post-modernism
aardvarchaeology | July 20, 2017Bob Lind has yet again managed to get the National Heritage Board to abdicate its responsibility at Ales Stenar, a beautiful 7th century AD burial monument near Ystad in southern Sweden. Bob has self-published odd interpretations of the site that have found no traction among professional archaeologists. He has kept vigil at Ales stenar for decades, lecturing to visitors, ranting at the municipal guides and occasionally attacking them. He has a very large sign on site, next to the National Heritage Board's, with permission from the County Archaeologist. My colleague Björn Wallebom has…
aardvarchaeology | June 13, 2016Like Romanticism, Post-Modernism is a poorly defined term that means different things in different contexts. But in academe, pomo can pretty much be equated with relativism. This term also means several different things, but all of them apply to pomo.
The relativism that makes me hostile to pomo is knowledge relativism or epistemological relativism. “All statements of fact are historically and culturally situated and thus meaningless outside a local contemporary sphere”. This stance can be applied to itself and immediately yields absurdity.
The other pomo relativism is aesthetic. “All value…