Interested to know what you think AP will get right that pomo got wrong. — Kenosha Kid

I thought pOmO was thought by its AP detractors to be "not even wrong". :yikes:

:up:

I thought pOmO was thought by its AP detractors to be "not even wrong". :yikes: — Janus

Is that why they fail to find fault with it?

Is any postmodern philosophy justifiable? — Kenosha Kid

Well, all those hordes of academics had to ensure a living for themselves, publish or perish, as it were, and what offers more opportunity for coining new career-making terms than pomo?!

The emergence and spread of postmodernism is an indicator of how the world of academia exists primarily for its own sake, catering to its own needs, interests, and concerns. It's also a cautionary tale of what happens when academia is opened to plebeians, ie. people who don't belong there.

That seems glaringly anachronistic.

If you want humans to progress/evolve to the next level of evolution (like primates evolved/changed) then YES we need POSTHUMAN philosophy

:chin: Okay.

I thought pOmO was thought by its AP detractors to be "not even wrong". :yikes: — Janus


Is that why they fail to find fault with it? — Kenosha Kid

No, rather that it is not even wrong is the fault they find with it. But note, I haven't said I think they are right or that the criticism is apt.

The emergence and spread of postmodernism is an indicator of how the world of academia exists primarily for its own sake, catering to its own needs, interests, and concerns. It's also a cautionary tale of what happens when academia is opened to plebeians, ie. people who don't belong there. — baker

I don't disagree but this latter part involving the plebeians - how do you see this working?

No, rather that it is not even wrong is the fault they find with it. — Janus

It's more what you'd expect as a conclusion to a more fundamental fault. But yeah it does seems like that kind of leap to me. It's been interesting reconciling the responses to the two questions with the polls, which is what this was all about.

I agree wholeheartedly with your take on postmodernism. I’d just like to add something to your comments on Derrida.

Derrida teaches his own kind of pluralism, not of epistemologies but of viewpoints, to systematically find every possible interpretation of a text without preferring one over another, and every possible authorial bias that hides and us hidden by those readings. — Kenosha Kid

What I would describe Derrida doing when he deconstructs text text is attempting to situate it in the richest and therefore most ‘precise’ context possible. Let’s say he is taking on Plato. First, he will choose a specific text of his rather than make general
comments about the arc of his philosophy. He does this because he recognizes that an author’s ideas change not only from period to the next in their lives, but even within a single work. Derrida typically goes to great lengths to justify a claim that he frequently makes that a certain consistent thematics unites the various periods of an authors writing. He then attempts to convey this thematics as faithfully as possible before he sets out to deconstruct it. One would think that Derrida would argue that it is impossible to convey any work ‘faithfully’, according to the author’s intent , since deconstruction. seems to reject the idea that one can ever locate this intent. But what Derrida means by interpreting the work faithfully is , to take into account that the reading is taking place from the vantage of a 20th or 21at century context , and the personal vantage of Derrida ( or whoever else is attempting the deconstruction) , and what ever other contexts belong to the interpreter’s background. Unearthing as many of these intertwined contexts as one can make explicit go towards strengthening the rigor of the reading. Having thus made explicit all of these interwoven contexts, Derrida proceeds to deconstruct Plato, revealing the interdependencies underlying Plato’s univocal and unequivocal assertions. So rather than encouraging every possible interpretation without preference for any one , Derrida is encouraging an exhaustively researched method of situating a work within the most complexity and intricate contexts.

Here’s one of my favorite examples
from ‘Points’ , the collection of interviews. Derrida’s
response to the question concerning the meaning of drug addiction is a great demonstration of how he attempts to situate the context of the meaning of a concept in as rich and ‘precise’ a way as possible.


Q.: You are not a specialist in the study of drug addiction, yet we suppose that as a philosopher you may have something of particular interest to say on this subject, if only because of the concepts common both to philosophy and addictive studies, for example dependency, freedom, pleasure, jouissance.

