News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Is there such a thing as good taste? by foldr on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @07:25AM (#29239715)
I don't think it's quite right to think of postmodermism as an 'anti-version' of modernism. To the extent that postmodernism is a single identifiable thing at all, it's a tendency that developed partly as a reaction against the idea of all-encompassing systems of thought. Antimodermism would be something different: a definite belief in the negation of the key theses of modernism. There's no Nicene Creed of postmodernism. Postmodernism is the mess you get when people stop even looking for that kind of foundation.

For this reason, I don't think you can really refute postmodernism simply by having some kind of direct experience of reality of the sort you were listing – as if postmodernists explicitly deny the primacy of these sorts of experiences. Postmodernists would only contend that a system of thought based on the primacy of such experiences is no more inherently valid or universally applicable than a system of thought with some other basis. (Though of course that is a very trite slogan, and I am not suggesting that all 'postmodern' thinkers would express things in those terms, or even agree at all.)

Understandably, people who don't like postmodern tendencies in thought want to find a definite definition of postmodernism to argue against. But as soon as you cast postmodernism as a particular doctrine that makes particular claims, it's no longer postmodernism.

There are no comments on this comment yet.