Postmodern That Now – Summary Notes

Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse characterized by skepticism

toward the "grand narratives" of modernism, opposition to epistemic certainty or stability of
meaning, and emphasis on ideology as a means of maintaining political power. Claims to
objective fact are dismissed as naïve realism, with attention drawn to the conditional nature of
knowledge claims within particular historical, political, and cultural discourses. The postmodern
outlook is characterized by self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism,
pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism; it rejects the "universal validity" of binary
oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization.

Initially emerging from a mode of literary criticism, postmodernism developed in the mid-
twentieth century as a rejection of modernism and has been observed across many disciplines.
Postmodernism is associated with the disciplines deconstruction and post-structuralism.
Various authors have criticized postmodernism as promoting obscurantism, as abandoning
Enlightenment rationalism and scientific rigor, and as adding nothing to analytical or empirical
knowledge.

Definition
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse which challenges worldviews
associated with Enlightenment rationality dating back to the 17th century. Postmodernism is
associated with relativism and a focus on ideology in the maintenance of economic and political
power. Postmodernists are "skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups,
cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person". It
considers "reality" to be a mental construct. Postmodernism rejects the possibility of
unmediated reality or objectively-rational knowledge, asserting that all interpretations are
contingent on the perspective from which they are made; claims to objective fact are dismissed
as naive realism.

Postmodern thinkers frequently describe knowledge claims and value systems as contingent or
socially-conditioned, describing them as products of political, historical, or cultural discourses
and hierarchies. Accordingly, postmodern thought is broadly characterized by tendencies to
self-referentiality, epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, and irreverence.
Postmodernism is often associated with schools of thought such as deconstruction and post-
structuralism. Postmodernism relies on critical theory, which considers the effects of ideology,
society, and history on culture. Postmodernism and critical theory commonly criticize
universalist ideas of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, language, and
social progress.

Initially, postmodernism was a mode of discourse on literature and literary criticism,

commenting on the nature of literary text, meaning, author and reader, writing, and reading.
Postmodernism developed in the mid- to late-twentieth century across many scholarly
disciplines as a departure or rejection of modernism. As a critical practice, postmodernism
employs concepts such as hyperreality, simulacrum, trace, and difference, and rejects abstract
principles in favor of direct experience.

Origins of term
The term postmodern was first used in 1870. John Watkins Chapman suggested "a Postmodern
style of painting" as a way to depart from French Impressionism. J. M. Thompson, in his 1914
article in The Hibbert Journal (a quarterly philosophical review), used it to describe changes in
attitudes and beliefs in the critique of religion, writing: "The raison d'être of Post-Modernism is
to escape from the double-mindedness of Modernism by being thorough in its criticism by
extending it to religion as well as theology, to Catholic feeling as well as to Catholic tradition."

In 1942 H. R. Hays described postmodernism as a new literary form.

In 1926, Bernard Iddings Bell, president of St. Stephen's College (now Bard College), published
Postmodernism and Other Essays, marking the first use of the term to describe the historical
period following Modernity. The essay criticizes the lingering socio-cultural norms, attitudes,
and practices of the Age of Enlightenment. It also forecasts the major cultural shifts toward
Postmodernity and (Bell being an Anglican Episcopal priest) suggests orthodox religion as a
solution. However, the term postmodernity was first used as a general theory for a historical
movement in 1939 by Arnold J. Toynbee: "Our own Post-Modern Age has been inaugurated by
the general war of 1914–1918".

In 1949 the term was used to describe a dissatisfaction with modern architecture and led to the
postmodern architecture movement in response to the modernist architectural movement
known as the International Style. Postmodernism in architecture was initially marked by a re-
emergence of surface ornament, reference to surrounding buildings in urban settings, historical
reference in decorative forms (eclecticism), and non-orthogonal angles.
Author Peter Drucker suggested the transformation into a post-modern world that happened
between 1937 and 1957 and described it as a "nameless era" characterized as a shift to a
conceptual world based on pattern, purpose, and process rather than a mechanical cause. This
shift was outlined by four new realities: the emergence of an Educated Society, the importance
of international development, the decline of the nation-state, and the collapse of the viability of
non-Western cultures.