J.D.: Okay. Let us speak then from the point of view of the nonspecialist which indeed I am. But certainly you will agree that in this case we are dealing with something other than a delimitable domain. The criteria for competence, and especially for professional competence, are very problematic here. In the end, it is just these criteria that, whether directly or not, we will be led to discuss. Having identified me as a philosopher, a non-specialist in this thing called "drug addiction," you have just named a number of highly philosophical concepts, concepts that philosophy is obliged to consider as priorities: "freedom," "dependency," "pleasure" or "jouissance," and so forth. So be it. But I propose to begin quite simply with "concept," with the concept of concept. "Drugs" is both a word and a concept, even before one adds quotation marks to indicate that one is only mentioning them and not using them, that one is not buying, selling, or ingesting the "stuff itself" [!a chose meme ]. Such a remark is not neutral, innocently philosophical, logical or speculative. Nor is it for the same reasons, nor in the same manner that one might note, just as correctly, that such and such a plant, root, or substance is also for us a concept, a "thing" apprehended through the name of a concept and the device of an interpretation.

No, in the case of "drugs" the regime of the concept is different: there are no drugs "in nature." There may be "natural" poisons and indeed naturally lethal poisons, but they are not poisonous insofar as they are drugs. As with drug addiction, the concept of drugs supposes an instituted and an institutional definition: a history is required, and a culture, conventions, evaluations, norms, an entire network of intertwined discourses, a rhetoric, whether explicit or elliptical. We will surely come back to this rhetorical dimension. There is not, in the case of drugs, any objective, scientific, physical (physicalistic), or "naturalistic" definition (or rather there is: this definition may be "naturalistic," if by this we understand that it attempts to naturalize that which defies any natural definition or any definition of natural reality). One can claim to define the nature of a toxin; however, not all toxins are drugs, nor are they considered as such.

Already one must conclude that the concept of drugs is a non-scientific concept, that it is instituted on the basis of moral or political evaluations: it carries in itself norm or prohibition, and allows no possibility of description or certification-it is a decree, a buzzword [mot d' ordre]. Usually the decree is of a prohibitive nature; occasionally, on the other hand, it is glorified and revered: malediction and benediction always call to and imply one another. As soon as one utters the word "drugs," even before any "addiction," a prescriptive or normative "diction" is already at work, performatively, whether one likes it or not. This "concept" will never be a purely theoretical or theorizable concept. And if there is never a theorem for drugs, there can never be a scientific competence for it either, one attestable as such and which would not be essentially overdetermined by ethicopolitical norms. For this reason I have seen fit to begin with some reservations about the division "specialist/ non-specialist." No doubt the division may prove difficult for other reasons. From these premises one may draw diff erent, indeed contradictory ethico-political conclusions.

On the one hand, there would be a naturalist conclusion: "Since 'drugs' and 'drug addiction,' " one might say, "are nothing but normative concepts, institutional evaluations or prescriptions, this artifice must be reduced. Let us return to true natural freedom. Natural law dictates that each of us be left the freedom to do as we will with our desire, our soul, and our body, as well as with that stuff known as 'drugs.' Let us finally do away with this law which the history of conventions and of ethical norms has so deeply inscribed in the concept of'drugs'; let's get rid of this suppression or repression; let's return to nature." To this naturalistic, liberal, and indeed la.xist decree [mot d' ordre] one may, on the basis of the same premises, oppose an artificialist policy and a deliberately repressive position.

Occasionally, this may, just like its liberal counterpart, take on a therapeutic guise, preventativist, if I can put it like that, inclined to be persuasionist and pedagogical: "we recognize," one might say, "that this concept of drugs is an instituted norm. Its origin and its history are obscure. Such a norm does not follow analytically from any scientific concept of natural toxicity, nor, despite all our best efforts to establish it in this sense, will it ever do so. Nonetheless, by entirely assuming the logic of this prescriptive and repressive convention, we believe that our society, our culture, our conventions require this interdiction. Let us deploy it consistently. At stake here are the health, security, productivity, and the orderly functioning of these very institutions.

