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[Lagayascienza]

Wikipedia characterizes postmodernism as “an intellectual stance or mode of discourse characterized by skepticism towards elements of the Enlightenment worldview. It questions the "grand narratives" of modernism, rejects the certainty of knowledge and stable meaning, and acknowledges the influence of ideology in maintaining political power. The idea of objective claims is dismissed as naïve realism, emphasizing the conditional nature of knowledge. Postmodernism embraces self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism […]. It opposes the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization. Postmodernism has permeated various disciplines and is linked to critical theory, deconstruction, and post-structuralism.”

Its “critics argue that postmodernism promotes obscurantism, abandons Enlightenment rationalism and scientific rigor, and contributes little to analytical or empirical knowledge.”

Along with religion, Postmodernism is one of Richard Dawkins’ bêtes noires. And he’s not alone.

“The end result of four decades of postmodernism permeating the art world”, according to Camillie Paglia (2015), is that “there is very little interesting or important work being done right now in the fine arts. Irony was a bold and creative posture when Duchamp did it, but now an utterly banal, exhausted, and tedious strategy. Young artists have been taught to be “cool” and “hip” and thus painfully self-conscious. They are not encouraged to be enthusiastic, emotional, and visionary. They have been cut off from artistic tradition by the crippled skepticism about history that they have been taught by ignorant and solipsistic postmodernists. In short, the art world will never revive until postmodernism fades away. Postmodernism is a plague upon the mind and the heart.”

Well, Paglia is nothing if not forthright.

Daniel Dennet, too, is no fan of postmodernism. He says, Postmodernism, the school of "thought" that proclaimed "There are no truths, only interpretations" has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for "conversations" in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster.

Many other notable intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Roger Scruton are similarly unimpressed with postmodernism. It seems to have had a profound impact on discourse and we see it in philosophy.

So, I’m wondering what folks here think of postmodernism. Is it as bad as they say?

I came to my own conclusions about it on reading what Richard Dawkins had to say about the Sokal Affair. I recommend reading the article which prompted the controversy, Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity which was published in the journal Social Text in 1996. It is freely available on the web. It’s a hoot.

[Sy Borg]

I see postmodernism as a tempering of modernism's tendency towards overconfidence and hubris. However, when postmodernism is used as a model rather than a modifier, it's a disaster. As with Marxism, the intent is good, but the approach is at odds with real world.

A practical example: Punk music was a postmodern rejection of the "elitism" of rock's ever improving bands and musicians. How long did actual punk last? It was almost immediately replaced by new wave music, basically an amalgam of rock, pop and Krautrock, which allowed for musical growth.

Some may protest that punk bands are still playing today, but it's not the same. Today, one can get lessons in authentic punk drumming. It's true! Standards soon appeared in what started out as pure postmodern rebellion. Now there's even a pedagogy! One cannot discard standards for too long or everyone gets bored with repeating the same old crap over and over. The human (animal?) has a deep desire to explore, to develop.

There's a problem today with DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) programs due to a postmodern abandonment of the merit principle. Some organisations, like the Ivy League universities, put aside the merit principle to reject white, Jewish and Asian applicants in favour of "people of colour" (presumably east Asians are either not coloured enough, or presumed to not be in need of help).

As postmodernists (unless money is involved), today's academic leaders seem to think that rejecting the best applicants available for years in positions throughout the organisation will not have consequences, and will not lower standards. To them, the standards are not real - just a piece of the oppressive white patriarchy. In other words, they are out of touch with actual reality.

Affirmative action is best suited to trainee and junior positions, where performance is not mission critical. Today, though, some of these colleges are being lead by poor scholars hired for their gender, skin colour and political leanings. More than one has been sprung for plagiarism and their academic output has been feeble compared with previous college presidents.

The result? Poor leadership resulting in the fostering of open anti-Semitism on campus, and a shift in emphasis towards non-productive and divisive politics and away from essential STEM subjects (the latter being the epitome of modernism).

[LuckyR]

I see postmodernism as a tempering of modernism's tendency towards overconfidence and hubris. However, when postmodernism is used as a model rather than a modifier, it's a disaster. As with Marxism, the intent is good, but the approach is at odds with real world.

I don't disagree with this. It's true there's more to life than what can be measured objectively (science), though it's a gross error that there's nothing to science and the objective.

[Count Lucanor]

Postmodernism produced interesting architecture and a very much needed reformulation of the principles of modern architecture and urbanism. Other than that, it sucks.

[Sy Borg]

I think postmodernism is largely a reminder not to replace the unquestioning worship of God with the unquestioning worship of science and progress.

