Posted on 05/02/2008 7:49:39 AM PDT by Laissez-faire capitalist
... There are lots of questions to be asked about Postmodernism, and one of the most important is about politics involved -- or more simply, is this movement toward fragmentation, provisionality, performance and instability something good or bad?
... the postmodern avowal of fragmentation and multiplicity tends to attract liberals and radicals. This is why, in part, feminist theorists have found postmodernism so attractive as Sarup, Flax and Butler all point out.
... postmodernist politics offers a way to theorize local situations as fluid and unpredictible, though influenced by global trends. Hence the motto for postmodern politics might well be "think globally, act locally" and don't worry about any grand scheme or master plan.
(Excerpt) Read more at colorado.edu ...
Postmodernists believe that truth does not exist objectively and that no universal truth exists which transcends culture(s).
1.) a.) "From the Postmodern view, postmodernism itself can only be seen as another 'abitrary social construction' like all other ideologies.
As such, we have no compelling reason to accept the theory.
b.) If Postmodernism can be shown to be true, a world view with objective truth, then Postmodernism's main thesis (rejection of objective truth) is wrong. It ends up teaching that there is some objective truth - that Postmodernism is right.
c.) In either case, Postmodernism's rejection of rational objectivity is self-defeating. It either denies the plausability of its own position, or it presumes the reliability of truth."
(McCallum, Dennis J. The Death of Truth. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1996)
2.) "To assert the truth that there is no truth is both self-defeating and arbitrary. For if this statement is true, it is not true, since there is no truth. So-called Deconstructionism thus cannot be halted from deconstrucing itself."
(Craig, William. Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World. Downers Grove, Ill. Intervarsity Press, 1995)
3.) Carson: "Deconstructionists may insist on either absolute knowledge or complete relativism. Either we can know something truly and absloute, or so-called 'knowledge' is nothing more than opinion and thus relativized. The criterion is made rigid and extreme."
This is a false dilemma created by Postmodernists.
4.) Sire: Even relativists [and Postmodernists] can be rbought to see that truth is necessary - even to the case for relativism. The truth question, in fact, cannot really be avoided."
Does the Postmodernist claim that his philosophy is really true? If not, then Postmodernism eats itself. But how can it be true if truth is relative? Once again, Postmodernism eats [deconstructs] itself.
So, you’re using logic to deconstruct an illogical belief system?
Postmodernists are “comfortable with contradiction”.
It all comes down to “I want to do whatever the hell I want to do without any consequences, including ‘judgement’ of my behavior”.
What say you?
It would be nice to beat back Postmodernism and relegate it to oblivion. Ultimately, Postmodernism can be shown to be is self-defeating - thus affecting the politics in the U.S. that it has had an effect on.
5.)Is knowledge knowable? If not, how do we know this?
-Woody Allen
My goal - and the goal of others - should be to use this and more (that I will post later) - to decosnstruct Deconstructionism (Postmodernism).
Thus, a pillar of liberalism can be brought down - which will have an effect on liberalism itself.
How sweet can that be?
No Postmodernists yet live. They were all killed in the War.
Ah, Woody Allen, one of the giants of intellectual thought...
(sarcasm).
Allens sentence would be proof that one can know, even though in his case this ability is quite limited.
Hey, I’m all for it, and would love to participate in the discussion.
I’m just saying that postmodernists are remarkably impervious to logic.
See my tagline.
Deconstruction is not postmodernism and is an apolitical rhetorical tool.
But, postmodernists do not stop their judging of others.
1.a They themslves would say that waterboarding is torture and not merely just another method of interrogation.
1.b And then turn around and say that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedomm fighter.” They would say that it is relative.
2.) So, one could reply, “One man’s torture method is another man’s mere interrogation method?” Relative?
They would say “no.”
They would say that 1b is relative, and 2 isn’t. They would hold fast to 1b, while attacking 2.)
Thus they relativize everything else, while claiming to be absolutely correct on what they believe.
That is the goal of Postmodernism - relativize conservatism, while claiming that liberalism is true and should be believed and adhered to.
By now, most American scholars have heard of deconstruction, the postmodern literary theory and philosophy popularized by French intellectual Jacques Derrida and others.This theory is false for several reasons.
One of the major tenets of the postmodern literary theory called deconstruction is that all language systems are conventional. In fact, they are so dependent on social conventions, say the deconstructionists, that they are completely artificial and, therefore, all language systems must be false and/or deceptive.
This idea confuses the word "convention" with the word "artificial" and mixes them up with words like "false" and "deceptive." Why isn't it possible for human beings to objectively observe the universe and create useful conventions based on their accurate observation? More importantly, however, if all language systems are conventional, then so is the statement that all language systems are conventional. To claim that all language systems are conventional is a self-contradictory statement. Therefore, it is a false statement. This means that we can completely reject this particular belief of the Derrida gang.
Another major belief of these social critics is the idea that the relationship between the sounds or letters of a word and their meaning is arbitrary and that the relationship between the meaning of a word and what it refers to is also arbitrary. The Derrida gang derive this idea from Ferdinand de Saussure, a linguistic scholar who wrote in the early 1900s, but they draw false conclusions from it. First, they assume that, because these relationships are arbitrary, the meanings of words have nothing to do with reality. Second, they falsely conclude that a word "is simply a fact about language" and not a fact about the world.
