schweblog

The latest round of criticism for the postmodern thought camp, perhaps surprisingly, isn’t coming from the anthropologists and historians and sociologists–the people who probably have the most to lose if we actually take what postmodernism is saying and apply it accordingly. It’s actually coming more from the hard sciences. Alan Sokal’s Intellectual Impostures and Fashionable Nonsense are a couple of the more recent works criticizing the postmodern trend of misusing scientific ideas and concepts in the name of furthering a theory (moreover, Richard Dawkins has a great review of the former on his blog in an entry entitled Postmodernism Disrobed). Sokal is a mathematician and physicist, Dawkins–who writes a damn good and rather intelligible review–is a biologist.

I stand with them in denouncing postmodernists’ ridiculous employment of a scientific idea/theory in order to convey a point about something that is, by all preconceptions of the postmodern ideal, nonscientific. However, under that shiny veneer of scientific common-sensibility is a general feeling that the entire movement really doesn’t constitute much in the way of actual thought. In fact, ever since the Sokal affair (in which Sokal managed to get a piece of utter nonsense published in a then-non-peer-reviewed academic journal of postmodernism), the general impression I’ve been given is that most of these critics feel the field of postmodernism is largely a hoax perpetrated by academics whose only protection is a shiny coat of vernacular armor.

After all, why shouldn’t the postmodernists replace classic terms in their ever-expanding vocabulary like aporia, parallax, and binary opposition with more accessible, sensible terms like, respectively: confusion, shifting perceptions, and opposite ideas? Basically, the general sense I get from these critics of postmodernism is that the field simply stands on these linguistic stilts, which essentially constitute a facade of actual thought. Why not make it more simple? Why favor complexity?

The answer, for me, lies in the nuances that are implied within each of these supposedly over-complex ideas. For a short parable, consider the idea of lightning–today, it’s viewed as an electronic discharge of electrons from cloud masses that is met with an equal and opposite electrical discharge from the Earth. With this concept of lightning, we can say confidently that it is not, in fact, Zeus hurling forged bolts of something down from Mount Olympus, nor is it the sound of thunder echoes of a divine game of bowling. Along with this more contemporary conception of lightning, we can better avoid the dangers posed by it–we now know that it’s not good to take shelter in our tin shed in a meadow in the middle of a lightning storm, nor is it alright to continue with our golf game.

I’m not suggesting that the word “lightning” somehow changed the way we understood lightning, nor am I suggesting that the scientific concepts of the phenomena actually created the word. What I am suggesting is that the incorporation of the word and the concept led to a greater understanding of its manifestation and resulted in a more aware, safer, and more sensible populace. I can say confidently that, with our current understanding of lightning, we are probably better off than a populace of 500 years ago, even though the concepts accompanying the word that refers to the same phenomena are significantly more complex and, quite frankly, more confusing.

This is why complexity is a good thing. Complexity requires that one understand the word and concept behind it–to a practical extent, at least–in order to employ it properly (someone who thought that thunder was the sound of gods bowling, for instance, and suggested as much in their language would be thought ridiculous–and would probably have a higher risk of getting struck by lightning, as they would mistake the sound of impending lightning storm for some deities’ leisure time). In using words like aporia, parallax, or binary opposition, postmodernists reveal more nuances to seemingly simple concepts or, rather, they take seemingly simple concepts and make them more complex. This complexity leads to a more profound understanding. Under the influence of these conceptions, we can understand the function behind the language–it no longer becomes just a game of language communicating concepts. We become more self-aware. We are more aware of our surroundings. We are more aware of the possibilities and potentials for control and chaos in our communities. And, if nothing else, the world becomes richer and, in some instances, funnier. Complexity, especially in this case, is a good thing. The goal of doing postmodernism with all of its loaded, complex terms, is summed up well by Richard Rorty:

The method is to redescribe lots of things in new ways, until you have created a pattern of linguistic behavior which will tempt the rising generation to adopt it, thereby causing them to look for appropriate new forms of non-linguistic behavior–for example…new social institutions. This sort of philosophy does not work piece by piece, analyzing concept after concept, or testing thesis after thesis. Rather it works holistically and pragmatically. It says things like ‘try thinking of it this way’–or, more specifically, ‘try to ignore the apparently futile traditional questions by substituting the following new and possible interesting questions.’