
The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond (2006) - gtirloni
https://philosophynow.org/issues/58/The_Death_of_Postmodernism_And_Beyond
======
trophycase
Seems like it is reaching. Core postmodern concepts like the hyperreal and
simulacra are more relevant and true than they have ever been.

Furthermore, the article claims that postmodern is characterized by an ironic
self awareness, and never has this idea been more prominent in culture. In
recent years I have noticed that TV commercials have become more and more
self-aware. Take for example a recent commercial by what I believe was
Verizon. It says something like "More coverage, more data." and then another
actor comes into screen saying "and more people saying more." If this isn't
ironic self awareness, I'm not sure what is.

Those are postmodern concepts about culture. But the postmodern metaphysical
and epistemological nihilism are, as another commenter said, basically bedrock
in terms of philosophy.

~~~
aphextron
>Furthermore, the article claims that postmodern is characterized by an ironic
self awareness, and never has this idea been more prominent in culture. In
recent years I have noticed that TV commercials have become more and more
self-aware. Take for example a recent commercial by what I believe was
Verizon. It says something like "More coverage, more data." and then another
actor comes into screen saying "and more people saying more." If this isn't
ironic self awareness, I'm not sure what is.

I think that perfectly proves the author's point, though. The "self awareness"
of postmodernism has filtered to even the most banal of sources and been left
in the dust by the avant garde of today. Irony and sarcasm as critical devices
are dead for anyone but the hacks.

From the article:

>"people who produce the cultural material which academics and non-academics
read, watch and listen to, have simply given up on postmodernism. The
occasional metafictional or self-conscious text will appear, to widespread
indifference – like Bret Easton Ellis’ Lunar Park – but then modernist novels,
now long forgotten, were still being written into the 1950s and 60s. The only
place where the postmodern is extant is in children’s cartoons like Shrek and
The Incredibles, as a sop to parents obliged to sit through them with their
toddlers. This is the level to which postmodernism has sunk; a source of
marginal gags in pop culture aimed at the under-eights."

~~~
coldtea
> _I think that perfectly proves the author 's point, though. The "self
> awareness" of postmodernism has filtered to even the most banal of sources
> and been left in the dust by the avant garde of today. Irony and sarcasm as
> critical devices are dead for anyone but the hacks._

Only today there are only hacks. And everybody still uses irony and sarcasm.

Besides, the parent is right. Postmodernism is not a theory to inform cultural
production (how people make stuff), although its confusingly referred to as
such sometimes.

Postmodernism is a condition of a whole culture (or a whole society) and the
inventions that appeared later on (the internet, mobile apps, interactive
shows etc) that the author speaks about, only serve to make the world even
more postmodern.

The core of postmodernism is that we have exhausted modernity -- and indeed
there are no trends that are "new under the sun anymore", not just because
everything has been done before (which is almost true), but because society
doesn't care about following this or that form en masse anymore and then
proceeding to another (e.g. how baroque turned romantic, turned 12-tone, etc.
or similarly in any other sphere).

Instead, everything is fragmented, and everybody (artist or not) can do
whatever they please and have an audience/followers. There is no canon and no
single "normative" culture the way it was 80 or 100 or 150 years ago.

Plus, nothing is able to baffle anyone anymore -- in the way that each
generation before could shock some part of the established culture (up to
perhaps punk, but probably not even that, and not even 50s rock n' roll -- it
only shocked the most conservative parts of society, and had no problem being
marketed, sold, and dominating the airwaves in record time).

Postmodernism is also about having access to all the cultural production and
modes of the past, and the internet and co made that even more so. Artists,
politicians, marketeers, etc can borrow from any period, and repackage and
resell everything, combine it, etc.

All of these things are what are described as the "postmodern condition" by
the now dead French theorists of the postmodernism.

And none of those things is going away.

