Writing in the National Review, Jonah Goldberg takes on Stanley Fish (and postmodernism more generally), reacting to Fish’s recent Harper’s cover piece, “Postmodern Warfare: The ignorance of our warrior intellectuals.” Writes Goldberg:
[…] what’s set me off is Fish’s claim that postmodernism is simply “a rarefied form of academic talk.” Fish would have people believe that postmodernism is simply what postmodernists do in their hidden English-department laboratories.
Well, not only did the virus of postmodernism escape Fish’s lab, but he and his henchmen ground it up into fine particles and sent aerosolized packets of it to every magazine, newspaper, publishing house, and movie studio in America. Fish’s hypocrisy is stunning. The PoMo virus has infected millions, destabilizing traditional institutions across the social landscape.
[…] When Fish is on the defensive he can make postmodernism sound humble and useful. Postmodernism, he says, merely holds that people from different or opposing belief systems cannot appeal to objective truth in order to persuade each other who is right and who is wrong. “Postmodernism maintains only that there can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations of an event is the true one,” he writes. Assuming he’s not being an intellectual Arafat, saying one thing in English to the American public and another thing in his “rarefied academic talk” to his minions, that actually sounds somewhat reasonable. It certainly isn’t a radically destructive idea.
But whether that’s the truth or just a propagandistic lie is entirely irrelevant. Fish damn well knows that millions of people think postmodernism means something very, very, very different — even if they don’t know what postmodernism is. For lots of Americans, the idea that there are no objective standards of truth or morality is incredibly sophisticated and intelligent. The authors who write the clever novels, the film directors who get awards and rave reviews for blurring the lines between good and evil, the professors who claim George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden are morally indistinguishable: These are the “thoughtful people” in our culture. Meanwhile, the people who talk in terms of right and wrong are ridiculed by the sophisticates.
Call it feminism, critical race theory, critical legal studies, queer theory, whatever: It’s all shrapnel from the same postmodern bomb, broadly speaking. These doctrines haven’t all been terrible for America, but their misapplication and over-application have. Scientists take responsibility for the damage they do. English professors take speaking fees. Conservatism, which does not fetishize the masses, understands that even an intelligent idea can have horrific consequences if let loose upon a society. The uninformed, the lazy, the affected, the ambitious, and the dumb can adopt sharp-edged ideas and use them as blunt cudgels if we are not careful. The authors of postmodernism have not been careful. [all emphases mine]
Jonah is correct that it is the misapplication of postmodern thought — and not postmodern thought per se — that has proven most “dangerous” as a philosophical position (grounded, as it is, on faulty philosophy). But he’s too tough on ol’ Stanley, I think. And in fact Jonah might be horrified to learn that in leveling his charges against Fish (by assigning culpability on these points), he’s parroting a particularly dangerous poststructural assertion — here articulated by genderfem theorist Judith Butler: “the action continues to act after the intentional subject has announced its completion” (“Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the Question of ‘Postmodernism'”).
In Jonah’s formulation, Fish is responsible for the actions of those who misapply postmodern thinking simply because his writings represent one of postmodernism’s most persuasive points of articulated origin, and because he realizes that many people just aren’t “getting” the nuances of the thought. But it’s problematic to blame Fish for people’s inabilility to read him accurately. And Jonah — who I suspect is an advocate of personal responsibility — might wish to blame the lazy thought on the lazy thinkers, and not on the proper purveyor of postmodern tenets.
Here’s what I posted on Fish and postmodernism a little over a week ago:
Too often, the real crux of postmodern thinking is caricatured as a kind of proscriptive relativism, which it is not (at least not as a matter of necessity). In fact, to my way of thinking, the problem with postmodernism is not a problem with postmodernism as a philosophical position per se — but rather with the misapplication and mischaracterization of postmodern thought, even by many of its most spirited practicioners and purveyors. Fish never seems to recognize this (or perhaps he considers it less of a problem than I do — and would likely reply that such people aren’t practicing postmodern thought at all), so on that point we part ways.
