I am going to bed now.

14

A chip on one’s shoulder:
Guys used to (and may still, I don’t know) challenge each other by putting a wood chip on their shoulder and daring the other person to knonk it off, thus signaling that they weren’t afraid to fight. Walking around like you have a chip on your shoulder=looking for a fight.

The pomo mango vinaigrette isn’t a mango vinaigrette with tomatos is it? Pomodoro is tomato in Italian.

15

I understood that. It made perfect sense.

Please shoot me.

16

Imagine several semesters of classes where that is standard discussion. Ugh, the trials of an English major. But finally a chance to use it some. It has been awhile though, so please don’t expect brilliance.

Anyway, wordman did an excellent summary of the idea. However, let me expand just a bit. Ozzy Osbourne and the show The Osbournes are a good example of a “commodity” that is nothing more than a representation of itself. Ozzy once upon a time was a bat-consuming, heavy-metal, sold-my-soul-to-rock-n-roll, singer. He had an image, yes, but he was producing something, ie music. The image of Ozzy was also being sold. His persona as Evil and your Worst Nightmare was a part of the package. Now, how many youths really pay attention to him for his music? Not many I would imagine. They are watching the show because of the former image he had and the image he has now of the stoner buffoon. He is famous now, maybe even more so now, because of the selling of the stoner buffoon image contrasting the Evil image of before. His kids are famous because we simply said they were. They don’t actually “do” anything or “produce” anything, but yet here they are getting far more than their allotted fifteen minutes because we allow them to. Cato Caelin is another example. He still shows up despite not having any noticable talents or skills. Most pop culture and/or kitsch falls into the realm of postmodern. If you have seen the commerical for the Trivial Pursuit 20th Anniversary Edition and the montage of pop culture icons, then you have been beaten with a heck of a big postmodern stick.

This was a rather Marxist spin upon the ideal, Marxist only because it discussed economics and production, not in a pinko-commie way. There are feminist spins which could apply gender and its role in society, deconstructive which could apply a whole lot of nihilism to the arguement, and psychoanalytic approaches as well.

Now aren’t you glad you brought it up?

17

Imagine it? I’m still trying to repress the memories of it.

18

My husband, who had to take many courses in this subject for his Masters in sociology, says that post-modernism is nothing more that what he learned previously about sociology, dressed up in verbiage to make those who study it feel “smart.” According to him, there are no new theories in post-modernism, they’re just phrased differently. He actually resented post-modernism a bit for what he vaguely felt was an effort to make sociology inaccesible to the common man through the use of overly-ornate language. To him, it was the snobbery of the elite, whereas the effort should be to make knowledge accessible to all, instead of intentionally distancing the information through jargon from the “average Joe.”

19

Post-modernism has been rather seriously bastardized in the last couple of decades. It originally had a fairly different, and very specific, meaning.

As you might conclude from the word itself, it was a reaction to “modernism.” This was the school of thought that the modern age, with its technological conveniences and scientific bases, would provide the answer to all the world’s confusions and problems. As one problem after another — splitting the atom, disease-causing germs, and so on — fell before the onslaught of rational inquiry, it became fashionable to predict that this very successful way of thinking would intrude into every aspect of life. We’d come up with “the objectively best” of everything, not just medicine, but architecture, parenting, fashion, a plan for the elimination of poverty, whatever. It’s this mindset that gives us the “Jetsons” future, buildings like the Space Needle, and so on.

But cracks began to show in the 1960s. The nuclear arms race was getting out of control, social unrest was on the rise, people began to wonder if they could really trust the government (to a degree greater than before), quantum mechanics and DNA research was undermining the “solid” foundation of science, etc., etc. The shining future promised by modernism wasn’t materializing, and people began thinking it never would.

Hence, “post-modernism” took root. Originally, and specifically, it was a reaction against the “all our problems are about to be solved” philosophy. In its original incarnation, it asserted that no school of thought had an exclusive claim on truth. Naturally, if you interpret that broadly, you can conclude that there is no truth at all to be found.

Naturally, that created a huge argument, which eventually became what we call “moral relativism” today. “Post-modernism,” for its part, has evolved such that it’s used as a label for a rather different phenomenon, which I summarize as “something that is more about itself than something else.” The film Adaptation, for example, is hugely post-modern under this definition, because its story is about the creation of the screenplay for the movie you’re actually watching, which makes the experience of watching the movie about the experience of watching the movie. In other words, “truth,” such as it is, lies somewhere in an inaccessible center, and only by circling back on yourself and twisting down tightly can you get anywhere near it.

This whole thing was discussed in a thread here about six months ago, but I can’t locate it now.

20

Cervaise, quite wonderful handling of an ugly topic. I bow to your skills.

and

Yes, there is unfortunately a large amount of elitism within the liberal arts community. In their minds the average joe looks upon Warhol’s soup cans or Pollack’s . . . explosions with a distainful attitude of “well my kid can do better and she’s only two.” While our happy intellectual “gets” the message not only within the art but also within The Osbournes our slacked jawed friend also watches. A lot of what is said is just verbal masturbation and a collective pat on each other’s backs. They aren’t so much trying to keep average joe from it, they are just reveling in a collosial inside joke they don’t expect him to get. The mindset is that average joe is content “watching” NASCAR rather than “thinking” about NASCAR. Just a throw back to the Greeks and their philosophers who assumed they were the end all be all because they were thinking and not doing.

Well, there are more things within postmodernism than just sociology. Granted, things such as feminist discourse and Marxism fall well within the purvue of sociology and I concur they really aren’t new, there is also psychology and just plain philosophy. A psychoanalytic approach to a text or artwork can give two different meanings if you approach it from a strict Freudian standpoint or a more gestalt reading. And it’s only been in the last thirty or so years has such interpretations been in vouge. I could really tell the difference between the more “old school” structuralist professors that had been teaching for eons and the freshly minted “postmodern” associate professors that had just started teaching. The old school would not even consider a psychological reading of a text. I’m not saying they were wrong, just from a different time and thought.

Or alternatively there is the Mother of All Postmodern ideas in the philosphy of Deconstruction. I suppose it could be argued that Deconstruction is merely a resurfacing of the Parable of the Cave, but it is a major philosophical idea nonetheless that has changed the readings and interpretations of art and text during the later half of the twentieth century. So maybe it might not be strictly “new,” but then again even back when the Bible was written there was nothing “new under the sun.” Each era thinks they have picked up something new each time, when in reality they are two nearsighted to notice all the fingerprints already on it.