Talk:Criticism of postmodernism

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Citations needed

Any sort of 'criticism of' page is extremely susceptible to garbage and needs a lot of sources. There are many good critiques of postmodern theory, but generally people who simply do not know what postmodern theory is (does anybody?) and who disregard it as conservatives are going to be attracted to make lazy contributions to this page like insects to doggy doo. Habermas and Rorty accept many of the principles of thinkers such as Foucault, and Foucault himself, I think quite rightly, rejected the postmodern label and emphasised the Kantian/Nietzschean position in his work (even if that position is somewhat contradictory). The idea that "postmodernists are dangerous and relativist" is a very very basic way of looking at it, when in reality, many postmodern critiques of science (and so many only focus on soft science; psychology, sociology, etc) are merely a continuation on the lines of Kant and Kuhn and offer quite sophisticated analyses of the social processes which determine the acquisition of certain knowledges. Anyway. In short: REFERENCES PLEASE!! --Tomsega (talk) 09:36, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Worst article ever?

Seriously, as if the article on postmodernism wasn't biased enough, we need a further article written by philosophy minors, no doubt buzzed on Redbull making strawman arguments that try to equate postmodernism and aryan ideals? Then They dig up every living soul who has ever walked this earth to criticize postmodernism and let them have a word here? I request the expedient deletion of such an non-encyclopedic entry as this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.147.31.73 (talk) 11:32, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

We need a section on how postmodernism affects modern culture. Portillo (talk) 07:48, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I think the biggest thing lacking in the article is a response to all the criticism. A lot of postmodern writers profoundly disagree with many of the criticisms in the article, but there is no counterargument. Also, there is some confusion about what is being criticized here: is it postmodern writers, or the postmodern condition? Many postmodern writers criticize the postmodern condition. Another ambiguity: in what sense are we using criticism here. In the critical theory sense, or in the "you suck" sense? Should the article be renamed as Modernist criticism of postmodern critical theory?COGDEN 09:28, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Most sections include responses to the criticism, though I agree with 68.147.31.73 in that it's poorly organized. The obscurantism/political critiques should get focus since they're the most prominent (esp. the Sokal affair) and stuff like the Christian and Marxist responses rolled into political critique. On that note, the 'Moral Relativism' section is really terrible - it starts off with the clumsy and prejudging "some critics, who are also described with the pejorative term, Christian Right," most of the source links aren't actually links to the material or otherwise invalid, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.9.109.213 (talk) 08:00, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

\

I agree, but on a slightly different note: this article has none of the weighty arguments against post-modernism. For instance, why isn't there any point about how it's only reasonably defensible when assumed? To be a little more clear: post-modernism is not based on intuitions, evidence, logic, reason, etc. It's based on a group of people who, when faced with the enormous difficulty involved in creating a rational theory of the universe, preferred instead to declare it all relative and then firmly stick to that point. It commits the fallacy of reasoning from a theory to the facts rather than from facts to the theory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.12.88.51 (talk) 05:26, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I for one do not agree. Postmodernism is silly, being based primarily on trivialities. It is rooted mainly in abject skepticism because of a subatomic-level quantum mechanics discovery as if that should change all philosophy and humanities. In addition, it essentially but over-zealously declares because we as yet have no explanation for quantum level movement being descriptively probabilistic rather than causal and predictable, postmodernism has decided to give up on all certainty, truth, paradigms, and theory that are not microscopic truths or local in scope. That is an absurd leap of total hopelessness and lack of faith when stepping across the divide and deposits between yore feet- that is, the faith in mid-range and grand theories - as if unified field theories of physics and structure do not and cannot exist! Their consummate “cannot believe in value assumptions for the foundation of things” style of broad, general doubt belies a rather obvious extreme skepticism and thus anarchist value assumption.  Because of their position of non-empiricism at other levels of nature and real-world organization exposes only a humus and manure of life in things that mean much more... Who cares if we are an island of logic and structure floating on a sea of wavy ether? What at this level of reality makes a wavy foundation important or relevant to higher levels of organization and pattern? There are multiple levels and many are much more stable than the quantum level! We bob and float in an organized and highly structured fashion above it all! In other words, it will land you flat on your back in a troublesome, stinky philosophical and artistic quagmire (and has done so) and not offer you a hand to get up except for the intellectually blissful, hateful hand that pushed you down! 
 Postmodernist is a waste of information instead of an integration of it! Its grandiose description is even based a meta-narrative itself, which include views of the world and of overarching truth postmodernism stands steadfastly against.  A meta narrative against all meta narratives is not only self-contradictory, but linguistic and manifestly absurd.  And this is why they defy all logic in defending it.  It is simply a revolutionary dismantling of anything truthful.   
 Let!s sum-up “Aunt-I met-a-narrative!”  The crux of what most postmodernists offer as I see is they have trouble believing in anything outside of themselves.  They want to be blissfully subjective and not be criticized at all for it. They are non-pragmatic as a result and not at all empirical realists. They are like a fly in the oink mint and soup placed in front of you by society - an affront and sometimes attack on all high level certainty and on the meta-idea of the existence of logically determined levels themselves and all hierarchy! It is thus against the very structure, stepwise logic, idea of complexity, and reason of nature which has enlightened and continues to enlighten science and technology!  It is the logical flaw of defiant conflation - it carries skepticism from just the forefront of social construct and paradigm development to the throne of science, technological advance, and our political and religious hearts!  As if you could put all of them down from only a microscopic view of one of them by only viewing reality at one level (even from our relativistically much higher organizational and observational level).  A circularity if not a singularity! 
 Postmodernists this apply their meta narrative selectively only to dismantle things in their field they consider old or established.  To fling toilet paper across the wall rather emotionally to make doubt in the extreme reign in fear supreme! They simply and consummately defy all authority, standards, law, convention, and they undermine politics and religion using hateful skepticism.  There is a position of no constructivist respect in postmodernism; only defiance of all deduction and even induction and blind doubt including the merits of technologically based empiricism and theory building.  It is experimentalism carried out only subjectively and to the blindsided extreme. 
 Postmodernism has harmed civilization to an abysmal degree.  Its natural law-defying deconstructionism based on the anti-structuralism of French Jacques Derrida risks much of civilization, information technology, and industrialization. It could easily ignite a world war and a nuclear one as a result. Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia are modernist, the West and Africa are postmodernist, and Asia doesn’t care.  Its meta narrative quite confidently asserts with all certainty, “Society exists. There-for I am.” (ref., Rene Descartes) And that is because the biggest “eye” will seize it. And who cares whether all structure is floating above a wavy, unpredictable sea, or not? The material is not the structure and nature is definitely not constructed of linguistic phenomena alone. Your non-linguistic skin-mending facility is smarter and more artistic than any hominid prefrontal lobe cortex that is processing linguistic data! Just try and get a surgeon to compete with it. Little in the organization of levels and structure of processes in nature is influenced by linguistic features. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 240D:1A:A97:4500:C8D9:75DA:882F:6B6B (talk) 07:10, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Art Bollocks

