Postmodernism is a cargo cult. It seeks to duplicate the form of rational inquiry, while lacking the substance. It's children dressing up in parents' clothes, and complaining about things they don't understand, like taxes and sciatica, for no better reason than that is what they see adults doing with their time. Monkey see, monkey do.
Postmodernists believe that if they make their terminology sufficiently obscurantist, sesquipedalian, and circumloquatious, nobody will notice the lack of substance. To a large extent, they are correct in that belief.
Some postmodern philosophers (like Baudrillard) are beyond help, while others (like Foucault) are largely salvageable. This must be judged on a case-by-case basis, but not without boots to wade through the exceedingly thick bullshit that permeates the entire idea-space.
When you start getting to ideas such as "science is sexist because it probes the natural world (which is the sacred feminine) against its will, thus committing rape" it's time to throw the document in the fire. It's important to leave a lot of room around the fire, though, as you've probably underestimated how much pomo literature is totally worthless.
Postmodernists believe that if they make their terminology sufficiently obscurantist, sesquipedalian, and circumloquatious, nobody will notice the lack of substance. To a large extent, they are correct in that belief.
Some postmodern philosophers (like Baudrillard) are beyond help, while others (like Foucault) are largely salvageable. This must be judged on a case-by-case basis, but not without boots to wade through the exceedingly thick bullshit that permeates the entire idea-space.
When you start getting to ideas such as "science is sexist because it probes the natural world (which is the sacred feminine) against its will, thus committing rape" it's time to throw the document in the fire. It's important to leave a lot of room around the fire, though, as you've probably underestimated how much pomo literature is totally worthless.
Jack: I just learned about postmodernism in college, and now I totally believe in it, and self-identify as such.
Jill: You and every other gullible sophomore looking for an intellectual family where you can't possibly be wrong, you fucking latte-sipping coward.
Jill: You and every other gullible sophomore looking for an intellectual family where you can't possibly be wrong, you fucking latte-sipping coward.
by R0rd_Er337 February 28, 2009
An ideology based upon the silly idea that metaphors can meaningfully serve as the subject of a transitive verb. Favored by university faculty who have nothing better to do than waste my time.
Colleague: This modality of the social construction of gender can _speak_ causally, but it cannot _think_ causally.
Me: You are wasting my time with this silly postmodernism.
Me: You are wasting my time with this silly postmodernism.
by Ludwig Wittgenstein February 09, 2009
The perfect (maybe) word to write about in Urban Dictionary because everything you say about it is encompassed by it. So if I were to say that Postmodernism is a goat, I am of course, right (left). If I say that Postmodernism is an art movement based on the unsurity of a declining art market of the 90's, I'd be correct (whatever that means). Eat your Captain Crunch, look at a Madonna video and drink a glass of Tang. Reality is media. Reality is simulation. Life is Art.
My professor tried to explain postmodernism but got hung up on what words to use. He kept losing track of the meanings and saying things that nobody could understand. Finally when he was unable to speak any language at all, we all understood and went home but couldn't find it, because home is in the film "The Wizard of OZ".
by Bozlog May 08, 2008
widely debated state or traits exhibited in cultural expressions (architecture, literature, visual arts, etc.) and in social and cultural theory. argued to be the "cultural logic of late capitalism" (Lyotard, 1984) both an extension of and a breaking with modernity, signified by a primacy of the visual, the valorization of form over substance and simulation over authenticity(Baudrillard), the narrativity of science (Lyotard), fragmentation of the liberal subject (Jameson), decentering of (sup/im)-posed systems of meaning in infinite interplay with chains of signifiers (Derrida)
see "Postmodernism for Beginners"
see "Postmodernism for Beginners"
by c joseph April 27, 2004
Postmodernism: pseudo-intellectual Trojan Horse of tyrants everywhere in the western world. Began in Arts faculties in various universities under "thinkers" like Derrida, Baudrillard, Foucault and Irigaray, and spread like a cancer into at least the "soft" sciences, if not further afield.
Works insidiously by establishing in the minds of the faithful that there are no ultimate truths in either a moral or a scientific sense, and dressing up bullshit in flowery language. Postmodernism pretends to be a guarantor of pluralism (a concept far better served, btw, by rational debate), and is in love with concepts such as the "transgressive" and the "paradigm shift". Unfortunately these matters are brought up in the midst of reams and reams of tendentious twaddle which constitute a dreadful waste of perfectly good trees, and the most notable effect of postmodernist (un)thinking is not the freeing of anyone's mind from conservative tyranny, but the scrapping of the very idea of objective truth. Once this happens, of course, what follows (outside the ivory towers of academia) is that the game goes, set and match, to the fellah with the biggest guns. Many conservative factions claimed that September 11 spelled the end of postmodernism. Ohhhh nooo, postmodernist twaddle was only just getting its boots on.
To take an (admittedly anachronistic) example of what is essentially the same thing:
"A new and magical understanding of the world is on the rise, one based on will rather than truth. There is no truth, in either the scientific or the moral sense."
- Adolf Hitler
Works insidiously by establishing in the minds of the faithful that there are no ultimate truths in either a moral or a scientific sense, and dressing up bullshit in flowery language. Postmodernism pretends to be a guarantor of pluralism (a concept far better served, btw, by rational debate), and is in love with concepts such as the "transgressive" and the "paradigm shift". Unfortunately these matters are brought up in the midst of reams and reams of tendentious twaddle which constitute a dreadful waste of perfectly good trees, and the most notable effect of postmodernist (un)thinking is not the freeing of anyone's mind from conservative tyranny, but the scrapping of the very idea of objective truth. Once this happens, of course, what follows (outside the ivory towers of academia) is that the game goes, set and match, to the fellah with the biggest guns. Many conservative factions claimed that September 11 spelled the end of postmodernism. Ohhhh nooo, postmodernist twaddle was only just getting its boots on.
To take an (admittedly anachronistic) example of what is essentially the same thing:
"A new and magical understanding of the world is on the rise, one based on will rather than truth. There is no truth, in either the scientific or the moral sense."
- Adolf Hitler
They didn't find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but Blair says they still except to find them and he walks in hope! How beautifully in line with the creed of postmodernism!
A recent postmodernism-infected view of the war in Iraq explained that Bush and Blair were "creating new realities" for the rest of the world to study.
A recent postmodernism-infected view of the war in Iraq explained that Bush and Blair were "creating new realities" for the rest of the world to study.
by Fearman June 18, 2007
The idea that there is no objective meaning, only subjective meaning, the meaning one brings to a thing, irrespective of the intent of the author, or of the Author, or of reality.
by David Malcolm Porta December 17, 2005
Imagine that on everyone's hand there is a penis and a vagina. Now imagine what it would be like to shake hands with someone.
Fred: Hi, I'm Fred Derkowitz, nice to meet you.
Bob: Hi Fred I'm Bob. Oh God.
Fred: That feels amazing.
Bob: L’important, c’est que le sexe n’ait pas été seulement affaire de sensation et de plaisir, de loi ou d’interdiction, mais aussi de vrai et de faux. Postmodernism booyakasha.
Bob: Hi Fred I'm Bob. Oh God.
Fred: That feels amazing.
Bob: L’important, c’est que le sexe n’ait pas été seulement affaire de sensation et de plaisir, de loi ou d’interdiction, mais aussi de vrai et de faux. Postmodernism booyakasha.
by Josh12345 May 14, 2007