What's your opinion on postmodernism?

>What the fuck did he mean by this?
Basically he told you not to talk of shit you know nothing about.
Which is moronic, because it basically implies that the same identical thesis can be right or wrong depending on who presents it. Basically admitting they are judging the person rather than the idea.

>post-Marxist
Your fault for asking a clearly mentally ill person anything.

It's bretty cool. I've noticed a recent push by illiterate /pol/fags to try scapegoat it for the fall of western civilization or some shit.

Sheer unfounded pretentiousness.

Lol

you and cleetus presumably aren't seen as equals by society, you and jamal less so, and both of them are acutely aware of this and it shapes their actions. Telling either Cleetus or Jamal that you do not perceive or acknowledge this difference, but continuing on with the behavior in line with your societal position, will upset them, and make you look like a tit, because you clearly do know.

that's pretty much it.

In fairness, the people who /pol/fags hate do pretend to be post-modernists. They are in fact not, acting if anything like a cross between enlightenment and modernist thinkers.

>Bretty good
Explain. Literally everyone I've met who subscribes to it has been a moron trying to look intelligent.

If you made the anti-formalism of modernism more self aware but kept all the other bad parts you have post-modernism, which is why its great.

Ah yes SOCIETY. That's definitely an easily defined and homogenous group of opinions.

where does white privilege become involved in this exactly?

The funny part is that most so called postmodernists in fact do away with the antiformalism, and actually force all the bad parts of modenism to bordeline formal dogma levels.

Does this really not make sense? People are better off being white still, and it's mean to pretend otherwise

there's no affirmative action or quotas for whites, the only downside I can see for blacks compared to whites is their presence in statistically less well off and more crime-ridden areas

yeah, that's what makes it great. We have something like the academe, but bourgeois in style instead of aristocratic, and just as dead and terrible. Here's a sever hundred thousand dollar reason to kick Jeff Koons in his creatively bankrupt, balloon animal patenting balls, it was shown in the Louvre and bought by a celebrity. Koons thinks its clever because its tacky and horrible but he was allowed to do it and get paid because he's Jeff Koons, and he doesn't even need good ideas anymore, he can just be meta.

Some day, I'll piss on his work. Some day.

The idea is that as a white person you have the *privilege* to say race doesn't matter and have it not negatively effect you in any meaningful way. Black people on the other hand aren't able to do that. Black people generally are treated in different and subtle ways and no black person can really just "forget" that they're black.

he partnered with Louis Vuitton, and they too are scum, also to be urinated upon. It may not seem like it, but I dig modern art.

I'm gonna sound really SJWish and I hate that. But think for a bit about what you said.
>the only downside I can see for blacks compared to whites
You just substituted your own perspective for the entire black experience, and expected all black people to act in accordance to that. Your perspective only even took in to account two demographic statistics, when there are many more that describe systematic differences between being white and black, at least in the US. And that's totally ignoring any cultural or social differences.

You have the privilege to say a thing? is that it?
>Black people generally are treated in different and subtle ways
what are these subtle and different ways of being treated? can you enumerate them, or are they more of a feeling?
>no black person can really just "forget" that they're black.
so they can't not dwell on race because they believe they are treated as lesser than whites becuase X

>You just substituted your own perspective for the entire black experience,
No I think I just stated a factual and material difference that you see statistically when looking at blacks and whites in America as two groups without taking into account the disparity within those groups because we're working with generalizations here like the "black experience".
>when there are many more that describe systematic differences between being white and black,
like what?

Okay, lets mobilize this thread, so we can discuss without as much shitposting.

Quote me and answer...:

1. What is postmodernism? Short, concise, no opinions definition. Just the basic thing, leave the onions.
2. Why is postmodernism good? What does it explain and help us with?
3. Why is postmodernism bad? What does it miss out on, and prevent us from doing?
4. What books and authors did you read and agree with to come to those conclusions?

