Am I Postmodern?

What does it say about me that I think Stanley Fish makes a whole heckuva lot of sense? This essay is one of many that I've read this election cycle and thought Why doesn't anybody else sound this reasonable? But Fish was always "the bad guy" in my educational circles: that crazy postmodern scholar who denied that a text means what the author intended it to mean.

I should note an exception to that generalization. Dr. Kevin Vanhoozer was always good about not laughing off a position that he and most of the classroom didn't agree with. "I should be careful here; I'm not suggesting that Fish is making a silly argument. . . ."

On the other hand, Dr. Vanhoozer wanted us to spell "postmodern" with a hyphen, which just looks ugly.

To answer my own question (first line of the post), it probably just means that I've learned to think like an academic. I don't mean that in the sense of "I've learned to reason and do research." More in the sense that I've been sensitized to the kinds of arguments that a curious subculture called academia likes to make.

In other news, a coworker (also spelled without a hyphen!) offered to sign his house over to me if I could do twelve pull-ups. I had to give that a shot . . .




Pitiful, isn't it. It's been a long time since I was in the running for a Presidential Fitness Award.