Post-modernism [Archive]

pastradamus

12th November 2010, 09:44

I could go on a huge long rabble and try my finest to explain what exactly post-modernism is but to do so would not only give me a headache as much as it would confuse the reader.

Basically, Post Modernism is an attempt, philosophically to understand the "grey area's" of thought and practice. Post-modernistic beliefs question anything to do with a "definite" IE. hot or cold, tall or small, right or wrong, left or right ect. It believes that humanity is gone in the direction of forgetting what the "in between" or "grey area's" are. That might sound all good and well but its completely flawed when applied against science (which it very often is).

Kleber did very well to make the comparison between Romanticism and the Enlightment - its an eerily simular case here. It challenges the beliefs of modern science in such a way to say - "science could be wrong" and "science might not be definite". But the fact of the matter is that science KNOWS ITS NOT PERFECT and KNOWS ITS NOT ALWAYS DEFINITE.

The Modern Post-modernist (no pun intended) seems to be nothing more than a pseudo-intellectual, one who believes to possess great knowledge about life and understanding of philosophy. A kind of Esperanto for the Prenticing Bourgeois.

Meridian

12th November 2010, 11:22

I think this should be in Philosophy.

RaÃºl Duke

12th November 2010, 16:11

I want to hear Arizona Bay's explanation and opinion of post-modernism. An analysis that doesn't use "bourgeois," "petit-bourgeois," "reactionary," etc; just something straight-forward and honest. It's not like we would drop being leftists or something over fucking post-modernism.

I want to hear the seemingly obvious bad of it (since everyone in revleft claims its bad) to whatever pros can be gained out of that line of philosophical thought.

ComradeOm

12th November 2010, 16:37

It's not like we would drop being leftists or something over fucking post-modernismWell no, but we would start being dickheads if we subscribed to it

The reason that post-modernism is so unpopular here is because it questions the very basis of revolutionary leftist politics. Most obviously this is in a complete rejection of 'grand theories' of Marx and other 19th C modernists but it also places question marks over the very concept of progress, class, revolution, etc. It makes these terms, depending on who is applying the analysis of course, entirely malleable and devoid of meaning. Suddenly we're not talking about class but the 'language of class' (which can mean whatever the author wants it to) or similar tripe

Now whatever the benefits of this post-modernism in the realm of philosophy, which probably ended in the 1970s, its application to political thought is absolutely poisonous. When you render a concept like 'progress' to be meaningless then it tends to kick the plank out from any programme of the left. Post-modernists are typically fine at questioning the hypocrisy of 'freedom' or 'democracy' but a refusal to provide a desirable contrast makes their 'stance', if you can call it that, worthless. Its the politics of the 'hip but clueless'. Follow post-modernist 'logic' and you end up with an exceptionally muddled and undirected mess that wears Kanye glasses

cenv

12th November 2010, 17:42

Postmodernism is the result of a drawn-out historical trend and needs to be understood as such. Modernity ushered in the disintegration of religion as the unifying force that bound together social and individual life, giving them a coherent meaning, if an illusory one. In the wake of this cultural destruction, modernism was the desperate attempt to establish a new unity, coherence, and meaning in the midst of modern capitalism's fragmentation.

As Marxists, we know that without revolution, without a concrete basis for this creative impulse, modernism's project was doomed from the start, chained by its parameters as a purely cultural movement (bourgeois society renders human creativity sterile by detaching it from the possibility of concrete action and confining it to the cultural sphere). Thus, postmodernism is a disillusionment with modernism, the idea that both its means and ends are meaningless fictions dreamed up by socially constructed non-individuals in a world that fundamentally denies them agency and meaning.

Postmodernism makes the fundamental mistake of all bourgeois thought: confusing particular social conditions with fundamental properties of "life," "the universe," etc. It takes the incoherence, inhumanity, and irrationality of bourgeois society as immutable conditions of existence and a call to resigned apathy and contemplation, when the fact is that the "postmodern condition" and the conditions it reflects highlight the need for us to fight for creativity, rationality, meaning, humanity, and revolution even more vigorously.

Communist

12th November 2010, 19:21

.

To Philosophy, from Theory.

Moved.

.

ChrisK

12th November 2010, 22:01

Alex Callanicos made a very interesting argument in his book Against Postmodernism, that postmodernism represents no real break from modernism. They are the same movement, with postmodernists simply claiming to be different. He also attacks poststructualism as being based on a reading of Saussure's words and concepts. As he mentions some, such as Derrida, have a serious flaw in that they believe that it is the words without the concepts that create meanings in an endless flow of words interacting with each other. This means that everything is a narrative. Of course, this idea is flawed in that just because we speak about it (and, thus, give it meaning) does not make it reality. I can talk about elves all day and they become no more real.

I really recommend this book (I haven't finished it yet), but must warn you that he accepts a form of the correspondence theory of truth.

Meridian

12th November 2010, 22:54

As he mentions some, such as Derrida, have a serious flaw in that they believe that it is the words without the concepts that create meanings in an endless flow of words interacting with each other.
While in fact it is humans that "create meaning" by the use of language. Words can't interact with each other, humans do, often with language.

This means that everything is a narrative. Of course, this idea is flawed in that just because we speak about it (and, thus, give it meaning) does not make it reality.
I think this idea is also flawed because it presumes that the role of language is to represent reality. If that were true then we could argue that "everything is a narrative", that the words we use in the different languages are determined based on culture, our other words, conditions, etc., and that there not necessarily is a connection to any external reality language is supposed to represent. Simultaneously, this 'representative' presumption is also at the core of correspondence theory, I think.

ChrisK

12th November 2010, 23:09

^^^ Completely agree

Summerspeaker

15th November 2010, 03:26

Postmodernism centers on taking nothing for granted and questioning established structures. In this sense it has a natural affinity with anarchism and the queer liberation. Extended too far this skepticism does indeed induce political paralysis and so serves the status quo, but that's merely one possibility among many. Postmodernist icon Michel Foucault produced searing critiques of our present authoritarian social system, advocated passionately for prison reform, and joined students in resisting university administration and police. In judicious doses, the philosophy adds a measure of humility and transparency to the leftist cause as well as offering a worthwhile set of tools for exposing oppression. I recommend this approach and suggest against single-minded opposition.

Sosa

15th November 2010, 05:49

on that note...

Jimmie Higgins

15th November 2010, 09:36

What is it? I have only a really basic grasp of what it is, if that. I'm particularly interested in its relation to modernism. If you think this should be in philosophy, move it.

There's a book called "Against Post-Modernism" by Alex Callinicos that deals a lot with the relationship between Po-mo and modernism from a materialist perspective. If I remember his argument correctly, I think he argues that post-modernism doesn't really exist on a material level as separate from modernism - that it is sort of a "mood" among intellectuals rather than any real distinct break from pre-WWII modernism.

As I understand it, post-modernism is basically the rejection of "over-arching" narratives of how the world works and a deep suspicion of the idea that anything can be known for certain.

So, for example, where many strains of modernism were obsessed with connecting with a mass audience and creating a kind of materialist non-spiritual universal experience, post-modern thinkers and artists emphasize peoples inability to understand each-other or have a common experience or perspective.

IMO post-modernism, while interesting, able to bring up good questions and critiques of existing institutions, and capable of creating amazing art (although I think the peak was probably the late 1960s and then a rapid decline after the 1980s), it is incompatable with leftists with a class perspective. If post-modernism is correct, then no revolution (or democracy even) could really produce a better world because people's views of what constitutes a better world are inherently subjective (not class based) and all class perspectives and political views are equal with none being "more correct" than any other.

Thirsty Crow

15th November 2010, 10:09

Postmodernism is a bourgeois idealistic rejection of science, objective reality, and the very idea of historical progress. It is popular among petty-bourgeois academics who used to champion reformist versions of Stalinism until the leaders of their beloved USSR capitulated to imperialism. Postmodernism can be compared to Romanticism, which rejected the rational principles of the Enlightenment, and gained ground in the confusion arising from the defeat of the French Revolution. Postmodernist literature generally serves only to confuse and distort. The deliberately inaccessible language and obfuscatory methodology of this "philosophy" should be wholly totally and absolutely rejected by genuine revolutionaries.

Oh my. There are a lot of false assumptions here.

First of all, the term originally applies to works of art, and not to philosophy o social critique. I would even argue that the term is meaningless if it wishes to encapsulate a "school of philosophy".
Considering this, your analogy with "Romanticism" is somewhat accurate, but you are making a serious error when implying that both post-m and romanticism are homogenous "fields" of mental practice. For instance, both Goethe and Shelley (and I would doubt that someone would refuse them the label "Romantics") did not reject the legacy of Enlightenment. In fact, their insistence on human progress (Shelley has been called "the poet of the future"; which is hardly surprising given the fact that he went on agitating in Ireland and echoed views very much similar to militant vegetarianism) completely disproves your point. The "irrational" aspect of Romanticism is only one of its facets.

What I would recommend when "postmodernism" is concerned is the following: David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity and Frederic Jameson's Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

The literary critic Fredric Jameson and the geographer David Harvey have identified postmodernity with "late capitalism" or "flexible accumulation", a stage of capitalism following finance capitalism, characterised by highly mobile labor and capital and what Harvey called "time and space compression". They suggest that this coincides with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system which, they believe, defined the economic order following the Second World War. (See also Consumerism, Critical theory)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernity

So, the emphasis is on the historical cultural development, which exhibits certain distingusihable traits in a given period, and this development has its analogue in the historical development of capital accumulation, which corresponds to what some call the "dematerialization of production" or "flexible accumulation" (strongly conected to a perceived dominance of finance capital).

From this perspctive, it seems that "postmodernism" Kleber is talking about is in fact only an extension of politics of identity. And I'd prefer to call it so, and not "postmodernism" since the term is most meaningful when applied to art, especially literature.

Oswy

15th November 2010, 10:43

What is it? I have only a really basic grasp of what it is, if that. I'm particularly interested in its relation to modernism. If you think this should be in philosophy, move it.

Postmodernism is to be found in those claims which express scepticism about the extent to which philosophies, theories and practices associated with 'modernism' have epistemological credibility. You can usually recognise postmodernism in any idea or argument where there's more emphasis on what cannot be known than what can, where subjectivities are posited as unavoidable, significant and even insurmountable in the quest to 'know' things about the world, where one point of view cannot be critically established as more or less viable than any other.

Postmodernism is worth a little credibility in that it injects some healthy scepticism towards scholarship which otherwise can be an unreflexive failure to grasp the extent to which the act of trying to 'find things out', understand them and explain them are necessarily limited and necessarily mediated by that act. Beyond that we should ourselves be sceptical about postmodernism's more radical claims, especially in the form of post-structuralism (a more language-focused dimension of postmodernist thought). At their most strident postmodernists seek to inform us of the unknowability of the world, that things like language and human subjectivities reduce all attempts to find and communicate knowledge as little better than imaginative interpretation and story telling. Yet, as has not gone unnoticed, such authoritative claims are themselves only 'viable' if language and 'the world' have epistemological credibility, i.e. postmodernist claims are at the deepest level paradoxical when seeking to question the power of claim making activities.

