Criticism of postmodernism
Encyclopedia
Criticism of postmodernism
has been intellectually diverse, but much of it has centered on the perception that postmodernism tries to "deconstruct" modernity
and promote obscurantism
in ways that are similar to reactionary
movements of the past.
or antimodern, particularly in relation to critiques of rationalism
, universalism
or science
. It is also sometimes used to describe tendencies in a society that are held to be antithetical to traditional systems of morality
.
Habermas' argument has been extended to state that postmodernity is counter-enlightenment
(see The Enlightenment, modern responses). Richard Wolin
in his book The Seduction of Unreason argues that key advocates of postmodernity began with a fascination for fascism. The view that Romanticism
is a reactionary philosophy and that Nazism
was an outgrowth of it is widely held among modernist philosophers and writers, who argue that the cultural particularity and identity politics
of postmodernity, the consequence of holding post-structuralist views, is "what Germany had from 1933-1945". They further argue that postmodernity requires an acceptance of "reactionary" criticisms that amount to anti-Americanism
.
This debate is seen by philosophers such as Richard Rorty
as between modern and postmodern philosophy
rather than being related to the condition of postmodernity per se. It also grows out of a common agreement that modernity
is rooted in a rationalised set of Enlightenment values.
and contributing to deviant behavior
. See, Postmodernity
, subsection "Anti-postmodernity critiques."
Christian writers are characterized as tending to look askance at the postmodernist era as ideologically agnostic and replete with moral relativism or situation ethics. Josh McDowell
& Bob Hostetler offer the following definition of postmodernism: “A worldview characterized by the belief that truth doesn’t exist in any objective sense but is created rather than discovered.”… Truth is “created by the specific culture and exists only in that culture. Therefore, any system or statement that tries to communicate truth is a power play, an effort to dominate other cultures.”
Many philosophical movements reject both modernity and postmodernity as healthy states of being. Some of these are associated with cultural and religious conservatism
that views postmodernity as a rejection of basic spiritual or natural truths and in its emphasis on material and physical pleasure an explicit rejection of inner balance and spirituality. Many of these critiques attack specifically the tendency to the "abandonment of objective truth" as the crucial unacceptable feature of the postmodern condition and often aim to offer a meta-narrative that provides this truth.
and Fashionable Nonsense
, by professors Alan Sokal
and Jean Bricmont
.
The criticism of elements of postmodernism as sophism
or obscurantism
was played out in the Sokal Affair
, where Alan Sokal
, a physicist
, delivered for publication an article about interpreting physics and mathematics in terms of postmodern theory, which he had deliberately written to mock postmodernist views on objectivity, determinism and the social construction of scientific truth. It was published by Social Text
, a cultural studies journal active in the field of postmodernism. Sokal arranged for the simultaneous publication of another article describing the former as a successful experiment to see whether a postmodernist journal would publish it, triggering an academic scandal. Sokal later published a book with Jean Bricmont
called Intellectual Impostures, which expands upon his criticism of postmodernism.
Criticisms of the postmodern condition can be placed in four broad categories: those who reject modernism
and its offshoots, criticisms from supporters of modernism
who believe that postmodernity lacks crucial characteristics of the modern project, critics from within postmodernity who seek reform or change based on their understanding of postmodernism
, and those who believe that postmodernity is a passing, and not a growing, phase in social organization.
The linguist Noam Chomsky
has suggested that postmodernism is meaningless because it adds nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge. He asks why postmodernist intellectuals won't respond as "people in physics, math, biology, linguistics, and other fields are happy to do when someone asks them, seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc? These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames."
Apologists for postmodernism claim that such critiques result not from faith in traditional authority but from a belief that objective knowledge must be obtainable either in all domains or in no domain. As such domains as physics and chemistry are not seriously taken as subjective or relative in postmodernity it follows that ethics, politics, and the good life in general are not relative or subjective either. This view has been mentioned by Allan Bloom
. However, as Richard Dawkins
argues in his review of Sokal and Bricmont's book, the crux of this critique of postmodernism lies not in epistemological musings, but in the high probability that fuzzy language, opaque jargon and directionless arguments are hallmarks of "mountebanks and charlatans" who actually have "nothing to say."
Critic Timothy Bewes called postmodernity "an historical blip", a "cynical reaction" against the Enlightenment, and against the progress of the modern project. This view, that features attributed to postmodernity are "kitsch", a turning away from fundamental deep structure and uncompromising progress, is one which is leveled by art critic Robert Hughes as well. From this viewpoint postmodernity is a subsidiary historical moment in a larger modern period. James Fowler argues that postmodernity is characterized by the "loss of conviction"; Grenz and Seidner concur, saying that postmodernity is a period of pessimism contrasting with modernity's optimism.
