Postmodernism

[Althusser]

What is postmodernism? I've heard it used in a derogatory manner toward college liberal types, but I am unsure of the specifics of this way of thinking.
(Does it have something to do with subjectivism? because I've seen parallels in its criticism.)

[Mackenzie_Blanc]

Postmodernism is essentially subjectivism on steroids - where everything is a social construct, including science. Individuals such as Derrida and Deleuze state that are no objective facts in the world. Some postmodernists have even asserted that all science is a product of "male patriarchal superiority". I'm in no way a sexist, but the sheer thought of the science method being corrupted by male superiority is laughable at best.

On another note, postmodernists write with ridiculously vague jargon, and obscure their syntax to hide their bullshit. If you find someone seriously contemplating how gravity is a product of racial norms, stay far away! :cool:

[Althusser]

Postmodernism is essentially subjectivism on steroids - where everything is a social construct, including science. Individuals such as Derrida and Deleuze state that are no objective facts in the world. Some postmodernists have even asserted that all science is a product of "male patriarchal superiority". I'm in no way a sexist, but the sheer thought of the science method being corrupted by male superiority is laughable at best.

On another note, postmodernists write with ridiculously vague jargon, and obscure their syntax to hide their bullshit. If you find someone seriously contemplating how gravity is a product of racial norms, stay far away! :cool:

Lol. What an idealist way of thinking. They've got to believe consciousness determines material conditions if they think everything is a social construct, like physics and shit.

[WorldingWorld]

Well post-modernism is an incredibly broad range of things ranging from philosophy to the arts, so as a perjorative it really doesn't make that much sense unless you are coming from a very particular philosophical viewpoint. In terms of philosophy, some of the ideas and thinkers are a little strange but you still have very grounded and lucid people like Heidegger and Rorty who are worthy of consideration. Overall I would say Blanc's summary of post-modernism is quite erroneous but not entirely unwarranted. As with all academia there is going to be a degree of pretension and there have been many post-modernist papers that are grasping, at best. This shouldn't color the whole, however, as it is not really representative.

[svenne]

It's either an ideological trend, if you're into idealism, or a state of late capitalism (as David Harvey and Fredric Jameson tells us). Pretty much: capitalism has evolved, and this new stage (Jameson uses Ernest Mandels concept of Late Capitalism) makes culture, our cities, and philosophical thought (Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze etc) - and a lot more - different from the ideas of yesterday. A lot is stupid, even more crap (and mostly unreadable), but in the same way Marx found some truths in the ideological texts of his day (just take a look at Theories of surplus value: it's both a massacre and a "here he's right, i'm gonna steal this and modify it to fit into my grand book Capital"), we're kinda stuck and has to analyse it. There's propably some truth in there, somewhere. In the left, it mostly sneaked in via Negri & Hardt and their Empire trilogy, where at least the first part (can't really remember the second and haven't touched the third) owes a lot to Deleuze. While a lot of communists dislike it, and hell, we should, it's propably not fair to say that every postmodernist thinker says that the objective world doesn't exist. If you look at Foucault, his books are usually an investigation into both former times written material, as well as how power and oppression worked in practice. Still a bad writer, though.

This is propably an okay start: http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm
While it's a philosophical text, a marxist shouldn't have too much trouble with it, except with the ending bit, where he starts talking Lacan n' crap.

[cynicles]

Language is a racis patriarchal institution perpetuated by a confluence of emotional distractions constructed via industrialist thought crimes meant to obstruct material relations with interplanetary kolabs!

[The Intransigent Faction]

What is postmodernism? I've heard it used in a derogatory manner toward college liberal types, but I am unsure of the specifics of this way of thinking.
(Does it have something to do with subjectivism? because I've seen parallels in its criticism.)

