Post-Modernism - Or How 3 French Cunts Fucked Up the West

[Secret Asshole]

Am I the only one reading the article here? This is an absolute literary abortion. This is why Jesus isn't coming back. This makes me think ISIS might have a point after all. This is a fucking stupid article and I suppose I had better explain why:

Second paragraph:
>began in France
Nope
>in the 1960's
Nope

Basic mistakes here, the author is either a moron or she knows her readers are.

Third paragraph:
I think the author is confusing questioning with attacking, the notions of absolute truth and objective reality are not sacrosanct, and its ever so slightly arrogant for a blogger to pass judgement on anybody who commits the cardinal sin of skepticism.

Fourth paragraph:
I was going to pass this paragraph since its about Modernism, but apparently the author can't get that right either. Modernism was a movement in the 1800's, yet if we're to believe this article it should be credited for events that occured centuries prior. She didn't even check a wikipedia article, this is getting depressing.

Fifth paragraph:
Again with the accusations of postmodernists coming for our hard-won freedoms, yet no citations or even anecdotal examples. What, you can't quote a postmodernist work? Oh wait, that would require reading one.

Sixth paragraph:
>The term “postmodern” was coined by Jean-François Lyotard in his 1979 book,
I just felt myself get another grey hair, am I being trolled? Is that what's happening now? Well mission fucking accomplished, I'm mad.
She's off by about a hundred years.

At this point I think I've proven that the author isn't qualified to write about this topic, so I'm not gonna fact-check everything else because I just realised how much bullshit there is. What follows seems to be a bunch of quotes that serve as adequate page filler, now onto some more bizzare rantings:

-We have the claim that acknowledging scientific backing for bigoted and destructive behaviour is the same as 'attacking' science. It's not. Admitting that people twisted science to justify discriminatory actions isn't an attack on science as a process. It's just history. It happened.

The author clumsily tries to connect this with the lolworthy #decolonisescience thing in South Africa, because we're meant to believe that a bunch of dumb fucking teenagers were intimately familiar with the heavyweights of postmodernism. Sure.

Notice how this is the best that the author can come up with? Some hashtags and some arrogant professors have "ruined the west"? Artists and philosophers, who are rarely even noticed outside of their bubbles, are now to blame for infiltrating and destroying literally everything else?

This article is taking you all for a ride, it's desperately trying to link identity politics and SJW's to something that sounds intellectual, safely assuming that nobody reading it will figure out how much of it is fiction.

I'm not out here defending postmodernism or anything, I don't care about it. Tear it all down if you like, but you can't just read a few quotes and tell yourself you know what it's all about.

If you really want me to go on, then I can. But whatever Post-Modernism was, it isn't now. The Sokol Affair is well known in scientific circles and still goes on, and that is definitely Post-Modernist. It has nothing to do with imperfections in Science, just infiltration to remove objectivity from it. Social Science still rejects Biology and uses Foucault's theories on being formed by culture only. I'm not saying that teenagers know what the fuck post-modernism is, but its more like academics who used Post-Modernism to 'prove' their ideas.

Like it or not, Post-Modernism is responsible for this. The philosophers and artists who founded the movement might not have envisioned this, but it is undoubtedly Post-Modernist in nature.

 

[Anti Fanta]

Foucault actually spent some time teaching at Berkeley. While he was there he spent his free time visiting sado-masochistic bathhouses and taking drugs.

Then he got AIDS and died, proving that nothing good will ever come from going to Berkeley.

 

[The Great Chandler]

Foucault actually spent some time teaching at Berkeley. While he was there he spent his free time visiting sado-masochistic bathhouses and taking drugs.

Then he got AIDS and died, proving that nothing good will ever come from going to Berkeley.

You can go homo, but don't go full homo.

 

[Lensherr]

Wonderful post @Secret Asshole ! Seriously, you're becoming one of my favorite posters here.

Do you think you could elaborate more on the Cultural Marxism thing? From what I know, it's a slang term for Critical Theory, which was born of intellectuals of the Frankfurt School and is aimed at deconstructing and attacking Western civilization and the basic precepts that it was founded upon, and it's disproportionate influence in academia. How closely aligned do you see Post-Modernism and Critical Theory, and would the Frankfurt School be considered Post-Modernist?

