I think you're vastly overstating the premise. Postmodernism and more broadly continentalism aren't very popular among certain analytic-leaning philosophers and philosophy departments, but that's by no means every philosopher or department. I wouldn't say the balance is necessarily even--I have no idea just what the balance would be, really, without doing some sort of survey--but continentalists/postmodernists/etc. get plenty of attention and respect in philosophy. And I say this as someone who is definitely analytic-leaning and not at all fond of contintentalism/postmodernism.

Also, although it's difficult to know just what the academic background might be of most folks on the board, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, etc. are WAY more popular on this board than any analytic philosophers.

There are also not an insignificant number of philosophers who have argued that an analytic/continental distinction is nowhere near as black & white as it's often made out to be.

But continental philosophy is not the same as postmodernism. Kant and Husserl were certainly not post-modernists, and arguably neither was Hegel. All three shared a faith in the exercise of reason to solve timeless, philosophical problems. Kant was a universalist; Husserl explicitly attacked psychologism; and Hegel was the last systematic philosopher building a ''meta-narrative''. Marx, another continental thinker, was also not a post-modernist, given his construction of a ''meta-narrative'' in the form of dialectical materialism, and his endorsing a materialist ontology (and hence remaining within the metaphysical tradition). These are all the things post-modernism attacks (among other things). The widespread study and teaching of continental philosophy does not entail the widespread study and teaching of post-modernism.

But continental philosophy is not the same as postmodernism. — philosophy

And indeed I said nothing like that. That should have been obvious to you by the fact that I used the phrase "and more broadly continentalism." "And more broadly continentalism" wouldn't make any sense if I were saying that postmodernism and continentalism were the same thing.

Postmodernism is a subset of continental philosophy. I mentioned continental phil and not just postmodernism because (a) they tend to be assessed similarly by the analytic philosophers in question, and the issues they have with postmodernism they see as an outgrowth of problems with continental philosophy in general, and (b) you mentioned Heidegger, who is not conventionally seen as a postmodernist. I wasn't interested in bickering with that, so I just broadened things a bit.

On the flipside of (a), the folks who embrace Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, etc. tend to embrace Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, etc. as well. It's not the New School for Social Research, UT Austin, etc. who made Derrida guest lecture under the literature department.

A lot of postmodernists, by the way, are going to object to being characterized in any particular way, as either supporting or attacking anything (re your " These are all the things post-modernism attacks"), and most even reject being characterized as postmodernists. They're certainly not going to accept anything resembling an idea that they belong to a "school of postmodernism."

That was also the case with most philosophers who wound up categorized as existentialists (which often includes Heidegger).

It's similar to how most folks won't accept being called a hipster or SJW--they try to "decharacterize" any characterization of those categories, etc.

Anti-labelists basically . . . who certainly wouldn't like being labeled as anti-labelists.

I suspect, of course, the reason is that post-modernism is not taken to meet ''acceptable standards of logic, rigour, and clarity'' which are seen as fundamental to the practice of philosophy. Whilst this may be true, I'm not sure whether it is a particularly strong argument to make given that these are the very things that post-modernist thinkers tend to critique/question. — philosophy

I don't know why you think that these aren't strong arguments.

Logic: it's inherently illogical to try and make a logical argument against logic. You can tweak rules of logic, maybe, but you can't just do away with it altogether and maintain sense.

Rigour: If you/some philosopher does not want to put in the necessary work/research into their theories, I don't see what the point is in paying any attention to them. It's a bit much to say "I may not have put much effort in my theory, or thought it through properly, but you STILL should listen to me 50 years after others have already debunked me."

Clarity: If you can't be clear about what you're saying a) it shows you don't actually understand yourself what you're saying, b) it usually stems from illogic and/or contradictory content, c) it's demanding your listeners/readers do the work of making sense of your ramblings, when it is actually your job to make your theory sensible.

Basically, you can't just throw together some illogical mess of a theory and then demand that people pay any attention to you. There's so much good, clear, logical philosophy being done, that the rest of us need to choose wisely on what to spend any time or effort. Being vague, semi-mystical, and illogical just makes that decision regarding these authors pretty easy.

I agree with you and it is for these very reasons that I am not sympathetic to post-modernism. Perhaps I phrased myself incorrectly. What I should have added is that post-modern attacks on reason/logic/truth are self-defeating/self-refuting.

