/lit/ - Literature

postmodernism is an attempt to think the present historically in an age that has forgotten how to think historically in the first place

>>10354676
It was when subtext became more important than actual propositional content

it's by definition undefinable

>>10354676
There are two definitions of postmodernism. The first is the academic and scholarly definition. It refers to the reaction to and rejection of the ideas of the previous movement, which was called modernism.
The second is the meme definition, invoked mostly by right wingers to claim that critical thought regarding western sacred cows somehow means you reject the notion of objective truth altogether.

>>10354676
post modernism is basically 'you can't know nuffin' on steroids, the idea that everything is subjective and of equivalent (subjective) value as such. Or as your comic explains, it's to not believe the truth you know.

>>10354691
there is at least a third (meme) pop culture definition

>>10354691
What a snidey ballsless framing. How is the second "definition" at all not consistent with the first

>>10354691
>if I read into something values and ideas that clearly aren't there and couldn't be there that's the same thing as critical thought and rejection of such is right wing memery!
sure anon sure

>>10354702
The Iliad is a story about feminism. Prove me wrong.

>>10354702
Each work is a product of human thought, which is shaped by the society around it. So it isn't unreasonable to assume that societal bias isn't reflected unconsciously or consciously critiqued or affirmed in every work of fiction ever created.

>>10354708
Example: in the Iliad conflict is largely instigated by women (Eris, three goddesses squabbling, Helen existing as a status symbol). This could be read into.

>>10354724
What you're talking about here is totally within the domain of modernism.

Post-modernism begins when an arbitrary secondary consideration like this BECOMES the story itself. Along with any other countless number of inter-conflicting silly readings. All are equally legitimate with the spirit of the text itself thrown away. Unspeakable

>>10354676
post-modernism means being meta and extremely self-aware is the pinnacle of thought. There is nothing beyond meta, you can only add multiple layers of meta.

We must return to naturalism.

>>10354736
This must be a mischcaracterization, no serious academic would be that stupid.

>>10354695
Everything is not subjective. Everything is self-referential.

>>10354756
>no serious academic would be that stupid.

Why the fuck would you EVER assume that?

>>10354756
HINT HINT, they don't actually believe it to be true but its expedient for their politics and career to pretend as if it is

Modernism and modernity, conventionally beginning with the Enlightenment and its Early Modern precursors, were dominated by what post-modernism calls "meta-narratives." Meta-narrative is a useful term for describing, more or less, any grand explanation of what the hell is going on with humanity (or with core aspects of humanity), and what we're supposed to do about it.

These meta-narratives were often totalizing and eschatological. That is, they often approached humanity, its history and its destiny, in terms of explicit or implicit moral programs. Some of the most obvious and common examples are the obsession with scientism, with technology, with enlightenment and rationality, with "progress." Marxism was eschatological, it had a Hegelian philosophy of history that concluded in utopia. Social darwinism and its offshoots had all kinds of meta-narratives about the survival of the fittest, or pushing human development forward. Theories of art, science, religion, philosophy, human consciousness, were all more or less imbued with these themes.

This is all very "modern" and it's what post-modernism is responding to. Critiques of modernity and many of these meta-narratives started to appear already in the 19th century, from all quarters, as society industrialized and urbanized, and as people became suspicious about the naive optimism and single-mindedness of many of the narratives. With the crises and world wars of the 20th century, "cultural pessimism" became more and more tha norm among intellectuals, along with a general sense that all the enlightenment and optimism had actually ended up creating a modernity that was more of a prison than a utopia.

After WW2 and its trauma, when the "what was all that killing and technologized death, with its 'enlightened' scientificity and organisation, even FOR?" sentiment was reaching its highest point, the colonial empires then fell apart under decolonisation, and no one could even have faith in the meta-narrative of their shattered nation's glory and manifest destiny anymore. Lots and lots of social theory started to proliferate that emphasised pluralism and deeply critiqued EVERYTHING the old world had arrogantly taken for granted. The whole general theme of meta-narrativising, and naively running full speed ahead into tragedy, was seen as a MODERN thing, a historical accident born from the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, etc.

Postmodernism is basically about saying "If that's what modernity was all about, if modernity was about confidently asserting that your interpretation of reality is correct, and then gung-ho shoving it down African and Asian throats, or slaughtering millions of people based on it, or re-building society to be an industrial hell, or destroying meaning and religion and joy so you can have a perfectly 'scientific' world with no room for humanity left in it, then fuck modernity."

>>10354676
>Can someone explain to me what postmodernism is?
>a clear, concise definition

>implying sign=signifier

Stop imposing your discourse and power structure on me you fascist.

>>10354805

The tension of postmodernism, what annoys people about it, comes from the fact that it inherits all the thought of modernity, it builds on the ruins of modernity and with the ruined fragments of modernity. In a sense, we are only able to see why relativism and pluralism are the only valid positions BECAUSE this is itself a totalising, non-relativising moral position - the position of "total" relativism - which is itself an Enlightenment way of thinking. There is a constant tension between this moral "never again!" aversion to any naively optimistic meta-narrative and the realisation that this aversion is, in itself, a meta-narrative, and that it's not a very satisfying one because we're still living in a wasted neo-liberal post-capitalist hell anyway.

Postmodernists handle this paradox in various ways and it often seems like they're being deliberately slippery, but that's because they associate rigidity and certitude with Very Bad Things, because modernity was typified people who were very certain and rigid in their moral commitment to gassing millions of people or to turning humans into commodity-purchasing automata.

