Talk:Postmodernism/Archive 7

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Very difficult to understand this...

This is a really tough article to understand. I think it should be more accessible given this term has entered common vernacular (I hear something labeled "post-modern" several times a day, probably as a slur). Someone not well versed in social science language is going to have a tough time with this, I think.

It's even more confusing when architecture seems to be a prominent component of post-modernism. 139.138.6.121 (talk) 13:43, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree with the IP user. This article is extremely difficult to comprehend, particularly for the average reader. We should consider putting a template clean up message that the introduction is very confusing. Debate chess (talk) 01:41, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Accurate Representation of Sources

The section on Lyotard is not good. "where what he means by metanarrative is something like a unified, complete, universal, and epistemically certain story about everything that is." No citation follows this. "Postmodernists reject metanarratives because they reject the concept of truth that metanarratives presuppose." No citation follows this. "Postmodernist philosophers in general argue that truth is always contingent on historical and social context rather than being absolute and universal and that truth is always partial and "at issue" rather than being complete and certain." A citation does follow this, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on postmodernism. However, I've combed through it as best I can and simply can't any reference to any of these three ideas. If somebody else does, by all means disregard this. But as I see it, this is a misrepresentation of the cited material. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.27.15.105 (talk) 19:18, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Photographs of Personalities such as Orhan Pamuk

Reading this article and trying to digest the concept, I get to the pictures at the end and recognise someone familiar, Orhan Pamuk. I wonder about his relevance and there are numerous authors listed in the literature paragraph, but his name does not appear in the main text. Neither do the other photographed personalities. Please excuse my ignorance regarding any style guides or the like, but it is a little confusing. Is there an unstated implication that a photo of any such individual should be assumed to fit into the para next to the photo?? Very Bodgy! Call me both (talk) 06:12, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Complete new version from Post-Science http://postscience.com

Our paper on Culture Level Quotient has just been published: http://www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/jrph/article/view/3784/3941 which is a non-technical explanation of the previous publication of “Fuzzy Completeness Theory” http://www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/jrph/article/view/3725 http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/education/research/centres/stem/publications/pmej/pome35/index.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by Post.science (talk • contribs) 07:16, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Redirect

I have redirected the stub article Post-futurism here. Just making a post here. BSMRD (talk) 23:48, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Why is the Semiotics template embedded in the Postmodernism article?

There are only two references to semiotics in the Postmodernism article itself. OneSkyWalker (talk) 21:49, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Derrida and Lyotard, that's why. Simonm223 (talk) 13:11, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

What does this mean?

Postmodernism is a broad movement that developed in the mid-to-late 20th century across philosophy, the arts, architecture, and criticism, marking a departure from modernism. The term has been more generally applied to describe a historical era said to follow after modernity and the tendencies of this era.

This is incomprehensible to someone who doesn't speak in social-science language. What does this mean **exactly**? It's a philosophical term? It deals with architecture? It's "critical" of something (what, exactly is the "criticism"?). It's a whole "movement"? Who are the participants in this "movement"? What does this soup salad ultimately mean?

Please be **precise** when you define this.

This is one of the few encyclopedia articles that has left me more confused after reading it. Please re-work this so a simple engineer can understand it, given this term is used in common English vernacular now, every day (ie. - an accusation is leveraged against an individual, concept or lifestyle for being "postmodern", which IMHO, should probably be hyphenated).

When someone is accused of being postmodern, what exactly does it mean? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.138.6.121 (talk • contribs) 05:15, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

I fear the incomprehensibility is the very core of this thing - it's a bag of wind camouflaged by verbal lace doilies. But the sentence you quoted just says it is a way of thinking which disagrees with another way of thinking called modernism. It's like describing an animal by saying "well, it's different from a horse." But you can't expect anybody to describe something like that in one sentence. The text after that has more details.

Postmodernism seems to be basically an instance of the adolescent attitude "I am smarter than those who came before me", and thus without much substance. The main property is described in one of the other sentences of the lead, in contrast to modernism, [..] which generally regards the promotion of objective truths as an ideal form of discourse. That means postmodernists don't care whether what they say is right or wrong, and therefore make no effort to check. See also Bullshit. When someone accuses you of postmodernism, this is what they mean.