[Lagayascienza]

So, apart from a warning to modernism about hubris and over-confidence, and some beneficial influence on architecture, I gather so far that folks don't think much of postmodernism.

I think its influence in liberal arts faculties has been extremely negative and it is, unfortunately, ongoing. I agree with what Paglia says in the quote above. When I speak to young folk today I see a reluctance to take a stand on issues, a belief that everyone's POV is as valid as anyone else's, that everyone is right... This makes it hard for them to express a view without fear of being accused of being in thrall to some dominant narrative. But postmodernism itself has become the dominant narrative. A pernicious narrative that denies there are any objective standards in the arts, in history or even objectivity in science.

But maybe others see postmodernism in a more positive light. If so, I be interested in reading why.

[Sy Borg]

I agree with all you said.

I remember being confused by the plethora of opinions and counter opinions. When the only way to determine the truth of statements is to go to the library or ask a professor willing to answer questions, arguments were often won via ferocity of conviction. As a somewhat autistic child, I was intimidated by fierce debaters. It was worst when caught between two people, equally convinced that they were right and expecting me to say something.

Back then, people sometimes disagreed as to which was the hottest month. Such information was not just a click away. I decided to draw up some tables and write down the maximum temperature of each day for a year, and then average them out. (I think it was January). Of course it was terribly flawed: A sample size of one year. No minimums, humidity or wet bulb temperature. Only means were calculated, no medians. The observations were from Observatory Hill, which is near the ocean, which can be much cooler than further west.

Still, it was better than nothing. It was a youthful way of trying to wrest modernism - meaning - from relatively formless chaos.

Having said that, I don't see young people being confused as cause for concern. I'd be more worried if teens started all being extremely well-adjusted. At least we know that our current crop of young somewhat-binary dictator-loving stimulant-soaked lunatics are not automatons ... yet ...?

[LuckyR]

Having said that, I don't see young people being confused as cause for concern. I'd be more worried if teens started all being extremely well-adjusted. At least we know that our current crop of young somewhat-binary dictator-loving stimulant-soaked lunatics are not automatons ... yet ...?

One thing I have noticed that baffles me about folks young enough to have grown up with the interwebs, is how prolific spam, scams and catfishing is and talked about. Yet how gullible and nonsuspicious they are about fantastic claims.

What we're calling: ECREE.

[Sy Borg]

Having said that, I don't see young people being confused as cause for concern. I'd be more worried if teens started all being extremely well-adjusted. At least we know that our current crop of young somewhat-binary dictator-loving stimulant-soaked lunatics are not automatons ... yet ...?

One thing I have noticed that baffles me about folks young enough to have grown up with the interwebs, is how prolific spam, scams and catfishing is and talked about. Yet how gullible and nonsuspicious they are about fantastic claims.

What we're calling: ECREE.

That would seem to come down to the bodies of knowledge they access. Like ants, teens are experts with social knowledge and almost completely clueless about the rest of reality. Thus, they are vulnerable to being stuck in social movements in the same way as ants are vulnerable to being caught in a death spiral https://a-z-animals.com/blog/what-is-th ... hey-do-it/

A “death spiral” is a strange natural phenomenon in which a colony of ants essentially commits suicide by following each other in an endless circle until they die of exhaustion.

Worker ants blindly follow the pheromones of a single lead ant in their search for food to feed the queen and the colony. If the lead ant encounters an obstacle, its change in direction can confuse the other ants in line so that they start circling, frantically following each other’s scent, leading to a death spiral effect.

The analogies are clear.

[Lagayascienza]

The ant “death spiral” analogy is interesting.

I hope today’s youth can transcend the stultifying postmodernist phase and emerge into something that offers a bit more clarity, certainty and hope.

I can understand the ambivalence of young people in the West these days. In one way, they have it easier than us oldies did. In other ways, it’s harder for them than it was for my post-war, pre-postmodernist, pre-IT generation. Technology has made a huge difference. It has brought benefits I could not have imagined when I was young. But it also has some serious downsides.

The internet has made accessing knowledge on any subject easy and instant. However, the web is also awash with dubious products, viruses, spyware, SPAM, scams, frauds, pornography… And it offers ways to sit around all day and tune-out of reality. For example, social media creates echo chambers where whatever views might have been formed can be reinforced and never challenged and where happiness is measured by how many “likes” or “upvotes” one gets.

And smart phones keep the young permanently online. They’ll still read in order to pass an exam, but they read less widely and deeply. And solipsism is everywhere - it seems that everything is aimed at “self” these days - it’s all I, ME, YOU as in iPhone, Me bank, Youi (You Insurance) … And “SELF-improvement” books have never been more popular.