>>10354805
>>10354812
This explanation is very good, although it should include more about how its the Jews behind it all instead of just hinting at it

>>10354676
by definition your definition is as good as anyone's

>>10354805
>>10354812
Can someone corroborate that these are somewhat accurate definitions, because they seem really well articulated

I don't want to take what was said here for granted though

>>10354990
Nah he's pretty on the ball

>>10354812
>>10354805

>Westerners genocide an entire continent's population by 90%+ and replace it with Western settlements
>Westerners enslave Africans for generations
>Westerners educate Asians to massacre each other in the tens of millions for Western ideologies
>Westerners stand by and watch as the Armenians are genocided
>Westerners kill about five million Je--

WHOA, WHOA, WHOA! WAIT A MINUTE! HISTORY IS OVER! HISTORY HAS COME TO AN END! THERE CAN BE NO POETRY AFTER THIS! THERE CAN BE NO LIFE! WE ARE IN THE MAUSOLEUM OF THE HUMAN CONDITION NOW! HOW DARE YOU TOUCH A JEW? A SACRED JEW, ONE OF THE CHOSEN RACE, THE GLORIOUS CHOSEN PEOPLE WHOSE FEET YOU WILL BE KISSING FOR ALL TIME ONCE THE MESSIAH COMES? HOW DARE YOU KILL FIVE MILLION JEWS, EACH OF WHICH IS WORTH A BILLION GENTILES, YOU SLAVE-RACE OF NON-CHOSEN CATTLE WHO WILL LICK OUR CIRCUMCISED COCKS IN G-D'S PERFECT WORLD?? HOW DARE YOU THINK HISTORY CAN CONTINUE AFTER THIS TRAVESTY? NOW EXCUSE ME, I HAVE SOME PALESTINIANS TO HOLOCAUST!

>>10354990
Yep, that’s basically the case.

>>10355002
I like this pasta.

>>10354812
>post-capitalist
Did you mean post-industrial?

>>10355002
you are very unwelcome here

>>10354805
>>10354812

These posts show me there's still hope for this board

>>10355028
>

>>10355028
But his copypasta is very correct.

>>10355002
>five million

Heh

>>10355054
I don't know about your country, but in mine we don't really give a shit about jews. You have to take the jew thing with a grain of salt and remember that the USA citizens are, overall, a borderline paranoid population in many senses.

>>10354812
>>10354805
First post is better than the second. You did a good job capturing what lead to postmodern thought, included a lot of examples, did your best to remain objective. What could be improved, what I took for your weakest part, is the turn to postmodernism. I don't think is was so simple as "then fuck modernism." You could also include some knowledge about postmodernism itself and how it actually works, makes claims to knowledge, explains language or history.

Your work is mainly summery told in a story structure. I can picture it being read over a black and white video of a plane dropping the a bomb, or scientist running experiments. I imagine you heard it from some such source. It reminds me of the Partially Examined life's video on Peterson, where he spends the first few minutes explaining postmodernism and how it came about.

Work that does not go beyond summary always gets a C. Good job anon.

>>10355094
What the fuck

>>10354689
t. hasn't read Faulkner

>>10355072
>we don't really give a shit about jews
It's more pointing out how foolish and ahistorical it is to single out the 20th century as a particularly brutal time. You have to be very ignorant, or have an ideological axe to grind, to think that modernity led to unparalleled suffering.

>>10354700
It isn't inconsistent, but b=a doesn't mean a=b.

This video has the best explanation of it that I have ever seen. He doesn't get to it right away, but the whole thing is very much worth a watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoxqtnI4I4c

And no, I didn't link the wrong video by mistake.

>>10355108
Faulkner was a direct precurser to post modernist

>>10354676
Modernism: There is a universal truth. People have a tendency to look for truth. People go crazy because they aren't mature enough to see the truth.

Post modernism: There is no universal truth. People have a tendency to look for truth. People go crazy because they can't find something that doesn't exist.

>>10355113
>It isn't inconsistent, but b=a doesn't mean a=b.

Yes it does..

>>10355126
Meth is a drug, but not all drugs are meth.

>>10355113
Hahaha holy fuck imagine the mental hoops this motherfucker had to jump through to believe this

>>10355072
>I don't know about your country, but in mine we don't really give a shit about jews
If it is a western country then you do (a la Hate Speech and Holocaust Denial laws). The narrative of the Holocaust as the worst crime in human history is a narrative that you cannot deny exists all over the west.
You also cannot deny that that aforementioned narrative has resulted in other genocides being pushed under the rug in terms of cultural awareness.
>the USA citizens are, overall, a borderline paranoid population in many senses
If you honestly believe this, you're the paranoid one. I think you are going to need to back up that extremely wide and outrageous statement.

>>10355134
Ah ok but you might want to have a quick look into Aristotelian notation if you want to get this across

>>10355134
You retard, that's if a then b vs if b then a, not a = b vs b = a

>>10355143
Pic related

I have a Jewish friend who hates himself because he's Jewish. Is he redpilled?

>>10355144
My bad

>>10355134
a = b and b = a are logically equivalent

>>10355147
Every S is P: S --> P
No S is P: P --> ~S

P = S: P is the same thing as S
S = P: S is the same thing as P

>>10355155
Almost, he has to take the Paul of Tarsus Pill
Divine captcha confirms

>>10355157
I see your point now, sry

>>10354780
The two are effectively the same.

