Are there any good books that critique post-modernism/post-structrualism/post-alllthatshit...

Are there any good books that critique post-modernism/post-structrualism/post-alllthatshit? Preferably from the left but as long as its intellectually serious I'd like to see it.

Pic is pretty accuarate. Continental philosophers are not even people

in fact, they're hardly physical bodies in space!

kys

>he isn't a post-modernist

Aw thats cute

The "Continental-Analytic" division is simply a spook, designed to degrade philosophy. The idea that philosophy can be "categorised" as such is simply a product of modernity.

>post-modernism/post-structrualism/post-alllthatshit
You're so stupid, OP.

I would argue that Infinite Jest kind of does this.

It's not a very concise argument though and it basically amounts to Wallace saying that irony and satire are bad because they cloud the responsibility we have to do things we know are good.

>There is no continental divide
>See pic related, an incredibly one sided perspective of a Analytic student

Historical traditions exist and profoundly impact the nature of the philosophy that is produced by thinkers. Its not about the philosophy itself so much as the context for which it is produced.

Isn't it obvious that post-modernism leads nowhere? Why do you need a full book to point this out.

>Isn't it obvious that post-modernism leads nowhere?

The fact that people discovered modernism leads nowhere is the origin of Post-Modernism. Thats why its the superior system, anything else is infantile delusion

Incorrect, it's the fact that the universality of reason central to modernism can lead to the destruction and death of WWI and WWII that cased the rise of postmodernism.

It's a reaction to the fear that we've placed too much faith in our abilities and structures as humans.

If you abandon all categories and objectivity, if nothing is good or better than something else. Then you can't improve anything. Your only path leads down deconstruction, destruction and chaos. Postmodernism adds nothing of value to the human existence.

WW1 and WW2 were characterized by several different actors with very different ideas of what "universality of reason" is.

>deconstruction, destruction and chaos.

kek you need to actually read post-modernists before talking shit

Post-XXX is such a broad term that means everything and nothing, if you want an intellectually honest critique of something you need a specific idea that can actually can be critiqued.

There's also not one origin to "everything post-". The theory of the 60s, especially critical theory, was a direct reaction to fascism. The post-structuralism of the 80s was in large part a reaction to the very "hard science" sociology of the 70s and the general academic trend to try and base everything, even the humanities, on empiric data.

Well, first off, I think this is definitely the wrong way of looking at it. Postmodernism isn't a position, but rather a movement, and, as such, it puts forward a cluster of propositions, which bear a family resemblance to eachother rather than a single proposition.

You can critique, say, radical scepticism or idealism, by looking at their foundational claim (that we basically can't know anything, and that everything in the world is mind-dependent, respectively). But Post-modernism doesn't do this, so there isn't anything you can say to "disprove" it.

Now, you have several options:

Either, you can look at postmodern thinkers individually and deal with their ideas on their own. Remember that many of these thinkers despised each other's work. Deleuze for example has a critique of Lacan, and Foucault makes a lot of passes at Derrida. So this is another reason why viewing post-modernism as something you can "disprove" is not just inadvisable but impossible.

Or (and this is probably of more interest to you), you can try and find a foundational basis for Post-modernism and critique that. There are two ways of doing this, both involving reading the post-modern church fathers, who are fairly easy to identify. I'll spoil it for you, and say that the basis for post-modernism is not a single propostition, but a cluster of (contradictory but mutually enforcing) propositions regarding determinism and alienation. Look to the three thinkers referred to as the "masters of suspicion" by Ricoeur: Nietzsche, Marx and Freud. Figure out what these three thinkers are saying about the limitations of human autonomy and then you have something to work with.

This is the reason (I can say this with absolute certainty) that you want to critique PoMo in the first place. What these thinkers have to say about autonomy makes you uneasy (whether you've read them or not), and you want your old certainties back. We all do, and it's a worthwhile exercise trying to get them back.