Once we get a few people answering these, we can discuss on a common ground. Right now its shit flinging.

>You have the privilege to say a thing? is that it?
? I don't your point, this conversation started about saying race is irrelevant. So yeah, I guess this is all about saying things.
>what are these subtle and different ways of being treated? can you enumerate them, or are they more of a feeling?
I can't really enumerate them, so I guess you'd classify it as 'more of a feeling.' I'm not talking about segregated water fountains or anything, just a different but parallel social experience as black. One that isn't inherently negative, just different. Imagine you're Black, you just spent half an hour watching BET and now you just walked into a nearby target to get something. Everywhere you go the manager follows just behind, just enough to make sure you aren't shoplifting. At the end of that can you really say "race doesn't matter" with a straight face.
>so they can't not dwell on race because they believe they are treated as lesser than whites becuase X
I never said lesser, just different. But yeah a lot of people would argue lesser, so you're mostly right.

...

Well first of all, you need to differentiate between "postmodernism" and "postmodernity".

Postmodernism is a trend in literature and the arts, that tends toward rejection of previous so-called "objective" criteria for what constitutes either literature or art.

This can include things like denying that a painting must by constrained by the physical attribute of having a canvas for example, and in literature it can take the form of ironic self-referentiality(e.g the author saying outright in the book he's writing that he is writing a book) and so on.

Now, postmodernity on the other hand, is simply the fact of our current society. It is just the cultural situation of living after modernity, which by most accounts ended after World War 2.

It can entail certain things though. It entails the deconstruction of identity, extreme urban life, alienation and overt commercial irony.

Let me know what you think.

Or this

Like this

And again I'll say, this is totally ignoring any cultural or social differences

>Let me know what you think.

I think you are defining the words like a good dictionary, but not like the way they are used.
Colloquially, post-modernist is used to refer to the belief that reality is relative, quality is relative, good or bad is relative, and nothing can be objectively true or objectively good.
In conversation it is mostly used to refer to the idea that you can't say this is better than that, because that may not be the case according to other people. It is only a fact for you, in this situation, and not an objective fact.

>post-modernist is used to refer to the belief that reality is relative, quality is relative, good or bad is relative, and nothing can be objectively true or objectively good.

Well I think this is a strawman. I think it's vastly more likely that a postmodernist of any stripe would argue that most of what we consider objectively true or good is simply socially constructed.

Could be, I am simply saying how I see the words used. In the context of art - that just because you don't like something and don't see it as art, doesn't mean it isn't. There is no objective definition of art, there can't possibly one, its relative from consciousness to consciousness. We don't all see the same red, so to speak, we just agree that roses are red, however each of us sees that.
In political terms it is used to claim that islamic culture isn't "worse" than western culture, since it can't be worse by definition. Its different, and its better for the islamic people, in the islamic world. Maybe its worse for you, but that doesn't matter to anyone but you.

That is how I see the terms used on this website, in its different boards, and on other forums I visit. Its not the dictionary definition you gave, and probably is a strawman, but it is one adopted by both sides of the debate for some reason.

>blacks come from a culture that doesn't value education
>this is somehow white peoples fault

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_immigration_to_the_United_States#Educational_attainment

There is nothing holding black people back except their own shitty culture, otherwise African-born Americans would be in the same situation. Instead they actively reject African-American culture and pursue success.

But it's always easier to blame your own failings on 'the white man'. Literally no difference to some skinhead blaming the Jews for his poverty.

Either way, the idea that reality is relative, quality is relative, good or bad is relative is true, but that doesn't mean something can be objectively true or good.

It all depends on your fundamental axioms. If you believe that the alleviation of suffering for example, is the most important value, then you can arbitrate what is objectively good by arguing from that axiom.

But the fundamental problem is that not everyone hold to the same moral axioms.

something can't be objectively true or good*

in reply to your image macro, i have to declare that similituteds of voracious nature the likes of which most post modernists acclimate and condescend to imitation is a cancer i most vehemently abhor. funny picture!