In 1971, in a lecture delivered at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, Mel Bochner
described "post-modernism" in art as having started with Jasper Johns, "who first rejected
sense-data and the singular point-of-view as the basis for his art, and treated art as a critical
investigation".

In 1996, Walter Truett Anderson described postmodernism as belonging to one of four

typological world views which he identified as:

Neo-romantic, in which truth is found through attaining harmony with nature or spiritual
exploration of the inner self. Postmodern-ironist, which sees truth as socially constructed.
Scientific-rational, in which truth is defined through methodical, disciplined inquiry. Social-
traditional, in which truth is found in the heritage of American and Western civilization.
History
The basic features of what is now called postmodernism can be found as early as the 1940s,
most notably in the work of artists such as Jorge Luis Borges. However, most scholars today
agree postmodernism began to compete with modernism in the late 1950s and gained
ascendancy over it in the 1960s.

The primary features of postmodernism typically include the ironic play with styles, citations,
and narrative levels, a metaphysical skepticism or nihilism towards a "grand narrative" of
Western culture, and a preference for the virtual at the expense of the Real (or more
accurately, a fundamental questioning of what 'the real' constitutes).

Since the late 1990s, there has been a growing sentiment in popular culture and in academia
that postmodernism "has gone out of fashion". Others argue that postmodernism is dead in the
context of current cultural production.
Theories and derivatives
Structuralism and post-structuralism
Structuralism was a philosophical movement developed by French academics in the 1950s,
partly in response to French existentialism, and often interpreted in relation to modernism and
high modernism. Thinkers who have been called "structuralists" include the anthropologist
Claude Lévi-Strauss, the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, the Marxist philosopher Louis
Althusser, and the semiotician Algirdas Greimas. The early writings of the psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan and the literary theorist Roland Barthes have also been called "structuralist".
Those who began as structuralists but became post-structuralists include Michel Foucault,
Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, and Gilles Deleuze. Other post-structuralists include Jacques
Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-François Lyotard, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, and Luce Irigaray.
The American cultural theorists, critics, and intellectuals whom they influenced include Judith
Butler, John Fiske, Rosalind Krauss, Avital Ronell, and Hayden White.

Like structuralists, post-structuralists start from the assumption that people's identities, values,
and economic conditions determine each other rather than having intrinsic properties that can
be understood in isolation. Thus the French structuralists considered themselves to be
espousing relativism and constructionism. But they nevertheless tended to explore how the
subjects of their study might be described, reductively, as a set of essential relationships,
schematics, or mathematical symbols. (An example is Claude Lévi-Strauss's algebraic
formulation of mythological transformation in "The Structural Study of Myth").

Postmodernism entails reconsideration of the entire Western value system (love, marriage,
popular culture, shift from an industrial to a service economy) that took place since the 1950s
and 1960s, with a peak in the Social Revolution of 1968—are described with the term
postmodernity, as opposed to postmodernism, a term referring to an opinion or movement.
Post-structuralism is characterized by new ways of thinking through structuralism, contrary to
the original form.

Deconstruction
One of the most well-known postmodernist concerns is deconstruction, a theory for
philosophy, literary criticism, and textual analysis developed by Jacques Derrida. Critics have
insisted that Derrida's work is rooted in a statement found in Of Grammatology: "Il n'y a pas de
hors-texte" ('there is nothing outside the text'). Such critics misinterpret the statement as
denying any reality outside of books. The statement is actually part of a critique of "inside" and
"outside" metaphors when referring to the text, and is a corollary to the observation that there
is no "inside" of a text as well. This attention to a text's unacknowledged reliance on metaphors
and figures embedded within its discourse is characteristic of Derrida's approach. Derrida's
method sometimes involves demonstrating that a given philosophical discourse depends on
binary oppositions or excluding terms that the discourse itself has declared to be irrelevant or
inapplicable. Derrida's philosophy inspired a postmodern movement called deconstructivism
among architects, characterized by a design that rejects structural "centers" and encourages
decentralized play among its elements. Derrida discontinued his involvement with the
movement after the publication of his collaborative project with architect Peter Eisenman in
Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman.