Thought I'd seen a thread about this somewhere before...meh.
Anyway, I have this stuff shoved down my throat in some sociology courses.
It's essentially nihilistic sophistry. Here's the best illustration I've seen so far (which conveniently even explains its role in suppressing any radicalizing potential of academia):

http://cdn.motinetwork.net/demotivationalposters.net/image/demotivational-poster/0805/postmodernists-postmodernism-bullshit-nihilism-demotivational-poster-1210958403.gif (http://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=VRyYqdinXX5JbM&tbnid=gxr5VfSaB_iILM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.demotivationalposters.net%2Fa sians-demotivational-posters-6086.html&ei=5U4kUe2_HMabrQGj7oHoBw&psig=AFQjCNFfMdweHv-74kcw4RZJJD6KfpS9eg&ust=1361420262391531)

[$lim_$weezy]

Postmodernism is, as defined by Jean-Francois Lyotard, an incredulity towards meta-narratives. While vague, this basically means that "grand narrative" type thinking does not have the central place it once had in Western thought. The idea of "progress" had been heavily critiqued and eventually discarded by many thinkers.

Postmodern culture is very interesting as well, as a glance at that Jameson article will tell you.

Even way back before the postmodernists, you had people like Lukacs finding problems with "objective facts", just to name a thinker in the Marxist camp. Postmodernism isn't just solipsism, in fact many postmodernists are profoundly anti-relativist (see Derrida for a striking, probably not-expected example).

[o well this is ok I guess]

Postmodernism is essentially subjectivism on steroids - where everything is a social construct, including science. Nope

Individuals such as Derrida and Deleuze state that are no objective facts in the world. Some postmodernists have even asserted that all science is a product of "male patriarchal superiority". I'm in no way a sexist, but the sheer thought of the science method being corrupted by male superiority is laughable at best. what


On another note, postmodernists write with ridiculously vague jargon, and obscure their syntax to hide their bullshit. If you find someone seriously contemplating how gravity is a product of racial norms, stay far away! :cool: I can't understand french; this moonspeak must be a means of hiding their contempt of me.

Cmon man you're just taking every stereotype of postmodernism you can find from newspaper political cartoons and trying to make a serious post out of them.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I love it when a bunch of philosophical illiterates write off an entire intellectual movement that they obviously don't understand based on a bunch of cliches, caricatures, oversimplifications and misunderstandings. Not that postmodern theorists are all perfect but really ...

The critique of objective knowledge is much more nuanced than people are portraying it here. It's not an anti-materialist position or one which utterly denies our empirical or rational abilities but one which tries to find the limits of people to find and articulate the "Truth" independent of a historical, linguistic and cultural context. Postmodern theory has had interesting things to say about what it means to be a "man" and "woman", "colonizer" and "colonized" etc etc but I guess that's all irrelevant to people here because anything that seems to question epistemological certainty is icky.

[Jimmie Higgins]

To echo someone: postmodernists interpret the world, the point, for revolutionaries, is to change it. There's no question that postmodern thinking has made valid insights and critiques, but overall I think the main failure of it from a radical perspective is that it provides no useful practical insights and IMO can lead to disorienting or confused political action.

I think in the big picture, postmodernism is just modernism but in different conditions, specifically of intellectuals reacting to revolutionary defeats and decline - some postmodernists would probably describe it as "failure of Modernsim" but I think historically, the two can't really be seperated. If modernism can be seen as both a left and right intellectual responce to rapid development of industry and worker movements, postmodernism flourished in the dissilusionment with the USSR and decline of worker movements and (observable) class conflict in places like the US. Postmodernists tent to claim many movements of modernism as sort of pre-cursers or retrospectivly-"postmodern". But groups like the Dadaists and whatnot really were "modernist" IMO and the reason people see a link there is because many of the critiques of modernism by postmodernists already existed within modernism, if not the dominant trends.

Some of the negative aspects of this trend that people have described might also have something to do with academia which got more competative in the last few deacdes in the US and so a school of thought that emphasizes subjectivity and endless dissection is useful for a group of people who have to publish things with unique perspectives for the sake of keeping their position, if not building a reputation. Also for Humanities departments in the US, there's a possibility that some of the attraction is that by putting science and interpretation on equal footing philisophically, helps justify these departments when applicable sciences probably get more funding. I think some of the cruder and more laughable examples of academic postmodernism may be related to this sort of academic atmosphere.

