The Failure of Postmodernism

[quote] The desire to “smash” the status quo, challenge widely held values and institutions and champion the marginalized is absolutely liberal in ethos. Opposing it is resolutely conservative. This is the historical reality, but we are at a unique point in history where the status quo is fairly consistently liberal, with a liberalism that upholds the values of freedom, equal rights and opportunities for everyone regardless of gender, race and sexuality. The result is confusion in which life-long liberals wishing to conserve this kind of liberal status quo find themselves considered conservative and those wishing to avoid conservatism at all costs find themselves defending irrationalism and illiberalism. Whilst the first postmodernists mostly challenged discourse with discourse, the activists motivated by their ideas are becoming more authoritarian and following those ideas to their logical conclusion. Freedom of speech is under threat because speech is now dangerous. So dangerous that people considering themselves liberal can now justify responding to it with violence. The need to argue a case persuasively using reasoned argument is now often replaced with references to identity and pure rage.

Study post-modernism all you want, but it's not going to help anyone at Datalounge understand why Lucille Ball was cast as Mame.

R2, but Focault disagrees with you! You are denying his reality! You are assaulting his sense of self! I'm calling the cops.

[quote]How much of a threat is postmodernism to science? There are certainly some external attacks. In the recent protests against a talk given by Charles Murray at Middlebury, the protesters chanted, as one, “Science has always been used to legitimize racism, sexism, classism, transphobia, ableism, and homophobia, all veiled as rational and fact, and supported by the government and state. In this world today, there is little that is true ‘fact.'”[9]

Another gem:

[quote] When the organizers of the March for Science tweeted: “colonization, racism, immigration, native rights, sexism, ableism, queer-, trans-, intersex-phobia, & econ justice are scientific issues,”[10] many scientists immediately criticized this politicization of science and derailment of the focus on preservation of science to intersectional ideology. In South Africa, the #ScienceMustFall and #DecolonizeScience progressive student movement announced that science was only one way of knowing that people had been taught to accept. They suggested witchcraft as one alternative.

R4 they chanted all that? Once you get beyond one, maybe two short sentences the chanting becomes less a protest and more of a cult meeting.

The constant rightwing trolling here is insane. Muriel, do something about this.

One does not need to be right wing to be against post-modernism.

[quote]the protesters chanted, as one, “Science has always been used to legitimize racism, sexism, classism, transphobia, ableism, and homophobia, all veiled as rational and fact, and supported by the government and state. In this world today, there is little that is true ‘fact.'”

Hard to imagine as a “chant.” A recitation perhaps? And yet, unless they’d rehearsed, an indecipherable mess.

A bunch of strange 60's era Frenchmen have really fucked up the social sciences and humanities. They have created a language that is impenetrable to all but themselves and have foisted nonsense ideas upon us. Postmodernist ideas have led to lesbians being unable to question how men in drag can call themselves women and take over women's spaces.

Below is the culmination of postmodernism at the college level.

R10, a picture is worth a thousand words...and a thousand pounds, apparently.

I mean just read Orientalism by Said and you'll see they have some points

"Postmodernism" isn't a thing that can succeed or fail, nor is it responsible for the culture of "outrage." Please flag this rightwing garbage.

This article is hysterically misinformed and the worst pseudo-intellectual vomit I have ever read. It's what a Breitbart "journalist" would cobble together in an attempt to undermine true leftist intellectual discourse.

To begin with, the author (who I suspect is the OP here, calling this shite "great") confuses WILDLY postmodernism as a cultural epoch and episteme, and the postmodernist research school, which immediately invalidates everything else that is written (which is so absurd and all over the place that I won't even start criticizing it).

All in all, a writing effort that puts the word intellectuals in parentheses and illustrates this with a picture of Foucault, is to be given the widest berth possible. What shit!!!

What R13 said. This is a right wing conspiracy linked to the “cultural Marxism” hoax. Both are thinly veiled allusions to anti-Semitism. This is alt-right garbage and it’s starting to creep into every thread here.

Postmodernism was specific to the French culture at the time, and didn't really translate to Anglo-American culture.

R16, would you say then the failure isn't one of postmodernism but of how it has been interpreted by American academics?

It's a failure because it's not applicable to Anglo-American society and culture.

And yes, those Frenchmen were some strange ducks.

The article must be good, since it's being censored by the fascists here. Digital book burning.

The comments in the article have the usual BS but there also some good discussions in there.

The only science the French truly value.

My god, the debilism on this board! Ff and delete.

R22, I'm so sorry you're offended.