Even a total return to modernism or classicism across all artists for example,
would still be postmodern -- because before post-modernism art didn't regress
to previous periods, it invented new modes.

~~~
rusk
> Plus, nothing is able to baffle anyone anymore -- in the way that each
> generation before could shock some part of the established culture (up to
> perhaps punk, ...

This whole paragraph made me think of Black Mirror.

 _> Instead, everything is fragmented,_

Isn't there a new form of art (the likes of BM) that takes all these fragment
and puts them back together in novel ways that help us reconnect them with the
human condition and what that means in a post-modernist society.

Not so much trying to go back in time but trying to reach back for things that
were important and give them new prominence?

As I write this, I'm considering the Jordan Peterson as performance art .. he
certainly shocks and discomfits many people and as much as you might like him
or disagree with him is position is pretty much unassailable.

Even Trump and Brexit look more sensible through this lense.

Indeed, isn't one of Putin's most senior advisors some kind of professor of
post-modernism or something?

As PM becomes more and more mainstream surely it makes sense that society find
new and unusual ways to continue cultural progress ...

EDIT some other modern media that pops to mind: Mr Robot with it's non-linear
narrative and skewed perspective on modernity. The Handmaids tale which,
though a few decades old, actually seems more relevant nowadays. I want to say
"Ex Machina" but I kind of feel the narrative style doesn't serve the subject
matter at all.

~~~
coldtea
> _Isn 't there a new form of art (the likes of BM) that takes all these
> fragment and puts them back together in novel ways that help us reconnect
> them with the human condition and what that means in a post-modernist
> society._

Well, that's the very definition of post-modernist art: putting fragments
together in novel ways (only the sole novelty is in the arrangement, and not
some inherent quality -- in the sense that two conjured random numbers are
different, but they're nonetheless still numbers, not something else, like
e.g. Stravinsky was still categorically different than Bach. Now we're all
collage makers, and the only difference is what we chose to stuck together).

> _As I write this, I 'm considering the Jordan Peterson as performance art ..
> he certainly shocks and discomfits many people_

Many people are mock-shocked these days (what with PC norms and all), but few
or none are actually shocked.

In the end Jordan Peterson is just another public speaker/figure one hates or
disagrees with, not "the end of civilization as we know it" which is how e.g.
norm-breaking figures were perceived back in the day.

> _Even Trump and Brexit look more sensible through this lense._

I think Trump and Brexit look more sensible under this interpretation:
rich/power elites had lost contact with the people, and pushed their own
interests (anti-middle/worker class laws and conditions) under the pretext of
"globalization".

The "unwashed masses" then took revenge in the polls, and could care less if
the new President is uncultivated or incompetent (they had an idiot president
under Bush anyway, and the sky hasn't fallen), or if Britain is separated from
EU (they didn't see much improvement in their everyday lives under EU anyway,
and they prefer their autonomy to the German-driven collective harmonious
pipedream that is EU).

~~~
rusk
_> one hates or disagrees with, not "the end of civilization as we know it" _

Perhaps that's what characterises this new paradigm. The durability of
reality. That our much vaunted social norms have far less impact than we
think.

Peterson makes absolute sense to me as performance art. (EDIT now so too does
50 shades of grey)

Black Mirror so is postmodernism in a yet-relevant format. Postmodernism may
still be relevant but it's the interpretation of post-modernism as _dogma_
(itself antithetical to PM) which is not.

It's the priests and priestesses of postmodernism that gets people's backs up
isn't it, not so much the concept(s) itself.

~~~
coldtea
> _It 's the priests and priestesses of postmodernism that gets people's backs
> up isn't it, not so much the concept(s) itself._

Yes, that. Especially since the concept itself was never meant to be something
one can opt to follow or not follow -- just a description of the reality we're
in.

It's not that we're "postmodernists" that is, but that we live in a
"postmodern" world -- and so we can't be anything aside from that.

As for Peterson, I see him as something orthogonal from postmodernism.

He is someone that talks from a traditional values standpoint in an era where
different norms are becoming the mainstream. He doesn't say anything
outrageous, in the sense that what he says would be common acceptable wisdom
30 or 50 years ago (and for tons of people still is).

The whole outrage is not because he's saying something inherently outrageous,
but because he dares to publicly stray from the mainstream while still being
mainstream.

Somebody could say the same things in a 1950 classroom or the president could
say them in 1970s and nobody would bat an eyelash -- even among the leftist
and more progressives. Heck, the Monty Python made fun of "gender identities"
for example in the late 70s, and those bunch was and is as progressive as they
come:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBOQzSk14c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBOQzSk14c)

~~~
rusk
But haven't a lot of good things happened in those 30 or 50 years in terms of
refining the social model? I feel he comes across as an apologist for
regression.

That's why people are shocked by him, and worse still for people who
uncritically swallow this stuff he's often right.

That's what makes him "post modern" in a post-modern world, and very much a
spectacle.

I see Monty Python as questioning these ideas as a way of advancing the
discussion. They're comedy though. They're not claiming "truth" status.

