In their book, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody, Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay look at how postmodern theory and activism have come to replace traditional scholarship, and the threats these anti-Enlightenment beliefs pose to liberal democracy. In so doing, it aims to explain the perspective of “woke” activism. This works to maintain the power of certain groups in society. p183, [2] ‘About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self: Two Lectures at Dartmouth.’ Political Theory, 21, 198-227, [3] Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction. But if they would use the scientific method to, for example, measure the gravitational constant, they would get the same result every time, proving the reliability.– I see what you mean. Trouble is it is insidious, with many normal people unaware of the march of postmodernism into daily life. I noticed the problem of self-referenciality while studying sociology. Helen Pluckrose, Queen Mary, University of London, School of English and Drama, Alumnus. This is consistent in postmodern thought. Input your search keywords and press Enter. However, there are consistent ideas at the root of postmodernism and understanding them is essential if we intend to counter them. From the end of the 19th century into the middle of the 20th, it was seen as a psychiatric disorder. In Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Then it became seen just as something that some people were. “We are not pretending that theories rooted in postmodernism reject science, reason & liberalism for some ulterior motive. It reacted against the liberal humanism of the modernist artistic and intellectual movements, which its proponents saw as naïvely universalizing a western, middle-class and male experience. Are they criticizing the scientific method or are they looking back in history and finding examples of bad science? “They would say that you are stuck in your Western mindset where you just assume that correspondence to reality is the best way to determine what is true.”. You think the owners go this society want a herd of educated working stiffs? Helen Pluckrose, co-author of Cynical Theories, guides us through the difficult philosophical concept of Postmodernism. They underlie the problems we see today in Social Justice Activism, undermine the credibility of the Left and threaten to return us to an irrational and tribal “pre-modern” culture. [8] Challenging Postmodernism: Philosophy and the Politics of Truth (2003) Prometheus Press. As Christopher Butler points out, “the plausibility of Lyotard’s claim for the decline of metanarratives in the late 20th century ultimately depends upon an appeal to the cultural condition of an intellectual minority.” In other words, Lyotard’s claim comes directly from the discourses surrounding him in his bourgeois academic bubble and is, in fact, a metanarrative towards which he is not remotely incredulous. It hink we need to be more careful with this term “identity politics,” as all politics are about identity. To you it seems clear that this is reality and everybody can discover this reality, but they would say that you are stuck in your Western mindset where you just assume that correspondence to reality is the best way to determine what is true. But this concept has gone a lot further and it is now present in feminism, postcolonial studies, critical race theory, disability studies, fat studies and particularly in queer theory which is almost entirely Foucauldian, Underlying it all are the ideas that everything is socially constructed, that we cannot get at the actual truth and that we are governed by an oppressive force. If you want a serious discussion about Foucault’s writings, I would be more than happy to do this. It will not only be a three-week discussion but also a civil, respectful debate involving the instructors and participants. Postmodernism. – James Lindsey and I suspect that we are in a late state of postmodernism, which will be known as the age of narratives. I encountered the same problem when trying to write about race and gender at the turn of the seventeenth century. The identity politics/pomo/intersectionalist crowd may call themselves Marxists but they reject, and are in fact extremely hostile to, class analysis which is the core tenet of Marxism. Peterson should stick to talking about myths and Jungian archetypes, subjects he knows something about. Helen Pluckrose: It comes from a mixture of postmodern scholarship and leftist activism. The whole idea of democracy done properly is that the law applies meaningfully to everyone, and provides for everyone, regardless of innate identities or unchosen affiliations, which are the obsessions of identity politics. No number of scientists telling him they are not demoralized nor any more doubtful than befits the practitioners of a method whose results are always provisional and whose hypotheses are never “proven” could sway him from this. Scientists studied it and in a very short space of time the conclusion became that this is a natural variant on sexuality. How do you have a valuable discussion with a postmodernist?– If you’re talking to somebody who is deeply embedded in the postmodern system, you are not likely to bring them out of it. The problem is that we can’t really see it. Helen Pluckrose • Posted 04 Feb '19. We will see that much that goes under the banner of postmodern philosophy has one eye on ancient and medieval sources and constitutes a significant recovery of premodern ways of knowing, being, and doing.” (p25), “Postmodernism can be a catalyst for the church to reclaim its faith not as a system of truth dictated by a neutral reason but rather as a story that requires ‘eyes to see and ears to hear.” (p125). We can do this whilst continuing to oppose authoritarian factions of the Right who genuinely are racist, sexist and homophobic, but can now hide behind a façade of reasonable opposition to the postmodern-Left. Fuck no. Dear Matt, Thanks for those kind words. The dangers of postmodernism are not limited to pockets of society which center around academia and Social Justice, however. [11]. This “set of concepts” threaten to take us back to a time before the Enlightenment, when “reason” was regarded as not only inferior to faith but as a sin. Helen Pluckrose writer and researcher, Areo Magazine and Conatus News. I’d argued that Shakespeare’s audience’s would not have found Desdemona’s attraction to Black Othello, who was Christian and a soldier for Venice, so difficult to understand because prejudice against skin color did not become prevalent until a little later in the seventeenth century when the Atlantic Slave Trade gained steam, and that religious and national differences were far more profound before that. Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay talk with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about their essay on the enemies of modernity. Pluckrose got a lot of attention from participating in the Grievance studies affair together with James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian. He defined the postmodern condition as “an incredulity towards metanarratives.” A metanarrative is a wide-ranging and cohesive explanation for large phenomena. Share O ccasionally, throughout history ... A second wave of postmodernism emerged at the end of the 1980s – one that made it more intelligible and actionable. Where I do see a correlation to your presentation, however, is in the secondary commentary regarding his work; and specifically, in the commentary and theories that emanates from the American academy. “The word woke has been used over the recent years to describe a person who is able to see these systems of power.”. It is responsible for its own fragmentation, purity demands and divisiveness which make even the far-Right appear comparatively coherent and cohesive. Taking place over 2017 and 2018, their project entailed submitting bogus academic papers to academic journals in cultural, queer, race, gender, fat, and sexuality studies to determine if they would pass through peer reviewand be accepted for publicatio… We see somebody like Donald Trump, who will say something and then he will deny having said it and then even say the exact opposite of it. In this world today, there is little that is true ‘fact.'”[9]. The basic flaw all of the ultra-rationalist/Darwinian reductionists share is their belief that their bleak and oversimplified world view is “objective” and infallible. Last year, Helen Pluckrose and I dedicated most of our time to writing a book about how “activist scholarship” has risen to prominence and created societal conditions that threaten to … English (literature) too, in my experience, is teaching a thoroughly postmodern orthodoxy. We all know which one is which. She is the editor of Areo Magazine and the author of many popular essays on postmodernism, critical theory, liberalism, secularism, and feminism. Pluckrose and Lindsay argue that modernity–by which they mean democracy, reason, and individual liberty–is under attack from pre-modern and post-modern ideological enemies. Michel Foucault developed the concept of biopower, and by that he meant scientific discourses which governed how people thought about sexuality. You heard that right. Helen Pluckrose received her degree in English literature from the University of East London and her Masters in early modern studies from Queen Mary University London. Social constructivism and Michel Foucault are praised while science and the belief in a non-relative truth are questioned. If we see modernity as the tearing down of structures of power including feudalism, the Church, patriarchy, and Empire, postmodernists are attempting to continue it, but their targets are now science, reason, humanism and liberalism.