ANTI-INTELLECTUAL RIGHT-WING PROPAGANDA

F&F

The article appears in Aero Magazine which others describe as having a left bias.

The author is Helen Pluckrose who was involved in the "Grievance studies affair".

I don't have time right now to read the article but thanks for pointing it out. Aero Mag seems interesting.

I'm not surprised by the low IQ book burners here.

The magazine does not seem right wing and certainly not fascist. The article is not particularly original but it's not fascist either. The identitarian left is a problem and probably has some partial origin in the extreme relativism that postmodernism philosophically supports .

R25/R26, just look at people on this thread to see some of their knee-jerk reactions. They are proving the author of the article right. I'm also a little surprised by the people clicking Ff on the thread. There are far more insidious topics posted everyday on here.

It seems the tenured neo-Marxist deconstructionists have stated their boundaries on this thread. You must not question postmodernism and the effects of identify politics on the democratic process, just as lesbians can not question straight male fetishists cosplaying females.

R4:

[quote]"The Bell Curve” endorses prejudice by virtue of what it does not say. Nowhere does the book address why it investigates racial differences in IQ. By never spelling out a reason for reporting on these differences in the first place, the authors transmit an unspoken yet unequivocal conclusion: Race is a helpful indicator as to whether a person is likely to hold certain capabilities. Even if we assume the presented data trends are sound, the book leaves the reader on his or her own to deduce how to best put these insights to use. The net effect is to tacitly condone the prejudgment of individuals based on race."

Charles Murray is a filthy racist and that is the end of it. Don't you dare come in here defending this pig.

;) ;) ;)

[quote] Even if every claim Charles Murray made turned out to be completely true — a position I do not share — this has absolutely no impact on whether or not racial minorities deserve every measure of equality within our society, nor does it in any way diminish the need for continued political action to make such equality more and more the reality of our time. Room for blasphemy does not by definition make room for bigotry. Disagreeing with your Muslim or Jewish friends on the truth claims of their religion in no way gives a green light towards infringing upon their rights as people. Both using the truth-claims of their beliefs to oppress and insulating such beliefs by conflating the two as the same only hinder the progress of our civilization, and the furthering of the project of maximizing human flourishing.

R29

[quote]Even if we assume the presented data trends are sound, the book leaves the reader on his or her own to deduce how to best put these insights to use.

And we don't want THAT do we.

First of all, anyone with a brain and some education knows that marxists are the number one enemies of post modern thought as it negates Karl Marx's historical materialism favoring ideas over practical material conditions. So stop labelling everyone who criticize this shit as right wing trolls. Within activism itself, marxists are 10 times more critical of it than any right winger, who are clueless idiots blaming the Frankfurt school for the very elitism Adorno and Horkheimer denounced, but I digress.

That being said, Foucault is probably the most misinterpreted philosopher in modern history, starting with imbecile Judith Butler and the whole gender and queer theory ilk doing their freestyle cherry picking interpretation of reality to fabricate their risible 'theory' of genders. It surprises no one that this movement came from a literature major and not a real philosopher with academic rigor.

I'm not an expert in Leyotard, but have Derrida is very misinterpreted too by so-called post modernist, which is expected as the idea of deconstruction includes negating any academic rigor in favor of personal experience and observation.

I think pan africanism and that "when we were kings and were all the western world empires" narrative, or flat earthers owe a lot to the misinterpretations of these philosophers. Observations aside, I don't think post modernist and post structuralist thought are real threats to academia or sciences as many here point out. Most examples are isolated cases that are completely frown upon by academia itself and most are exclusive to activism without practical changes in life. I know there has been some backing up of free speech at universities and whatnot, but that's not a threat I would consider a danger, yet.

Ironically enough the war of narratives only thrives on the Internet and the echo chambers of college activism, where people have taken it as the whole experience of reality. Derrida would be proud.

[quote] It's a failure because it's not applicable to Anglo-American society and culture.

That's a ridiculous and uninformed statement.

R33 You are my idea of sexy.

r34 it's specifically related to French society and culture and doesn't translate to schools of thought in the Anglosphere. At least not on a practical level.

R31: BULLSHIT! He's promoting racism with an "intellectual" veneer on it, which totally impacts public support for policies to alleviate racial discrimination and poverty. It is not blasphemy what he says, it is bigotry. There is NO comparison between Murray's beliefs and religious faith. Lucas Lynch is being very intellectually dishonest.

