See if any of this sounds familiar. From Tim Cavanaugh at Reason:
Are the great American habits of directness, foursquare honesty, and a hearty handshake being undermined by fancy-pants French critical theory? You betcha! From the Obama-McCain struggle to find the proper meta-analysis of the word celebrity to the deconstruction of the mainstream media’s treatment of John Edwards, from the “framing” and “repackaging” of political constructs to the rise of identity politics for white people, the trend is clear: We are all postmodernists now.
The mainstreaming of pomo thinking has been largely a stealth project, something Americans do without committing overt acts of academia. We thought we were trying to clear away the cobwebs of shoddy analysis and elite hypocrisy, but all along we were bringing the tools of critical thinking to the masses. Go into any bar in the country, and you’ll find somebody unpacking the assumptions in someone else’s text.
Yet the mainstreaming of critical theory hasn’t necessarily been good for its original practitioners. Just as the old media were left cold as their once difficult and rarefied functions were ceded to any slob in his pajamas, so the bards of meta-analysis are struggling to survive in a world of front-porch semioticians.
[my emphasis]
I interrupt Cavanaugh here to highlight and expand upon a few key points. First, I don’t believe, with Cavanaugh (and there’s a chance he doesn’t believe it either, but was rather going for rhetorical effect), that we are “all postmodernists now.” But there’s a degree of irony in the statement itself, given that many of us who are not postmodernists as the term is generally understood are in fact more well-versed in postmodern philosophy and poststructural assumptions about language than are those championing the pomo cause. For my part, I’ve argued on this site for years now that postmodernism is descriptive, and yet it is often misunderstood by those who embrace it such that it is taught as prescriptive — a mistake that hastens the breakdown of the grounds for meaning.
Or, to put it another way, postmodernism does the most damage when it is embraced by those enthusiasts or critics who don’t really understand it all that well but who nevertheless presume to teach it or to denounce it without quite knowing why they are doing either.
Second, Cavanaugh is correct, with a caveat, that the mainstreaming of postmodern thought as it is generally understood has been a stealth project. Assumptions about language gleaned from the linguistic turn — which to those like me represent a rather banal set of truisms about sign usage and reference, and about the necessary disconnect language creates between ourselves and things as they are — have been used to justify a kind of de facto relativism, and to promote a culture wherein the interpretive community with the power to enforce a narrative attains consensus and a tenuous hold on “truth.” And this procedure plays into the hands of those for whom the will to power is a liberating entry into “pragmatism,” freed from “tyranny of facts,” the “fallacy of proof,” or the bourgeois “logic” of the Enlightenment.
To such people, the denaturing of “truth,” its reduction to a mere man made construct — one that is frustrated by any number of competing “truths” that are equally valid for being equally man made — creates ideological, political, cultural, and, finally, legislative openings by which a descriptive becomes prescriptive. PC is one such result. Multiculturalism as a social philosophy is another. “Diversity” (as it is now understood legally) is yet another.
For my part, I have dealt with hermeneutics and interpretation theory in the age of postmodernism, endeavoring to show that what we think we’re doing when we “interpret” plays a crucial role in whether or not we allow the mainstreaming of postmodernism, in its cheapened form, into the very fabric of our though and the very epistemological paradigm under which we operate as a society.
Democratizing “interpretation” by denying a common ground for meaning in authorial intent has effectively turned interpretation into something quite unlike what we believe it to be. Most troubling, of course, has been our willingness to accept anyone’s use of our signifiers as indictments of our own signs — a procedure that has rendered interpretation itself meaningless, given that we are battling over the “meaning” of different texts: the first created by the author as a speech act; the second created by the receiver without concern to the author’s intent, and so without a common ground upon which to locate an intentional text’s meaning.
And this has become the state of “interpretation” in this country, one whose very nature is authoritarian inasmuch as it takes the power of the creator to mean and overthrows that in favor of the power of the interpreter to define the text, and in so doing, define the creator.
In this sense, postmodernism has insinuated itself by stealth — based on incoherent linguistic ideas — into the substructures of our epistemology. And in so doing, has pressured the more grounded system favored by the Enlightenment paradigm.
Where Cavanaugh is a bit too cavalier in his analysis, then, is when he writes, “the mainstreaming of critical theory hasn’t necessarily been good for its original practitioners.” Because what he means to say is that it hasn’t been good for the careers of several prominent practitioners who have outlived their usefulness, once their tricks were mastered by others as a result of mainstreaming; but on the whole — as a way to break down the foundational principles upon which we base our governance — the mainstreaming of critical theory has been all its original practitioners could ask for and more.
The greater good is being served. And while some individuals may no longer be needed in the long march through history, by no means does this mean that the end isn’t being furthered by other aggregate means.
