Postmodernism has been hailed as radical and progressive since it emerged from the year of revolts and strikes that was 1968. Yet the postmodernist thinkers of that era were not enthusiastic revolutionaries. Quite the contrary. A mix of ex-Marxists and anti-Marxists, they were dismissive of the workers movement, contemptuous of left-wing student action, and sought to replace the idea of societal transformation with battles around ideas and language.
French thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Pierre Bourdieu, and others still retained elements of the Marxist analysis but otherwise rejected ‘meta-narratives’, universal truths, and the kind over-arching explanation of society and its history offered by Marxism. They also turned on science and much of the legacy of the Enlightenment stating that there are multiple truths that are relative and subjective.
For Marxists, it’s no accident that postmodernism came to the fore alongside the rise of capitalist neo-liberalism and the collapse of Stalinism – which hugely undermined confidence in all strains of Marxism. Underlying this, from a Marxist point of view, was the sharp decline in the power of organised labour and the role of the working class as the primary agency of change.
The postmodernist may use the language of revolution but the philosophy is shot through with universal scepticism and a rejection of the kind of structuralist analysis that underpins Marxism. The idea of dialectical progress in history leading to a revolutionary break with capitalism by a radicalised proletariat is enough to make any postmodernist squirm. It’s not their bag.
So what is Postmodernism?
It all started in 1968. That year things went badly wrong for those who stood in the shadow of the Enlightenment, believing society could be defined and transformed. Convinced in the improvement, even perfecting of humanity. And that underlying our daily reality were dynamic historical processes, capable of being analysed and understood in relatively simple terms.
1968 sent a wrecking ball through all of this. It was the death knell for modernists, rationalists, structuralists, and…arguably…in time…Marxism-Leninism.
When the revolution failed to materialise in the year of uprisings that was 1968 – postmodernism burst to the surface. This happened in parallel with the rise of neoliberalism and the collapse of Stalinism, which dragged the whole edifice of Marxism down with it.
By the 1980s, postmodernism was triumphant in philosophy and culture. But what on earth was it?
More Nietzche than Marx
Postmodernism, by its very nature, resists definition – which is what makes it frankly maddening. Because its vagueness is a weapon postmodernists use to deflect or silence critics. If you try and argue against postmodernism, you’re soon told – rather sniffily – that you just don’t get it. And nobody wants to look dumb. So, in the spirit of the Emperor’s new clothes, most educated commentators pretend to understand postmodernism, while privately scratching their heads.
It’s easier to state what postmodernism isn’t than what it is. Postmodernism rejects a belief in science as the key to human progress; the primacy of reason to understand the world; and the ability to control and direct our society. Instead, it elevates text and language, literary analysis, rejects the idea of objective truth in favour of focussing on power relations. It argues that what has masquerading as objectivity has in fact been a way of oppressing the disenfranchised in society including women, racial minorities, and populations in the developing world.
Some of the language used by postmodernists can sound very close to the terminology used by Marxists. But the philosophical viewpoint is fundamentally different. Underlying postmodernism is a rejection of the Enlightenment tradition that is more in keeping with the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche than Karl Marx.
Nietzsche’s ‘perspectivism’ held that there is no essential, universal truth because each individual brings their own interpretation rooted in who and what they are to a subject. To him, truth was an illusion or has he explained it, “that the insect or bird perceives an entirely different world from the one humans do, and that the question as to which of these perceptions of the world is more correct is quite meaningless”.
Whereas a Marxist strives for workers to achieve a higher level of consciousness/awareness of the world in order to realise the necessary changes required – ie, a revolution – Nietzsche saw consciousness as fraudulent: “all becoming conscious involves a great and thorough corruption, falsification, reduction to superficialities and generalisation”.
To put it crudely, Nietzsche represented a decisive step towards divorcing human beings from the real world – which is not governed by universal truths and therefore unknowable. He stood in the tradition of ‘idealist’ philosophy, especially influenced by the 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant – though rejecting Kant’s belief in objective morality. This was what Nietzsche wrote about human beings who believed in objective truths:
“Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history,” but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die.“
No struggle, no class, no society, nothing…
Essays on postmodernism often read like the ramblings of an AI chatbot told to discuss philosophy – full of buzzwords, but little real meaning. What often underlies the gobbledygook is a gloomy nihilism where nothing can be truly known and all values are baseless. As the postmodern thinker Jean Baudrillard put it: “Whoever lives by meaning dies by meaning.”
