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The author of this chapter critiques Oakeshott's view of aesthetics as inconsistent, & despite his focus on the need for playfulness & " 'useless activity" for participation in the conversation of mankind, reveals his true nature as a linguistic realist. Oakeshott's evolution through his early writing on modes ("Experience and its Modes, The Voice of Poetry") leads to the conclusion that, for him, there is no single formula for the aesthetic. Poetry remains ambiguous, paradoxical & (like conversation), plural, yet works to signify or symbolize things in a reasonably objective manner. Although Oakeshott does have some postmodern affiliations, in the arena of declarative discourse he is a linguistic realist. The practical modes of science, history & practice are safe from his demand for nonsymbolic language. The idea that words themselves are unstable would be absurd, & a postmodern view of ordinary language as fiction (Derrida) would be accused of irrelevance. 14 References. J. Harwell

Evidence of two contradictory subcultural responses to the body is presented: the body-modification & adornment practices of modern primitivism, eg, tattooing, piercing, & scarification, & the cyberspace experience of escaping the body. Modern primitivism with its stress on corporeal spiritualism & rituals is in fact a subculture about the body & the discourses of ownership, control, & sensation. This discourse is about the relationship between the body & technology. Similarly, the posthuman cyberpunk culture also deals with this relationship, with the disembodiment, disengagement, & "terminal numbness" in cyberspace. Cyberpunk writing includes descriptions of the aesthetic manipulation of the body, functional alterations of the body, & the melding of human & machine. These contradictory trends reflect the tension between disembodiment & re-embodiment as corporeal strategies. 36 References. M. Pflum