To think you clever lot can explain postmodernism

[FlamedToACrisp]

I've just come across postmodernism, and I can't get my head around it at all.

What am I to understand of sentences like: "Such reality as there is, according to postmodernists, is a conceptual construct, an artifact of scientific practice and language." (Encyclopedia Britannica) ?

If we reject the idea of reality, what does that leave? I mean, what's the point? Our 'reality' is experienced by us as real on every level, and, barring The Matrix or similar, surely it walks like a duck?

Is it just a load of pretentious bollocks, or have I missed an important point?

As I understand it, postmodernism came about because there was no longer any 'new' things; all things were suddenly just a pastiche of old things.

It is a tough one, OP.

In a nutshell, postmodernists reject truth as fact, they relate truth to individual experiences. That is my very basic and limted understanding of it.

Heard the line, 'there's her side, there is his side and then there is the truth?'

It crosses quite a few disciplines- feminism, sciences, languages.

Look forward to reading other responses on this one.

I'm going to say Option A, pretentious bollocks, but possibly I am also just missing an important point.

I was always baffled about it during my History degree and clearly remembered saying at my Oxbridge interview 'but the Battle of Hastings HAPPENED?' They let me in so clearly had some sympathy with this point of view.

As I understand it, in history it sort of grew out of literary criticism and the idea that a reader cannot interpret authorial intent, as they are by default going to be reading in a way that's shaped by their own understanding. And lots of Derrida and Foucault writing about language and power maybe? And then, as academics are sometimes wont to do, everyone got very excited and wanted to see how far they could push the idea before it, or their discipline, broke.

I think that this all makes sense as an explanation and therefore I just conclude that it is almost certainly wrong.

Thanks for this thread OP, it's cheered up my nightly battle with a teething toddler!

Is it not more about criticising the idea of a single objective reality, rather than everyone's individual experience of their own reality?

So for example, 30 people in the same class won't have the same experience, even though they were all in the same place at the same time. Some will love that teacher and think that class was great, some will have thought it duller than a mirror newly polished with mud.

I might be wrong though.

Well I think it depends what you mean by 'single objective reality', in a way.

E.g. my toddler currently thinks I am being deeply unreasonable by not sitting in his room with him for the next hour, while I think he is a little ratbadger for refusing to go back to sleep without me. But we can probably both agree that he is awake and screaming. The more extreme ends of the postmodernist spectrum would, I think, posit that this bit is relatively unimportant - but I think the material reality of the night waking is at least part of the reason we will both be grumpy in the morning.

I think you might be right - Changepassword. You've explained it much better than I have and it may not be an individual experience but as you've described. Rather like the pandemic - some peoples view of the virus is very different from another person's or group.

But we can probably both agree that he is awake and screaming

He's a toddler. There is little chance that he will agree that he is screaming. In his mind, he is probably the reasonable one here... And you are failing to read his mind to give him what he wants, even if you were give him what he indicates he wants.

Hope you get some sleep soon!

FreiasBathub i feel for you. My insomnia is menopause but at least I haven't a little one keeping me awake.

I really like that explanation though. It is very literary and arts. Which is not my area at all other than a surface knowledge. But my daughter covered it in history.

Thanks BakedCam. Fingers crossed.

Yes that's exactly it ChangeThePassword. I totally agree that he likely thinks he is being reasonable and communicating his needs in a proportionate way. Like all words, 'screaming' is not neutral, especially in this context. It carries with it all kinds of assumptions and loaded meaning about the event.

Nonetheless, he is not currently in the physiological state of sleep and he is making a noise which is preventing me from being in that state also. At the most basic level this is part of the reason that we will both be tired and grumpy in the morning, along with (of course) the clash that exists between our very different understandings of the current state of affairs. To dismiss the existence of this shared experience, regardless of the different layers of meaning we ascribe to it, is not helpful in understanding later events. In my opinion, anyway!

Well, of course reality is constructed. We didn't evolve expensive brains (in terms of energy use and years of development) in order to perceive reality. Rather, to survive and reproduce. We talk about reality because its convenient to us to do so, but it's socially constructed. To me, that seems obvious! I didn't realize that that position made me a postmodernist though.

If you think of the spirit of the time of modernity, as in the 19th century, it is characterised by such things as empire, industrialisation, urbanisation, scientific advance, the growth of a number of social science disciplines such as anthropology, psychology, and sexology.

Post-modernism comes along and throws into question the neutrality, objectivity, and truth value of these “grand narratives“. It’s not so much about saying “nothing is real”, but about questioning the authority and authenticity of narratives of progress and asking whose interests they served.

At least that’s how it starts out in the academy with writers such as Frederic Jameson. It has sadly descended, in some social-political contexts, into a meaningless, reason-is-bad, feelings-and-individual-interpretations-are-everything free for all.

