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

[feedtheoctopus]

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."

Academic dick wagging is nothing new. It's a story as old as universities themselves. Thing is we're more familiar with modern day dick wagging than anything in the past. A lot of these thinkers absolutely do give into their own narcissism and don't know how to filter out bullshit from what's actually interesting in what they're saying. My experience with a lot of academics (Zizek is a great example) is that they just write/publish fucking anything they write down regardless of whether the world needs to hear it or not.

I love postmodern art. Pynchon, Delaney, all those people. But I do think it is a fair criticism to say that they tainted pop culture with irony at the expense of sincerity. Thing is while a book like Crying Of Lot 49 was an obvious reaction to the absurdities of the 1960's, when you take that same attitude and apply it to today the result is just mindless cynicism. Like, if you watch South Park the number one message you get out of it is "every viewpoint is the same and believing in anything is stupid". That's what counts as "wisdom" to a lot of people. A lot of people's politics come off like a giant George Carlin routine. Just call everything fuckin' stupid and leave it at that. Older I get more I find that shit just totally useless.

 

[AnOminous]

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.

Overuse of "postmodern" as a snarl word is sort of the academic equivalent of right wingers of a conspiratorial bent calling every single thing they dislike "cultural Marxism" whether it has anything to do with Marx or not. This is especially silly when it is applied to things that actual Marxists detest, like selfish identity politics that alienate oppressed minorities from their shared interests and pit them at each other's throats in the pursuit of often trivial, niche interests which fail to address class struggle in any meaningful way.

Still, blaming Foucault or even Derrida or any of the rest of the original "postmoderns" for the current state of academia is overstating the issue, and is somewhat akin to blaming Nietzsche for the Nazis. I think I've said that before, possibly on this very thread. At least in theory, the basis of postmodernism is, as you say, questioning metanarratives, the underlying assumptions that generate successions of prevailing narratives and determine what sort of form they take.

Unfortunately, any academic rigor in this has long since died, and I think while the progenitors of postmodernism aren't directly responsible for this, they can be blamed for having led their followers into what is ultimately a dead end and which, ironically, has itself become a prevailing metanarrative of the very sort it professed to destroy.

Actually interrogating and questioning narratives requires studying them. Unfortunately, this has quite often descended into nihilistic, self-justifying ignorance, since if nobody ultimately has any privileged viewpoint that should be studied and interrogated, simply acting in disregard of history and tradition for its own sake and not because it contributes to progress, progress itself being one of those metanarrative components the philosophy rejects.

Ironically, many of the people who adopted these memes that filtered out from academia, not because they've actually ever read Foucault but simply because they're part of SJW culture, simultaneously extoll nonsensical self-congratulatory silliness like being "on the right side of history," even though to be consistent, they should realize there's no history to be on the right side of anyway.

Consistency, of course, is also more oppression.

I love postmodern art. Pynchon, Delaney, all those people. But I do think it is a fair criticism to say that they tainted pop culture with irony at the expense of sincerity. Thing is while a book like Crying Of Lot 49 was an obvious reaction to the absurdities of the 1960's, when you take that same attitude and apply it to today the result is just mindless cynicism. Like, if you watch South Park the number one message you get out of it is "every viewpoint is the same and believing in anything is stupid". That's what counts as "wisdom" to a lot of people. A lot of people's politics come off like a giant George Carlin routine. Just call everything fuckin' stupid and leave it at that. Older I get more I find that shit just totally useless.

Ironically, considering it's almost pamphlet-sized, Crying of Lot 49 is the only Pynchon novel I haven't read other than whatever he's written in the last five years or so.

"Postmodern" in terms of art is really a separate thing from the philosophy. It is sort of like how Freudianism is now only taken seriously in literary criticism, usually related to analyzing symbolism (or character analysis).

 

[Positron]

I swear to god 99% of people who bitch about post-modernism have no idea what it actually is.

Is there anyone in the world knows what postmodernism actually is? The very notion of definition is haram in pomo.

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.

In a sense pomo indeed does not argue for nihilism: pomo theorists privilege their viewpoint, their subjectivity, above all else, even when it flies in the face of all objective data and experience of all people in the world. It is more solipsism than nihilism.

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.