What I should have added is that post-modern attacks on reason/logic/truth are self-defeating/self-refuting. — philosophy

Indeed!

lol I would say building castles of reason is a solipsistic/masturbatory fantasy and also that analytic philosophy is the worst offender in radicalizing the mind/body duality

I will occasionally joke "my brain serves my balls, not the other way around"

While the writing style of people like Derrida is extremely frustrating, I don't think its fair to characterise postmodernism as attacks against reason/logic/truth--rather their position is better characterised as against the idea that reality is directly accessible. To some extent, reality is constructed through language, social structures and so on. There may be something that exists independently from us, but we only know about it by constructing a picture of it in terms of things like language, and the rules which govern how we assign truth and falsehood depend upon the manner of construction as much as the picture's correspondence with the independent object. It's more 'anti-direct-access' rather than anti-truth.

Important to note that this is not the same as saying that all ways of 'constructing' reality are equally valid--one can still hold that some ways of 'constructing' reality are better than other ways (e.g. one might hold that 'construction' using the scientific method is more practical than other methods of 'construction'). So it's also unfair to say that postmodern philosophy/linguistics is a form of naive relativism, as is often charged. (Though of course there are, as with every academic tradition, hacks who do go down the path of absolute relativism)

It's also not so inconsistent with more scientific views--Paul Cilliers wrote a book called 'Complexity and Postmodernism' which persuasively argues that the logic of, for example, Derrida's linguistics is consistent with that of the connectionist principles used to understand things like neural nets.

Just ew.

America inherited the British inclination for philosophy in a pragmatic style more closely associated with the empirical disciplines than the humanities. That manifests itself in the dominance of empiricism in U.S. philosophy departments. What that means is not that that American philosophers never embrace Continental thinkers, but that they do it very slowly. Look at the frequency of references in analytic and philosophy of mind publications to Descartes, Hume, Kant and Leibniz over the past 70 years. Then see how often Hegel and Husserl popped up. It was only writers like Bernstein, Putnam , Quine, Sellars, Donaldson and Rorty embraced Hegel that we finally began to see him referenced more widely. Now the same thing is beginning to happen with Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and other phenomenological writers, thanks to a turn toward embodiment in philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

We'll have to wait a little longer for posrtmodenists like Deleuze and Derrida to get their turn, but it is already beginning to happen. Heidegger ,Gadamer, Lyotard , Foucault and postmodernism in general are being made use of in 4ea(enactive, embedded, embodied affective) approaches in cognitive science.(See Jan Slaby, Shaun Gallagher and Matthew Ratcliffe, and the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences).

It would be nice if someone from the Institute of Institutional Archeology would launch a major dig into the (unfortunately still damp) dung- and garbage-filled middens of Academia to determine who, what, when, where, and how post-modernism infected English Departments, American Studies, GLBTQIXXDV Studies, etc.

One of the first counter voices I came across to PM was the magazine Lingua Franca, a great little trade magazine that among other things was involved in the Sokol Hoax. If you've never heard of it, or want to revisit a dead friend, here is the link to some of its issues. archive.

Because philosophers are less prone to radical chic and moral exhibitionism.

The cultural relativism at the heart of post-modernism gives rise to an internal inconsistency that is a clear sign of intellectual vacuity for philosophy. If cultural value is relative, the the statement that cultural value is relative is also relative... Plato knocked this on the head in the Protagoras and philosophy, like science, builds on its achievements. Literary theorists are still arguing about what literary theory is.

Your complaint is an old one, Just replace 'postmodern' and Derrida with 'Ideallsm' and Kant, or 'rationalism' and Descartes.The establishment is alway by definition slow to catch on.

Who in your opinion was the first post-modernist? Kierkegaard? Nietzsche? Merleau-Ponty? Were Dewey and James proto-postmodernists? IS radical constructivism a post-modernism? When does a constructivism become post-modern? What about hermeneutics and Gadamer? Is this postmodern? Or Thomas Kuhn?

That may be. I don't know what the "TRUE" method of criticizing literature would be. For me, all sorts of factors go into evaluating literature: the background of the period from which a work came, the biography of the author, his or her intent, and of course the work itself. Then there are some features of literature, like the various forms of poetry that can either be observed or ignored to good and bad results.

I always prefer simpler, more direct language over obscurantist opaque language--something that a lot of contemporary, post-modern, deconstructionist, or whatever-the-hell-it-is, is very guilty of. (Not that they invented opaque language. There are English texts from the past--way before our modernism, that are quite difficult to follow. I'm not referencing Middle English; I'm talking about some Victorians. Other writers, like Boswell (18th century) are very easy to read and comprehend. So is the 17th Samual Pepys, probably because he was just writing for himself, informally.

I would be flabbergasted if I ever witnessed someone demonstrating even a rudimentary understanding of Nietzsche. I've actually seen many people attempt to discuss him for maybe ten minutes before admitting that they haven't read more than a few of his sentences.

