Pop Destroys Postmodernism (but not Postmodernity)

"These are my favorite chords. I know you like them too. When I get a new guitar, you can have this one and sing me a lullaby. Sing me the alphabet. Sing me a story I haven't heard yet."

I have been deeply in love with the Weakerthans, a rock band from Winnipeg, Manitoba,
ever since I first heard a song by them. Almost hyperliterate compared to any of their peers, the Weakerthans’ music is both representative of postmodernity and something wholly other and alternative to it, positing, as the most compelling pomo thinkers have, a new way. Love, community, relationships, thanksgiving, tenderness, a hunger for justice. These things are everywhere in the three albums by the Weakerthans, and are, I think, a more compelling and even more realistic picture of what postmodernity is about than anything that has come from the ivory tower. Pop – and especially that gorgeous, loving type played by the Weakerthans – erases the fundamental disconnect between postmodernity and postmodernism.

To be continued in the next issue of The Other Journal, "Pop Revolutions."