No chocolate, no compass, no matches
I’ve been wondering what ‘postmodernism’ is exactly. I don’t mean what its claims are, I mean what it is itself. What kind of thing is it? What box does it go in? It’s not a discipline. It’s not a kind of philosophy, like pragmatism or utilitarianism. It’s not a kind of inquiry. What is it? I realize I don’t even know, and I’m not sure other people do either, including postmodernists themselves. Their descriptions of postmodernism tend to be notably vague around the edges. Evasive, a hostile witness might say. Like this one from the hilarious article on the reception of ‘Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism’ by Holmes et al. last summer, the one that quotes comments on a blog as its main examples of that reception.
The postmodernist thinking that has characterised a number of academic disciplines in the last two or so decades of the 20th century – and is still alive and well in some quarters – has played an important role in creating new ways of developing ideas in the arts, science and culture. The relativism on which it is founded, and the ‘liberation’ from sacred cows it seeks, have a place in healthcare and health science…[P]ostmodernism is a response to modernity – the period where science was trusted and represented progress – and essentially focuses on questioning the centrality of both science and established canons, disciplines and institutions to achieving progress. The nature of ‘truth’ is a recurring concern to postmodernists, who generally purport that there are no truths but multiple realities and that understandings of the human condition are dynamic and diverse. The notion that no, one view, theory or understanding should be privileged over another (or that no discourse should be silenced) is a tenet of postmodernist critique and analysis.
The words used kind of give away the fact that there is nothing very rigorous going on here. Postmodernist thinking, creating new ways of developing ideas, the ‘liberation’ it seeks, a response, essentially focuses, questioning the centrality, a recurring concern, generally purport, notion. Tenet, critique and analysis sound a little sterner, but after all those mushy terms they don’t convince. It all seems to speak of…just some people saying some things. So, what is that? What is postmodernism?
Well, whatever it is, let’s have a fantasy. Let’s imagine someone who seriously does question ‘the centrality of both science and established canons, disciplines and institutions to achieving progress.’ Okay? Got the someone? Let’s call it X. Let’s imagine depositing X stark naked in the middle of a trackless northern forest in the dead of winter (now, in fact), and then let us see how long X will want to sustain this questioning. Remember – it’s science that is being questioned. So that means no tool use: that means no making a fire, no building a shelter, no making clothes, no trapping animals, no fishing except with bare hands, no throwing sticks, no snow shoes, no rafts. It also means no existing knowledge – X can’t discriminate between poisonous berries and the other kind, can’t identify venomous snakes, doesn’t know how animals behave, can’t tell what the weather is doing, can’t navigate by the north star or the sun, doesn’t know that water can be full of bacteria. X would be dead in a matter of hours.
Now, X will say, indignantly, ‘But I’m not going to be trapped naked in the middle of a trackless forest in the dead of winter!’ Well no, X, you’re not, unless you’re very careless, but that is my point. You are dependent on science for your very existence at every turn, and you don’t even know it. If you suddenly found yourself in the trackless forest scenario, it would probably become clear to you very, very quickly how ‘central’ science is. In short, you’re a fool.
Kind of like a modification of the old ‘what do you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean’ joke.
What happens when you put a thousand naked postmodernists in a trackless northern forest in the middle of winter..?
Actually, a pretty entertaining ‘reality’ (pun intended) show could be made out of your idea, don’t you think?
Tensions would rise as a suspected microfascist was alleged by the green team to be surrepticiously recalling ‘knowledge’ from high school biology class in order to ascertain a method of obtaining food. The pink team would insist that if they would only believe strongly enough then food would surely find its way to them. Fights would break out over ‘what Derrida would do’..
Ah, the possibilities..
Heh! I do indeed think. Reality shows are the source of much of the detail in the fantasy. I’m addicted to the ones on Discovery where a guy is stuck in some hellish bit of nature and has to make his way out.
“a suspected microfascist was alleged by the green team to be surrepticiously recalling ‘knowledge’ from high school biology class in order to ascertain a method of obtaining food.”
Heh heh heh. Exactly.
Yay for Dr Goldacre.
A literary academic friend of mine once said the best way to approach post modernism was to look at it as a tool box used to achieve certain ends, not as a way of life. Eg deconstruction in itself can be quite useful, for example when analysing a political essay or something sent out by a PR agency.
