Habermas : Surrealist revolt

The project of modernity remains incomplete, and in the uncertainty of the postmodern age the unity that Habermas seeks shows no signs of being realised. Life is increasingly fragmented, and to many observers the artistic community seems to retreat further into sterile abstraction and pretentious conceptualisation with every 'controversial' exhibition or statement. Lyotard argues that this specialisation proves it is impossible to present a total world view, but other more cynical observers, like the critic Donald Judd feel that "the elaboration of the term 'postmodern' is not due to real change but to naked fashion and the need to cover it with words" [26]. The modernity project is incomplete, and it is hard to see circumstances in which the degree of reunification that Habermas seeks could occur. It is, however, far more comforting to think it possible than to have to concede, with Lyotard, that we have no choice but to theorise our ineffectiveness into a postmodern sublimity and abandon ourselves to an aestheticising of the chaos around us.


http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/show_article.php?aid=84


I am not happy with the modern/post-modern  split - the issue is meta rationality (communicative rationality - communicative disscourse) in the case of Habermas.... the revolt needed to be in tandom with an argument for a more inclusive rationality... was it ? I need to investigate more...