PoMo Studies Hoax (gets taken seriously)

[Matthew Taylor]

Jordan Peterson and his fanboys' misunderstanding and misuse of
'postmodernism' is hilarious when it isn't disheartening. Sometimes it
seems like Peterson means postmodernity, but even then the term doesn't
mean what he often wants it to...pesky definitions, always getting in the
way of his weepy, inane, and self-contradictory rants about how scared he
is of the world.

Perhaps one of the most amusing, regularly recurring instances of this
utter confusion of concepts is when the Peterson Pissants talk about
"postmodern cultural Marxists" (or some similarly incomprehensible jumbling
together of these terms). One of the most widely understood and repeated
features of postmodernism is its skepticism of grand, totalizing
meta-narratives. Marxism and Marxists, of course, claim to be able to
render history and the world intelligible through a systematic analysis of
class struggle, modes of production, dialectical materialism, etc.

Marxism isn't suspicious of ideology qua ideology; it claims that
ideologies have discernible class character, that ideas are a product of
quantifiable material conditions and that competing ideas serve mutually
antagonistic class interests. It doesn't shy away from being seen as a
so-called 'meta-narrative.' This is also meaningfully distinct from
Peterson, who rails against 'ideology'—thereby erasing the critical
differences between the wide range of mutually exclusive, often
antagonistic ideologies, acting as though they are all somehow the same and
ought to be summarily dismissed—despite being deeply ideological himself,
even if his ideology is incoherent, inconsistent, and informed by
reactionary impulse rather than systematic analysis.

It should be clear to anyone who has thought about these things for more
than five minutes that postmodernism and Marxism are irreconcilable
concepts. But the oddly popular, pseudo-intellectual, and altogether
reactionary mode of thinking of which Peterson is exemplary doesn't care if
what it says about these things is correct or even internally consistent;
rather, the goal is just to burden these terms with enough negative
associations that people dismiss and even revile them without ever even
engaging with them to begin with.

On Thu, Oct 4, 2018 at 5:08 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> In architecture, PoMo was a late 70s/early 80s retrograde reaction against
> what was felt as the reductive strictures of Modernism.  It was soon
> supplanted by Neo-Modernism, still in favor now, after many iterations, a
> quarter century later. PoMo architecture is remembered mostly as an
> embarrassment. But I think it did provide a needed bursting of Modernism's
> self-righteousness info bubble.
>
> My exposure to Lit PoMo is mostly through the P-list.  To me its lingo is
> comically convoluted and obscure.  It seems to me that Deconstructionism
> would be a better name.  In architecture, deconstruction is seen as a
> modernist's strategy, a means for abstraction of form by slicing, dicing
> and unpeeling a familiar object into the unfamiliar.
>
> Maybe Lit PMo theory is too politically rooted: It takes (took?) itself way
> too seriously.  But any neo-libs that still try to work that angle seem to
> have missed the last bus to more lucrative gigs.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Thu, Oct 4, 2018 at 6:16 PM John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > "Postmodernism" has become the new catch-all term encompassing
> > everything despised by the conservative neolibs who follow Jordan
> > Peterson and the like. In the list above that includes psychoanalysis
> > and sociology (both of which predate postmodernism by decades) and
> > critical race theory which is often in direct opposition to postmodern
> > theory.
> > But pomo is a handy strawman if you look around and feel your tenure
> > as big man on campus is threatened by all these newfangled ways of
> > questioning your right to be boss. Pomo theory per se is hardly even
> > taught much these days outside of art and architecture courses, in
> > which instances it's regarded as a historical movement of the 20th
> > century. I think a lot of proper postmodern theory is quite dangerous
> > and reactionary itself but I find it bizarre that that's the whipping
> > boy the new right have come up with.
> > On Fri, Oct 5, 2018 at 7:51 AM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> >
> https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/10/cultural-studies-hoax-mostly-being-brushed-off-as-tiresome-bs/
> > >
> > > "Three hoaxsters with no previous expertise brushed up on their pomo
> and
> > > then wrote a series of deliberately dumb papers that they submitted to
> > > serious, peer-reviewed journals in the areas of gender studies,
> > > masculinities studies, queer studies, sexuality studies,
> psychoanalysis,
> > > critical race theory, critical whiteness theory, fat studies,
> sociology,
> > > and educational philosophy. Seven of their papers were accepted, and
> the
> > > number probably would have been higher if they hadn’t been uncovered
> and
> > > forced to end their experiment early."
> > >
> > > A Twitter response:  "If an amateur with no background can spend three
> > > months brushing up on your field, and then immediately start cranking
> out
> > > papers that get accepted at serious, peer-reviewed journals, there is
> > > something badly wrong with your field."
> > >
> > > David Morris
> > > --
> > > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>