I don’t know a lot about post-modernism. I know that I have been accused of espousing it without necessarily knowing what it is. I know that in political circles, the right throws around the term “post-modern” with the same disdain as “progressive,” “leftist,” and “socialism.” I know – as a reformed political conservative – that those are really powerful words because they lay opposed to one’s fundamental ideology. What I think I know about post-modernism is that it makes certain-types of people feel uncomfortable (e.g. people who need order and certainty in their lives, especially the religiously-inclined), but that is an anecdotal guess, nothing more.
Briefly looking up a convenience sample of 3 sources on post-modernism: Wikipedia, Britannica, and PBS, because they were the first 3 items in my internet search results.
According to Wikipedia:
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse defined by an attitude of skepticism toward what it describes as the grand narratives and ideologies of modernism, as well as opposition to epistemic certainty and the stability of meaning. … Postmodernists are generally “skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races,” and describe truth as relative. It can be described as a reaction against attempts to explain reality in an objective manner by claiming that reality is a mental construct. … Postmodernism and critical theory commonly criticize universalist ideas of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, language, and social progress. … Analytic philosopher Daniel Dennett said, “Postmodernism, the school of ‘thought’ that proclaimed ‘There are no truths, only interpretations’ has largely played itself out in absurdity…” … Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry criticized postmodernism for reducing the complexity of the modern world to an expression of power and for undermining truth and reason: “If the modern era begins with the European Enlightenment, the postmodern era that captivates the radical multiculturalists begins with its rejection. According to the new radicals, the Enlightenment-inspired ideas that have previously structured our world especially the legal and academic parts of it, are a fraud perpetrated and perpetuated by white males to consolidate their own power. Those who disagree are not only blind but bigoted. The Enlightenment’s goal of an objective and reasoned basis for knowledge, merit, truth, justice, and the like is an impossibility: “objectivity,” in the sense of standards of judgment that transcend individual perspectives, does not exist. Reason is just another code word for the views of the privileged. The Enlightenment itself merely replaced one socially constructed view of reality with another, mistaking power for knowledge. There is naught but power.“
From Britannica:
In Western philosophy, late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power. … many of the doctrines characteristically associated with postmodernism can fairly be described as the straightforward denial of general philosophical viewpoints that were taken for granted during the 18th-century Enlightenment. [Regarding the notion of] an objective natural reality, a reality whose existence and properties are logically independent of human beings—of their minds, their societies, their social practices, or their investigative techniques. Postmodernists dismiss this idea as a kind of naive realism. Such reality as there is, according to postmodernists, is a conceptual construct, an artifact of scientific practice and language. … [Regarding the notion of] descriptive and explanatory statements of scientists and historians [that] can, in principle, be objectively true or false. The postmodern denial of this viewpoint—which follows from the rejection of an objective natural reality—is sometimes expressed by saying that there is no such thing as Truth. … Postmodernists insist that all, or nearly all, aspects of human psychology are completely socially determined. …
And finally PBS:
A general and wide-ranging term which is applied to literature, art, philosophy, architecture, fiction, and cultural and literary criticism, among others. Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. In essence, it stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality. For this reason, postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one’s own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal.
Postmodernism is “post” because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for everybody – a characterisitic of the so-called “modern” mind. The paradox of the postmodern position is that, in placing all principles under the scrutiny of its skepticism, it must realize that even its own principles are not beyond questioning. As the philospher Richard Tarnas states, postmodernism “cannot on its own principles ultimately justify itself any more than can the various metaphysical overviews against which the postmodern mind has defined itself.“
So, after reviewing the materials, haphazardly summarized above, I think I get it, and my gut was probably right. For instance, I can see how the folks that I know who are on the right would not like how I can be so “wishy-washy” when I wonder aloud about the experiences of urban or black youth and the impact it must have on their morality, which is relativistic. I think post-modernism lends itself to ambiguity as well, including the denial of binary right/wrong or true/false thinking that many people prefer, especially the law and order conservatives who think that stealing is wrong under all circumstances … you know, until they are the ones who are starving.
Such seems to be the case this week, when supporters at a political rally in Washington DC on January 6 besieged and broke into the Capitol Building while Congress was in session to interrupt/stall/prevent (the crowd was a disparate and disorganized mob, seemingly without intention) the counting of electoral college votes because they believe (without evidence) that the national election was “rigged”, that President Trump was rightfully elected president, that there was a secretive nation-wide campaign/conspiracy to change/alter/throw away/create votes to elect President-elect Biden, and that the soon-to-be-president will be illegitimate. I wish there were a way to put into context for my children what just happened, but I can’t … not in a blog post anyway. All that I can say is that the events that unfolded this week were unprecedented and it may signal the end of our democracy as the world has known it for the last 225 years.
Anyway – the irony is not lost on me that those who perpetrated the crimes against our democracy are the same ones who claim that they are fighting for it. I doubt that there was a participant in that crowd that didn’t consider themselves a patriot. It is also not lost on me that the ONLY way that those same folks can think themselves patriots is to have become post-modernists themselves.
Of course, they won’t see it that way. That is ironic too.