I'd also recommend Alex Callinicos's book Against Postmodernism if you want a substantial intro and critique.

If you're particularly interested in postmodernism (and poststructuralism) as they have specifically affected scholarship in history, as I am, then I recommend the following:

Bryan D. Palmer, Descent into Discourse (Temple University Press, 1990).

Willie Thompson, What Happened to History? (Pluto Press, 2000).

Matt Perry, Marxism and History (Palgrave, 2002).

Of these three Willie Thompson's book is the one I'd advise you prioritise.

The postmodernist and poststructuralist bubbles have more-or-less burst, though they remain potent forces in academia. So while it's important to have some understanding of their philisophical and theoretical underpinnings they don't dominate academic fields as they threatened to - literature is the possible exception, it having been the subject which, for obvious reasons, most lends itself to colonisation by postmodernist thinking.

Jimmie Higgins

15th November 2010, 11:02

The postmodernist and poststructuralist bubbles have more-or-less burst, though they remain potent forces in academia. So while it's important to have some understanding of their philisophical and theoretical underpinnings they don't dominate academic fields as they threatened to - literature is the possible exception, it having been the subject which, for obvious reasons, most lends itself to colonisation by postmodernist thinking.

I'm interested in what people think about this. I also have read and heard that this is the case, and when I was in school in the late 90s there was constant talk of "beyond post-modernism" and so on. So it seems like there is a general sense among academics and many artists that post-modernism is no longer a compelling way to explain (or non-explain) the world, but there is nothing yet that has been able to replace it. Any thoughts on this situation (especially anyone currently in university or more familiar than I am with academia) would be appreciated.

Oswy

15th November 2010, 11:35

I'm interested in what people think about this. I also have read and heard that this is the case, and when I was in school in the late 90s there was constant talk of "beyond post-modernism" and so on. So it seems like there is a general sense among academics and many artists that post-modernism is no longer a compelling way to explain (or non-explain) the world, but there is nothing yet that has been able to replace it. Any thoughts on this situation (especially anyone currently in university or more familiar than I am with academia) would be appreciated.

I can't imagine it is easy to continue in a discipline once you've convinced yourself to some degree or other that you're just indulging in poetry, unless, of course, you're specifically working in the discipline of poetry. What we might call radical or substantive postmodernism, and especially poststructuralism (which I think of as the 'hard core' of postmodernism) too obviously turns down a dead-end, intellectually speaking. Once we ask, indeed demand, that our readers give our claims no more credibility than the latest Harry Potter novel we don't have anywhere to go. In abstract disciplines, like literature, philosophy and maybe linguistics, I can see why postmodernism would still hold sway, disciplines where idealist (contra materialist) theory has probably always been dominating anyway.

More generally, what has remained, I think, especially in disciplines like history, are weaker forms of postmodernism. While scholars don't want to have their evidence and arguments reduced to fiction they are often happy to offer it up in the form of fiction, i.e. as the heroic or romantic novel. This is the Simon Schama kind of history; light on analysis and heavy on swashbuckling and feelings but still, ultimately, presenting the past as a set of factual, i.e 'knowable' claims.

Personally I never found poststructuralism to have any credibility even at the most basic level. For me it is the equivalent of the claim:

"The author's intended meaning, of this or any other sentence, can never be accurately understood by the reader."

It's just so obviously paradoxical; if we can accurately understand what poststructuralists are claiming through language then, pretty obviously, we can accurately understand claims made through language. As one critique puts it, if human communications were not meaningfully accurate in transmission and reception we wouldn't step onto airplanes, we wouldn't be inhibited from tasting liquids in bottles market 'poison'. Ultimately, though, I think poststructuralism is wrong because structuralism is wrong (the former is a radical extension of the latter, not really a 'clean break' as it is assumed).

Jimmie Higgins

15th November 2010, 12:29

I wish I could remember the artist or find the quote, but I was reading an interview with a contemporary artist who uses a lot of kitsch in his work and he defined post-modernism as: the realization that there is nothing beyond capitalism and so all that is left for the artist is to take the assumptions and norms of capitalism and re-arrange and re-contextualize them.

He was saying this in a positive sense, but I thought it was a great accidental illustration of some of the limitations of post-modern thought.

28350

15th November 2010, 13:22

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm

ChrisK

15th November 2010, 17:02

Tablo

15th November 2010, 17:13

gLX2Lk2tdcw
My theater professor says this is post-modernist. Our professor decided since it was to difficult for him to explain he would show us this 25 minutes film.

Summerspeaker

15th November 2010, 17:30

Postmodernist influence remains alive in well in my field of history, though it of course sparks vigorous debates.

Sosa

15th November 2010, 17:42

bretty

16th November 2010, 07:57

I can't imagine it is easy to continue in a discipline once you've convinced yourself to some degree or other that you're just indulging in poetry, unless, of course, you're specifically working in the discipline of poetry. What we might call radical or substantive postmodernism, and especially poststructuralism (which I think of as the 'hard core' of postmodernism) too obviously turns down a dead-end, intellectually speaking. Once we ask, indeed demand, that our readers give our claims no more credibility than the latest Harry Potter novel we don't have anywhere to go. In abstract disciplines, like literature, philosophy and maybe linguistics, I can see why postmodernism would still hold sway, disciplines where idealist (contra materialist) theory has probably always been dominating anyway.

More generally, what has remained, I think, especially in disciplines like history, are weaker forms of postmodernism. While scholars don't want to have their evidence and arguments reduced to fiction they are often happy to offer it up in the form of fiction, i.e. as the heroic or romantic novel. This is the Simon Schama kind of history; light on analysis and heavy on swashbuckling and feelings but still, ultimately, presenting the past as a set of factual, i.e 'knowable' claims.

Personally I never found poststructuralism to have any credibility even at the most basic level. For me it is the equivalent of the claim:

"The author's intended meaning, of this or any other sentence, can never be accurately understood by the reader."

It's just so obviously paradoxical; if we can accurately understand what poststructuralists are claiming through language then, pretty obviously, we can accurately understand claims made through language. As one critique puts it, if human communications were not meaningfully accurate in transmission and reception we wouldn't step onto airplanes, we wouldn't be inhibited from tasting liquids in bottles market 'poison'. Ultimately, though, I think poststructuralism is wrong because structuralism is wrong (the former is a radical extension of the latter, not really a 'clean break' as it is assumed).

I don't think this is a very fair interpretation of post-modern or post-structuralist viewpoints. I think Foucault's remark suits best in saying that he hopes his work is used much like a toolbox rather than some encompassing view. Further the comment comparing Harry Potter is a little much, it's first of all difficult to suggest all of these writers share this viewpoint and also to suggest that any of them reject finding meaning in their work.

Oswy

16th November 2010, 10:17

I don't think this is a very fair interpretation of post-modern or post-structuralist viewpoints. I think Foucault's remark suits best in saying that he hopes his work is used much like a toolbox rather than some encompassing view. Further the comment comparing Harry Potter is a little much, it's first of all difficult to suggest all of these writers share this viewpoint and also to suggest that any of them reject finding meaning in their work.

There's an irony in such defences of postmodernism and poststructuralism (by which I mean the substantive kinds, not just those who are trying to inject some of the seemingly 'exciting' or 'sophisticated' flavour of those movements into their probably otherwise pedestrian work). I'm talking about positions which are centrally characterised by their rejection of 'modernist' claims to objective means by which to understand the world and thus defend any given assertion about it. It is, I'll concede, part of the postmodernist 'game' to obfuscate and avoid making their actual philosophical, theoretical and political positions plain. While the rest of us are easy targets for PoMo attack, because we try our best to fix our positions and make them understood with ordinary language, the PoMos themselves delight in word-play and grammatical gymnastics in their offerings - have you tried reading Derrida? Of course the PoMos have an interest in making their ideas difficult to understand, that's the point, that language is a mysterious force, floating in the aether, only partially seen, only partially decipherable. So, to suggest that there can be a 'fair interpretation' of anything as if it could knowably stand free of Derrida's 'discourses' or Foucault's 'power-knowledge' paradigm is to do both of them a disservice. What is 'fair' in the world of Derrida and Foucault is determined by textual interplay or knowledge legitimised only by power, is that how you are conceiving of 'fair'? Their whole point is to reduce action and thought to language games; to squeeze out the human subject; to trivialise or even deny the material facts which shape actual human existence and communication.

As for my Harry Potter comment? Foucault, a putative historian, is infamous for having stated that "I am well aware that I have never written anything other than fictions."

I'll actually defend postmodernism where it encourages a greater spirit of critique in scholarship that presents the world in a 'matter of fact' way, i.e. 'what you see is what you get'. I'll also defend postmodernism where it seeks to remind us that there are always different perspectives from which the world, and the forces of human society, are experienced. But postmodernism and poststructuralism in their strong philosophical form I must reject. I'm a materialist, the world and human life is not reducible to texts and mental processes which take place with little regard to the human bodies which generate them, the hard reality which drives them.

Thirsty Crow

16th November 2010, 12:04

...have you tried reading Derrida?
Funny fact, after capitalism has been restored in the area of former USSR, when the celebrations of "the end of history" have begun to appear, it was Derrida who fiercly opposed them and engaged in something that very much resembles a defense of Marx and Marxism.

For it must be cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelise in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realised itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. Instead of singing the advent of the ideal of liberal democracy and of the capitalist market in the euphoria of the end of history, instead of celebrating the ‘end of ideologies’ and the end of the great emancipatory discourses, let us never neglect this obvious macroscopic fact, made up of innumerable singular sites of suffering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute figures, have so many men, women and children been subjugated, starved or exterminated on the earth.

Specters of Marx.

So, either Derrida is being unfaithful to his own doctrine, especially by mentioning something like "this obvious macroscopic fact", or you are simplifying the issue.

Oswy

16th November 2010, 15:37

...either Derrida is being unfaithful to his own doctrine...

I'd say this.

I can imagine it is common for the kinds of substantive postmodernists and poststructuralists we're discussing to slip - when they're not concentrating on epistemological demands of their philosophical and theoretical positions - into more conventional or familiar territory. I'll stand corrected, but I'm sure in my reading I've found references to the likes of Derrida and Foucault having been past Marxists themselves; if that's correct then their slippages are quite likely to have a Marxist-sounding quality to them.

RaÃºl Duke

17th November 2010, 01:17

the realization that there is nothing beyond capitalism and so all that is left for the artist is to take the assumptions and norms of capitalism and re-arrange and re-contextualize them.

Such mood is not surprising. To me, the post-modernist mood in relation to politics seems to be that capitalism is seemingly "all there is" (or "all we know"; "another world may be possible but I doubt it") and even though they view it critically and may do things to criticize or satirize it they barely do anything to advance "something else." Maybe I'm wrong, but to me that's what it is and it's not reasonable for such a mood to arise since after 69/70s.

