Mongoose, 9/15

This week’s discussion of Habermas really helped clear some things up for me from the reading. I chose to post about Jenks earlier in the week because I did not feel comfortable writing about Habermas after reading him before class; however, I now feel that I have a firmer grasp on Habermas’ writing than I do of Jenks. After looking at the works of both of these men, I feel that they have two different views on what postmodernism means to them. Habermas feels that postmodernism is ‘anti-modern’, he believes that when moving forward and improving, we are naturally moving away from what made the world ‘modern’. According to him we lose sight of the classic and turn our focus toward the new. Jenks’ view of postmodernism differs quite a bit from the view of Habermas, Jenks seems to have a bit of nostalgia in how he looks at the progression of society. He turns his attention in the direction of the arts and architecture and finds that there is a tendency to hold onto the past when progressing toward the future. Directly opposed to Habermas’ view of postmodernism being ‘anti-modern’, Jenks finds that postmodern art tends to build off of modern or past ideas and apply them to their current projects.
One particular area of Habermas’ writings that caught my attention was his notion of the “cult of the new”; he felt that our culture has an obsession with what is new, as soon as something new comes out, whatever it is improving on or replacing is immediately tossed aside and no longer considered relevant. Not only was this true when Habermas was writing but it remains relevant today. One area where I see this come to light is the ever-improving ipod; it seems as if every time you turn on the TV a new ipod commercial is on with some sort of upgrade to the past model. The original intention of this item was to play music but now also doubles as a phone, video camera, arcade or a DVD player depending on the model you choose to buy. Nowadays, the standard ipod music player is completely outdated and whatever model you buy today will also soon be outdated because we continue to be obsessed with that which is new.