Post-postmodernism
The connection between postmodernism, posthumanism, and cyborgism has led to a challenge
to postmodernism, for which the terms Post-postmodernism and postpoststructuralism were
first coined in 2003:

In some sense, we may regard postmodernism, posthumanism, poststructuralism, etc., as being

of the 'cyborg age' of mind over body. Deconference was an exploration in post-cyborgism (i.e.
what comes after the postcorporeal era), and thus explored issues of postpostmodernism,
postpoststructuralism, and the like. To understand this transition from 'pomo' (cyborgism) to
'popo' (postcyborgism) we must first understand the cyborg era itself.

More recently metamodernism, post-postmodernism and the "death of postmodernism" have

been widely debated: in 2007 Andrew Hoberek noted in his introduction to a special issue of
the journal Twentieth-Century Literature titled "After Postmodernism" that "declarations of
postmodernism's demise have become a critical commonplace". A small group of critics has put
forth a range of theories that aim to describe culture or society in the alleged aftermath of
postmodernism, most notably Raoul Eshelman (performatism), Gilles Lipovetsky
(hypermodernity), Nicolas Bourriaud (altermodern), and Alan Kirby (digimodernism, formerly
called pseudo-modernism). None of these new theories or labels have so far gained very
widespread acceptance. Sociocultural anthropologist Nina Müller-Schwarze offers
neostructuralism as a possible direction. The exhibition Postmodernism – Style and Subversion
1970–1990 at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 24 September 2011 – 15 January 2012)
was billed as the first show to document postmodernism as a historical movement.

Philosophy
In the 1970s a group of poststructuralists in France developed a radical critique of modern
philosophy with roots discernible in Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, and became known
as postmodern theorists, notably including Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-François
Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, and others. New and challenging modes of thought and writing
pushed the development of new areas and topics in philosophy. By the 1980s, this spread to
America (Richard Rorty) and the world.

Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French-Algerian philosopher best known for developing a form of
semiotic analysis known as deconstruction, which he discussed in numerous texts, and
developed in the context of phenomenology. He is one of the major figures associated with
post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy.

Derrida re-examined the fundamentals of writing and its consequences on philosophy in

general; sought to undermine the language of "presence" or metaphysics in an analytical
technique which, beginning as a point of departure from Heidegger's notion of Destruktion,
came to be known as deconstruction.

Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, and literary critic.
First associated with structuralism, Foucault created an oeuvre that today is seen as belonging
to post-structuralism and to postmodern philosophy. Considered a leading figure of French
theory [fr], his work remains fruitful in the English-speaking academic world in a large number
of sub-disciplines. The Times Higher Education Guide described him in 2009 as the most cited
author in the humanities.

Michel Foucault introduced concepts such as discursive regime, or re-invoked those of older
philosophers like episteme and genealogy in order to explain the relationship between
meaning, power, and social behavior within social orders (see The Order of Things, The
Archaeology of Knowledge, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality).

Jean-François Lyotard
Influenced by Nietzsche, Jean-François Lyotard is credited with being the first to use the term in
a philosophical context, in his 1979 work The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. In
it, he follows Wittgenstein's language games model and speech act theory, contrasting two
different language games, that of the expert, and that of the philosopher. He talks about the
transformation of knowledge into information in the computer age and likens the transmission
or reception of coded messages (information) to a position within a language game.