Now for the philosophy itself, it seems very hard to get a very precise "full definition" of what it is. The common thing I heard about post-modernism is that it's skeptical of many things (of claimed objectivity in academia?) or rejects meta-narratives.

Postmodernist influence remains alive in well in my field of history

I'm not sure if that's the case in my university, but in my historical theory or historical methods class I was called Marxian (conflict theory, focus on groups struggle for power, particularly class), Foucaultian (power-dynamics in many spheres of society), and post-modernist (history is written in perspective, relativism, 100% objectivity doesn't exist thus multiple sources required for analysis, my analysis is written though my perceptual filters, so it also ain't 100% objective). I guess I tend to use all these theories to some degree when I analyze things.

blake 3:17

17th November 2010, 01:24

I'm an art historian and from what I've learned from post-modern art (which isn't very much) that seems pretty accurate. Is that artist Jeff Koons? it sounds like something he would say.

Koons could have said it. I'll take him over Hirst any day of the week.

I'd also recommend Alex Callinicos's book Against Postmodernism if you want a substantial intro and critique.

If you're particularly interested in postmodernism (and poststructuralism) as they have specifically affected scholarship in history, as I am, then I recommend the following:

Bryan D. Palmer, Descent into Discourse (Temple University Press, 1990).

Willie Thompson, What Happened to History? (Pluto Press, 2000).

Matt Perry, Marxism and History (Palgrave, 2002).

I've read the first two, and don't the latter two. I think it pretty fishy to examine a set of ideas by starting with the assumption that Marxism is true, so if someething isn't Marxist it's wrong. More recently Callinicos has written The Resources of Critique, which is a much fuller book than Against Postmodernism. His engagegment with Deleuze is better. I think he's more sympathetic to Hardt and Negri than I am.

The only folks I know these days who are into Baudrillard are female visual artists. Hmmm.

Oswy

17th November 2010, 11:43

...

I've read the first two, and don't the latter two. I think it pretty fishy to examine a set of ideas by starting with the assumption that Marxism is true, so if someething isn't Marxist it's wrong. More recently Callinicos has written The Resources of Critique, which is a much fuller book than Against Postmodernism. His engagegment with Deleuze is better. I think he's more sympathetic to Hardt and Negri than I am.

...

Why fishy? I'm sceptical that there can be any analysis (even by postmodernists and poststructuralists) without it relying upon some or other philosophical or theoretical assumptions. If we happen to think Marxism is the most fruitful perspective from which to analyse then we're going to make that our perspective. I don't imagine that researchers in physics set aside their 'relativistic quantum mechanics' perspective when confronted with new ideas or phenomenon. They are likely to make use of that approach they have explanatory confidence in first, modify it if necessary, abandon it only should the problem compel abandonment.

I would abandon Marxism - or at least accept a modification - if I thought there were things in substantive postmodernism and poststructuralism which warranted it, I just don't see them. There are plenty of non-Marxist critiques of PoMo too. Where the discipline of history is concerned Richard J. Evans in his In Defence of History, sets out some reasonable 'mainstream' critiques. I actually think PoMo has been good for history in that it has encouraged a discipline which has long tried to avoid philosophy and theory, to make some examination of these dimensions of their work, and thus take up more rigorous positions. PoMo does us all a service in the more general references to the epistemological gap between the world and our ability to understand and represent it, I'm all for critiques which break intellectually conservative 'matter of fact' history, for example. It's the abandonment of materialism, as I see it, in the PoMo scholarship which I object to, the abandonment of material conditions shaping mental states, language and action, and a return to less than radical idealist notions to the effect that when someone tells you they are starving, or even has a 'feeling' that they are starving, it is, you know, just a discursive formation.

bretty

18th November 2010, 05:26

There's an irony in such defences of postmodernism and poststructuralism (by which I mean the substantive kinds, not just those who are trying to inject some of the seemingly 'exciting' or 'sophisticated' flavour of those movements into their probably otherwise pedestrian work). I'm talking about positions which are centrally characterised by their rejection of 'modernist' claims to objective means by which to understand the world and thus defend any given assertion about it. It is, I'll concede, part of the postmodernist 'game' to obfuscate and avoid making their actual philosophical, theoretical and political positions plain. While the rest of us are easy targets for PoMo attack, because we try our best to fix our positions and make them understood with ordinary language, the PoMos themselves delight in word-play and grammatical gymnastics in their offerings - have you tried reading Derrida? Of course the PoMos have an interest in making their ideas difficult to understand, that's the point, that language is a mysterious force, floating in the aether, only partially seen, only partially decipherable. So, to suggest that there can be a 'fair interpretation' of anything as if it could knowably stand free of Derrida's 'discourses' or Foucault's 'power-knowledge' paradigm is to do both of them a disservice. What is 'fair' in the world of Derrida and Foucault is determined by textual interplay or knowledge legitimised only by power, is that how you are conceiving of 'fair'? Their whole point is to reduce action and thought to language games; to squeeze out the human subject; to trivialise or even deny the material facts which shape actual human existence and communication.

As for my Harry Potter comment? Foucault, a putative historian, is infamous for having stated that "I am well aware that I have never written anything other than fictions."

I'll actually defend postmodernism where it encourages a greater spirit of critique in scholarship that presents the world in a 'matter of fact' way, i.e. 'what you see is what you get'. I'll also defend postmodernism where it seeks to remind us that there are always different perspectives from which the world, and the forces of human society, are experienced. But postmodernism and poststructuralism in their strong philosophical form I must reject. I'm a materialist, the world and human life is not reducible to texts and mental processes which take place with little regard to the human bodies which generate them, the hard reality which drives them.

I'm not sure what you mean by doing a disservice to them? I'm saying you're opinion isn't very fair, if you'd prefer I could say rather I disagree with your objections to these authors ideas. I think many of them are useful in several disciplines notably Foucault who has inspired several great writers in the field of International Development which I study. As for the quote from Foucault, I'd rather see from where it came since I'm sure there is a context to it, I would disagree with the idea that he put little truth into the study and analysis of modern discourses around institutions and power. Also I think you're far too general in your rejection of ideas, there's a lot of differentiation between those authors you and others widely claim to be post-modern which is maybe why I said I don't think you're interpretation is fair in the first place. The fact that you suggest they misrepresent facts, I think is false, Foucault's work on the other hand has had exemplary effects on influencing really interesting research to discover antagonisms in culture, economy, politics and micro-political and social development particularly in the all-encompassing capitalist system.. Which in a sense I agree with your point that they have helped create more rigorous scholarship debates. Secondly Deleuze has had a great impact on writers such as Manuel Delanda, who wrote a great book called "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History" which I find to be exceptional at outlining the faults of a historical totality, or a dialectical process inherent in history.

However I'm not particularly a proponent of these writers, I simply find merit in some of them such as Deleuze and Foucault. However in reading Hardt and Negri's books and some others fashioned with similar ideas, I can't help remain skeptical of these new social movements, the ideas of plurality and creative resistances. There is a sort of vagueness in attempts to fashion new concepts of resistance, I think maybe it can be summarized that there have been both positive and negatives produced by this new wave of concepts.

-B

Oswy

18th November 2010, 12:34

I'm not sure what you mean by doing a disservice to them? I'm saying you're opinion isn't very fair, if you'd prefer I could say rather I disagree with your objections to these authors ideas. I think many of them are useful in several disciplines notably Foucault who has inspired several great writers in the field of International Development which I study. As for the quote from Foucault, I'd rather see from where it came since I'm sure there is a context to it, I would disagree with the idea that he put little truth into the study and analysis of modern discourses around institutions and power. Also I think you're far too general in your rejection of ideas, there's a lot of differentiation between those authors you and others widely claim to be post-modern which is maybe why I said I don't think you're interpretation is fair in the first place. The fact that you suggest they misrepresent facts, I think is false, Foucault's work on the other hand has had exemplary effects on influencing really interesting research to discover antagonisms in culture, economy, politics and micro-political and social development particularly in the all-encompassing capitalist system.. Which in a sense I agree with your point that they have helped create more rigorous scholarship debates. Secondly Deleuze has had a great impact on writers such as Manuel Delanda, who wrote a great book called "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History" which I find to be exceptional at outlining the faults of a historical totality, or a dialectical process inherent in history.

However I'm not particularly a proponent of these writers, I simply find merit in some of them such as Deleuze and Foucault. However in reading Hardt and Negri's books and some others fashioned with similar ideas, I can't help remain skeptical of these new social movements, the ideas of plurality and creative resistances. There is a sort of vagueness in attempts to fashion new concepts of resistance, I think maybe it can be summarized that there have been both positive and negatives produced by this new wave of concepts.

-B

I don’t doubt that Foucault is an inspirational figure but that doesn’t mean that the specifics of his histories and his philosophical and theoretical positions cannot be criticised. I think of Chomsky as an inspirational figure too, but I wouldn’t automatically accept every position he takes or the reasoning behind his positions. I don’t have much time for people who seem obsessively defensive of everything Marx offered up either. So, yeah, I’m with you on Foucault as an important and novel thinker who has encouraged the exploration of new subject matter and new ways of thinking about it. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that he has inspired some great work. And the same, no doubt, goes for others associated with postmodernism and poststructuralism. At the very least these movements injected some much needed attention into philosophy and theory in the humanities. I’ll also accept your point that I’m probably generalising in my criticisms of thinkers who are often differentiated in the specifics of their philosophical and theoretical positions; though once we’ve decided something falls under the ‘PoMo’ umbrella it’s difficult not to start applying criticisms which are generally applicable to whatever we mean by that term.

Here’s one example of the kind of thing which makes me very suspicious of Foucault:

“...The individual is an effect of power, and at the same time, or precisely to the extent to which it is that effect, it is the element of its articulation. The individual which power has constituted is at the same time its vehicle.”

Foucault, Power-Knowledge, ed. C Gordon (Brighton, 1980), p.50.

Individuals as an ‘effect’? Could his anti-humanism be any more obvious? Power is a tricky subject for sure but as a materialist I regard human individuals as being very much party to the substance, generation and articulation of power, we’re part of the physical world, the only world, ultimately, there really is. Once you regard human beings as an 'effect' of some abstract force I think you've taken a wrong turn. In my view we’re not empty shells merely constituted by an ethereal force called ‘power’.

Widerstand

18th November 2010, 12:42

Individuals as an ‘effect’? Could his anti-humanism be any more obvious? Power is a tricky subject for sure but as a materialist I regard human individuals as being very much party to the substance, generation and articulation of power, we’re part of the physical world, the only world, ultimately, there really is. Once you regard human beings as an 'effect' of some abstract force I think you've taken a wrong turn. In my view we’re not empty shells merely constituted by an ethereal force called ‘power’.

I haven't read that work (or anything by Foucault), but to me it sounds as if you're somehow viewing individual as something non-abstract and power as something abstract. I'm not sure if that's how the passage should be read. One could argue that "individual" is an abstract term - in your interpretation it sounds as if "individual" meant a single (human) body that was created by power. However, the way I understand the quote, is that a human can't develop or express individuality (abstract) without possessing power. Therefore, empowering a human makes an individual out of them.