Sometimes, postmodernism sounds as if it’s warning us that we have bought into fake realities created by the rich and powerful who are manipulating us. It points to the emergence of augmented reality and artificial intelligence as enablers of this process. Fair enough. The Marxist would then advise replacing the fake reality with a real one – gained through a combination of class struggle and political education.
However, the postmodernist doubts that there is any reality out there to be grasped. By all means, reject the narratives of the ruling class, but not seek to replace them with another reality, which more than likely does not exist. This is surely a recipe for total despair.
Postmodernism to the rescue of the truly oppressed?
Postmodernism claims to be about post-colonialism. It is portrayed as a philosophy of liberation for the formerly oppressed, once governed by the British, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese empires. It accuses modernism of being a ‘Eurocentric’ tool:
“Postmodern theory provides pathways through which the postcolonial world can talk back to the old empire with a renewed sense of legitimacy. The postmodern and the postcolonial also come together irrevocably in resisting imperialist culture and the totalizing systems and manifestations of modern thought.“
The oppression of the colonial world is viewed as a game of words that westerners have won in the past. A battle of ideas. In his 1978 book Orientalism, Edward Said argued that British and French writers in particular had created a romanticised view of the Middle East and the Arab world that belittled it, in comparison to Europe, while portraying it as exotic. This false view was then internalised by Arab elites who came to believe in the orientalist narrative.
No Marxist would deny the existence of a skilfully constructed imperialist propaganda intended to justify the ruthless exploitation of the developing world by the European powers. But they would see this as the bi-product or superstructure built on top of imperialism to mask the sucking out of resources and reducing of colonial peoples to abject poverty.
Postmodernists had a point about people in colonial societies needing to un-learn the version of history and the truth imposed on them by colonial administrators. Its criticism of the shortcomings of many in the western Left – and their attitude to the developing world – had plenty of merit. The trouble is that beyond that there is no strategy of resistance, no will to build a movement, or desire to change the structure of society through revolution.
All superstructure and no base
Despite their differences with Marxism, some postmodernists have bandied the terms ‘post-Marxist’ and ‘neo-Marxist’ to describe themselves, inferring that they have now moved on from the crude modernism and structuralism of traditional Marxism to something more relevant to modern conditions.
Postmodernist philosophers accept the Marxist idea of a superstructure of ideas and culture that reflects the interests of power. Marx argued that this superstructure rested on the economic base of capitalism, promoting its interests in often very subtle ways and creating a fog of ‘false consciousness’ to befuddle the minds of the exploited.
Postmodernism kicks the base away. It argues that the superstructure is too vast and complex to be under the direct control of the bourgeoisie. And anyway – what is the bourgeoisie? What is the proletariat? Jacques Derrida, one of the philosophical architects of postmodernism poured scorn on orthodox Marxism and class analysis: “I cannot construct finished or plausible sentences using the expression social class. I don’t really know what social class means.”
TikTok – the creation of a postmodernist hell
I’ve become hopelessly addicted to TikTok and regretted most of the time spent on this infuriating social media platform. Writing this blog post, I began to muse that TikTok is the perfect expression of postmodernism. And I’m not the only person, it seems, who has arrived at this conclusion.
So, you get the absurd situation where a scientist of the calibre of Professor Brian Cox is discussing the latest theories on the universe and comments underneath read along the lines: ‘None of that is proven’, ‘according to you’, ‘there’s no evidence’. Ignoring centuries of astronomy reaching back to Galileo, TikTok users breezily kick over a corpus of knowledge painstakingly built up by scientists.
But in the era of postmodernism, figures of authority like scientists, technicians, and other experts are compromised figures whose utterances are not so much grounded in objective reality as reflections of power relationships and entirely subjective and relative. This is a one way ticket to subjective idealism.
The danger is that platforms like TikTok are manipulated by those who want us to be in a state of permanent confusion and suspicion. Refusing to believe not only in science but democratic institutions, human rights, and equality. Rejecting official or traditional sources of information – the mainstream media – as biased.
Marxists would also question these things but not in the nihilistic way a postmodernist does that delivers people into the hands of Kremlin bot factories and American far Right trolls pumping out poison. Left with no solid reference points, and not even sure that reality exists, the modern mind is buffeted between contradictory messages, ultimately not knowing what to believe.
This is a perfect outcome for plutocrats. Leave the masses completely befuddled and bickering between themselves while creating an ever wider wealth gap that goes unchallenged. In Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World, the population of the future was controlled with a tranquilising drug called ‘soma’. Now, billions of minds, disarmed by postmodernism, can be fed any crap through an array of social media channels.
Categories: Philosophy
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