/lit/ - Literature

>>10433938
I was in your position for a long time OP, and am definitely still in it to a large degree, but I've caught a glimpse along the way into postmodernism's nature.
The book that tied a lot of strands together for me was pic related. I recommend it for its completely straightforward while still somewhat decent analysis.
Post-modernism, at its broadest definition, can most aptly be defined as a lack of substance in the current era of some field (whether its art, architecture, philosophy, or political thought, etc), and a resulting looking backward to previous eras for inspiration. The most neutral and least harmful expression of this is in the realm of architecture. Modernist architecture was so ugly and horrific, the succeeding period of Postmodernist architecture (which we are in) candidly realized it had nowhere to go and thus looked to the past to create hodgepodges of older styles, while introducing modern sensibilities.
In philosophy, social thought, etc (i.e., "academic though") the problem is much graver when a generation of thinkers cannot find a foundational base for their ideology that they can actually believe in, and thus the problems start. By refusing to believe in the past seriously, as well as the present, Postmodernist academic thought rejects the possibility of meaning even being possible, and thus embrace chaos and nothingness as the only meanings themselves. That is precisely why most Postmodernist art is so chaotic and ugly, precisely because such qualities are seen as the goal. C.S. Lewis said something of "nothing being strong" without God, in the literal sense of the desire for chaos and nothingness becoming the overriding power in a person without a firm base in some faith.
Now, in such an environment, the human intellect is weak to deeper ideological temptations, and thus you have the rise of Marxism having subtly infected most of upper academia.
That is the best way I can express my general understanding atm, OP. I hope I helped a little.