Postmodernism

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'''Postmodernism''' is a philosophical, literary, cultural and art movement which developed in the twentieth century. It developed out of philosophical criticisms of [[modernism]] and disillusionment which resulted amongst European philosophers on the [[leftism|political left]] following World War Two and the damage to [[Marxism]] done by the communist governments of Eastern Europe.
 
'''Postmodernism''' is a philosophical, literary, cultural and art movement which developed in the twentieth century. It developed out of philosophical criticisms of [[modernism]] and disillusionment which resulted amongst European philosophers on the [[leftism|political left]] following World War Two and the damage to [[Marxism]] done by the communist governments of Eastern Europe.
  
Contrary to many rationalists' views, postmodernism is not composed entirely of [[bullshit]] — it is a useful critical method to keep on hand when talking about mushy social and artistic things, like most of what humans do that might be called culture. Humans are incredibly full of shit, and postmodernism can be useful. However, it is itself horribly susceptible to bullshit in turn, particularly when overapplied to actual reality.
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Contrary to many rationalists' views, postmodernism is not composed ''entirely'' of [[bullshit]] — it is a useful critical method to keep on hand when talking about mushy social and artistic things, like most of what humans do that might be called "culture". Humans are incredibly full of shit, and postmodernism can be useful. However, it is itself horribly susceptible to bullshit in turn, particularly when overapplied to actual reality.
  
 
==Summary==
 
==Summary==

Revision as of 11:44, 1 December 2010

It's the combination of narcissism and nihilism that really defines postmodernism, and that's another interview for another time, if you're interested in it.
Al Gore
Postmodernism advertises itself as pluralistic, tolerant, and non-dogmatic. In practice it is superficial, fast-forward, deliberately confused, fragmented, media-obsessed, illiterate, fatalistic, uncritical excresence, indifferent to questions of origins, agency, history or causality. It questions nothing of importance and is the perfect expression of a setup that is stupid and dying and wants to take us with it.
John Zerzan

Postmodernism is a philosophical, literary, cultural and art movement which developed in the twentieth century. It developed out of philosophical criticisms of modernism and disillusionment which resulted amongst European philosophers on the political left following World War Two and the damage to Marxism done by the communist governments of Eastern Europe.

Contrary to many rationalists' views, postmodernism is not composed entirely of bullshit — it is a useful critical method to keep on hand when talking about mushy social and artistic things, like most of what humans do that might be called "culture". Humans are incredibly full of shit, and postmodernism can be useful. However, it is itself horribly susceptible to bullshit in turn, particularly when overapplied to actual reality.

Contents

Summary

Postmodernism asserts that the meaning of any text (where the term 'text' is taken to mean any system of meaning of representation) is constructed contextually and is contingent. It emphasizes the fractured and 'heterogeneous' nature of the social, natural and literary worlds. Methodologically, it often focuses on questioning the inherent presumptions and concepts which underlie any ideological system. It is most commonly associated with the work of the French intellectuals: the philosopher Jacques Derrida, the philosopher and historian Michel Foucault and the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.

Criticism and Utility

There is a marked tendency to dismiss postmodernism as being useless – a sort of empty set of theories disguised with opaque jargon. But postmodernism is at its heart a theory based around the essential subjectivity of our words and the rules we construct to govern our knowledge. And a serious investigation into the nature of postmodernism reveals that this theory has very much to offer us, with its fruits being greater than the nihilistic negation which is often ascribed.

In some respects, the blithe contempt of critics is justified. When some try to use postmodern tools to evaluate the objective sciences, such as physics and biology, they seldom find much worth the reading. While these disciplines are bound by some arbitrary rules and closeted by language in some ways, the problems of these strictures are seldom overlooked by scientists. Taxonomy, for instance, is an entire system of partially arbitrary classifications, but taxonomists are keenly aware of this and constantly propose changes to compensate. Postmodernism critiques subjective aspects of our knowledge, and incidents like the Sokal affair illustrate how little useful material there is to be found in the subjective investigation of objective science.

In the humanities and social sciences, however, postmodernism can prove a highly effective and insightful theory. The perception that it clears the theoretical table with a sweep of the arm and says, “Well, this was all really nothing,” is not accurate. Rather, it specializes in looking at the way in which we arrive at conclusions, and how these conclusions are built from materials that are ultimately shaky.

The study of Arthurian literature is an excellent example. For many years, literary theorists had examined the various Arthurian works by Mallory, Cretien de Troyes, and others, looking for the ur-text. The idea was that there was a single Arthurian source, which gave the essentials of some of the stories or of the hero himself. Many people had taken one side or another of the years, arguing for the predominance of one idea of Arthur or the fact that a particular folk-tale preceded another in history. But the postmodernist Jean Baudrillard pointed out that this was a search based on the false premise that there had to be an ur-text[1]. It was the postmodern approach that suggested this to him.