Lyotard defined philosophical postmodernism in The Postmodern Condition, writing:

"Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives...." 
where what he means by metanarrative is something like a unified, complete, universal, and
epistemically certain story about everything that is. Postmodernists reject metanarratives
because they reject the concept of truth that metanarratives presuppose. Postmodernist
philosophers, in general, argue that truth is always contingent on historical and social context
rather than being absolute and universal—and that truth is always partial and "at issue" rather
than being complete and certain.

Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty argues in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature that contemporary analytic
philosophy mistakenly imitates scientific methods. In addition, he denounces the traditional
epistemological perspectives of representationalism and correspondence theory that rely upon
the independence of knowers and observers from phenomena and the passivity of natural
phenomena in relation to consciousness.

Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard, in Simulacra and Simulation, introduced the concept that reality or the
principle of the Real is short-circuited by the interchangeability of signs in an era whose
communicative and semantic acts are dominated by electronic media and digital technologies.
For Baudrillard, "simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It
is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal."

Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson set forth one of the first expansive theoretical treatments of postmodernism
as a historical period, intellectual trend, and social phenomenon in a series of lectures at the
Whitney Museum, later expanded as Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
(1991).
Douglas Kellner
In Analysis of the Journey, a journal birthed from postmodernism, Douglas Kellner insists that
the "assumptions and procedures of modern theory" must be forgotten. Extensively, Kellner
analyzes the terms of this theory in real-life experiences and examples. Kellner used science
and technology studies as a major part of his analysis; he urged that the theory is incomplete
without it. The scale was larger than just postmodernism alone; it must be interpreted through
cultural studies where science and technology studies play a huge role. The reality of the
September 11 attacks on the United States of America is the catalyst for his explanation. In
response, Kellner continues to examine the repercussions of understanding the effects of the
11 September attacks. He questions if the attacks are only able to be understood in a limited
form of postmodern theory due to the level of irony.

The conclusion he depicts is simple: postmodernism, as most use it today, will decide what
experiences and signs in one's reality will be one's reality as they know it.

Manifestations
Architecture
Modern Architecture, as established and developed by Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, was
focused on:

the attempted harmony of form and function; and, the dismissal of "frivolous ornament."[page
needed] the pursuit of a perceived ideal perfection;
They argued for architecture that represented the spirit of the age as depicted in cutting-edge
technology, be it airplanes, cars, ocean liners, or even supposedly artless grain silos. Modernist
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is associated with the phrase "less is more".

Critics of Modernism have:

argued that the attributes of perfection and minimalism are themselves subjective; pointed out
anachronisms in modern thought; and, questioned the benefits of its philosophy.[full citation
needed]
The intellectual scholarship regarding postmodernism and architecture is closely linked with the
writings of critic-turned-architect Charles Jencks, beginning with lectures in the early 1970s and
his essay "The Rise of Post Modern Architecture" from 1975. His magnum opus, however, is the
book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, first published in 1977, and since running to
seven editions. Jencks makes the point that Post-Modernism (like Modernism) varies for each
field of art, and that for architecture it is not just a reaction to Modernism but what he terms
double coding: "Double Coding: the combination of Modern techniques with something else
(usually traditional building) in order for architecture to communicate with the public and a
concerned minority, usually other architects." In their book, "Revisiting Postmodernism", Terry
Farrell and Adam Furman argue that postmodernism brought a more joyous and sensual
experience to the culture, particularly in architecture.

Art
Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of
modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. Cultural production
manifesting as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art, deconstructionist display, and
multimedia, particularly involving video, are described as postmodern.

Graphic design
Early mention of postmodernism as an element of graphic design appeared in the British
magazine, "Design". A characteristic of postmodern graphic design is that "retro, techno, punk,
grunge, beach, parody, and pastiche were all conspicuous trends. Each had its own sites and
venues, detractors and advocates."