 

[Un Platano]

Postmodern literature has produced some good novels like Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse Five necause it emphasizes the effect reliability and narrator has an a narrative. It's an interesting writing philosophy because of that. I can't imagine why someone would extend that to a general life philosophy though. Postmodernism is exceptional if it's not fiction.

 

[TowinKarz]

One of the my biggest issues with post modernist ideologies like social justice is that it's devotees are hypocritical and enforce it selectively. The prime principle of pose modernism is that there are no universal truths yet post modernists spout supposed universal truths all the time such as all whites are racist or gender is a social construct.

In much the same way that "why?' can destroy the edgy student anarchist yelling at you to "QUESTION EVERYTHING!"

But yeah, glad I'm not the only one seeing the naked hypocrisy in "All crime is a social construct, no one is truly evil at heart, except for white straight males with jobs"

 

[AnOminous]

Postmodern literature has produced some good novels like Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse Five necause it emphasizes the effect reliability and narrator has an a narrative. It's an interesting writing philosophy because of that. I can't imagine why someone would extend that to a general life philosophy though. Postmodernism is exceptional if it's not fiction.

Postmodernism as a literary phenomenon is not the same as in a philosophical context.

Nor, frankly, were even the progenitors of postmodernism as a philosophy in the same class as the cancer they inadvertently (or even deliberately) spawned.

I don't think Kurt Vonnegut ever uttered the word postmodernism. If so, I can't remember it. I don't think he identified as it. He probably identified more as a science fiction writer than that, and he didn't consider himself a science fiction writer either, although he did publish a story in Harlan Ellison's original Dangerous Visions collection ("The Great Space Fuck").

It sounds to me like postmodernists have way more to gain by claiming Vonnegut than he ever did by claiming them.

 

[Positron]

How closely aligned do you see Post-Modernism and Critical Theory, and would the Frankfurt School be considered Post-Modernist?

The two are almost diametrically opposite (though equally odious): as a byproduct of Marxism, Frankfurt School believed in societal teleology (i.e. society is heading towards a predestined goal for the betterment of mankind, and some form of revolution is needed to achieve such goal). Hence FS was a quintessentially Modernist school of thought, exactly the thing that Postmodernism serves to defy. What FS was in common with PoMo was their preoccupation with cultural products, especially popular culture, but even in this aspect their attitudes differ: FS was staunchly against pop culture, denouncing it as Capitalist false consciousness. They believed only some form of arcane learned art (e.g. 12-tone music) could reflect the social condition of the people, and thus serve as the inspiration of class revolt. PoMo, on the other hand, believe that pop culture is the social condition of people. Hence PoMo embrace pop culture, even to the extent they elevate it above learned arts.

 

[Jan_Hus]

After the Sokal affair, you would think that would be the final nail in the coffin for postmodernism... but no... they keep spewing retarded horseshit

 

[Anti Fanta]

The two are almost diametrically opposite (though equally odious): as a byproduct of Marxism, Frankfurt School believed in societal teleology (i.e. society is heading towards a predestined goal for the betterment of mankind, and some form of revolution is needed to achieve such goal). Hence FS was a quintessentially Modernist school of thought, exactly the thing that Postmodernism serves to defy. What FS was in common with PoMo was their preoccupation with cultural products, especially popular culture, but even in this aspect their attitudes differ: FS was staunchly against pop culture, denouncing it as Capitalist false consciousness. They believed only some form of arcane learned art (e.g. 12-tone music) could reflect the social condition of the people, and thus serve as the inspiration of class revolt. PoMo, on the other hand, believe that pop culture is the social condition of people. Hence PoMo embrace pop culture, even to the extent they elevate it above learned arts.

Yeah it always amuses me when someone whose knowledge of the subject has clearly come entirely from some misinformed /pol/ infographic says that things like degeneracy and 'Jewish tricks' in popular music are due to the Frankfurt School's influence.

Theodor Adorno spent most of his intellectual career panning pop culture. If anything, he and his colleges wanted to save the West from cultural degeneracy, not encourage or accelerate it.

EDIT: As an aside I seem to recall I read an article about Adorno's hatred of hippies and the cultural movements of the 60s, and that in return a lot of those people hated him back for being a square or whatever.