>Imagine you're Black, you just spent half an hour watching BET and now you just walked into a nearby target to get something. Everywhere you go the manager follows just behind, just enough to make sure you aren't shoplifting. At the end of that can you really say "race doesn't matter" with a straight face.
depending on what I wear this happens to me, I highly doubt this anecdote is true for every black, mostly just the ones who wear tracksuits constantly or travel in packs like nigs
if you're a black who looks completely normal and not like you're making an effort to proclaim how underclass you are then I don't think you'd be hassled in the slightest
we call those sorts of people knackers here

Way to entirely miss the point.
Nobody said anything was anyone's "fault"
Only that black people have a systematically different experience in the US than white people and that saying "race doesn't matter" is dumb because it's a proveably untrue statement that is usually said by white people who either don't know or choose to ignore the black experience in America.

Also the comparison to African immigrants is almost entirely irrelevant. Legal immigrants are almost always ambitious people from educated backgrounds. The immigration act of 1990 heavily favors educated professionals. Hell there are more immigrants holding STEM PhDs in the US than non-immigrants.
AND I've talked to African immigrants and they also say they feel poorly treated because of their association with American-born blacks.

Are you saying blacks get a bad rap because they're associated with African-American culture that glorifies crime and thuggery?
I'd certainly agree with that but that seems like it'd only effect a very small amount of people who want to distance themselves from that whilst the majority of blacks in America participate in or are of that culture to some extent.

>saying "race doesn't matter" is dumb because it's a proveably untrue statement
Except it's not. If race had such a big impact on the state of the current state of Afro-Americans, then African immigrants would be in the same situation. Instead they're twice as succesful as white people.
>Legal immigrants are almost always ambitious people from educated backgrounds
So what you're saying is...race is irrelevant and your success mostly comes down to your parents wealth and your own ambitions? I re-iterate, there is nothing holding black people back on the institutional level (the opposite, blacks are given a huge handicap and still fail) except for their own past and garbage anti-success anti-education culture. Even Mexicans are starting to overtake them economically, despite starting off impoverished.

Let me make a comparison that will hopefully make things clearer.
Its not all about social justice or black liberation or whatever fucking else.
Just imagine a pretty actress saying "looks don't matter, anyone can be an actor!"
She's not wrong, but it's really tone deaf and she is speaking from a place of privilege about social hardships she has never had to face. And it's pretty disrespectful to people that aren't beautiful.

The entire point is that blacks have a culture distinct from mainstream white America,and that culture is almost entirety drawn on racial lines. A black guy in Atlanta has much closer experiences to a black guy in LA than he does to a white guy in Atlanta.
Saying "race doesn't matter" erases that culture and those shared experiences

This. Frankly the single biggest advantage or """privilege""" someone can be born with is to be born into a stable, two parent household.

Second biggest is being born into a good culture, what ghetto blacks call 'actin white', even though Asians, Pajeets and African born Americans 'act white' better than actual whites do.

>A black guy in Atlanta has much closer experiences to a black guy in LA than he does to a white guy in Atlanta.

Not him, but this might've been true in 1955, but is this really true anymore?

Somehow I doubt it.

Yeah that makes more sense. Only reason people say race doesn't matter is because of white racists and racialists though, and a degree of virtue signalling.

So what you're saying is...race is irrelevant and your success mostly comes down to your parents wealth and your own ambitions?
But if your parents wealth and your ambition is strongly correlated with your race, then how can you say race is irrelevant?
>except for their own past and garbage anti-success anti-education culture
That is the whole point! Those things are PART of being black in America!

If anything it's only become stronger with the rise of black media
Black people listen to black music, watch black TV, use black twitter, talk in black speech, watch black porn, etc.

And I say Cletus has much more in common with Tyrone than Tyrone has with Mb'Utu from Nigeria and his oil baron parents.

In other words, wealth (or even just what your parents do) and culture are far more important than race in 21st century America.

