Not sure what Chomsky said about Zizek (although I could imagine), but one problem with this position, IMO, is that some seminal postmodern figures were not leftists. I'm referring specifically to Nietzsche & Heidegger, who in turn influenced Foucault, Derrida, and other members of the postmodern pantheon.

That concession alone doesn't automatically refute your theory: Their works could have been appropriated and used for nefarious ends - in some plot to fragment the leftist opposition to neoliberalism, etc. - but basic tenets of postmodernism (as I understand them) are not exclusive to those who identify with liberal or progressive politics.

My take is simply that 'post-modernity' is a descriptive label for a period or development in history, which is (obviously) subsequent to 'modernism' (which I categorise as the period between, or book-ended by, the publication of Newton's Principia and Einstein's General Theory of Relativity).

The reason I say that is because the 'modern period' was still characterised by a generally realistic metaphysic and an overall faith in progress; WWI started to puncture that, by horribly demonstrating that the grand march of progress still barely masked barbarity and self-destruction. And then in the 1920s the discoveries of quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle undermined philosophical realism without offering anything to replace it. That was when the vertiginous sense of 'all that is solid melting into air' really began to take hold. (It's still happening, but we're so glued to our screens we don't notice.)

It is 'post' because it passed through the stage of modernity before rejecting or modifying it (analogous to the way that a post-Christian philosophy differs from a non-Christian philosophy). It is informed by modernity but it sees through or transcends or rejects many of the reflexive certainties of modernity. It is characteristically troubled and fragmented as a consequence. So there really is no such thing as a particular post-modern school or system or way of thinking, in the sense that earlier forms of intellectual life could be so characterised; it is fragmented because it reflects the fragmentary or dis-integrated nature of the //post//modern world.

I have one anthology, The Truth about the Truth, Walter Truett Anderson, which I found helpful, but for the above reasons, it was a completely heterogeneous set of essays - there was no real unifying theme. I particularly liked the contributions from Huston Smith (but then, I'm pretty new-age) and Vaclav Havel. There are other elements of post-modernist philosophy that I have appreciated, but as a fashion, I think it's overall an abyss and the symptom of a wounded civilisation.

'post-modernity' is a descriptive label for a period or development in history, which is (obviously) subsequent to 'modernism' (which I categorise as the period between, or book-ended by, the publication of Newton's Principia and Einstein's General Theory of Relativity). — Wayfarer

I think most people would put the beginnings of postmodernism as later than that date of 1915, which is when Einsteins General Theory was published.

Accounts I've read put it mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, with perhaps just a few forerunners in the forties.

I think of it as in a way a reaction against the horrors of the second war, which was seen by some as the culmination of modernism.

And Nietzsche.

Agree that it became consciously articulated later but I mark WWI as its advent.

Can anyone think of any positives? — Ricardoc

In order to use anything that is 'post', one has to understand and know just what was before it, the thing before the 'post'.

If you know modernism (and obviously you have to know Enlightenment philsophy), then perhaps postmodernism can give you some new critical views that might be positive. The problem is when young students don't know the classics or what modernism was all about, postmodernism just confuses them. All they end up doing is saying things like "Objectivity doesn't exist".

I always remember how my economic history professor got gloomy when a student said that he or she (usually it was a he) had decided to make his Master degree work or Doctoral thesis on something related to Foucault. She knew that most likely the thing wouldn't be finished. Sounds familiar, Ricardoc?

Absolutely!! Great answers, guys, but let me draw an unobvious parallel. If you study biblical history, you have problem in terns of determining what happened, what the gospels say happened, who wrote the gospels and who translated and copied the gospels and whether any interpolations were made. Then, we have to interpret what, if anything, they meant.

The same problem arises with post modernism. We have to say, what modernism was, who described modernism thus, whether their description was contemporaneous with the phenomenon itself, whether it was consistently used, when, and by whom. Having established that, we then have to look at the concept of postmodernism, which, while it may legitimately be used to descibe the end of the Edwardian summer, was used by whom and where and when.

Now, the fact it pops up in the world of academe after fifteen years of some of the most militant behavious since the turn of the century, makes me wonder if it were not merely a fad designed to remove leftist academics from their posts. Nobody talks about it anymore. Maybe, having made undergraduates get heavily into debt to get their degrees, the powers that be no longer have to concern themselves with radicalism escaping the campuses. Or, maybe, it was abolishing full employment as a social priority .

As against 'we are all socialists now', we say, ' We are all up to our ears in debt now, and really need jobs!!' Who wants a pseudo-philosophical fig leaf when we just kick the slaves in their economic genitals.

So, all we have left is the epistemological ephemera of the likes of the Slovenian Scruff!!