The result of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Art Bollocks was to merge that article into this one. I have performed a purely mechanical merge. Content experts need to assimilate it into the article in a more useful manner. Fiddle Faddle 23:44, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Solomon quote

I'm unaware of any other article which features a heading quote as this one now does. This is keeping with the style of Wikipedia and the policy of neutral presentation? 66.87.119.183 (talk) 22:38, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Authenticity of Chomsky criticism

Has this been verified to have been authored by Chomsky? http://bactra.org/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html

This was a very open and public argument and his comments still stand. So yes they are verified. Would you like more sources? Shabidoo | Talk 16:09, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

My guess is the link is legitimate, the writing sounds like Chomsky and I know its consistent with what Chomsky thinks, he has said similar things on various youtube clips, but I agree with the person who started this section, that link is hardly credible. It just goes to someone's personal web site. That's not a valid reference. If I get a chance I'll see if I can find a better one but I don't think that reference should stay, or at a minimum there should be a better additional reference to something actually published or a clip of video or audio, Chomsky has made his opinion clear on this topic, he thinks postmodernism is pseudoscience. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:36, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

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American Psycho

Thanks for the contribution to the article. I'm not sure that the Jennifer Krause article is really the right source for "Criticism of Postmodernism". Having read the abstract of this article, you encounter the terms: "intertextuality", the use of an analytical method by a post modernist "Beaudrillard". The text of the article also includes some fairly post-modernesque tropes: "argues that a reconsideration of", "culture and its relationship with postmodernism" and "needs to be addressed". In the second paragraph: "one encounters a more complex understanding". In general it seems that, American psycho isn't a critique of postmodernism but a critique of our "post-modern world". In other words, it posits we live in a post-modern condition and highlights the problems and absurdities that come from it. This isn't the same as a general criticism of the very ideas and theories of postmodernism, postmodern art, postmodern philosophy and postmodern discourse. In otherwords...the article isn't alluding to criticism of postmoderism...but is literary criticism of works which explore problems with our assumed post-modern condition. It may be a good idea to move your text to the actualy article on postmodernism or postmodern discourse rather than this article...which is criticism of the very concept of postmoderism itself and it's tropes, analysis, claims, assumptions, language etc. Shabidoo | Talk 23:21, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

I disagree, criticism of postmodern world is by definition criticism of postmodernism, since that world is product of it. Aocdnw (talk) 10:34, 2 July 2019 (UTC) Block evasion by sock. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:17, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Articulated why it is postmodern [1]. Aocdnw (talk) 16:53, 2 July 2019 (UTC) Block evasion by sock. Beyond My Ken (talk) 16:17, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Unsourced claims in Moral relativism

The first sentance seems to Noam chomsky has accused Post-Modernism of "contributing to deviant behavior" If there is a source for that, it isn't next to the claim. "A Trojan Horse: Logotherapeutic Transcendence and its Secular Implications for Theology" way back machine link doesn't work And I am not sure "Some critics, such as Noam Chomsky" gives an acurate picture of the criticism of the "some others" since all 3 sources seem to be theological. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Some2Guy (talk • contribs) 10:37, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Metamodernism claim in Introduction

I removed the metamodernism part in the introduction as it had no sources, or explanation in the main body. I also believe it to be irrelevant for this article, as it did not bring up any concrete criticism of postmodernism, the specific critiques made by the metamodernists would be relevant. Some2Guy (talk) 08:59, 24 September 2021 (UTC)