David Peckinpaugh ~ "Framing the Postmodern: Language, Culture, Commerce and Consciousness"

In his most recent book "The Lexus and the Olive Tree", foreign affairs correspondent for the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman, states that this "new system of globalization---in which walls between countries, markets and disciplines are increasingly being blown away---constitutes a fundamentally new state of affairs... the only way to see it, understand it and explain it is by... assigning different weights to different perspectives at different times in different situations, but always understanding that it is the interaction of all of them together that is really the defining feature..."

Interaction of difference together: The defining feature of globalization.

Much of the new wave in philosophy and theoretical discourse is concerned with just that: an integrationist view of the world of Self and Other in relation to difference. Thus, there is being birthed this new wave of eco-philosophies, waves of both breadth and depth; where the peaks and valleys, streaming flows and bedrocks of globalizing tendencies are seen to play out across domains once thought to be distinctually alien to each other; where global finance hinges on geopolitical stability and technological innovation; where we cannot thoroughly understand any single feature of the postmodern worldspace apart from the whole field of interactions, i.e., the interactions of the different, together. Meaning, there is an inviolate thread of dependence running throughout this "fundamentally new state of affairs"---and we are quickly becoming aware of this thread of the "all-together different".

This is where the texts presented here both begin and end; texts which can be summed up in two words: It depends. Any question is, by nature, dependent. Any financial gamble or risk is, by nature dependent. Languaged interpretations of the worldspace are, by nature, dependent. Geopolitical stability is, by nature, dependent. Subjectivity is, by nature, dependent. Culture, likewise, is, by nature, dependent. Whatever it is, if it is, simply and unequivocally depends. Hence, the frame is important. And how we frame is important. What follows is just one way of framing the postmodern. Of illumining the intercontextual constitution of language, culture, commerce and consciousness.