
What comes after postmodernism? - mpweiher
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2018.1462520
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scythe
>On a more practical level, the wake of postmodernism is clearly visible in
the educational arena. Because everyone’s experiences are now privileged over
investigation of a shared, knowable world, young scholars are increasingly
finding venues for articles that tout their own experiences. Nowhere is this
more conspicuous than in the humanities where alleged experience-based
methodologies, such as autoethnography and ‘action research,’ have gained
traction in peer-reviewed journals. With that traction comes increased Impact
Factors when academicians cite the personal experiences of others as evidence
to bolster supposedly scholarly claims.

This paragraph seems to be the “meat” of the article; standard complaints
about postmodernism constitute the remainder. It is an interesting point, but
it is not fleshed out very much.

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conatus
Yeah. I was expecting some level of proposal. I expected the article to have
more, so downloaded the PDF. Nothing more!

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tootie
This sounds less like serious academics more like "kids these days, am I
right?". Identity politics, nationalism, tribalism are all very pre-modern and
just never went away. I think you could easily argue that they've diminished
to an all-time low and not the other way around. The reason we hear so much
about it now is that in past generations, race and class strata of society
were simply an unspoken fact of life and the current trend of public whining
is just a reaction to the walls coming down. Asking for social justice is not
new, it's just being listened to now instead of stamped out.

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conatus
The sense of massive deja vu settles over me when I see these pieces. Or more
accurately: hasn't this been done already?

I studied continental philosophy as a graduate student about ten years ago and
have kept up since as much as possible.

Continental philosophy was the spawning pool for the loose cluster of
tendencies[0] that form the concept of postmodernism in the imagination of
most - Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard.

At this time, it seemed definitively that this set of ideas this lot was on
the way out. There was even a term for what was bad about them, as captured in
_After Finitude: An Essay On The Necessity Of Contingency_ by Quentin
Meillassoux: correlationism[1]. The idea that human thought never "got at" the
truth because of intermediate cognitive or societal structures or biases.
There was a whole movement against correlationism called speculative
realism[2]. In the UK at least, indeed, the focus of continental philosophy
that preceded it seemed to oppose this postmodernism taken as a name for this
cluster of thinkers. Broadly, a solid focus on Deleuze resulting in "new
materialisms" (often scientifically informed) and a figure like Alain Badiou
(Meillassoux's tutor) who very much attempted to stake out the ground for
Truth with a big-olde-capital-T.

So to me that it is still a live term and people are talking about it so much
is pretty strange. Of course that continental philosophy influences other
discourses, and that both Derrida and Foucault were quite interdisciplinary in
their work. So one could say this is some sort of institutional lag. But it is
an odd thing to observe[3].

\---

[0] I say this because Foucault and Derrida are better described as post-
structuralists and this is what they would have considered themselves as.
Lyotard helped assist the terms with his work certainly in _La Condition
postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir_ but it was a term of societal diagnosis
rather than support. I feel that postmodernism as a cluster term was the
result of the reception of these theories in American literary theory
departments.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-
oriented_ontology#Criti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-
oriented_ontology#Critique_of_correlationism)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_realism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_realism)

[3] I'm not actually adjudicating here on the merits or otherwise of those
thinkers grouped as postmodern. That's another topic.

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baybal2
I see a great divergence coming: take a look at a culture divide in between
rich Chinese cities, and the rest of the country. The divide is visible in
everything from aesthetics in art, to attitudes to marriage, the proletariat
and 1% are a world apart.

I see the same coming sooner or later to the rest of the world.

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js8
I think postmodernism also affected journalism. It was more important to
invite both sides of the argument rather than care about facts. But I think
the attitude has been changing lately, with the ecological dangers and dangers
of fascism that this system brings.

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deogeo
I think the explanation is much simpler. Inviting both sides is cheap and gets
lots of controversy, which sells. Whereas finding and reporting the facts
doesn't get you much attention, takes time (so the story is no longer fresh),
money, and exposes you to legal risk if you got any of the facts wrong (and
even if you didn't, you may have to defend yourself in court).

One option is easy, cheap, quick, safe, and attracts a large audience. The
other is the exact opposite. It's obvious which one an amoral, profit seeking
corporation would choose.

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Wintamute
It's gratifying to see a deep understanding of the origin and current reality
of this situation emerge after so many years of chaos and culture warring.
Hopefully with understanding, and greater exposure to society at large, will
come a remedy.

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krackers
Post-postmodernism/metamodernism, perhaps best embodied by the type of "post-
irony" found on imageboards?