I still think knowledge and logic tend to work better, though.
My generic response to such extremist P-Ms (and one runs into them in my academic institution on occasion) is to point out that every time they get on an airplane they’re being a flaming hypocrite.
As one of the badscience bloggers whose discourse was privileged to be identified as “reactionary” in the journal editor’s “mea non culpa – honest – but you guys are MEAN” response, I can only say that I was deeply tickled to have my online alter ego quoted in a supposedly serious journal. It’s been a notable week as I also spotted someone quoting a factoid of wikipedia put there by me. Cyber-fame at last.
A thought –
Apart from the “equal privileging of all discourses” line, the PM extremists remind me of nothing so much as the Chinese Communists in the era of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book – for “microfascist!” or “hegemonist!” read “reactionary!” (which both groups use) or “counter-revolutionary!”
Think there is a whole gag-book to be written about post-modernists lured into trouble by the awkward collision of their ideology and that damned inconvenient reality (as I would put – I guess for them I should add inverted commas). Puts me in mind of Tom Lehrer’s lines about “As uncomfortable as a Christian Scientist with appendicitis”
I used to have some books that used a lot of po-mo jargon…they aren’t there now. I am still trying to figure out the diff tween a dualism and a binarism, and tween originary and original.
The game show idea is great. I still wouldn’t get a tv, but that experiment ought to be tried. I read somewhere that when po-mos join the Mafia they make you an offer you can’t understand.
I still find it hard to believe that the title of the article Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism is for real. It’s just too good to be true.
“every time they get on an airplane they’re being a flaming hypocrite.”
Or as Ben Goldacre put it to me when I was musing on the naked postmodernist fantasy: “show me a relativist in a house and i’ll show you a hypocrite.”
Yeah, Dr Aust, I saw you there. There’s glory for you!
A whole gag book. Hmmmmmmmmm…
Postmodernism “has played an important role in creating new ways of developing ideas in the arts, science and culture”?
Exactly what “new ways of developing ideas in science” has postmodernism created?
I know of none.
How’s this:
“Genuine post-modernists don’t care if the roof leaks. Fixing the roof would privilege the concept of dryness.”
Vell, you szee, zat is ze utility off verds like ‘rrole’ und ‘crreating’ und ‘new vays’ und ‘developing’ und ‘ideas’ – zey all mean so verry little zat it is possible to claim zat postmoderrrnism has indeed played szuch a rrole.
Like, it’s played a role in provoking people in science to develop ideas about what is so stupid about postmodernism.
Szimple.
If you haven’t already – and I suspect I’m shutting the stable door etc …
Look at tha article Ophelia has posted at the top of the main page, about “BadScience” – and PoMo.
Incidentally, this also refers to the argument going on two or three subjects down (Aggressive Naughty Mean Atheists – I think) and my constant reference to scientific facts being used to help in value judgements.
Now what I want to know is why people like Merlijn and Cathal agree with trashing PoMo, but the moment I use the same argument, they try to jump on my head.
Inconsistent, is, I believe the word to use here.
While ripping the piss out of po-mo is fun, it is worth bearing in mind OB’s original question of what it is. One answer, from my own discipline, is that it is a reaction [ongoing now for somewhere like 35 years] against expressions of absolute hegemonic certainty made by classic ‘modernist’ authorities that, read now, are breathtaking in their arrogance. Read, for example, Jack Plumb’s ‘Death of the Past’ and wince at how certain he is that he and his fellows can construct ‘an historical past, objective and true’ to serve the needs of society for progress to a single, equally ‘objective’ future — and he wasn’t even a Marxist!
OTOH, as my friend John Arnold notes in a review article in the latest European History Quarterly [2007, vol 37 no 1], many of those pushing something they call ‘postmodernism’ as a response to this are equally arrogantly ignorant of the actual mechanisms of historiographical practice, and grievously simplistic in their own pronouncements.
“the “equal privileging of all discourses” line”
I’ve never understood why postmodernism seeks to privilige itself above all other discourses. It seems pretty absolutist about its relativism.
“X can’t discriminate between poisonous berries and the other kind, can’t identify venomous snakes, doesn’t know how animals behave, can’t tell what the weather is doing, can’t navigate by the north star or the sun, doesn’t know that water can be full of bacteria. X would be dead in a matter of hours.”
