Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2024 June 1

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June 1

the term "postmodernism" in non-academic discourse

Hi all,

I've been doing some work on the postmodernism article, and I believe that it needs a section on how such a poorly defined term from art criticism made its way into mainstream cultural and political discourse. Can anyone point me to any good sources? Or just suggestions of where/how best to find high-quality sources on this kind of thing?

Thanks! Patrick (talk) 19:17, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

From the point of view of many people who were somewhat aware of developments in certain corners of U.S. academia, but not directly involved, it was a part of a wave of French-derived theories mainly imported from France starting in the 1970s (see Foucault, Kristeva, Derrida, Lyotard, Lacan, Irigaray, ad nauseam) which had little concern for facts or truth, and in some manifestations had a strong ultra-relativist hostility to the very idea of truth (see strong programme, constructivism, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" etc etc). The general reputation of such "theory" (a word sometimes pronounced with reverence in English literature departments, but with contempt by academics of a more scientific orientation) was not helped when Paul de Man turned out to have Nazi connections. For a relatively early book partly about such "theory", see Higher Superstition. Even people without any great knowledge of postmodernism/deconstructionism have sometimes wondered what the heck the value is of an academic field which hovers on the boundary of rejecting the concept of truth (and sometimes crosses over the boundary). AnonMoos (talk) 00:29, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I've always wondered if there was a deeper, perhaps coincidental connection with Asian philosophical traditions. There are arcane philosophical ideas about rejecting the concept of truth that can be traced to Hindu and Buddhist teachings, particularly when it comes to understanding emptiness. Because these old ideas have religious patinas, they are considered obscure and out of reach for most people. It almost seemed like Derrida and others were giving people a taste of this, very much in line with countercultural interpretations that perceived differences in assumed and given truths, experienced and lived truths, and learned or revealed truth, such as the kind popular in Christianity. So maybe the value is in realizing that Derrida and others, who in all likelihood were atheists and quite secular, had unknowingly crossed over into religion. Just my take. Viriditas (talk) 03:47, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't know. My two cents are that postmodernism is a good idea for sciences which do not have a paradigm, and a bad idea for sciences which do. tgeorgescu (talk) 03:59, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Even though my politics are likely very different than AnonMoos, and lean towards the progressively liberal, I tend to agree with conservatives that postmodernism overall was bad for academia. I only say this because I saw the impact it had in the university up close and personal, and I knew then it was nonsense just as I do now. That is not to say that nonsense doesn't have a time and place, which is what you are getting at in some respects with your reply. Personally, I think a certain kind of nonsense makes for some good art, like comedy, or even certain kinds of music such as aleatoric music. And like I said above, it may even have a reduced role in philosophy and religion. But for academia as a whole, it's hard to see how it was useful, since it served more to confuse students than to enlighten them. Viriditas (talk) 04:11, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

This is not really the place to debate the issue at any length, but I actually consider myself somewhat "left" (certainly in terms of whom I'm likely to vote for in U.S. elections), but a fact- and truth-respecting Enlightenment-influenced reasoned leftist, who's unlikely to be swayed by jargon buzzwords or trendy slogans of the moment, if they don't have substance behind them. Some forms of Buddhism analyze the world in terms of "things true", "things false", "things true and false", and "things neither true nor false" (and each of these four can then be negated as a whole), and as a dogmatic religion this may not be any worse than any number of other dogmatic religions, but I don't see how it's likely to advance our understanding of either literature or scientific facts about the universe. It's been pointed out a number of times, that postmodernist/deconstructionist apathy toward truth is overall compatible with global-warming denialism (may have even been part of the foundations of global-warming denialism in some respects), and the only real reason why postmodernists/deconstructionists aren't climate-deniers is pure personal preference... AnonMoos (talk) 05:47, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone, for the input. My question, however, still stands (which is just to say that I remain confused). What I would like to document for the article is how the thought of a variety of notoriously difficult French thinkers in the second part of the 20th century came to attain such an outsized importance in popular discourse. People who have not even heard of the figures mentioned above believe that science, culture, and society are genuinely threatened by the fringe views held by a small number of professors of the humanities. This seems to me quite unusual and in need of explanation. Patrick (talk) 15:53, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

There are people who whip up a frenzy of righteous indignation on various media about basically anything not fitting the ideal way they wish to see the world framed. What draws their ire can be a library holding a book acknowledging that humans too have bodily functions, or a teacher admitting to their class that the Emancipation Proclamation did not totally erase the problems of formerly enslaved people (or even merely referring to them as "enslaved people"). The idea is that the world is ideal, or rather would be ideal except for a growing legion of social-justice warriors and intellectuals out of touch with reality, controlled by a sinister elite with a nefarious secret plot. They suggest forcefully that if not stopped this will upend everything we hold dear. It gains them a following of easily frightened people and helps to maintain the status quo.