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

First of all, thank you @Secret Asshole for this thread.

Do you think you could elaborate more on the Cultural Marxism thing?

Secondly, I too would appreciate a deeper delving into this lovely catchphrase that would quickly kill me if we made it a drinking game.

 

[Anti Fanta]

Feel like people here would appreciate this: http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

Basically randomly generates postmodern academic essays and is surprisingly accurate to the kind of thing you do see in various journals and publications.

 

[r00]

We are already trying to find our way past postmodernism. In the 60s, it was a mic-dropping, mischievous, apocalyptic kinda philosophy that cheekily highlighted the limitations of structural understanding of human existence. Nowadays its all just a bit "yeah, but where do we go from here?". And it's just so damn vague as a paradigm. It's almost been distilled down to a "feeling". A "feeling" of detached, snarky, smartass self-consciousness, that was very handy in the 60s for exposing conservative hypocrisy, but now its just created a generation of special snowflakes who miss the point and only embrace the most self-centered aspects of it. The whole idea of individual narratives being more important than objective truth is torn straight from Roland Barthes wikipedia page, misinterpreted, and then regurgitated by retarded literature undergrads with tumblr accounts.

David Foster Wallace (the guy who wrote Infinite Jest, which is a really amazing piece of art if you can get past its scale, and reputation as pretentious hipster bullshit) wrote a very interesting essay in the early 90's about what he saw as a pervasive cultural irony that arose out telvision coopting postmodernist literary techniques.
https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf
He was pretty much bang on. Anyone old enough to remember the 90s has been dosed so full of irony over the years, its purpose has lost all meaning.

 

[Secret Asshole]

Wonderful post @Secret Asshole ! Seriously, you're becoming one of my favorite posters here.

Do you think you could elaborate more on the Cultural Marxism thing? From what I know, it's a slang term for Critical Theory, which was born of intellectuals of the Frankfurt School and is aimed at deconstructing and attacking Western civilization and the basic precepts that it was founded upon, and it's disproportionate influence in academia. How closely aligned do you see Post-Modernism and Critical Theory, and would the Frankfurt School be considered Post-Modernist?

First of all, thank you @Secret Asshole for this thread.


Secondly, I too would appreciate a deeper delving into this lovely catchphrase that would quickly kill me if we made it a drinking game.

No problem and thanks, only happy to reveal the shittyness that is academic post-modernism. The 'theory' behind Cultural Marxism is that the Soviets realized that Communism failed, so the way to subvert the capatalists wasn't economically, but socially. The problem is that Marxism is BOTH a social AND an economic system. But lets keep going.

Essentially, its basically: infiltrate academic institutions, slip Marxism into culture, Marxism brainwashes students, students hold soft communist revolution. That's the conspiracy theory. And Cultural Marxism does exist....except as @Positron said, its diametrically opposed to everything SJWs do. Pop culture is basically capitalism incarnate. You can't subvert it, because comics, games, movies, music are essentially ALL the spirit of capitalism. Cultural Marxism in general used by alt-right is a conspiracy theory and its just a post-modernist mode of thought. Not really a way to ferment a communist revolution. SJWs generally don't give a fuck about the working class and you see them get treated with disdain. Kind of goes against Marxist ideals.

Just to be clear, I don't care about post-modernism in art and fiction (as long as people don't treat it like the end all, be-all). Just that it has infected academic circles

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

Pop culture is basically capitalism incarnate. You can't subvert it, because comics, games, movies, music are essentially ALL the spirit of capitalism. Cultural Marxism in general used by alt-right is a conspiracy theory and its just a post-modernist mode of thought. Not really a way to ferment a communist revolution. SJWs generally don't give a fuck about the working class and you see them get treated with disdain. Kind of goes against Marxist ideals.

It would be pretty ballsy for any of the talking heads to firmly adopt marxism, since making money off of youtube videos is entirely inseparable from the capitalist spirit.

 

[feedtheoctopus]

I swear to god 99% of people who bitch about post-modernism have no idea what it actually is. It's an analysis of modern power relations and the impact of the mass media, it isn't an endorsement of them. That's the mistake people always make. That and people act like they're somehow making an argument for nihilism, which they aren't.

