Postmodernism and Critical Theory. Or why the Empress has no clothes.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
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Typhoon
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Postmodernism and Critical Theory. Or why the Empress has no clothes.

Post by Typhoon »

The conceptual penis as a social construct

[Tip of the hat to a friend.]
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Emperor has no clothes.

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Typhoon wrote:The conceptual penis as a social construct

[Tip of the hat to a friend.]
We'll assume that tip is metaphorical like all conceptually performative maleness. ;)

*in other words, beat me to it.
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Emperor has no clothes.

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Besides poor standards, certain social class prejudices and confused thinking, why else did this pass as a serious article?

It sounds silly to say, "...but wait, there's more!" but there is- if someone handed an article in saying something like, "Male epicycles"....it wouldn't have gone anywhere.

The key is that this set of words is a specific, magical incantation expressing a (real and imagined) disappointment in sons.

We have a lot of people currently in charge (or maybe more specifically in gatekeeping sorts of roles) who show the same consistent disappoint of sons and grandsons that they (generationally) showed to their fathers and grandfathers.

All this talk of maleness and performance and toxicity...it's the same "F-you Dad" energy looking for a rationalization.
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Emperor has no clothes.

Post by noddy »

those sneeky old white male capitalists are one step ahead of all this.

Image

the postmodernists are paying them top dollar for the pleasure of throwing the virtual tomatoes.

genius.
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Emperor has no clothes.

Post by Simple Minded »

noddy wrote:those sneeky old white male capitalists are one step ahead of all this.

Image

the postmodernists are paying them top dollar for the pleasure of throwing the virtual tomatoes.

genius.
Yep. Brilliant marketing. People will always overpay for status, doesn't matter if it is shoes, housing, wine, beer, or education. Mommy & Daddy are as much to blame as the hucksters.

in ORZ, it is known as being educated beyond one's level of intelligence. Education used to be viewed more as a useful tool. Whether everyone has a high school diploma or everyone has a PhD, it might not be a very informative indicator of intelligence.

AGW, anyone?

Chicken or the egg question, which came first, fake news or fake education?

Hmmmm.... perhaps you and I could open up the International Institution of Universal Insensitivity (IIUI) and offer antidote education for all the snowflakes who got masterbaiter degrees in sensitivity, only to learn that it made them even more miserable and offended. You know, for their own good, kinda like a hospital that cures the sick, or a church that saves their souls.

Who said altruism can't pay well?
Simple Minded

Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Emperor has no clothes.

Post by Simple Minded »

are you sirius..... :?

we solved this problem long ago in SimpleMindedStan. People who post are extremists. People who read posts are mainstream. simple nuff.... no?

gets even simpler for those without access to the internet..... talkers are extremists, listeners are mainstream....
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Emperor has no clothes.

Post by Parodite »

Air Jordan flies again:

Urd0IK0WEWU

I think he posted this interview from April 2017 as it clarifies his objections again the infamous Bill C16 that a few days ago, to his horror but not unexpectedly, passed without amendments in Canada.

Senate hearing on Bill C16
Deep down I'm very superficial
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Emperor has no clothes.

Post by Miss_Faucie_Fishtits »

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:Besides poor standards, certain social class prejudices and confused thinking, why else did this pass as a serious article?

It sounds silly to say, "...but wait, there's more!" but there is- if someone handed an article in saying something like, "Male epicycles"....it wouldn't have gone anywhere.

The key is that this set of words is a specific, magical incantation expressing a (real and imagined) disappointment in sons.

We have a lot of people currently in charge (or maybe more specifically in gatekeeping sorts of roles) who show the same consistent disappoint of sons and grandsons that they (generationally) showed to their fathers and grandfathers.

All this talk of maleness and performance and toxicity...it's the same "F-you Dad" energy looking for a rationalization.
twit from December, 2016:
From the paper: Human bipedalism is an oppressive social construct and teaching people to walk upright reinforces ableist norms
https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview/with_replies
She irons her jeans, she's evil.........
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Emperor has no clothes.

Post by Typhoon »

Miss_Faucie_Fishtits wrote:
From the paper: Human bipedalism is an oppressive social construct and teaching people to walk upright reinforces ableist norms
https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview/with_replies
NRPR is a goldmine of inadvertent postmodern humour.

Thank you.
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Emperor has no clothes.