Specifically for postmodernism in academia, because the writings of the stars in the field were so abstruse, it was easy to fake it and not get caught (not only for Sokal), which appeared a more inviting road to upcoming academics in a publish or perish environment than to call out the Emperor's New Clothes of a local star. IMO the criticism of scientific certainty as being a cocky pseudo-certainty is sometimes justified; both sides of the debate can go overboard. See also Science wars.  --Lambiam 16:42, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, that's not implausible, but Wikipedia can't denounce something as a cynically deployed moral panic without much stronger sourcing than I think we are going to find.

Since most of the major texts and figures are more than 30 years old, I was hoping to find a non-polemical account of how these various thinkers, most of whom did not use the term "postmodern", were lumped together under that heading and injected into the popular imagination. For, as is attested by this very thread, it continues to generate a strong evaluative response well-outside the seminar room.

(Also, NB, Many of the criticisms mentioned here are documented at criticism of postmodernism, which another editor broke off into a child page due to its considerable length.) Patrick (talk) 18:04, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

AnonMoos, I'm familiar with the history of climate denial, and I don't see any direct connection between the architects of science denial and postmodernism, so I wonder if what you are describing is just a coincidence. I do see what you are saying when it comes to people like Jean-François Lyotard and his unusual admonition against explanatory theories and consensus, which he calls an "outmoded and suspect value", as this comes off as deeply anti-science and, to my mind, even anti-democratic, which is odd to me, because he is described as anti-authoritarian. This is one of the many reasons I dislike postmodernism; it is self-contradictory, paradoxical, and has little to no explanatory or predictive value. In some respects, it is a natural outgrowth of the counterculture of the 1960s, but in others, it just devolves into navel-gazing. I was also surprised to discover that there are writers who have drawn parallels between Buddhist notions of emptiness and postmodernism, which I thought was my own idea. It wasn't. As for the OPs question, it's a good one and it's something I still don't know the answer to here. Viriditas (talk) 20:34, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Patrick_Welsh -- In the case of Judith Butler, the largely unfalsifiable "fringe views held by a small number of professors of the humanities" have had a very deep influence on a number of western nations over the past ten or a dozen years, many would say for the worse, leading to unfair competition in girls' and women's sports, biologically male sex offenders being placed into women's prisons, sterilization of children for reasons that the Cass Review found to be usually not based on solid science, etc. etc. Political turmoil over gender ideology controversies almost certainly accelerated the departure from office of the last two First Ministers of Scotland (Humza Yousaf and especially Nicola Sturgeon), though not the only reason, while the Green Parties in the UK (different organizations in England & Wales and in Scotland), have now adopted a rigid Stalinist attitude toward gender ideology, rapidly expelling from the party anyone who dares to question it in any way (they seem to be a lot more concerned about that than about environmental and ecological issues these days). In the United States, roughly two dozen states have passed anti-gender-ideology laws while a smaller number have passed pro-gender-ideology laws, and there's a perpetual flood of lawsuits flying in all directions. I bet a lot of people really wish that Judith Butler was a fringe figure without much influence outside academia, but that's not the case... AnonMoos (talk) 21:26, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I can’t say that I agree with this assessment, as most of it has been debunked as conservative fearmongering; I also don’t see the direct connection between gender issues and postmodernism. I first learned about this topic in the context of anthropology, so I think it’s been politicized by bad actors, many of whom have connections to religious interest groups. For me personally, this has always been an issue related to civil and human rights. Opponents exemplify the maxim: "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression." Somehow, I think issues related to postmodernism are being thrown into this mix unnecessarily, often to muddy the waters. Even our article on gender equality starts off in the early 15th century. Further, the fact that traditional gender roles are historically enforced by society doesn't really have anything to do with postmodernism. More interesting is how traditional gender roles, when looked at with a historical microscope, tend to fluctuate greatly over time and culture. My understanding is that this means that traditional gender roles don't actually exist, they are artificially imposed, such as forcing boys to wear dresses as children (quite common until recently) and dressing girls in blue clothing (now pink in the modern era). Pink was once considered more "masculine" than blue, etc. One thing that drove this point home to me the other day was a discussion on NPR where one of the participants said, and I loosely paraphrase, "until recently, our only acceptable career choice as women was to be mothers". It's a heavy statement that has a great deal behind it. Although not in any way equal or equivalent, I think men have faced a similar problem. Until recently, men were shaped as warmongers; they either had to go to war on the battlefield, go to war in the courtroom, go to war in the boardroom, or go to war on the natural world (science). So what women are going through, men are also experiencing in different ways, but obviously from a position of power. This isn't a kind of postmodernism, nor is it saying that there's no objective truth. It's just an observation that societal truth changes over time and place. As for your comment about environmental and ecological issues, I have noticed more people engaging in interdisciplinary discourse in those two fields, and I wonder if this comes off as "postmodern" to critics. About a month ago, I watched an hour long webinar about mitigating climate change in Hawaii, and while it was very good and run by two leading experts on the subject from the University of Hawaii, one from the social sciences and one from the hard sciences, some of the things the social science representative said were a bit fuzzy and postmodern-like, but I think their intention was rooted in the idea of inclusion: climate change will impact everyone in every field, so we need to have a big tent. I could see conservative critics hating on this, but it makes a lot of sense if you consider that nobody is safe and everybody will have to do their part. My guess is that this POV is very much at odds with conservatism, as that kind of ideology is rooted in Us vs. Them polemics, and depends on upholding the status quo, which means continuing to use oil and not to change the way we do things, and to keep society stratified, segmented, and segregated by class, race, gender, etc. This is why I think most criticisms of postmodernism might not be criticisms of postmodernism at all, but rather reactionary attempts to stay the course and prevent progress. Viriditas (talk) 22:00, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to y'all for your attention to my query! I do not see this going anywhere productive, however, and I am unfollowing. Please tag me or, better yet, post to the discussion page with any suggestions of good sources.