>That is the whole point! Those things are PART of being black in America!
Not really. Look at Appalachia, only difference is less violence.

Yeah, good point.

Just because there are things that "matter" more doesn't mean "race doesn't matter"
If you can't see that race is an integral part of culture in the US I don't know what to say

Well that's also conversely more true. Gentrification is a thing with all races.

But that doesn't mean the U.S hasn't come a long way since Jim Crow. Which it has.

Postmodernism generally speaking rejects the notion of objectivity. In art & literature that manifests itself by breaking previously established rules and conventions.
In philosophy on the other hand it can become very destructive, denying that things like logic & reason can aid in our understanding of reality. As exercised by people like Foucault or Derrida it is essentially Marxism in its death throws, trying to corrupt language and establish a kind of leftist doublethink. I recommend Stephen R.C. Hicks "Explaining Postmodernism" as a good summary. I would post some quotes and stuff, but I am on a train and typing is difficult enough already...

People in Appalachia do have systematic problems and are discriminated against. Appalachian accents are seen as indicating someone is stupid or uneducated. They are also treated differently because of historic cultural problems and prejudices.
It really isn't much different from being black in its own way.

>But if your parents wealth and your ambition is strongly correlated with your race
You've got it backwards, I think. Their wealth is correlated with their race because their parents were poor, and their grandparents and so on until slavery, this isn't necessarily correlated with race: if your parents were poor it's likely you'll be poor too. Like someone else said, look at Appalachia.

The only reason for the correlation is because in most situations it isn't as stark. There are plenty of poor whites whose ancestors were poor, but there are also much more well of whites whose ancestors were rich, or at least ambitious. Pretty much every black person in the US (except for African immigrants) has a poor ancestry.

>People in Appalachia do have systematic problems and are discriminated against
And it happens even though they're white. You see? Being black isn't being poor, there are plenty of poor whites out there, being poor just correlates with being black. Hence, it isn't really race, is it?

I don't think you know what correlation means

>it is essentially Marxism
>proceeds to talk about things that have nothing to do with Marxism

Mate, Marx had like five ideas. None of them have anything to do with objectivity or its lack.

My argument was never "wha wha blacks have it so bad! Won't someone think if the blacks! etc."
But that there are differences between being white and being black and it's stupid to say they don't exist.
Look at this post
Steve Buscemi is a phenomenal actor, that doesn't mean that appearance doesn't matter for an actor

PM was inevitable and among the precursors to PM art were some of the most sophisticated works in history
Rabelais, Cervantes, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Apuleius, Joyce, Andrei Bely and the likes
butthurting and badmouthing PM never achieves anything. try to understand the phenomenon, the background, the history, and the liberating ideals (however anti-idealistic) behind it
more than anything PM is a revolution of "meta-thinking" and epistemology. if you're dumb or believe in some kind of golden age, you would probably blow your anus into pieces sooner than even try to attemp to approach it

here's Big Dipper by Renat Voligamsi
now continue arguing about your stupid little iden-tities and races

Edgy in the 50s but tired and worn out nowadays. In the end analytic philosophy and the rational anglo perspective withstood the challenges and proved that it is indeed valid.

Not him, but people like Foucault do tend to reduce the world to some kind of master-slave dialectic.

Also, critical theory does have it's hand in postmodernism as well. Especially ideas from Marcuse that anything an oppressed class does to the oppressor cannot be said to be morally wrong by definition.

Now I have to open pdfs to pull quotes anyway. Thanks:
Derrida 1995
>deconstruction never had meaning or interest, at least in my eyes, than as radicalization, that is to say, also within the tradition of a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism

Thats cool, but its not Marx.