X can use traditional folk ways of knowing which berries are poisonous and they can boil the water because errrr.
Well anyway, folk knowledge could be like science. If you cover your mouth when you sneeze because of spirits rather than because of viruses you will obviously develop antivirals to tackle the evil spirits. Because that example isn’t confusing words and ontology at all, oh no. It’s a stunning refutation of the scientific method because errr.
And we know which bits of folk knowledge to claim are like science because, well, you know. When you burn yourself, rubbing fat on the burn is not as good as placing the burn under cold water, but that’s not a useful example because errrr.
“I’ve never understood why postmodernism seeks to privilige itself above all other discourses. It seems pretty absolutist about its relativism.”
This always gets my goat too but Simon Blackburn dosn’t think it is a killer argument.
It is fun noticing the things that postmodernists tend to be postmodern about, though. Aeroplanes is a good example, of course, and heart surgery. Cancer really seems to bring the modernist out in people too. Not much parity of critical discourse in evidence on the oncology ward: ‘The doctor has decided against chemotherapy in your case Mr Rorty, fearing that it over-privileges western evidence-based discourses. He’d like you to wear this lucky hat instead.’
“It seems pretty absolutist about its relativism.”
This is called dogmatic scepticism [or skepticism, if you prefer]. It is just another way of saying ‘ooh, I’m so special and you’re so stupid.’ An arrogant assertion of the impossibility of discrimination [and the double-meaning of the latter term in political discourse may be a clue to the avoidance of the practice, of course].
Radical sc/kepticism, however, which affirms that ‘nothing is true, not even this’, is a position which allows for doubt even over the existence of doubt, and thus paves the way for cautious [skeptical] reliance on evidence — empiricism.
Calling people ‘microfascists’ because they are skeptical enough to demand evidence before affirming a practice as valid is proof of the infantilism of what ‘postmodernism’ has become.
Picking up on Dave’s comments, in order to kow what we mean by ‘post-modernism’ we first have to know what we mean by ‘modernism’ and as that means many different things in many different fields, it’s not surprising that its successor is hard to define.
Given what Dave was saying – how long before the Post-Modernists all become devout religious believers, so that their statement can be even more priveliged from nast rationalist criticism?
GT:
Now what I want to know is why people like Merlijn and Cathal agree with trashing PoMo, but the moment I use the same argument, they try to jump on my head.
Inconsistent, is, I believe the word to use here.
Nonsense. I agree with trashing PoMo in as far as PoMo descends into epistemic relativism. As I do believe “truth matters”. And that’s all. And my opposition to these aspects of “postmodernism” is probably all the more fierce because I would acknowledge that some aspects of the whole “postmodernist enterprise” – it’s merciless criticism of ideologies, textual analysis, etc. – could be attractive in some disciplines. But when turned against knowledge itself, the whole thing implodes.
Of course scientific facts play a role in value judgements. It’s just as obvious that you can’t deduce value judgements from just scientific facts (we’ve been through this). I believe in some kind of continuüm of rational methods at use in science, the humanities, philosophy, our day-to-day lives and ultimately religion. This would put me strongly at odds with postmodernism – but also with the crude scientism you seem to represent.
“One answer, from my own discipline, is that it is a reaction [ongoing now for somewhere like 35 years] against expressions of absolute hegemonic certainty made by classic ‘modernist’ authorities that, read now, are breathtaking in their arrogance.”
That’s interesting, and believable. But why does a retort to J H Plumb have to be a postmodernist retort? Why does one have to go to postmodernism in order to dispute absurd arrogant certainty? Was absurd arrogant certainty universal among modernists before postmodernism came along? I don’t think so.
“I would acknowledge that some aspects of the whole “postmodernist enterprise” – it’s merciless criticism of ideologies, textual analysis, etc. – could be attractive in some disciplines.”
But what is postmodernist about that? That (surely) just plays into the whole arrogant postmodernist trope that pretends postmodernism invented skepticism. There was criticism of ideologies and there was textual analysis before postmodernism was a gleam in Derrotard’s eye. Lyoida didn’t invent skepticism.
I never said po-mo was the omly answer to Plumb et al. The culturalist Marxism of EP Thompson was one very different retort, though being Marxism, it also brought its own implicit teleology.