Post by noddy »

Simple Minded wrote:
Yep. Brilliant marketing. People will always overpay for status, doesn't matter if it is shoes, housing, wine, beer, or education. Mommy & Daddy are as much to blame as the hucksters.
little darling needs to express itself, it has many wonderful things to say, its just getting frustrated that freedom of speech isnt also compulsory to listen.
Simple Minded wrote:
Hmmmm.... perhaps you and I could open up the International Institution of Universal Insensitivity (IIUI) and offer antidote education for all the snowflakes who got masterbaiter degrees in sensitivity, only to learn that it made them even more miserable and offended. You know, for their own good, kinda like a hospital that cures the sick, or a church that saves their souls.
that might have to be the advanced course for the black belts.

the hook will have to be the opposite of that to reel the sucker bait in.
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Emperor has no clothes.

Post by noddy »

Typhoon wrote:
Miss_Faucie_Fishtits wrote:
From the paper: Human bipedalism is an oppressive social construct and teaching people to walk upright reinforces ableist norms
https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview/with_replies
NRPR is a goldmine of inadvertent postmodern humour.

Thank you.
tis brilliant, i had a lovely afternoon of train wreck humour :)
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Emperor has no clothes.

Post by Typhoon »

noddy wrote:those sneeky old white male capitalists are one step ahead of all this.

Image

the postmodernists are paying them top dollar for the pleasure of throwing the virtual tomatoes.

genius.
Indeed.

My limited understanding of the US student load system is that student loans are special relative to other loans with regards to conditions on and obligations of the borrower and the rights of the lender.

td;dr: No escape from one's student loans.
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Emperor has no clothes.

Post by Simple Minded »

Typhoon wrote:
Miss_Faucie_Fishtits wrote:
From the paper: Human bipedalism is an oppressive social construct and teaching people to walk upright reinforces ableist norms
https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview/with_replies
NRPR is a goldmine of inadvertent postmodern humour.

Thank you.
Modifying an ORZ quote: "Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and even more of a tragedy to those who feel they think, instead of think they feel."
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Empress has no clothes.

Post by Typhoon »

Quillette |Evergreen State and the Battle for Modernity
All of this matters because, whether people are overtly aware of it or not, their beliefs and actions are implicitly guided by one of these three world-views. A person may have never attended an Ivy League gender studies class, but if they belong to and agree with the ideas of a typical urban, liberal, hipster milieu, they are very likely subscribing to a postmodernist ideology, even if they’ve never cracked open Lyotard.
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Empress has no clothes.

Post by Simple Minded »

Typhoon wrote:Quillette |Evergreen State and the Battle for Modernity
All of this matters because, whether people are overtly aware of it or not, their beliefs and actions are implicitly guided by one of these three world-views. A person may have never attended an Ivy League gender studies class, but if they belong to and agree with the ideas of a typical urban, liberal, hipster milieu, they are very likely subscribing to a postmodernist ideology, even if they’ve never cracked open Lyotard.
Excellent. Thanks for posting. sadly, I missed out on the whole "college-is-a-place-for whiners-to-congregate" era. Mostly due to financial oppression I think.

"In many ways, the old left/right dichotomy no longer applies. Instead we are faced with a three-part distinction between postmodern/modern/traditional....

Modernists are those who believe in human progress within a classical Western tradition. They believe that the world can continuously be improved through science, technology, and rationality......

Postmodernists, on the other hand, eschew any notion of objectivity, perceiving knowledge as a construct of power differentials rather than anything that could possibly be mutually agreed upon. Informed by such thinkers as Foucault and Derrida, science therefore becomes an instrument of Western oppression; indeed, all discourse is a power struggle between oppressors and oppressed....."

I'm not sure why the author felt the need to mansplain this to me. The mere publication of his knowledge & opinions is an obvious act of oppression! :x If he really is smarter than me, he should know better! :x :x

From binoids to triangulators to thinkers vs. feelers. Progress not doubt.

"The world is a comedy to the person who thinks and a tragedy to the person who feels." I suspect it has always been so. Maybe reverse progress....

" It is no coincidence that, while society outside the walls of campus looks on with disbelief, administrators to this point have been siding with the students. For if they were to repudiate the actions of the students, they would also need to repudiate the ideology with which they have been brainwashing them. In other words, taking a stand against the students would require administrators and professors to re-evaluate the meaning and value of the entire raison d’etre of their adult professional careers.... "

Superior intellects consumed by the little monsters they created. Cosmic justice at it's finest.
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Empress has no clothes.

Post by Typhoon »

To paraphrase J. M. Keynes*
Men who believe themselves to be quite contemporary in their thinking, are usually the slaves of some defunct philosopher.
Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.
Who could have predicted that a group of Continental philosophers - for lack of a better category, mostly French, whose purposely obscure writing are the greatest collection of bullsh*t ever published, would end up having such influence on the humanities in American Universities.
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Empress has no clothes.