Literature
Jorge Luis Borges' (1939) short story "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote", is often
considered as predicting postmodernism and is a paragon of the ultimate parody.Samuel
Beckett is also considered an important precursor and influence. Novelists who are commonly
connected with postmodern literature include Vladimir Nabokov, William Gaddis, Umberto Eco,
Pier Vittorio Tondelli, John Hawkes, William S. Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, John Barth, Jean
Rhys, Donald Barthelme, E. L. Doctorow, Richard Kalich, Jerzy Kosiński, Don DeLillo, Thomas
Pynchon (Pynchon's work has also been described as high modern), Ishmael Reed, Kathy Acker,
Ana Lydia Vega, Jáchym Topol and Paul Auster.

In 1971, the American scholar Ihab Hassan published The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward
a Postmodern Literature, an early work of literary criticism from a postmodern perspective that
traces the development of what he calls "literature of silence" through Marquis de Sade, Franz
Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, and many others, including developments such as
the Theatre of the Absurd and the nouveau roman.

In Postmodernist Fiction (1987), Brian McHale details the shift from modernism to
postmodernism, arguing that the former is characterized by an epistemological dominant and
that postmodern works have developed out of modernism and are primarily concerned with
questions of ontology. McHale's second book, Constructing Postmodernism (1992), provides
readings of postmodern fiction and some contemporary writers who go under the label of
cyberpunk. McHale's "What Was Postmodernism?" (2007) follows Raymond Federman's lead in
now using the past tense when discussing postmodernism.

Music
Jonathan Kramer has written that avant-garde musical compositions (which some would
consider modernist rather than postmodernist) "defy more than seduce the listener, and they
extend by potentially unsettling means the very idea of what music is." In the 1960s, composers
such as Terry Riley, Henryk Górecki, Bradley Joseph, John Adams, Steve Reich, Philip Glass,
Michael Nyman, and Lou Harrison reacted to the perceived elitism and dissonant sound of
atonal academic modernism by producing music with simple textures and relatively consonant
harmonies, whilst others, most notably John Cage challenged the prevailing narratives of
beauty and objectivity common to Modernism.

Author on postmodernism, Dominic Strinati, has noted, it is also important "to include in this
category the so-called 'art rock' musical innovations and mixing of styles associated with groups
like Talking Heads, and performers like Laurie Anderson, together with the self-conscious
'reinvention of disco' by the Pet Shop Boys".

In the late-20th century, avant-garde academics labelled American singer Madonna, as the
"personification of the postmodern", with Christian writer Graham Cray saying that "Madonna
is perhaps the most visible example of what is called post-modernism", and Martin Amis
described her as "perhaps the most postmodern personage on the planet". She was also
suggested by assistant professor Olivier Sécardin of Utrecht University to epitomise
postmodernism.

Urban planning
Modernism sought to design and plan cities that followed the logic of the new model of
industrial mass production; reverting to large-scale solutions, aesthetic standardisation, and
prefabricated design solutions. Modernism eroded urban living by its failure to recognise
differences and aim towards homogeneous landscapes (Simonsen 1990, 57). Jane Jacobs' 1961
book The Death and Life of Great American Cities was a sustained critique of urban planning as
it had developed within Modernism and marked a transition from modernity to postmodernity
in thinking about urban planning (Irving 1993, 479).

The transition from Modernism to Postmodernism is often said to have happened at 3:32 pm
on 15 July in 1972, when Pruitt–Igoe, a housing development for low-income people in St. Louis
designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, which had been a prize-winning version of Le
Corbusier's 'machine for modern living,' was deemed uninhabitable and was torn down (Irving
1993, 480). Since then, Postmodernism has involved theories that embrace and aim to create
diversity. It exalts uncertainty, flexibility and change (Hatuka & D'Hooghe 2007) and rejects
utopianism while embracing a utopian way of thinking and acting. Postmodernity of 'resistance'
seeks to deconstruct Modernism and is a critique of the origins without necessarily returning to
them (Irving 1993, 60). As a result of Postmodernism, planners are much less inclined to lay a
firm or steady claim to there being one single 'right way' of engaging in urban planning and are
more open to different styles and ideas of 'how to plan' (Irving 474).