~~~
coldtea
> _But haven 't a lot of good things happened in those 30 or 50 years in terms
> of refining the social model? I feel he comes across as an apologist for
> regression._

Not necessarily. A lot of good things, but perhaps a lot of excess as well.

(e.g. in my opinion end of segregation and women and gay rights obviously
great. Non-binary bathrooms, "gender-neutral pronouns", "Safe zones" and other
absurdities not so much).

Peterson plays between those two (condemns the bad developments but often some
good developments too). But nowhere near the caricature he's made to look but
those who he'd rather uncritically embrace everything.

It's like with the French revolution: a lot of good things, but a lot of zeal
to cut heads and change things to absurdity. It's just the bias of the current
advocates that make any change from the older norms seem great. In retrospect
a different generation would laugh at some of our excesses. (Like the 80s and
still on to day laugh with hippies, whereas in the sixties and early 70s those
ideas -- heck, even those clothes -- where de rigueur for young people).

~~~
rusk
What's wrong with safe zones? I honestly don't see anything wrong with
participation medals either ...

Non-binary bathrooms? I don't see why anyone would legislate for bathrooms at
all.

I'll draw the line at gender-neutral pronouns since "they/their" is perfectly
adequate and means I don't have to change how I use language overnight to
accommodate a fringe group.

Excess, sure. I'm happy to see some exuberance among communities once
oppressed.

I don't share the fear of some that these communities are becoming the
oppressors, although clearly (as with the whole C-16 thing) some are getting
carried away.

If you take Peterson seriously, I kind of feel like he's just throwing away
everything that's happened in the last few years and acting like it didn't
happen. It's as though his whole didactic is tone-deaf.

An enlightened approach would be to integrate the new ideas with the old.

~~~
dnissley
> _I kind of feel like he 's just throwing away everything that's happened in
> the last few years and acting like it didn't happen._

What are you referring to by "everything"?

~~~
rusk
Did you even read the thread dude

------
Lanz
Postmodernism has run its course. It's become clear that while it provides a
deconstructive lens for academics, it provides a destructive one to society.

~~~
myWindoonn
It's not our fault that society can't bear to look at itself in a mirror.

Postmodernism broadly consists of only two tools. The first, as you mentioned,
is the deconstructive POV, the ability to look at an object as-is and to
understand its origin, its design, its footguns, its flawed narrative, its
social excuses, its secret hatreds. But there's more.

We _also_ get the curse of relativity, the understanding that all epistemic
sources are relative and that we ultimately choose to believe what we believe.
This was definitely frustrating, coming on the heels of modernism, and that's
why postmodernism has its name: modernism is clearly wrong and serves only to
mislead and enslave via narrative control.

But in return, we get something good: Concepts can become relativized too, and
so we get many simple metaphysical statements as ways to understand what
things are. What is a proof? Well, it's whatever convinces you that something
is true. We lose absolute proof, but each of us gain a deeper understanding of
what it means to prove something _to somebody_. What is art? Well, it's an
expression in some medium. We lose art galleries, but now we can be artistic
just by expressing ourselves any time we find new media, such as video games
or graffiti or atomic layer deposition or selfies.

We get another good thing: A more precise understanding of how the various
pieces of knowledge fit together. By talking of _theories_ and _evidence_ and
_logic_ as objects in their own rights, rather than as absolute facets of the
universe, we can _connect_ the various sciences and reunify the entire
philosophical endeavor under a single umbrella, just like Quine always wanted
with his semantic web of science. Maths is logic is metaphysics. [0]

Edit: Formatting, examples.

[0]
[https://philpapers.org/archive/ALVLIM-3.pdf](https://philpapers.org/archive/ALVLIM-3.pdf)

~~~
lmm
It's not that we can't bear to look at ourselves in a mirror. It's that
objective reality, truth and all of that do exist, good art is better than bad
art in ways that aren't purely relative, and so on. Postmodernism loses you
more than you gain.

~~~
ThomPete
Just saying they exist doesn't make them exist. Good art vs. bad art isn't an
argument against postmodernism.

