Dr. Shawver Responds

I can only understand the generosity of these three letters by remembering my own introduction to what I have called postmodern thought. It occurred 35 years ago when sitting in a small undergraduate classroom. I had lifted my hand and asked the innocent question, “What happens to the hole in a donut when we eat the donut?”

My professor delighted in this homey version of a traditional philosophy puzzle (that I suspect he had planted in different terms the day before), and he used it for several classes to guide me (and the class along with me) around the philosophy of later Wittgenstein. I cannot explain his answer in this short space, but suffice it to say that somehow his answer to that question was sufficiently satisfying to me that I spent the next 35 years trying to understand it better.

As I see it, the authors of these three letters are overly generous to me because my paper afforded them a glimpse into these often maligned ideas. I like to imagine these letter-writings feeling as I felt when the teacher used Wittgenstein to explore the hidden confusion in my question, “What happens to the donut hole when you eat the donut?”

Dr. Katz, on the question of whether Horney is postmodern: It makes sense to me to say that she sometimes had postmodern moments. At least that is the way that I read the passages that I quoted in my paper.

Dr. Kramer, I agree that it was important for an introductory postmodern paper like this to try to escape the political language that champions causes. We can't talk about such issues meaningfully unless we calibrate our vocabularies so that we are talking about the same thing.

Dr. Cook, your focus on the importance of vernacular poetry gets us to the heart of this postmodern venture. It is this concept, I believe, that best unravels the blindfold of modernity.

There is so much more in the postmodern literature than my paper discussed. I welcome your presence in this realm as colleagues looking over a treasure that is before all of us. I am