>He believes that the insistence on the use of gender-neutral pronouns is rooted in postmodernism, which he sees as thinly disguised Marxism.
I've only been studying theory for a few years but how is this interpretation of postmodernism possible? It seems to run counter to one of what I understand to be the foundations of the movement - the rejection of metanarratives.
If I remember correctly, Peterson says that the Neo-Marxists followed up on the theories of postmodernism as a way to bring Marxist thought back into the academically-acceptable realm, and that led to where we are today. So, the author is slightly wrong in his description of Peterson's beliefs. He doesn't see Postmodernism as "thinly disguised Marxism". He see Neo-Marxism as having its roots in Postmodernism.
There's the academic philosophical postmodernism, which rejects metanarratives. Then there's a derived ideology taken up as the basis for a lot of Intersectional activism which can be termed "Social Constructionism." As is the case for many activist derivations of ideology, there is some straying away from the original academic version.
While postmodernism claims it rejects metanarratives, like the one in Marxism, the derived ideologies share a lot of parallels in effect. They both result in opposing groups which can't effectively talk to each other, so must coerce each other by force. (Doesn't this remind you of the Intersectional "Stack Ranking" and the "Oppression Olympics?") They both effectively result in a rejection of logic. They both effectively create their own forms of obscurantist alternative "logic." The ideological effect of both Marxism and Social Constructionism is to come up with a pretext for rejecting existing standards and tearing society apart -- one which is ideologically sealed against negotiation, logic, and adaptation to evidence.
"Postmodernism" and "deconstructionism" are often used synonymously: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/10/02/what-happened-with-decons... and like many overarching "isms" they've come to mean such different things that they can be used to mean almost anything.
That being said, many strands of postmodernism in universities have come to teach that there is nothing outside of language itself (that's a common reading of Foucault and Derrida), so everything can be seen as a language or sign system. Want to change "reality" (as if there is such a thing!)? Just change the language.
Another stand holds that there are only two really important groups: the powerful / powerless, which could also be seen as the "oppressors" and "oppressed." Everyone is supposed to be in one of the two groups. This gets grafted onto identity politics in rather unpleasant ways (IMO).
So in the pronoun debate, people who are transgendered or non-gendered are the oppressed and need help; everyone who is not "helping" them is the oppressor and must be opposed.
This, anyway, is the line of thinking, though it isn't my own view of the world. To say that everything is linguistic seems unlikely. When I was in grad school in English (note: don't do this: https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-befo... ) and would hear this argument, I liked to observe that everyone, given the choice between getting punched in the face or having someone say something mean to them, chooses the latter. This would seem to me to argue that not everything can be reduced to language, even apart from all the other very good and obvious-seeming arguments along those lines.
> That being said, many strands of postmodernism in universities have come to teach that there is nothing outside of language itself (that's a common reading of Foucault and Derrida), so everything can be seen as a language or sign system. Want to change "reality" (as if there is such a thing!)? Just change the language.
> Another stand holds that there are only two really important groups: the powerful / powerless, which could also be seen as the "oppressors" and "oppressed."
Those aren't really separate stands, the latter is a consequence of the former: if language (or, rather, beliefs which is transmitted between people by language) is the defining factor in reality, then the ultimately meaningful differentiation between people is whether they are influential in shaping belief (powerful) or not (powerless).
It's also directly contrary to the central theme of Marxism, which makes the association of these particular postmodernist viewpoints with Marxism bizarre. (Certainly, there are people who moved from Marxism to this kind of postmodernism, just like there are people who have moved from Marxism to capitalism or from Marxism to democratic socialism or from Trotskyism to neoconservatism.
It's also directly contrary to the central theme of Marxism, which makes the association of these particular postmodernist viewpoints with Marxism bizarre.
And yet, activists who claim to be Marxist seem to be very well aligned with others who claim postmodernist derived ideologies.
It's still great to read but rereading I noticed at the core the same oppression narrative that seems to appear out of all postmodern discourse at some point and which JBP associates with Marxism. Here the programmer is oppressed by stuck up programming languages, Perl reverses the roles and is happy to be like a butler/slave. Which is fine for a programming language, but offers problems when reversing the oppressor/oppressed roles is the only solution you can think of, the only interpretation you wish to dwell on however flimsy the interpretation is (which seems to be where postmodernism went wrong / taken over by Marxists), and each side involves real people.
I’ve never encountered this interpretation before either.
The only way I can make some sense of it is by drawing a correspondence between postmodernism’s “there is no absolute truth, only convenient fictions” and marxism’s class warfare.
Many take issue with the minutae of his arguments, like his understanding of postmodernism. Still, if you focus on the problematic symptoms he describes and skip his causal arguments, that is, what he attributes as the cause of those symptoms, he is pointing out real issues that deserve attention.
I've only been studying theory for a few years but how is this interpretation of postmodernism possible? It seems to run counter to one of what I understand to be the foundations of the movement - the rejection of metanarratives.