>>10355155
Ask to trade him for it. Being a Jew is great, from my outsider view

>>10355216
Maybe he doesn't want to be a scrawny ratfaced resentful exploitative cretin

>>10354684

>postmodernism is an attempt to think [about] the present historically

uh huh, interesting

> in an age that has forgotten how to think historically in the first place

This is the "Muh present people r decadent dum dums" meme

More people know how to think historically than ever. It's just that because of a variety of factors, including the Dunning-Kruger effect, widespread edutainment, political thriller and historical thriller entertainment, there's a lot more people making half-assed attempts at talking about history. Your soccer mum might say something like "I was reading the other day that English sounded nothing like it does today a long time ago. I think it's because they started letting women say more things." and you might find that trite and cringeworthy and pleb and indicative of some lack of knowledge, but it's a godsend compared with previous eras.

Your average medieval person wouldn't have been literate, let alone educated on matters of history. Neither are they gonna start quoting from "Top ten historical blijdl;kfj" articles either. Their knowledge would have been be less, along with their eagerness/ability to demonstrate their lack of knowledge.

It's like John Green said :^)
Nobody woke up at the height of Egyptian civilization and sad "Gee, it sure is nice living at the height of Egyptian civilization."

Yet, here we are on 4chan, for years acknowledging the decline and corruption of American hegemony.

>>10355222
That full house confirms

>>10354676
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/
Start here and ignore the retards above me. Please notice that philosophical postmodernism and artistic/literary postmodernism are two different things.
>>10355253
You're a fucking retard.

>>10354695
Postmodernism is not as much as total subjectivity as the rejection of total authority. It doesn't say that all readings of a text are equally valid but that there's not a single reading that can explain the whole text.

Postmodernism is subjective in the sense that a text can be interpreted from different perspective, not in the sense that you can get away with saying that an apple is an orange.

It goes without saying that your average women studies professor and their students don't get postmodernism and are destroying it.

>>10355253
holy shit that lizard is funky

>>10354756
>no serious academic would be that stupid.
no serious academic would ever browse /lit/ either tbdesu

>>10355596
Thats untrue, I'm a serious academic myself

I remember one time on here, I pointed out the correlation between people spelling postmodernism with a hyphen and being morons from /pol/ and since then I have almost never seen the obvious /pol/fags spell it post-modern.
I feel like this is my great contribution to our field.

>>10355612
I've always been embarrassed by this board's average mathematical intelligence and understanding of statistics and probability. It's consistently painful to witness as a /lit/izen

>>10355411
>you're a fucking retard

I feel so bad now

>>10355623
nigga what

>>10355625
not him, but you are. certainly disorganised in thought.

>>10355531
You're an idiot who doesn't know shit about what you're talking about.

>>10355635
you dumb dass all

>>10355640
You're an idiot who doesn't know shit about what you're talking about.

>>10355647
Nothing about that post had anything to do with mathematics

>>10354676
Postmodernism includes a variety of writers and tendencies in philosophy.

What they have in common is an affinity for post-structuralist critique of existing (modernist) thought and concepts.

>>10355654
Your understanding of the possibility of a recurring hyphen had everything to do with it.

>>10355636
oh boy, you refuted all my points, thanks

>>10355747
Grow up you fucking child

>>10355636
>Me
>disorganized

>not the guy asserting with no evidence that people in general used to be better at understanding history, but have since gotten worse

I gave multiple counter examples, and my only two responses were "u suck" and "nice pic"

And so far you haven't asserted anything either.

Could it be that you just resent my character and bearing and don't have anything in particular to say about what I've said?

Just speculating.

>>10355002
Because fascists did it and they seemed to reject(and be a rejection of) everything that resembled post-modernist as degenerate and championed classical art and stuff.
Also the metanarrative countries just lead to a superdestructive war AGAIN after everybody in their right lind didn't want it to happen again

Jewish postmodernism is defined as the dissolution of order and the inversion of western cultural values and norms. The first major seeds of it were being planted in our culture early last century and have metastasized into the nihilistic and degenerate pornographic shit show we have today. Jews have been poisoning our culture for decades and postmodernism is the result.

>>10355793
So yeah it is a kneejerk reaction but what is post-modernism if not a kneejerk reaction?

>>10355794
Imagine believing this.

>>10355811
Jew detected.

>tfw jewish
Why do you hate me so? :^(₪

>>10355760
different person but I think you kinda missed their point.
Thinking historically about the present is very different from thinking about history in the present. Former means understanding the present as itself being and becoming history. This way of understanding requires a certain detached view of present ethical norms for example. Only when viewing and judging them as we would those from, again, for example, 500 years ago, we are thinking about the present historically.
The examples you gave were examples of the latter, of "thining about history in the present".

I hope that clears things up a bit.

>>10355253
Universal literacy was a mistake.

>>10354990
It’s a good post and he’s right in my opinion. Rare, quality content on /lit/

>>10355054
No, it’s a stupid comparison. Western thought revolves around the western world, the holocaust obviously left a much larger impact than any other tragedy, as it was perpetrated on western soil, by western men.
Plus, there was no reason to deny, ignore or hush up the Holocaust, as opposed to colonialism and the Armenian genocide. Politics 101 says you shouldn’t cry about your country committing mass murder and exploitation to your compatriots as the political leadership, it’s bad for business.

It’s just another jewbait and a petty attempt at marginalizing the holocaust.

>>10355109
The 20th century was inarguably the most destructive period in all of human history, the deadliest period in all of human history and therefore the period of human history with the most suffering of all.

>>10354676
Its that pic.