However the most influential proponent of this critique, Jürgen Habermas
, contends that all responses to modernity abandon either the critical or rational element in philosophy and that the postmodern condition is one of self-deception over the uncompleted nature of the modern project. He argues that without critical and rational traditions society cannot value the individual and social structures will tend towards totalitarianism
. From his perspective universalism
is the fundamental requirement for any rational criticism and to abandon this is to abandon the liberalising
reforms of the last two centuries. Postmodernists including Lyotard and Stanley Fish
see Habermas as desiring to rationalise universalism and argue that the entire critique rests on the modernists' insufficient faith in social mechanisms.
rejected the label of postmodernism explicitly in interviews but is seen by many to advocate a form of critique that is "postmodern" in that it breaks with the utopian and transcendental nature of "modern" critique by calling universal norms of the Enlightenment into question. Giddens (1990) rejects this characterisation of modern critique by pointing out that a critique of Enlightenment universals were central to philosophers of the modern period, most notably Nietzsche. What counts as "postmodern" is a stake in political struggles where the method of critique is at issue. The recurring themes of these debates are between essentialism and anti-foundationalism, universalism and relativism, where enlightenment thinking is seen to represent the former and postmodernism the latter. This is why theorists as diverse as Nietzsche, Lacan
, Foucault, Derrida, and Butler
have been labeled "postmodern", not because they formed a historical intellectual grouping but because they are seen by their critics to reject the possibility of universal, normative and ethical judgments. With some exceptions (e.g. Jameson
and Lyotard
), many thinkers who are considered 'postmodern' or 'poststructuralist' see these characterizations merely as labels of convenience and reject them altogether.
, a leading member of the British Socialist Workers Party
, argued against what he calls "the idealist irrationalism of poststructuralism", the "existence of any radical break" from modernism to postmodernism, and the socio-economic developments of the late 80s and early 90s (the height of postmodernism's popularity) actually representing "any fundamental shift from classical patterns of capital accumulation
."
Callinicos attacks notable postmodern thinkers such as Baudrillard and Lyotard, arguing postmodernism "reflects the disappointed revolutionary
generation of '68, (particularly those of May 68) and the incorporation of many of its members into the professional and managerial 'new middle class'. It is best read as a symptom of political frustration and social mobility
rather than as a significant intellectual or cultural phenomenon in its own right."
Art historian John Molyneux
, also of the Socialist Workers Party, accuses postmodernists for "singing an old song long intoned by bourgeois historians of various persuasions".
Fredric Jameson
, American literary critic and Marxist political theorist, attacks postmodernism (or poststructuralism), what he claims is "the cultural logic of late capitalism," for its refusal to critically engage with the metanarratives of capitalization and globalization
. The refusal renders postmodernist philosophy complicit with the prevailing relations of domination and exploitation
.
Sherry Wolf
, a leading member of the American International Socialist Organization
dismisses postmodernist theories as a way to fight for gay liberation
in her 2009 publication, Sexuality and Socialism.
, who argues that the trend towards more and more ironic and referential artistic expression has reached a limit and that a movement back towards "sincerity" is required on which the artist actually speaks with an intended, concrete, static meaning.
Certain criticisms also focus on the fact that postmodernism lacks a coherent rhetorical theory. "Consequently, a theory will always fail to make good on its claim to provide a set of rules independent of the practice it describes; and because a theory will always fail in its goal to guide and reform practice, it therefore, by definition, can have no consequence."
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
has been intellectually diverse, but much of it has centered on the perception that postmodernism tries to "deconstruct" modernity
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
and promote obscurantism
Obscurantism
Obscurantism is the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or the full details of some matter from becoming known. There are two, common, historical and intellectual, denotations: 1) restricting knowledge—opposition to the spread of knowledge, a policy of withholding knowledge from the...
in ways that are similar to reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...
movements of the past.
Counter-Enlightenment and antimodernism
The term postmodernism, when used pejoratively, describes tendencies perceived as relativist, counter-enlightenmentCounter-Enlightenment
"Counter-Enlightenment" is a term used to refer to a movement that arose in the late-18th and early-19th centuries in opposition to the 18th century Enlightenment...
or antimodern, particularly in relation to critiques of rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
, universalism
Universality (philosophy)
In philosophy, universalism is a doctrine or school claiming universal facts can be discovered and is therefore understood as being in opposition to relativism. In certain religions, universality is the quality ascribed to an entity whose existence is consistent throughout the universe...
or science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
. It is also sometimes used to describe tendencies in a society that are held to be antithetical to traditional systems of morality
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
.
