If we did away with postmodernism, we’d just be left with a modern criticism of modernity. Then people might just criticise the criticisms and then where are we?
well, i agree modernism encompasses postmodernism for the most part although modernism means many things already and has many starting points...but postmodernism added structuralism's influence and is somehow synonymous with poststructuralism...structuralism's anti-individual-subjectivity thing, was that new and distinct from modernism or a form of it?
Cultural Studies is what's pissing off the Right, not postmodernism, which is too caught in how overarching meaning is largely impossible to be potently political for the most part, or am I wrong? I still like Derrida, I still think how postmodernists critiqued the individual author's existence even as a locus of interior subjectivities has lost sway but is still a real problem, I think generally we don't think about the problem of "telling the truth" enough...Cultural Studies, like postmodernism, gets a lot from the Frankfurt school, but it isn't as mired in questioning the self as much because otherwise there would be no agency to appropriate identities and identity itself would be impossible to discuss...(?)
maybe I'm wrong on Frankfurt school...I was an American Studies major a long time ago but never quite knew where cultural studies came from but evidently it's a British movement, but also Althusser was part of the mix, and he taught a lot of postmodernists...anyway, I think my contention that Cultural Studies is what the Right cares about is more accurate than postmodernism, I just don't think postmodernism had a great deal of positivist efficacy and was too wrapped up in the mechanics underlying language and texts and how those de-facto (for the masses) subtleties somehow manifested social power structures...well, this is all from memory I just feel like postmodernism, like, in art, for example, was not only anti-capitalist but often also easily capitalist, in its appropriated images frenzy, look at what happened to the art market in the 80s...anyway, I haven't read your piece thoroughly enough so apologies, it just occurred to me cultural studies was distinct and missing.
A lot of different directions in your comments, so I'll just note three responses:
1. I can talk in a future essay about the Terry Eagleton/Raymond Willaism crowd in future weeks. It's a great catch--haven't thought about them in years but they are totally central to the development of the thought of the New Left.
2. You are right that Critical Theory is very important. Joseph Heath, an academic with an excellent substack, has been doing great work recently if you are interested in coverage of this. I have crossed paths with him in meatspace and I essentially agree with his views as I understand them on the relationship between Critical Theory and conspiracy theory. I'm liable to just restack his essay on conspiracy theory.
3. The death of the author is a tricksy one, and I'll have to come back to it in the context of covering Foucault when I do history of conspiracy theory. My view on this is that the New Left needed a theory of meaning with some truly radical characteristics, but you get this with Althusser as well, and so I don't buy that it's part of a new movement called postmodernism.
Thanks for the replies--some notes about points I will have to cover in future weeks.
The writer of this essay disagrees with all the world around him, surely he must know that in doing this he declares himself an egomaniac!
If we did away with postmodernism, we’d just be left with a modern criticism of modernity. Then people might just criticise the criticisms and then where are we?
well, i agree modernism encompasses postmodernism for the most part although modernism means many things already and has many starting points...but postmodernism added structuralism's influence and is somehow synonymous with poststructuralism...structuralism's anti-individual-subjectivity thing, was that new and distinct from modernism or a form of it?
Cultural Studies is what's pissing off the Right, not postmodernism, which is too caught in how overarching meaning is largely impossible to be potently political for the most part, or am I wrong? I still like Derrida, I still think how postmodernists critiqued the individual author's existence even as a locus of interior subjectivities has lost sway but is still a real problem, I think generally we don't think about the problem of "telling the truth" enough...Cultural Studies, like postmodernism, gets a lot from the Frankfurt school, but it isn't as mired in questioning the self as much because otherwise there would be no agency to appropriate identities and identity itself would be impossible to discuss...(?)
maybe I'm wrong on Frankfurt school...I was an American Studies major a long time ago but never quite knew where cultural studies came from but evidently it's a British movement, but also Althusser was part of the mix, and he taught a lot of postmodernists...anyway, I think my contention that Cultural Studies is what the Right cares about is more accurate than postmodernism, I just don't think postmodernism had a great deal of positivist efficacy and was too wrapped up in the mechanics underlying language and texts and how those de-facto (for the masses) subtleties somehow manifested social power structures...well, this is all from memory I just feel like postmodernism, like, in art, for example, was not only anti-capitalist but often also easily capitalist, in its appropriated images frenzy, look at what happened to the art market in the 80s...anyway, I haven't read your piece thoroughly enough so apologies, it just occurred to me cultural studies was distinct and missing.
A lot of different directions in your comments, so I'll just note three responses:
1. I can talk in a future essay about the Terry Eagleton/Raymond Willaism crowd in future weeks. It's a great catch--haven't thought about them in years but they are totally central to the development of the thought of the New Left.
2. You are right that Critical Theory is very important. Joseph Heath, an academic with an excellent substack, has been doing great work recently if you are interested in coverage of this. I have crossed paths with him in meatspace and I essentially agree with his views as I understand them on the relationship between Critical Theory and conspiracy theory. I'm liable to just restack his essay on conspiracy theory.
3. The death of the author is a tricksy one, and I'll have to come back to it in the context of covering Foucault when I do history of conspiracy theory. My view on this is that the New Left needed a theory of meaning with some truly radical characteristics, but you get this with Althusser as well, and so I don't buy that it's part of a new movement called postmodernism.
Thanks for the replies--some notes about points I will have to cover in future weeks.