Oswy

18th November 2010, 14:18

I haven't read that work (or anything by Foucault), but to me it sounds as if you're somehow viewing individual as something non-abstract and power as something abstract. I'm not sure if that's how the passage should be read. One could argue that "individual" is an abstract term - in your interpretation it sounds as if "individual" meant a single (human) body that was created by power. However, the way I understand the quote, is that a human can't develop or express individuality (abstract) without possessing power. Therefore, empowering a human makes an individual out of them.

When you say "I'm not sure if that's how the passage should be read" you highlight one of the central paradoxes of postmodernism and poststructuralism. The PoMo position ranges from the view that there are always a multiplicity of perspectives from which any utterance can be understood to the position that any claim to 'understanding' is illusory or at least undemonstrable. The more conventional epistemological claim that there is more-or-less an accurate way to 'understand' an offering, especially a written offering, is one of the things PoMo is most consistently critical of. But putting that aside maybe you're right, maybe I am failing to read Foucault in the right way, after all my ability to understand him is, under his doctrine, a discursive formation the characteristics of which are determined by a power-knowledge nexus. Isn't the next obvious question for us to ask; to what extent are Foucault's claims nothing beyond a discursive formation the characteristics of which are determined by a power-knowledge nexus? Can he stand outside of the process which otherwise makes him and his claims an 'effect of power'?

Meridian

18th November 2010, 17:20

on that note...

That was amusing, but the whole theory rests upon misuse of language. 'Reality' can not be a lie, or anything else for that matter, because it would contain what is predicated of it. Facts are not inscrutable either, if they were, so would that fact be, making it contradictory.

blake 3:17

18th November 2010, 21:53

Why fishy? I'm sceptical that there can be any analysis (even by postmodernists and poststructuralists) without it relying upon some or other philosophical or theoretical assumptions. If we happen to think Marxism is the most fruitful perspective from which to analyse then we're going to make that our perspective. I don't imagine that researchers in physics set aside their 'relativistic quantum mechanics' perspective when confronted with new ideas or phenomenon. They are likely to make use of that approach they have explanatory confidence in first, modify it if necessary, abandon it only should the problem compel abandonment.

I won't speak to physics I don't understand it enough. I consider myself a Marxist, and think that Marx did develop useful and accurate ideas about describing social/political/economic life in many societies in 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. His critique of the commodity, the commodification of labour power and theory of exploitation I think stand fine.

I don't think Marxism explains why one enjoys a particular film, or how a school should be run, why butterflies migrate or the signficance of dreams. There are many Marxists who have attempted to answer these questions and have come up with totally different answers.

Part of our dilemma here is that Modernism is completely bursting with radical and fundamental contradictions, while the Post-Modern appears to have more consistencies. Was Joyce a Modernist and his secretary, Beckett, a Post-Modernist?

Jeff Koons was mentioned above, and I think it's easy to say he is a Post-Modernist. What about a far more interesting artist like Mike Kelley? I think Cindy Sherman is brilliant, but it would make any sense to criticize her for not being a Marxist?

I'm very impressed by Cornel West, who holds the strange place of being a Pragmatist Black Christian Existentialist Marxist. I some papers he suggests that Chekhov is the intellect he's most inspired by. West is a pretty conservative Marxist, but doesn't reject Marxism. Some of his political conclusions I disagree with, and others are right.

I think I spent too much in school picking apart theories and philosophies simply beause they a) weren't Marxist or b) lend themselves easily to some kind of revolutionary democratic socialist politics.

There's a fair bit of Marxist art and literary criticism I've read and enjoyed. As an example, John Berger's Ways of Seeing isn't really all that Marxist. The companion volume to Ways of Seeing, The Seventh Man is by far the better book. I doubt Berger would've produced it without a Marxist influence.

I'm starting to get into circular logic, which is why didn't continue my studies in philosophy (too much solipsism too easily acquired).

I was going to continue with a thing about Naomi Klein's non-Marxism but I gotta get moving!

kalu

19th November 2010, 05:47

I make it a duty of mine to intervene in threads like these, perhaps out of some misplaced belief that eventually, after enough boring arguments about "pomo is nihilism" or "pomo is relativism," we might begin to actually engage more productive and stimulating questions directly linked to the thinkers themselves. (though this thread actually has been comparatively useful, versus some past discussions)

There are many ways "postmodernism" has been used, which makes it as ephemeral as Marxism. Consider as an analogy the way Marxism has been used to refer to: the Soviet Union, Trotskyism, Maoism, Leninism, Keith Olberman, Mickey Mouse...I think you get the idea. Better to begin with some concrete instances of the "pomo" phenomenon and see if we might sort our way through those discourses and structures.

I'll basically stick to discussing two types of pomo: pomo as a "cultural logic" of late capitalism, to use the neo-Marxist terms of Jameson and Harvey, and pomo as a philosophical movement. The former begins with a discussion of shifts in capitalist production since the 1960s, particularly the rising emphasis on post-Fordist regimes of flexible accumulation. Think "outsourcing," and the phenomenon inaccurately referred to as "globalization," but better specified as the spread of neoliberalism. These theorists see pastiche, play, and other related pomo concept-affect formations emerging out of "material realities," in a classical Marxist sense, yet the language is so slippery that they begin to attribute real weight to even the ideas themselves. As Harvey puts it in The Condition of Postmodernity, for example, power in the realm of representation may achieve the same materiality as power in reality itself, given the mediatization of the social world. Think about the performative aspects of the stock market, and how trades can suddenly be impacted by even the whiff of a "crisis" in some part of the planet.

The other side of pomo, as a philosophical movement, is more interesting in my opinion, but shouldn't be reduced to straw men. Thus, and as I'll repeat ad nauseam, it's best to begin with the thinkers and arguments themselves in order to engage with some measure of specificity. Foucault is cited often in these threads, so I'll discuss Derrida. Derrida's project is to deconstruct the "western metaphysics of presence." Heidegger, for example, discusses how objects become covered or uncovered through our being in the world, and are not immediately "present" to our intuition. Derrida takes this argument further by deconstructing Heidegger's opposition between Being and beings, the latter referring to the thematic totality of the objects themselves and the former referring to Heidegger's complex metaphysical concept of the "Being of these beings." I'm less familiar with the details of this argument, but it's essential to understand that Derrida is arguing with a set of philosophers, particularly the "three H's": Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger.

What if anything do these ideas have to do with radical politics? It's hard to summarize in a couple of sentences, but various political theorists have benefited from these philosophical endeavors in order to reconceptualize our political projects. Laclau emphasizes, for example, the role of articulation in transforming "elements" into "moments" within a discourse, while emphasizing its fundamental instability. These is no guaranteed point outside of various discourses that can guarantee our struggle. Laclau links this ontological point to Gramsci's political point about the role of hegemony and the continuing contestation of social forces that prevent any final victory, which theoretically disables projects that would seek to evacuate the political, whether through consensus or predetermined liberal principles. Thus, Laclau is an "agonist," he promotes conflict in a productive sense. Anyways, the details of his overall "radical democratic" project are somewhat problematic, but he makes many interesting theoretical points with direct relevance to the way we as radicals might reconceive our struggle and alternative points of reference to the neoliberal hegemony, particularly the "chain of equivalences" it has established like "liberty=difference=inequality."

Begin with the thinkers, argue from there. You might find it harder to summarily dismiss a whole swathe of thought.

EDIT: I forgot to add, I am glad to see some people recognizing the call to rigorous theory that pomo has injected into the humanities and social sciences.

to what extent are Foucault's claims nothing beyond a discursive formation the characteristics of which are determined by a power-knowledge nexus? Can he stand outside of the process which otherwise makes him and his claims an 'effect of power'?

Excellent questions. Rabinow and Dreyfus argue in their book, Foucault, that he moves from an archaeology of discursive formations and epistemes to a genealogy of power/knowledge given his realization that he too is operating with categories birthed within power/knowledge. So it becomes more of a self-critical exercise, constantly emphasizing discontinuities in thought. Nevertheless, Spivak in "Can the Subaltern Speak?" claims that Foucault still makes transparent his role as an intellectual, insofar as he lacks a theory of ideology.

You raise some other points worth dissecting, such as the claim that "pomo rejects materialism." I'll get to them when I have more time.

Jimmie Higgins

19th November 2010, 16:35

I'm an art historian and from what I've learned from post-modern art (which isn't very much) that seems pretty accurate. Is that artist Jeff Koons? it sounds like something he would say.No, I don't think he was anyone all that well known - at least no someone I'd ever heard of before. Damn, don't you just hate it when you can't place something you've read!

L.A.P.

21st December 2010, 05:11

Postmodernism is interesting when applied to art and there are some good movies that are based on postmodernism but as a form of logic and philosophy, I reject it.

blake 3:17

21st December 2010, 18:49

Anyways, the details of his overall "radical democratic" project are somewhat problematic, but he makes many interesting theoretical points with direct relevance to the way we as radicals might reconceive our struggle and alternative points of reference to the neoliberal hegemony, particularly the "chain of equivalences" it has established like "liberty=difference=inequality."

Intriguing. I've been pretty dismissive re: Laclau. A former anarchist friend got into Laclau and Mouffe, they just seemed dull to me, but maybe not.

You familiar with the Canadian philosopher George Grant? He was a strange thinker -- into Plato, Christianity, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Celine -- and fairly important in Canadian left nationalist politics. He's most famous for Lament for a Nation, which is a very powerful piece of writing. He picks up Heidegger's critique of technology and I think expands on it. There's a funny balance in his thinking between a profound pessimism and a more optimistic anti-Utopian Christianity.

Edited to add: I'm repeating myself, but I think it very very dangerous for those of us to the left of Social Democracy to just write off cultural and intellectual work for not being Marxist/Anarchist/Communist/Revolutionary/True. There is no monopoly on truth. If we embrace the more fluid and creative Marxist and radical thinkers of the past 50 years, they can't explain it all. Aside from basic socialist politics, I spend a lot of time thinking about ideology and its material practices and effects -- that I'm sitting on a couch writing this that anyone with access to the web and capable of reading English reflects a qualitative difference between the era of newsletters. A couple of days ago I was out for beers with friends and they ended up searching each other YouTube on their phones. It's weird!

To try to find every way to describe kinds of social phenomena in the writings of Marxists only seems foolish and misguided.

Hoipolloi Cassidy

21st December 2010, 18:56

Can he stand outside of the process which otherwise makes him and his claims an 'effect of power'?

Why would he want to?

Lucretia

2nd January 2011, 20:17

As others here have indicated, postmodernism is an umbrella term encompassing a variety of artistic, cultural, philosophical, and political trends and ideas. For the purposes of the Marxist, the most salient aspect of it is the idea that meaning is always indeterminate and that any claims to its determinateness is therefore an act of power. According to postmodernism knowledge of the world can never be gleaned from a god's eye view and social reality is as a result unknowable in a way that renders large-scale "meta-narratives" or theories of history ala Marxism implausible. The idea seems to be that these are just fanciful, fictional discourses through which power (and oppression) operates.

