Commentary

The Class of Low Expectations

The nonlinear logic and nonsensical conclusions of liberal ideology are not just evident in postmodernist thought-it's omnipresent.

To transform the philosophy curriculum into a wasteland takes a lot of hard work. The postmodern philosophers worked hard and they can be proud of that achievement. Congratulations: philosophy is dead. What was not achieved by the common idiots of all the previous centuries was accomplished by the 'high'-minded and prestigious class of postmodern intellectuals.

Who are the postmoderns?

There are many routes to idiocy and the postmoderns want to explore them all. We can rather talk about the postmodern disposition. Certain ways of looking, examining and analyzing things. One main characteristic of the postmodern cult is their determination to introduce 'new,' 'revolutionary' ideas. For example, "objective truth is a chimera." Why? Because the "underlying structure is that which determines social reality." All facts are not facts, and truth doesn't exist. One only has to ask Lacan or Derrida if that statement is true. The situation gets even worse when those philosophers go into detail. Thus Braudillard argues that basic needs like that of food, shelter and clothing are creations of the social structure. Another characteristic of postmodernism is their appetite for mixing up theories in the most ambiguous and arbitrary way.

The worst usually happens when they try to use science to back up their 'arguments.' In the book of Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense, case after case is uncovered. The authors write that they wanted to "show that famous intellectuals such as Lacan, Kristeva, Irigaray, Baudrillard, and Deleuze have repeatedly abused scientific concepts and terminology: either using scientific ideas totally out of context, without giving the slightest justification," "or throwing around scientific jargon in front of their non-scientist reader without any regard for its relevance or even its meaning."

When the postmoderns don't abuse science, they abuse everything else. The most preferable theoretical mix is usually some de Saussure, some Freud and a bit of Marx. Of course, de Saussure is used so to uncover the evil workings of language, Freud to add something to that and Marx to finish it up. When all is done, the 'philosopher' in question, will serve it, in the most unnecessarily complex way possible. Without a doubt they'll say, it's all for good reason. To explain complexities you need complex ideas. But what oftentimes one will find under these complex ideas is:

a) thoughts that in a simpler form would appear totally arbitrary, ambiguous or sheer nonsense, or

b) truisms. To avoid that, the postmoderns refuse to participate in a dialogue of any form. Thus Derrida refuses to define deconstruction, a major idea of the postmodern cult, whose creator he is. Why? Because defining it would at best miss the point of the whole thing. Why these inquisition people didn't think that line of argumentation? It seems like that the ecclesiastic tribunal was too soft.

Finally, another major characteristic of the postmodern cult is their style of writing. Briefly we could say that there is a persistent preference for the general, abstract and vague against the specific, concrete and definite. Obscurity is a goddess in whose altar every damn page should be sacrificed. The words must preferably be longer, foreign and most importantly needless. ,p> Metaphors are always to be more puzzling than the ideas they are supposed to help clarify. For the poor quality of postmodern 'philosophy' responsible it's not only the obscure radicalism that the postmoderns suffer. It's also their willingness to exhibit a new role, that of celebrity. But not exactly like the common celebrity, that's too "depthless." Instead they form a new kind of species, the primetime intellectual. You'll find them oftentimes quoted in the back pages of a popular magazine, a side note for a talk show, and the unread book in the home library of the chattering class. It is a prestige good for all of those who consume them. That's possible because the postmoderns have portrayed themselves as an different kind of intellectual. An intellectual who can talk about everything with the sense of knowing everything. The intellectual who has the depth of a poet, the precision of a mathematician, the passions of a revolutionary and the elegance of an aristocrat. They portray to be exactly what they are not.

But it's all just fine in the modern academy. An academy these days full of writers who write about other writers, dissertation upon dissertation concerning some specifics of another dissertation. We could find the whole thing in E Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, where "A cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste." It's not a surprise then that once the postmoderns detested the products of mass culture as another "deterrence model" (something that produces conformity) while today many of them really appreciate them. It could have seemed inevitable since being what they are, they have subscribed to the postmodern dogma: Why bother with reality when you can ignore it?

Napoleon Linardatos, our resident intellectual, sure is cleaning up in this issue of the Oregon Commentator. This is #2.