Derrida draws another false conclusion from this theory of Saussure. He believes that the arbitrary quality of sounds, letters, and meanings makes all meaning indeterminate or uncertain. According to the back cover of a collection of essays by Derrida titles Limited Inc, Derrida's "most controversial idea" is "linguistic meaning is fundamentally indeterminate." Derrida's conclusion here is self-contradictory and therefore false because, if linguistic meaning is fundamentally indeterminate, then so is the linguistic meaning of that statement. To say that meaning is indeterminable is like saying, "I cannot utter a word of English." It is silly intellectual nonsense that should be rejected by all thoughtful people.
John M. Ellis in Against Deconstruction explains, "Saussure had argued that meaning is not a matter of sounds being linked to concepts existing outside a given language but instead arises from specific contrasts between terms that are differentiated in specific ways." According to Ellis, Derrida takes Saussure's idea of contrasts and substitutes the word "play." "Play is no longer a matter of specific contrasts," Ellis notes, "it is 'limitless,' 'infinite,' and 'indefinite'; and thus meaning has become limitless, infinite, and indefinite."
If what Ellis says is true, then Derrida has illogically switched categories by substituting these words for Saussure's idea of contrasts. Switching categories in this manner is an informal logical fallacy and makes Derrida's argument logically invalid. "The meaning of one word does indeed depend on the meaning of many others," Ellis argues; "but to choose one word from a system is to employ all of the systematic contrasts with other words at that very moment -- the process of contrasting does not stretch out into the future" as Derrida's concept of play attempts to do. That is why the immediate context of a word in a sentence or paragraph, or the immediate context of a scene in a film or play, usually determines its meaning. This is a general rule of all interpretation that Derrida and his gang ignore. By ignoring this rule, they clearly show the inherent fallacies of their whole theory. Deconstruction is a theory that is beyond being intellectually bankrupt -- it is intellectually meaningless and thus had no intellectual capital to begin with!
Deconstructionism is part of a movement called poststructuralism. Like deconstructionism, this movement has many problems with it. Poststructuralism builds on many ideas developed by structuralism, its precursor.
As Terence Hawkes points out in Structuralism and Semiotics and as John Sturrock notes in Structuralism and Since, many of the most noteworthy structuralists seem to have thought that reality is unknowable and, therefore, we should stop trying to seek some ultimate truth or meaning to all things. Instead, we should "delight in the plurality of meaning."
I am skeptical of this extreme skepticism. If reality is unknowable, then how do we know it is unknowable? If there is no absolute truth, then is that an absolute truth and am I supposed to believe it absolutely? According to Sturrock, the structuralists and poststructuralists don't like authoritarian interpretations, but their fuzzy-minded pluralism is just as authoritarian as any other system of interpretation. To say there is no one way to truth (or no one way to God) is to actually offer one way to truth. Such an absolute pluralism is inherently self-contradictory. Consequently, it is absolutely false.
Either reality is objectively knowable or reality is not objectively knowable. Either absolute truth exists or absolute truth does not exist. Either there is one way to truth or there is no one way to truth. Either there is one way to God or there is no one way to God. Since the second statements in each of these four sentences are clearly false, we must conclude, therefore, that reality is indeed objectively knowable, that absolute truth does indeed exist, that there is indeed one way to truth, and that there is indeed one way to God. I don't reject everything that the structuralists and poststructuralists say, but I hold the preceding truths to be not only ontologically absolute but also epistemologically self-evident.
So, where do you take the argument from there.
If someone is impervious to logic, it is perfectly acceptable for them to say that all viewpoints are relative, but that theirs is “right” and yours is “wrong”.
When the social scientists utilize deconstructionism, it is most definitely an aspect of postmodernism. When it is used to rid our language (and hence our epistemology) of meta-narravatives (such as ‘transcendence’), then it is without question considered an aspect of postmodernism. It is very important to distinguish deconstruction from the viewpoint of the professor of literature as compared to those in the behavioral sciences, esp sociology.
My point was that it can be used for anything. Postmodernism is a cultural logioc that has produced a lot of nonsense and some good art (Thomas Pynchon).
Postmodernism is a refuge for people who shouldn't be in college in the first place.
At the doctoral level, it is a mechanism to give degrees to people who would otherwise never manage to get them because they cannot master statistics. At the faculty level, it permits the hiring of people who are otherwise uncompetitive with applicants who have real accomplishments on their CVs.
As for their claim to not believe in objective truth, pomos invoke it selectively. Just try telling one of these nutcases that domestic violence and/or rape are social constructs invented by feminazis to obtain power over men. They'll resort to the objective fact argument in a nanosecond.
The language of mathematics relies upon conventions that are absolutely universal, such as- the interval between 1 and 2 is the same as that between 2 and 3, etc. Post-modern deconstruction is a marxist/feudal oligarch ploy to dynamite the foundations of technological civilization back into a dark age horror where they can function as idea-monopolists without competition.
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