Red Future

2nd January 2011, 20:25

Not intelligent enough to analyse this in a depth with the other posters but i do know that the collapse of the USSR and the east european peoples republics led to a growth in the acceptance of postmodernism eg the argument "communism doesn't work" which i am sure many of us have encountered among liberals and a loss of confidence in Marxist analysis.

Turinbaar

13th January 2011, 08:23

As I understand it in debates that I've had with them, post modernism can best be understood by analyzing the meaning and implications of Nietzche's statement "God is Dead." Post-modernists grant religion's assumption that morality and the fundamentals of life are derived from man's creation of religion and his submission to authority, and that the rejection of the latter is the rejection of the former. Nietzche's prescription for the moral crisis that he claimed to be the fault of atheism was for a minority within humanity to become gods, his so-called "uber-mench."

The statement that stood out the most to me when debating the post-modernist was "reality is a fabrication of the mind." Once this assumption is granted, everything else pretty much follows logically, but to accept this logic is to alienate oneself from the external world, which has all sorts of implications in approaching art, philosophy, music, history, and science. Post-modern art is immediately identifiable by its mediocrity, lack of grounding in anything real, and most of all by the pretentious excuses that are offered for its display in galleries. Their philosophy is defined by its ego-driven and authority based platitudes and non-sequiters, and their music is legendary for its departure from anything musical. It's attitude to history and historical moments of crisis is either apathetic or reactionary. It's line on religion is either erroneous or apologetic. Worst of all, people often don't even realize they are thinking in such a manner because they had simply accepted it from a young age as inculcated by establishment propaganda.

The final and most important feature of post-modernism is its reaction to when petty desire cannot be successfully projected onto objective reality. This can take the form of resorting conspiracy theory thinking, religious conversion, or self destruction, or all three.

In other words, this stuff can kill if its underestimated.

blake 3:17

13th January 2011, 18:19

and their music is legendary for its departure from anything musical

So I should throw out my Sonic Youth, Public Enemy, John Cage, Plastickman, MIA, PJ Harvey, Bjork, J Dilla, Roots and Cat Power albums?

Turinbaar

13th January 2011, 19:52

So I should throw out my Sonic Youth, Public Enemy, John Cage, Plastickman, MIA, PJ Harvey, Bjork, J Dilla, Roots and Cat Power albums?

Bjork immediately. The rest can and will be forgotten on their own with enough time.

Jimmie Higgins

13th January 2011, 20:11

The statement that stood out the most to me when debating the post-modernist was "reality is a fabrication of the mind." Once this assumption is granted, everything else pretty much follows logically, but to accept this logic is to alienate oneself from the external world,

Were you debating that Arizona shooting guy by any chance?

Turinbaar

13th January 2011, 21:09

Were you debating that Arizona shooting guy by any chance?

I knew there was something fishy about him...

KurtFF8

20th January 2011, 02:33

I have yet to have time to go through this whole thread (although what I've seen so far seems to show that this thread is really interesting!)

I suggest Fredric Jameson's "Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" and there are long excerpts from it here: http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm

The language, like that of a post-modernist work actually, can seem a bit convoluted and difficult at times. But it's one of the more important critiques of post-modernism from the Left nonetheless.

MagÃ³n

20th January 2011, 03:39

I like Post-Modernism because if you're not tripping on Acid, you can still relate and connect with the ones who are around you. :) (And I'm serious, the way the two speak is nearly identical.)

Billy2

20th January 2011, 21:07

I have yet to have time to go through this whole thread (although what I've seen so far seems to show that this thread is really interesting!)
I just finished reading it, agree, very interesting. Judging by the trend of opinion from page one to here, from total disavowal of Pomo in the first few posts, then to pointing out some okay things, then to compatibilism by the bottom of page 2, shouldn't the next remark be:

Marxism is Postmodernism.

KurtFF8

20th January 2011, 22:51

Marxism is Postmodernism.

Oh dear Lord no. Marxism is certainly not postmodernism. Although postmodernism certainly does have a relationship with Marxism, the reverse isn't true at all.

syndicat

21st January 2011, 00:12

as to the claim that anarchism has something in common with post-modernism (or post-structuralism), that's not plausible because post-modernism rejects any "grand narrative" about liberation.

there are various philosophers who contributed to post-modernist trends: Foucault, Heiddegger, Deridda, Lyotard, Rorty, Saussure.

post-modernism is anti-realist, so in effect it's similar to David Hume's extreme brand of empiricism in championing a kind of skepticism...and this skepticism is directed at any movement that aims towards a grand project of social liberation, as the various revolutionary socialist tendencies do.

the dominance of non-class "social movements" in the '70s-'80s period was itself an influence on post-modernism, and its rejection of traditional class struggle conception of the socialist movement. this fragmentation was reified and the assumption was it was a permanent condition...even tho this assumption is inconsistent with the post-modernist skepticism.

a good refutation of the anti-realist skepticism of the post-modernist philosophers is in John Post's little book "Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction". Don't be put off by the title. His exposition of a materialist theory of language is worth the price of the book. Like the book by Callinicos, this book defends a form of the realist (or correspondence) theory of truth but does so in a much more robust and plausible way than Callinicos does.

KurtFF8

21st January 2011, 05:14

I think that a lot of self proclaimed anarchists in the United States may be influenced by post-modern thought. But then again, many "post-Marxist" are as well, and both deemphasize the importance of class struggle.

But in terms of building socialism (or a movement for socialism) I would argue that post-modernism has been a detriment to the movement when it's been an influence as opposed to a helpful critique.

Billy2

22nd January 2011, 19:39

Oh dear Lord no. Marxism is certainly not postmodernism. Although postmodernism certainly does have a relationship with Marxism, the reverse isn't true at all.
I thought post-modernism is about supporting a wide spectrum of dissent? Isn't Marxian universalism just worker-class struggle in the way feminism can be read as feminazism? All the various struggles come together under new-left?

AlienatedLabor

24th January 2011, 03:37

If you've never read Richard Dawkins' awesome criticism of postmodernism, I recommend it. It's called "Postmodernism Disrobed," and quotes well-known pomo works and discusses the (in)famous Sokal Hoax.

I'm really not a fan of pomo. As another poster mentioned here, I can see the value in allowing a healthy degree of scepticism about the limitations of the scientific, realistic approach to scholarship. And while I think a lot of writers take the concept way too far, I can agree with the general idea that perception creates individual reality (though that doesn't mean that a true, objective reality doesn't exist, imo). But the writing is so incoherent, pretentious, and inaccessible to the everyday reader, that I just can't see any practical intellectual value in terms of providing insight into human life and how to improve it.

I'm a big believer in the idea that, in order to be valueable, a philosophy needs two things:

1. Its principles can be boiled down into relatively simple, yet meaningful concepts that can be understood by someone who's not a PhD. This doesn't mean that the original writing has to be simple; Kant, Neitzche, Marx, and other philosophers wrote in ways that were difficult to follow for the layman, but it was still possible to "translate" into simple speech so that people could know what they were arguing for. Pomo can hardly do that, because the speech is so bloated, yet the content so minimal, that you can hardly extract the meaningful principles.

2. It needs to propose something valueable and insightful about how the human race should live. All Pomo seems to do is say that everything's relative. Ok, everything's relative. People create reality through perception. Marginizalized points of view should be equally valued. Ok, but so what? What is the purpose for having those understandings? What kind of society should we strive for, what principles should we keep, in the face of those ideas? So far, postmodern thinkers haven't seemed to provide any coherent answers to those questions.

Until postmodern philosophers can accomplish those things, it'll be hard for me to see it as the philosophy of self-indulgent academic charlatans whose ultimate concern is making people think they're smart and insightful, not advancing human knowledge. But that's just me.

ChrisK

24th January 2011, 04:52

I just finished reading it, agree, very interesting. Judging by the trend of opinion from page one to here, from total disavowal of Pomo in the first few posts, then to pointing out some okay things, then to compatibilism by the bottom of page 2, shouldn't the next remark be:

Marxism is Postmodernism.

No. Marxism never speaks of grandnarratives of liberation or the end of such narratives. Nor does Marxism reject objectivity in favor of complete subjectivity. Any comparison between the two is due to some postmodernists being influenced by Marxism.

kalu

24th January 2011, 22:40

No. Marxism never speaks of grandnarratives of liberation or the end of such narratives. Nor does Marxism reject objectivity in favor of complete subjectivity. Any comparison between the two is due to some postmodernists being influenced by Marxism.

Postmodernism is not about "complete subjectivity." Rather, certain poststructuralist authors such as Derrida argue in favor of dissolving the empiricist distinction between subject and object.

syndicat

27th January 2011, 01:03

Postmodernism is not about "complete subjectivity." Rather, certain poststructuralist authors such as Derrida argue in favor of dissolving the empiricist distinction between subject and object.

that was precisely the basis of 18th and 19th century idealism. it is in fact an idealist viewpoint.

syndicat

27th January 2011, 01:04

Marxism never speaks of grandnarratives of liberation or the end of such narratives.

"the emancipation of the working class is the work of the workers themselves." that's a grand narrative.

kalu

27th January 2011, 01:43

that was precisely the basis of 18th and 19th century idealism. it is in fact an idealist viewpoint.

So are you equating poststructuralism with idealism? That there's not a single difference between those two philosophical movements, which (just to emphasize my incredulity), stand more than a century a part? I think you'll need to provide an actual argument backed up by the texts and authors, since that's quite a grandiose claim. I have no interest in freely throwing around such pretentious equations and pithy remarks that do nothing to elucidate an intellectual or political movement.

I have a very loose understanding of Hegel's dialectic, but as I understand it, it begins with a subject that is "alienated," but which grasps itself through this alienation, sublating the object (aufheben). That teleological view is quite a ways from Derridean deconstruction, for example, which begins with Husserl's radicalization of Cartesian subjectivity through phenomenology. According to my (again, loose) understanding of Derrida, Husserl's epoche does not presume an object in the act of intentionality, and Derrida rewrites this backward, saying that there is no subject either. Thus, the division between subject and object is dissolved and replaced by writing, the structure of differance.

I know someone's going to come and say "blah blah" this is all gibberish, and if you want to do so, fine. But I'm responding to your off-the-cuff remark that there is no difference between idealism and poststructuralism, which is downright preposterous given the radically different intellectual and argumentative spaces these two modes of thought inhabit. Idealism was responding to empiricism and Kant's reformulation of subjectivity, poststructuralism to Husserlian phenomenology and structuralism. Again, to equate the two is just ignorant.

ChrisK

27th January 2011, 02:18

"the emancipation of the working class is the work of the workers themselves." that's a grand narrative.

Thats not what I meant. I meant that Marx does not have a theory of grand narratives like Derrida does. I was responding to the claim that Marxism is identical to postmodernism.

kalu

27th January 2011, 06:53

I meant that Marx does not have a theory of grand narratives like Derrida does.

