It all started with this e-mail to Shane and Ron:
Subject: postmodernism disrobed. Book review by
> Dawkins.
> I would love to hear your responses to this article:
>
>
Postmodernism Disrobed
by Richard Dawkins, Nature
Richard Dawkins' review of Intellectual Impostures
You can read the article
Here.
Here is the back and forth thus far. Starting with Ron:
--- Ron (CI)
wrote:> I don't have the time nor intelligence to give a
> detailed meta type
> response...I mean what do I know. But I can say that
> the first time I read
> a piece by Deleuze and Guttari I was blown away. It
> was beautiful because
> it pushed me to reimagine the world, to erase
> boundaries, to be, to use one
> of their terms, rhizomatic (roots growing in all
> directions) in my
> thinking, imagining new possibilities, instead of
> only "logical,"
> chronological, step by step.
>
> I think Dawkins and these authors oversimplify yet
> still offer an necessary
> critique. I want others to question whether all the
> pm stuff means anything
> and at times it doesn't. But to merely dismiss it
> all as blathering is
> silly.
>
> As you may know, Travis, this all goes right back to
> the debate we had
> about science. I think science needs a critque
> through language--which is
> what pm can do--because science however much it
> wants to be purely
> objective is held up by and through LANGUAGE. And,
> duh!!!, to critique it
> will mean to take language to its extreme, to its
> outer boundaries. Sure it
> will be convoluted and nonsensical at times because
> that's exactly what it
> is trying (sense, common sense, "reality") to
> dislode and disturb.
>
> Ron
Here is Shane's first response:
Interesting article. But I'm curious to know why
you're interested in my response--why you thought
of me when reading it. Are you insinuating that I'm
an intellectual imposture?
I'm also curious about why someone would go to the
lengths that the authors of "Intellectual Impostures"
did to prove that intellectual impostures exist.Of
course they do. And not all impostures are postmodernists.
Some of them are even scientists.
Even scholars who proudly adopt the postmodernist
label are aware that impostures exist. In fact,they
have a contest every year to see who can produce
the most jargon-ridden post-modernist writing samples.
And the writing looks a lot like the stuff quoted in
this review. But I hardly think that postmodernism as a
concept is "disrobed" because a few impostures have
been discovered. Just because some scientists are
still claiming that men are smarter than women
because men have larger brains (a claim that most
scientists once considered a proven fact) doesn't mean
that science has been "disrobed". Further, the whole
concept of "moral relativism" that this review really
takes aim at has nothing to do with"postmodernism" as
explained by Sartre or Derrida, the primary founders
of the "postmodernist movement" (neither of whom called
themselves "postmodernists", btw).
But Dawkins makes a few good points. For example,he
writes: "No doubt there exist
thoughts so profound that
most of us will not understand the language in
which they are expressed. And no doubt there is
also language designed to be unintelligible in
order to conceal an absence of honest thought.
But how will we know the difference?"
It isn't easy. But, to reiterate, I think it's
important not to throw out everything resembling
postmodernism just because of a few or even a vast
number of bad eggs. Let's face it, most conspiracy
theorists are quacks. But, just as true, a lot of
conspiracy theories are now proven facts.
Not only that, but I think Dawkins incorrectly
characterizes the notion of "play" in postmodern
writing. What a lot of postmodernists are trying
to dois to redefine language. In other words, they're
refuting familiar depictions of reality; they're
"playing" with concepts of what's real and unreal
in order to question the status quo version of
history--saying that reality is not totalitarian;
it isn't absolute and it can be changed. That's a
political and revolutionary stance. If you're trying
to report and define reality, there is no need for
'play'--but if you don't believe language, any language
including mathematics, can report and define all the
subtleties of experience, then you need to treat lang-
uage in a very non-reverential and playful manner--in
a way that expands rather than clarifies understanding.
Moreover, I don't think most postmodernist
writers deliberately try to be unclear. But they
do, by virtue of the nature of their ideas, try to be
unfamiliar--and that makes them difficult. The Situa-
tionists, for example, advocated a deliberately
obscure style of writing, because they saw how
effectively capitalism co-opted all forms of
resistance--how it pigeon-holed all forms of expression
into convenient categories that accommodated mainstream
viewpoints. In response, they took familiar ideas and
sources and subverted them so that the viewer could
experience the work as something new--as something
without "purpose", meaning something autonomous in its
own right rather than as an instrument to be exploited.
Dawkins is also correct in exposing the way concepts
originating in the physical sciences are co-opted,
often wrongly, by philosophers and new agers the
world over. I think people do this because of the
privileged position that science has in our culture.
It's a way to give yourself credibility. It has the
opposite effect on me, though.
Okay, I'd better stop. I feel like I could go on
and on here. Maybe I should develop my thoughts more
and post on my blog.
At any rate, thanks for the link! Got my juices
going this morning for sure.
Talk to ya soon, amigo!
Shane
-------------------
HH:Shane,
I did not think of you as a post-modernest. Your
erudition is clear, concise, and (often) biting. Yet,
I do think that, at times, (as Dawkins rightly points
out) there are postmodernists who use babble as a
substitute for substance. The focus on language and
its use has delved into an ethereal world in which
ONLY language matters. Sounds very Wittgenstein-like
to me (when he wrote, "the limits of my language are
the limits of my world." He was, of course wrong on
SOOO many levels.
When those who do espouse themselves as
postmordernists, are shown reasonably to be frauds,
its seems that it is SOME data towards whether the
whole system, istelf, need be put under scrutiny.?
In my view, we use words to convey meaning. When
that meaning is diluted and changed through
postmodernist rhetoric (rather than substance), it
seems that language is short-shrifted, and
communication becomes impossible (taken to its
extremes).
You wrote, "Moreover, I don't think most
postmodernist
writers deliberately try to be unclear. But they do,
by virtue of the nature of their ideas, try to be
unfamiliar--and that makes them difficult." Where,
then, is the line between babbling inanely attempting
to appear lucid, and foggying the boundaries of the
"known" in order to teach others to reach for new
thoughts and ideas? To deliberately obscure, seems to
be equivalent to deliberately trying NOT to
communicate at all.
I do hope you post on this.
(other stuff was here, but only time will tell if it
rang true or not -- (Go Kucinich!)
------------------
Welcome to the discussion...
HH =)