****
(h/t Ted P; also, sorry if this post reads a bit rushed. I was writing it in the few minutes before I had to take my son to school.)
Does I for real need an intellectual political framework? Ok that would be wrong gets me through my day just fine. Also, that’s stupid and well yeah but that’s NPR for you work pretty good too. Socialism is what it is. I won’t cooperate.
My hat is doffed to you, sir. I have no idea what you just said, but I believe it wholeheartedly.
I dunno, I always considered the pomo twits to be fuzzy thinkers who want to force everybody to think just as fuzzily as they do. Probably to avoid being ridiculed.
Cognito ergo cornholeo.
Assuming, of course, the deconstuctionist prevail and i’m am shipped of to “get my mind right.”
Anyone trying to feed me that kind of shit better be able to run pretty fucking fast.
Related essay:
http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/decon.html
Daniel Dennett, “Postmodernism and Truth”
There was much quotation from Baudrillard, Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Saussure, and the like, every single word of which was impenetrable.
Not if I catch ’em, Smith,
ooooh, does this mean we all get capes?
If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit. Of course perfectly good brilliance can be turned into bullshit by an asshole.
I may go somewhat astray here on the topic, but I am reminded of Patrick Henry’s warning to protect liberty from radical french philosophy. ( precursor of that which is described above)
A favorite quote:
So long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger. But believing, as I do, that these are in danger, that infidelity in its broadest sense, under the name of philosophy, is fast spreading, everything that ought to be dear to man is covertly but successfully assailed.
That government is no more than a choice between evils is acknowledged by the most intelligent among mankind, and has been a standing maxim for ages. The great and direct end of government is liberty. Secure our liberty and privileges, and the end of government is answered. You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your government. Liberty-the greatest of all earthly blessings-give us that precious jewel, and you may take everything else. Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force.
And this has become the state of “interpretation” in this country, one whose very nature is authoritarian inasmuch as it takes the power of the creator to mean and overthrows that in favor of the power of the interpreter to define the text, and in so doing, define the creator.
Testify, brotha! This is all about getting power by any means necessary.
And what better way to disarm your opponent than to deny him the ability to present arguments against you?
Yet the mainstreaming of critical theory hasn’t necessarily been good for its original practitioners. Just as the old media were left cold as their once difficult and rarefied functions were ceded to any slob in his pajamas, so the bards of meta-analysis are struggling to survive in a world of front-porch semioticians.
This assumes that they were needed in the first place. As Bill Whittle skewers elites again in his usual style:
Which then leaves us wondering what is the role of the intellectual class in a free society? Surely their cerebral gifts can be put to better use than eloquent sneering at the commoners…
“The legend of differénce thwarts the precision proper to the desire of any protracted effort to arrest (where any such effort accentuates) the irreducible substitution and translation, the iterable structure of the word.”
One more thing:
Is anyone else delighted to see the word “xanthochroid” in the Reason article? It was new to me. It means “A person having a light complexion and light hair,” but it sounds like something out of Alien, and would make a good faux insult, if you’re so inclined.
Fucking hell. When a guy says something to me, and I want to understand him, I say, “Hey Sam, what do you mean by that?” I want to know what he intended to tell me, for crying out loud. Just look at what we do when we want to know what someone means. If we didn’t do this, how could we ever interpret anything?
I’ve already written ‘fucking hell,’ so now, Crike!
Différance, not differénce.
. . . don’t want to confuse anybody.
Or something written by Piers Anthony.
Would it be wrong to think that a possible upshot to all this is that these methods, along with there notable advocates, have -through ascendency- lost the fundamental appeal they offered as representing the underrepresented, giving voice to the voiceless, and posturing as the underdog?
This fascist, warmongering, racist, imperialistic hegemon is all theirs now, and I plan on beating them over the head with it every chance I get.
xanthochromic covers it for me – it sucks up everything.
Why, it’s almost like that extra layer of pomo-branded willful not-knowing is
or, in English, to make
…eh?
I usually like Cavanaugh’s stuff. But he’s doing it, too.
There’s no path forward from “fancy-pants French critical theory” to what he’s calling “pomo” — the ad-world slop-head version of it, or the American leftoid What’s the Matter with the Lumpensubaltern? version, or the Webb-style reaction against that. It’s a well-trod no-path, but it’s still not there.
That’s what needs calling out. Adding a list of philosophers almost no one has read (and far fewer have followed) — or the wrong name for an un-understood not-philosophy — to a lefty-style list of the Names of The Devil can only backfire and shore up the bad guys’ esteem.
Righties — the ones who aren’t fascists — should still be shit-talking Plato, not trying to look with-it.