As for “Lyoida didn’t invent skepticism”, did anyone say they did? Po-mo exists historically just as modernism did before it — i.e. in a very complex relationship to its context [however ironic one chooses to find that]. Without Marxism, for example, it is doubtful whether structuralism would have taken the hold it did, thus prompting ‘poststructuralist’ critiques, and opening the way for wider [vaguer] postmodernist notions. Without a very complex history of the evolution of, say, Literary Criticism and Anthropology as practised disciplines within the [especially US] academy, the emergence of distinctively ‘postmodern’ [and emphatically sh*te] variants of these disciplines will appear mysterious…
Everyone always has to claim to be both a] new and b] right, otherwise you can’t play the academic game, which is where po-mo operates most cosily. The fact that, thanks to the ‘professionalisation’ [i.e. compulsory degree-certification] of some essentially non-academic subjects, po-mo has escaped into areas where it can do real harm to the world is unfortunate, but highly contingent.
Dave, no I didn’t mean you said Lyoida invented skepticism, I meant postmodernists often (or possibly always) either say it or imply it.
So I still sort of wonder why a Plumb calls forth that particular reaction. But the thing about having to claim to be both new and right probably answers that question. WTM talks about that need, as a matter of fact.
But what is postmodernist about that? That (surely) just plays into the whole arrogant postmodernist trope that pretends postmodernism invented skepticism. There was criticism of ideologies and there was textual analysis before postmodernism was a gleam in Derrotard’s eye. Lyoida didn’t invent skepticism.
I totally agree. But you know and I know that academic memories can be short. And then there’s the need Dave and you pointed to to continuously appear “revolutionary” and “paradigm-shifting” – something Susan Haack dubbed preposterism, if I recall. Which probably has sociological roots of its own: universities churn out graduates at an ever increasing rate, which increases pressures for new academics to publish, publish, publish, regardless of the actual mediocrity of the research – and to appear new and innovative at all costs.
Part of the problem – perhaps the main part – is that by their very nature, knowledge claims in the human sciences are weaker than in the natural sciences. There’s been a consistent effort to get some kind the methodological rigour and relative solidity of the natural sciences into the human sciences by aping them. So you get “historicism” in Marxist or other incarnations, or behaviorism, etc.
The alternative – the kind of hermeneutic method proposed by Collingwood, Gadamer, etc. – is much more fickle. It’s terribly open to attack in that it is post-hoc, not predictive, etc. Which is true, but I think that’s just how it is.
I think that postmodernist criticisms of science in a way is an attractive escape-route for some people in that it criticizes the concept of knowledge as a whole, at which point the humanities and the natural sciences are raised on an equal footing. I think it’s ultimately rooted in the same kind of physics-envy (and recently biology-envy) which brought us “laws” of history, behaviorism, memetics, and so forth.
Yep.
But it’s so irritating that they keep on doing it. Year in, year out, they pretend that no one ever thought a skeptical thought until they came along. How I wish we could magic just one of them into the deep dark forest…
No, I do most emphatically NOT represent “crude scientism” – it is only that some peole are determined to read it that way.
What I am saying, is that established facts should be taken into account, and that popular prejudices, especially religious ones, should be treated with the contempt they deserve.
An example we have been looking at recently was the number and proportion of natural abortions. This must be taken note of in any discussion on the subject. I did not say it was all black-and-white – if I remember correctly, I stated that the 20-28 week period was problematical …..
The appeal of pomo in a nutshell is that if no one is right, you can never, ever be shown to be wrong.
Hi folks,
Belated reaction to the “pomo and EBM” debate. I have just read through the pomo EBM article “Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism ” from start to finish.
It’s pathetic – beyond belief, almost like something out of the Postmodernism Generator. LOL, side-splitting, mirth, tears falling on keyboard, etc.
So why on earth was it published by an EBM periodical?
