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I’m up to Chapter 3 so far and would highly recommend this book to those who want understand the ‘why & how’ of what is happening in our society. Understanding post-modernism is the first step. This is a short summary gleaned from ‘Goodreads’ is a part of what the book is explaining about Postmodern thought.
“The online Encyclopedia Britannica defines postmodernism as: “a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad scepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power.” The authors of this book mentions the two principles and four themes of postmodernism thus:
1. The postmodern knowledge principle: Radical skepticism about whether objective knowledge or truth is obtainable and a commitment to cultural constructivism.
2. The postmodern political principle: A belief that society is formed of systems of power and hierarchies, which decide what can be known and how.
The Four Major Themes
1. The blurring of boundaries
2. The power of language
3. Cultural relativism
4. The loss of the individual and the universalNow, to translate this to words of one syllable.
The first principle means that we can never know the objective truth: indeed, it is doubtful whether it exists at all. The second principle means that what is known as the truth is decided by the power hierarchy inside the system.
Thus, in one fell swoop, postmodernism dethroned science from its pedestal – because if we are not sure whether there is objective truth at all, why spend time looking for it? And in the colonial world, most of the objective knowledge was based upon colonial viewpoints; so a deconstruction of this was essential, especially as Orientalism was holding sway in the West.
(However, this doesn’t negate the power of science – but the fallout of postmodernism has engendered dangerously unscientific attitudes.)
Now let’s move on to the themes.
The blurring of boundaries means categorisations are no longer trusted. Not only the boundaries between objective and subjective and between truth and belief have been blurred, but also those between science and the arts, the natural and the artificial, high and low culture, man and other animals, and man and machine, and between different understandings of sexuality and gender as well as health and sickness. Everything is a spectrum.
The power of language emphasises that it is through language that we define power structures in a society. Under postmodernism, many ideas that had previously been regarded as objectively true came to be seen as mere constructions of language. In postmodern thought, language is believed to have enormous power to control society and how we think and thus is inherently dangerous. It is also seen as an unreliable way of producing and transmitting knowledge. To summarise: we create reality through language.
In a world where there is no objective truth, no boundaries, and where everything is created through how we speak and think, truth and knowledge are different for each and every culture and no one from outside that culture can comprehend it. This is called cultural relativism.
Consequently, to postmodern theorists, the notion of the autonomous individual is largely a myth. The individual, like everything else, is a product of powerful discourses and culturally constructed knowledge. Equally, the concept of the universal—whether a biological universal about human nature; or an ethical universal, such as equal rights, freedoms, and opportunities for all individuals regardless of class, race, gender, or sexuality —is, at best, naive. At worst, it is merely another exercise in power-knowledge, an attempt to enforce dominant discourses on everybody. This leads to the loss of the individual and the universal.
I totally get this. It’s a very nice intellectual exercise: and I must say that in the field of arts, literature and sociology, it has got valid uses. The only place I take the high road while postmodernists take the low road is when it comes to the concept of the individual and the universal, which I do believe are required as valid concepts if we need an equitable world. And also, for all our subjective perceptions, science has discovered many objective truths through its powerful method, which are not dependent upon language and/ or culture.
But now, the authors started talking about Theory (with a capital T: applied postmodernism) and the concept of Social Justice; and I started getting a bit alarmed – because I could now make sense of how I was annoying all those woke people.
The books we read define who we are. The books we choose inform our world view and how we look at the events in the world. The dissident viewpoint is not particularly fun or easy to hold as every point must be scrupulously backed up with ample evidence to be even considered in conversations and debate. This list, as the title says, is not complete nor will it probably ever be as education and learning never stops during a lifetime.
This post serves also to provide insight into the how and why I talk about issues and the positions I take while debating.
The first, and probably most important work to my education as a rational human being would have to be the grand tomb by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky – Manufacturing Consent. It is an acutely precise documented look at the American Media. Manufacturing Consent also offers a propaganda model to assist in analyzing and understanding how the media works, the reason for the prevalent rightward bias, and why that bias exists.
MC really started my adult education, as it caused me to become skeptical of what I had been taught in school and question the assumptions and point of view of how most my classes where taught.
I should mention Hegemony or Survival and The Fateful Triangle and Year 501: The Conquest Continues as well. They all brought clarity to the questions about how the world works and more importantly the structures in place that work against justice, egalitarianism and freedom.
I have read more Chomsky, particularly to understand the Vietnam War but I would single out these four works as being particularly important.
Howard Zinn is another major figure in my interpretation of history. It was his A People’s History of the United States that really reinforced the idea of history being written by the victor and how important alternate narratives are in understanding history. Out of the rest of his works, I have read War and Terrorism, which I also recommend as it is also very informative and illuminating.
In a similar vein, Major General Smedley Butler‘s work War is a Racket also ranks prominently in my readings of Western History because he simply tells it like it was for him, as a member of the United States Armed forces. His prescient observations are ever more true today.
I came upon Chris Harman’s book A People’s History of the World, like Zinn’s work it is a depressingly good read. I have only read it once, but it is coming back into rotation as is a valuable reference and starting point for further historical analysis.
It sits beside my copy of Zinn’s work as part of the spine of my history collection.
A fiery excerpt from one of his speeches.
War Talk, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire by Arundhati Roy, and Taraq Ali’s Pirates Of The
Caribbean: Axis Of Hope (2006), Bush in Babylon (2003), and Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002). Both Roy and Ali provide external analysis of our situation in the West and how we are viewed by the rest of the world. Ali is a powerful speaker and I had the opportunity to listen to him when he came to the University in 2008. His eloquence and arguments made for an evening to remember. External points of view are necessary, but sometimes a homegrown view is necessary to provide more perspective on the important issues of our time.
The Canadian Naomi Klein and her works fits nicely into the puzzle giving a Canadian view of the world as it. I did not enjoy NoLogo very much but found The Shock Doctrine to be a necessary and informative read about how the elites do what they must to rule the world. The Shock Doctrine explains how countries are jolted into submission before neoliberal reforms are forced on them. Again, file under good but depressing reading.
I almost forgot one of the most important works of history that I have read. It is called The Great War for Civilization by Robert Fisk. It is a huge work spanning most of Fisk’s journalistic career. It is history close up, a punch in the nose of a wake up call as for what trouble with Middle East and ‘civilizing influence’ there.
This list is a longer than I first expected, as even after 500 words I have covered only a couple of areas of the literature that informs my view and opinion on the world (in retrospect, probably a good thing). I will cover other areas of my interests in future posts.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…