The Postmodern Left (original) (raw)

Facts Shifting to the Left: From Postmodernism to the Postfactual Age

PMLA, 2019

How postmodern is populism? Is there a hidden legacy of the 1968 manifestos in today's right-wing protest culture? In recent years, questions like these have often been posed in a more or less polemical manner. They should be reconsidered in a more sober, nuanced way. In academia, they are of far more than merely historical interest since unlike the hairstyles, clothing fashions, body culture, and living spaces from the late 1960s, many of the theories from that period are still regarded as contemporary. Above all, this applies to poststructuralism as a collective name for the impulses of what is often called French theory, which have set the tone in the humanities for two generations. However, the problem with the continuing topicality of poststructuralist and postmodern ways of thinking is that many of their elements are becoming virulent under completely changed political circumstances.

The Neo Manifesto-Moving in the Right Direction

1. Postmodernism was our culture's low point and the scale is now swinging back towards traditional value, yet we are merely predicting the change in the same sense a meteorologist predicts the inches of rain from a storm we know will come. Of course the driving force behind a potential cultural revival is metamodernism but this is due to overcorrection. When overcorrection occurs, as it frequently, if not ​ exclusively​ does in culture; it will be met with its polar opposite until the scale balances out over trial and error until the next pseudo-revolutionary​ ​ comes to once again tip the said scale into chaos, disruption and turmoil which never occurs without victims by its hand. We interpret this with the same merit a basic physics student may not know where the parabolic projectile lands, but can predict from natural laws of science. These natural laws are objective truths in our case. To understand Neo-modernism we must first understand Traditionalism, Modernism, Postmodernism, Metamodernism, Relativism, progressivism and nihilism. This seems tedious, but these sociobiological movements will be the substance, the context of our argument and or defense. Explain these chronologically in respect to cultural and political effects, we must draw the map of what led us here starting with World War 1 and a prelude of Marxism as well. While the arts and politics may be referenced, this is purely a cultural argument. To not remain apolitical would jeopardize the purity of neo-modernism and its ideas would surely deter from the broader values it stands in expression of. (however, it would be prudent to note that the arguments for neo-modernism are somewhat akin or simply share a likeness to certain political parties. It should, furthermore, be mentioned of course that this is simply a coincidence do to ideological linearity between the two. Once again this is not a foundation for specific or particular political movements but for the maturity of culture, political discourse and action can be built off the foundation of our belief and it will be the cure to this parasite that has colonized hollywood, education, politics, all downstream of culture, which puts culture on trial; accusation, murdering the West. Our goal is not to eliminate our enemies but adversely find what that with which we can agree on. This is not a simple make peace and love one another movement. There is an aphorism that in a fight, a bad man will kick their opponent in the groin to make them weaker, and a good man will grab a chair to make himself stronger. the The reason all of these distant ideas are crucial to the Neo-Modernist argument is because the ill-informed will typically shy from cultural opposition or revolution due to their lack of a historical background, not their conviction in their beliefs. This unevidenced conviction is in fact what holds them in neutral, as society, however unseemingly in the modern day, tends to select against unestablished and personally subjective idealism. Alluding, again, to the mind of the beginner physics student, one can assume, without knowing the student, that he or she has witnessed the laws of physics in the everyday world. Herein lies the major discrepancy between the student and the amateur political philosopher; while the student involuntarily experiences the laws of physics on a day to

'The real but greatly exaggerated death of Postmodernism' in JCEPS 17 (2). ISSN 1740-2743

Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies (JCEPS), 2019

This paper tracks the managing-out of Postmodernism in UK universities, before casting doubt on the tendency to declare its death. Firstly, Postmodernism's current status as 'geist' is defined and the question is put as to whether Postmodernity is dead in the university. I use Google Ngrams and data from the main three academic libraries I am affiliated to in order to broadly answer in the positive. That the collapse of Postmodernism maps out on the crash of 2008 suggests that Postmodernism's 'geist bubble' may have been enabled by access to credit, by a finance bubble. However, the paper then describes the emergent academic terms 'post-postmodern', 'after-modern', 'neomodernism', 'Metamodernism' and the 'New Sincerity'-suggested new paradigms coming after Postmodernism-critically, as they are all rooted in Postmodern theory or postmodern culture, for instance the writing of Fredric Jameson and David Foster Wallace. I argue that we need to attempt a new reorientation rather than over-arching terms for a new era which has barely shown its shape yet. We are not in a position to fully diagnose what comes after Postmodernism is managed out of academia, although clearly there are ramifications for the study of culture broadly. Playing advocatus diaboli I suggest that it would be better to reconsider terms such as False Consciousness than to float new signifiers over the current