Marx said:
>The natural state of people is cooperation, not competition, and we are driven to competition because some people hoard resource, and thus there is scarcity for the rest of us.
>People should group by class, not tribe - you have more in common with the other tribe's workers than with your own tribe's king.
>Labor produces value - renting out a building doesn't create any value, advertising a product doesn't create any value, only the labor (building a house, crafting a product) have value.
>Redistributing resources based on wealth and inheritance is not efficient, and it is an inevitability that a very few people will end up with most resources.
>When the above happens, it is an inevitability that the majority that can't access resources will rise up and demand access from that minority, possibly through violence.

This is Marx in five paragraphs. Horribly reductionist, but this is basically all of Marxism. Everything else is derived from Marx, but isn't what Marx said or wanted.
Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, whatever Asian butcher you favor, whatever South American dictator, your university professor, the Starbucks girl you like, they may derive from Marx, but if they say anything on top of those five paragraphs, they are adding to Marx.

99% of what I read here being attributed to Marx has nothing to do with what the guy said. My favorite is "Marx hated capitalism", when Marx said capitalism (the rule of merchants) is a great way to increase overall wealth, its just crap at distributing this newly created wealth. I find that to be observable reality to be honest.

>cultural values are subjective in nature therefore we cannot make objective judgments about them

Only modern liberals could be so deluded as to take this line of thinking. Clearly all human behaviors have utility value in terms of the happiness and health of their adherents. And if you don't value happiness and health in choosing your culture you don't even deserve to be at the discussion as what other things could we require of our culture?

Please tell me that image is satire

The problem with SJW identity politics is that they're too honest, and that they are siding with the oppressed. The reasons for their public mistification is mainly tribalism: their preachings do not make sense because they do not really improve the life of the general population.

Most people on Veeky Forums do not care if what that dumb screaming red-haired feminazi was right, what they care about is the fact that what she was saying directly influences their life in a negative way. It was never about arguments, facts and discussions, it was always about who gets the short end of the stick. I'm sure that on /pol/ there are only a handful of anons who have read on the argument from both sides and then tried at least once to truly empathize with a trans person in the US: if this does not happen frequently (meaning: if both sides are not knowledgeable of their opponents' arguments) no debate worth reading can possibly happen, devolving instead into a strawman and stereotypes contest.

Thread premise:
>What's your opinion on postmodernism?

Your post:
>The problem with SJW identity politics is...

>a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism

If this doesn't scream to you "my special snowflake non-Marxist Marxism that I am my friends made up" you must be new to the english language.

Its like saying "he was short, weak, a coward, lazy, but he had a certain strength to him".

That picture is more about dada and pop art rather than PoMo at large, especially in the visual arts. The word genius is still accepted and artists are still expected to prove their worth through a brilliant academic career. People still accept formally notions such as composition in paintings.
in literature you're exected to be a erudite with a full grasp on both traditional and contemporary literary forms, and real literary success still happen in mostly elitist and competitive academic institution. There are still quality hierarchies, none of the postmodernists you may quote does not accept the usefulness of said mental tool.
In music you're expected to become a scientist,and to costantly innovate on every possible ground, conceptual, formal, structural, sonic, etc. Music academia uses the same approach to music that scientists use for science.

tl;dr: the guy who made that comic did not know what he was talking about

In a past Veeky Forums thread one guy was saying PoMo was ruining the arts, and his example of classic and objectively good non-PoMo art was a plastic/silicone statue of a man, with all the individual hairs planted, colored perfectly to appear real.
He couldn't comprehend that such a statue is PoMo, since its not the "classic" statue, its a new way to do art - a complete copy of a real object using new medium and technology.

One of the repeated negative patterns of feminazi is pushing many initiatives that influence neutral party without helping minorities in any meaningful way so to speak. Things like meddling with like video game content come to mind. For every one person who is somewhat legit in what they do, there around many dozens of attention seekers "holier than you" types who are trying to selfly capitalize not on helping the common cause, but at the expense of the innocent people.

Sounds like you lack reading comprehension.

You're obviously just seeing Marx the sociologist and philosopher, and aren't seeing Marx the political activist.

