Leggo My Pomo
There's an interesting exchange brewing over at Secular Blasphemy, provoked by Jan's seemingly-innocuous post (second item, scroll down) of a would-be parody of typical academic post-modern criticism. I say “would-be parody” because the best examples of this genre already exceed self-parody, and are therefore impervious to humor.
A commenter who identifies him or herself as Artificial Chaos took exception to the po-mo bashing. The Raven joined the fray and eventually expanded his comments at his own site, and now I am doing the same. For context, here are the last three comments in the chain, followed by my response.
ARTIFICIAL CHAOS writes:
I never asked for an exhaustive account of any particular movement at all, only said that I believe your interpretation of the events of the enlightenment was romanticized, and I still believe that. Maybe romanticized is the wrong word and anachronistic is the right word? I apologize if romantic was taken as an insult, it was not intended that way.
Every massive human intellectual movement is a "gotcha" game. The people of the enlightment were playing "gotcha" with the preconcieved notions of the current citizenry, just as postmodernism is doing with us now. Furthermore the scholarly activities of the enlightenment were just as opaque to those contemporaries as postmodernist "scholarly" debate is to us.
Postmodernist thought need not be scholarly garbage and semantics, one can discuss the ideas clearly and thoughfully if they want. Those that do (if any have, which I do doubt along with you) will rise to the top in 100 years and all the crap will be shed. That is progress.
I replied (with characteristic tact and diplomacy):
Your assertion that "every massive human intellectual movement is a 'gotcha' game" is totally preposterous and ignorant. Up until recently, most intellectual movements took themselves seriously as efforts to move human understanding forward and free the mind from the bounds of dogma and ossified tradition. Postmodernism, in its effort to politicize everything, is a step backward into dogma and obscurantism. The one contribution to discourse that it offers - that certain "truths" are cultural constructs rather than metaphysical certainties - is so blinding obvious that it would go without saying if it did not serve to keep an entire industry of academic paper-pushers in business.
In short, I think that in order to restore any semblance of sanity and informational value to our current cultural discourse, we need to integrate po-mo's single insight into our political framework - a project which has largely been accomplished since the 1960s - and move on in a more constructive intellectual direction.
AC answered back:
Again, I maintain my claim.
Yours is an anachronistic interpretation of the intellectual movements that have characterized human cultural evolution.
It is from your low opinion of postmodernism that you submit that it does not "take itself seriously" (Which is an ignorant claim if anything is. Maybe you don't agree with it, and you're free not to, but just because that is the case does not mean they don't "take themselves seriously") and it is your vantage point in the future that allows you to see previous movements in human intellectual advancement as somehow more noble than they were.
It seems that postmodernism's most significant contribution (which you claim is *so* obvious) is right in front of our faces. Tell me, then, if its such an obvious point, why can't you see that the very culture you were raised in provides you with these beliefs of human intellectual movements? And that that culture provides you with the anachronistic viewpoint that you then apply to these movements?
To which I offer the following (here’s the new stuff):
This exchange provides a perfect self-criticism of post-modernism and an excellent demonstration of its fundamental lack of seriousness. In your response, you are basically suggesting that because everyone’s point of view is socially-constructed, there is no way to independently validate any perspective beyond the nexus of self-interest and identity politics.
Well, I ask, who says your entire criticism and perspective isn't also socially-constructed and therefore irrelevant? Or that my retort isn't, or whatever you say back isn't? Why don't we just hurl dirt-clots at each other in the schoolyard, since that's all our discourse signifies anyway?
This intellectual problem is known in the business as non-falsifiability. That is, if there is no way to independently prove a proposition false within the framework of a system, then the system is inherently epistemologically unsound. Marxism and Christianity fail this test – neither Marx nor Jesus can, by the rules of the system, ever be wrong about anything. Same with post-modernism, because some critic can always take a position outside the debate and challenge the fundamental standing of his/her opponent. Modernism, whatever its faults, was serious enough to allow for honest differences within the framework of its theory. That’s the difference between an authentic intellectual movement and a parlor game for bored, cynical academic careerists with lousy prose styles.
And, incidentally, post-modernism is also ethically unsound. By denying that there is any other component to cultural discourse beyond naked self-interest and will-to-power, post-modernism implicitly endorses “rule of the strongest” as the only honest means of adjudicating all human conflicts. Perversely, this so-called radical ideology plays directly into the hands of the most power-hungry authoritarians among us. If that isn’t a step backward, I don’t know what is.
9:55:03 AM 
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