Clearly, my critique of Fish is in keeping with Goldberg’s — but where I split with Jonah is in the assigning of blame to Fish for others’ perversions of the philosophy he espouses. Fish refuses to acknowledge that the misapplication of postmodern thought is polluting the humanities and social sciences (to his detriment, I think), but frankly, it’s not his responsibility to chase down and correct every misconstrued trajectory his thought takes on.
Oh, you ignorant right-winger, you. Anybody want to start a pool on whether this post gets 150+ comments?
I’d put the high low at 5.
And I’ll put my money on low.
Wo unto me, for I am entering grad school at a lowly state college as a medieval history major this fall, and I’m middle-aged, no less. Am I a fool? Will my neck be broken by the whiplash from sudden exposure to misapplied postmodernism? Probably, but I guess on the bright side, I’ll have more material to feed the blog.
There, that makes 3.
update: Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and maintain that there can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations of an event is the true one—while insisting that this empirical fact in no way invalidates individually or collectively-held notions of truth, much as critics of postmodernism like to insist otherwise. Which I’ll do while drinking a coupla’ Gibsons. At tonight’s blog bash]
It was this comment about a week or so ago that made things finally click in my head ‘bout you Pomo humanities word context freakazoids. I was a Math major. Sounds a lot like the math behind quantum theory – electron placement arount the nucleus and stuff. Couldn’t Den Beste, or someone put it in those terms – or am I off base, still.
That is, the statistical probability of the sun rising tomorrow is not 100% (mathematically). That doesn’t mean we should worry about it not happening.
Also, the act of viewing an event physically at the molecular level, has such an impact on the event, that you change the event. There’s some principle here, I forget.
Anybody out there able to make the analogy work, or point out the difference?
Thunderstorm coming – gotta power down – lousy electric here in Mennonite farm country. Will check in later.
Heisenberg Principle. Lots of pomo-ers base their analysis around just that idea.
Ahhh, finally something I know about.
Particles exist in a wave function until they are observed. They are only <i>probably</i> somewhere. In fact, the trippiest experiment you’ll ever run in physics is where you put a two slot piece of paper in front of a electron gun and then a backstop to see the results of the electrons. The phantom particles actually interact, so to speak, with one another (two phantoms each going through a different slot even though it’s only one electron) and create interference patterns which requires us to understand them as waves and not particles.
However, once they are observed, they were indeed at an actual location at a given time, hence they have to be particles. This is often called “the collapse of the wave function”.
In particle physics, things are only up in the air if you ignore them otherwise standard logic applies.
I always liked the Schroedinger’s cat dealy, myself.
That’s a common misperception of the Heisenberg Principle, way to go pomos. All the HP means is that to measure something you have to interact with it.
The Copenhagen school was dead on in their physics but rather weak by feeling the need to explain (incorrectly) what the physics mean. Physics doesn’t <i>mean</i> anything at all.
The two slot experiment is lot like seeing an actual picture of the dead cat and the living cat interacting. Trumps Shroedinger’s pet stories anyday.
I’m posting this comment even though I know nothing about postmodernism. Is that wrong?
Ha ha. Anyway, why not not hold anyone responsible for anything to a greater extent than holding them responsible means urging them to affect what they can in a positive way? (No, there is no typo there.) If Fish can and should do something positive about something then where does it get us pondering whether or not he is “responsible” for it? I’ve always harbored the belief that the word “responsibility” has very little meaning. If I’m not responsible for something, and yet I stand to affect it greatly one way or another, is this a reason for me to step aside and do nothing? Conversely, if I have no control over something, but am responsible for it, how does this change the fact that I shouldn’t waste time lamenting over it? All things being equal, how does responsibility affect anything?
Note: This is a tangent. I really know no more about postmodernism than Jeff has mentioned, and, despite the looks of it, am not trying to express any opinion about it one way or another.
It matters, Todd, because it applies to such things as lawsuits and the legal range of culpability. For instance, can a gun manufacturer be held responsible for an individual’s choice to misuse a gun? Can car manufacturer be held liable for the drunken driver who chose their company’s vehicle(already, pubs where a drunk driver was served a drink can be sued in many states—as can the bartender—though bartenders aren’t required to administer breathalizers to all their customers before they pour a draught, last I checked). The idea that an action continues to act after the intention is completed is a truism; but just because the action continues to act (that is, because we can trace it along and make a narrative of its life as an action) does not mean the original actor should be held responsible for every contingency that act subsequently produces.