The first one more or less just diagnosed problems with capitalism, the second one advocated the destruction of capitalism through violent revolution.

This idea that it's possible to just reduce Marx and Marxism to some simple critical theory of modern society that has no moral injunctions at all is ridiculous.

>Sounds like you lack reading comprehension.
>Proceeds to make up a narrative about an author based on nothing from his work

>Marx advocating violent revolution is "based on nothing from his work"

Get the fuck out pseud.

The only time he talked about bloody revolutions is in an interview for the Chicago Tribune, where he implied that the USA, Great Britain and France can easily move to socialism without violent revolutions, but in Germany, Austria, Italy and Russia the autocrats in charge will prevent it, and force a violent movement against them.
And it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this is mostly a commentary on the authoritarian regimes in these places being opposed to change, rather than the need for violence in general.

>pseud
This is an obvious red flag, another one and I'll stop responding. Don't be that kind of fag, make arguments.

You're just deflecting from the whole point of this thread.

The fundamental idea of Marxism is that society is divided most distinctly between property owners and laborers and that this situation is untenable and morally unfair.

And Foucault and other poststructuralist/postmodern philosophers agree with him completely, they just use a different language. They use oppressor/oppressed categories instead, and think the problem is vastly larger than simply property divisions.

So yes, it is a lot of postmodern philosophy is based in fundamental Marxism; Marxism again itself is based on Hegelian master-slave dialectic.

Based on doesn't mean its the same, you imbecile.
The post that started this conversation claimed Postmodernism and Marxism are "essentially the same thing".
This is about as much true as Marxism and Hegelian Dialectic are essentially the same thing.

You either didn't read the whole chain of replies, or are moving the goal posts so far we are going to need to call a cab to get home.

Foucault talks about oppression, but, since he is mostly usong the Nietzscheian's genealogic system, he is not assigning any quality statement.

In fact, among all the philosophers that are considered postmodernists Foucault has been one of the more pragmatic one, often accepting all kinds of internalized for of oppressions in exchange for their benefits.

Sure, he may have influenced some of the most hypocritical instances of identity politics, but he did so in a very indirect way, so much in fact that his stances are non-compatible with said movements most of the time.
It's like blaming retards on /pol/ and their infographic basd racial realism on Darwin.

The guy didn't say "Postmodernism and Marxism are "essentially the same thing"

He said "Postmodernism is Marxism in its death throes", which is quite something else.

Oh, my bad, he was wrong in a different way.

>It's like blaming retards on /pol/ and their infographic basd racial realism on Darwin.

No it's not.

Do you really think that Madness and Civilization didn't influence the way modern culture now views mental illness? Because it did.

Mental illness is, in many ways, viewed as simply individual idiosyncrasies now, and not as something life-denying and painful, because Foucault just had to write a book about how psychiatry has been used to destroy the lives of otherwise healthy people throughout history and that mental illness is just a social construction that should be ignored.

I also take issue with this idea that Foucault was some kind of amoral philosopher. Any person who investigates society cannot by definition be amoral.

>Do you really think that Madness and Civilization didn't influence the way modern culture now views mental illness? Because it did.

Do you really think Darwin's work didn't influence the way modern racists talk about race and the term race realism?

*tips Sokal Affair*

What, exactly, is your point?

>It's like blaming retards on /pol/ and their infographic basd racial realism on Darwin.
>No it's not.

Post-modernism means nothing. That is a post-modernist statement. But it's not.

>The way the totality of modern Western culture views something is completely analogous to how some deranged political schizophrenics view something on a Mongolian tapestry-making forum

Yeah, ok.

That's the joke, it's post-positivist and rejects the conception of a single truth

I don't know, but I think he gives a me a justification for genocide non -whites

>the way that i make one thing sounds irrelevant and another very grand is an adequate substitute for an argument

Oki doki.

>I don't have any arguments myself, but I'm still going to whine that you don't have any arguments.

Okidoki.

Poverty produces culture as much at least as much as vice versa