This notion of "power create knowledge" is trivial; when you have more money you can use it to investigate and create things. No mystery, no controversy.

What is controversial about Foucault is the notion that power relationship permeates every pore of human existence. How come mental illnesses and "madness" is defined as such? POWER! How come we acknowledge astronomy as legit but not astrology? POWER! This is an altogether different notion that needs to be proven.

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.

Not all "metanarratives" are created equal. The "metanarrative" of Physics (let's for a moment image there is indeed such a thing) -- everything in the natural world follows certain laws, and that such laws can be discovered through observation and experiment, and can be expressed mathematically -- continues to serve us very well. The "metanarratives" of gender studies, not so much. Declaring every knowledge system as untrustworthy just because some knowledge system turned out to be untrustworthy is illogical and smacks of nilhilism.

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

If truth exists, it would just be another "metanarrative" and will be taken down pronto.
And how are we able to identify truth when we find it? Or is pomo merely paying lip-service to the notion of truth by relegating it to some Platonic la-la land?

 

[feedtheoctopus]

Is there anyone in the world knows what postmodernism actually is? The very notion of definition is haram in pomo.

One reason I actually kind of dislike most criticisms of postmodernism I've read is that it treats it as a singular entity. Granted, I did the same thing up above to an extent out of convenience, but it's a generalization all the same. We're talking about a diverse body of theory here. It shares similar themes, but it's broad enough that people can and do argue about the definition all the time.

This notion of "power create knowledge" is trivial; when you have more money you can use it to investigate and create things. No mystery, no controversy.
What is controversial about Foucault is the notion that power relationship permeates every pore of human existence. How come mental illnesses and "madness" is defined as such? POWER! How come we acknowledge astronomy as legit but not astrology? POWER! This is an altogether different notion that needs to be proven. .

Personally anyway, I think the idea that political/economic/religious/whatever power permeates most of our existence is sort of self evident. No matter how much we try we can't really separate our conception of morality or personal identity from the machinations of power. You experience it every time you go to work or vote.

Not all "metanarratives" are created equal. The "metanarrative" of Physics (let's for a moment image there is indeed such a thing) -- everything in the natural world follows certain laws, and that such laws can be discovered through observation and experiment, and can be expressed mathematically -- continues to serve us very well. The "metanarratives" of gender studies, not so much. Declaring every knowledge system as untrustworthy just because some knowledge system turned out to be untrustworthy is illogical and smacks of nilhilism.

I've read a lot of bullshit, but I've never read anybody who seriously said that, for example, the sky isn't blue. What most of these philosophers concern themselves with is culture and society, not physical laws. And human culture and the reasons we act like we do are far more abstract.

If truth exists, it would just be another "metanarrative" and will be taken down pronto.
And how are we able to identify truth when we find it? Or is pomo merely paying lip-service to the notion of truth by relegating it to some Platonic la-la land?

Generally anyway? It's saying truth and lies are put on the same level by society to the extent that our ability to discern one from the other has sort of collapsed. What postmodernism is after is the "why"

 

[RichardMongler]

Speaking of Cultural Marxism and Postmodernism, this rather curious vlogger released a video essay on exactly why she feels Paleoconservatives and right-wing cranks misapprehend both concepts. Here's how she feels they should be interpretted.

Spoiler: Bibliography and transcript courtesy of the video description.

"Cultural Marxism", as the far-right portrays it, doesn't exist.

The critical theory of the Frankfurt School ought to be understood as a continuation of the long tradition of Jewish antinomianism, as it emphasizes a break from the ideology and norms of the existing modern order for the sake of redemption. The members of the Frankfurt School drew inspiration from the western canonical tradition, with its blend of Jewish and Pagan precepts, rather than seeking to destroy it. Their animosity towards western industrial-capitalist society and the progress myth grew out of the historical disdainful attitudes of the Gentiles towards European Jewry, culminating in a genocide characterized by hierarchical obedience and technical efficacy.

