Over the weekend I read an entire book on PostModernism! OK, so it was a short book, but I read it cover to cover. Here is what I learned.
Post Modernism is a broad term, applying to art, architecture, linguistic theory and philosophy. At its core, it doesn't mean anything really specific, but rather tries to capture a general change in attitudes which started to become prevalent in the 60s and 70s. According to this book, PoMo has almost run it's course now.
In Art, PoMo was all about totally new forms of art, for example a toilet, or a pile of garbage. If only I'd known that piles of garbage were art, I could have saved a lot of effort cleaning my house. Why are these art? I'm not sure, but by calling this stuff art, it forces the viewer to ponder deep questions, and this kind of assult on the viewer is very PoMoish. What kinds of questions does it present to the viewer? Probably, 'Why the heck is this toilet called art?'
In literary theory, PoMo is linked to deconstructionism and structuralism. Deconstructionism when applied to a text basically means to tear the text apart, uncover the author's biases and contradictions, his frameworks and assumptions. Structuralism is the idea that all concepts are linked to all other concepts, and nothing really has objective meaning except in terms of everything else. Since language must be used to explain any idea, and since all words only makes sense in the context of anything else (the dictionary is circular: every word is defined in terms of another word!), this means that nothing can ever be said objectively.
Because language doesn't mean much anyway, or rather means whatever you take it to mean, PoMo authors have had a field day writing all sorts of crazy sounding stuff. It's so bad, that PoMo authors regularly win competitions for the World's Worst Writing, without intending to. Here is the first prize winner from 1997:
"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."
Not sure who the writer is but it does sound a lot like Josh Harrison of Reshimu. (OK I admit, I'm jealous. I wish I could write like that!).
Even worse, some PoMo writers use scientific concepts (such as Quantum Physics), in new and totally gibberish ways, infuriating Scientists in the process. PoMo writing was famously parodied by Alan Sokal who submitted a completely fake article to a prestigious PoMo magazine, and they didn't notice. Actually, it wasn't fake at all, but was very good PoMo gibberish, which was exactly the point.
Since all language is subjective, and all concepts are subjective, and all people are subjective, then (taken to the extreme), PoMo means that any idea we have, even science, is only subjective. Most people reject this extreme version of PoMo, except for Kiruv Clowns and sophisticated fundamentalists, who are eager to have a modern philosophy which bashes science. However before we bash the Chareidi PoMo crowd, we should acknowledge that Eugene Borowitz, a famous Reform Rabbi, constructs his entire Theology on the basis of PostModernism, and even mentions in one of his essays that he was pleased to discover that Science isn't objective.
So what do I think of PoMo? Well, there is obviously a little bit of truth in it. People are indeed subjective. But Science (at least the good parts of Science) is about as objective as you can get in this world, so bashing Science is rather stupid. Does PoMo open up new avenues for religious faith? Not really. I think it was always common sense that Science isn't the whole story, and could never be, you don't need PoMo for that, just a little philosophy of Science.
I also think that when certain skeptics bash any attempt to go with extra-rational thought (e.g. based on intuition or feelings or faith) as being 'PoMo' that's just plain wrong. Even though I reject extreme PoMo, and don't really think my toilet is art, I do think that the fundamentalist "I shall only believe things which are proven" skeptics are wrong. There's more to being human than being a robot logic machine. People have feelings, intuition and even faith. This is normal, natural and healthy. If it wasn't, we probably wouldn't have evolved that way.
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