>>10355059
>jews don't like that leader of germany claims they are subhumans that need to be purged
>boycott germany
>wtf murdering six million jews is justified now

>>10355028
>shits on your carpet

>>10354676
check this out senpai:
>postmodernism is the realization that everything has already been written.
ka-blam-o

>>10355002
tfw no qt jewess feet to kiss

>>10357467
Whoah, hold on there. Haven't you read any philosophy? Morality, is like, relative (like a "spook"), so murdering 4 million Jews (I think the word "murdering" can be debated here (if you're interested, watch The Greatest Story Never Told)) isn't objectively wrong, because it's, like, relative.

>>10355253
good post

>>10355155

I assume he hates himself because he sees some of the stereotypical negative Jewish character traits within himself.

We all have our own natural inclinations, but we are not wholly subservient to them -- our upbringing and education teaches us valuable lessons that guide the future development of our character, and illuminate how to best satiate our inner-most desires.

How could someone who lacks the will to amend their situation, and resigns to despairing over their base instincts ever be considered 'redpilled'?

>>10357451
Totally wrong. Check out infant mortality rates, death from diseases, famines etc. You were less likely to die young in the 20th century then any preceding period.

>>10357437
>getting triggered by pasta

>>10354805
Good effort mate, but I feel it's not sufficient to describe it as a movement against the certainty with which modernity postulated its various 'meta-narratives'. I think you're making it sound too benign and descriptive, but I to me it's clear that its reach extends beyond that. Now, to be fair, you have acknowledged that by taking this stance, postmodernism ends up positing a meta-narrative of its own.

Postmodernism doesn't merely declare itself an open-minded agnostic or a sceptic of historical progress, epistemic certainty, identity, ethical hierarchies, etc. It speaks with certainty, although not necessarily explicitly, as though these are epistemological objects that are forever beyond our reach. I will grant you that its conclusions vary and won't throw all postmodernists in the post-structuralist pit, but one thing they have in common is an ethos so divorced from pragmatism and responsibility for their relativist descriptions that I see their descriptive intentions as having direr effects than the modernist meta-narrative that they set out to fight against. Time will tell.

>>10357564
>implying I’m triggered
>not literally taking a shit while posting

>>10354823

>>10354676
It's a blanket term for a wide range of philosophies, i.e. it's fairly meaningless as a term. This is why a consistent and understandable definition of it does not exist. At best you could say that postmodernism is "what a bunch of French guys in the 20th century thought."

The less time you spend thinking about empty generalities like this, the better. Just read individual authors, don't pay attention to labels.

>>10357560
You're missing the point. The 20th century is known for the greatest crimes against humanity in breadth and magnitude than any time period in history.

>>10358850
What about the Mongol conquests? They slaughtered some of the greatest cities in the world, killing millions. They wiped out 1/3 of the world's population.

>>10354676
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/
this has only 10k words so it's pretty concise. if that's still too much then you can just read the first sentence

>>10358850
Alexander the Great did some serious damage on the Persians, destroying monuments and libraries, and they were an old civilization by the time he did it.

>>10354691
You must not have been in academia in a while because social constructivism is quite the hype.

Hint Hint. the only objective truth is that there is only subjective truth. Now you tell me that isn't denying objective truth

>>10354805
>>10354812
>>10355094
do you anons have any recs on what books to read to educate myself on postmodernism?

>>10359023
Deleuze, Foucalt, Lacan, Derrida

>>10359042
Lacan isn't really a post-modernist though he was hugely influential among them

>>10355109
Because modernity began with the 20th century, right guys?

>>10359187
Actually yes, from an arts perspective

>>10355604
If no serious academic would come to /lit/ then how could you be a serious academic? 0_o

>>10359204
>brutal time
didn't know you were referring to art

>>10354676
Lyotard defined it as
>incredulity towards meta-narratives

>>10355002
I guess the difference is in systematic approach. Like it can be overlooked when a child harms insects and animals when he is small and just stumbles around but when he specifically seeks out targets for torture and killing you have a problem.

It's not like the only problem was how jews were treated. There was tons of killing beyond them

>>10355028
Speak for yourself

>>10357467
Why do you think a man whose main talking point was anti-semitism went form basically no-one to dictator with enormous popular suport?
Why do you think Jews were being persecuted for centuries in virtually every European country?
Do you believe things just happen with no cause?

>Postmodernism describes a broad movement that developed in the mid- to late 20th century across philosophy, the arts, architecture and criticism which marked a departure from modernism.
>While encompassing a broad range of ideas, postmodernism is typically defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony or rejection toward grand narratives, ideologies and various tenets of universalism, including objective notions of reason, human nature, social progress, moral universalism, absolute truth, and objective reality. Instead, it asserts to varying degrees that claims to knowledge and truth are products of social, historical or political discourses or interpretations, and are therefore contextual or socially constructed.
>Accordingly, postmodern thought is broadly characterized by tendencies to epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, irreverence and self-referentiality.
This is the first paragraph of the Wiki article. Can you get any more concise than this? If this short piece of text confuses you, just give up.

The cultural logic of late capitalism inherent to the changing division of labor, ownership of production, and their subsequent social manifestations. Postmodernism is far less of a theoretical or aesthetic movement than an economic-historical period. People who think we can just "resist" postmodernity and thereby reinstate older time periods don't understand what they're talking about and are indeed the very victims and proponents of what they claim to hate.

who would win??
>muh subjectivity
>muh reality tunnels
>muh innability to know reality

v.s:

a standing city

>>10359023
lyotard's postmodern condition nigga

the problem with postmodernism is its inherently a modernist political position; it presents itself as the new moral grandstanding absolutism of the afrofuturistic near-future while serving as the new inquisitorial dogma for the present globalized late capitalism

every single of their ideas, except for the afrofuturism, are old as shit, its only novelty is its insistance in the idea that the most moral position to take in the present is that of western civilization's suicide

it literally is a regression over modernism, like foucault showed it operates over a sin/confession/atonement/forgival dynamic

>>10354676
I can't, but I fucking love postmodern science.

https://archive.is/RfNLu
>There's no objective truth therefore child """obesity""" doesn't exist

>>10360456
https://archive.is/IC29J
I don't know what those words mean in that configuration but I guess Trump being a bad person is now a scientific fact

>>10360456
>>10360472

I'm filled with a desperate, resigned, yet somehow giddy urge to kill.

