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| Explaining Postmodernism | | Date Created: May 08, 2005, 06:59 PM |
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This isn't technically a review so it's not in the review section. Well actually it's a review of a review. Sometimes the review is all you have time for. Sometimes the review is all you need. In this case the review is adequate to substitute for the book but I'm getting the book anyway. It's another piece in the puzzle of the left-liberal worldview.
Perhaps you've heard of the forces in the universe explained by physics? They are the strong force, the weak force, electromagnetism, and gravity. Quantum mechanics explains the first three fairly well but gravity has no similar explanation and no way to relate it to the other three in a Grand Unified Theory (GUT). Einstein failed at this and no one has completed the task. If you're interested, Roger Penrose, an A-list physicist has a new book out about it and there was a cover article on him in the latest issue of Discover Magazine. (June -- not online yet). I think the article should have been entitled "How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All" but it's actually called, "If An Electron Can Be In 2 Places At Once, Why Can't You?"
But we're off on a tangent.
The point is that I'm looking for the GUT -- call it the Grand Unified Theory of Left-liberals and Socialists (GUTLS). Stephen R.C. Hicks' book, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, may explain at least one of the forces of liberal nature. The others may be "therapism" (explained in One Nation Under Therapy); political power (explained in several recent books); "victimology" (the book yet to be written); and "alternative" (music, medicine etc -- still poorly defined).
The review of Hicks' book is by Gary Jason and is called "Socialism's Last Bastion". It's in the latest issue of Liberty Magazine, which is a must read magazine. Here's the relevant excerpts:
" In short, postmodernism is relativism run riot, skepticism on stilts."
"The postmodern mindset views the whole Enlightenment project as a failure. The po-mo view is metaphysically anti-realist and anti-naturalist, holding that the physical universe is not ultimately describable in final terms. It is socially subjectivist in epistemology, holding that the "world" is what we socially construct, and each "group" (racial, gender, linguistic, ethnic, national or what have you) constructs the world according to its group identity. Postmodernists are egalitarian and collectivist in matters ethical and political."
"...there is a contradictory tone to all this — all cultures are equal, but ours stinks; all truth is relative, except the unquestionable po-mo truth; no race, class or gender is superior, but middle class white males are clearly inferior; and no books are superior, except, of course, those by third-world authors. Where does this farrago of resentment come from?"
"Postmodernism is a fusion between Leftist politics and skepticism. But the dream of socialism died in the latter half of the 20th century. Socialism was tried in a variety of forms, from Leninism to National Socialism to Maoism and so on, with the clear result that, far from being superior to capitalism, it is completely inferior. Socialism promised to free workers from capitalist bondage, but it chained them to the means of production they purportedly owned. It promised to outproduce capitalism, but the prosperity achieved by capitalist economies totally eclipsed the poverty wrought by socialism. Socialism promised to usher in an era of peace and humane values, but it delivered decades of police states and gulags. Free-market democracy, i.e., classical liberalism, won decisively in the developed world, and is rapidly transforming the rest of the planet as well."
The failure of socialism, both empirically and theoretically (once Mises demolished socialist theory with his publication of "Socialism" in 1920), brought about a crisis of faith among socialists, and postmodernism is their response. Hicks puts it well:"
'Postmodernism is born of the marriage of Left politics and skeptical epistemology. As socialist political thought was reaching a crisis in the 1950s, academic epistemology had, in Europe, come to take seriously Nietzsche and Heidegger and, in the Anglo-American world, it had seen the decline of Logical Positivism into Quine and Kuhn. The dominance of subjectivist and relativist epistemologies in academic philosophy thus provided the academic Left with a new tactic. Confronted by harsh evidence and ruthless logic, the far Left had a reply: That is only logic and evidence; logic and evidence are subjective; you cannot really prove anything; feelings are deeper than logic; and our feelings say socialism. . . . Postmodernism is a response to the crisis in faith of the academic far Left. Its epistemology justifies the leap of faith necessary to continue believing in socialism, and the same epistemology justifies using language not as a vehicle for seeking truth but as a rhetorical weapon in the continuing battle against capitalism.' |
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