All best, Patrick (talk) 22:52, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

That's enough. Matt Deres (talk) 13:01, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Sorry, I only just now looked at your article. It already uses Connor's The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism which answers your question in spades. It notes that Daniel Bell, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Charles Jencks, and Ihab Hassan were working on the topic simultaneously in the 1970s and 1980s, but it wasn't until the 80s that Fredric Jameson synthesized (in part) the disparate work into a cohesive whole, at which point it was anthologized in the 1990s, and became transformed into a kind of pseudo-hypothesis (my words) in the humanities, forming the first notions of what became known as postmodern theory in academia, followed by work by Hans Bertens and John Frow. By the late 1990s, it transformed into a kind of philosophy and became associated with "postcolonialism, multiculturalism and identity politics", which was a newer formulation. Connor notes that in 1970, it focused on postmodernist literature; in 1980, it was postmodern architecture; while by 1990 with the fall of the Soviet Union, it became a discussion of cultural postmodernism. Connor argues that by the 2000s, it had transformed into discussions of legal, religious, and performance postmodernism. There is some indication in the book that Jean Baudrillard may have had a lot to do with introducing the discussion into academia, but he famously distanced himself from postmodernism. Frankly, I find the entire topic confusing and obfuscatory, so this will be my last comment on it. Just looking at Connor's book for ten minutes made me remember why I dislike this subject so much. It's just nonsense. Viriditas (talk) 23:33, 2 June 2024 (UTC) There's no real commonality between "gender equality" and "gender ideology", except for a word of six letters. Some gender ideology fanatics are among the strictest in insisting on basically traditional gender roles -- if a child (even far younger than puberty) shows any non-traditional gender-role characteristics, then the extremists will insist the child is "trans". (So much for tomboys, etc.) For example, Susie Green's son liked wearing tutus and playing with girls' toys, and his father was uncomfortable with that behavior, so that was apparently pretty much it, from anything that she's ever said publicly -- he was dragged off to Thailand and castrated. Our Susie Green article is mealy-mouthed when it says she "unexpectedly" resigned -- she had received severe criticism from a number of sources, and the organization Mermaids which she dominated for years was placed under a legal inquiry a week after she resigned, and her boasting TED Talk mysteriously disappeared off of Youtube a month or two later, but you won't find any of that out from her Wikipedia article. Also, gay and lesbian advocates never displayed the personal vindictiveness that "transactivists" or "TRAs" do. Gays and lesbians singled out a few prominent figures like Anita Bryant and Rick Santorum, while TRAs try to destroy the careers or lives of a large number of people who dare to dissent from gender ideology, often using thuggish tactics of intimidation and harassment, and often seemingly motivated by misogyny in singling out women for heavier retribution than men. Gays and lesbians also never had any particular objections to heterosexuals meeting together for relevant purposes (such as in singles bars), while TRAs have devoted great effort to making it almost impossible for lesbians to publicly meet together in some regions and countries (see the Tickle v. Giggle lawsuit, whose only amusing feature is its name, etc etc). Much of lesbian life is now furtive and underground in those areas, while back in the 1990s it was open and free. A great advancement for "progressivism", I'm sure! AnonMoos (talk) 23:40, 2 June 2024 (UTC) Cancel culture and deplatforming were invented by the right wing and are touchstones of conservatism, not the left. It was used for decades to ostracize anarchists, socialists, communists, peace and anti-war advocates, homosexuals, libertines, labor rights advocates, and anyone remotely perceived as a threat to capitalism, the military industrial complex, and the government. This changed in the 1960s and 1970s, as the right wing openly opposed progress such as civil rights and desegregation, aligning and identifying themselves as regressives, and engaging and supporting the criminal Nixon administration which was pardoned for its crimes. This led the right to create their own conservative counterculture, in the spirit of the Powell memo and the Koch network, and wage a campaign of conservative infiltration of the media and academia over about four decades, all the while