Criticism of postmodernism

Criticisms of postmodernism are intellectually diverse, including the belief that postmodernism is meaningless and promotes obscurantism.

Vagueness

Philosopher Noam Chomsky has argued that postmodernism is meaningless because it adds nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge. He asks why postmodernist intellectuals won't respond like people in other fields when asked:

Seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc? These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames.^[1]

In a similar vein, Richard Dawkins writes in a favorable review of Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's Intellectual Impostures:^[2]

Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content.

Dawkins then uses a quotation from Félix Guattari as an example of this "lack of content".

It has been suggested that the term "postmodernism" is a mere buzzword that means nothing. For example, Dick Hebdige, in "Hiding in the Light," writes:

When it becomes possible for a people to describe as ‘postmodern’ the décor of a room, the design of a building, the diegesis of a film, the construction of a record, or a ‘scratch’ video, a television commercial, or an arts documentary, or the ‘intertextual’ relations between them, the layout of a page in a fashion magazine or critical journal, an anti-teleological tendency within epistemology, the attack on the ‘metaphysics of presence’, a general attenuation of feeling, the collective chagrin and morbid projections of a post-War generation of baby boomers confronting disillusioned middle-age, the ‘predicament’ of reflexivity, a group of rhetorical tropes, a proliferation of surfaces, a new phase in commodity fetishism, a fascination for images, codes and styles, a process of cultural, political or existential fragmentation and/or crisis, the ‘de-centring’ of the subject, an ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’, the replacement of unitary power axes by a plurality of power/discourse formations, the ‘implosion of meaning’, the collapse of cultural hierarchies, the dread engendered by the threat of nuclear self-destruction, the decline of the university, the functioning and effects of the new miniaturised technologies, broad societal and economic shifts into a ‘media’, ‘consumer’ or ‘multinational’ phase, a sense (depending on who you read) of ‘placelessness’ or the abandonment of placelessness (‘critical regionalism’) or (even) a generalised substitution of spatial for temporal coordinates - when it becomes possible to describe all these things as ‘Postmodern’ (or more simply using a current abbreviation as ‘post’ or ‘very post’) then it’s clear we are in the presence of a buzzword.^[3]

Others, such as the British historian Perry Anderson, have argued that the various meanings assigned to the term "postmodernism" only contradict one another on the surface and that a postmodernist analysis can offer insight into contemporary culture.^[4] Kaya Yilmaz defends the lack of clarity and consistency in the term's definition. Yilmaz points out that because the theory itself is “anti-essentialist and anti-foundationalist” it is fitting that the term cannot have any essential or fundamental meaning.^[5]

Moral relativism

Some critics have interpreted postmodern society to be synonymous with moral relativism and contributing to deviant behavior.^[6][7][8] Culturally conservative writers, such as Charles Colson, are characterized as tending to look askance at the postmodernist era as ideologically agnostic and replete with moral relativism or situation ethics.^[9] Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler offer the following definition of postmodernism: “A worldview characterized by the belief that truth doesn’t exist in any objective sense but is created rather than discovered.”… Truth is “created by the specific culture and exists only in that culture. Therefore, any system or statement that tries to communicate truth is a power play, an effort to dominate other cultures.”^[10]

Many philosophical movements reject both modernity and postmodernity as healthy states of being. Some of these are associated with cultural and religious conservatism that views postmodernity as a rejection of basic spiritual or natural truths and in its emphasis on material and physical pleasure an explicit rejection of inner balance and spirituality. Many of these critiques attack specifically the tendency to the "abandonment of objective truth" as the crucial unacceptable feature of the postmodern condition^[11] and often aim to offer a meta-narrative that provides this truth.

Marxian criticisms

Callinicos attacks notable postmodern thinkers such as Baudrillard and Lyotard, arguing postmodernism "reflects the disappointed revolutionary generation of '68, (particularly those of May 68) and the incorporation of many of its members into the professional and managerial 'new middle class'. It is best read as a symptom of political frustration and social mobility rather than as a significant intellectual or cultural phenomenon in its own right." ^[12]

Art historian John Molyneux, also of the Socialist Workers Party, accuses postmodernists for "singing an old song long intoned by bourgeois historians of various persuasions".^[13]

Fredric Jameson, American literary critic and Marxist political theorist, attacks postmodernism (or poststructuralism), what he claims is "the cultural logic of late capitalism," for its refusal to critically engage with the metanarratives of capitalization and globalization. The refusal renders postmodernist philosophy complicit with the prevailing relations of domination and exploitation.^[14]

Sherry Wolf, a leading member of the American International Socialist Organization dismisses postmodernist theories as a way to fight for gay liberation in her 2009 publication, Sexuality and Socialism.^[15]

Art Bollocks

Art Bollocks is an article written by Brian Ashbee which appeared in the magazine Art Review in April 1999.^[16] Ashbee points out the importance given to language in "post-modern" art.^[16] The post-modern art forms mentioned by Ashbee are: "installation art, photography, conceptual art [and] video." The term bollocks in the title of course relates to rubbish.

Sokal affair

Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University, formulated the Sokal affair, a hoax in which he wrote a deliberately nonsensical article in a style similar to postmodernist articles. The article was accepted for publication by the journal Social Text.

See also

• Postmodernism Generator

References

1. ↑ Noam Chomsky on Post-Modernism
2. ↑ Richard Dawkins (1998/2007). Postmodernism disrobed. Retrieved 30 March 2013. Originally published in Nature 394:141–143.
3. ↑ Dick Hebdige, ’Postmodernism and “the other side”’, in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A reader, edited by John Storey, London, : Pearson Education .2006
4. ↑ Perry Anderson, in "The Origins of Postmodernity", London: Verso, 1998.
5. ↑ Yilmaz, K 2010, "Postmodernism and its Challenge to the Discipline of History: Implications for History Education", Educational Philosophy & Theory, 42, 7, pp. 779-795, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 April 2012.
6. ↑ "Truth Decay", Probe Ministries
7. ↑ Wells, David F. Review:"Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision," 1998.
8. ↑ Seidner, Stanley S. (June 10, 2009) "A Trojan Horse: Logotherapeutic Transcendence and its Secular Implications for Theology". Mater Dei Institute.
9. ↑ Seidner, Stanley S. (June 10, 2009) "A Trojan Horse: Logotherapeutic Transcendence and its Secular Implications for Theology". Mater Dei Institute. p 3.
10. ↑ Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler, The New Tolerance (Carol Stream IL: Tyndale House, 1998), p. 208.
11. ↑ See for an example the Traditionalist School, in special the critical works by René Guénon.
12. ↑ "Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique" Alex Callinicos (University of York), 1990. Accessed July 22, 2008
13. ↑ Is Marxism deterministic? International Socialism Journal, Issue 68, Accessed December 20, 2010.
14. ↑ Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,Duke UP, 1991.
15. ↑ Sexuality and Socialism: Reviews Haymarket Books. Accessed December 28, 2010.
16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 "Art Bollocks". Ipod.org.uk. 1990-05-05. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-08-17.