You must use these thinkers against the postmodernists, by reinterpreting them in such a way that their claims about autonomy become affirmitive (very easy with Nietzsche, but a complete waste of time with Freud), rather than negative. Or you can attack these thinkers.

You have a very large pool of intellectual ideas for doing so. Look to religious critiques of Nietzsche for example. Look to all the critiques of Marx. Look to Jung's attitude towards Freud (the former being a much more affirmative thinker than the latter).

(1/2)

You say:
>preferably from the left
Am I right in assuming that you're a leftist? In which case, you might want to think long and hard about Marx in particular, since he is the real obstacle to you forming a critique of post-modernist claims. The farmework of modern leftism is provided by Marx (not a good or a bad thing; just a thing) and thus, if you are a leftist, it is immensely more difficult for you to move beyond post-modernism than otherwise. What you are essentially doing if you try and form a left-wing critique of Marx (or Rousseau, who you might think of as a more distant grandfather of post-modernism, regarding their attitude towards the coercive relation between society and the individual) is similar to a christian of the middle ages trying to attack or reinterpret Augustine or Aquinas. It will not only make you unpopular, but will force you to extricate yourself from a code of thinking which has been instilled in you by your ideology. This is however possible; how many modern Christians subscribe 100% to the claims of Aquinas and Augustine? Not very many, and those that do are indulging a reactionary faith, based more on the aesthetic of being religious than actual living, genuine faith.

That it is immensely difficult only makes it more worthwhile. So good luck OP.

* (2/2)

>The fact that people discovered modernism leads nowhere

No, it's the fact that modernism led to somewhere that a shitload of degenerates didn't like - excluding them from the picture, even.

Therefore, rather than change themselves, post-modernists launched a crusade to deconstruct and/or destroy all of the institutions/societies/etc to which they could never belong.

The movement is pure ressentiment.

>using a Nietzschian concept to disregard the entirety of post-modernism

Ask me how I know you're shitposting or retarded

>The post-structuralism of the 80s was in large part a reaction to the very "hard science" sociology of the 70s and the general academic trend to try and base everything, even the humanities, on empiric data.

Not disagreeing with your analysis of how poststructuralism came to be, but your timing is off by several decades. Poststructuralism emerged in the 60s (or very late 50s at the earliest) and was in high esteem by the 70s, and was a reaction to the sort of extreme empiricism of the 40s and 50s (Skinner and behaviorism, structural anthropology, a strong medical view towards mental illness, etc).

Terry Eagleton is certainly left-leaning, and has come down against postmodernism on numerous occasions, you might like him.

>I'm a philosopher
>I shouldn't waste my time with unsubstantiated opinions

lul

is there a part 2?

Terry Eagleton is a spastic hack

...

OP here, good posts. You're right that it's hard to name anything that would critique all possible parts and fields but I kept my original question kind of broad for two reasons: asking an open ended question can allow people to sort of recommend a multitude of things on a variety of different parts of postmodernism(if it helps i'm specifically interested in criticism of critical race theory), and because then more people reply and more people see the thread(which is why I chose the OP pic, to get some autists riled up by it. Get baited faggots)

But I feel you're a little off in your analysis of my motivations.I greatly admire Nietzsche and Marx, in fact my problem with postmodernism isn't at all the implications of what it might mean, I can live with that if it was true. But most of it just seems like unintelligible garbage, and so I feel like I fall in the Chomsky-esque criticism camp. But you're spot on in that Marx/Nietzsche/thinkers pose a big roadblock in criticism of "post-modernism" and so its an interesting predicament I find myself in because I agree with Nietzsche(my favorite actually) and Marx in so many respects but find myself opposed to some of their intellectual ancestors.

All you have to do is find a truth that can't be denied. It can't be that hard for a smart person like you, right?

I recommend Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia. She's not a fullblown leftist but she's a Yalie so she knows the culture. It's mostly about art history and human nature but there are some piercing critiques of the posts-in-question as well, especially Lacan, Derrida et al

>tfw to smart too read anything from the 20th century onwards