Derrida does not have a theory of grand narratives. You're confusing him with Lyotard.

syndicat

28th January 2011, 00:43

So are you equating poststructuralism with idealism? That there's not a single difference between those two philosophical movements, which (just to emphasize my incredulity), stand more than a century a part?

you're confusing a necessary condition with a necessary and sufficient condition. merging object and subject evaporates the distinction between the perceiver, thinker and the world being thought about and perceived. that is an idealist position. but it doesn't follow that those who hold that there is no distinction between subject and object have all the types of views characteristic of this or that traditional idealist.

the whole bit about "all there is is discourse" is a form of linguistic idealism. but earlier forms of idealism were based on the notion of "ideas" or direct experience, not language.

black magick hustla

28th January 2011, 01:17

Derrida does not have a theory of grand narratives. You're confusing him with Lyotard.

eh structures/grand narratives same fuckin thing

NGNM85

28th January 2011, 03:18

Postmodernism is simply intellectual chicanery.

ar734

28th January 2011, 03:57

Post-modernism is anti-modernism; it is also a reactionary attempt to return to the Hegelianism of the early 19th century. It was Hegel who deconstructed the idea of the subject and object. But I think it does demand, or force, an ideological reading of a text.

blake 3:17

28th January 2011, 04:08

there are various philosophers who contributed to post-modernist trends: Foucault, Heiddegger, Deridda, Lyotard, Rorty, Saussure.

Only Lyotard could really be considered a post-modernist.

kalu

28th January 2011, 04:56

eh structures/grand narratives same fuckin thing

You have no clue what the hell you're talking about. Point me to a line where Derrida presents a theory of "structures."

Postmodernism is simply intellectual chicanery.Useful contribution to the discourse. Is this what "anti-"poststructuralists have descended to[1]? Mere epithet?

[1]I put quotes because I'm hesitant these opponents actually even understand the texts they're arguing against, at least until proven otherwise with a relevant citation and argument. Basically, this isn't about "poststructuralism," this is about some misty conception of a group of philosophers that people have latched onto, very similar to the way conservatives think of marxism as the axis of evil "Marx-Mao-Stalin" in conjunction with an image of MiG-29 jets and fancy lookin' Russiany lookin buildings with them funny lookin cones and shits. This is stupid.

you're confusing a necessary condition with a necessary and sufficient condition.

Hegel is still trying to work within the scope of reality, albeit by posing the rationality of the real, ie. the teleology of the spirit. Derrida does nothing of the sort, the problem of "reality" doesn't even enter into his discourse (big problem number 1). So even if "subject-object dissolves" is only a "necessary condition" in your comparison between poststructuralism and idealism, I'm still calling it because it leads you to the conclusion that idealism is poststructuralism in some fundamental sense (at least, that's what you said in your previous posts), again totally false. Your original analogy is a conflation based on the mere phrase "dissolving subject and object"--a very superficial basis for comparison--which proves completely unhelpful to thinking poststructuralism's argumentative specificity. I could say that Nazism is (like) liberalism because both presume an established government, but that's totally silly. I don't understand what work you want your analogy to do; are you merely trying to incriminate by association, because we associate idealism with politically reactionary positions?

syndicat

28th January 2011, 05:37

I'm still calling it because it leads you to the conclusion that idealism is poststructuralism in some fundamental sense (at least, that's what you said in your previous posts),

you apparently can't read. to say that X is Y, is to say that X is a necessary and sufficient condition for Y.

to say that poststructuralism is, or implies, a form of linguistic idealism -- as in fact it does -- is not to say "that poststrucurallism is idealism". your "is" here is the is of identity.

i think building movements presupposes being able to say there are certain situations that need to be fought, that there is a certain way the working class is oppressed, and so on.

these imply a form of realism. post-structuralism's scepticism gets in the way of commitment to the fight for change.

The Garbage Disposal Unit

29th January 2011, 01:44

"the emancipation of the working class is the work of the workers themselves." that's a grand narrative.

Arguably, divorced from its context, it's really not - and very appealing for it, in my opinion. If workers' emancipation is understood as the project of the workers, defined only in the process of that emancipation itself, it is a refreshing antidote to grand schemes, y'know?

ar734

29th January 2011, 04:21

i think building movements presupposes being able to say there are certain situations that need to be fought, that there is a certain way the working class is oppressed, and so on.

these imply a form of realism. post-structuralism's scepticism gets in the way of commitment to the fight for change.

Just a couple of thoughts:

Structuralism certainly implies realism. And when the structure begins to fall apart one probably should be skeptical about it (esp. if you are inside of it, the law of gravity asserting itself, etc.) But post-structuralism, I think, would deconstruct or deny any differance between realism and idealism, or scepticism and faith. Wasn't Marx both idealistic as well as realistic?

Also, once you "build" a movement you imply some kind of structure.

kalu

29th January 2011, 09:39

you apparently can't read. to say that X is Y, is to say that X is a necessary and sufficient condition for Y.

to say that poststructuralism is, or implies, a form of linguistic idealism -- as in fact it does -- is not to say "that poststrucurallism is idealism". your "is" here is the is of identity.

i think building movements presupposes being able to say there are certain situations that need to be fought, that there is a certain way the working class is oppressed, and so on.

these imply a form of realism. post-structuralism's scepticism gets in the way of commitment to the fight for change.

No sir, apparently you can't read (the original texts, that is). Just because Derrida talks about signs and texts, for example, doesn't literally mean he's talking in the obvious "linguistic" fashion about phenomena like words; the latter notion leads you to the muddle that poststructuralism is "linguistic idealism." Poststructuralism has nothing to do with "skepticism" either. And yes, I have already understood your disaggregation between necessary and sufficient conditions, and I still call it for the reasons above. You do essentially equate them[1], and I'm saying that that "necessary" condition is based on a superficial comparison at best (the phrase "dissolve subject and object"). I of course recognize that that's not the same as you claiming they're the same. Just to clarify, I've retracted my original claim that you see "no difference" between them, though I still see your original comparison between idealism and poststructuralism as useless at best, dangerous at worst, for the reasons given throughout my posts.

[1]"it is in fact an idealist viewpoint."

syndicat

29th January 2011, 19:56

No sir, apparently you can't read (the original texts, that is). Just because Derrida talks about signs and texts, for example, doesn't literally mean he's talking in the obvious "linguistic" fashion about phenomena like words; the latter notion leads you to the muddle that poststructuralism is "linguistic idealism." Poststructuralism has nothing to do with "skepticism" either. And yes, I have already understood your disaggregation between necessary and sufficient conditions, and I still call it for the reasons above. You do essentially equate them[1], and I'm saying that that "necessary" condition is based on a superficial comparison at best (the phrase "dissolve subject and object"). I of course recognize that that's not the same as you claiming they're the same. Just to clarify, I've retracted my original claim that you see "no difference" between them, though I still see your original comparison between idealism and poststructuralism as useless at best, dangerous at worst, for the reasons given throughout my posts.

[1]"it is in fact an idealist viewpoint."

this is basically just blather.

to say

(a) a human is an animal

is not to "equate" humans with animals. that would imply that humans are the only animals.

thus to say

(b) post-structuralism is a form of linguistic idealism

is not to "equate" idealism and post-structuralism.

people like Rorty, Derrida, et al are certainly anti-realist.

of course the talk of "discourse" is about representations. representations of reality include beliefs and thoughts as well as sentences. but any plausible account has to be able to explain why we have these capacities, which are biologically inherited capacities. humans are evolved beings, and these capacities are hugely important to human survival and are tightly bound up with the intensely social character of the human species and the possibility of coordination and division of labor. it's hard to see why we'd have these capacities if they did not represent states of affairs in the world independent of the representations themselves. this argument is drawn out in a very clear manner in John Post's little book "Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction" which discusses Saussure, Derrida and other "posts" and refutes them and provides a highly plausible defense of realism and the correspondence theory of truth based on the ideas of the American materialist philosopher Ruth Garrett Millikan. Millikan rejects a traditional apriorist philosophical method and instead "naturalizes" philosophy thru an extrapolation from theories and results in empirical sciences such as developmental psychology and evolutionary biology.

black magick hustla

29th January 2011, 20:20

You have no clue what the hell you're talking about. Point me to a line where Derrida presents a theory of "structures."

http://hydra.humanities.uci.edu/derrida/sign-play.html

he didnt "present a theory of structures", he tried to criticize structuralism by pointing out structures themselves are unstable. i think you are the one that has no fuckin idea what he is talking about

black magick hustla

29th January 2011, 20:21

ive read a lot of shitty critical theory essays btw lamentably

ar734

30th January 2011, 00:56

ive read a lot of shitty critical theory essays btw lamentably

Do you mean:

1. I've lamentably read a lot of shitty critical theory essays, btw; or
2. I've read a lot of lamentably shitty critical theory essays, btw; or
3. Lamentably, I've read a lot of shitty critical theory essays, btw; or
4. I've read a lot of shitty, lamentably critical theory essays, btw; or
5. I've read a lot of shitty critical theory essays, lamentably, btw?
:D

black magick hustla

31st January 2011, 04:58

the meaning of the text is always unstable cant say

black magick hustla

31st January 2011, 10:24

this is basically just blather.

people like Rorty, Derrida, et al are certainly anti-realist.

but "anti realism" does not equate to idealism at all. nor it necessarily implies that "reality" is a social structure. (in fact some anti-realists would probably argue that the statement of "reality" as a social structure is flawed in itself. kuhn was an anti-realist but certainly he was not an idealist at all. in fact, i would argue that anti-realism is more in line with marx's methods than to make banal statements like "what exists is physical" or whatever, which are reductionist and do not consider the complexities of language and context.

black magick hustla

31st January 2011, 10:27

by the way i am somewhat of a kindred spirit to post structuralism in the sense of skepticism to philosophizing but i am of the school of thought that post structuralism makes the same fundamental mistakes that what is criticizing (metaphysics). it is no wonder, the post structuralists seemed to have a chubby for the old man kant.

Hoipolloi Cassidy

31st January 2011, 13:47

the post structuralists seemed to have a chubby for the old man kant.
Really? How so? Historically it's the exact opposite.

syndicat

31st January 2011, 18:15

but "anti realism" does not equate to idealism at all. nor it necessarily implies that "reality" is a social structure. (in fact some anti-realists would probably argue that the statement of "reality" as a social structure is flawed in itself. kuhn was an anti-realist but certainly he was not an idealist at all. in fact, i would argue that anti-realism is more in line with marx's methods than to make banal statements like "what exists is physical" or whatever, which are reductionist and do not consider the complexities of language and context.

historically it has tended towards idealism. with post-modernism this takes the form of linguistic idealism.

and your statement "everthing that exists is physical" confuses physicalism with realism. a theist or Cartesian dualist could be a realist. and physicalism doesn't have to be reductionist. there could be various sorts of emergent properties.

black magick hustla

31st January 2011, 18:19

historically it has tended towards idealism. with post-modernism this takes the form of linguistic idealism.

and your statement "everthing that exists is physical" confuses physicalism with realism.

but my point was that physicalism is a form of realism, which is a view, that you as a marxist or someone influenced by marx probably have (because materialism as a view is obviously outdated).

i don't think "historically" it has tended to idealism. the positivists were anti-realists as well as various "empiricists" in the history of science. to call them idealists is in my opinion more of slander than an honest engagement of their ideas.

black magick hustla

31st January 2011, 18:20

Really? How so? Historically it's the exact opposite.

they were all "post kantian". well at the very least in their biographies they always start with kant or something. foucault comes to my mind.

