Post Modernism Disrobed - Richard Dawkins

[Hiero]

Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content. The chances are that you would produce something like the following:


http://richarddawkins.net/articles/824-postmodernism-disrobed

[Luís Henrique]

Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content. The chances are that you would produce something like the following:


http://richarddawkins.net/articles/824-postmodernism-disrobed

I have never had any patience for Guattari and/or Deleuze. They do seem to me intellectual impostors. And I dislike the obfuscating style some people think must be associated with intellectual depth.

That said, some subjects are difficult, and expanding on them without resorting to complex language can be challenging. And, on the other hand, some writers do have a lucid and clear style, and no problems in exposing their lack of content. After all, who said that all readers are after content, or can recognise it if rubbed into their noses?

Luís Henrique

[Book O'Dead]

Thank god I'm too dense to understand the fashionable "philosophers". That's why I don't pay attention to them.

My "philosophers" tend to be novelists and story-tellers for whom being understood in plain language is their livelihood.

[JustMovement]

I'm skeptical. I don't know much about post-structuralism, but obscurantism is a charge that philosophers have been leveling at each other for ages. Schopenhauer did it to Hegel, others did it to Schopenhauer. Russel did it to Heidegger, and now Husserl is quite accepted in analytic philosophy, and Heidegger increasingly so.

Have Sokal&Co. done the necessary readings? Terminology is employed in philosophy. I could quote some Kant out of context and it would seem absolutely impenetrable & nonsense. Even analytic philosophy establishes has its own jargon and made up words.

Having said that: post-structuralism and Derrida from what I understand explore the limitations of language. They necessarily must use language to explore its own limits, and this can quickly veer into nonsense. It also gives the opportunity for a lot of pseudo-intellectuals to spout their nonsense and receive tenure. Ultimately I think that philosophy is divided between good & bad, and I would be very surprised if it was possible to write off post-structuralism as entirely empty.

Dwarkins on the other hand, anything outside genetics, I despise. The New Atheists are bores, and Nietzsche got there 100 years before & was a lot more insightful. Genealogy of Morals 100 times over the selfish gene or whatever its called.

[hatzel]

All I've managed to glean from this is that Dawkins has a boring, plodding prose style, whilst D&G et al write emotive, stimulating texts.

However, I haven't managed to figure out where the 'theory' element lies in all this...

[Mr. Natural]

JustMovement, You're singing my song. I despise Dawkins. He is the ultimate reductionist who sneers at those who worship God while he worships his tiny bits of dust (genes). Those genes do nothing unless they are organized into a genome within the organization of the cell, but Dawkins will have nothing to do with this critical organization. I find him to be the very model of a supercilious, academic, British prig.

I don't read the postmoderns: the insights I would gain wading through their prolix jargon can be had by reading their more clearly written evaluations. The postmoderns are all resigned to capitalism, too.

Dawkins, though ... James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis are absolutely correct in their Gaia Hypothesis, which understands our biosphere as a self-regulating ecosystem. Dawkins has since spent a lot of time savaging Lovelock and Margulis, and has refused to either debate or meet with them.

I actually had the experience of asking a Dawkins enthusiast if he actually believed he was a machine created by his genes to carry them around for reproduction. He replied, "Yes," to which I countered, "In your case, Dawkins might be right."

Thanks for providing me an excuse to once more express my extreme dislike of Dawkins and his reductionism. My red-green best.

[Hiero]

Thanks for providing me an excuse to once more express my extreme dislike of Dawkins and his reductionism. My red-green best.

Ha no problem.


I find with the anti-postmodernism crowd, they over emphasize the influence and supposed damage of so call post modernism. Dawkins does not mention any of the current debate around these issues. There are apparently either proponents or hard core critics. The people he is talking about have been dead for decades if we take Lacan, Deleuze and Guattari over 15 years. Maybe in cultural-studies they do sit around and read those authors with cult like agreement. However social science has moved a lot since the rise of French post-structuralism. People on this forum still quite the (in)famous Chomsky article, everytime I feel like saying “move on”.
The other thing that is not noted is the difference between authors. Deleuze and Guattari branched away from Lacan because of his centralism of his theory, the major focus of a subject’s life being the Oedipus. Where their rhizome theory has multiple entries points, exit points and throwbacks (which I think is great when looking at fashion trends, music etc). But the critics never actually detail the epistemological breaks between each author.

