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> they identified genuine problems and self-contradictions in the preceding traditions Could you give examples of some of the problems and self-contradictions

> they identified genuine problems and self-contradictions in the preceding traditions Could you give examples of some of the problems and self-contradictions that postmodernism identified? The most important lesson for literary criticism, as far as I (very vaguely) remember, was an emphasis on intertextuality, which downplayed the role of individual author (Barthes' "death of the author"), and thus downplayed authority of the author. It may be one way of looking at things; although not particularly productive and known to previous literary scholars, especially those who had been studying folklore. > inspired most of all by Nietzsche The will to power, you mean? Is there a textual link between Nietzsche and the founders of postmodernism?

dang 6y ago
The death of the author became a fashionable trope but it wasn't the central idea—more a corollary. The postmodernists worshipped Nietzsche; he was their lodestar. (There are many textual links, but I'm a long way out of grad school—someone else will have to provide them). If you think of Foucault's concentration on the topic of power, that's entirely in the Nietzschean line. The postmodernists were mostly following through on the explosion that Nietzsche and Freud wrought on Western ideas of rationality and objectivity. I started writing a comment about this when I saw the thread, but could feel it starting to turn into more of an essay, and that's not a good thing at 3am. I remember going to see Derrida when he came to Stanford shortly after 9/11. It was impossible to understand a single thing he was saying—I have a funny story about that for another time. (Edit: turns out I posted it years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=341350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=341350) And yet...for all the obscurantism and bullshit, the Sokal hoax and everything else—I came to the conclusion that the postmodernists touched something deeper than their critics, something which we have yet to reckon with. The real problem with the postmodernists is not that their texts are full of ornate bullshit (look up the story about Searle asking Foucault why he can't just write straightforwardly, and Foucault saying no one in Paris would take him seriously if he did). The real problem is that their program is only negative. Unless I missed it, they never point to anything new. After deconstructing all the self-contradictory things that humans call knowledge, they have no recommendation for what anybody should actually do. They reach the limits of the human, at which point the only answer is spiritual—but having rejected any possibility of spirit, they end up with nothing. Or, to put it in a different way: deconstruction is fine, but what are you adding? Or another way: criticism, even consummate criticism, isn't enough. (Edit: I found another old comment about this - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=713432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=713432) p.s. I didn't answer your question about examples. It's not so easy to give clear examples, because the postmodern analysis isn't definitive on isolated data points—it's more a preponderance-of-the-evidence thing. Also, it's been a large and unspecified number of years since I worked with this material.
- azangru 6y ago
  > After deconstructing all the self-contradictory things that humans call knowledge And yet we proceed, at least in STEM subjects, with the epistemological methods that we trust and that we believe to work, as if postmodernists didn't happen. They may have influenced the politics of science, or the philosophy of science, but they have not changed a thing about how scientific or engineering knowledge is acquired.
  - dang 6y ago
    I think that if we could zoom out to a more historical perspective, things would probably look different. History isn't linear and overlapping things are always going on at the same time. The new coexists with the old. It's true that most practitioners of scientific and engineering knowledge don't give a fig about what the postmodernists had to say, but it doesn't follow that the postmodern critique is without effect. It would be interesting to know who 'wins' a hundred years from now. I wouldn't bet on the practitioners of scientific and engineering knowledge as we know it today.
    - azangru 6y ago
      > It's true that the practitioners of scientific and engineering knowledge don't give a fig about what the postmodernists had to say, but it doesn't follow that the postmodern critique is without effect. Are there historical examples when radical philosophical scepticism changed the way science is done? Descartes, with his "evil demon", Hume, the solipsism of George Berkeley — they all have valid points, and they all have pointed out contradictions in things we call knowledge, with sufficient force to have been immortalised in textbooks on the history of philosophy, but they haven't changed the practice of engineering and science, I don't think.
      - orwin 6y ago
        Depends of your definition of science, but historical science definitely changed in the 70s. Was it under the inflence of postmodernists or skeptics? Was it by comparison to other scientific fields? Was it because historian now had real formations?

dang 6y ago

The death of the author became a fashionable trope but it wasn't the central idea—more a corollary. The postmodernists worshipped Nietzsche; he was their lodestar. (There are many textual links, but I'm a long way out of grad school—someone else will have to provide them). If you think of Foucault's concentration on the topic of power, that's entirely in the Nietzschean line. The postmodernists were mostly following through on the explosion that Nietzsche and Freud wrought on Western ideas of rationality and objectivity. I started writing a comment about this when I saw the thread, but could feel it starting to turn into more of an essay, and that's not a good thing at 3am. I remember going to see Derrida when he came to Stanford shortly after 9/11. It was impossible to understand a single thing he was saying—I have a funny story about that for another time. (Edit: turns out I posted it years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=341350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=341350) And yet...for all the obscurantism and bullshit, the Sokal hoax and everything else—I came to the conclusion that the postmodernists touched something deeper than their critics, something which we have yet to reckon with. The real problem with the postmodernists is not that their texts are full of ornate bullshit (look up the story about Searle asking Foucault why he can't just write straightforwardly, and Foucault saying no one in Paris would take him seriously if he did). The real problem is that their program is only negative. Unless I missed it, they never point to anything new. After deconstructing all the self-contradictory things that humans call knowledge, they have no recommendation for what anybody should actually do. They reach the limits of the human, at which point the only answer is spiritual—but having rejected any possibility of spirit, they end up with nothing. Or, to put it in a different way: deconstruction is fine, but what are you adding? Or another way: criticism, even consummate criticism, isn't enough. (Edit: I found another old comment about this - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=713432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=713432) p.s. I didn't answer your question about examples. It's not so easy to give clear examples, because the postmodern analysis isn't definitive on isolated data points—it's more a preponderance-of-the-evidence thing. Also, it's been a large and unspecified number of years since I worked with this material.

azangru 6y ago
> After deconstructing all the self-contradictory things that humans call knowledge And yet we proceed, at least in STEM subjects, with the epistemological methods that we trust and that we believe to work, as if postmodernists didn't happen. They may have influenced the politics of science, or the philosophy of science, but they have not changed a thing about how scientific or engineering knowledge is acquired.
- dang 6y ago
  I think that if we could zoom out to a more historical perspective, things would probably look different. History isn't linear and overlapping things are always going on at the same time. The new coexists with the old. It's true that most practitioners of scientific and engineering knowledge don't give a fig about what the postmodernists had to say, but it doesn't follow that the postmodern critique is without effect. It would be interesting to know who 'wins' a hundred years from now. I wouldn't bet on the practitioners of scientific and engineering knowledge as we know it today.
  - azangru 6y ago
    > It's true that the practitioners of scientific and engineering knowledge don't give a fig about what the postmodernists had to say, but it doesn't follow that the postmodern critique is without effect. Are there historical examples when radical philosophical scepticism changed the way science is done? Descartes, with his "evil demon", Hume, the solipsism of George Berkeley — they all have valid points, and they all have pointed out contradictions in things we call knowledge, with sufficient force to have been immortalised in textbooks on the history of philosophy, but they haven't changed the practice of engineering and science, I don't think.
    - orwin 6y ago
      Depends of your definition of science, but historical science definitely changed in the 70s. Was it under the inflence of postmodernists or skeptics? Was it by comparison to other scientific fields? Was it because historian now had real formations?