Revealing ‘The Great Amputation’ of Postmodernism’s Triumph
I Wanna Get Anagogical
By Scott Seward Smith
The most important piece of writing of the past decade to me is an article written last year in Modern Age by Ewa Thompson, “The Great Amputation: Language in a Postmodern Era.” It is important because it identifies the key to our modern stupidity.
This stupidity is increasingly irksome in the way that it has seeped into political decisions that affect our lives. Thompson’s discovery is even more profound, however. She explains one of my great frustrations: when we have literally at our fingertips the entire record of the greatest thoughts of human history, why do we not use them to help solve our problems, understand each other better, or merely delight in the play of genius? Why, furthermore, do we in general not contribute to them? Why are we becoming sub-literate? As Thompson writes: “words are losing their power to convince, console, and elicit joy.” As someone who takes literally Faulkner’s injunction that man is immortal because he alone among animals has an inexhaustible voice, the disempowering of the word is a matter of grave significance.