(Poststructuralism is something related but slightly different. An attempt to unpack the relationship between language, truth, and power.That’s Foucault and Derrida.)

Nothing is true. Nothing matters.

Frankly it's a gift to the kind of woke brocialist wankers I went to university with. All male and used to counter any feminist or socialist points about inequality with some bullshit about subjectivity.

It was a good idea. But it's been used for evil mostly. And most of the men who loved it and college... I would never tire of punching them. Which would be fine, because the rule of law and pain are subjective.

I can't offer useful input but great thread!

Goodoldfashionedploverboy and Mrs TP Thank you for making sense off and confirming my suspicions!

Mrs TP thanks also for 'brocalist.'
Described as 'Post Truth world' by a similar style male lecturer recently to shut down complaint about a really blatant piece of of old school misogyny and racism in the middle of a painfully woke community, but it's ok because of who's doing it.

@ChangeThePassword

Is it not more about criticising the idea of a single objective reality, rather than everyone's individual experience of their own reality?

So for example, 30 people in the same class won't have the same experience, even though they were all in the same place at the same time. Some will love that teacher and think that class was great, some will have thought it duller than a mirror newly polished with mud.

I might be wrong though.

That's a pretty good definition: I think its about accepting that everyone's perception of reality is different and therefore there is no objective truth.

So that leads to a situation in art (of any medium) whereby the traditional connection between symbols and meanings is decoupled and no long reliably means what it historically always meant. Which is why you get so much postmodernist art which is about symbols and signifiers and playing with what they represent.

I think at heart its quite an interesting concept which evolved to deal with the death of a lot of certainties which had underpinned the way we understood the world for centuries (religion/politics/moral codes). And was quite helpful when ideas such as feminism took root in that it allows you to look at a lot of the traditional ways women had been characterised and question where these ideas had come from.

But I think it does lend itself to quite a lot of bollocks and people often use it as a get-out-of-jail-free card when they have created fairly crap art which other people don't get and which doesn't really stand up to intellectual scrutiny.

That's a pretty good definition: I think its about accepting that everyone's perception of reality is different and therefore there is no objective truth

This.

My dating profile says, no homeopathy, no astrology. I'd better add, no postmodernism.

I love explanations from @ChangeThePassword and @Goodoldfashionedploverboy .

I tend to the "bollocks" side of the fence but only because of where we have ended up not where we started. I came into say the very thing that OldFashioned said about us ending up with debates about climate change and flat earth (and dare I say it biology)

I think inthe example given of "the battle of Hastings happened" postmodernism would question who gets to say what happened? What was the outcome for all participants etc. Great thread

Is it not more about criticising the idea of a single objective reality, rather than everyone's individual experience of their own reality?

That's my understanding, @ChangeThePassword, and you've put it very succinctly.

To give a RL example, I once had to read witness statements about a robbery. There were 3 witnesses in the office that had been robbed and 2 robbers. The 3 witnesses' statements varied so much - one person had one of the men wearing a hat, the others had him bareheaded, two thought one of them had glasses on, the other didn't, they were variously tall/short, fat/thin wearing jeans/jogging bottoms and all 3 had them in different colour jackets.

Objective reality was nowhere to be seen!

(They were convicted anyway, because there was other compelling evidence, just in case anyone wondered)

I think inthe example given of "the battle of Hastings happened" postmodernism would question who gets to say what happened? What was the outcome for all participants etc. Great thread

I think that's the most interesting aspect of postmodern thinking. The implications for how we see history.

How people in the South East of England view Margaret Thatcher will be very different to how she is viewed in mining villages. Who is right? Well, possibly both, for different reasons. How will she be remembered once she is no longer remembered by the living? Who knows.

I'm back! I slept!

I agree this is a fascinating thread. I too tend to sit somewhere in the middle, thinking that postmodernism is a really useful and important tool for exploring how we understand and make sense of the world and our place in it.

BUT I object when historians and social scientists (especially) start to behave as though the material events do not matter, only the many different meanings that are constructed around them. Both are important. If you just say 'oh, well, we can never get to the bottom of the nature of reality' then you can wash your hands of ever trying to change or improve it. I wish this didn't happen but I've sat in too many meetings with academics (I'm a policy person working in a university) to be able to say that it doesn't.

I understand, from my Masters, that this makes me a critical realist, which I've always been quite pleased about.

Although tbf a less wanky term for it would be 'committed fence-sitter'.

Goodoldfashionedploverboy thanks, that's a very helpful historical overview.

I get very confused as postmodernism means slightly different things in art, philosophy, film and I suppose society.

Pleased to see this thread 'active'

I'm in the third sector and the two issues surrounding this sector are safeguarding and finance. Post-modernism doesn't lend itself well to such issues.

Ah, pretty much did my entire degree and dissertation on Post Modernism. I used to actually feel my brain working when I was reading! Happy Days! Too tired to fully contribute now but so pleased to read this thread and I’ll be back!