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Postmodernism: Some corrections and clarifications

#1
C C Offline
https://quillette.com/2020/09/18/postmod...fications/

EXCERPTS (Elena Shalneva): Before I proceed with a brief discussion of postmodernism and its contribution to the 20th century thought, a clarification: contrary to the common view, the “modernism” part of the word “postmodernism” does not denote “modernity.” Such an interpretation is wrong (and also raises the question of why postmodernism had not happened 200 years earlier). The “modernism” part of the word refers to the dominant literary and artistic movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In other words, postmodernism is not what came after the Renaissance, the industrial revolution, Voltaire and Descartes—it is what came after the cubists, the existentialists, Kafka and Joyce.

This correction is important for reasons of formal accuracy—but it is also a reminder that postmodernism was neither the first, nor the most important movement to attack the values of Western civilisation. Mannerism did it in the 1520s, followed by baroque, then the gothics and romantics, and, finally, at the turn of the 20th century, the modernists. The latter rebelled on a truly grand scale, negating and annihilating everything that had held up before: symbolists defied reality in favour of dreams and hallucinations; dadaists proclaimed “unconscious impulse” to be the only reliable source of truth; surrealists called for “exemption from any moral concern”; Picasso and Apollinaire obliterated laws of aesthetics by stripping art and poetry of beauty; and André Breton took an expressly anti-humanist stance with his appeal to “dash into the street… and fire blindly into the crowd.”

Compared to the lion’s roar of modernism, its iconoclasm, the demonic genius of its key figures, postmodernism was barely a squeak. So, please, let’s not credit it with (or blame it for) undermining modernity. Instead, let’s compare these two movements in more detail and try to understand what, if anything, was postmodernism’s unique legacy.

[...] Like most—all?—20th century movements, postmodernism owes its existence to Nietzsche. With his proclamation that “God is dead,” Nietzsche didn’t just denounce Christianity -- he also denounced the shallow, philistine, instrumentalist values that Christianity encouraged, and the “famished, self-complacent souls” who knew “neither frenzy nor fervour” that walked the Earth as a result. In their place, Nietzsche heralded the arrival of a new kind of man -- one that would say a “great Yes to all lofty, beautiful, daring things,” and whose only guide in life would be his own instincts.

[...] Both modernism and postmodernism emerged as a reaction to the chaos of a post-Nietzschean world. Yet each movement dealt with it in its own way. Modernism fought back -- despite its apparent nihilism, it was a highly idealistic movement. You might even call it utopian: In the ugliness and absurdity of everyday life, it saw hope for a better future.

Postmodernists saw no such thing. They accepted the chaos and they resigned themselves to it. They capitulated fully and unconditionally. And this brings me to the third fallacy that is in need of correction: Postmodernism was not a politicised movement. Yes, some of its theories focused on the role of ideology; yes, the personal politics of most postmodernist figures were strongly left-leaning; and yes, many postmodern concepts were appropriated by the 21st century social justice agitators with regrettable consequences. However, postmodernism’s most significant legacy, the novel, is fundamentally, profoundly apolitical -- it offers no social position, no historic context, no ideological stance. It is completely withdrawn from reality. It is a timeless, spaceless abstraction... (MORE - details)
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#2
Syne Offline
This seems to pretend that the innocence of postmodernism in the arts means that postmodernism in philosophy, politics, etc. are equally benign. Art is inherently subjective, but the reality in which we make policy decisions is not. And it's contradictory on its face to call "hope for a better future" nihilism, especially in comparison to being "resigned" and "capitulated fully" to chaos. Only a moron would deny that postmodernism is politicized. The simple fact that postmodernism seeks to remove any standards opens the door to wholly subjective and often identitarian "truths" in a way nothing else does.
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