If Jew-hating conspiracy theorists really knew anything about Jewish history and the Frankfurt School, they'd bring up Walter Benjamin - may HaShem avenge his blood - and his admitted interest in the Gnostic Sabbatian-Frankist heresies - something he picked up from his good friend and theologian Gershom Scholem - which consisted of amoral transcendence of Jewish law and ethics (such as consumption of unkosher foods, ritual sodomy, feasts and orgies on Purim, et cetera), egalitarianism, and female liberationist doctrines, all in the name of tikkun and Messianic redemption. The Dönmeh (the loyal followers of Shabbatai Tzvi) publicly converted to Islam in the manner of the forced conversion of their Moshiach, all the while secretly practicing their clandestine heretical Jewish faith, replete with wife-swapping, homosexuality, and other Abrahamic no-nos. The Dönmeh, situated in Turkey, later "infiltrated" Sufi and Alevi orders, as well as the Turkish communist party, feminist and anarchist organizations, intent on subverting traditional Islamic morality and epistemology.

Critical theory follows in this wave of thought by throwing off the rigid chains and iron fists of the narratives which emerged from modernity and capitalism. Mythologies of “progress” and the gradual move towards a new Golden Age through the forces of technological development, so-called capitalist “freedoms”, and un-malleable “logic” which had engulfed the western mode of thought were, in essence, flipped in the sense that they would be interpreted as elements of social control and an ongoing historical catastrophe, leading humanity straight to a torturous fascist death. Oral Torah and kabbalistic texts are littered with references to the existing world being under the domain of evil side of God, that is, the side of God which incorporates hatred, punishment, and unholiness. God fell into duality by the act of Creation, and must be re-unified through the tikkun of the people below, whose actions will thus bring about the re-unification of God above and the return to primordial harmony. ….

In all of this, it can be stated that the intellectuals of the Frankfurt School were in no way trying to destroy culture, but were rather looking to retrieve the elements of western culture which gave off a sense of utopianism within the commodified capitalist sludge. This can be seen in the ways Benjamin utilized translation as a means of finding the lost holy sparks of God within language and literature, and also in within his motif of collecting and contrasting the artifacts of culture he encountered whilst walking into the sphere of the profane. It is also what lead Adorno to praise old school reactionary thinkers on the basis that such thought longed for a culture that was more “authentic”, and Marcuse to champion bourgeois literature as superior to the hippie aesthetics which he denounced as having little to no artistic value. They all recognized that mainstream culture had been transformed into a decaying carcass as modernity and capitalism loomed over western civilization.

Xexizy’s video:

The Dialectical Imagination (Martin Jay): http://www.antropologias.org/files/downloads/2012/03/The-Dialetical-Immagination-Martin-Jay.pdf

“Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as a Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe” (Martin Jay): https://web.archive.org/web/2011112.../martin-jay-frankfurt-school-as-scapegoat.cfm

Jewish Cryptotheologies of Late Modernity: Philosophical Marranos (Agata Bielik-Robson): https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Cryptotheologies-Late-Modernity-Philosophical/dp/1138774499

Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘On The Concept of History’ (Michael Löwy): https://www.versobooks.com/books/2279-fire-alarm
Sabbatai Zevi (שבתי צבי, Sabetay Sevi): http://www.donmeh-west.com/sabbatai.shtml

Sabbatianism: https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/sabbateanism

 

[Positron]

Tinfoil hat.

There is some common ground between Frankfurt School and the more Foucault-influenced postmodernists (especially Deleuze), in that they are both deeply critical about Capitalism and skeptical about democracy. But the appearance is only skin-deep: Frankfurt school might be pessimistic about the direction the human race is heading, but they still believe that genuine social progress is at least theoretically possible. Pomo denies any notion of social progress altogether, and they're apt to be as critical to Marxism as they are to Capitalism.

 

[Lackadaisy]

I got a C in my "Post Modern Feminist Literature" class in college because I, and I quote the professor here, "didn't properly engage with the reading material" and "actively sought to destabilize classroom discussions by disagreeing with core concepts of the course."

Thank God I didn't pay for that experience.

 

[AnOminous]

I got a C in my "Post Modern Feminist Literature" class in college because I, and I quote the professor here, "didn't properly engage with the reading material" and "actively sought to destabilize classroom discussions by disagreeing with core concepts of the course."

Thank God I didn't pay for that experience.

All you have to do to get an A in those classes is make sure anything you say or turn in for a grade is completely incomprehensible and full of pomo gibberish. One of my roommates in college long ago had one of the proto-versions of this kind of class and we'd just sit around doing bong hits and thinking of ridiculous shit to put in his term paper which got an A despite him being a FUCKING WHITE MALE.

