The Death of Postmodernism Part II

I'm more interested in defining the 21st century than in becoming boxed into any of the literary categories of the 20th.

The underground has drawn from many streams, from the oldest sources, but represents in itself a new source of refreshment and sustenance, set apart from the stagnant cesspools of literature now.

Our goal has been not to become the academy but to overturn the academy, along with the moldy premises which define the academy-- to see literature as a living thing which exists in society outside the academy. Maybe, the underground means no more academies.

The literary underground represents roots writing: literature at its beginning. A new beginning. It's grounded writing and has to be based on grounded thinking.

My emphasis on truth and honesty-- my insistence that demi-puppets not be demi-puppets-- has not been for tactical reasons. It's an essential part of the movement we're trying to create. Truth, the search for truth, has to be our fundamental principle. Not tactically, but philosophically. It's fundamental to our battle for groundedness, for sanity, which I fight for and which all of us should fight for, as our culture is swiftly slipping away from it into the solipsistic madness of the mind.

It's what distinguishes us from postmodernists, who beginning with Heidegger, Derrida, and DeMan have embraced belief in the Lie, the philosophy of the Lie, which has continued through to the postmodernists of our own day, who'll be discussed in Part 3 of this essay.