Philosophy 101, #15: What is Post-Modernism and how does it contrast with Modernism?
Image 1: Marcel Duchamp's post-modern art, Fountain.
As mentioned in my previous post on modernism, modernism’s foundations are located in its profound confidence in reason and science and revolt against the pre-modern reliance upon tradition, faith, and mysticism. This constituted the Enlightenment and, all in all, modern philosophy made individuals become freer, wealthier, live longer, and enjoy more material comfort. Postmodernism rejects the reason and individualism that the Enlightenment world depends upon. It ends up critiquing objective truth, science, liberal capitalism, and a classical liberal government.
What do post-modern philosophers have in common?
Like modernism, post-modernism has a large variety of thinkers from different academic disciplines and competing schools. This makes it difficult to characterize it in such a way that would be fair to its diversity. Nonetheless, there is a fairly accurate characterization of postmodernism.
Figure 1: Pre-modernism vs Modernism vs Post-modernism.
Social subjectivism
Post-modernism is primarily a reinterpretation of what knowledge is, what counts as knowledge, and how people arrive at their knowledge or perspectives of the world. Instead of experience and reason, post-modernists put (linguistic) social subjectivism at the center.
Anti-realism
Post-modernists are anti-realists, which means that they believe that the world is mind-dependent. To demonstrate the contrast between a realist and an anti-realist view of the world, consider the utterance of “snow is white”. The realist believes that there are properties in the world that can be discovered. The property of snow itself is white, and this property exists independently of our personal interpretation. The anti-realist believes that there is no objective characteristic of ‘white’ in the world, and that it’s only experience that we refer to when we say that “snow is white”.
Cultural relativism
From a cultural perspective, it represents a cultural relativism in which all cultures are placed on equal footing and in which all reality, truth and value are creations of social constructions.
Collectivist and egalitarian ethics
Instead of valuing the ethical individualism of modernists, the post-modernists call for communalism, solidarity, and egalitarian restraints.
Socialism
They prefer socialism as a political and economical doctrine over liberal capitalism.
Image 2: Modernism vs Post-modernism.
Post-modern activism
In addition, they have a disdain for reason and an obsession to explain world relations in terms of power. As Jean-Francois Lyotard states:
Reason and power are one and the same.
Influenced by the post-modernist philosopher, Jacques Derrida, post-modern literary criticism maintains that objectivity and truth can be deconstructed. Literary criticism becomes a subjective play in which the reader pours subjective associations into the text or in which the deconstructed text reveals the author’s race, sex, or class interests.
In education, the post-modernists’ method of molding is linguistic, and so language is used that will create a human being sensitive to its racial, sexual, and class identity. The world is seen as oppressed by whites, males, and the rich. They focus on the historical crimes of whites, males, and the rich, and as a matter of social justice emphasize on the achievements of non-whites, females, and the poor. The conflict between men and women is brutal. As Andrea Dworin expresses it,
The normal fuck by a normal man is taken tob e an act of invasion and ownership undertaken in a mode of predation.
Women have been chattels to men as wives, as prostitutes, as sexual and reproductive servants. Being owned and being fucked are or have been virtually synonymous experiences in the lives of women. He owns you; he fucks. The fucking conveys the quality of ownership: he owns you inside out.
Where do we find post-modernists?
The philosophy of post-modernism has greatly influenced the humanities – philosophy, gender studies, post-colonial studies, social justice studies, sociology, anthropology, education etc.
They look for philosophical support in such post-modernist thinkers like Richard Rorty, Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Jacques Derrida. Those figures in turn, look for philosophical support at Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Karl Marx.
Reference
Hicks, S. (2004). Explaining post-modernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault
Good post
Thanks, Chhayll!
Good post Chhay!
Thanks, Rick!
Can I assume that all of the gender studies majors at liberal universities here in the US would rally their social justice warrior friends to deconstruct your post so they come to the conclusion that you are entirely wrong?
Hehe, that would be fun. :D
Post-modernism seems to be largely a lack of artistic talent disguised by a veneer of sophistry.
Lol, that's a nice way to describe it.
Maybe I'm just a cynical philistine, but I stand by my assessment.
Nice post
Thanks! :)
Skepticism is a good topic to learn about. Thanks for sharing this.
You're welcome! :)
Healthy skepticism leads to the truth. Unhealthy skepticism leads to solipsism and denial of the truth...
:)
I'll preface this by saying I consider myself a POST-postmodernist. Most of the insights of postmodernity are correct to a point but fail in the end in performative contradictions. This does not mean we are privy to the fine mechanisms of nature or reality. We still don't know all that much! I call this epistemological humility.
This framing seems to me more of an academic war rather than offering valid insights into reality and the human condition.
Much of what postmodernity got right was premised on Sellars's Myth of The Given; that is to say that reality isn't simply given to us in the way we thought prior to The Enlightenment.
Where this line of thinking is correct, IMO: Critical Theory and The Frankfurt School with its Marxist Multiculturalism should not be allowed to destroy western cultures. And no, I am not an ethno-nationalist, but I do think immigration should be premised on a TWO WAY STREET! If a Saudi wants to live in Canada then the exchange should be one for one with the Canuck being given the same rights as the Saudi in Canada.
On Classical Liberal economics: it's been hijacked by oligopolies and been turned into a transnational plutocracy. This is not good! Having said that, Classical Economics was fine in its time but now deficient to solve the complexities of the coming century....
I don't think it is very helpful to oversimplify modernism in saying that it was characterized by Liberal Capitalism. Yes some did identify and were at the roots of its movement (e.g. Locke and Smith), but where do the others stand?
I'm not arguing for a minority presence here but for giants like Rousseau and Kant who fall under modernists but fall short under other labels (ethics, politics, metaphysics and epistemology). Where else would post-modernism have had its roots?
You would have to specify that the modernism you are talking about is a classical liberal modernism and not modernism in general.
I look forward to your reply!