Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 15:58:10 -0500 From: H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers Reply to: H-NET List on German History To: Multiple recipients of list H-GERMAN Subject: Re: Meaning of "Postmodernism" Submitted by: Gerald D. Feldman The comment of Thomas Schmitz saying that he does not know what I had in mind when I referred to the "real world" is answered by himself in his reference to the Weberian and Rankean reasoning to which I confess a very strong attachment. It seems to me that there is nothing whatever in his description of postmodern method that is not adequately dealt with by the methods of Quellenkritik and Begriffsgeschichte. I have always found the methods of the post-modernists very self-serving, that is, methods whereby the trivial can be raised to heights of glory by "decentering" and where one can postulate whatever one wants without much accountability. While it is all great fun to do this on e-mail, I periodically confront young people in the classroom who have to be taught--even at Berkeley--that Berlin does not lie on the sea and have to be told why the Sudentenland is important. I run into slightly more sophisticated problems of the same nature in dealing with graduate students. All that is part of the "real world" I am talking about it. G. Feldman .