Criticism of postmodernism

Criticisms of postmodernism are intellectually diverse, including the belief that postmodernism can be meaningless, promotes obscurantism and uses relativism (in culture, morality, knowledge) to the extent that it cripples most judgement calls. Criticism of postmodernism is usually not a comprehensive attack on the various diverse movements labelled postmodern. Criticism often refers to specific branches of postmodernism which may vary greatly such as postmodern philosophy, postmodern architecture and postmodern literature. It may also be limited to certain tendencies in postmodern thought such as post-structuralism, cultural relativism and "theory". For example, a philosopher may criticize French postmodern thought yet still appreciate postmodern cinema. Conversely Ashbee criticises most creative postmodern works (works of art, books, films etc.) without broadly attacking the entire inventory of varied post-modern projects.

Vagueness

Philosopher Noam Chomsky has argued that postmodernism is meaningless because it adds nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge. He asks why postmodernist intellectuals won't respond like people in other fields when asked:

Seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc? These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames.^[2]

Christopher Hitchens in his book, Why Orwell matters, writes, in advocating for simple, clear and direct expression of ideas, "The Postmodernists' tyranny wears people down by boredom and semi-literate prose."^[3] Hitchens also criticized a postmodernist volume, "The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism":^[4] "The French, as it happens, once evolved an expression for this sort of prose: la langue de bois, the wooden tongue, in which nothing useful or enlightening can be said, but in which various excuses for the arbitrary and the dishonest can be offered. (This book) is a pointer to the abysmal state of mind that prevails in so many of our universities."

In a similar vein, Richard Dawkins writes in a favorable review of Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's Intellectual Impostures:^[5]

Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content.

Dawkins then uses a quotation from Félix Guattari as an example of this "lack of content".

It has been suggested that the term "postmodernism" is a mere buzzword that means nothing. For example, Dick Hebdige, in Hiding in the Light, writes:

When it becomes possible for a people to describe as ‘postmodern’ the décor of a room, the design of a building, the diegesis of a film, the construction of a record, or a ‘scratch’ video, a television commercial, or an arts documentary, or the ‘intertextual’ relations between them, the layout of a page in a fashion magazine or critical journal, an anti-teleological tendency within epistemology, the attack on the ‘metaphysics of presence’, a general attenuation of feeling, the collective chagrin and morbid projections of a post-War generation of baby boomers confronting disillusioned middle-age, the ‘predicament’ of reflexivity, a group of rhetorical tropes, a proliferation of surfaces, a new phase in commodity fetishism, a fascination for images, codes and styles, a process of cultural, political or existential fragmentation and/or crisis, the ‘de-centring’ of the subject, an ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’, the replacement of unitary power axes by a plurality of power/discourse formations, the ‘implosion of meaning’, the collapse of cultural hierarchies, the dread engendered by the threat of nuclear self-destruction, the decline of the university, the functioning and effects of the new miniaturised technologies, broad societal and economic shifts into a ‘media’, ‘consumer’ or ‘multinational’ phase, a sense (depending on who you read) of ‘placelessness’ or the abandonment of placelessness (‘critical regionalism’) or (even) a generalised substitution of spatial for temporal coordinates - when it becomes possible to describe all these things as ‘Postmodern’ (or more simply using a current abbreviation as ‘post’ or ‘very post’) then it’s clear we are in the presence of a buzzword.^[6]

Postmodernists or postmodern-friendly intellectuals such as the British historian Perry Anderson defend the existence of the varied meanings assigned to the term "postmodernism", claiming they only contradict one another on the surface and that a postmodernist analysis can offer insight into contemporary culture.^[7] Kaya Yılmaz defends the lack of clarity and consistency in the term's definition. Yılmaz points out that because the theory itself is "anti-essentialist and anti-foundationalist" it is fitting that the term cannot have any essential or fundamental meaning.^[8] Sokal has critiqued similar defenses of postmodernism by noting that replies like this only demonstrate the original point that postmodernist critics are making: that a clear and meaningful answer is always missing and wanting.

