quick note on "What is postmodernism?" article (a top search result)
April 23rd, 2008
[critique, philosophy, postmodernism]
A recent search I performed at ask.com for "What is postmodernism?" returned an article from an English professor [1] which is a sort of a book commentary-slash-essay... This post is just a quick commentary on one glaring logical fallacy (as much for me to come back to and refine / elaborate on as for you, gentle reader...)
Mary Klages' essay, titled simply "Postmodernism", does present some good summary points, but I have to point out that it has some glaring statements of bias presented as "fact"/"truth". In particular, her statement
"Because modernity is about the pursuit of ever-increasing levels of order, modern societies constantly are on guard against anything and everything labeled as "disorder," which might disrupt order. Thus modern societies rely on continually establishing a binary opposition between "order" and "disorder," so that they can assert the superiority of "order." But to do this, they have to have things that represent "disorder"--modern societies thus continually have to create/construct "disorder." In western culture, this disorder becomes "the other"--defined in relation to other binary oppositions. Thus anything non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic, non-rational, (etc.) becomes part of "disorder," and has to be eliminated from the ordered, rational modern society."
While her claim about "western culture" may be true, the "Thus..." statement does not follow. (In formal logic, a non sequitur is an argument where the conclusion does not follow from its premises.) The concept of an 'ordered society' that collectively and/or governmentally moves to squelch or otherwise suppress societal elements that represent 'disorder' is by no means exclusive to the philosophical construct of "modernism." Such efforts would seem to be a natural result of a societal power-structure that seeks to retain power (and what government doesn't?) and could be classified in any other number of political or societal terminologies. More importantly though, in the context of this discussion on modernism, it is not a fundamental "truth" that those who subscribe (or have subscribed) to the idea of a 'ordered, rational, modern society' must think in only "binary" concepts (as the author puts it), or that elements of disorder will be conceived of as "anything non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic" et cetera.
Assuming the ideas of "modernism" are at play, cultures -- western or otherwise -- can define elements of "disorder" in any number of ways; these elements are historically things which are seen to be different than the "norm" (i.e. of the perceived majority), unfamiliar (foreign / "foreigners"), or that are perceived to be a threat to the established power-holders. These elements _have_ been, at various times and in various cultures, "non-white" or "non-male", etc, but there's no play in a rational discussion for claims that they MUST BE, or that the only logical manifestation of a modernist philosophy will be one of "binary" thinking and an "ever increasing" effort to impose more and more levels of "order".
Pay attention to her use of words in the rest of the article as well; they seem to express an opinion: that "order" and its connotations in the context of modernism is "bad"/undesirable and that postmodernist relativism is "good". This instead of what the article pretends to be; which is an objective look at the philosophical underpinnings of the terms being discussed.
I suspect that this article may also have problems of generalism, by which I mean a tendency to ascribe to the philosophies being discussed characteristics that are not part of the original concepts -- expansions of the ideas put forth by the original proponents that seem logical to the writer, but are actually from other (albiet related) schools of thought.
[1] http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html
notes-on_what-is-postmodernism_article; by Liberto M., April 2008