[o well this is ok I guess]

The postmoderns are all resigned to capitalism, too. Dude what

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

I have never had any patience for Guattari and/or Deleuze.

I love Deleuze/Guattari. I also find it a bit amusing that Richard Dawkins used the term "intellectual imposter," in reference to other people.

[Luís Henrique]

I also find it a bit amusing that Richard Dawkins used the term "intellectual imposter," in reference to other people.

Yeah, this looks like the naked talking about the undressed.

Luís Henrique

[black magick hustla]

i don't think all "postmodernism" is the bad, or at least the main theses. there is something to say about the domination of language and culture in the way we conceive truth functionals. something that anglos have generally missed. i don't think foucault was a conman for example, although i do think the psychoanalytic crowd and derrida were. wittgenstein in a way was a preface to postmodernism in general.

i don't like the way old dudes and like boring marxists dismiss "posmodernism". one of my biggest pet peeves is obscurantism and i'll fight tooth and nail against it, both in its "marxist forms" and other forms. however, i do think marxists "dismiss" "postmodernism" because it comes up with very uncomfortable questions. marxists are obsessed with theory building and calling their subject a "science" so they are not really aware about the epistemic limits of system building in general. they think you can just theorize bullshit and if it kinda makes sense then it points in the right direction. in a way, this is why some marxists are very prone to fall for bullshit enablers like zizek, psychoanalysis, badiou, hegel, etc. they are enamoured with systems and system builders but they don't really get the fraility of structuralism in general.

i dislike dawkins but he atleast isn't a conman. his theses are crystal clear and its easy to know if you agree or disagree with them. an asshole like deleuze or guttari you can interpret that shit as however you want. if there is antything i hate the most is intellectual conmen.

[Franz Fanonipants]

Haha yeah Richard Dawkins is a vanguard thinker against capitalism

[black magick hustla]

Haha yeah Richard Dawkins is a vanguard thinker against capitalism

nah but "anticapitalism" in academia is jsut another market niche so who gives a fuck really

[black magick hustla]

oops i meant "radical scholars" lol

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Yeah, this looks like the naked talking about the undressed.

Luís Henrique

Not really, Dawkins is severely over-rated and in my opinion, says stupid shit all the time which is why again, I find his charge humorous. He should stick to biology and science.

[Ostrinski]

Dawkins is a wanker

[Stadtsmasher]

I agree with those who are skeptical about postmodernism. Seems like an "emperor's new clothes" phenomenon.

However, I do credit it with making some inroads in instilling leftist philosophy through its manipulation of terminology.

[Lynx]

Dawkins is a successful author, otherwise few people would have ever heard about him. The 'selfish gene' was a sound byte, meant to sell books. It was not meant to be taken literally.

[pluckedflowers]

Dawkins should stick to the lab. If you want a critique of postmodernism, see David Harvey's "The Condition of Postmodernity."

[Franz Fanonipants]

nah but "anticapitalism" in academia is jsut another market niche so who gives a fuck really

No one cares about your boring ass self hatred bro

E: which is to remind you that you yourself are a worthless academic of the exact type you burn ulcers over

[ForgedConscience]

"The postmoderns are all resigned to capitalism, too."

Not all of them, Alasdair Gray is an avowed socialist for example (and one of my favourite authors).

I would be hesitant to write off all postists or neoists as pretentious even if the terms themselves are (and I will admit that it tends to be indicative of such). The quality or quantity of the actual content of a work is not inextricably tied to the way it is presented, nor is post-modernism necessarily obfuscation or a lack of clarity of vision. In my mind the general aim is to provoke critical thought rather than holding the reader's hand.

[Luís Henrique]

I could quote some Kant out of context and it would seem absolutely impenetrable & nonsense.

Quite possibly.

Here is an excerpt of what Dawkins calls Guattari's imposture:


We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously.

Evidently there is some non-trivial terminology here. Some of it seems to be borrowed from scientific jargon, such as "bi-univocal correspondence", and some seem to be philosophical jargon, such as "ontological binarism". Many seem to be Guattari's own contribution to the Tower of Babel: "archi-writing", "machinic catalysis".

The problem with Dawkins' criticism of this quote is that it clearly refers to previous text, without which it cannot be understood: there is a "multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis" that does not correspond to "linear signifying links or archi-writing"; if we knew what each of the terms of this inequation was, we maybe would understand the construction. Evidently, it is possible that Guattari never previously defined or even discussed such terminology, but to affirm that would take the effort of reading the whole thing.