The postmodern approach to understanding the city were pioneered in the 1980s by what
could be called the "Los Angeles School of Urbanism" centered on the UCLA's Urban Planning
Department in the 1980s, where contemporary Los Angeles was taken to be the postmodern
city par excellence, contra posed to what had been the dominant ideas of the Chicago School
formed in the 1920s at the University of Chicago, with its framework of urban ecology and
emphasis on functional areas of use within a city, and the concentric circles to understand the
sorting of different population groups.Edward Soja of the Los Angeles School combined Marxist
and postmodern perspectives and focused on the economic and social changes (globalization,
specialization, industrialization/deindustrialization, Neo-Liberalism, mass migration) that lead
to the creation of large city-regions with their patchwork of population groups and economic
uses.

Criticisms
Criticisms of postmodernism are intellectually diverse, including the argument that
postmodernism is meaningless and promotes obscurantism.
In part in reference to post-modernism, conservative English philosopher Roger Scruton wrote,
"A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative,' is asking you
not to believe him. So don't." Similarly, Dick Hebdige criticized the vagueness of the term,
enumerating a long list of otherwise unrelated concepts that people have designated as
postmodernism, from "the décor of a room" or "a 'scratch' video", to fear of nuclear
armageddon and the "implosion of meaning", and stated that anything that could signify all of
those things was "a buzzword".

The linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky has said that postmodernism is meaningless
because it adds nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge. He asks why postmodernist
intellectuals do not respond like people in other fields when asked, "what are the principles of
their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already
obvious, etc.?...If [these requests] can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in
similar circumstances: 'to the flames'."

Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has said "The idea that we live in a postmodern culture
is a myth. In fact, a postmodern culture is an impossibility; it would be utterly unliveable.
People are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology;
rather, they are relativistic and pluralistic in matters of religion and ethics. But, of course, that's
not postmodernism; that's modernism!"

American author Thomas Pynchon targeted postmodernism as an object of derision in his

novels, openly mocking postmodernist discourse.

American academic and aesthete Camille Paglia has said:

The end result of four decades of postmodernism permeating the art world is that there is very
little interesting or important work being done right now in the fine arts. The irony was a bold
and creative posture when Duchamp did it, but it is now an utterly banal, exhausted, and
tedious strategy. Young artists have been taught to be "cool" and "hip" and thus painfully self-
conscious. They are not encouraged to be enthusiastic, emotional, and visionary. They have
been cut off from artistic tradition by the crippled skepticism about history that they have been
taught by ignorant and solipsistic postmodernists. In short, the art world will never revive until
postmodernism fades away. Postmodernism is a plague upon the mind and the heart.
German philosopher Albrecht Wellmer has said that "postmodernism at its best might be seen
as a self-critical – a sceptical, ironic, but nevertheless unrelenting – form of modernism; a
modernism beyond utopianism, scientism and foundationalism; in short a post-metaphysical
modernism."

A formal, academic critique of postmodernism can be found in Beyond the Hoax by physics
professor Alan Sokal and in Fashionable Nonsense by Sokal and Belgian physicist Jean Bricmont,
both books discussing the so-called Sokal affair. In 1996, Sokal wrote a deliberately nonsensical
article in a style similar to postmodernist articles, which was accepted for publication by the
postmodern cultural studies journal, Social Text. On the same day of the release he published
another article in a different journal explaining the Social Text article hoax. The philosopher
Thomas Nagel has supported Sokal and Bricmont, describing their book Fashionable Nonsense
as consisting largely of "extensive quotations of scientific gibberish from name-brand French
intellectuals, together with eerily patient explanations of why it is gibberish," and agreeing that
"there does seem to be something about the Parisian scene that is particularly hospitable to
reckless verbosity."