 

[Lackadaisy]

All you have to do to get an A in those classes is make sure anything you say or turn in for a grade is completely incomprehensible and full of pomo gibberish. One of my roommates in college long ago had one of the proto-versions of this kind of class and we'd just sit around doing bong hits and thinking of ridiculous shit to put in his term paper which got an A despite him being a FUCKING WHITE MALE.

I guess my stuff just wasn't incomprehensible enough. I've always been the sort of person who finishes a paper and then has to tack on extraneous shit to meet the page count.

 

[AnOminous]

I guess my stuff just wasn't incomprehensible enough. I've always been the sort of person who finishes a paper and then has to tack on extraneous shit to meet the page count.

For this kind of paper, though, it has to be ALL extraneous shit. You probably fucked up by putting in something that made sense.

 

[Trilby]

For this kind of paper, though, it has to be ALL extraneous shit. You probably fucked up by putting in something that made sense.

I wonder if this is where drugs come in to help?

 

[Positron]

I got a C in my "Post Modern Feminist Literature" class in college because I, and I quote the professor here, "didn't properly engage with the reading material" and "actively sought to destabilize classroom discussions by disagreeing with core concepts of the course."

Thank God I didn't pay for that experience.

There can't be such thing as "core concepts of the course", because the notion of a "core concept" smacks of a metanarrative whose sole purpose is to legitimize the discourses privileged by the course. Likewise there can't be such notion as "properly engage the reading material" because it presupposes said reading material has a finished, self-contained meaning, like a locked box which the student is supposed to open with a key. In actuality, any text is unstable and in a state of flux and fracture. Like Heraclitus's river, how you engage it depends on the state you happen to find it. Privileging a supposedly "proper engagement" marginalizes and silences other modes of engagement. By the same token, all classroom discussions, being texts, are unstable by nature, and you can't really "destabilize" the already unstable.

Give your prof an F.

I wonder if this is where drugs come in to help?

Pomo's rise in America coincided with drug culture. Make of that what you will.

 

[Lackadaisy]

There can't be such thing as "core concepts of the course", because the notion of a "core concept" smacks of a metanarrative whose sole purpose is to legitimize the propositions covered in the course. Likewise there can't be such notion as "properly engage the reading material" because it presupposes said reading material has a finished, self-contained meaning, like a locked box which the student is supposed to open with a key. In actuality, any text is unstable and in a state of flux and fracture. Like Democritus's river, how you engage it depends on the state you happen to find it. Privileging a "proper engagement" marginalizes and silences other modes of engagement.

Give your prof an F.

I was very tempted to send him an email like his, but I thought the better of it.

 

[r00]

For this kind of paper, though, it has to be ALL extraneous shit. You probably fucked up by putting in something that made sense.

Probably this. If you don't make the professor realise that Understanding your viewpoint and cultural frames of reference is a futile impossibility then you've failed.

 

[Lensherr]

 

[Mysterious Capitalist]

This thread makes me kinda regret that I never bothered to study philosophy during my formative years. Is there something light I can read about this topic?

BTW, very nice thread @Secret Asshole , I hope to see more stuff like this from you

 

[Positron]

This thread makes me kinda regret that I never bothered to study philosophy during my formative years. Is there something light I can read about this topic?

Understand Postmodernism by Glenn Ward is probably the best start. It is a short book, written largely in human language, has an emphasis on the arts, and most importantly Ward provides salient criticisms to most of the ideas he introduces. The short side is that there is not enough coverage on such funky issues as queer studies, social justice, and feminism.

 

[Secret Asshole]

Modern humanities graduate education doesn't deal in evaluation. All you do in the humanities is vomit back the opinion of the professor whose in turn is in the opinion of dying or dead academics from the early 1950s to late 1970s. Every single concept, notion, or theory they have is actually 50 years old, and constantly twisted to make it look not 50 years old. All of their knowledge is outdated and useless for any sort of evaluation because it was never proven in the first place. You are basically vomiting back dead, useless theories and forcefully trying to put them in a modern space. These theories still rely on the foundation of tabula rasa, in that every human is born a blank slate with no behaviors encoded onto us, which was the presiding theory before genes, genetics and behavioral genetics were discovered. They don't use any form of genetic or methods based psychology, psychiatry or neurology, at all.