There is something that should raise our suspicions in Guattari's text, though: his being removed from the "logic of the excluded middle". Which is, to my knowledge, formal logic in general; a criticism of formal logic is of course possible, but if not very cautious, it will quite probably lead us into some kind of irrationalism.

Perhaps someone among those who like Guattari here can explain to us what Guattari means with his awkward terminology.

Luís Henrique

[Hit The North]

Dawkins is a wanker

Well, we all dabble at that particular activity in the UK. I'd be surprised if this was not true in the US as well.


JustMovement, You're singing my song. I despise Dawkins. He is the ultimate reductionist who sneers at those who worship God while he worships his tiny bits of dust (genes).

Americans seem to have a big problem with Dawkins for his mannered Britishness which appears to them be the epitome of aloof, ruling class arrogance. But, hey, if he's out there contributing to the public discourse that opposes the type of religious fundamentalism that has a hold in the United States and elsewhere, then I'm with him - on that at least. But the way he draws criticism of this from American comrades makes me wonder whether they are more at ease with the God-deluded shitbags who campaign against abortion rights and bomb abortion clinics - every single one of them a loyal Christian jerk-off paying fidelity to the commandments of their stone age god. Dawkins might come over as a stiff, sneering prig, but at least he's not a fucking idiot like those he opposes.

On the OP, if Dawkins is wrong about Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze writing impenetrable and meaningless shite, then what the hell do the following chunks of mangled prose mean?


We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously.
In the first place, singularities-events correspond to heterogeneous series which are organized into a system which is neither stable nor unstable, but rather 'metastable,' endowed with a potential energy wherein the differences between series are distributed . . . In the second place, singularities possess a process of auto-unification, always mobile and displaced to the extent that a paradoxical element traverses the series and makes them resonate, enveloping the corresponding singular points in a single aleatory point and all the emissions, all dice throws, in a single cast.
All I've managed to glean from this is that Dawkins has a boring, plodding prose style, whilst D&G et al write emotive, stimulating texts.


"Emotive" and "stimulating". Really? :lol: You should read Faulkner or something.

[black magick hustla]

No one cares about your boring ass self hatred bro

E: which is to remind you that you yourself are a worthless academic of the exact type you burn ulcers over

nuhuh. i get money to play games can't complain.

[Franz Fanonipants]

nuhuh. i get money to play games can't complain.

fucking right fool i don't say shit and w/e i think we are sellouts

[hatzel]

"Emotive" and "stimulating". Really? :lol: You should read Faulkner or something.

It is my understanding that he wrote what the Germans call Schöne Literatur, rather than philosophy. As such I don't think a comparison can exactly be made, given the different aspirations of those writing in each field. Shakespeare's sonnets are far more lyrical and romantic than 'The German Ideology,' didn't you hear? Though the latter is very rarely read as a poem, and such a text wouldn't be written as one, either, so it doesn't matter all that much.

But by any yardstick Dawkins has a pretty boring writing style, I'd say. Which only becomes more boring when he's writing articles that are just "waaaaah this guy wrote a sentence I don't understand waaaaah he's been totes debunked now yeah!" Just feels like the most pointless of articles to write, to claim that a whole bunch of philosophers have somehow been discredited because this or that sentence is difficult to understand in isolation...isn't there some kind of fancy Latin name for this fallacy? When you attack ideas for the manner in which they are presented, rather than what they actually posit? Argumentum ad writing styleium, I'll call it for the time being...

I still maintain that the writers 'disrobed' by Dawkins here write in such a way that the imagination is necessarily engaged, and their texts conjure up images quite unlike those expected from non-fiction, which tends to leave the parts of the mind accessed by poetic verse wholly untouched. But maybe that's just me, in my distaste for and relative unfamiliarity with cold, lifeless and shallow prose; I much prefer spirited and lyrical texts, and most of what I read could perhaps be called 'cryptic' or 'obscure,' as this allows a far greater degree of engagement in the form of interpretation, as opposed to those wholly analytic texts which seek to state their supposed truths in the most straightforward possible fashion, in the process making them terribly dull, monofaceted reads...

[o well this is ok I guess]

Man I remember trying to read Badiou's little red book.
That guy is a knob. Writes shitty plays.

