PoMo Studies Hoax (gets taken seriously)

[Matthew Taylor]

I'm referring to Jordan Peterson, a pseudo-intellectual Canadian psychology
professor who became prominent by railing against 'social justice warriors'
and talking gibberish about myth and archetypes. He's one of the most
well-known repeat offenders of hating 'postmodernism' while evidently
having no idea what it means.

I genuinely don't know what you mean by saying that my post "confirms PoMo
school to be drowning in politics."

On Thu, Oct 4, 2018 at 8:06 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Your whole post here confirms PoMo school to be drowning in politics
> (Peterson who?).  PoMo is IMHO a bad label.  But that might just be my
> architect's shame.  Either way, I hate PoMo jargon with a passion.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Thu, Oct 4, 2018 at 9:33 PM Matthew Taylor <matthew.taylor923 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>
>>