Countering Postmodernism Arguments.

[Oswy]

What are the best starting points for combatting the assertions of postmodernism?

Can anyone recommend introductory literature outlining the problems in postmodernist thinking?

I understand that the primary starting point for the Marxist is to assert material reality in opposition to the idealism which characterises most (if not all?) postmodernism, but what is the next step?

[Black Dagger]

It would help if you outline which specific arguments you wish to refute.

[Oswy]

It would help if you outline which specific arguments you wish to refute.

I was thinking in the widest terms practicable.

However, these are three of the things which I think postmodernists seem to promote most forcefully:

1) That human thought and action is an effect of uncertain and unstable language games/discourses, not an expression of material life consistently capable of representation. Implicit in this assertion is an idealist conception of (anti-)reality.

2) That rationality and reason (and science) are just some of many 'myths' of meaning and method possible and have no justifiable privileged authority over irrationalism, non-reason or quasi-science etc.

3) That human existence is characterised by a multiplicity of fragmented and changeable identities and thus incapable of being understood through 'essentialising' analytical categories such as 'class', 'gender' and so on.

[rouchambeau]

I understand that the primary starting point for the Marxist is to assert material reality in opposition to the idealism which characterises most (if not all?) postmodernism, but what is the next step?
It is my understanding that postmodernists reject any sort of totalizing view of the world--idealism included.

[Oswy]

It is my understanding that postmodernists reject any sort of totalizing view of the world--idealism included.

Certainly that is a claim they make often enough. Yet as idealism is a philosophical standpoint which posits that primary ontological reality is thought and postmodernists posit the ontological primacy of language/discourse I'd argue that the two positions are close enough to be the same thing. But I'm not a student of philosophy so I could be mistaken here.

[wallflower]

I cannot recommend strongly enough Frederic Jameson's excellent and comprehensive study, "Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism". In this work, Jameson approaches all facets of postmodern culture skeptically, and always with a materialist approach (believe it or not, the genesis of postmodern thought, often characterized as being merely "an attack on all meta-narratives", is far deeper and has strong material underpinnings). Best of all, Jameson isn't a hater, so you don't have to worry about encountering the kind of hands-off pretension surrounding the works of earlier Marxist critics like Adorno - that said, Adorno's brilliant, even if he is a stick-in-the-mud sometimes.