Habermas' argument has been extended to state that postmodernity is counter-enlightenment
Counter-Enlightenment
"Counter-Enlightenment" is a term used to refer to a movement that arose in the late-18th and early-19th centuries in opposition to the 18th century Enlightenment...
(see The Enlightenment, modern responses). Richard Wolin
Richard Wolin
Richard Wolin is an intellectual historian.He is Distinguished Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he has worked since 2000...
in his book The Seduction of Unreason argues that key advocates of postmodernity began with a fascination for fascism. The view that Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
is a reactionary philosophy and that Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
was an outgrowth of it is widely held among modernist philosophers and writers, who argue that the cultural particularity and identity politics
Identity politics
Identity politics are political arguments that focus upon the self interest and perspectives of self-identified social interest groups and ways in which people's politics may be shaped by aspects of their identity through race, class, religion, sexual orientation or traditional dominance...
of postmodernity, the consequence of holding post-structuralist views, is "what Germany had from 1933-1945". They further argue that postmodernity requires an acceptance of "reactionary" criticisms that amount to anti-Americanism
Anti-Americanism
The term Anti-Americanism, or Anti-American Sentiment, refers to broad opposition or hostility to the people, policies, culture or government of the United States...
.
This debate is seen by philosophers such as Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University...
as between modern and postmodern philosophy
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
rather than being related to the condition of postmodernity per se. It also grows out of a common agreement that modernity
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
is rooted in a rationalised set of Enlightenment values.
Moral relativism
Some critics have interpreted postmodern society to be synonymous with moral relativismMoral relativism
Moral relativism may be any of several descriptive, meta-ethical, or normative positions. Each of them is concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different people and cultures:...
and contributing to deviant behavior
Deviant Behavior
Deviant Behavior is an interdisciplinary journal which focuses on social deviance, including criminal, sexual, and narcotic behaviors.The journal is published by Taylor and Francis, Inc., and was ranked 41st out of 46 psychology journals and 46th out of 90 sociology journals in 2004 by the...
. See, Postmodernity
Postmodernity
Postmodernity is generally used to describe the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity...
, subsection "Anti-postmodernity critiques."
Christian writers are characterized as tending to look askance at the postmodernist era as ideologically agnostic and replete with moral relativism or situation ethics. Josh McDowell
Josh McDowell
Joslin "Josh" McDowell is a Christian apologist, evangelist, and writer. He is within the Evangelical tradition of Protestant Christianity, and is the author or co-author of some 77 books. His best-known book is Evidence That Demands a Verdict, which was ranked 13th in Christianity Today's list of...
& Bob Hostetler offer the following definition of postmodernism: “A worldview characterized by the belief that truth doesn’t exist in any objective sense but is created rather than discovered.”… Truth is “created by the specific culture and exists only in that culture. Therefore, any system or statement that tries to communicate truth is a power play, an effort to dominate other cultures.”
Many philosophical movements reject both modernity and postmodernity as healthy states of being. Some of these are associated with cultural and religious conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
that views postmodernity as a rejection of basic spiritual or natural truths and in its emphasis on material and physical pleasure an explicit rejection of inner balance and spirituality. Many of these critiques attack specifically the tendency to the "abandonment of objective truth" as the crucial unacceptable feature of the postmodern condition and often aim to offer a meta-narrative that provides this truth.
Meaningless or disingenuous
Critiques of postmodernism can be found in Beyond the HoaxBeyond the Hoax
Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy, and Culture is a book by Alan Sokal detailing the history of the Sokal affair in which he submitted an article full of "nonsense" to Social Text, a critical theory journal, and was able to get it published....
and Fashionable Nonsense
Fashionable Nonsense
Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science is a book by professors Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont...
, by professors Alan Sokal
Alan Sokal
Alan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in...
and Jean Bricmont
Jean Bricmont
Jean Bricmont is a Belgian theoretical physicist, philosopher of science and a professor at the Université catholique de Louvain. He works on renormalization group and nonlinear differential equations....
.
The criticism of elements of postmodernism as sophism
Sophism
Sophism in the modern definition is a specious argument used for deceiving someone. In ancient Greece, sophists were a category of teachers who specialized in using the tools of philosophy and rhetoric for the purpose of teaching aretê — excellence, or virtue — predominantly to young statesmen and...
or obscurantism
Obscurantism
Obscurantism is the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or the full details of some matter from becoming known. There are two, common, historical and intellectual, denotations: 1) restricting knowledge—opposition to the spread of knowledge, a policy of withholding knowledge from the...
was played out in the Sokal Affair
Sokal Affair
The Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax, was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies...