By means of this law, at once supplementary and fundamental, these institutions protect the very possibility of the law in general, for by prohibiting drugs we assure the integrity and responsibility of the legal subject, of the citizens, and so forth. There can be no law without the conscious, vigilant, and normal subject, master of his or her intentions and desires. This interdiction and this law are thus not just artifacts like any other: they are the very condition of possibility of a respect for the law in general in our society. An interdiction is not necessarily bad, nor must it necessarily assume brutal forms; the paths it follows may be rwisted and symbolically overdetermined, but no one can deny that the survival of our culture originarily comprises this interdiction. It belongs to the very concept of our culture, and so forth.

From the moment we recognize the institutional character of a certain concept of drugs, drug addiction, narcotics, and poisons, two ethico-political axiomatics seem to oppose each other. Briefly put, I am not sure that this contradiction is more than superficial; nor am I convinced that either of these logics can follow through to their conclusions; and finally I am not sure that the two so radically exclude each other. Let us not forget that both start from the same premises-that is, the opposition of nature and institution. And not simply of nature and the law, but indeed already of two laws, of two decrees. Naturalism is no more natural than conventionalism.”

It's more what you'd expect as a conclusion to a more fundamental fault. But yeah it does seems like that kind of leap to me. It's been interesting reconciling the responses to the two questions with the polls, which is what this was all about. — Kenosha Kid

I think part of the problem is deciding just what philosophical literature should be counted as postmodernist and what should not. Deleuze, for example, is a self-avowed metaphysician, so does he count as a postmodernist? Some of the strong critics of PM find value in Deleuze and in Foucault, and yet the latter, at least, is generally considered to be a postmodernist philosopher, even an archetypal example. I remember reading Zizek on Badiou, if memory serves, where he praises Badiou as finding a way beyond the 'postmodern sophists', and yet it is not clear just who he refers to with that term.

I remember reading Zizek on Badiou, if memory serves, where he praises Badiou as finding a way beyond the 'postmodern sophists', and yet it is not clear just who he refers to with that term. — Janus

Zizek is quite entertaining and often says interesting things. But if Lacan does not count as someone of which the term "postmodernism" is correctly used on, then we aren't talking about anything.

Perhaps Zizek has Lyotard in mind, maybe Derrida or Baudrillard.

Deleuze, for example, is a self-avowed metaphysician, so does he count as a postmodernist? Some of the strong critics of PM find value in Deleuze and in Foucault, and yet the latter, at least, is generally considered to be a postmodernist philosopher, even an archetypal example. — Janus

Derrida shirked the label postmodernist too. As I said, I don't think it matters whether one considers a particular philosopher to be a postmodernist or a proto-pomo. These are equivalent to saying: I set an arbitrary delineation _here_. Whether you start at Lyotard, or Derrida, or Wittgenstein, or the French existentialists, or Darwin, or Kant is entirely up to you.

My view is that there's no real boundary between late modernists (taking Descartes as the start of modernism) and early postmodernists/protopomos. The latter evolved from the former. When one species evolves into another, there is rarely a particular individual that marks the start of a new species.

However, if you cannot proceed on this basis and are open to an arbitrary nominal beginning, understanding that it is arbitrary, you could follow Steven Hicks and start with Kant, including (by my reckoning) Wittgenstein, the phenomenologists, and the existentialists.

But despite these people being the seeds of postmodernism, it will outrage many who'd claim them purely for modernism, labouring under the illusion that there _is_ a non-porous boundary between modernism and postmodernism. In which case maybe start with Derrida. This would outrage Derrida, but he's dead, so...

In trying to get votes for the Superconducting Super Collider, I was very much involved in lobbying members of Congress, testifying to them, bothering them, and I never heard any of them talk about postmodernism or social constructivism. You have to be very learned to be that wrong. — Stephen Weinberg, d. July 23, 2021

I'm more and more convinced that the only people who actually speak about postmodernism are people who are 'against' it - whatever 'it' is. Irony of ironies, it's like the ultimate simulacrum.