I assumed, and still assume, that you weren’t discussing the idea of legal responsibility, since, for example, Fish can’t be held legally responsible for the effects of his philosophies. But what you say about legal responsibility might go a long ways towards explaining how people use the word “responsibility”.
I’ve often found responsibility in legal issues to be a problematic way of dealing with laws, for the same reason that I’ve said that the word “responsibility” has a flimsy meaning. Of course, “holding someone responsible” for something has a very clear meaning, it means that they will be punished or somehow deterred with the expectation that this will acheive “justice” (another of my favorite words) and (hopefully more importantly) prevent what has happened from happening again. People get so caught up in determining whether or not someone is “responsible” for something that they sometimes don’t stop to think about what should really be done to correct a problem. Whether or not someone is responsible for something seems to determine only one thing, how to acheive “justice”, which seems to be some kind of suffering balance system. Justice occasionally deters people, I’m guessing, but seems to be based on what is normally called “revenge”. I’ve never seen a point to justice as a principle, because I think that all things it was invented to accomplish are better accomplished by having the principle, “make things better for people”, and thus have never seen a point to responsibility, as determining responsibility on any issue seems to only be for the purpose of procurring justice.
Maybe Fish can’t be held responsible for his philosophies, but the misapplication of his philosophies can have a very real impact on legal responsibility.
What you seem to be talking about is that Fish should’ve taken more of a personal interest in the misapplication of his thought. I’d say you’re right on that account, but then, he may believe that he had more important things to do than to correct a bunch of misconceptions championed by dunderheads who’d misread him (and who knows, maybe he’s right). But that has to do with priorities and personal ideas about responsibility. The responsibility I was talking about was the kind that gets codified into law.
Heh heh.
I wasn’t saying anything about Fish, which is what I tried to make clear by the “Note” at the end of my comment. Oh well.
Now I’m in the incredibly awkward and plausibly pointless position of disagreeing with you about what you were saying. Yes, Fish obviously can’t be held responsible for his philosophies or the release of them to the public. Because it is so obvious, to both you and me and everyone else, you would have never said that he shouldn’t have been held responsible by Jonah if you had been talking about legal responsibility.
I guess I only posted a comment in the first place because I thought the parody comic you made (This Modern Whine) seems to contrast with some of the other things you wrote, and I wanted to see what you were really like. But, now that I’ve read your own comments on that entry, I think I understand. The comic was made be oversimplifying, because you felt that Tom’s comic was oversimplifying.
But to make sure this is clear again: The comment I wrote under that entry about the comic was meant to convey that, when I read Tom Tomorrow’s comics and when he reads his own comics, we scrutinize them, and the comic you made seemed to be without scrutiny. Every statement anyone makes is an oversimplification of reality. However, your comic isn’t an oversimplification, it’s a misrepresentation. The people you describe in it are a misunderstanding of certain real people. The people Tom Tomorrow describes in his strip actually exist, and I think they are people you don’t particularly agree with. I’m not sure why you came to their defense.
I’m going to go kick myself now for posting this comment.
I disagree. The types of people who I invoke in my rewrite <i>do</i> exist. Every one of those frames has its referent in someone or something I’ve heard argued since 911. Do I think those opinions are representative of everyone on “the left”? No, of course not. But by pointing out the extremes on the left, I wanted to highlight that it’s easy to caricature from both sides.
You’re right—I don’t agree much with the extremists Tom Tomorrow bashes. But I believe he knows that he is holding up extremists in order to tar all of conservatism by association. I don’t like it when people use Jerry Falwell as an index for the “right,” just as I’m sure those on the left don’t like being reduced to mini-Chomskys or Sontags or Alice Walkers. (And evidently I was correct, given the level of vitriol against me the rewrite has inspirted.)
My (non cartooned) opinions on specific topics covered by those comics are all on display here on this blog. That so many people visiting this site for the first time have been willing to dismiss me as some rightwing nutjob doesn’t speak well of their willingness to see beyond their own prejudices, I don’t think.
Now, no more talk about that comic. At least not here. Please.
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