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What do You make of Postmodernism?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
Augustus
…
Po-mo largely has a reputation (not wholly undeserved) for being self-indulgent, wanky, pretentious gobbledygook where a bunch of fops and feminists pontificate of the gender based hermeneutics of Harry Potter. Discussing how Potter's wand, which fires out magic which is used to ward of evil, is a metaphor for the mystical power of the phallus, and the demonisation of the female who can only be subdued through male sexual dominance epitomised by the contemptuous act of ejaculation. And how this represents JK Rowling's intrinsic self loathing acquired through the Stockholm syndrome effect of constant oppression by masculine, hetero-centric cultural and sexual hegemony.
The difficulty with Po-Mo, as you mentioned, is what it actually constitutes. It incorporates things such as semiotics, the concept of the 'text', critical theory, (neo) Marxist philosophy, etc, which are important tools for making sense of many aspects of our experience. The excesses of po-mo come when it starts to deny that there is any such thing as 'truth' or 'reality', rather than the less extreme position of accepting that reality is a heavily mediated concept affected by numerous ideological and perceptual tendencies.
With deconstruction, it often resorts to a writer simply saying whatever they want about a text and it's hidden assumptions, rather than anything that has any objective justification beyond the writer's imagination.
There are aspects of po-mo that are useful, although arguably they are not unique to it depending on where you draw the boundaries. It does have a tendency to move beyond an acceptable application of these tools and techniques and descend into self-congratulatory vapidity though.
Overall, a mixed bag and best taken in moderation.
The difficulty with Po-Mo, as you mentioned, is what it actually constitutes. It incorporates things such as semiotics, the concept of the 'text', critical theory, (neo) Marxist philosophy, etc, which are important tools for making sense of many aspects of our experience. The excesses of po-mo come when it starts to deny that there is any such thing as 'truth' or 'reality', rather than the less extreme position of accepting that reality is a heavily mediated concept affected by numerous ideological and perceptual tendencies.
With deconstruction, it often resorts to a writer simply saying whatever they want about a text and it's hidden assumptions, rather than anything that has any objective justification beyond the writer's imagination.
There are aspects of po-mo that are useful, although arguably they are not unique to it depending on where you draw the boundaries. It does have a tendency to move beyond an acceptable application of these tools and techniques and descend into self-congratulatory vapidity though.
Overall, a mixed bag and best taken in moderation.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Personally, I find vapid people confusing verbosity for meaning to be highly entertaining.
dust1n
Zindīq
It has contentions with modernism.
Timothy Bryce
Active Member
It's a natural consequence of modernism and it's great. We're all inescapably experiencing it now in the collective consciousness. It's an imperative tool for us to expand our thoughtfulness and sensitivity as individuals and conceive of meaning as fragile but flexible enough to necessarily mean anything. There's a sense of jumbled freedom aired throughout the movement where everything becomes validated automatically when someone puts an idea or action out into their surroundings or internalizes it somehow; once it's there, it's permanent and open to a full spectrum of interpretation until humans as a species are rendered obsolete. We naturally arrived at postmodernism as a means to intellectually adapt and progress.
I find postmodernism to be mostly gibberish that hasn’t contributed much of anything to any subject. And it seems to have been surprisingly short-lived--I didn’t see where the SEP article cited any material after the 1980s.
That said, I do tend to agree with Foucault that the concept of sexual orientation is (more or less) a social construct. But my agreement is provisional; I can be persuaded by unequivocal scientific evidence to the contrary. Actually, the current population studies, such as they are, show that genetics can only account for a minor portion of the variance in sexual orientation. (Of course, my husband disagrees that sexual orientation is a social construct.)
That said, I do tend to agree with Foucault that the concept of sexual orientation is (more or less) a social construct. But my agreement is provisional; I can be persuaded by unequivocal scientific evidence to the contrary. Actually, the current population studies, such as they are, show that genetics can only account for a minor portion of the variance in sexual orientation. (Of course, my husband disagrees that sexual orientation is a social construct.)
jonathan180iq
Well-Known Member
Isn't everything a social construct? Like, absolutely everything that we believe? How is it not 100% influenced by our surroundings?
Timothy Bryce
Active Member
Engagement with the internet could be argued to be an exercise in postmodernism in some cases. The internet in and of itself could be conceived of as an instrument that lends itself to postmodernism.
What's ironic is that your dismissal of the movement as "mostly gibberish that hasn't contributed much of anything to any subject" is actually validated and enhanced by way of postmodernism.