(The non-Jeff quote above is from Foucault. But you know that. He’s on your side…almost.)
I talk Plato and CSP.
But the grad school girls will jack you off next to the keg if you get them all wet with Walter Benjamin. So…I’m flexible.
There’s MY pragmatism.
Then: “I say what I mean and I mean what I say.”
Now: “I say what I mean and I mean what you say.”
So what happens when you deconstruct deconstruction? Is it like playing a country music song backwards? Unringing the bell?
“The Devil Went Down to Berkeley”
Listening to a bunch of no-brain twit Faux LIberals only makes me mad. Send some of those grad school girls my way, statim.
btw/what’s a ‘school’?
As much as I enjoy this site, this type of post always makes me wish you’d close up shop and become a lawyer, Jeff. One day, we’re going to need our own William Kunstler.
“Good jobs for Philosophers, too!”
— Firesign Theatre, “Any More Rocket Fuel For You Hard-Hats?”
Righties  the ones who aren’t fascists  should still be shit-talking Plato, not trying to look with-it.
I hardly know what you’re saying, psycho, but I do believe what Jeff describes above could not have occurred without the Left’s strong arm tactics backing up the progs’ writings. How many classically liberal professors have found themselves on the defensive, arguing, “But that’s not what I meant,” only to be screamed down with calls of “Yes it was! We know the code. Racist! Homophobe! Sexist!”
Meanwhile, classic liberals and conservatives have thought if they just stayed calm and reasoned, they’d win. Bullshit. The Left knows force shits on reasons’ back, and reason’s stuck in some kind of f*cking Greek rulebook?
Administrators, who these days are basically fund-raisers, know those calls can be backed up with Leftist student violence and hostile news coverage.
Tim Cavanaugh is a former Los Angeles Times writer. In this same Reason piece he confirms the right-wing blogosphere’s suspicions about the Times’ attempt to bury the story of John Edwards’ affair:
Sure. Didn’t quote that part because, frankly, it’s a given, Aldo — and patterico took care of it anyhow.
And they thought it would never be used against themselves?
Fools. Any tactic can be used against the originator. Which is why one should be circumspect – for his own safety’s sake.
Where Cavanaugh is a bit too cavalier in his analysis, then, is when he writes, “the mainstreaming of critical theory hasn’t necessarily been good for its original practitioners.†Because what he means to say is that it hasn’t been good for the careers of several prominent practitioners who have outlived their usefulness, once their tricks were mastered by others as a result of mainstreaming…
The fun when a tenured radical says ‘Stick it to the man’ and his students point out ‘you are the man’. Any tactic can be used by anybody. ‘Rommel – you magnificent bastard! I read your book!’
I noted in Dan’s Shakespeare thread that Sen. Obama was likely to be Richard II, finding that what he had done would come back to haunt him, the mirror. These academics let loose the hound of the readers’ interpretation as superior to the author, and they will find that hound coming back to them. It had to – for what is an academic but a speaker/writer? And giving the audience full control of the intent of the speech/text dooms them also.
Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
Fools. They have sown; let them reap.
Me and the jewish kid can whip anybody in the room.
Hubris. Google it.
It is the same. When law=whim; when authorial intent=whim. No one is safe then, not even a king.
‘As My Whimsy Takes Me’ is a very scary motto.
It’s one thing to be purely a hardened, lying, opportunistic politician. It’s quite another to be presiding, still wet behind your quasi-marxist ears, expecting to carry the progressive crown indefinitely, when the fruits of that entirely mistaken philosophy come home to roost. And yeah, the opportunistic career politician part still factors in this One too.
Yeah, we’re screwed. But we’re not as screwed as those who will live to see the end of an entire national and international myth.
And we’re really not as screwed as the One that embodies that myth shall inevitably be.
Politics isn’t a linear tension. It’s a highly asymmetrical fight between, in the best of times, the functional expression of self-responsibility, honesty, fairness, and real justice on the one hand, and the parasites on the other.
These won’t be the best of times.
It will be interesting times, JHoward.
In short, it will be like most times. It only looks interesting/not interesting in retrospect. The late 1950’s were all about ‘Peggy Sue’, but they were also about family fall-out shelters.
It all comes down to a claim that all utterance is a lie. Liars have an interest in believing that falsehood.
I’ve been teaching college English long enough to have predated deconstruction. We had a guest speaker from a California university introduce Derrida and deconstruction to us, and I remember distinctly having an “Emperor with no clothes” moment.
I looked around to challenge his bullshit with my colleagues, but they were already lost.
…and it’s true that, especially in literary circles, postmodernism has always held inside its own seeds of self-destruction.
For those who follow it blindly, it has always been, inevitably, a no-win situation.
An English prof denying meaning is like a plumber denying water.