, where Alan Sokal
Alan Sokal
Alan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in...
, a physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
, delivered for publication an article about interpreting physics and mathematics in terms of postmodern theory, which he had deliberately written to mock postmodernist views on objectivity, determinism and the social construction of scientific truth. It was published by Social Text
Social Text
Social Text is an academic journal published by Duke University Press. Since its inception as an independent editorial collective in 1979, Social Text has addressed a wide range of social and cultural phenomena, covering questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment...
, a cultural studies journal active in the field of postmodernism. Sokal arranged for the simultaneous publication of another article describing the former as a successful experiment to see whether a postmodernist journal would publish it, triggering an academic scandal. Sokal later published a book with Jean Bricmont
Jean Bricmont
Jean Bricmont is a Belgian theoretical physicist, philosopher of science and a professor at the Université catholique de Louvain. He works on renormalization group and nonlinear differential equations....
called Intellectual Impostures, which expands upon his criticism of postmodernism.
Criticisms of the postmodern condition can be placed in four broad categories: those who reject modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
and its offshoots, criticisms from supporters of modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
who believe that postmodernity lacks crucial characteristics of the modern project, critics from within postmodernity who seek reform or change based on their understanding of postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
, and those who believe that postmodernity is a passing, and not a growing, phase in social organization.
The linguist Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
has suggested that postmodernism is meaningless because it adds nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge. He asks why postmodernist intellectuals won't respond as "people in physics, math, biology, linguistics, and other fields are happy to do when someone asks them, seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc? These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames."
Apologists for postmodernism claim that such critiques result not from faith in traditional authority but from a belief that objective knowledge must be obtainable either in all domains or in no domain. As such domains as physics and chemistry are not seriously taken as subjective or relative in postmodernity it follows that ethics, politics, and the good life in general are not relative or subjective either. This view has been mentioned by Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
Allan David Bloom was an American philosopher, classicist, and academic. He studied under David Grene, Leo Strauss, Richard McKeon and Alexandre Kojève. He subsequently taught at Cornell University, the University of Toronto, Yale University, École Normale Supérieure of Paris, and the University...
. However, as Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
argues in his review of Sokal and Bricmont's book, the crux of this critique of postmodernism lies not in epistemological musings, but in the high probability that fuzzy language, opaque jargon and directionless arguments are hallmarks of "mountebanks and charlatans" who actually have "nothing to say."
Subsidiary historical moment
The criticisms of postmodernism are often complicated by the still-fluid nature of the term , and in many cases the criticisms are clearly directed at poststructuralism and the philosophical and academic movements that it has spawned rather than the broader term postmodernism .Critic Timothy Bewes called postmodernity "an historical blip", a "cynical reaction" against the Enlightenment, and against the progress of the modern project. This view, that features attributed to postmodernity are "kitsch", a turning away from fundamental deep structure and uncompromising progress, is one which is leveled by art critic Robert Hughes as well. From this viewpoint postmodernity is a subsidiary historical moment in a larger modern period. James Fowler argues that postmodernity is characterized by the "loss of conviction"; Grenz and Seidner concur, saying that postmodernity is a period of pessimism contrasting with modernity's optimism.
However the most influential proponent of this critique, Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
, contends that all responses to modernity abandon either the critical or rational element in philosophy and that the postmodern condition is one of self-deception over the uncompleted nature of the modern project. He argues that without critical and rational traditions society cannot value the individual and social structures will tend towards totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
. From his perspective universalism
Universality (philosophy)
In philosophy, universalism is a doctrine or school claiming universal facts can be discovered and is therefore understood as being in opposition to relativism. In certain religions, universality is the quality ascribed to an entity whose existence is consistent throughout the universe...
is the fundamental requirement for any rational criticism and to abandon this is to abandon the liberalising
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
reforms of the last two centuries. Postmodernists including Lyotard and Stanley Fish
Stanley Fish
Stanley Eugene Fish is an American literary theorist and legal scholar. He was born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island...
see Habermas as desiring to rationalise universalism and argue that the entire critique rests on the modernists' insufficient faith in social mechanisms.