:smirk:

My view is that there's no real boundary between late modernists (taking Descartes as the start of modernism) and early postmodernists/protopomos. — Kenosha Kid

I agree with the thrust of this, but I'd also argue that a marker of difference between modernism and postmodernism is an explicit self-awareness of the modernist sensibility and a self-reflexivity that is not overtly present in modernism. I mean, quick literary examples. Modernist authors: Joyce, Kafka, Beckett, Marinetti. Real fuckin' weird, huge emphasis on experimentation with form, a response to dramatic changes in the world around them. Anyone not paying attention might mistake their work for 'postmodern'. And then postmodern: Pynchon, McCarthy, Palahniuk, Ashbury. Here you get a real involution of form, writers well aware of what they are doing and thematizing that awareness at the level of the work itself; they are writers incredibly comfortable with what they are doing in the sense of exhibiting a sense of "play" with their audience and themselves (no matter how 'dark' the subject matter gets). They take for granted the lack of foundationalism that seems to torture or perplex Joyce/Kafka/Beckett/Marinetti and turn it into an aesthetic principle to be explored for its own sake. It's the difference between "the world is fucked up, how should we respond?" and "the world is fucked up, so we may as well inhabit it".*

A proper reading would flesh this out with concrete examples but I'm lazy so. In a formula: the postmodern is the modern become self-conscious. Edit: one more example to really hammer it home: if Marx was a modernist (and he was), can we really say that his thought is also imperceptibly shades into postmodernism? He'd roll over in his grave.

For realsies though, the only people with anything interesting to say about postmodernism seem to the be Marxists (Jameson, Anderson, Eagleton, Callinicos, Wood) insofar as they actually have a sense of history, while everyone else just kind of drools on about style and hoaxes and Lyotard as though they aren't reiterating verbatim stale complaints made since the 80s (i.e from 4 decades). The only thing more dreary than postmodernism are people who complain about postmodernism because at least the former had 5 minutes in spotlight before shutting up forever while the latter can whine about it interminably.

Maybe because, in many circles (here in America), p0m0 has become the illness it seeks to cure, the 'anti-metanarrative metanarrative', so to speak, validating a rainbow of "micro-narratives" while it also relativizes them all down to the cynical point of nihil – no more emancipatory metanarratives – in this globalist abattoir of (TINA) neoliberalism-über-alles. Yeah, it is pointless to waste much time bitching about p0m0 come and gone.

Idk, the anti-pomo cottage industry is as much a cottage-industry as all the actual industry that people like to also whine about. If I had to guess a ratio of people whining about pomo to people actually espousing pomo ideas I'd say the ratio runs about 1000:1. Not even exaggerating. It clearly serves some kind of ideology, or at least satisfies some kind of desperate need, and I'd wager its the same one that recoils in the face of any avant-garde that threatens, even marginally, the status quo. This even if every one of the 'critics' is correct on every count.

I mean, quick literary examples. Modernist authors: Joyce, Kafka, Beckett, Marinetti. Real fuckin' weird, huge emphasis on experimentation with form, a response to dramatic changes in the world around them. Anyone not paying attention might mistake their work for 'postmodern'. And then postmodern: Pynchon, McCarthy, Palahniuk, Ashbury. — StreetlightX

Beckett is the transitional writer here. Postmodern literature is generally thought to start with him, albeit with outliers (e.g. The Third Policeman).

A proper reading would flesh this out with concrete examples but I'm lazy so. In a formula: the postmodern is the modern become self-conscious. — StreetlightX

:up:



Part of my motivation for these threads was a dissatisfaction with those wheeled-out pomo criticisms. I was hoping to see where, starting from the first obvious question (is/was there a postmodern condition), pomo was perceived to fail. But that doesn't appear to be a conversation we can have: we skipped right to the end, the conclusion, straight away. For instance, 0 posts in support of the leading poll option on this thread. It seems hysterical to me.