[o well this is ok I guess]

archi-writing I'm just gonna put this out there
This is a Derrida thing.

[black magick hustla]

blahblahblah

you can be lyrical and evocative without stringing a run of sentence of polisyllabic words borrowed from math. obscurantism is not the same as lyricism. check out some poetry yo

[Luís Henrique]

I'm just gonna put this out there
This is a Derrida thing.

Hey, I never ever used such phrase unless quoting one of those philosophasters.

Luís Henrique.

[Luís Henrique]

Dawkins is a successful author, otherwise few people would have ever heard about him.

So is Guattari. So are Paulo Coelho or Sidney Sheldon, by the way. Or Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. In a world dominated by exchange-value, success has little to do with quality.


The 'selfish gene' was a sound byte, meant to sell books. It was not meant to be taken literally.

I love the way his sound bytes always end by biting his own arse... :D

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Americans seem to have a big problem with Dawkins for his mannered Britishness which appears to them be the epitome of aloof, ruling class arrogance.

Really? Never thought of it that way.


But, hey, if he's out there contributing to the public discourse that opposes the type of religious fundamentalism that has a hold in the United States and elsewhere, then I'm with him - on that at least.

My impression is that he does just the opposite. The content of his discourse may be opposed to American protestant fundamentalism (in that fundies believe in God and Dawkins does not), but it is framed upon the same mentality - there are ultimate truths about The Important Things Beyond Our Practical Experience that are worth proselitising about. And perhaps martyrdom.


But the way he draws criticism of this from American comrades makes me wonder whether they are more at ease with the God-deluded shitbags who campaign against abortion rights and bomb abortion clinics - every single one of them a loyal Christian jerk-off paying fidelity to the commandments of their stone age god.

I don't know. I certainly prefer Dawkins to those guys - which doesn't mean that I agree with him or am going to refrain from criticising his absurds just because he is a (troublesome) ally against religious fanaticism. A a person that gets it right about Jerry Fallwell doesn't necessarily get it right about Guattari - much less about Freud or Marx.


Dawkins might come over as a stiff, sneering prig, but at least he's not a fucking idiot like those he opposes.

Granted, he is not - but the phrase "intellectual imposture" comes to my mind when I read about his theories on "memetics".


"Emotive" and "stimulating". Really? :lol: You should read Faulkner or something.

That is good advice. "Arid" and "convoluted" come to my mind in relation to Guattari, rather than "stimulating" or "emotive".

Luís Henrique

[Vanguard1917]

I still maintain that the writers 'disrobed' by Dawkins here write in such a way that the imagination is necessarily engaged, and their texts conjure up images quite unlike those expected from non-fiction, which tends to leave the parts of the mind accessed by poetic verse wholly untouched. But maybe that's just me, in my distaste for and relative unfamiliarity with cold, lifeless and shallow prose; I much prefer spirited and lyrical texts, and most of what I read could perhaps be called 'cryptic' or 'obscure,' as this allows a far greater degree of engagement in the form of interpretation, as opposed to those wholly analytic texts which seek to state their supposed truths in the most straightforward possible fashion, in the process making them terribly dull, monofaceted reads...

If i want an entertaining (and rather frivolous) literary puzzle, i'll read some Kafka or Joyce. When i want to get nearer to the truth* about society, i prefer a writer who puts sense before style. I don't read him or her to be 'entertained'.


* Of course, the pomo mumbo-jumboists have no time for that word, so there goes that one at the first hurdle.

[Mr. Natural]

Prole Art Threat, Good to run into you again. My BIG beef with Dawkins is that he is a scientific reductionist. He is an assassin of living relations.

You are quite right that Americans have a problem with British class relations and expressions of them, and Dawkins is the personification of upper class British superciliousness.

Despite Dawkins' brilliance, I find him ultimately to be an egotistical, unscientific hack.

Of course, Americans could use some "class," but not that of the British bourgeoisie and Dawkins.

My continuing red-green best.

[Android]

i don't think foucault was a conman for example, although i do think the psychoanalytic crowd and derrida were

I've read you say this a few times in the recent past about psychoanalysis, could you elabourate a bit on what your critique is? For what its worth I am not inclined toward a pro or anti disposition.


i don't think all "postmodernism" is the bad, or at least the main theses. there is something to say about the domination of language and culture in the way we conceive truth functionals. something that anglos have generally missed

Maybe I am just a "boring marxist" but I don't really buy this schema you are devising between moderns and postmoderns with the later being aware of the role language and culture play in society, and the former just ignore it. Since capitalism's cultural turn in the 1970s there has been a proliferation of material on this and not just from postmodernists that have dealt with this, for example Ray Williams in Britain and Jean-Jacques Lecercle in France.