Moral relativism

Some critics, such as Noam Chomsky, have interpreted postmodern society to be synonymous with moral relativism and contributing to deviant behavior.^[9][10][11] Culturally conservative writers, such as Charles Colson, are characterized as tending to look askance at the postmodernist era as ideologically agnostic and replete with moral relativism or situation ethics.^[12] Josh McDowell and Bob Hostetler offer the following definition of postmodernism: "A worldview characterized by the belief that truth doesn’t exist in any objective sense but is created rather than discovered."… Truth is "created by the specific culture and exists only in that culture. Therefore, any system or statement that tries to communicate truth is a power play, an effort to dominate other cultures."^[13]

Many philosophical movements reject both modernity and postmodernity as healthy states of being. Some of these are associated with cultural and religious conservatism that views postmodernity as a rejection of basic spiritual or natural truths and in its emphasis on material and physical pleasure an explicit rejection of inner balance and spirituality. Many of these critiques attack specifically the tendency to the "abandonment of objective truth" as the crucial unacceptable feature of the postmodern condition^[14] and often aim to offer a meta-narrative that provides this truth.

Marxian criticisms

Alex Callinicos attacks notable postmodern thinkers such as Baudrillard and Lyotard, arguing postmodernism "reflects the disappointed revolutionary generation of 1968, (particularly those of May 1968 in France) and the incorporation of many of its members into the professional and managerial 'new middle class'. It is best read as a symptom of political frustration and social mobility rather than as a significant intellectual or cultural phenomenon in its own right." ^[15]

Art historian John Molyneux, also of the Socialist Workers Party, accuses postmodernists for "singing an old song long intoned by bourgeois historians of various persuasions".^[16]

Fredric Jameson, American literary critic and Marxist political theorist, attacks postmodernism (or poststructuralism), what he claims is "the cultural logic of late capitalism," for its refusal to critically engage with the metanarratives of capitalization and globalization. The refusal renders postmodernist philosophy complicit with the prevailing relations of domination and exploitation.^[17]

Sherry Wolf, a leading member of the American International Socialist Organization dismisses postmodernist theories as a way to fight for gay liberation in her 2009 publication, Sexuality and Socialism.^[18]

Art Bollocks

Art Bollocks is an article written by Brian Ashbee which appeared in the magazine Art Review in April 1999.^[19] Ashbee points out the importance given to language in "post-modern" art.^[19] The post-modern art forms mentioned by Ashbee are: "installation art, photography, conceptual art [and] video." The term bollocks in the title of course relates to nonsense.

Sokal affair

Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University, formulated the Sokal affair, a hoax in which he wrote a deliberately nonsensical article in a style similar to postmodernist articles. The article was accepted for publication by the journal Social Text. This was followed up with his book Fashionable Nonsense which was a in-depth critique of some branches of postmodern thought and practices.

Mumbo Jumbo

Francis Wheen's book How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World broadly critiques a variety of non-critical paradigms with a significant critique of cultural relativism and the use of postmodern tropes to explain all modern geo-political phenomena. According to Wheen, postmodern scholars tend to critique unfair power structures in the west including issues of race, class, patriarchy, the effect of radical capitalism and political oppression. Where he finds fault in these tropes is when the theories go beyond evidence based critical thinking and use vague terminology to support obscurantist theories (much like the oft quoted claim that e=mc² is a sexist annotation of relativity). Relativism, according to Wheen becomes a sort of wall which shields non western cultures from the same sustained critiques. While inherent sexism in North America is open to hostile critique (as it should be according to Wheen), according to postmodern thought it is taboo to critique honour killings and female genital mutilation in North Africa and the Middle East. Relativism will defend such taboos by claiming such cultures are out of the sphere of shared Western values and that we cannot judge other cultures by our own standards or it is defended through diminishing the severity of sexism by either denying its prominence (as Western propaganda/misunderstanding) or blaming it on menacing western factors (imperialism, globalization, western hegemony, resource exploitation and Western interference in general). Wheen admits that, while some of this may have merit, its case is highly exaggerated by relativism. Wheen reserves his strongest critique for those who defend even the most appalling systemic mistreatment of women, even in countries where Western contact and influence is minimal.^[20]

See also

• Postmodernism Generator

References