I've heard arguements that PoMo's ubiquity in US academia was because it was less threatening and so could be encouraged as an alternative to more radical and socially critical views, but I don't know if there's much of a basis for that. Even Marxism or Gramsci can be defanged and coopted for non-threatening academic consumption. I think if there were an upsurge in struggles, if postmodernism still had any cred or influence, we'd probably see a rise in much more (socially) combative versions of some of these ideas and arguments.


Nope
what

Cmon man you're just taking every stereotype of postmodernism you can find from newspaper political cartoons and trying to make a serious post out of them.

Care to contribute to the discussion with a counterpoint?


I can't understand french; this moonspeak must be a means of hiding their contempt of me.Someone once told me that a lot of the style and jargon in postmodernism comes from the translation of French into English; American writers who were inspired by French existentialism immitated their translated language and style, but then this was further adopted by other English writers as well as from translations into yet other languages from the English. This is why a lot of the English texts tend to have inverted syntax.

I don't know if this is true or not, but the person who told me was French and a grad student, so I believed her.:lol:

[Jimmie Higgins]

anything that seems to question epistemological certainty is icky.IMO, more that the way knowlege is questioned by postmodernism can sometimes be idealist or equivocal. Marxism also questions "the truth" and where ideas come from materially in our society, but it also roots this critique and understanding in how the world (society) works overall. The crude versions of postmodernism - or at least arguments I've encountered from people with this view - seem to suggest class oppression, racial oppression, and so on are just various examples of kinds of relations and not necissarily connecting or tied into anything larger.

And "you're not an intellectual, so your opinions are invalid" is not a very convincing argument in favor of the value of ideas. I'm not an intellectual and I'm not well-read in philosophy, so I generally get my impression of these ideas from pomo adherents, not philosophical texts or journals, so in what ways does postmodernism help in struggles against oppression of women, the colonized, etc?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

IMO, more that the way knowlege is questioned by postmodernism can sometimes be idealist or equivocal. Marxism also questions "the truth" and where ideas come from materially in our society, but it also roots this critique and understanding in how the world (society) works overall. The crude versions of postmodernism - or at least arguments I've encountered from people with this view - seem to suggest class oppression, racial oppression, and so on are just various examples of kinds of relations and not necissarily connecting or tied into anything larger.


First off, if philosophers and academics all got it 100% right all the time, then the history of ideas would be over long ago. Postmodernists have a right to get things wrong in part, as long as they are contributing something interesting to the discussion overall.

As for the whole idealism thing, I can see where people are getting that - but let's face it, the Marxist critique of idealism does not necessarily invalidate all ideas which use idealist language or metaphysical presuppositions. Perhaps postmodernism could benefit from being explicitly tied to a Marxist/materialist conception of history but that doesn't mean that their ideas in and of itself aren't useful. It is important to figure out how ideas and concepts develop over time, and can have some historical weight, even if the realm of "ideas" are manifestations of material relations. The big postmodern push is going to be to show how a lot of the major cultural ideas and institutions are presupposed to be somehow "objective" and "natural" but are instead a reification of various power relations, historical ideas and so on. Perhaps it is not going to get at the "material causes" which root these, and perhaps it gives ideas more social power than the average materialist might be comfortable with, but that doesn't mean that there isn't something interesting to say.