claiming there was a "liberal media bias" and "liberal bent" to academia; once again showing that every accusation was, in fact, a confession. In response to this open opposition to democracy, obstructionism, and authoritarian impulse, progressives began to fight back. The right wing revised history (as they always do), to make it seem like the left invented cancel culture and deplatforming in the 2000s, when the right had been using those tactics for a century. Once again, the old conservative adage applies: "do as we say, not as we do". Or as I like to say, "watch what they do, not what they say". All this constant talk of "electoral fraud" and "irregularities" on the right, only to discover that it was the right who was trying to overturn the election. This is what conservatism looks like. Rank hypocrisy, disinformation, and lies. Every accusation is a confession. This is post-truth politics, and if it's postmodern, it's an invention of the right, not the left. Viriditas (talk) 00:24, 3 June 2024 (UTC) Whatever -- I'm not right-wing, so most of your tirade whooshes right by me. In any case, whether I'm more right than wrong, or more wrong than right, either way, it's simply not working now (assuming that it ever did work) to try to paste a smiley face on the current situation and claim that everything connected with gender ideology is just fine and dandy except for a few complaining "right-wingers"[sic]. That won't accomplish anything for Scott Wiener or anyone else at this point... AnonMoos (talk) 20:57, 3 June 2024 (UTC) I mean, yes, that's my point. "Gender ideology" is a manufactured controversy and culture war spread by the right. I get that you don't see it that way, but when you painstakingly trace it back, the majority of the talking points come from billionaire-backed, right-wing foundations working in partnership with Christian Nationalist-oriented interest groups, who perceive gender fluidity, or the notions thereof, as an "attack" on Christian values. The last time I looked into this, they went to great lengths to hide the connections through dark money slush-funds and front groups. And I think it's perfectly reasonable that you might not be aware of this subterfuge, as numerous, well-known left of center celebrities have been fooled into thinking otherwise. You should look a little closer at the connections in red states where the masks have accidentally come off. Florida is a well known example. The Florida Parental Rights in Education Act was originally introduced by Dennis Baxley, who was on the Steering Council of the Conservative Baptist Network, which is connected to the National Association of Christian Lawmakers (NACL). The NACL uses the bill mill model of the Koch-connected American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to push Christian nationalism. The artificial culture war talking point of gender ideology is one of many ways that they introduce Christian nationalism into law to undermine democratic norms and freedoms. They are working towards establishing the US as a Christian theocracy, and this is one of their incrementalist approaches. The Kochs and other right-wing foundations may not be as religious as they are, but they work together to strengthen the power of oligarchs, corporations, and the state, such that individuals (in this case gay people) have less rights, which in turn, promotes the heteronormative paradigm of Christian nationalism. This kind of model of overreach can then be used in all other like-minded legislation in their agenda, from prohibiting the discussion of the environment or climate change within state government, to putting the breaks on renewable energy transitional models. All of these things, while vastly different on the outside, are intimately connected. The Kochs and these other foundations are all heavily invested in oil production, that's how they make their money. They can't just come out and say "pass a bill to make oil production and usage mandatory", so they work around on the outside margins, to test their legislation out on marginalized people first. Another good example is their well-funded backlash to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). You might think this has everything to do with racism, but once again, that's the going after marginalized people angle to test their strategy. In reality, the attack on DEI has to do with going after equity, which impacts oil producers because there are aspects of fossil fuel divestment connected to it. Once again, all of these things come back to oil. Things are just not what they appear to be. There's three agendas at work, the overarching agenda of the oil, chemical, and extraction industries, and their so-called "side-gigs", which keep people distracted from where their money is going and what they are doing with it. Christian