Clearly I must name these things art, and their writers artists, as I've been spurred to a blend of emotions that I have never felt so strongly before.

> Waagh! Why do people care about material things?!
> Waagh! Why are you making everyone peaceful and prosperous enough to pursue higher goals and actually produce art and literature without being subsistence farmers forever?!
> Bring back some false but idealized view of the past which mischaracterizes human interactions with worse nostalgia goggles than Vanilla fags
> Waagh!
I love how now that the lefties are all materialistic whores, their opponents feel the need to dig up long buried skeletons in an attempt to appear new and edgy for lack of better words.

Interesting stuff guys but this is getting a touch ridiculous.

>>10360456
thats not what Foucault says at all doe, he just speaks about discourse and the political uses of categorizations

>>10360637
>anyone under any communist regime ever had time to pursue a higher goal

>>10354805
fuck wypipol

>>10360645
Despite the misguied materialism of communists, one avenue for pursuing spiritual goals is having the material wellbeing enough (that capitalism produces) to devote the time to these goals. Without that the only spiritual growth and higher ideals you can have come from what is forced on you by circumstance and not choice, that which you get from fighting a war, or toiling day and night, or appreciating your family as you share a single potato in the winter by candlelight, but by all means is it the only way to pursue these goals or the most desirable. Fuck commies but do you know what I mean? Do you agree with where I'm coming from here? Like by their own goals these post modernists mischaracterize "materialist" societies and self insert so much shit, that it always leads to weird conclusions.

>>10360638
sorry, I'd rather trust a peer-reviewed paper than an anonymous poster from anime imageforum :^)

>>10360714
if you would actually know how to read you would see the "peer-reviewed paper" just implies it, because its actually factually incorrect, in fact is well known that leftists were frustrated at Foucault's unwilingness to turn his ideas into something palatable for political activism

"Drawing on Foucault, [many scholars contest the assertion that there exists some objective "truth"] " -> In no place does it says Foucault contests this assertion, only that "many scholars" (no citations) inspired by Foucault say it.

The rest of the quotation is factual but at no point does it jump from the analyzis on discourse towards doubting the existence of "truth".

In fact Foucault is obsessed with truth, he goes to long lengths to dismantle old historical memes and narratives based on categorization, he does a great deal of work on looking at the truthful dynamic of stuff instead of talking about them in terms of categories within a cultural framework.

>>10360691
Ahh you were arguing against the "matriarchy myth" and the 68 france-tier intellectuals? I assumed that your post was attacking reactionarism cause of this

> Bring back some false but idealized view of the past which mischaracterizes human interactions with worse nostalgia goggles than Vanilla fags

and that you were saying communism allows the pursuit of higher goals and art

Yeah i agree and i think commies do to, specially pre-revolutionary ones, artistic pursuit and higher goals are some sort of complacent social sin for them

Postmodernism scoops up something of the material logic of advanced capitalism and turns this aggressively against its spiritual foundations. And in this it bears more than a passing resemblance to the structuralism which was one of its remote sources. It is though it is urging the system, like its great mentor Friedrich Nietzsche, to forget about its metaphysical foundations, acknowledge that God is dead and simply go relativist. Then, at least, it might trade a modicum of security for a degree of actuality. Why not just confess that your values are as precariously ungrounded as anybody else's? It would hardly leave you vulnerable to attack, since you have just craftily demolished any vantage-point from which any offensive might be launched. In any case, the kind of values which are rooted in what you do, which reflect the unvarnished social reality rather than the high-falutin moral ideal, are likely to be a good deal more cogent than a lot of nebulous talk about progress, reason or God's special affection for the nation.

But it is all very well for pragmatist philosophers to argue this way. Those who bear the burden of running the system are aware that ideologies are in business to legitimate what you do, not just reflect it. They simply cannot dispense with these high-sounding rationales, not least because a great many people still credit them, indeed cling to them ever more tenaciously as they feel the ground shifting beneath their feet. The commodity, pace Adorno, cannot be its own ideology, at least not yet. One could imagine a future phase of the system which this would be true, in which it had taken a course at some North American university, desperately or cheerfully jettisoned its own foundations and left behind it the whole business of rhetorical legitimation. Indeed there are those that claim that this is precisely what is afoot today: that 'hegemony' is no longer important, that the system does not care whether we believe in it or not, that it has no need to secure our spiritual complicity as long as we do more or less what it demands. But postmodernism in this respect belongs to a transitional era, one in which the metaphysical, like some unquiet ghost, can neither resuscitate itself nor decently die. If it could manage to lapse from being, then no doubt postmodernism would pass away with it.

The greatest test of postmodernism is how it would shape up to fascism. Its rich body of work on racism and ethnicity, on the paranoia of identity-thinking, on the perils of totality and the fear of otherness: all this, along with its deepened insights into the cunning of power, would no doubt be of considerable value. But its cultural relativism and moral conventionalism, its skepticism, pragmatism and localism, its distaste for ideas of solidarity and disciplined organization, its lack of any adequate theory of political agency: all these would tell heavily against it.