It is true that many postmodernists are not too concerned with Marx's historical materialism, and perhaps they should be, but that doesn't make what they say completely illegitimate. Foucault wasn't a Marxist but hey he still has some interesting things to say on prisons and madness. Butler seems to contribute a lot on the social significance of ideas of manhood and womanhood, and adopts the position that ideas are important in shaping these. Foucault can argue how institutions like prisons have their power reinforced by the way that they are laid out and implemented, and the historical notions on which they are grounded. Butler can argue how our terms for gender inform and reinforce the kind of gender roles which people adopt. Is that such an irrational position? It seems like they are trying to get at things which are missed or overlooked by strictly materialist interpretations of history - even if materialism is correct from a metaphysical point of view, it doesn't mean that we necessarily know all the material conditions underpinning various ideas and that the ideas themselves don't then have some kind of impact on material relations.

Even if we adopt a strongly materialist point of view, it is intellectual arrogance at its worst to dismiss a seemingly idealist philosophy on metaphysical grounds without first delving a little deeper. For one thing, it is important to recognize that when Marx takes Hegel and "turns him on his head", criticizing idealist philosophy, in particular he is responding to the kind of deep, metaphysically rich (and German nationalist) idealism of the later Hegelian scholars. That was a very different form of idealism than any "idealism" which postmodernists could be accused of, and in the case of postmodernists it is not one which is absolutely irreconcilable with Marx's ideas. It is better to hold them in conversation than reject it all because it seems strange to us.

The bigger problem with postmodernism which nobody here really brought up is that it's a little bit of an intellectual fad, but then again so was Marxist analysis for some time so there's nothing about being a "fad" which makes something necessarily wrong.



And "you're not an intellectual, so your opinions are invalid" is not a very convincing argument in favor of the value of ideas. I'm not an intellectual and I'm not well-read in philosophy, so I generally get my impression of these ideas from pomo adherents, not philosophical texts or journals, so in what ways does postmodernism help in struggles against oppression of women, the colonized, etc?You can be a non-intellectual and do intellectual work but for christsakes at least try to make a good argument or understand what you're talking about before writing off a huge portion of our intellectual tradition. If you aren't going to make a good argument for why you are rejecting it then don't be so damn smug - there's nothing worse than a smugly delivered intellectual claim that has no basis in reality whatsoever. For a person who studies these kinds of things, reading some of the responses in this thread is the equivalent of reading "Marxists are dumb because they don't get that communism contradicts human nature"

I don't want to come across as an intellectual elitist but it's really hard not to respond that way when; people are taking rabidly anti-intellectualist positions without knowing what they're critiquing, it's 3 in the morning, and I've had a few beers in me.

[Comrade #138672]

I am not a postmodernist (anymore), but postmodernist thinking did, at least for me, pave the way for Marxism, because it 'allowed' me to doubt bourgeois ideologies. Now Marxism has replaced postmodernism, because it is of better use.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Postmodernists have a right to get things wrong in part, as long as they are contributing something interesting to the discussion overall.I don't argue that there are no insights, people would get nothing from it if it was some kind of trick or pure hoodwinkery (which is why I don't buy the arguments that PoMo was promoted as a "safe philosophy" in opposition to more radical schools of thought. But I do think - crudely, that is in general - that many of the assumptions and methods are not clarifying or useful in any practical sense. And often these ideas when acted out in real life, create more confusion and disorientation for activists and in the general audience than the insights it may provide.

And insights alone don't validate a worldview in it's entirety. Liberals and conservatives and 18th century monks can make insights - otherwise there would be no "great literature" that any worker or radical could relate to. But even novels by right-wingers can reveal truth in their fictions despite maybe having a shitty overall view (not Ayn Rand which is why she fails as both a novelist and a 'philosopher').



As for the whole idealism thing, I can see where people are getting that - but let's face it, the Marxist critique of idealism does not necessarily invalidate all ideas which use idealist language or metaphysical presuppositions. But materialism DOES! Again, not that pomo can't have insight but it's inherently "upside-down" to privilege text or "story" or language over material circumstances... to value the reflections more than the object.