I continually see his name in reference to "post-modernist thinking", yet throughout the course of his own written words he continually chastises both those who argue against him and those who emulate him as having misinterpreted his position.

That anyone would find inspiration in his words toward nihilism or social revolution or any of what I've come to recognize as "post-modernism" is the epitome of irony.

I think it should be obvious that his work openly mocks the very people who pay it homage and opposes the very people who believe they've found value in its contents. How can someone lack awareness to such an extent that they take his criticism, sarcasm and cynicism literally and out of context in order to generate their own positions from it that so deeply contradict his overall tone and message?

In response to the title of the thread, I haven't bothered much with some of the other names you've listed as "post-modernist" thinkers, but with Nietzsche in particular, there is a mirror being held to the face of philosophy, and it is urged to examine its own ugliness.

He was also a language and literature specialist and has had some of his works, chiefly those written prior to his mental breakdown, deemed some of the most eloquently written words in the German language. I don't intend to imply agreement or disagreement with this claim. I don't read German. What I'm saying is that his work might be given credit more for its style and effect than for any philosophical interpretation of its contents.

Insofar as "postmodernism" is used in relation to philosophers, there is a reason Nietzsche is counted. The critcism of "postmodernism" isn't directed at what a philosopher says (none of them are nihilsts or reject objective truths). It's a vauge response to denying the application of some kind of tradition narrative.

The "postmodernist" philosopher is misunderstood to be a nihilist or rejecting objective turth on account of abandoning a traditional narrative which is understood to be a source of meaning.

For gender studies, for example, the movement away from the tradition of what a man must be and a women must be, is understood to be destroying the tradition that gives meaning to life.
Hence they are "nihilists" and "subjectvists", since they are understood to be abandoning the only objective truth. (the fact they are making objective arguments about people and their relations doesn't matter to these critics).

Nietzsche is counted because he is an arch-anti traditionalist. He attacks our religious, philosophical and moral traditions without quarter. Indeed, he utterly refutes the idea traditions are accounts or our existence or the reason for our living. For Nietzsche, no-one lacks value and needs to have it granted by a tradition. He utterly undermines what the traditionalist understands to be objectivity. He makes us all worldly and our accounts of ourselves a question of what states of the world do.

As (I think) Joshs implies, 'postmodernism' is more of a pointless buzzword than a useful organising category that groups together thinkers with disparate ideas. The term seems to include everything from scepticism about conceptual categories (Derrida, Foucault -- though again I think these guys only go so far as to say assigning truth or falsehood to statements depends as much on how we construct statements about the world as much as whether those statements really 'correspond' with reality. This is not tantamount to absolute relativism.) to essentialism about conceptual categories (as in the dodgier side of identity politics). It's become even more useless as a term ever since Lord Lobster Daddy became popular with his pOsTmOdErN nEoMaRxIsM conspiracy theory.

Some of these people use obscurantist language (Baudrillard), some of them don't (Foucault, despite his giant sentences, is not that bad). The worst 'postmodernists' do tend towards absolute relativism. But this shouldn't be an excuse to dismiss the great range of thinkers who are shunted under the 'postmodern' label, which is basically what happens when one says postmodernism per se is bad writing and absolute relativism.

In response to the thread title: 'postmodern' thinking (by which I mean a hodgepodge of poststructuralist linguistics, 'continental' philosophy, Marxism (Frankfurt School, structuralist, and more orthodox variants), cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and so on) has become big in English Literature departments as a reaction against what was dominant before, which was even worse than the current so-called 'postmodern' paradigm. Before texts were treated as autonomous, self-referential objects which had little relation to the mechanics of society. At least under the current paradigm academics think about texts as things whose meanings are dependent upon social factors.

Personally I do think the current paradigm could do with a lot more scientific method, and I think the future of English literature probably lies in machine learning/computational linguistics combined with social systems/complex systems theory. But there is much of value to be mined from so-called 'postmodernism'.

Personally I do think the current paradigm could do with a lot more scientific method, and I think the future of English literature probably lies in machine learning/computational linguistics combined with social systems/complex systems theory. — alieninstinct

Lol. no, I don't think that's accurate. Some Lit academics and Phil of Lit people think that's interesting, but it's highly unlikely that the entirety of the field will focus on just machine learning and systems theory. That's just not how the people in that discipline think.

I've actually seen many people attempt to discuss him for maybe ten minutes before admitting that they haven't read more than a few of his sentences. — whollyrolling

It's hard to read more than a few pages of what amounts to a list of aphorisms.

"When, however, ye have an enemy, then return him not good for evil: for that would abash him. But prove that he hath done something good to you.