Like that whole bit about Foucault. That's a massive oversimplification of the guy. So much so it doesn't have much of anything to do with what he actually wrote, to the point I have to wonder if the author's ever read him. Like, he wrote about how political power influences society and the scientific establishment. The idea that it doesn't is just flat out idiotic, considering it obviously does. The internet came from military research for example. In fact a lot of scientific research is funded and directed by the government, to the extent a lot of other possible avenues are left totally unexamined. That's Foucault's "power creates knowledge" schtick in a nutshell. Much of what we understand about the world and the context we find ourselves in is defined by powerful people.

The most basic definition of post-modernism I ever encountered was "collapse of metanarratives". A metanarrative essentially being an all encompassing analysis of history. Think Marxist dialectics or the social contract. Idea that history and society has this rational, preordained, and easily verifiable course. What post-modernism proposes (broadly) is that we've essentially lost faith in those metanarratives. That they no longer appear to have any relevance to our lives. It doesn't take a genius to realize a kind of hopeless cynicism is the defining feature of the modern world. At the same time there's an environment of information overload. Truth and lies seem to blend together and flip upside down so much that it becomes almost impossible to tell which is which. Take for example the whole Trump-Russia thing. You have the media saying one thing, the president saying another, a million and one internet blogs saying both and adding some conspiracy theory in for good measure, constant allegations of Russian botnets directing internet discourse, etc etc.

Result? Anybody who says they know what the actual fuck is going on is a liar.

Postmodernism doesn't say truth doesn't exist, just that our conception of it has been warped beyond all belief.

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

Postmodernism doesn't say truth doesn't exist, just that our conception of it has been warped beyond all belief.

But the end result is a bunch of snotty cynics throwing their hands up in the air and saying "I don't have to listen to anyone who doesn't support the narrative I've already decided makes me the good guy".

 

[feedtheoctopus]

But the end result is a bunch of snotty cynics throwing their hands up in the air and saying "I don't have to listen to anyone who doesn't support the narrative I've already decided makes me the good guy".

Yup, and that's the problem. But blaming postmodernist thinkers is kind of barking up the wrong tree. They're analyzing that attitude, not giving it a thumbs up.

 

[r00]

The most basic definition of post-modernism I ever encountered was "collapse of metanarratives"

That's how I like to boil it down. Like Lyotard said, postmodernism manifests as an "incredulity towards metanarrative", but even he later admitted that "the postmodern condition" was a deeply flawed essay. I see how this incredulity applies to art and literature as set of distinct techniques (such as irony, self consciousness, pastiche, fragmentation etc) that artists can use to creatively undermine mordernist idealism, but I struggle to see how the paradigm can be effectively applied elsewhere, as anything other than a cheeky stopgap philosophy that we only keep until someone clever comes up with something better. It boggles my mind that people took this idea, and turned it into "whatever I say is right", rather than interpreting it as highlighting the flaws in the possibility of an absolute structural understanding of human experience.

The conspiritard in me also thinks that postmodernism has been perpetuated by academics as a way of keeping themselves relevant after more leavisian forms of criticism and canonisation were exposed as being unhelpful elitist bullshit. It's difficult to say anything new and exciting about Shakespeare, but if you can show how the wording of a chinese takeout menu reflects the negative aspects of post-colonialist orientalism, then you'll definitely find a publisher somewhere to pat your ass for you.
Almost all of my favourite art is stylistically postmodern, but as a cultural paradigm, it might be one of the worst things to happen to humanity.
At this point, most talks of postmodernism really do sound like "De man and Foucault in the mouth of a dull child" because "how dare you question the veracity of Muh narrative?". Of course

Seeing as I'm Drunk and rambling, Ill just leave another of my favourite assessments of postmodernism from Umberto Eco (who was the absolute fucking man):

"I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows that he cannot say to her ‘I love you madly’, because he knows that she knows (and that she knows he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say ‘As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly’. At this point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly that it is no longer possible to speak innocently, he will nevertheless have said what he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her in an age of lost innocence."

 

[Sperglord Dante]

It would be pretty ballsy for any of the talking heads to firmly adopt marxism, since making money off of youtube videos is entirely inseparable from the capitalist spirit.

Check the second comment here

https://kiwifarms.net/threads/jason-unruhe-maoist-rebel-news.11068/