Perhaps postmodernism could benefit from being explicitly tied to a Marxist/materialist conception of history but that doesn't mean that their ideas in and of itself aren't useful. It is important to figure out how ideas and concepts develop over time, and can have some historical weight, even if the realm of "ideas" are manifestations of material relations. The big postmodern push is going to be to show how a lot of the major cultural ideas and institutions are presupposed to be somehow "objective" and "natural" but are instead a reification of various power relations, historical ideas and so on. Perhaps it is not going to get at the "material causes" which root these, and perhaps it gives ideas more social power than the average materialist might be comfortable with, but that doesn't mean that there isn't something interesting to say. But Marxism does this - in fact it does it better because it connects all these aspects together (again, "better" not in specific insights necessarily, but in overall framework). Science is biased according to Marxism too, not inherently but subjectively because of the way society is organized and arranged - and science can only be a biased-tool for the hands who use it. But Marxism also offers a solution, if Science is biased for all the various social strings tieing it's research and applications to the way society is organized by the few, then a society based on liberation and and no one having power over another, then science would be utilized in a mutual and equal way.

Postmodernism, it seems to me, takes the same attempt at critique, but unlinks it to the material roots so that "madness" is constructed by rulers in society in order to create and counter-pose an ideal "Reason/Saneness", rather than capitalism disrupted the traditional ways people took care of themselves and secured a life for them and members of their families (which would include how people took care of those who could not work in a field or gather food or whatnot). That capitalism created a "problem" in that not everyone could work, and even those who could potentially work (or could have lived a fairly decent and sustainable life by collecting food in the commons or whatnot) may not have had the physical or mental requirements needed for a 12 hour shift in a mill or to work every day or work at a pace that would be profitable for the bosses. "Madness" isn't a social construct due to ideological reasons, but because the society of capitalism is constructed so that our value is in our ability to produce for capital and if one is excluded or unable to have this "value" then they are thrown away, imprisoned, or warehoused in asylums.

Insights about specific power relations and so on by someone like Foucault are useful as insights, but often the power relations that develop are secondary and subordination to (or the result of) the larger structure and framework of society. Marxism and anarchism are "meta-narratives" and so despite some overlap in observations and even critique, the overall view of what's described as postmodernism is fairly incompatible.


Is that such an irrational position? It seems like they are trying to get at things which are missed or overlooked by strictly materialist interpretations of history - even if materialism is correct from a metaphysical point of view, it doesn't mean that we necessarily know all the material conditions underpinning various ideas and that the ideas themselves don't then have some kind of impact on material relations. I don't think "materialism" means determinism or that ideas don't have importance, just how and why these ideas are dependent on material conditions. Madness and Reason weren't just pulled out of someone's ass, these concepts formed then fundamentally due to material changes going on in society. These changes influenced ideas which may have then influenced actions or policies which further changed material conditions, in turn changing ideas once again. But the ideas and social constructs and so on are not the fundamental driving force IMO and I think that's where some postmodernist arguments seem to get off balance.


Even if we adopt a strongly materialist point of view, it is intellectual arrogance at its worst to dismiss a seemingly idealist philosophy on metaphysical grounds without first delving a little deeper. For one thing, it is important to recognize that when Marx takes Hegel and "turns him on his head", criticizing idealist philosophy, in particular he is responding to the kind of deep, metaphysically rich (and German nationalist) idealism of the later Hegelian scholars. That was a very different form of idealism than any "idealism" which postmodernists could be accused of, and in the case of postmodernists it is not one which is absolutely irreconcilable with Marx's ideas. It is better to hold them in conversation than reject it all because it seems strange to us.I'm not saying ignore or abhor these ideas and arguments, I just think they haven't added much other than some insights to a useful understanding of the world and I think the broader assumptions have actually had a disorienting effect on some movements and schools of thought.


You can be a non-intellectual and do intellectual work but for christsakes at least try to make a good argument or understand what you're talking about before writing off a huge portion of our intellectual tradition. I'm trying to understand, but as much as I've been exposed to I don't find them all that insightful in anything other than observations and I don't find these ideas clarifying or useful for more practical understanding of things. And in order to try and change the world, we need to understand it, not in bits and pieces and ideas and reflections, but the fundamental workings of it.