Postmodernism suggests that any given word or set of meanings derives from an imprecise definition in terms of other meanings, which are themselves imprecise. This endless circle of houses-upon-sand was called différance by Jacques Derrida, the founder of postmodernism. And this approach led Baudrillard to realize that the Arthurian stories might have evolved in a similar way, absent any single dominant source.

Where postmodernism runs into trouble is when the difficulty of creating an precise and unbiased set of meanings is taken to the point of nihilism, either explicitly or implicitly. It is worth noting that many, indeed most, major postmodernist thinkers have been highly politically involved, and have not acted in a manner consistent with nihilism. One major explanation for this phenomenon is Gayatri Spivak's idea of "strategic essentialism," which accepts the need to create constructs of knowledge in specific practical situations. Postmodernism, in its best form, should be understood not as saying that nothing is true or that all meaning is arbitrary - rather it should be understood as noting that meaning and truth are prone to shifts and redefinitions over time based on circumstances.

Relationship to science

Whilst extremely popular in literary circles, and also influential in architecture, social science and cultural studies, postmodernism's dense writing style and commitment to relativist morals have led to criticism. Many outside literature and philosophy circles (liberal and conservative alike) reject doctrinaire postmodernism as being pretentious and intellectually lazy; many, especially those in scientific fields, have asserted that its theories are a form of denialism which prevent theoretical development.

Its attempts to analyse scientific practice have proved particularly controversial (especially in light of the lukewarm-at-best reception in the scientific world of non-postmodernist science philosophers such as Popper and Kuhn).

At the same time postmodernism does provide tools for interpreting the human activity known as science. This is especially useful in examining its history, role in culture, and in some cases intellectual underpinnings.[2] Possibly troubling to some scientists is that postmodernists hold that much of what they do is a social construct. Furthermore many postmodernists tend to question the concept of "truth," and some have even pointed out the social constructedness of the scientific method itself, showing its development coming from a particular culture and a particular time.[3]

Sokal affair

Some postmodernists don't quite understand that there is actually such a thing as reality that isn't just a cultural artifact and doesn't care what you think of it. This can lead to some embarrassment.

Of particular note was the 1994 Sokal Affair, which in which NYU physicist Alan Sokal submitted and had published a paper in the literary journal Social Text. The paper was intended by Sokal to be nonsensical and ridiculous. For example, he asserted that gravity was a 'social construct'[4]. It is worth noting, however, that Social Text is not a peer-reviewed journal, and Sokal himself has stressed the limited nature of the conclusions to be drawn from his hoax.

Sokal went on to co-author a book titled Fashionable Nonsense with Jean Bricmont. This book specifically attacked the use of science and scientific concepts in the works of many leading postmodernists such as Jacques Lacan and Luce Irigaray. The book has been controversial, with postmodernists largely claiming that Sokal fails to understand the texts he cites and thus misrepresents them. Sokal counters this argument in the book, noting that if a scientist cannot understand the use of science to explain a concept, there is something wrong with the explanation.

In defence, many of the theoreticians who initially used postmodernist approaches to study science have argued that scientific knowledge is 'constructed', rather than 'socially constructed'; [5] that interpretations otherwise have failed to appreciate the distinction between these two points.

Courtier's reply

Overall, while postmodernist themes in literature, which tend to lean towards the surreal, have proven to be quite successful among writers, postmodernist philosophy has long suffered from the problem of being extremely difficult to nail down coherently. While its supporters claim that one must be thoroughly versed in the traditions of Western philosophy to even begin to understand the jargon commonly used by postmodernist writers, its detractors are of the opinion that supporters' lack of ability to make their points in clear language is less a sign of intellectual loftiness than a potentially embarrassing lack of content, and that the invocation of tradition is something of a courtier's reply. That said, one must be at least somewhat cautious with this line of argument, as it can be used to cut against scientific jargon with equal effectiveness.

See also

External links

References

  • Dawkins, Richard. "Postmodernism Disrobed", Nature, 1998. A review of Sokal and Jean Bricmont's Impostures Intellectuelles (published as Intellectual Impostures in the UK and Fashionable Nonsense in the US). Presents the argument that postmodernist philosopers not only obfuscate horribly, but are in way over their heads whenever dealing with science.
  • Editors of Lingua Franca, The Sokal Hoax: The Sham That Shook The Academy. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000, ISBN 0803279957.
  • Hagen, L. Kirk, "The Death of Philosophy", Skeptic Magazine 11:4 (2005), p. 18. A scathing attack on Derrida's legacy.

Footnotes

  1. A source text from which the others were derived.
  2. http://www.sts.wisc.edu/about_sts.html From STS program at the University of Wisconsin
  3. Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump:Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life, 1985 Princeton University Press.
  4. The original "Sokal affair" paper
  5. Bruno Latour, 2005, Reassembling the Social
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