Political aspects
Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
rejected the label of postmodernism explicitly in interviews but is seen by many to advocate a form of critique that is "postmodern" in that it breaks with the utopian and transcendental nature of "modern" critique by calling universal norms of the Enlightenment into question. Giddens (1990) rejects this characterisation of modern critique by pointing out that a critique of Enlightenment universals were central to philosophers of the modern period, most notably Nietzsche. What counts as "postmodern" is a stake in political struggles where the method of critique is at issue. The recurring themes of these debates are between essentialism and anti-foundationalism, universalism and relativism, where enlightenment thinking is seen to represent the former and postmodernism the latter. This is why theorists as diverse as Nietzsche, Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
, Foucault, Derrida, and Butler
Judith Butler
Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
have been labeled "postmodern", not because they formed a historical intellectual grouping but because they are seen by their critics to reject the possibility of universal, normative and ethical judgments. With some exceptions (e.g. Jameson
Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson is an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends—he once described postmodernism as the spatialization of culture under the pressure of organized capitalism...
and Lyotard
Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-François Lyotard was a French philosopher and literary theorist. He is well known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and the analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition...
), many thinkers who are considered 'postmodern' or 'poststructuralist' see these characterizations merely as labels of convenience and reject them altogether.
Marxist critique
Alex CallinicosAlex Callinicos
Alexander Theodore Callinicos is a Trotskyist political theorist, a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party and its International Secretary, and is Director of the Centre for European Studies at King's College London...
, a leading member of the British Socialist Workers Party
Socialist Workers Party (Britain)
The Socialist Workers Party is a far left party in Britain founded by Tony Cliff. The SWP's student section has groups at a number of universities...
, argued against what he calls "the idealist irrationalism of poststructuralism", the "existence of any radical break" from modernism to postmodernism, and the socio-economic developments of the late 80s and early 90s (the height of postmodernism's popularity) actually representing "any fundamental shift from classical patterns of capital accumulation
Surplus value
Surplus value is a concept used famously by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. Although Marx did not himself invent the term, he developed the concept...
."
Callinicos attacks notable postmodern thinkers such as Baudrillard and Lyotard, arguing postmodernism "reflects the disappointed revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
generation of '68, (particularly those of May 68) and the incorporation of many of its members into the professional and managerial 'new middle class'. It is best read as a symptom of political frustration and social mobility
Social mobility
Social mobility refers to the movement of people in a population from one social class or economic level to another. It typically refers to vertical mobility -- movement of individuals or groups up from one socio-economic level to another, often by changing jobs or marrying; but can also refer to...
rather than as a significant intellectual or cultural phenomenon in its own right."
Art historian John Molyneux
John Molyneux
John Molyneux VC was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.-Details:...
, also of the Socialist Workers Party, accuses postmodernists for "singing an old song long intoned by bourgeois historians of various persuasions".
Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson is an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends—he once described postmodernism as the spatialization of culture under the pressure of organized capitalism...
, American literary critic and Marxist political theorist, attacks postmodernism (or poststructuralism), what he claims is "the cultural logic of late capitalism," for its refusal to critically engage with the metanarratives of capitalization and globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
. The refusal renders postmodernist philosophy complicit with the prevailing relations of domination and exploitation
Wage slavery
Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person's livelihood depends on wages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a negatively connoted term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor, and to highlight similarities between owning and employing a person...
.
Sherry Wolf
Sherry Wolf (activist)
For the American surrealist painter and designer, see Sherry Wolf .Sherry Wolf is an American revolutionary socialist, Jewish anti-Zionist, independent journalist and author. Openly lesbian, she was on the Executive Committee for the LGBT National Equality March for full civil rights in October 2009...
, a leading member of the American International Socialist Organization
International Socialist Organization
The International Socialist Organization is a revolutionary socialist organization in the United States that identifies with the politics of International Socialism, a current of Trotskyism, and the Marxist political tradition that American socialist writer and activist Hal Draper called...
dismisses postmodernist theories as a way to fight for gay liberation
Gay Liberation
Gay liberation is the name used to describe the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement of the late 1960s and early to mid 1970s in North America, Western Europe, and Australia and New Zealand...
in her 2009 publication, Sexuality and Socialism.
Critiques within postmodernism
The range of critiques of the postmodern condition from those who generally accept it is quite broad and impossible to summarise. One criticism levelled at postmodernity from within is expressed by author David Foster WallaceDavid Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...
, who argues that the trend towards more and more ironic and referential artistic expression has reached a limit and that a movement back towards "sincerity" is required on which the artist actually speaks with an intended, concrete, static meaning.
Certain criticisms also focus on the fact that postmodernism lacks a coherent rhetorical theory. "Consequently, a theory will always fail to make good on its claim to provide a set of rules independent of the practice it describes; and because a theory will always fail in its goal to guide and reform practice, it therefore, by definition, can have no consequence."