Then there are flagging economies and the unfolding climate catastrophe, which the young didn’t cause, and about which they feel helpless. When all this is added to the postmodernist dogma instilled into them at universities, I think one can begin to understand the ambivalence, the ennui, the apathy and the solipsism of modern youth. Especially in the West.

I guess that in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes where internet access is curtailed and filtered and where universities must teach what they are told to teach, postmodernism has not had the same effect as in the west. It’s the opposite, and even worse than in the West, because kids are “taught” what is true (truth is what the dictator or the state says it is) and they are taught to follow the dear leader or the party line and to not question anything. Or suffer the consequences.

At least in western democracies most of us have heard postmodernism’s warnings about grand narratives, and we are free to question anything.

[Gertie]

Wikipedia characterizes postmodernism as “an intellectual stance or mode of discourse characterized by skepticism towards elements of the Enlightenment worldview. It questions the "grand narratives" of modernism, rejects the certainty of knowledge and stable meaning, and acknowledges the influence of ideology in maintaining political power. The idea of objective claims is dismissed as naïve realism, emphasizing the conditional nature of knowledge. Postmodernism embraces self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism […]. It opposes the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization. Postmodernism has permeated various disciplines and is linked to critical theory, deconstruction, and post-structuralism.”

Its “critics argue that postmodernism promotes obscurantism, abandons Enlightenment rationalism and scientific rigor, and contributes little to analytical or empirical knowledge.”

The narrative optimism of Post Enlightenment Modernism had become unsustainable in the twentieth century, as had the planet. The utter horror of the mass mechanisation of World War II, nuclear weapons and production line death camps, the rise of psychology, moral relativism, science veering from clockwork reliability into the fabric of reality itself, which reason and logic are rooted in, to the 'weirdness' of QM. A reckoning was due.

Post-Modernism provides a perspective for analysis which asks us to challenge our comfortable certainties and inherited cultural narratives (at least comfortable for those who got to create the narratives).

The problem is it's de-stabilising and leaves us in something of a limbo, not offering clear answers for us to re-cohere around. That's up to us to to figure out. But that's a big task and a big responsibility. We can see lots of ways that the recklessness it opens the door to are dangerous.


In art post-modernism can challenge conventions in a similar way. It's often art about art. It offers a playground where old rules don't matter, a mix of ideas and techniques to experiment with. It can be meaningful, shocking, playful, or anything else. That's fine, it's a matter of taste if it appeals to you

[Lagayascienza]

I think that is a fair appraisal of the situation, Gertie. Postmodernism has much to answer for but it wasn't all bad news. Much of it was absurd (the Sokal Affair) but its warnings about modernist grand narratives have been taken on board. I think postmodernism's worst effects have been on Continental discourse rather than in the Anglosphere.

[Gertie]

I think that is a fair appraisal of the situation, Gertie. Postmodernism has much to answer for but it wasn't all bad news. Much of it was absurd (the Sokal Affair) but its warnings about modernist grand narratives have been taken on board. I think postmodernism's worst effects have been on Continental discourse rather than in the Anglosphere.

I like philosophy to be as clear as poss, and applicable to reality. I've not delved into continental philosophy, because with the bits n pieces I've looked at the jargon is too annoying - I can't keep it all in my head while simultaneously trying to follow the points being made. So I can't speak on that.

The worst effect of post-modernism imo is the limbo it leaves us in. Which unscrupulous actors can exploit. When the framings and institutions we rely on to provide truthful and moral stability are undermined, with no ready replacement, there's a tendency to turn to demagogues to sort it all out on our behalf. Combined with our natural tribalism, that's a dangerous mix. America is currently toying with that.

[Lagayascienza]

Yes, the US has a problem. I think the ultra-conservative hard right-wing in the US has been able to use what it sees as problems caused by postmodernism in US universities to demonize the left. Even though "left" in the US wouldn't be left in most democracies. In my terms, Bernie Sanders could reasonably described as "left-ish", the Democrats as center-right and the Republicans as so far right they've lost sight of reality. Who can say what's going to happen there? I hope they can sort it out. Without a sensible America, NATO and the democratic West generally, would be hard put to hold it together.

[Gertie]

Yes, the US has a problem. I think the ultra-conservative hard right-wing in the US has been able to use what it sees as problems caused by postmodernism in US universities to demonize the left. Even though "left" in the US wouldn't be left in most democracies. In my terms, Bernie Sanders could reasonably described as "left-ish", the Democrats as center-right and the Republicans as so far right they've lost sight of reality. Who can say what's going to happen there? I hope they can sort it out. Without a sensible America, NATO and the democratic West generally, would be hard put to hold it together.

Yep they're gleefully playing with fire.