>>10359373
>went form basically no-one to dictator with enormous popular suport
because it's germany
only g*rmans are retarded enough to fall for that

>>10359421
This.

The confusion of world markets, complex debt packages, credit, inflation and the rise of post-Fordism since the 70's has been paralleled in cultural forms: architecture (modernist functionalism to postmodern anti-functionalism), art (modernist representation to postmodern pastiche/imitation), philosophy (the search for meaning to deconstructing meaning), and psychology (from modern emphasis on what is signified to the postmodern emphasis on the ephemeral signifier). This signifier vs. signified disparity is disturbing from an economic standpoint: what the postmodern is prioritizing--money, for example as signifier--over the signifier, the value it represents or repression it necessitates, is merely echoing economic policies that began during the 70's, which have seen the rise of fictitious capital, the widening of the gap between paper money and any sense of being grounded in a real representative base.

All that's solid melts to air.

>>10360777
This is a very good post and to me perfectly explains the main problem with it through the lenses of a postmodernist who thinks his methodology is flawless, its very honest, but inserts adjectives and categorizations to dismiss or outright denounce the growing resistance to an existence as an atomized individual with no ground on which to stand upon.

>>10355794
>early last century
>ie, the advent of modernism
>is a retard

>>10358910
The most idiotic attempt, from Standford, to explain what Postmodernism is. It's horribly inaccurate and ambiguous, and doesn't cover but a narrow and obtuse sense of the term.

>>10359415
LOL, pathetically idiotic.

>>10354691
Actually postmodernism are literally jews getting their relativist philosophy in occident's. Same with modernism.

>>10360278
Good start.

>>10360847
no shit, Ryan Gosling's rant on The Believer explain this perfectly

>>10355113
good dublethink, goy

>>10360777
Social theorists should not be given the title "philosopher". It's simply fraud.

>>10354724
> a social status affects humans thoughts, so thet means the reality is defined by humans
Sure, lad. Also gr8 b8

>>10360818
>>10359421
Yes, accurate.

>>10360854
please read this statement back to yourself and think about how stupid it sounds

>>10360868
did you watch the movie? or do you just have repressed feelings for ryan gosling and get triggered at the mention of him?

>>10354754
isn't that modernism already?

>>10354805
literally emo wannabe not like d uter gurlz

>>10355002
gr8 post saved

>>10360874
i don't have repressed feelings for gosling
i am very open about them

>>10360887
lel then why don't you watch the movie, he plays a jewish nazi bad boy, will open your eyes really fucking big

>>10360854
link to the scene plz

>>10360900
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eilDS0IKhLE

>>10355113
Transitive property I believe.

>>10354676
I'm not going to bother myself in investing effort but image ought be edited so that the post-modernist hasn't brush in hand. From personal experience contemporary artists all full of puff without ever sincerely putting horsehair to canvas; onanistic ego-stroking without ever any effort.

>>10359023
Anything by baudrillard

>>10360744
like, yeah man, I feel like he was a great uncoverer of the 'truthful dynamic of stuff' too.

>>10355117
I enjoyed this thank you anon

>>10359220

Came here to say this very thing. Minus the part about Lyotard.

>and today I learned something.
>incredulity such a fashionable word
>never get to use that one much

>>10357405
He's wrong about the fundamental aspects though. The world does not work in this purely abstract fashion. People drive these things, and the destruction and nihilism that has come about has been directly aligned with the jewish rise in power. Jews are an alien group that attacks their host from within and has an enormous amount of power. They were largely responsible for the coercing western governments into fighting brutal cousin wars you do not know the death toll of off the top of your head, though you surely remember the six million jews you've been told endlessly about. You cannot take the human element out and pretend these are all abstract phenomena or you'll miss the most important points.

>>10354676
a clear, concise definition is a theoretically untenable cultural construct

>>10354676
Postmodernism is just a method to sidestep Marxism and other forms of materialist analysis to bring philosophy back to 19th century liberal navel-gazing.

>>10362602
>Postmodernism is just a method to sidestep Marxism
Postmodernism is an extension, or the result, of jewish Marxism.

>>10359373
Because it wasn't his only talking point, hitler got elected for the same reason trump did (im not calling trump hitler), because they talked about bringing the country back to greatness during a time when the country was in a severe slump (percived or otherwise)

>>10362522
People at the end of ww2 didnt all know about the death toll eirher, some people did, but not everyone, because it wasnt in history books yet you mongoloid,

>>10362814
They were in the newspapers though.

>>10355253
Good post

>>10355134

>>10355411
You have high functioning autism.

>>10354812
>that's because they associate rigidity and certitude with bad things
And so they choose to be rigid and certain in their attitude toward rigidity and certainty. Seems like naive, reactionary utopianism to me. There is no just natural order waiting to be uncovered underneath the 'oppressive' rules we have constructed, just more room for the rules of necessity to decide for us, and necessity doesn't care about justice.
If your first instinct upon analysing a structure and realizing that it is in some way unjust and limiting is to destroy it because you're afraid that it might eat you, you'll also destroy the justice and freedom it provides, and eventually be eaten by the dragon of chaos.

>>10362634
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about

A Marxist analysis of the Iraq War would look at various business interests that pushed the Bush administration toward a major military encounter and the ways that global hegemony aid the free transfer of capital across national borders. A Marxist would argue that as long as capitalism and class society exist, imperialist wars for profit will continue.