Zimbabwean-born British Marxist Alex Callinicos says that postmodernism "reflects the
disappointed revolutionary generation of '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."

Analytic philosopher Daniel Dennett said, "Postmodernism, the school of 'thought' that
proclaimed 'There are no truths, only interpretations' has largely played itself out in absurdity,
but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of
the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for 'conversations' in which
nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can
muster."

American historian Richard Wolin traces the origins of postmodernism to intellectual roots in
fascism, writing "postmodernism has been nourished by the doctrines of Friedrich Nietzsche,
Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot, and Paul de Man—all of whom either prefigured or
succumbed to the proverbial intellectual fascination with fascism."
Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry criticised postmodernism for reducing the complexity of
the modern world to an expression of power and for undermining truth and reason:

If the modern era begins with the European Enlightenment, the postmodern era that captivates
the radical multiculturalists begins with its rejection. According to the new radicals, the
Enlightenment-inspired ideas that have previously structured our world, especially the legal and
academic parts of it, are a fraud perpetrated and perpetuated by white males to consolidate
their own power. Those who disagree are not only blind but bigoted. The Enlightenment's goal
of an objective and reasoned basis for knowledge, merit, truth, justice, and the like is an
impossibility: "objectivity," in the sense of standards of judgment that transcend individual
perspectives, does not exist. Reason is just another code word for the views of the privileged.
The Enlightenment itself merely replaced one socially constructed view of reality with another,
mistaking power for knowledge. There is naught but power.

Richard Caputo, William Epstein, David Stoesz & Bruce Thyer consider postmodernism to be a
"dead-end in social work epistemology." They write:

Postmodernism continues to have a detrimental influence on social work, questioning the

Enlightenment, criticizing established research methods, and challenging scientific authority.
The promotion of postmodernism by editors of Social Work and the Journal of Social Work
Education has elevated postmodernism, placing it on a par with theoretically guided and
empirically based research. The inclusion of postmodernism in the 2008 Educational Policy and
Accreditation Standards of the Council on Social Work Education and its 2015 sequel further
erode the knowledge-building capacity of social work educators. In relation to other disciplines
that have exploited empirical methods, social work's stature will continue to ebb until
postmodernism is rejected in favor of scientific methods for generating knowledge.

H. Sidky pointed out what he sees as several inherent flaws of a postmodern antiscience
perspective, including the confusion of the authority of science (evidence) with the scientist
conveying the knowledge; its self-contradictory claim that all truths are relative; and its
strategic ambiguity. He sees 21st-century anti-scientific and pseudo-scientific approaches to
knowledge, particularly in the United States, as rooted in a postmodernist "decades-long
academic assault on science:"

Many of those indoctrinated in postmodern anti-science went on to become conservative

political and religious leaders, policymakers, journalists, journal editors, judges, lawyers, and
members of city councils and school boards. Sadly, they forgot the lofty ideals of their teachers,
except that science is bogus.

Criticism by "postmodernists" themselves

The French psychotherapist and philosopher, Félix Guattari, rejected its theoretical
assumptions by arguing that the structuralist and postmodernist visions of the world were not
flexible enough to seek explanations in psychological, social, and environmental domains at the
same time.

In an interview with Truls Lie, Jean Baudrillard noted: "[ Transmodernism etc] are better terms
than “postmodernism”. It is not about modernity; it is about every system that has developed
its mode of expression to the extent that it surpasses itself and its own logic. This is what I am
trying to analyze." "There is no longer any ontologically secret substance. I perceive this to be
nihilism rather than postmodernism."

See also
References
Further reading
External links
Discourses of Postmodernism. Multilingual bibliography by Janusz Przychodzen (PDF file)
Modernity, postmodernism and the tradition of dissent, by Lloyd Spencer (1998)
Postmodernism and truth by philosopher Daniel Dennett Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's
entry on postmodernism