:up: nice analysis

As I understand the postmodern trend, it's always moving on to something else...never resolving anything

Re identity politics, can someone enlighten as to what other kind of politics there is?

If you study biblical history, you have problem in terns of determining what happened, what the gospels say happened, who wrote the gospels and who translated and copied the gospels and whether any interpolations were made. Then, we have to interpret what, if anything, they meant.

The same problem arises with post modernism. — Ricardoc

Western cultural history was dominated by the idea of the Second Coming, the Eschaton. It is arguable that the whole notion of ‘progress’ in the West grew out of this underlying notion. Of course, this doesn’t mean that it was always taken literally, but there was the basic expectation that history was a linear narrative, the unfolding of the divine Plan. You even see that echoed in Hegel. And then, of course, Marx famously ‘stood Hegel on his head’. But his expected earthly paradise ushered in by the Worker’s Revolution never eventuated either. The West lost the very rationale that had propelled it. And meanwhile the Biblical prophesies of the end of the world never began to seem so plausible. If you read many of the 20th century existentialists, there’s an acute sense that the whole of history might be a bad joke.

I have read several analyses that in effect, the physical cosmos is now assigned the role that was previously accorded to the Creator. Interstellar travel is, then, the sublimated longing for Heaven — we will ‘slip the surly bonds of Earth’ and advance, warp speed, to other worlds, other galaxies. That seemed to be the late great Stephen Hawking’s almost plaintive belief.

Regrettably, I don’t believe it. We have a spaceship - only one.

can someone enlighten as to what other kind of politics there is? — unenlightened

Policies based on political philosophies other than one’s sense of oneself. You know - ‘I believe in public education’, ‘I support free enterprise without bureaucratic interference.’ And so on.

As I understand the postmodern trend, it's always moving on to something else...never resolving anything — Merkwurdichliebe

One of the Pomo leitmotifs is ‘rejection of meta-narratives’. That covers a lot of ground.

can someone enlighten as to what other kind of politics there is?
— unenlightened

Policies based on political philosophies other than one’s sense of oneself. You know - ‘I believe in public education’, ‘I support free enterprise without bureaucratic interference.’ And so on. — Wayfarer

Oh right, so my beliefs and philosophy are not part of my identity? Can you just draw that line a little more sharply for me, because it always tend to look as if my politics is all about high principle, like the superiority of the white man and the absoluteness of property rights and so on, and everyone else's is about religious, ethnic, racial, or sexual identity, and therefore illegitimate.

Re identity politics, can someone enlighten as to what other kind of politics there is? — unenlightened

Politics with a defined practical necessity where the decisions don't have anything to do with the identity of the people.

Is monetary policy about identity politics? I don't think that loose monetary policy defines the identity of people. You see being a Keynesian or a monetarist doesn't in the same way define your identity.

Or how about transport policy? Do we go with rail or shipping?

The fact that 's its rise was contemporaneous with the Reagan-Thatcher-Mitterand-Kohl proto-neo-liberal narrative, — Ricardoc

??? That's some research you did. Postmodernism arose long before the late 1970s/early 1980s.

This, by the political scientist Corey Robin, might be helpful:

"One last word on identity politics: Every form of politics can take its identitarian turn. Here's what I mean by that: Everyone in politics tries to sidestep the critical role and need for argument, the need to craft a coalition and mobilize around a set of ideas and interests. Rather than build a case, people appeal to a condition. Identitarianism is not peculiar to a politics of race or gender or sexuality, not at all. The original identitarianism is nationalism or religion. There are terrible identitarianisms of class. (That's why I cringe every time someone depicts the working class as a brawny factory worker. Or of Joe Biden as somehow a "fighter for the working class." Or the notion that the working class is automatically something.)

All of these identitarianisms sidestep, as I say, the need for moral and political argument, the need to craft coalitions of interest and ideology that are not immediately apparent or present but that have to be created. I'm not against a politics based on conflict, on arraying one group against another. I'm against building those conflicts on spurious appeals to "you're one of us." Even if that "us" is an oppressed group. Kafka said, "What do I have in common with Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself." All of us are divided in multiple ways, first and foremost within ourselves. That's what politics at its best does: to craft a commonality out of that preexisting division. Identitiarians begin with the most spurious identity of all--the undivided self--and build from there."

All of us are divided in multiple ways, first and foremost within ourselves. That's what politics at its best does: to craft a commonality out of that preexisting division. Identitiarians begin with the most spurious identity of all--the undivided self--and build from there — StreetlightX

Well I'm sorry, but that has the same ring of hypocrisy to me. I craft coalitions of interest and ideology, but when anti-racists and feminists do it... Now if one were to talk of fundamentalisms, that brook no compromise, I could see something of the undivided self at play, but it is not Isis or the KKK that anyone means when they talk about 'identity politics' is it?