A postmodernist analysis of the Iraq War would talk about how there are "impulses to subjugate" within the Western patriarchal mindset that influence the administration from George W Bush all the way down to the lowliest infantryman. A postmodernist would argue that class and capitalism don't matter, and until we can "radically rethink whiteness and masculinity" (whatever that means), imperialist wars of subjugation will continue.

>>10363076
So both are meta-narratives which reduce 'negative' human motivation to a single factor, Marxism to business-interests created by capital, postmodernism to the male principle. Both promise that, if we could get rid of these corrupting factors we'd be living in Utopia. It's interesting to me that pomo is even more transparently slave-morality than Marxism was. Are we /lastmen/ yet?

>>10363076
You're lost because you can only view these issues in the abstract and at face value, and don't understand where they came from. Both Marxism and postmodernism are jewish inversions of western norms parading as legitimate forms of critique. Your example proves this point exactly, too, in how you can dissect the Iraq War in various ways while failing to realize that it was a jewish-promoted war to destroy one of Israel's neighbors as part of the Oded Yinon Plan. Because you are only approaching these ideas abstractly instead of understanding them in terms of group interests and power, you ultimately fail in your critical analysis and your basic understanding of phenomena.

>>10363091
your breakdown of those systems into duality and single-factor explanations seems to be a better definition of post modernism than your actual definition of post-modernism

do you know which post-modernist writers address whiteness and masculinity directly? or are you just pre-supposing that on post-modernism because of the gender scholar abuse of those terms in the name of post-modernism

>>10363130
>70 percent of ALL jobs are won through nepotism in the US
>Jewish people have a higher IQ on average, leading them to succeed dis-proportionally in egalitarian societies, much like asians
there's the answer to your Jewish question, retard. now go back to /pol/ and let people who don't believe in the boogeyman have a real discussion

>>10363207
The egalitarian society you're referring to is white society. Whites are egalitarians, jews are semitic nepotists who cannot create functional, egalitarian institutions because they are parasites. Pretty basic stuff here, buddy.

>>10363130
Instead of the voice of conscience, the postmodern paranoiac hears voices; instead of inwardly examining itself in order to draw up a protocol of its own lust for power, it attributes to others the Protocol of the Elders of Zion. It overflows at the same time as it dries up. It invests the outside world boundlessly with what is within itself; but what it invests is something utterly insignificant, an inflated accumulation of mere means, relationships, machinations, a grim praxis unilluminated by thought. Domination itself which, even as absolute power, is inherently only a means, becomes in untrammeled projection the purpose both of oneself and of others, purpose as such. In the sickness of the individual, humanity's sharpened intellectual apparatus is turned once more against humanity, regressing to the blind instrument of hostility it was in animal prehistory, and as which, for the species, it has never ceased to operate in relation to the rest of nature. Just as, since its rise, the human species has manifested itself toward others as developmentally the highest, capable of the most terrible destruction; and just as, within humanity, the more advanced races have confronted the more primitive, the technically superior nations the more backward, so the sick individual confronts the other individual, in megalomania as in persecution mania. In both cases the subject is at the center, the world a mere occasion for its delusion; it becomes the impotent or omnipotent quintessence of what is projected on to it. The opposition of which the postmodern paranoiac complains indiscriminately at every step is the result of the lack of resistance, of the emptiness which the encapsulated subject generates around itself. The postmodern paranoiac cannot stop. The idea, having no firm hold on reality, insists all the more and becomes the fixation.

Because postmodern paranoiacs perceive the outside world only in so far as it corresponds to their blind purposes, they can only endlessly repeat their own self, which has been alienated from them as an abstract mania. This naked schema of power as such, equally overwhelming toward others and toward a self at odds with itself, seizes whatever comes its way and, wholly disregarding its peculiarity, incorporates it in its mythic web. The closed circle of perpetual sameness becomes a surrogate for omnipotence. It is as if the serpent which told the first humans 'Ye shall be as gods' had kept his promise in the postmodern paranoiac.

>>10363225
I hope one day you say this shit out loud and become undesirable in the general populous because no company wants to be associated with you.
then you get hired by your uncle who takes pity on you.
then you kill yourself because you realize that just like 70% of the rest of your country, you couldn't get a job on merit alone because hiring procedures are done by one lazy guy who doesn't want to parse hundreds of job applications, not of a world Jewish Illuminati

>>10363186
The post you replied to wasn't a continuation of >>10363076, but a response by a different anon.
As to whether whiteness and masculinity are actually that relevant: Pomo has the rejection of logocentrism at its core, and whiteness and masculinity just happen to be two (non)qualities of of the kinds of thinkers who would generally be denounced as logocentrists. Then some retarded sociology majors got their hands on philosophical debates they didn't understand and created the identity politics paradigm we're stuck in right now. The problems we are dealing with are more of a shadow-image of postmodernity with all the philosophical value (for instance Derrida made some pretty good points about language dynamics) stripped away.

>>10363226
This post is all fluff from an idiot who still doesn't even understand why the Iraq War happened. You should start focusing on facts and basic concepts like occam's razor and THEN worry about fitting that real-world phenomena into an ideological system, instead of wasting your time waxing poetic over simple shit you lack a fundamental understanding of, that you mistakenly believe you will be able to interpret through a purely abstract lens you can't even define.

>>10363265
The jewish problem is mainstream now. The only question here is whether you don't get it because you're jewish or just an idiot.

>>10363281
step out of your echo chamber before it turns you broken and hateful past the point of redemption

as of now your worldview is as fundamentally broken as the marxist who see's the terror of capitalism in every human interaction.

worry about yourself before you worry about what you think is wrong with the world

>>10363272
>This post is all fluff from an idiot who still doesn't even understand why the Iraq War happened.

