Wtf is going on here???
intro to the zine vol. ii
In preparation for our launch party tomorrow, we’re releasing the intro to the zine vol. ii.
RSVP to the party (tomorrow!) here. And click here to order a copy of the zine if you haven’t already done so.
For those of you who have been following us since the beginning, we gotta hand it to you. From our early days on WordPress, to our Patheos era, to the dawn of the pod and Substack, to the first print edition of the zine last summer, we’ve undergone quite the evolution. And unfortunately for you, we haven’t gotten any less weird, esoteric, or niche. Cracks in Postmodernity has managed to continue churning out content that confuses, provokes, enrages, and just when you think you’ve got us figured out, throws you for a loop once again.
Clearly, the content in these pages are not for the faint of heart (seriously, you might just get some time carved off your stint in purgatory if you read it cover to cover). Rather, we hope that what you’ll find in these pages will help you to scavenge a path through the weeds whose mission is to ensnare you on your way through the savagery of our current postmodern jungle, and to get some light cracking through to the dark forest floor on which we must tread.
In a word, this zine is for you searchers. It is for you people who seem to make no sense to anyone…not even to yourself, ridden as you are by complexity and paradoxes. It’s for those who are tired of sincere cringe-posters—whose self-serious, puritanical moral code makes you gag, and whose saccharine sentimentality makes you feel like a prediabetic. But this is also for those who are tired of swallowing the irony pill, startled as you are like a pre-menopausal church lady by the nihilistic shit-posting, uncharitable tomfoolery, and fascist-adjacent musings of those who have already OD-ed on it.
What you hold in your hands is for those who are looking for a refreshing breeze of substance in the desert that is “the scene.” It is especially for the trad queers and queer trads. No, not gays who go to Latin Mass (though they are certainly welcome to read this publication), but those who are queer in the traditional sense of the term, as in “strange,” “odd,” or “slightly ill”...and for those who are trad in the queer sense of the term, as in feening to imbibe the insights offered by those throughout history who–like yourself–desperately desired to know if there is an ultimate point to it all.
It’s for the devout Midwesterner who doesn’t exactly fit in with his old skool family because he rather strike up conversations about Huysmans than Bishop Barron’s latest video. It’s for the M2F who wonders whether the public’s disdain for transracialism is a matter of ethical integrity or cognitive dissonance, as it is for the little twink who thinks Donald Trump is just as skilled a drag queen as RuPaul and Wendy Williams, as well as the grad school dropout who was going to write her dissertation on “Three Theories of Applause: Ratzinger, Warhol, and Gaga.” It’s for the tradwife who is too busy working a full-time job and taking her kids to get hot dogs at Costco after daily Mass to hand make floor-length skirts, and for the chad-dad who is too busy running his small gym and giving free powerlifting coaching sessions to his neighbors to be posting neopagan fodder from an anon account on X. It’s for the literature professor who wonders if a university posting tweets advocating for the oppressed using hashtags du jour counts as progress as much as paying its adjuncts a living wage does, and for the millennial who is adamantly opposed to North American customs like blasting air conditioning and tipping waiters, but is too committed to his family and local community to get an email job and uproot himself to the Mediterranean.
The diversity of our contributors and readership is not the fruit of some training program concocted by bureaucratic elites in some far-away boardroom, but of an ecumenical spirit that seeks to recognize that which we share in common as human beings.
We’ve been accused variously of trying to “appeal to all of [our] bases” and of not taking a definitive stand on hot button issues because we “have no backbone.” Perhaps this may be true…perhaps we are guilty as charged. But perhaps it is also true that the world today is too divided by petty, inconsequential “culture war” battles…with expending energy fixating more on being–in the words of Ms. Lauryn Hill–right (that is, self-righteous…projecting our unresolved Laschian psychological complexes onto others) than on actually being righteous. We are too caught up with problems that have little to do with our concrete, day-to-day affairs…or with the great questions that plague us at the depths of our souls. Meanwhile, hidden power-players continue to reap the benefits of our distraction, taking advantage of the divided masses who waste their time bickering over who’s on the right side of history, rather than confronting the sinister intentions of those whose mission is to “divide and conquer.”
This volume that you are about to (a) skim through (b) read voraciously and savor every word of (c) just look at the pictures in or (d) ostentatiously display on your coffee table to make your guests think you are more cultured than you actually are aims to incite you to think about some deep ish—death, beauty, suffering, evil, love, justice—as well as things as spicy as which perfume will make you feel like a Manhattan debutante, and in which Bushwick bar’s bathroom you can experience both sacred and profane encounters.
As devotees of paradox, it is our aim to make you weep over the follies of being a fallen creature in our pomo world, humbling you to the point of bringing you to your knees begging the Creator for mercy, and ultimately laughing at your vain attempts to “get your life together,” and to rejoice jubilantly with gratitude for the gift of what Brother Cornel West calls the “tragi-comic” nature of your existence.
Forge forward with courage, with liberality of heart, and a little bit of shtoch–as the Ashkenazis might say–as you make your way through these pages. May the vibe continue shifting. May the discourse go meta (minus the Zuck). And may postmodernity continue cracking into a million little specs of diamond dust.
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If you’re new to Cracks in Pomo, check out the About page or read up on our Essentials. Also check out our podcast on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.