Whenever I meet people who claim there is an objective truth I always ask them
to give any examples. So far I have not met anyone who can come up with an
objective claim that isn't merely basing that on a frame of reference which
can be deconstructed or shown to be based on a set of apriori assumptions
itself.

~~~
zxcmx
I am reminded of the “brick in the face” argument against solopsism.

Tell me _whack_ more about your _whack_ frame of reference...

I see postmodernism and extreme relativism as a sort of awesome stage of
society where we get to make up reality because we are freed from mundane
concerns like knowing where our water comes from or where our sh%t gets
flushed to. It is quite wonderful that many many people get the luxury of
_never even being curious_ about these things.

Meanwhile, the engineers, doctors, carers, labourers (I am missing a lot out
here) who ultimately keep people alive tend to have quite definite opinions
about critical aspects of reality.

Granted these are still not objective truths because all experience is
subjective. All I can say is that a sophist who believes that rent is not an
objective truth is nonetheless likely to find themselves (subjectively) on the
streets if they don’t pay it.

~~~
ThomPete
Buddhist philosophy reached some of the same conclusions as postmodernism
have.

But don't forget that the fact most of our early engineering advanced were
done by philosophers who had the time to ponder and tinker.

~~~
zxcmx
Yeah I tried to argue over several edits that people seem less objective about
their own pain or hunger but realised I backed myself into a corner :)

------
DonHopkins
One of my favorite pieces of deconstructive criticism:

[http://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html](http://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html)

How To Deconstruct Almost Anything

My Postmodern Adventure

By Chip Morningstar, June 1993.

"Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right." \-- Donald Norman

------
forapurpose
I've been mourning postmodernism and wondering at the cause of death and at
what has or will replace it. I think postmodernism has the answers to much of
what plagues society today, and in fact I wonder if the plague may be due to
its loss.

In a world of overwhelming information and especially fake information, a
strong belief in the "elusiveness of meaning and knowledge" and of doubt in
anyone possessing an ultimate truth, and the high degree of skepticism that
results, would seem essential - a pre-Internet philosophy that seems tailor-
made for the Internet era. Instead, people seem to be embracing ideology
(ultimate truths), self-importance (another ultimate truth, rather than
'ironic self-awareness') and whatever claims can be insisted upon rather than
supported through reason and fact; they are abandoning skepticism and reason,
and the project of the Enlightenment entirely. I would ask what they see as
the solution to this flood of lies and deception, but I'm afraid their answer
will be that they don't care.[0]

I was at a lunch with someone I hadn't spoken to in years, an English lit
academic whose PhD was about a post-modern author; one of their co-workers sat
between us. I mentioned reading something related to their dissertation; to my
surprise, my friend was clearly embarrassed; they said 'I don't read those
things any more'. Other PhDs I know have abandoned intellectualism as
fervently as the 'psuedo-modernists'; they buy into the ideology and fake news
du jour too. If not them, then who? (When I mentioned this to a sympathetic
academic, they said 'they aren't intellectuals; they're just a medieval
guild'.)

I want to ask: Why did academics and intellectuals abandon post-modernism? Why
has everyone else? How can they knowingly lie to themselves and accept the
misinformation as truth? What do they think will replace it? How do they
intend to solve these problems without it?

[0] To avoid redundancy:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17361122](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17361122)

~~~
scarecrowbob
I generally know what you're talking about; it meets with my experiences with
fellow academic refugees. I quite a Lit PhD well into my dissertation and
writers like Lyotard figured heavily in my MA thesis.

But there's not a lot of use in talking about anything like this stuff in
general conversation. Groups of people get exposed to something a little bit,
someone smugly tells them that the emperor has no clothes, and it quickly
becomes more enjoyable for them to use that tiny bit of smugness to dismiss
rich and useful lines of thought. At a certain point, there isn't much to say
to people who have developed an allergy to certain kinds of terms, analysis,
and lines of thought.

~~~
forapurpose
> Groups of people get exposed to something a little bit, someone smugly tells
> them that the emperor has no clothes, and it quickly becomes more enjoyable
> for them to use that tiny bit of smugness to dismiss rich and useful lines
> of thought.

Sure, you can see it on HN. But I expect more from experts in their own
domain. Perhaps that's why I'm disappointed.

> At a certain point, there isn't much to say to people who have developed an
> allergy to certain kinds of terms, analysis, and lines of thought.

I do disagree with this. In that scenario, people are following the herd like
sheep; it's not a result of strong beliefs. Among sheep, one leader can change
the direction of things, at least to an extent.

~~~
scarecrowbob
"Among sheep, one leader can change the direction of things, at least to an
extent."