Hoipolloi Cassidy

31st January 2011, 18:37

they were all "post kantian". well at the very least in their biographies they always start with kant or something. foucault comes to my mind.

That's as good a definition of postmodernism as I've heard - actually it's pretty much Lyotard's. So on the one hand you have postmoderns who are engaged in a critique of Kantianism, and on the other those who merely parrot a watered-down positivist idealism (Kant minus the critique) under various names like Marxism, Empiricism, or Rosajerkoffism.

syndicat

31st January 2011, 19:24

but my point was that physicalism is a form of realism, which is a view, that you as a marxist or someone influenced by marx probably have (because materialism as a view is obviously outdated).

"materialism" is an outdated term from the 18th and 19th centuries. philosophers back then tended to confuse realism with physicalism or naturalism. this is why contemporary philosophers don't use "materialism" anymore. they've split the issues of realism and physicalism. and realism also comes in various forms...realism about properties, realism about persistent particulars, realism about truth. and physicalism need not be reductionist. i would tend to agree with naturalism and a non-reductive form of physicalism.

i don't think "historically" it has tended to idealism. the positivists were anti-realists as well as various "empiricists" in the history of science. to call them idealists is in my opinion more of slander than an honest engagement of their ideas.

historically it has so tended. logical empiricism (of which logical positivism was the dominant form) was a mix of the Frege-Russell logic with the extreme empiricism of Hume. Hume's extreme scepticism was a consequence of his empiricist assumptions and this contributed strongly to the prevalence of idealism in 19th century philosophy. The logical positivists followed Mach in the misguided attempt to "reduce" the world to sense data. In practice this program couldn't be carried out, and thus was abandoned. Causality and natural laws, even as used in the sciences, and ordindary counter-factual statements could not be accounted for.

it was predicated on Descartes' epistemic mistake...that statements or beliefs about the world must be deductively related to immediate sense data to be warranted. this assumption, also shared by Hume, led directly to idealism as well as the positivists' reductionist phenomenalism. from the '60s on a steady attack on foundationalism -- the Myth of the Given, as Wilfred Sellars called it -- cut the ground out from under the assumptions of logical empiricism.

ar734

2nd February 2011, 00:43

Causality and natural laws, even as used in the sciences, and ordindary counter-factual statements could not be accounted for.

it was predicated on Descartes' epistemic mistake...that statements or beliefs about the world must be deductively related to immediate sense data to be warranted. this assumption, also shared by Hume, led directly to idealism as well as the positivists' reductionist phenomenalism. from the '60s on a steady attack on foundationalism -- the Myth of the Given, as Wilfred Sellars called it -- cut the ground out from under the assumptions of logical empiricism.

I think post-structuralism is a valid "concept" (etc.), but I have a question about modern science and data. All economics, sociology and, say, physics, are deluged in data; modern science could not work without sense data.

Hoipolloi Cassidy

2nd February 2011, 09:56

All economics, sociology and, say, physics, are deluged in data; modern science could not work without sense data.
That's where dialectics comes in. Read the Introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. We hold the rose in name only.

syndicat

2nd February 2011, 20:22

I think post-structuralism is a valid "concept" (etc.), but I have a question about modern science and data. All economics, sociology and, say, physics, are deluged in data; modern science could not work without sense data.

you're confusing sense data with observation. they're not the same thing. the theory of sense data assumed it was possible to reflectively separate out the pure "given" from cognitive interpretation. but psychologists nowadays reject this idea as naive and implausible. the way that perceptions are formed includes dispositions which are shaped or calibrated by past experiences and by one's belief system.

i can illustrate this with an example. a Euro tourist is in the African wild with a native guide. the guide says, "Look at the lion over there." The European replies, "Where?" he doesn't see the lion. Then suddenly a "bush" moves and now he sees it. The native could see the lion because of his life long familiarity with this particular environment.

ar734

3rd February 2011, 03:39

you're confusing sense data with observation. they're not the same thing. the theory of sense data assumed it was possible to reflectively separate out the pure "given" from cognitive interpretation. but psychologists nowadays reject this idea as naive and implausible. the way that perceptions are formed includes dispositions which are shaped or calibrated by past experiences and by one's belief system.

Am I confusing sight with seeing? A theory of sight (sense data) assumes it is possible to separate what we see from what we think. Psychologists reject this. We think because of what we have experienced and what we believe.

[/QUOTE]i can illustrate this with an example. a Euro tourist is in the African wild with a native guide. the guide says, "Look at the lion over there." The European replies, "Where?" he doesn't see the lion. Then suddenly a "bush" moves and now he sees it. The native could see the lion because of his life long familiarity with this particular environment.[/QUOTE]

Your example sounds oddly imperialist. :D (i really like this icon.) In other words, the native sees the lion because he has grown up in the bush and has seen a lot of lions. So, the sight of the lion does not have anything to do with what or how the native is thinking?

blake 3:17

3rd February 2011, 18:11

This discussion seems to go in circles. Are post-structuralist post-modernists? Someone replying to a post I made basically wrote off all the relevant popular music from the Anglo-American sphere from the past 25 years. I find that a bit hard to stomach. The Communist Manifesto is more than 150 years old. While I would stand by it in both spirit and many of its particulars, it doesn;t explain the whole world. I think it silly for Leftists to dismiss contemporary thought for being explicitly Marxist at all times.

Anyways I'm off to hear Susan Buck-Morss speak today. Should be good!

Hoipolloi Cassidy

3rd February 2011, 18:20

Enjoy! What's she gonna talk about?

BTW - The failure is not only the failure to distinguish post-structuralist (thinkers) from post-modernist (fiction, art, whatever, e.g. stuff that was not consciously following post-structuralist theory), but failure to distinguish post-modernism from post-modernity (the stuff that Jameson talks about).

Not to mention the failure to dismiss contemporary thought that's not explicitly Marxist-party affiliated from post-modernist thought that stays within the Marxist horizon without making a big fuss about it.

Meridian

3rd February 2011, 18:49

Am I confusing sight with seeing? A theory of sight (sense data) assumes it is possible to separate what we see from what we think. Psychologists reject this. We think because of what we have experienced and what we believe.
Blind people think like seeing people, so it is possible to separate what we see from what we think. However, blind people may be unable to imagine or visualize things in the way seeing people can.

The ability to think is inseparable from knowing language, not from having sight.

syndicat

4th February 2011, 00:38

Am I confusing sight with seeing? A theory of sight (sense data) assumes it is possible to separate what we see from what we think. Psychologists reject this. We think because of what we have experienced and what we believe.

"Sense data" is a technical term in philosophy. it refers to whatever we can immediately notice in our field of view or in other sense modalities. The theory is that this can be separated from interpretation. For example, you have an experience of a pattern of patches of color and shape, and you interpret this as a radio sitting on top of a table.

this separation was part of traditional empiricist philosophy, and is essential, for example, to any phenomenalist reductionist program like that of Mach or the logical positivists.

there is a pretty universal consensus in psychology nowadays that this is a completely mistaken and inaccurate theory of human perception.

i can illustrate this with an example. a Euro tourist is in the African wild with a native guide. the guide says, "Look at the lion over there." The European replies, "Where?" he doesn't see the lion. Then suddenly a "bush" moves and now he sees it. The native could see the lion because of his life long familiarity with this particular environment.

Your example sounds oddly imperialist.

you're clutching at straws. don't toss up irrelevant bursts of sand to confuse the issue.

In other words, the native sees the lion because he has grown up in the bush and has seen a lot of lions. So, the sight of the lion does not have anything to do with what or how the native is thinking?

the point is that he sees it immediately as a lion. there isn't any separation between what he immediately experiences and his "interpretation" of it as a lion. both are part of the perceptual experience.

in the sciences the data are the facts that are observed, such as noticing that this meter reads 0 degrees C.

ar734

4th February 2011, 03:03

there is a pretty universal consensus in psychology nowadays that this is a completely mistaken and inaccurate theory of human perception.

OK, what is the consensus on human perception? It isn't that perception is socially created or constructed? If you take a baby and withhold from it all social interaction but allow it to see, hear, etc., what would happen. There is something like this done in Russian orphanages. You get sociopaths. Or, for that matter, if you take an adult, more or less normal human, and you isolate her for several years and deprive her of all sensory experience don't you get a completely insane human being?

[/QUOTE]

you're clutching at straws. don't toss up irrelevant bursts of sand to confuse the issue.

Don't mix your metaphors.

[QUOTE]the point is that he sees it immediately as a lion. there isn't any separation between what he immediately experiences and his "interpretation" of it as a lion. both are part of the perceptual experience.

A two yr old child of the native can perceive the same shapes, colors, movement, etc. and not immediately experience it any better than a tourist. Besides, there cannot be any "immediate" perception. Light comes from the object, there is a stimulus of the optic nerve, chemicals travel up neurons and there is perception.

in the sciences the data are the facts that are observed, such as noticing that this meter reads 0 degrees C.

That is not confusing sense data with observation; that is asserting that sense data is observation.Thought devoid of observation: post-modernism. And I am a post-modernist.

syndicat

5th February 2011, 00:01

A two yr old child of the native can perceive the same shapes, colors, movement, etc.

how do you know what a 2 year old can perceive? during the period of 2 to 4 years, according to developmental psychologists, this is when children absorb a vast amount of language and learn the concepts that go with them. the cioncepts themselves are abilities to recognize or identify things.

in any event, the point is that people, through the experiences they have in their lives, acquire various dispositions to perceive in various ways based on inputs to the eyes or other senses. thus the actual perception can't be separated from an interpretation. people who have different experiences and different environments will end up with brains that are "callibrated" differently, and may interpret the same inputs to the eyes differently. that is, the brain will construct a different perception for A than B even tho their eyes receive the same inputs.

Besides, there cannot be any "immediate" perception. Light comes from the object, there is a stimulus of the optic nerve, chemicals travel up neurons and there is perception.

this is an old fallacy. the "immediacy" has to do with the perception. do you have immediate, non-inferential knowledge of features of the world around you? do you have any sense of making an inference or do you simply see this thing as a cat? thus "immediacy" has both a psychological and epistemoical meaning. it refers to the nature of the experience.

you're not aware of what's going on in the "plumbing" of the brain and optic system. that's not relevant to whether you have a direct experience of the yellow color of this wall here.

the problem with the old empiricist sense-data theory is that they assumed that by trained careful observation a person can separate out the features that are immediately given from layers of cognitive interpretation due to the dispositions that people build up from their experience. in fact this isn't feasible. the various acquired dispositions shape the perceptual experience itself, so seeing this thing as a cat seems quite psychologically immediate.
me:

in the sciences the data are the facts that are observed, such as noticing that this meter reads 0 degrees C.