My view is that there's no real boundary between late modernists (taking Descartes as the start of modernism) and early postmodernists/protopomos. The latter evolved from the former. When one species evolves into another, there is rarely a particular individual that marks the start of a new species. — Kenosha Kid

I agree with this; there is no well-defined boundary, and I'm not convinced there is any well defined difference between modernism and postmodernism other than the latter's explicit rejection of the grand narrative. I am also minded of what we might think the difference between modernity and postmodernity to be if there is one. Do you think there is a postmodern condition as distinct form a merely modern?

I agree with the thrust of this, but I'd also argue that a marker of difference between modernism and postmodernism is an explicit self-awareness of the modernist sensibility and a self-reflexivity that is not overtly present in modernism. I mean, quick literary examples. Modernist authors: Joyce, Kafka, Beckett, Marinetti. Real fuckin' weird, huge emphasis on experimentation with form, a response to dramatic changes in the world around them. Anyone not paying attention might mistake their work for 'postmodern'. And then postmodern: Pynchon, McCarthy, Palahniuk, Ashbury. Here you get a real involution of form, writers well aware of what they are doing and thematizing that awareness at the level of the work itself; they are writers incredibly comfortable with what they are doing in the sense of exhibiting a sense of "play" with their audience and themselves (no matter how 'dark' the subject matter gets). They take for granted the lack of foundationalism that seems to torture or perplex Joyce/Kafka/Beckett/Marinetti and turn it into an aesthetic principle to be explored for its own sake. It's the difference between "the world is fucked up, how should we respond?" and "the world is fucked up, so we may as well inhabit it".* — StreetlightX

The problem with this is that it seems to be saying that the awareness that the world is "fucked up" is not already a self-reflexive modernist critique of the condition of modernity, if not of the modernist sensibility itself (whatever we might take that to be). Is the world fucked up because of the modernist sensibility?

You say "not overtly present"; so if post-modernism is the transition from a not overtly present (an implicit) self awareness of the modernist sensibility (and condition?) to an explicit self-awareness of it, does it follow that the world is therefore less fucked up because of the rise of the post-modernist critique? Or is the world now more fucked up than ever because of the postmodernist movement?

It's interesting that you say the post-modernists were comfortable with what they were doing (and with the fucked up world?) because that seems to raise the question as to whether they were more comfortable simply because they inhabited a more prosperous and comfortable epoch. I don't agree that it was a "lack of foundationalism" that "tortured or perplexed" the modernists, but rather a sense of meaninglessness or ennui. There simply wasn't as much to distract oneself from a sense of emptiness in the earlier time as there came to be in the later.

If postmodernism is the rejection of the grand narrative, then the authors you cited are already postmodern. Of course there will also be different "mappings" regarding modernism/ postmodernism depending on whether you are considering literature and the arts, or philosophy, anthropology, politics and so on.

Do you think there is a postmodern condition as distinct form a merely modern? — Janus

Yes, I think so. The killer blow in terms of the condition is how predictive _The Postmodern Condition_ was: it reads like a history book.

In terms of it being non-modern, also yes. I think that, aside from anything else, and despite a lot of good (mathematics, empiricism), modernism is first and foremost a faith in the power of superior man (both 'human' and 'male'), his language, and his tools: an inherent rightness of his thinking, his writing, and his transformation of his environment.

I think we are more pluralistic, relativistic, even nihilistic now. We're right to treat governments, ideologies, authorities, and technologies like AI with suspicion, because the myth of the inherent rightness of their tokens is rightly exploded. Information is available to debunk or undermine anything now, and it's no longer a question of the right-est but the least wrong: which micronarratives have to give way when they conflict (under the full understanding that any choice is to some extent arbitrary)?