Well I'm sorry, but that has the same ring of hypocrisy to me. I craft coalitions of interest and ideology, but when anti-racists and feminists — unenlightened

But feminism and anti-racist movements do not largely conform to the description I gave above. I think - though I could be wrong - we might agree on this. Those who like to wield and weaponize the term 'identity politics' do make it seem as though they do though. Which is still not to say that the description is not useful, or true of some politics.

But feminism and anti-racist movements do not largely conform to the description I gave above. I think - though I could be wrong - we might agree on this. Those who like to wield and weaponize the term 'identity politics' do make it seem as though they do though. — StreetlightX

What folks are probably referring to with "identity politics" are the squeaky wheels who focus on things like race and gender essentially as a means of controlling what other people can choose to do. It's not anything like a broader academic analysis of a movement. It's just a reaction to people who make a lot of noise via media/social media and who have some impact due to that fact (because people are afraid of losing advertisers, they're afraid of being sued, they're afraid of boycotts, etc.)

What folks are probably referring to with "identity politics" are the squeaky wheels who focus on things like race and gender essentially as a means of controlling what other people can choose to do — Terrapin Station

All politics is an effort to control or change what people can 'choose to do'. So this is unhelpful and unspecific.

What happened to the "squeaky wheels who focus on things like race and gender essentially as a means of " part of the sentence?

I ignored it because it's quite obvious that there are issues of race and gender that can and ought to be politically redressed.

I ignored it because it's quite obvious that there are issues of race and gender that can and ought to be politically redressed. — StreetlightX

But that has nothing to do with what I was saying. I was talking about what the people using the phrase "identity politics" are probably referring to. It's something rather specific and limited in reference.

I don't think most people who use the term 'identity politics' know what they're referring to. I think they just see words like 'race' and 'gender' and then start frothing at the mouth, much like Pavlov's little mutts.

The same, I should probably add, goes for the term 'post-modernism'.

The same, I should probably add, goes for the term 'post-modernism'. — StreetlightX

Sure.

I'm not defending either side. It's more than seeing words "race" and "gender," but it's not much different than that.

In any event, there's something they have in mind--the stuff they observe that they're labeling in a particular way.

we might agree on this. Those who like to wield and weaponize the term 'identity politics' do make it seem as though they do though. Which is still not to say that the description is not useful, or true of some politics. — StreetlightX

I think we probably do agree, you and I, but I'm not so sure about Corey Robin. "The Identitarian movement or Identitarianism is a European, North American, Australian and New Zealander far-right and white nationalist movement that originated in France." (Thus Google) As I said already, that just isn't what people mean when they talk about identity politics.

That has more to do with Nazis rebranding themselves as 'ethno-nationalists' or 'identitarians' rather than the usual connotations of (left liberal) identity politics.

Edit: though those doctrines are about as 'identity politics' in the strict sense as they come.

Exactly, so why is a political scientist using it as the descriptor of someone who he is defining as guilty of 'identity politics'?

Re identity politics, can someone enlighten as to what other kind of politics there is? — unenlightened

Hive-mind politics.

My, this thread is full of liberal naivete. It's as though George Carlin never lived.

1) As my mother used to say about Mussolini. 'I was there', and the postmodern narrative had no force in academia before these woolly headed ex-trots strted publishing non-theoretical histories in the late seventies. You know, the same gang who supported the project for the American century, Wolfowitless and that gang.

There were some publications which mght be deemed post modern, but as it is a term generally used to describe everything from Mission Viejo, to Bliarism to Lacanianism, we are all humpty-dumpty. For example, in the world of architecture it was used for eclecticism, in which case you could say it began under the Victorians. It only got picked up by the corporate media in the 1980s. You know, with feminism and green-painted petrol stations.

And, 2) Hermione, the political process is not fair and the state is not some neutral referee. I am amazed in this day and age I have to say this. It is like 2008 never happened. Identity politics is merely a divide-and-conquer ruse to keep us proles in our place, you know.

Or perhaps, individualism?

I would like to blame post modernism for having the most opaque, reader-unfriendly style, and maybe it does, but as I reflect on some texts I had to read in teacher training, I have to admit that they weren't the first. Some pedagogy texts were extremely opaque and obscurantist in the 1960s, and these folks were on no intellectual cutting edge.

I am grateful that the English department at the provincial state college I went to in the '60s was not afflicted by postmodernism. I took some classics courses in the early 80s at the U of MN and they were uninfected too. But by the 80s PMS (post modern syndrome) was definitely in the air, and was becoming pervasive (at least in some departments; I don't think Mechanical Engineering or Agriculture departments were much affected). The Ag people had real shit to deal with, so didn't need to cook up synthetic forms of BS.