That is not confusing sense data with observation; that is asserting that sense data is observation.Thought devoid of observation: post-modernism. And I am a post-modernist.

Right here you show you don't know what you're talking about. in philosophy, as I pointed out, "sense data" is a technical term. these are the features that one can notice immediately in experience. observation is a process or act of a person. they are quite separate. if this thing being yellow is a sense datum that i notice when looking at a yellow wall, then the act of noticing and the yellow wall are distinct things.

Observation is itself a cognitive event, a form of thought. Thought directed at what one is experiencing.

ar734

5th February 2011, 01:09

thus the actual perception can't be separated from an interpretation. people who have different experiences and different environments will end up with brains that are "callibrated" differently, and may interpret the same inputs to the eyes differently. that is, the brain will construct a different perception for A than B even tho their eyes receive the same inputs.

So the native sees something different from the tourist. The native sees the lion, the tourist sees something different? The native only sees it quicker.

The native sees a dangerous animal and sees it quickly or she would not have lived as long as she had. The tourist, however, once the lion is pointed out, sees a fascinating animal which he has paid thousands of dollars to see in the "wild."

this is an old fallacy. the "immediacy" has to do with the perception. do you have immediate, non-inferential knowledge of features of the world around you? do you have any sense of making an inference or do you simply see this thing as a cat? thus "immediacy" has both a psychological and epistemoical meaning. it refers to the nature of the experience.

You are saying there is no separation, difference, distinction between perception and inference. But the native sees the movement and color and infers a lion; the tourist sees the same movement and color and infers nothing in particular, except a possible interesting "experience" for himself.

[/QUOTE]the various acquired dispositions shape the perceptual experience itself[QUOTE]

The sound "yellow" in English does not change the fact that the color "yellow" represents a specific place on the electro-magnetic spectrum.

syndicat

5th February 2011, 01:58

You are saying there is no separation, difference, distinction between perception and inference.

wrong. i'm saying that in the perceptual experience of seeing something as a cat you can't separate out experience of shapes and colors from its being a cat. You don't consciously infer "that's a cat." you just see it as a cat.

the sense data theory assumes that you can separate in consciousness the sensing of the basic properties of shape and color from a "judgment" about what kind of thing it is.

We do make inferences and judgements based on our perceptual experience, but that's not the issue. the issue is the nature of the perceptual experience itself. the sense data theory claims that being a lion or a cat or a tree, or being your mother, are not things you can just "see" or experience immediately. this is what has been refuted by psychology.

But the native sees the movement and color and infers a lion; the tourist sees the same movement and color and infers nothing in particular, except a possible interesting "experience" for himself.

the native may just see a lion. no inference.

the various acquired dispositions shape the perceptual experience itself

The sound "yellow" in English does not change the fact that the color "yellow" represents a specific place on the electro-magnetic spectrum.

nope. you don't see the electro-magnetic spectrum but you see yellow surfaces. color words refer to properties of surfaces and volumes. these properties are called "spectral reflectances" in the physical sciences. this is based on the molecular character of the surface that determines how the light is refracted from that surface. this is what explains why the light reflected from a surface has a certain pattern to it.

animals thru evolution developed visual systems that "pick up" the light and interpret it to see the colors and shapes of the surfaces and volumes. it would not have been advantageous to their survival to see light waves. it is advantageous to see surface colors. consider a monkey in a tree. with color vision it can easily pick out the yellow of a ripe banana from the green background.

ar734

5th February 2011, 16:42

animals thru evolution developed visual systems that "pick up" the light and interpret it to see the colors and shapes of the surfaces and volumes. it would not have been advantageous to their survival to see light waves. it is advantageous to see surface colors. consider a monkey in a tree. with color vision it can easily pick out the yellow of a ripe banana from the green background.

Moving from the native and the tourist to the monkey. The monkey has evolved a system of sensing certain parts of the electro-magnetic spectrum. It obviously does not "see" light waves or light particles; there is nevertheless, a physical relation between the banana and the monkey's eyes:

"But, in the act of seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of light from one thing to another, from the external object to the eye. There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things." Marx, The Fetishism of Commodities

The monkey and the banana are two separate things. There is no question of a social relation, or a social interdependence, or social entanglement between the monkey and the banana. Thus, for the monkey, and pre-capitalist humans, there is no issue with perception, sense-data, understanding, thought, mediation between the object and the "subject."

However, in late stage capitalism, objects produced only by social relations are seen as relations between things. Thus, the tourist sees the commodity-values, the lion and the native as things rather than as social relations. Otherwise, the lion and native have no value for the "tourist."

Certainly the pre-capitalist native and the tourist see different things, but not only because of different experiences. The native sees an unmediated thing as a thing, the capitalist-tourist sees commodities, the lion, produced by social relations--the entire economic structure of men and women which makes the lion-native-tourist spectacle possible, including the local government which forces the native, his family and his livestock to live among some of the most dangerous animals on earth--and the native, as things. (It is true that natives lived among lions for thousands of years, but they also were not prevented from killing lions which developed a taste for humans and livestock.)

Modern psychology has "proven" that perception, reality, experience, knowledge of a thing, surface, color, shape and the thing itself are all part of some mystical oneness. The social relation between humans is obscured by this mysticism. This is why a Margaret Thatcher could say that there is no such thing as "society" any more, only individuals.

The native and his clan experience a social reality far more "real" than the tourist can possibly imagine. The tourist-journalist Anderson Cooper's experience in Egypt is interesting. He sees news as a commodity to be bought and sold for a profit. The "natives" see the news as dangerous, free, driven by intense internal forces, but which also can be managed, manipulated and propagandized. Cooper is shocked when the lion tries to eat him.

Humans have never before seen, experienced, perceived, understood, etc., the existence of earth-like planets orbiting stars hundreds of thousands of light years away. Yet there they are.

syndicat

5th February 2011, 17:21

the marx quote isn't about sense-perception.

i don't think you've said anything in this post. nothing clear at any rate.

Meridian

5th February 2011, 17:30

Modern psychology has "proven" that perception, reality, experience, knowledge of a thing, surface, color, shape and the thing itself are all part of some mystical oneness. The social relation between humans is obscured by this mysticism. This is why a Margaret Thatcher could say that there is no such thing as "society" any more, only individuals.
Is this a joke?

ZeroNowhere

5th February 2011, 18:09

The thinker is thought, and perception is the realm of the Other within which lives the sighs of forgotten flowers.

syndicat

5th February 2011, 20:38

Modern psychology has "proven" that perception, reality, experience, knowledge of a thing, surface, color, shape and the thing itself are all part of some mystical oneness.

no such claims are made by psychology. there are distinct studies on cognition, sense perception, inference, memory and so on.

The social relation between humans is obscured by this mysticism.

the mysticism is in your own obsucrantist language. this is one of the worst aspects of pomo. you think it's cool because it sounds "profound." ugh. the obscurantist language makes it impossible to check or verify what they say. they can always claim you misinterpreted if you come up with a critique. it's also elitist because it makes the language less accessible to the uninitiated or less educated.

when professional "philosophers" do this (such as Derrida) i regard them as charlatans.

This is why a Margaret Thatcher could say that there is no such thing as "society" any more, only individuals.

methodological individualism is a separate issue from where the distinction lies between cognition and sensory experience.

ar734

5th February 2011, 21:12

methodological individualism is a separate issue from where the distinction lies between cognition and sensory experience.

Who is obscurantist?

Attempted translation: Individualism has nothing to do with thought and sensation.

syndicat

6th February 2011, 00:19

This is why a Margaret Thatcher could say that there is no such thing as "society" any more, only individuals.

this reduction of the social to the individual, when it's used as a method in the social sciences (as it is by pro-capitalist economists), it is called "methodological individualism." if you're going to post on a philosophy message board, you should learn some of the terminology.

me:

methodological individualism is a separate issue from where the distinction lies between cognition and sensory experience.
you:

Attempted translation: Individualism has nothing to do with thought and sensation.

wrong again. "methodological indivdualism" is a reductionist assumption that some people in the social sciences make. that is completely unrelated to the whole question of why the sense data theory of perception has been refuted. the refutations do not assume methodological individualism. for example, J.J. Gibson's "ecological" theory of sense perception is not methodologically individualist.

the learning that develops the mindsets of people and which shape how they perceive is of course affected by their social interactions as part of a social community. but the point that psychologists of sense perception make is that because all perceptions are shaped in this way by the cognitive mindset and learned reactions and expectations of people, it's not possible to separate out in perceptual experience some pure realm of the directly given, which is made up only of colors and shapes directly related to inputs to the eyes, as the old empiricist sense data theory assumed.

ar734

6th February 2011, 16:53

the learning that develops the mindsets of people and which shape how they perceive is of course affected by their social interactions as part of a social community. but the point that psychologists of sense perception make is that because all perceptions are shaped in this way by the cognitive mindset and learned reactions and expectations of people, it's not possible to separate out in perceptual experience some pure realm of the directly given, which is made up only of colors and shapes directly related to inputs to the eyes, as the old empiricist sense data theory assumed.

Trans: The social community develops the minds and perceptions of people in the community. Because of this social development it is not possible to separately perceive, for instance, colors and shapes, sounds, tastes, smells, and touch.

I think it should be easy to prove such a thesis. You could try, I suppose, by teaching a 3 yr. old the color red. Then place three balls in front of the child, a red one, green one, and blue one. Then tell the child if she picks the red one she gets a cool rattle. If your theory is correct the child will never be able to "separate in perceptual experience" the red ball.

The science of cognition, I think, is better at understanding the phenomenon of The Paranoid Style in American Politics. The Arizona shooter, blood libel Palin, Beck and his Islamist caliphate, These people are psychotic. Why doesn't cognitive science study them as such?

syndicat

6th February 2011, 18:09

Trans: The social community develops the minds and perceptions of people in the community. Because of this social development it is not possible to separately perceive, for instance, colors and shapes, sounds, tastes, smells, and touch.

a person's perceptual mindset or dispositions are not just shaped by social interactions but also by the physical environment...as the example of the lion illustrates.

colors and shapes can be noticed, but the point is that there are other features that have equal psychological immediacy, such as this thing being a cat. and being a cat is not something which the sense data theory allows us to have an immediate awareness of. it's supposed to be a judgment. but you don't consciously discern a separate judgment, you just just see it as a cat. so the dispute is over the range of features of the world that we have direct or immedate awareness of in perception. these features include things that are interpretation, not just explained by the immediate input to the eyes.

the Cartesian epistemology was built on the idea that there are some features that are the given, the immediate data, and then from this we infer the existence of objects of such and such a kind, and this interpretation is founded on the immediate data. this viewpoint is called foundationalism. but we can't make this separation in sense-perception because there is almost always some interpretation that is contributed by our learned capacities to interpret the world.