[o well this is ok I guess]

Hey, I never ever used such phrase unless quoting one of those philosophasters.

Luís Henrique. It's pretty lazy, yeah. Maybe he introduced archi-writing earlier in particular work this was taken from.

[black magick hustla]

I've read you say this a few times in the recent past about psychoanalysis, could you elabourate a bit on what your critique is? For what its worth I am not inclined toward a pro or anti disposition.

its not a critique of anything in particular but the nature of the theory itself. I read a long ass time ago some Lacan when I was trying to go through a course of critical theory. For lacan, you could cruise the internet and find all sorts of wild statements like saying a penis is equivalent to the square root This is not what is important though, the important part is that systematization and theorization have certain epistemic limits, limits that i don't think psychoanalysts and some people in love with systems get.





Maybe I am just a "boring marxist" but I don't really buy this schema you are devising between moderns and postmoderns with the later being aware of the role language and culture play in society, and the former just ignore it. Since capitalism's cultural turn in the 1970s there has been a proliferation of material on this and not just from postmodernists that have dealt with this, for example Ray Williams in Britain and Jean-Jacques Lecercle in France.

its not only about "language and culture" but there is something more fundamental about the issue. its about systematizing and theory building in general and not thinking about the act of "theorizing", but instead limiting to the theory itself. Its actually really easy to make a theory seem like it "fits" providing that the theory allows for sufficiently vague abstractions, doesn't mean its not all bullshit though and entirely useless.

[Lucretia]

Postmodernism disrobed? Sounds naughty!

[Android]

This is not what is important though, the important part is that systematization and theorization have certain epistemic limits

This seems to be crux of what you are saying, a la the postmodernist critique of "grand narratives" of writers like Aristole, Hegel, Marx etc. Aside from going into that your point assumes that Marxism or whatever you are critiquing has a epistemological (theory of knowledge) as opposed to a ontological (theory of social being) basis. Which is not at all clear and is disputed.

[black magick hustla]

This seems to be crux of what you are saying, a la the postmodernist critique of "grand narratives" of writers like Aristole, Hegel, Marx etc. Aside from going into that your point assumes that Marxism or whatever you are critiquing has a epistemological (theory of knowledge) as opposed to a ontological (theory of social being) basis. Which is not at all clear and is disputed.

I am not talking about marxism. I don't think marxism is bullshit lol although some applications of it might seem. When I mean epistemic limits I mean that there is so much you can "know" through a theory. I am not criticizing a "marxist epistemology" but its more a general critique of people that do no tunderstand the limits of theorizing.

[blake 3:17]

There is something that should raise our suspicions in Guattari's text, though: his being removed from the "logic of the excluded middle". Which is, to my knowledge, formal logic in general; a criticism of formal logic is of course possible, but if not very cautious, it will quite probably lead us into some kind of irrationalism.

Perhaps someone among those who like Guattari here can explain to us what Guattari means with his awkward terminology.

I think Guattari could live with a wander through irrationalism.

I've been reading them over the past few years and find their writing very thought provoking, challenging, weird and freeing. In D&G's collaborations, ideas and concepts just flow. In an interview, Guattari explained how he had to censure some of his Deleuze's contribution because Deluze would just come up with another another another another idea. A Thousand Plateaus, their greatest work, has more in common with Naked Lunch than any other modern philosophical writing. The exception would be Benjamin's Arcades Project but it's status as a philosophical writing is open.


If i want an entertaining (and rather frivolous) literary puzzle, i'll read some Kafka or Joyce.

Kafka is frivolous?


Since capitalism's cultural turn in the 1970s there has been a proliferation of material on this and not just from postmodernists that have dealt with this, for example Ray Williams in Britain and Jean-Jacques Lecercle in France.

Williams was doing this stuff in the 1940s and 50s. Aside from everything else, Williams was a thinker who helped pave the way for the global 1968, 1968 made Deleuze and Guattari's collaborations possible. There are other huge differences, not just stylistic ones.

I'm unfamiliar with Lecercle but am now curious.