And rather be angry than abash any one! And when ye are cursed, it pleaseth me not that ye should then desire to bless. Rather curse a little also!

And should a great injustice befall you, then do quickly five small ones besides. Hideous to behold is he on whom injustice presseth alone.

Did ye ever know this? Shared injustice is half justice. And he who can bear it, shall take the injustice upon himself!"

And so on, and so on. It gets tiresome.

He doesn't attack without quarter though, he continually points to redeeming qualities in traditional values amid his seething rants but then proposes such qualities can later be found in the absence of tradition. He admits that abandonment of traditional valuation is foreboding beyond comprehension and condemns the nihilist for doing what it is bound to do.

He also holds to objective (subjective) truths even while contesting them.

The nihilist cherry-picks phrases and takes passages out of context in an attempt to fill its emptiness with the words of its enemy, to fill its mind with the ambitions and intentions of its alleged oppressor, which is ironically how people often treat heroes.

The association between the "post-modernist" title and its recipients makes no sense to me, and it's impossible to evaluate the corresponding "humanities" rhetoric because it's such senseless drivel that it brings on a headache. Gender studies is inventing conflict to gratify an addiction and promoting victimhood for the sake of political leverage--it's not destroying tradition, it's validating it, placing it on a pedestal. Meanwhile, it despises the very people it pats itself on the back for defending. It's a snake so busy eating its own tail that it can't reach all the other tails it's trying to eat.

To isolate Nietzsche's work to a few aphorisms is impatient and short sighted. If only reading was so easy as finishing one sentence before throwing the book into a bonfire with all the others.

I suppose I should have said the future of Eng lit ought to be in ML/comp linguistics + systems theory. That being said, digital humanities is a field which is both growing in the UK and Europe and is interested in using machine learning, as is cultural analytics in Canada. Big data is only going to become more relevant so I wouldn't be surprised if these (currently small) fields end up influencing all the humanities. Of course it won't happen overnight.

To isolate Nietzsche's work to a few aphorisms is impatient and short sighted. If only reading was so easy as finishing one sentence before throwing the book into a bonfire with all the others. — whollyrolling

Except, the ENTIRE book is that way. So yeah, to the bonfire it goes.
(Trust me, I read it. I hate it, but I read it.)

He attacks the important point without quarter: that our meaning is given through tradition. We have to remember these traditionalists, to Nietzsche, are nihilists: they suppose we are meaningless and that, through these traditions, we become meaningful brings (i.e. "if there is no God, life is meaningless/there is no truth).

For these traditionalists, Nietzsche is the ultimate enemy. He denies the terms of their tradition. He puts meaning is us (regardless of our tradition! ) and the world, denying it's a specific tradition (e.g. God, Christianity, maleness, femaleness, etc.) gives us meaning. Nietzsche sees value in tradtion, but he refutes what matter these traditionalist, that we are meaningless unless we follow a specific tradition.

With respect to similarities between Nietzsche and other "postmodernists", it in that both worldly focused. In describing and analysing social situations, they describe what people are doing in society. They describe relationships of power between people and how this forms their social situations. Neither accept people and society formed on the basis of these traditional narratives in question.

I suppose I should have said the future of Eng lit ought to be in ML/comp linguistics + systems theory. That being said, digital humanities is a field which is both growing in the UK and Europe and is interested in using machine learning, as is cultural analytics in Canada. — alieninstinct

I think there is a lot of work going on in that direction, especially in the postmodern parts of Lit departments. People are getting more and more interesting in issues about transhumanism in regard to technology as well.

I'm all for becoming an android when the time comes (immortality and superpowers, woot!), but I'm a bit skeptical of the application of such theories on Shakespeare and Whitman ;)

The so-called 'postmodernists' won't be there forever, the borg will assimilate their uniqueness in time (I hope). As for Shakespeare...

Mega corpus of criticism/writing about Shakespeare since tudor times + systems theoretical understanding of society + computational linguistics = detailed picture of how the concepts used in interpreting Shakespeare have changed since tudor times and the social mechanisms which relate to these changes = detailed picture of how the meaning of Shakespeare's texts themselves have changed since what this meaning is is simply the sum of its interpretations (perhaps throw in some ML analysis of a Shakespeare corpus too).

I must confess I don't have much of an interest in postmodern literary criticism. I'm much more intrigued by postmodern philosophy of science(Joseph Rouse) and postmodern cognitive science. Adherents of this approach include Jan Slaby(critical neuroscience), Shaun Gallgher(philosophic of mind, hermeneutics, enactive embodied cognition) and perhaps Evan Thompson.