Well, I am skeptical that people are that easily led... I feel that it's more
the case that they respond to what they need and so if what you're providing
doesn't line up with their (possibly dysfunctional) view of the world your
ideas will fall on deaf ears. It's not like these ideas in their functional
forms have ever been widespread beyond artists using them as a post hoc
justification for why their work resonates with the popular mood.

As to your first point about "experts in their own domain"...

I believe that most of the folks who care about these ideas are probably
neither in academia nor have much access to popular discourse.

There are plenty of threads to pickup in this world where the intellectual
work is still ongoing, but the people in academia mostly don't consider these
ideas useful because (among many reasons) they destabilize their already
unstable position in the economy.

My dissertation director was way more interested in a very conservative
approach to history than in unpacking language, and he was, I think, fairly
representative of the people in the field: if you're interested in theoretical
concerns, then you're almost definitely going to be either unemployed or
become unemployable as an academic or an intellectual.

It's really tough for my cohort to afford to write while paying off student
loans working at Barnes and Nobles or adjuncting a 5/5 at some JC. At the same
time, I personally have the time to write, but I'd rather focus on playing
music because it's a lot more relatable for most people.

You might consider someone like Mark Fisher (kpunk) to be the kind of person I
am thinking of when I say that theory in the university is a rough endevor.
I'm in the middle of reading his "Capitalist Realism: Is there no
alternative?" and I think it addresses this, so maybe pull the PDF and take a
skim. His personal mode of addressing the issue (he eventually killed himself)
is probably not super healthy, but at the same time I am not sure that there
really is much else that is actionable here.

~~~
forapurpose
Thanks for a valuable comment worth reading a couple times or thrice. The
insights into academia are depressing, though I already know well the plight
of the adjunct. Unionize!

> Well, I am skeptical that people are that easily led... I feel that it's
> more the case that they respond to what they need and so if what you're
> providing doesn't line up with their (possibly dysfunctional) view of the
> world your ideas will fall on deaf ears.

I'll add a couple points, hopefully without belaboring the question: First,
governments, corporations, and political organizations spend a lot of time and
money trying to influence opinion, especially online (even on HN); they must
believe, rightly or wrongly, that they can lead people. Second, I agree that
your ideas can't conflict with their worldview, and in fact the way to lead
people (in this sense) is to target their worldview; frame that, program their
assumptions and their conclusions are second nature.

------
3rdAccount
There's a long article from Larry Wall (Perl's inventor) on Perl being
Postmodern. It was probably the first time I saw it explained as such. An
interesting talk even if you don't like Perl much:

[http://wall.org/~larry/pm.html](http://wall.org/~larry/pm.html)

~~~
52-6F-62
This is a great talk. I started reading it on the bus on the way into work. It
actually made me look at Perl differently. I kind of understand the reasoning
behind the syntax I hated so much for so long. Now I kind of _want_ to learn
it...

funny thing.

~~~
3rdAccount
I'm in a similar boat. I hated it too until I learned it was supposed to be
the Unix language of choice that sits between needing Bash/Awk/Sed & C/C++. At
that point the odd conventions and philosophy make more sense. I still use
Python most of the time for my scripting needs, but am glad I can switch to
Perl every now and then when I need it. The one liners are great too for
terminal work.

~~~
52-6F-62
I can see that. Especially the image of the girders and ductwork showing
really resonated. I would have been more suspicious of him just being a good
salesperson if he wasn't a great programmer. It's on my todo list, now.

------
basicplus2
This says it all..

"Radio phone-ins, computer games – their shelf-life is short, they are very
soon obsolete. A culture based on these things can have no memory – certainly
not the burdensome sense of a preceding cultural inheritance which informed
modernism and postmodernism. Non-reproducible and evanescent, pseudo-modernism
is thus also amnesiac: these are cultural actions in the present moment with
no sense of either past or future.

The cultural products of pseudo-modernism are also exceptionally banal, as
I’ve hinted. The content of pseudo-modern films tends to be solely the acts
which beget and which end life. This puerile primitivism of the script stands
in stark contrast to the sophistication of contemporary cinema’s technical
effects. Much text messaging and emailing is vapid in comparison with what
people of all educational levels used to put into letters. A triteness, a
shallowness dominates all. The pseudo-modern era, at least so far, is a
cultural desert."