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Typhoon wrote:To paraphrase J. M. Keynes*
Men who believe themselves to be quite contemporary in their thinking, are usually the slaves of some defunct philosopher.
Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.
Who could have predicted that a group of Continental philosophers - for lack of a better category, mostly French, whose purposely obscure writing are the greatest collection of bullsh*t ever published, would end up having such influence on the humanities in American Universities.
A century of major wars has a funny effect on men. :)

It was only natural that structuralism would be followed by deconstruction but we are post-deconstruction now and have been so for a while.

What we are left with are a muddle of various identity discourses incapable of rising to either a overarching philosophy or political movement; the social pressures it agitates have no healthy release, and it is attracted to a tendency it mythologize any information to latches onto.

It's a hierarchy of theories against theories with very little lived constraint and subject to quick changes in intellectual fashions.

We would do well if we could even get back to the deconstructionists!
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Empress has no clothes.

Post by noddy »

i just need to reassure myself that whist this mob do some damage to the wider society and influence certain politicians they are still a minority viewpoint which struggles to gain much above 5% in elections and only gets 10% in its stronghold areas.

I do understand the hows and why's of their appearance - post colonialism forced multiculturism on european empires hard and fast so something had to give in terms of the rabidly ethnocentric viewpoint they carried at the time - they needed to try and intellectualize them into the national story.

rarely am i super positive but in this case i believe reality will win through - mainly becuase the fixation upon power struggles and class opinions is always a losers game and cant sustain itself for too long before breaking down in bitter squabbling, those folks wouldnt know how to cooperate if their lives depended upon it.

on the negative side, the arabs seem to like it , which brings us back to france and its post colonial conditions :P
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Empress has no clothes.

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noddy wrote:i just need to reassure myself that whist this mob do some damage to the wider society and influence certain politicians they are still a minority viewpoint which struggles to gain much above 5% in elections and only gets 10% in its stronghold areas.
To aim at a quote I believe to be Tallyerand's: numbers mean a great deal and some numbers are greater than others.

The American Revolution was the passion of 3 to 10% of the population and when fighting broke out never had more than 25 to 33% of the people's support, depending on who's doing the calculations.

You don't need a lot of people to cause of lot of upheaval.
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Empress has no clothes.

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

The thing about the old deconstructionists is that they make a convincing case that the objective features of a phenomenon so little constrain the ways it is classified and theorized that these features can be disregarded in trying to understand why a particular classification system or scientific theory has been adopted. Maybe this goes for Foucault and Derrida in particular; we may call them sophists all we like, and that is a reasonable case to be made about them, but they illuminate important problems even if or when they arrive at them in a sophistical manner.
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Empress has no clothes.

Post by noddy »

i cant see the triggered pentasexuals building much of a populist army - the thing with that is you need the ever famous "silent magority" behind the vanguard for those percentages to work.

the criticisms are fine, if not obvious and thats the problem with all these things is they all lack a bit of nuance, black and white teardowns of black and white strawmen.

a complete culture with balances on all that seems so far away at this stage, which i fear is your other point above.
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Empress has no clothes.

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

It's one thing to marshal an army, it's another to create a secret police.

To follow through with the repressive tolerance argument of Mr.Marcuse is to acknowledge how similiar his ideas follow the line of thinking of Felix Dzerzhinsky; whose solution was the Checka.
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Empress has no clothes.

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:It's one thing to marshal an army, it's another to create a secret police.

To follow through with the repressive tolerance argument of Mr.Marcuse is to acknowledge how similiar his ideas follow the line of thinking of Felix Dzerzhinsky; whose solution was the Checka.
I want to add a bit to this:

I don't mean to intend the association to be an alarm to look out for communists under every rock. Though if you want to play sentinel about it, be my guest. :)

That said, I think it is of some interest that Mr.Dzerzhinsky was an ex-aristocrat and the cultural marxist guys Marcuse is lumped in with rehabilitated a lot of thoughts which would have had them accused of being reactionaries in the pre-war world.
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Re: Postmodernism. Or why the Empress has no clothes.

Post by noddy »

as many years of discussion with dou/bz covered - im not particularly optimistic about the totalitarian nature of our techno future on any level.

progressive lefties are not of any more, or less, concern than any of the other paranoid control freaks - even things i agree with and support become odious under a regime of absolute enforcement and statistical triggers
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