It happened because imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, my dude.

>>10363226

>>10363298
This is such a stupid and nonsensical point of view. Capitalism doesn't just cause things to happen, people who hold power and are pursuing their interests cause things to happen. You have to be retarded to blame this stuff on capitalism. Please.

>>10363312
yeah blaming capitalism for the Iraq War is like blaming school shootings on guns themselves.
the problem was who had the power, not the power itself.

although the analogy doesn't work because guns aren't what's pulling the third world out of abject poverty faster than any projected models or predictions

>>10363130
>>10363272
You are like babby. Has it occurred to you that it happened because batshit crazy reactionary evangelicals literally want to immanentize the eschaton (i.e. usher in the apocalypse and the second coming of Christ) and that's why they kowtow to Israel and help them sow chaos in the Middle East?

Just yesterday Trump announced that Jerusalem will be recognized as the capital of Israel...

>>10363331
Third worlder here, social democracy was doing it but it was not capitalistic enough so the US has been fucking everything south of the mexican border because neoliberalism GOTTA WORK THIS TIME.

>>10363312
>>10363331
Capitalism is the means by which the ruling class have and maintain power, you fucking buffoons.

>>hurr durr no the jews actually have power because of human sacrifices to lizard gods from alpha draconis

Kys

>>10363281

>the jewish problem is mainstream now

no its not

>>10363352
>Jews detain all power in capitalist society but they're also all secretly communists

I will never understand this.

>>10363331
The Iraq War happened because jews wanted it to happen and benefited from it happening. To pretend it is some accident or inertial mistake of imperialism or capitalism is to shun logic, reason, and all facts. And we're well past the 2004 cui fucking bono stage. This is 15 years on. We know why it happened, the same reason why many things happen these days: because the jews who have infested our halls of power want it to happen.

>>10363339
Who are those evangelicals worshipping moron? A jew. They're useful idiots as Christians have been since Charlemagne's court jews bribed him to spread it.

It's amazing how people will ignore what is so obviously right in front of their face because they're afraid of offending jews, or because they've heard this muh conspiracy line and will circumvent all reason so to not be labeled as such. It's pathetic.

>>10363354
wrong image
>

>>10363361
Oh you sweet summer child.

>>10363352
being better than /pol/ because the boogeyman in your all-encompassing worldview is more tangible isn't saying much
>>10363361
extremist ideologies need to paint their bad guys with as many negative descriptors as possible to attract the most people

>>10363371
What the fuck does "extremist" even mean, I fucking hate this notion. When you think things couldn't get any worse, there are people who actually think the kind of "moderate discourse" that plagued the 80s and 90s and made the institutional discourse on boths dies pretty much the same thing is positive.
We very clearly need radicalism, people should just suspect any radicalism that ends up enforcing current society because something went wrong there. Ironically, this seems to be a problem to every facet of the american political climate, what radicals want are just different variations on the american history, not to step forward.

>>10363392
we live in a democratic society, retard. if you let extremists be the voice of your ideology, the only question becomes which extremist has the bigger fanbase.
you don't believe you're a radical because you believe that resetting a society from the ground up isn't inherently dangerous no matter who controls the reigns

>implying judaism isnt a thing

>>10355134
But Meth and Drugs don't fit as a / b comparisons. What you're describing is set (drugs; b) includes {a (meth), c (cocaine), j (lead paint), f (lye soaked fish)}.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGKh7K-GI5g

Better run and hide, goys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0DwRAVJZ4A&list=PLHeOw1pwXQhCvutGQD-UeIhe78Gd7HHHK

>>10363091
Post structuralism is supposed to be about tearing down these narratives and instead providing a specific analysis to every specific situation, but yeah in practice it just involves specific cultural phenomena other than class being identified as the fulcrum by which society pivots around.

Hence second wave feminist analysis like "environmental destruction is patriarchy"

>>10363130
How is the Marxist critique at all illegitimate?

Also
>pretending Israel does not have material financial interests in fighting Baathism
>pretending the US does have material financial interests in protecting Israel

lmao

>>10363928
Marxism is jewish iconoclasm; it does not come from a spirit of good-natured reform, proletarian-minded betterment, or honest social critique like naive whites think, it is semite-driven destruction promoted by an alien tribe that hates the west and wants to tear everything down. Russians learned this jewish ruse the hard way, and if you're white and think you're a Marxist or communist you're a fucking retard squared whose doing the bidding of people who hate you.

>>10364029
watching nazis and communists argue about who is experiencing more cognitive dissonance is one of the reasons /lit/ will always be better than /pol/

your retardation is on a level playing field here

>>10364045
If you want anyone to believe you have some kind of high ground in the future, a) try to use better grammar than a 13 year old girl would in a text message, and b) don't use fake jewish words.

>>10364045
its funny how the left only sees the jew when he is at israel

>>10354691
You mean, there's the correct way to use it, and then there's the way Jordan Memerson and Paul Joseph Watson throw it around to mean what ever they want it to.

>>10364107
I always wonder if this dude is the same guy the anon wrote about meeting on the subway when anon was reading Plato and he dissed him.

>>10364157
me too tbqh

Also, what's he originally reading?

>>10364107
>mentions youtubers

>>10355002
fuck off you stupid faggot this is not funny the second time

>>10355028
>>10365736
>DELET

>>10355253
i hope you die of a rare, painful disease anon. you’re so stupid its infuriating

>>10365949
>soccer moms on /lit/