------
taneq
I've always found the term "postmodern" amusing, it's kind of like the way we
refer to spandex, tinfoil spacesuits, blinkenlights computers and cardboard-
box robots as "futuristic".

~~~
shpx
In a similar vein, I'm against calling things neo-something or "New
Something".

There's too many old cities still called some variant of "New City" like
Novgorod (founded 882 years ago), Naples (founded as Neapolis in the 7th
century BC), and Carthage (founded in the 13th or 9th century BC).

~~~
SamReidHughes
The trick is to name your cities after saints, to ward off the additional
prefix.

------
woodandsteel
Postmodernism is a variation on Plato's allegory of the cave. The idea is that
everyone is living in a world of total illusion, but the philosopher will,
though a very unconventional intellectual process, discover the really real,
and then use his understanding to bring about a utopia.

For postmodernist, the intellectual process is deconstruction and critical
thought, and the utopia is sort of multicultural but radically individualistic
world, and the replacement of capitalism with some sort of vague socialism.

However, postmodernists don't really believe in their claimed radical
perspectivism. So for instance, when there is a dispute between peasants claim
they are starving and beaten down, and the wealthy landholders claim the
peasants are doing just great, they think the peasants are objectively correct
and the landholders are just plain wrong.

Postmodernism came about because Marxism had come to a political dead end, and
so leftist types in France decided to try to use Nietzschean relativism as a
way to undermine liberal realism, in hopes it would somehow lead to their
desired utopia.

This doesn't make much philosophical sense, since Nietzsche was militantly
anti-socialist, and as a political strategy it has been an utter failure.

~~~
keithnz
I don't think so, platos point was that the shadows were poor representations
of real objective things. By moving beyond the cave, you can see the real
objective thing.

post modernsim says, nah, your objective things aren't objective, you just
found some "shadows" that look prettier to you.

I think pseduo modernisim is a bit more more like the cave, a sort of
acknowledgement that there are real objective things but the shadows are
things in and of themselves. Except these are special shadows that can produce
brilliant colorful holograms, and these fancy shadows are also interesting
things, in fact they can make life super interesting. But somehere in these
shadows there is some kind of objective reality.

~~~
woodandsteel
>I don't think so, platos point was that the shadows were poor representations
of real objective things. By moving beyond the cave, you can see the real
objective thing.

post modernsim says, nah, your objective things aren't objective, you just
found some "shadows" that look prettier to you.

I agree, that is why I said it is a variation on Plato's cave, not a simple
repetition. What they have in common is the belief that what seems real in
experience is in fact not, and that to arrive at an understanding of the true
state of affairs requires a complex intellectual process that is radically
different from ordinary thinking. Contrast all this with, for instance,
Aristotle.

------
maldusiecle
Unconvincing, from start to finish--and what a poor start! Yes, the obvious
texts in courses on postmodernism are a few decades old; it takes time for
things to filter into the academy. It would be easy to argue for more recent
authors like Bolano, David Foster Wallace, Eugenides, or Zadie Smith as
examples of postmodern fiction. Step outside literature and it's even more
blatant. Kanye West, the high-grossing Marvel movies, prestige TV--these can
be, and often are, read as postmodern.

But rather than pick apart at cultural examples, I want to take issue with a
more central claim: "The shift from modernism to postmodernism did not stem
from any profound reformulation in the conditions of cultural production and
reception." This is not an uncontroversial claim. Theorists like Fredric
Jameson describe postmodernism as precisely a change in material conditions.

I don't have space to describe all of Jameson's arguments here, but I'd
encourage anyone curious about the shift from modernism to postmodernism to
look into them. They're more robust and convincing than this article, for
sure.

------
schuyler2d
While I agree with most of their analysis, I acknowledge that this reads
basically like a "Grumpy Old Postmodernist"

Something the OP doesn't dive into much but I found myself wondering is that
the "pseudo-modern" label is artificial. It seems like an important aspect of
the post-post-modern culture/philosophy is that it's uncoalesced -- no one
starts/joins a successful movement of self conscious difference (haha or
differance) from post modernism.

So it's left to the grumpy olds to start making names

------
rusk
_" Pseudo-modernism belongs to a world pervaded by the encounter between a
religiously fanatical segment of the United States, a largely secular but
definitionally hyper-religious Israel, and a fanatical sub-section of Muslims
scattered across the planet: pseudo-modernism was not born on 11 September
2001, but postmodernism was interred in its rubble."_

Frighteningly prescient.