I think it was because, for all the paper’s awfulness, there was something inside it trying to get out, some kernel of truth. It’s this (I copy from an online abstract of another paper to save myself the time and trouble):
“Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has already had a profound effect on both medical education and clinical practice. The benefits of EBM, which defines the value of medical interventions in terms of empirical evidence from clinical trials, are enormous and well described. Not clearly acknowledged, however, are the limits of EBM. An intrinsic gap exists between clinical research and clinical practice. Failure to recognize and account for this gap may lead to unintended and untoward consequences. Under the current understanding of EBM, the individuality of patients tends to be devalued, the focus of clinical practice is subtly shifted away from the care of individuals toward the care of populations, and the complex nature of sound clinical judgment is not fully appreciated. Despite its promise, EBM currently fails to provide an adequate account of optimal medical practice. A broader understanding of medical knowledge and reasoning is necessary.“
I’m a charitable post-Christian secularist family guy. I turn my two cheeks at the same time in all directions. I seek the best in everyone, that shimmer of light even in the dying embers ….
The question is: if this was what the pomo brigade was trying to say (and I think perhaps it was) why didn’t they just say it?
It’s not even anything new. Google in “limits of evidence based medicine” and you’ll get 634 hits. It’s old hat for everybody except for the pomo-ists themselves.
Yes, absolutely, I believe that point has been made in discussions of this elsewhere – a reasonable query is turned into a load of laughable sh*te by pouring po-mo gunk over it.
Incidentally, am I the only one who has the unfortunate tendency to read ‘porno’ when someone writes ‘pomo’? It’s very distracting, and why I prefer to hyphenate [you play your games, and I’ll play mine, as the bishop said to the actress…]
…am I the only one who has the unfortunate tendency to read ‘porno’ when someone writes ‘pomo’?
Dave, do you know that until I read your question I hadn’t even thought of it, in my pristine purety
Now it’s porno, porno everywhere!
You have robbed me of my innocence.
“why didn’t they just say it?”
Well what a silly question. Would we be talking about them if they had? Would anyone except people closely involved in the EBM debate? The way to get attention is to make a silly claim – I mean, to transgress the boundaries of the established disciplinary canons.
Funny how similar rn and m look in this particular font.
That’s one of the confusing things about hornosexuals, isn’t it?
Well what a silly question. Would we be talking about them if they had?
Now, now, let’s not be too uncharitable. Next time, I’ll insert a rhetoric on/off pair of tags.
Good one there, Stewart — you had me baffled until third reading.
Now, now, let’s not be too – um – literal. I knew your question was rhetorical, of course; my reply was also rhetorical. Is there a word for that? Meta-rhetorical? Rhetorical in the second degree? Something like that. I was rhetorically answering it as if it were not rhetorical.
Point taken — mea culpa!
If we have to pin down what postmodernism means, I would tend towards saying postmodernism is an ‘approach’.
The problem here is that the practicioners of postmodern art, architecture, and literature have a certain approach (self-consciously recycling imagery, intertextuality, fragmentary narratives and designs, and so on), while the concerns of the ‘thinkers’ of postmodernism, i.e. the theorists, tend to be somewhat different, so their ‘approach’ to questions is more conceptually based (ideas about the Other, metanarratives, ideology, etc.).
I suppose ultimately they are both connected through a desire to tear down what was established.
So, really, perhaps I’ve muddied the waters a bit more here.
But to conclude:
‘postmodernism’ is an ‘approach’.
Thanks, Edmund; that’s helpful.
Is an approach slightly less rigorous than a methodology? And/or is it slightly (or more than slightly) more…attitudinal? Is it more like a stance than like a methodology? Or is it somewhere between the two?
I asked the question in the first place because it struck me that the claims Pearson made in that account seemed much more political than epistemic. That’s not a new thought, of course: part of the reason postmodernism can be so exasperating is precisely that it tends to disguise a political stance as an epistemic view. But it did make me wonder what postmodernism is generally taken to be.
I think the best way to understand pomo is based on Tom Wolfe’s Bauhaus to Our House. Essentially, a gang of struggling artists or litcrits or whoever form a circle, invent a private language and issue a manifesto: ART(or KNOWLEDGE) INSIDE THIS CIRCLE.
It is a claim to take away the ‘privilege’ of Establishment on the grounds of self-recognised coolness.
It doesn’t need everyone to agree – just enough good-looking chicks and funding agencies to make things comfy.
And of course, us pop evolutionary psychologists have no trouble recognising it as a strategy for second-string males of a baboon troop, excluded from status and breeding females, to set up their own troop.
Wolfe called it a ‘clerisy’.
Maybe THIRD-string; the ones with no close expectation of cracking tenure.
Babooniversity?
Hah!
Hey, tenure in a baboon troop is no sinecure…