But I'm partisan, a Marxist, materialist, and a re-modernist:D. Attempting to understand the universal doesn't mean wanting or advocating uniformity. I think in order for everyone to be subjectively free we need universal liberation. Postmodernism in the large sense seems to deny this as even a possibility.

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

Insights about specific power relations and so on by someone like Foucault are useful as insights, but often the power relations that develop are secondary and subordination to (or the result of) the larger structure and framework of society. Marxism and anarchism are "meta-narratives" and so despite some overlap in observations and even critique, the overall view of what's described as postmodernism is fairly incompatible.

Whether it's incompatible or not is not in question. I think his point is that we should be prepared to assimilate the best ideas of these thinkers despite their bourgeois philosophies, because they may actually have something to say. As Marxists, I believe it's our obligation to engage ideas before dismissing, or assimilating them. We do not have the right to treat every insight of our philosophical opponents as anathema to materialism in our search for the truth.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I don't argue that there are no insights, people would get nothing from it if it was some kind of trick or pure hoodwinkery (which is why I don't buy the arguments that PoMo was promoted as a "safe philosophy" in opposition to more radical schools of thought. But I do think - crudely, that is in general - that many of the assumptions and methods are not clarifying or useful in any practical sense. And often these ideas when acted out in real life, create more confusion and disorientation for activists and in the general audience than the insights it may provide.

And insights alone don't validate a worldview in it's entirety. Liberals and conservatives and 18th century monks can make insights - otherwise there would be no "great literature" that any worker or radical could relate to. But even novels by right-wingers can reveal truth in their fictions despite maybe having a shitty overall view (not Ayn Rand which is why she fails as both a novelist and a 'philosopher').


Well, this is a more nuanced critique at least! I think that the contributions of liberals and conservatives at least are under-acknowledged by many on the intellectual "Left" (notably not Marx, who read Hegel, Smith and ancient Greek philosophy). And postmodernism overall is in agreement with Marxist analysis on many issues.



But materialism DOES! Again, not that pomo can't have insight but it's inherently "upside-down" to privilege text or "story" or language over material circumstances... to value the reflections more than the object.
I don't want to get into a materialism v idealism debate but to argue that the debate was somehow settled by Marx and the implications for one in relation to the other is not true. Marx himself saw how idealist theories could be related to material reality in a way that got at the truth. Nor is postmodernism "idealist" in the sense that Marx was talking about. Again, he was criticizing a certain philosophical movement up to that point, whereas postmodernism is bringing in some ideas which Marx never had the chance to respond to.



But Marxism does this - in fact it does it better because it connects all these aspects together (again, "better" not in specific insights necessarily, but in overall framework). Science is biased according to Marxism too, not inherently but subjectively because of the way society is organized and arranged - and science can only be a biased-tool for the hands who use it. But Marxism also offers a solution, if Science is biased for all the various social strings tieing it's research and applications to the way society is organized by the few, then a society based on liberation and and no one having power over another, then science would be utilized in a mutual and equal way.

Postmodernism, it seems to me, takes the same attempt at critique, but unlinks it to the material roots so that "madness" is constructed by rulers in society in order to create and counter-pose an ideal "Reason/Saneness", rather than capitalism disrupted the traditional ways people took care of themselves and secured a life for them and members of their families (which would include how people took care of those who could not work in a field or gather food or whatnot). That capitalism created a "problem" in that not everyone could work, and even those who could potentially work (or could have lived a fairly decent and sustainable life by collecting food in the commons or whatnot) may not have had the physical or mental requirements needed for a 12 hour shift in a mill or to work every day or work at a pace that would be profitable for the bosses. "Madness" isn't a social construct due to ideological reasons, but because the society of capitalism is constructed so that our value is in our ability to produce for capital and if one is excluded or unable to have this "value" then they are thrown away, imprisoned, or warehoused in asylums.