In terms of it being non-modern, also yes. I think that, aside from anything else, and despite a lot of good (mathematics, empiricism), modernism is first and foremost a faith in the power of superior man (both 'human' and 'male'), his language, and his tools: an inherent rightness of his thinking, his writing, and his transformation of his environment. — Kenosha Kid

I certainly agree that there is movement against what you here characterize modernism as being; to deny that would be absurd. But I also think that much of that amounts to lip service. It's like the global warming issue: perhaps the majority of people who are comfortable enough to have the leisure to think about it, and were privileged enough to get a half-decent education will say that yes we really should do something about it, and yet they resist any diminishment of their lifestyles or even relatively minor
inconveniences, which would be necessary to make any difference and resort instead to empty virtue signalling.

I think we are more pluralistic, relativistic, even nihilistic now. We're right to treat governments, ideologies, authorities, and technologies like AI with suspicion, because the myth of the inherent rightness of their tokens is rightly exploded. Information is available to debunk or undermine anything now, and it's no longer a question of the right-est but the least wrong: which micronarratives have to give way when they conflict (under the full understanding that any choice is to some extent arbitrary)? — Kenosha Kid

I agree and this is highlighted nicely by the debate about Covid and the vaccines. People don't know who to trust, since their confidence in governments and corporations (in this case represented by what is referred to as "Big Pharma") and their motives has been significantly eroded.

Only here it is not a battle of micronarratives, but a battle between the grand narrative represented by the government, the health authorities and the pharmaceutical industry, and the various micronarratives that represent lack of confidence in, and even suspicion of, those entities and what might be their "real motives".

In The Technological System, Ellul has this to say about "posts" and other vague terms:

Certain sociologists fully realize that we are no longer in an industrial society [...] But they employ strange words: postindustrial, or advanced industrial society. I find it quite remarkable that in a time when the use of mathematics is being developed in the human sciences, people can employ such imprecise and meaningless words.

[...]

Postindustrial? This simply means that we have passed the industrial stage. And now?

In what way does this indicate the slightest feature, render the slightest idea of what our society is like? If someone knew nothing about these things, one could precisely define the machine, industry, hence industrial society. But how can we communicate anything about a "post"?

Would Bell ever dream of defining the political society of the seventeenth century as postfeudal, or that of the nineteenth century as postmonarchic? Likewise, the term "advanced or developed industrial society" makes no sense. "Developed"? This can only mean that industry has developed further. So we must still be living in a society that is industrial, only more so.

[...]

Z. Brzezinski also figured he could add something absolutely new by coining the term "technetronic". [...] I certainly won't deny that Brzezinski has very accurately brought out new features of society in its present or imminent phase, but I don't see the need for coining a new term. [...] The traits that Brzezinski discerns in his technetronic society are actually the traits of a technological society. And much as I like his honest book, I am forced to admit that he simply went along with the fad of making up a - seemingly - esoteric vocabulary in order to give the impression of coming up with something new. What he says is quite standard in regard to technological society. All that is new here is the word "technetronic", which is unjustified. "Technology" amply suffices for everything he discusses. — Ellul

:up:

The emergence and spread of postmodernism is an indicator of how the world of academia exists primarily for its own sake, catering to its own needs, interests, and concerns. It's also a cautionary tale of what happens when academia is opened to plebeians, ie. people who don't belong there.
— baker

I don't disagree but this latter part involving the plebeians - how do you see this working? — Tom Storm

How do I see what working? Kicking plebeians out of academia?

No, I meant how do you define plebeians and how do you identify them in situ before they do damage?

Oh, personally, I'd go by the one drop rule.

Practically, I think this is a lost cause, the damage is done, and the system will just have to gradually purge itself from intruders in indirect ways, such as by increasing scholarship tuitions, increasing competition between students and between academics, allowing for (more) nepotism and cronyism. This should bring the educational system back into the domain of the elite, where it belongs.

I bet this really really riles up every democratic, egalitarian bone in your body. That is not my intention. I think though that many people waste a perfectly good lower middle class life trying to be something they are not when they try to join the elite by trying to get a fancy education.