I was going to go find cites for the following claim and post it in a thread here on the SDMB. But I’m being rushed out the door and probably can’t come back today. So instead of waiting, I want to impatiently offload the work to others.
Except what if I’m wrong? then I want to find that out too.
The claim? It’s this:
Liberals typically hate postmodernism. And when postmodern ideas are used in political rhetoric, (which is rare,) they are typically used by self-identified conservatives.
I know to some that sounds like crazy talk, but I’m pretty sure it’s true, based on my experience with dialogue with liberals and conservatives in discussion forums like this.
But does anyone else share this impression I have? If so, is there some way to demonstrate the truth of the claim by citing a bunch of examples?
I’ll see what I can drum up this evening but it’d be interesting if others have something to say about the claim.
Liberals do not always hate postmodernism–at least the ones who understand it do not. Richard Rorty is probably the best known example of a liberal who found postmodernism important to his (pragmatic) philosophical arguments.
It might help if you’d specify: Liberal what? Postmodern what? Rorty is a philosopher, and is a good answer if you’re talking about postmodern philosophy. If you’re talking about garden-variety liberal politics and postmodern political thought, then it’s a mixed bag – political postmodernism emphasizes decentralization, which is a conservative shibboleth, but plenty of liberal organization function on a community level and reject national-level control. Culturally, as the rejection of modernism’s rejection of Enlightenment notions of progress, postmodernism appeals to social conservatives who want to hold the line against secularism and socialism, whereas liberals latch on to relativist tendencies in deconstructionism, and reject the idea of progress in other arenas like development and expansion. Postmodern critical thought is mainly about technique, and will justify almost any conclusion.
Nametag, great post but a couple of follow-up questions if you don’t mind. When you say that cultural modernism rejected Enlightenment notions of progress I assume you must mean Modernism–i.e, the aesthetic movement, especially in literature and art, that begins at the very end of the 19th century and stays strong till about about 1960 or so. Correct? If so–I’m not familiar with any “postmodern” cultural movement that “appeals to social conservatives” wanting to hold the line against secularism and socialism. Not to mention the fact that Enlightenment itself was pretty secular (and potentially socialist) so I don’t think you mean a “postmodernism” that simply reverses Modernism’s cultural rejection of the Enlightenment.
I also don’t really follow you mean about liberals rejecting “the idea of progress in other arenas like development and expansion” though I am guessing that you might mean that liberals want government to regulate such development and expansion so that it is, say, environmentally friendly or taxed fairly, etc.
I have to disagree with this. Sure, polls show that if you ask liberals and conservatives if they agree with relativism, more liberals than conservatives will say ‘yes.’ But as a practical matter, when it comes to making concrete moral judgments, liberals are no more likely to *behave *like relativists than conservatives. On the contrary–in mainstream political debates, cultural relativist arguments (like ‘Marriage in our culture means X, and therefore that definition is correct for us, and other definitions are incorrect’) are IMO advanced by conservatives at least as often as by liberals.
In grad school, I interacted with a number of students and profs who were into postmodernism. Every single one was politically liberal or radical. People who were skeptical of it were politically conservative/moderate/libertarian.
No. I mean culture, the things people who aren’t artists do and think. I’m pretty sure that aesthetics has little to do with politics.
Neither am I.
Of course not. I said “Enlightenment ideas of progress,” specifically the idea that rationality, science, and democracy would usher in a Golden Age of Man. The 20th century rejected much of this, being subversive, emotional, and polymorphously spiritual. While there’s little about Enlightenment ideas themselves that would appeal to a 21st century American social conservative, what they regard as the moral degeneracy that replaced it is positively evil.
No, I mean that liberals don’t believe that development and expansion ARE progress. I don’t know why I brought that up, though, because it doesn’t contrast with the previous point.
My main point, of course, is that all of these cultural movements are too incoherent to even define, much less assign to any part of the political spectrum, which is also incoherent and can’t be defined consistently.
And also that Frylock hasn’t answered my damn question.
How un-Postmodern of you. ;p I agree, and I think you made a valuable point either way. But in terms of how people self-identify liberals are more likely to openly defend postmodernism intentionally.
Something I find interesting is the dueling primitive inauthenticities of New Agers and Christian Fundies.
Yeah, I’m one of those liberals who doesn’t like postmodernism. I like to think I’m one of those reasonable liberals.
Well, yes, in fact. If a liberal is passionately arguing for the rights of workers in country X, or against female genital mutilation in country Y, or that our culture’s definition of marriage is oppressive and that revising it would represent moral progress, then I think it is difficult to attribute certain post-modern ideas to said liberal.
Sorry I can’t participate more meaningfully in a thread I started.
I’ve had a little time to think (but just a little) about what I said in the OP. I think what’s going on is that when I hear someone talking about politics and claiming that political truths are available to everyone objectively, and can be arrived at through rational analysis and discussion, that person tends to be politically Liberal. Meanwhile, when I hear someone talking about politics and claiming that political truths, while not true only “relative to” this or that group, are nevertheless not the kind of thing that can be arrived at through rational analysis and discussion, (rather, what gets called “objective, rational discussion” is just the kind of discussion led by people in power, or the kind led amongst groups which already fundamentally agree with each other,) that person tends to be politically Conservative. The latter is, as I now see, not a postmodernist position as it affirms that political truths are true absolutely and not relatively. But you can see why one might sometimes mistake it for a postmodern-ish position, since it is skeptical of rationality, seeing it as power politics in disguise.
Well, like I said, sorry I can’t participate more fully. Tons of super important “real life” stuff to do. I shouldn’t really even be here.
Frylock There’s a sort of duality going on here. Conservatives are more likely to make an argument that resorts to primitive authenticity, at least nowadays, I think the hippies were big on those back in the 70s. These kinds of arguments are post-modern, in that they reject modernity. Conservatives who reject modernity are definitely engaging in post-modernism. However, Conservatives abhor the notion of moral relativism. They don’t think that cultures are equal and distinct. No, they think that their culture is superior, correct and the model everyone else in the world should follow. This is why those immoral Zeropeans aren’t fucking to save their own species, because they’ve forgotten God. They appeal to a primitive authenticity of patriarchal tradition and they will defend aspects of the same in other cultures such as Islamic cultures, but it’s hardly a relativist position, they are just defending the bits and pieces that happen to coincide, they still see their own views as superior to those of the Islamic conservative, who views them in pretty much the same way. The Islamic though cannot be fairly categorized as post-modern if he has never really experienced modernity to begin with.
That is my experience as well. The same applies to relativism. In any debate on moral relativism, the relativists were always the liberals, and the absolutists the conservatives.
I never met a deconstructionist who wasn’t a liberal.
Nametag, Can only reply briefly at the moment but in response to this from you
Really? I’ve never heard of such liberals. Can you give me an example? (I mean opinions on expansion can vary depending on what is expanding and how. But development? The term comes right out of liberalism).