The humanities has not moved out of the 1970s. All of it is a regurgitation of old principles that were always accepted as truth. Its like trying to pin a personal philosophy to a reality that has long since abandoned it.

 

[AnOminous]

Modern humanities graduate education doesn't deal in evaluation. All you do in the humanities is vomit back the opinion of the professor whose in turn is in the opinion of dying or dead academics from the early 1950s to late 1970s. Every single concept, notion, or theory they have is actually 50 years old, and constantly twisted to make it look not 50 years old. All of their knowledge is outdated and useless for any sort of evaluation because it was never proven in the first place. You are basically vomiting back dead, useless theories and forcefully trying to put them in a modern space. These theories still rely on the foundation of tabula rasa, in that every human is born a blank slate with no behaviors encoded onto us, which was the presiding theory before genes, genetics and behavioral genetics were discovered. They don't use any form of genetic or methods based psychology, psychiatry or neurology, at all.

The humanities has not moved out of the 1970s. All of it is a regurgitation of old principles that were always accepted as truth. Its like trying to pin a personal philosophy to a reality that has long since abandoned it.

Meanwhile, while having this secularism that is as fact-based as Lysenkoism, they simultaneously preach that everything is a social construct, there is no objective truth or even reality, and therefore, every opinion is as worthless as every other. Nevertheless, you must slavishly adhere to their specific brand of nihilism because reasons, or else.

 

[Secret Asshole]

Meanwhile, while having this secularism that is as fact-based as Lysenkoism, they simultaneously preach that everything is a social construct, there is no objective truth or even reality, and therefore, every opinion is as worthless as every other. Nevertheless, you must slavishly adhere to their specific brand of nihilism because reasons, or else.

The way Post-Modernism was supposed to work was actually as a destruction of the academic establishment. The problem is it did the reverse. Not only did it not destroy the academic establishment, it allowed for a cementing of an academic establishment, it also allowed a methodology for expunging any criticism of it. Lending to this stagnation and death of the humanities we are now seeing. Make no mistake, this post-modernist shit was not supposed to leave the halls of academia for a very good reason. Because it'd be roundly mocked. Its long since tried to spread to fields beyond itself, but has always failed.

Its hip as shit now in liberal circles, but this is not an ideology designed to exist in the real world where real people can look and analyze. Their 'proofs' are series of unclaimed excuses that go in endless circles. Gender as a social construct was originated by a pedophile and a fraud, whose 'groundbreaking study' failed and directly lead to the suicides of both participants in it. The troons and proponents of gender as a social construct like to forget this fact that Dr. John Money was a fraud and should live as a fraud, and should only be taught in scientific ethics courses as an example. It also always makes me laugh that people who study gender never have to take a single reproductive biology course. If you don't touch reproductive biology or biology of gender in general, your entire field is fucking worthless. But we all know why this is. Because they're too fucking stupid to do so. These people are the mongoloids too stupid for any other major. They exist only to prop up a massive student loan and provide the college with a massive amount of money. The humanities have become the easy majors in society.

Don't think for a moment anyone in STEM respects these people. The CEOs are doing public relations dances. In STEM, the humanites are roundly mocked and rejected. You know why they can't get a foothold in STEM? Because in STEM, you require results, critical thinking, logic. These people can't do anything but interpret a 60 year old theory in gibberish. Anita Sarkesian's videos to me didn't need to be deconstructed because they were pseduoacademic trash. They were fucking hysterical. They provided no evidence for these outrageous claims and used jargon and meaningless academic filler to make themselves look intelligent. I could do a video and make the same people who swallowed this shit drink water from a pothole by making it sound academically complex.

And of course, because they've idiotically cemented their own ideology as the 'right' one. Yet they have no comeback to rebuffs of their ideology besides increasing calls to violence, because their token words no longer work. Anita is smart enough to realize that she could never win a debate because she has no evidence for her claims. The stupid ones who debate always lose and come back frustrated, hence why hitting the opposition is so popular. These are children who haven't graduated high school. All you have to do to defeat them is say No. They have no other recourse than appealing to authority.

They're revolutionaries calling on the government and corporations to revolt for them. Fucking pathetic.