Are you saying that, e.g., DNA and natural selection are social constructs? Are potatoes social constructs?
Give that argument.
BTW, can you define postmodernism (more succinctly than the SEP article did?) Is postmodernism an epistemological thesis? A metaphysics?
jonathan180iq
Well-Known Member
Everything that we believe...
However, the very knowledge that you have of DNA is merely a product of the social setting that you were born into and raised in. Your knowledge of DNA and natural selection is merely a product of some lucky biological happenstance at the time of your conception. Same applies to me. The same applies to those who know nothing of DNA or natural selection. The only reason that they don't know those things is a result of the very same reason that you do.
Timothy Bryce
Active Member
The internet is a completely unfiltered, international, convenient means for people from literally any part of the word or background to put anything they want out into the collective consciousness to be potentially responded to individually by anyone with access to the internet. It seems to have subverted the old media in many ways; concepts of truth and meaning have been dissolved to an extent. There is more refined acknowledgement of the vast diversity of human perception as a result, etc.
Neither. I'll refer you to my first post in this thread. It becomes more ineffable beyond that; by postmodernism's very nature, my definition of it tomorrow could be completely different. That's how it functions.
So your belief that “everything we believe is a social construct” is itself a social construct and therefore has no objective meaning?
Isn’t that self-defeating?
Among my beliefs about DNA is that it is a molecule that in human cells consists of two strands of linked nucleotides twisting around each other to form a double helix. I believe those are objective facts about human DNA, and are not merely beliefs imposed by my society. I believe those are facts that are not subject to revision by a mere change in the social order or one’s attitude.
I suspect you would not want a postmodernist physician to explain to you that your sudden, excruciating headache and inability to see out of one eye are just social constructs that are solvable by thinking in different concepts.
While I may agree with your statements here, none of them amount to an argument of any sort, much less an argument that concludes that the internet “is an exercise in postmodernism”. To logically conclude that something “is an exercise in postmodernism,” one must first be able to define “postmodernism”. It’s an exercise in inanity to claim that Socrates was not a man but a hornswoggle if one cannot define “hornswoggle.”
I’m certain Al Gore did not engage in any any postmodernist analysis of computers when he invented the internet.
jonathan180iq
Well-Known Member
Not at all. The logic is sound, regardless of my belief or faith in it.
Is there any other way that you can consolidate the fact that you know about DNA and Chemistry moreso than someone who was born an aborigine?
That's not what I said at all... Go back and look.
Evidence of cultural decay and a civilization in decline.
I suppose at issue is whether there are realities that remain uninfluenced regardless of how they are thought of or not thought of. If there are, then the notion that "everything is a social construct", even if true, is in some sense trivial at best.
jonathan180iq
Well-Known Member
I don't think it lessens the value of things, just to know where they come from. But it doesn't change the fact that a huge percentage of who we are is simply a byproduct of time and space.
I really don't think there are realities that are uninfluenced, on the grand scale. To use the example that Nous brought up about DNA, there are certainly objective facts that we've discovered along the way. Math, for example, is still math regardless of our feelings about math. That much is true. One rock plus one rock will always be two rocks. But the social and cultural use of math, the value placed on math, any qualities that we refer to when talking about math, the nature of math...all of those things are social constructs that each of us have picked up along the way and I'd wager that they have more to do with our human experience than does our understanding of basic arithmetic.
Pick anything. If I say "There is a tree." That's probably an objective fact that we can agree on. But everything else about the tree, down to the reactions we have about the colors of the leaves or the way the light casts shadows on each individual piece of bark, and memories about other similar trees that we've seen in our past, are social constructs. Even our understanding of how and why trees grow comes from our social place in time. You and I aren't going to debate the idea that trees are manifestations of the Earth Goddess' desire to reach towards the heavens, right? We know that tree seeds grow into trees. But we know that only by virtue of the culture which we were brought up in.
Sure, it's doesn't have too much value on it's own. But it does help to put even are deepest personal realities into perspective.
What logic? You've claimed that "everything we believe" is a social construct, but you haven't elucidated how those facts about DNA that I and many other people believe are social constructs.
Certainly no one denies that facts are discovered at some point in time or that knowledge disseminates across cultures. No one knew any fact about the US Civil War in the 18th century--and even when General Lee surrendered, some people in China probably didn't know about it. That doesn't mean that the Civil War is a social construct.
To be fair to philosophers (who are generally unworthy of fairness), I do think postmodernism has been short-lived. And it seems there were never many proponents of it. I think structural realism has been a more popular thesis among recent academic philosophers.