nationalists attacking gender ideology is one of these side-gigs. About a year or so ago, I spent an entire day tracing it all back to these foundations. None of this is grassroots based, or originating in popular movements. In fact, every grassroots movement that comes forward and says they are, have been uncovered as part of this well-oiled machine, with Moms for Liberty one of the most notable. And in case you haven't figured it out by now, if a group has "liberty" or "freedom" in its name, they are often a right-wing front group for the Koch network. Viriditas (talk) 21:35, 3 June 2024 (UTC) So… it’s all a conspiracy by big oil? Please, spare me. We hear enough conspiracy crap from the right… we don’t need to hear it from the left. Blueboar (talk) 21:27, 3 June 2024 (UTC) Yes, it is all connected to big oil, but big oil has shared interests with Christian nationalists. Some conspiracies are very real. The Koch network and the Council for National Policy are both well-known conspiracies working out in the open. This has been covered extensively by historians of science and investigative journalists like Naomi Oreskes and Jane Mayer. Sometimes the truth is too difficult for people to believe, which is why people like yourself prefer to believe in fantasies. You're in good company, as that's true for most people. Viriditas (talk) 21:35, 3 June 2024 (UTC) You can add the Federalist Society to the list. (See also Leonard Leo.) For a more complete list, see the sections Think tanks and Other organizations of Template:Conservatism US. Not all are equally conspirational, but they are very connected through personal unions, and the goals of several as they are actually scheming are not quite as democratic as their publicly professed aims.  --Lambiam 07:09, 4 June 2024 (UTC) Listing all those people and organizations certainly make appear obsessions with conspiracies so obviously undeniably founded. It particularly quickly contributes to proving your point that everything worrying has been initially concocted by right-wingers with access to a lot of money and the means of more or less individually controlling the diffusion of their very personal and very wrong theories. That's forgetting that all right-wingers may have not been created equal just like leftist scholars identifying themselves as authorities regarding the roots of climate scepticism because they are primarly able to reiterate the discourses that showed the evilness of the tobacco industries. Then one who owns money and doesn't know where that only comes from and sometimes reads one or the other pieces of what's left of the press will easily decide that endorsing the role of a leftist billionaire would make of him at this point in history merely a follower. So he knows how to make followers but I'm sorry to say, those might not be be only the flock that will be rallying around his banner. He's also rallying the adequate opposition. But yes in my opinion, whatever it has to be considered morally or sociogically, that's also in all probably a very postmodern phenomenon. For example rallying against climate change was a move already possible in '65, though maybe not realistically in the US. Established hippies I met as late as fifteen or eighteen years later were still engaging in touristic activities, few good will people being able of realistically rejecting rationalism. Postmodernism transfers may have been the disguise of prudent attempts to finally start to be acting realistically, prudent because everybody has to be cautious to not definitively spoil their chances at a comfortable fucking session some time to begin with. --Askedonty (talk) 10:31, 4 June 2024 (UTC) This was kind of what I was getting at, based on what AnonMoos wrote up above. We are told via conventional wisdom that the phenomenon of postmodernism originally came of out Marxist and leftist-counterculture, and by extension, centrists and conservatives objected to its embrace by the social sciences and the humanities and the loss of objectivity (to whatever extent that is even true). But when we look really closely at this, we see that it wasn't the left that embraced this kind of postmodernism, it was the right; conservatives, not liberals, gave birth to the very concept of doubting the truth, which later morphed into climate denial, alternative facts, COVID-denial, and post-truth Trumpism. But somehow the left is to blame for this? It doesn't make sense. Viriditas (talk) 10:39, 4 June 2024 (UTC) Back in '65, climate denial was not even identifiable. For example my mother's ambition to be equal to men which was a highly considered goal amongst most men around us and most of the kids I had to play toy car with implied she was to own any fitting gas guzzler like the guy next door so soon as was feasible. So she was rather right-wing most of the time: the left were too many intellectuals. Among her motivations collectivism implied faring bus, and she was outraged at society imposing to the disabled them waiting for busses. So after she was used having her own cars and the left was explicitly busy focusing on the disabled because nobody else needed assistance anymore, she ceased being very much an ardent no-leftwinger. In a way in the end I would say, with perseverance she more or less managed to get money alloted by the right, with the left not bothering to interfere. After which she could afford growing leftist, make black people friends if she could even though them not in subservient roles etc. As with a too early climate denial charge for example truth if that ever can be determined would have to be gotten lost on the way. She simply would have been frightened under one different light. A frequent criticism regarding the left monopolizing ownership of truth relates to the denial problem including a dimension related to the initiative sequence - as in a present struggle - and also, representativity. The left does not divide itself on subjects as readily identifiable like the right would because their base just does not need, and is not required to consider the current contentious points in deep like those on other side would; a matter of the initiative sequence. Behind would have to be studied the relevant specific doctrines, it's really not interesting to get blinded by the effects after someone managed to turn the lights to their's own advantage. --Askedonty (talk) 12:37, 4 June 2024 (UTC) I'm going to belatedly invoke WP:SOAPBOX at this point, and WP:NOTFORUM. Before somebody more influential than me does, and perhaps questions the usefulness of the ref desks.  Card Zero  (talk) 08:04, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Ok, I'll bite. I'd say there are four postmodernisms.
There's the postmodern movement in art, which is often used outside of academic literature without too much trouble -- remix, influence, combinations, collaborations, collages, mixed methods, mixed styles, etc.
There's the postmodernism that's really just talking about a loose grouping of writers skeptical of proclaimed matter-of-fact capital-T truths, perfect histories, unquestioned chains of causation, ahistorical ideas, and any and all relationships between knowledge and power. If you've heard the Churchill quote about history being written by the victors and had a realization that reality might've been skewed through the presentation of objective facts in a history book, congrats you're a postmodernist. Focus on the kind of language used in that history and you get bonus points for being poststructuralist, too. :) The people who we group together under this postmodernism hardly ever actually use that term. People who write in the humanities might use the term as shorthand, but I don't think you hear it used outside of academic writing much. Maybe because the next two postmodernisms have spoiled it.
The third postmodernism is closely related to the second: it's the brash, performatively provocative postmodernism of the [mostly French] theorist-celebrities who say things like "there should be no age of consent laws" or "tuberculosis is a social construct" or "there is no truth". You don't make headlines or appear on popular television programs if you say things like "we should be skeptical of claims to objectivity"; it requires the flair of "the author is dead". To actually read and understand their writings, you can see past their habit of stating things in the most [ironically] matter-of-fact and provocative way to see that they're really just doing something similar to folks in the second postmodernism or providing vocabularies for more grounded scholars to apply to real things in the world. But it's through these performances that we get the fourth postmodernism.
The fourth postmodernism is squarely for popular usage outside of academia, especially in the realm of right-wing influencers: postmodernism as a rejection of reality, a rejection of scientific fact, extreme relativism, shocking moral relativism, etc. It's based in part on a kneejerk reaction to the third postmodernism, part on a good faith misunderstanding, and part on a bad faith pseudointellectual veneer grafted onto reactionary ideas to give them an air of legitimacy. It's that last part where you might find a bunch of recent literature. Look for basically anyone who knows anything about postmodernism writing about Jordan Peterson, for example. May also be worth looking for things like "cultural marxism", too (another term that sounds academic but has more to do with reactionary politics than scholarship, and is therefore frequently uttered in the same breath as postmodernism). FWIW. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:04, 13 June 2024 (UTC)