------
chubs
Perhaps people began seeing postmodernism's deconstruction of beauty, love,
soul, and truth as too stark to endure.

------
ThomPete
Postmodernism is the final philosophical analysis You cant dig deeper than the
very language we use to philosophize with. Every attempt at undoing
postmodernism will get you right back at the postmodern realization. So very
much alive at least philosophically but we are also starting to realize this
in other areas.

~~~
goatlover
Or you can stop making philosophy an exercise in linguistic analysis. Language
is the tool we use to ask questions with, not the things we are asking about.

~~~
ThomPete
But asking those questions bring you right back at defining them. We can
ignore it just like we can ignore quantum physics talking about classical
physics but that just mean we are ignoring them and reducing the discussion
into a frame of reference which is exactly the point of postmodernism.

~~~
goatlover
I don't think any interesting questions boil down to agreeing on a dictionary
definition. Say you could get everyone to agree on the same definition for
free will or consciousness. You're still left with the same questions about to
what extent do we have defined free will and subjective experiences, which
people will still disagree and debate on.

Unless you get people to agree on definitions that define the problem away,
but then you're just going to be using a different definition to pose the
question that came up, because it will keep coming up.

Language is just a tool to express ourselves. It's not the fabric of
existence.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
It's not about agreeing on some dictionary definition.

The exercise is semantic in the sense that it seeks to describe and then
connect sets of concepts to sets of beliefs in certain contexts.

So in that sense, it's analytically deep. However what tends to happen is that
most casual students get to a certain depth in PM, say undergraduate level,
give up on the complexity and then throw their hands up and say "nothing is
real so I can create my won world that you need to conform to." That's the
problem.

------
dalbasal
A lot of abstract concepts degrade as they age.

My take on it is that they start as a sort of art. Name things. Get big
abstract points across. Shift attention from one thing to another. Use a
different perspective lens. Enlightenment era "rationalism," for example. When
it's an eye opening perspective, we will adopt the whole system of thought.

Then, leaks in the abstraction start to become obvious. Does Hegelian
reasoning (to get meta) _really_ have three distinct phases. What about these
examples over here, that seem to have four or two.

If the abstraction/ideology has been built upon, and those ideas are now
important to the integrity of subsequent ideas then, most likely, we'll try to
fix the underlying theory. Generally, what we do is keep the labels, but
change/augment their meaning. "Workers State" has an increasingly nuanced &
technical meaning, depending on how long it's been since Marx said it. So does
net neutrality. So does liberal democracy, rule of law, Agile... " _From now
on, we 're doing Agile"_" has the exact opposite implications in 2018 then it
did in 2003.

Postmodernism, as a word, has been at that stage for while. It's too much work
patching the damn thing. It obscures more than it informs. Generally, instead
of describing something using the word postmodernism (or one of its many
associated terms) it will be easier and better to just explain things
directly.

------
golergka
> Pseudo-modernism includes all television or radio programmes or parts of
> programmes, all ‘texts’, whose content and dynamics are invented or directed
> by the participating viewer or listener

So, it's essentially gaming, right?

~~~
iron0012
Good observation, gaming is absolutely a post-modern phenomenon. Any creative
works with which audience actively engage and interact (rather than just
observe)--and especially those that by necessity _require_ the audience's
engagement, or blur the line between the creator and the audience--are by
nature post-modern.

------
jancsika
> To them what came before pseudo-modernism will increasingly seem a golden
> age of intelligence, creativity, rebellion and authenticity.

Gotta be kidding me.

Is there a clickbait algorithm that is luring writers to mythologize Derrida
et al as titans of a bygone era in academia? Seriously-- other than the
Wachowskis, name one important figure who was influenced by Baudrillard...

------
DrImplausible
"Modernity died at the gates of Auschwitz", which is the Lyotard quote that I
usually bust out when trying to explain Postmodernism to undergrads. Even
though it isn't entirely true. It probably died at Verdun and the Somme.

But the point is that the end result of the project of modernity had resulted
in the development of the means of atrocity, of automatic mass death and
holocaust, and the only sane move in that instance was to put it aside and
move past it. Hence: "post".

Coupled with the burgeoning theories from physics, Heisenberg's uncertainty,
and the rest, and the idea that perhaps we not on as solid a foundation as we
thought, and the time was ripe for moving on to new ways of thinking about the
world.