Insights about specific power relations and so on by someone like Foucault are useful as insights, but often the power relations that develop are secondary and subordination to (or the result of) the larger structure and framework of society. Marxism and anarchism are "meta-narratives" and so despite some overlap in observations and even critique, the overall view of what's described as postmodernism is fairly incompatible.
If Marx accurately described the broader picture, can his theories always be used as effectively on finer points? Ecology gets broader patterns about an environment but we still accept biology as a legitimate science. The postmodern analysis of things like prisons can bring out interesting, unique components of the system and articulate how they come to be reinforced through the social context. For instance, the penitentiary system as a model of isolating prisoners and holding them alone in a cell for long periods of time was a new innovation and Foucault's Discipline and Punish tries to explain that. Likewise, Butler's arguments about gender are used by queer theorists to show how parts of our society reinforce heteronormative ideals. It doesn't mean that those ideas created history devoid of material conditions however. On the contrary, many of these people read their Marx and knew his arguments. Perhaps they were a little cynical about teleological political programs in some cases but they didn't just ignore Marx and his contributions to the kinds of questions that they were asking.



I don't think "materialism" means determinism or that ideas don't have importance, just how and why these ideas are dependent on material conditions. Madness and Reason weren't just pulled out of someone's ass, these concepts formed then fundamentally due to material changes going on in society. These changes influenced ideas which may have then influenced actions or policies which further changed material conditions, in turn changing ideas once again. But the ideas and social constructs and so on are not the fundamental driving force IMO and I think that's where some postmodernist arguments seem to get off balance.

I'm not saying ignore or abhor these ideas and arguments, I just think they haven't added much other than some insights to a useful understanding of the world and I think the broader assumptions have actually had a disorienting effect on some movements and schools of thought.

I'm trying to understand, but as much as I've been exposed to I don't find them all that insightful in anything other than observations and I don't find these ideas clarifying or useful for more practical understanding of things. And in order to try and change the world, we need to understand it, not in bits and pieces and ideas and reflections, but the fundamental workings of it.
Again, I don't want to get into a materialism v idealism debate but ideas don't need to be the driving force to be something which we need to analyze, or something which won't have a significant weight in how material relations are perpetuated through time. I think that's one of the postmodernist projects.

I don't think Foucault and these folks argue that people pulled these systems out of their ass by the way, that seems to be a bit of a strawman.



But I'm partisan, a Marxist, materialist, and a re-modernist:D. Attempting to understand the universal doesn't mean wanting or advocating uniformity. I think in order for everyone to be subjectively free we need universal liberation. Postmodernism in the large sense seems to deny this as even a possibility.Some postmodernists might deny it, but I don't know if all would. There's a skepticism towards teleological politics in general but I don't know if postmodernism as a movement embraces that. Even so, it's important too to recognize the historical context in which postmodernism arose - teleological politics had seemingly failed in that the USSR was steadily forfeiting its moral legitimacy while the US and liberal European powers were pursing neoimperialism.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Nope
what

I can't understand french; this moonspeak must be a means of hiding their contempt of me.

Cmon man you're just taking every stereotype of postmodernism you can find from newspaper political cartoons and trying to make a serious post out of them.

Really? Because he's just echoed about twenty people that I know who are post-modernists.

Full of themselves and metaphysical - what a horrible combination.

[MarxArchist]

So far as it relates to Marxism it ends up being an idealist mess which thrashes the conception of class in favor of fragmentation and by default identity politics (an atmosphere where everyone is fighting their own form of or experience with oppression outside of class struggle with socialism in mind). It has affected political praxis in a way that we all should be first and foremost aware of and secondly fighting to end. They think we live in a 'post industrial society' where class is irrelevant. Historical materialism gets mangled as well. As materialists we should reject postmodernism in general but especially when it comes to "postmodern Marxism". As far as Lacan, Derrida, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. it's mostly pseudo intellectual fluff and I shouldn't have to expand on why post structuralism and Marxism are oil and water.