Murray is horrible and a racist. The disturbing thing about the episode at Middlebury College is that the female professor who disagrees with him and was debating him on stage was also attacked and apparently injured. I can understand, although I don't agree with, the position that he shouldn't even be accorded the respect of being debated on stage, but it's horrible that a person debating him be physically attacked. If you are defending that, and some on the far left are, then you are an authoritarian thug and need to be denounced. Just ignoring that that occured puts you beyond the pale.

Postmodernism didn't fail France or Germany. I did semiotics and critical theory at Cornell, Brown, Sorbonne and Genève in the thick of it. By the mid 90s one noticed that critical theory was going gangbusters in US academia - a pacman eating everything up, yet falling into oubliettes on the Continent. French and German institutions didn't let their intellectuals and departments become putrified, while American universities let it creep through many departments and academic fields and started hiring 2nd rate minds as assistants and now professors. Instead of having FUN with critical theory, they took it dreadfully seriously and added post-colonial and gender studies politics to suck ALL the air in the rooms. Worse, they were educating humorless twats into SJWs. Twats with now, 3-rate minds, 3x removed from the simply intellectual merriment structuralism, post structuralism and critical theory had been, in their origins. Sure there had been some radical chic Marxism so I guess it could have been considered applied - but applied philosophy was more of a 20-50s thing.

French professors are amazed that this crap is still being dished in American academia. It's pathetic and not the fault of "post-modernism" - rather the fault of average minds in both teaching and administration latching onto post-marxist purity policing and post-colonialist finger-pointing to create and maintain careers. Look at the implosion of Oberlin. All because too many entrenched woke people there couldn't call a spade, a spade.

Blame the American sheep. The profs and deans and gender studies grads. Not Althusser and Derrida, for crissakes.

R39, do you think American universities can be fixed or is it too late?

Not R39 here but I agree with much of his analysis. Combine that with rising costs and I think one will see the demise of many mediocre middle sized liberal arts colleges in the next two decades or earlier. And what's largely being sold now in the humanities, outside of more conservative places, is not popular with parents and most students. There's a reckoning coming and a collapse, R40. I'm not sure what emerges from the ashes.

R40 The big ones can be fixed but they need strong presidents and they need a directive to Deans that the school isn't just serving the immature emotionally-based intellects of average minds applied to abstract topics. If the liberal arts wants to turn out gender studies or post colonial studies the students in those programs should have HIGH foreign language requirements, such as 2 languages mastered to CEFR C1, and they should have financial analysis AND have to do an internship and work-based project, in order to get the B.A. Then they will be employable and it won't be just navel gazing.

But R42, if all that happens, we won't get people like Alok anymore!

"They" got a BA in Feminist Studies at Stanford '13. Their statement:

I chose to major in Feminist Studies because it was one of the few programs at Stanford where I could study issues that were directly pertinent to my life and my activism. There was never a concern that the knowledge I was learning was not 'practical,' or not 'applied' to the real world because the theories and methods I was exposed to...

... were directly related to how to challenge and eradicate power inequalities. Feminist Studies, thus, allowed for me to seamlessly integrate my queer and feminist activism with my coursework. The most important aspect of the experience was writing my Honors Thesis on white supremacy and the LGBTI movement in South Africa as this allowed me to integrate theory with practice, have international research and activism experience, and grow as a scholar and activist. Feminist Studies helped me develop an analysis of power relations and an appreciation for compassion and solidarity that I will take to all new positions (professional or not) in my life.

Alok Vaid-Menon, '13

"They" do seem to be an activist of some sort besides being a fame whore. Alok probably has employable skills - I don't know if he wants to be a scholar. Do they now have a masters? I don't know if they would compromise to work in a large foundation, or bank, or NGO, on their interest in "power imbalances" if it would mean a big dent in their gender-bending fame whoring. But a Stanford degree would admit them.

They should know a few languages and be able to crunch numbers and write policy papers. That's what NGOs in Geneva want, at least.

They probably makes an ok living as a fame whore for the moment. IMO they will be less tolerable as they turns into a middle aged person.

Another problem facing middle range middle sized liberal arts colleges is fewer students are applying. State universities are less expensive. So the caliber of student body is lowered, leading to fewer good students applying. Furthermore you can't really teach many of those students multiple languages, math, statistics, etc. Feminist and Queer Studies which rejects such methods are where those students end up, if they don't drop out after the first year. This is not a suatainable economic or educational model.

Marry me, r39.

[R41] Yes, and the state schools are getting better and better, thus making the small private schools increasingly irrelevant. The community colleges are improving too, and attending those for at least the first year of college is a sensible choice for middle class kids.

Going to a community college to get an Associates and then transferring to a university to get a Bachelors is an increasingly popular option for many students these days, due to how expensive tuition is now.