[Buddha-l] Another query

[StormyTet at aol.com]

Hi All,
 
 I am just beginning the process of digesting the  modernist/postmodernist 
debates.  It seems to me that there is some  similarities between postmodern 
thought and Buddhism.  Has this ever been a  topic of scholarly discussion in 
Buddhist academic circles? Any suggestions  where to look?
 
For example, In "Postmodernism and Social Inquiry" edited by David Dickens  
and Andrea Fontana, the author David Ashley, speaks in less-than-glowing terms  
of "Baudrillard's rejection of [...] reason immanent in modernism [as having] 
 more in common with Hindu or Tao mysticism than with Western philosophical  
traditions" (Ashley 1994, p 61). 
 
Also, in an article by Fredric Jameson in "New Left Review" v. 146 p.  53-92, 
Jameson says the following using Munch's 'Scream" as an example of  the 
postmodern condition :
 
"...Expression requires the category of the individual monad, but it also  
shows us the heavy price to be paid for that precondition, dramatizing the  
unhappy paradox that when you constitute your individual subjectivity as a self  
sufficient field and a closed realm in its own right, you thereby also shut  
yourself off from everything else and condemn yourself to the windless  solitude 
of the monad, buried alive and condemned to a prison cell without  egress." 
 
Jameson believes that the postmodern condition has fragmented the  
individual, whereas more radical postmodern thinkers believe that there never  really 
was an individual and that the postmodern age has just revealed the truth  of 
our ephemeral ego nature. What I find interesting about Jameson here is that  I 
think it would be considered doctrinally correct to say, from a Buddhist pov,  
that there is only One Life or one Self that Is (condemned or not)?  Of  
course, Jameson is talking about the individual ego here, but I have also read  
Buddhist's who suggest that the dance of Maya was began in the first place  
because 'nobody likes to eat alone," so to speak.
 

Does anybody have any suggestions as to readings or comments in  re. to these 
ideas?
 
Thanks
Stormy Tetreau
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
" 
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