What Is Postmodernism?

An explanation of the original French postmodernism, contemporary leftist identity politics postmodernism, and analysis of the ramifications of their difference.

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0:00 Modernism
01:04 French Postmodernism
07:12 'Radical' Postmodernism

[tmcsons]

Imagine I took all my many notebooks worth of notes on what postmodernism is and put them into a computer. The computer reorganizes everything I've learned and printed out a succinct, easy to read, final report. That' what this video is. Thank you for organizing it so well.

[masonbazeley]

Your videos are so aesthetically and logically pleasing. There's a very calming simplicity to them. Please keep them coming. I wish you more subscribers. Thank you

[MrZombieCosmic]

Fantastic resource to use to educate people. Thanks for making this.

[unknown]

I was brought to your channel from the crt video. I was searching for information on crt that isnt ad hominen or politically charged and i found yours! The videos that you have posted thus far are eerily similar to the topics ive been pondering abt. Thanks so much for putting these out in a calm and rational manner.

[Mart-Bro]

Brilliant and timely piece. Thanks for making this, it's super important

[michealflaithbheartaigh]

The thing about being in a cult, is that nobody recognizes they're in a cult .

[Pyryp]

Finally a good take on this topic. Every philosopher seems to have made a video about how dumb it is that postmodernism is linked with modern leftism when Foucault would have disagreed with them on so much.

[dwen]

Interesting. I accept science, which tells us we are an extremely social (“eusocial”) species like bees and ants but with highly developed language and culture. We have a nature forged by evolution and therefore are not blank slates out of the womb. Although we do not have instinctual castes like other eusocial species, we are extremely status conscious (a similar construct). That is part of being a eusocial animal. Power politics (at all levels and dimensions) is an expression of this status consciousness. And certainly, the female of the species is different than the male in form and nature. Not better or worse, just different. Not 100% uniformly different. It’s all bell shaped curves of probability. This is not a white male construct, but something that needs to become self evident or we will not have a chance to coexist and sustain the species and civilization. I think extinction is more likely, which is the typical end for most species during the history of Earth. Can’t help but note that double think is just another expression of power politics and status consciousness.

[garrettrinquest]

I really appreciate where you said in essence, "this I where I'm taking a side and no longer being fully objective." It's great to have the distinction

[kevincurrie-knight]

I consider myself quite friendly to (original) postmodern thinking, and I think this video is quite good! As someone who quite likes Foucault and Lyotard (and Rorty and Fish), I think what happened was that crit theorists like hook and the like took certain postmodern tool they thought were useful, forgot others, and used the tools they took in ways that ended up conflicting with anything the original postmodernists would recognize.

Here's an academic example. In many places, Foucault talks about the "microphysics" of power. He suggests that power is this plural thing that goes in many directions within social situations. Teachers have authority over students, but students can also exercise power over teachers - they can refuse to do what teachers say, joke about the teacher in a way that gets into that teachers head, etc. White people often have more cultural power in interactions with black people, but that surely isn't always true. Etc. So, when hooks, Crenshaw, and the like took this postmodern power analysis and ended up with the idea that structural racism biased toward whiteness is everywhere a governing force, Foucault almost surely would have objected. That's structuralism; postmodernism is POST-structuralism.

Or a personal example. I have a colleague who works in critical race theory, while I'm more heavily influenced by postmdoernism. So he'll say that x situation is clearly racist. I'll say "But surely that is one description of it from one vantage point, and it can probably be redescribed in other ways from other positions." (That's something postmodern philosopher Richard Rorty would surely say.) My colleague will react in horror and say: "No! The situation literally can only be desctibed in that one way, the correct way." Even if his tools of analysis were in any way postmodern, the idea that "the situation is racist" is the one correct description of the event is clearly not a postmodern position.

[cdrthire]

You were quite fair with postmodernism and clear about your views on the "anti modern". This was very well articulated and refreshing. Thank you.

[JimmyDThing]

The problem is that encouraging critiquing metanarratives is itself a metanarratives and, worse, it's a metanarrative that blinds the follower to the fact that it is a metanarrative while also creating huge vacuums in the inevitable need for GRAND narratives. That's why everyone in these vacuums is behaving so incredibly dogmatic and religious and in extremely fundamental ways.

[axiss]

I don't know how you don't have more exposure. You do a really good job of explaining WHAT postmodernists are and WHY they're so paradoxical.
Your stuff is great!

[JasonKnightTulsa]

Man, what excellent thoughts. I've recently read White Fragility in an ongoing attempt to understand my wife's lived experience as a black woman in the US. Though parts of the book were helpful, I came away with a feeling of dread. You've nailed the source of it, namely that Dr Diangelo's ideas are radically post-modern, are not falsifiable as a hypothesis, and implicate me and every white person as irredeemably racist. Most frighteningly, and without any solid evidence, our racism is unconscious.

Keep up the good work. Have a sub and a like and a notification button click :).

[reanakovalcik]

I found this to be an incredibly helpful walkthrough of Modernism and French Postmodernism. While I wasn't expecting the critique on modern radical leftism, I thought it fit well with your analysis. The tie to what we're seeing now in the left (speaking as someone who sees themselves as a leftist) was especially powerful.

[jameskirby]

Great videos mate 👍, as someone who feels tired of being a tennis ball in the unending social arguing going on, these videos are really useful for my personal education and a wider understanding of the opposing factions in modern society.

[Lavishandlazy]

I'm very glad I found this channel. It's a nice antidote to James Lindsay's contemptuous (at times) sarcasm, which can be a turnoff. Your calm, succinct narrative is so clear, it's really solidifying my understanding of this movement. You're also very brave for making this video, so Thank You.

[tanyabennett]

While your comments about the logical contradictions in feminism are certainly true in some cases, you've reduced several important multi-faceted movements into something laughable. Cancel culture doesn't own feminism or racial activism. Do you prefer the "original" postmodernists because they don't try to forward an ethics? Such a program is much simpler, intellectually, of course. However, the relevance of philosophy is in the places where it meets personal experience, isn't it? I'd like to see you do a vlog on Pauli Murray (writer, lawyer, feminist/social activist, and Episcopal priest) to mine the logic of someone who straddled identities of male/female and black/white. Gloria Anzaldua arues that someone "outside" or "between" the accepted categories of gender and ethnicity can see dominant social structures much more clearly than those on the "inside." Murray certainly helped bring real change to American law to bring it more in line with its own founding documents. For Murray, logic that could be applied to reconcile discrepancies for people of color should be applied to everyone. Personally, postmodernism helped me "decolonize" my mind (to the extent that such is possible), liberating me to think more logically. Dismissing postmodern "offshoots" without acknowledging their complexity seems like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

[davidjuliesmiththomas]

Just got on to this chap recently. Brilliant. He has done the hard yards and is such a clear thinker. I would share this but I doubt that most of my friends have the patience to weather the concentrated information presented here. Nevertheless I will try.

[thomasswords]

This was a good summation of the original postmodernists, but I'm afraid you veer into caricature of those you deem "radical postmodernists." You claimed their ideology was full of contradictions, but you didn't cite a single example to show that. Do scholars like Crenshaw and Butler claim to believe in racial equality but blame one race exclusively for social problems? It's a very harsh charge and you don't substantiate it at all, so the whole video just comes off like a centrist who is rubbed the wrong way by what he *thinks* people on the left believe.