Philosophy often suffers from being described like one huge undividable lump where, before you can understand one specific philosophy, you need to understand all older philosophies first. So, have fun with modernism. And everything before it. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:48, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

That means postmodernists don't care whether what they say is right or wrong, and therefore make no effort to check.

That's an interesting definition, because that accusation has been leveraged against people who deny COVID-19, or certain scientific principals, for example, but I don't feel those individuals actually fit the definition of post-modernist (which seem to fall on the left of the political spectrum whereas the various deniers seem to fall to the right). This is a term, to me, that seem to describe something related to hipsterism or being "artsy". 139.138.6.121 (talk) 15:57, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I did not say it is the definition of postmodernism. There are a lot of other impostors and bullshitters out there. At the moment I think of one windbag who certainly does not use "verbal lace doilies".

But all this does not contribute to improving the article, and therefore does not belong here. Sorry I went on that tangent. Can we please stop it? --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:27, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I didn't mean to annoy -- honest. I just encounter this term used as a slur (more often than not), and I'm trying to understand it better. That's all. I think understanding this aspect of the term would certainly contribute to the article overall. 139.138.6.121 (talk) 17:37, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

There have been several well-meaning attempts to improve the lead of this article over the past ten years. Look back through the edits. The most recent such effort resulted in an article lead that was clearer and more accurate than the current one. After this considerable effort to improve the lead, one editor demoted the new lead to become an introduction and restored the original lead.sbelknap (talk) 14:17, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

It probably doesn't help that so many people who are associated with "postmodernism" as a school of thought disavowed any such association. Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition would make him a contender for a template for theoretical postmodernity but he later said that it was his worst book and at least partially disavowed it as a work to nearly the same extent as Libidinal Economy. Derrida had, likewise, a complicated relationship with the term and little interest in engaging with it as a systematic. You see similar prevarication from other theorists such as Félix Guattari - who was impacted sufficiently by Trotskyism that he generally preferred to be treated as part of that overall modern trend of thought. And of course Foucault infamously pretty much refused to be nailed down on nearly anything - claiming to be an historian among philosophers, a philosopher among historians. You'll excuse I'm focusing specifically on French theorists because that's where I'm most widely read. What it comes down to is that Postmodernism becomes a very slippery term, as often as not deployed as an accusation against academic rivals or as a short-hand for Continental philosophy as it exists after Sartre. Simultaneously it's used in various arts either to describe that artwork that emerged in a specific time or to suggest a Derridean focus on deconstruction - situating Alan Moore as a template for the postmodern artist. Honestly it'd probably be more effective to constrain the term in theory to Lyotard and Derrida and damn the extent to which they would detest it. But of course they pretty famously split over Marx and several other topics so even that constrained a definition becomes unstable. I guess what I'm saying is that you don't have to be hostile to late-20th century Continental philosophy to find Postmodernism a confounding term that is difficult to nail down. Effectively it becomes like that famous quote about pornography: I know it when I see it. Simonm223 (talk) 13:27, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Lede

It seems like the definition section was a previous attempt at the lede that got bumped downward but it reads basically as a better written and better sourced version of the lede (for example it accredits Habermas' critique of postmodernism to him directly rather than talking vaguely about some philosophers). I've been WP:BOLD and removed the old lede, instead moving the definition section up to serve as the lede. Simonm223 (talk) 13:47, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

It looks good, but I’m not sure if it’s a bit long/jargony. I’ll ask some offline friends their opinions and see what they think. Cheers, postleft on mobile! 14:44, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Boston333200.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:02, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Habermas

Seems odd to not have any mention of Habermas considering he's generally thought to be a key critic of Postmodernism, with The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy referring to Habermas as "The most prominent and comprehensive critic of philosophical postmodernism". https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/#9 194.223.51.184 (talk) 00:03, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Criticisms section

The criticisms section of this is on my to-do list (to whit: I want to integrate the criticisms into the article better). I've removed a few criticisms that came from obvious non-experts however for the rest it's going to be a more difficult task of determining where those criticisms best fall within the overall structure of the article. Suggestions are very welcome. Simonm223 (talk) 13:10, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Since the Fringe theory noticeboard fandom has decided to weigh in I'd suggest they should quickly express a defense for how this commercial magazine article written by an anthropologist is suitable to understand philosophical epistemology. His "postmodernism is anti-science" approach is ignorant and should be disregarded as WP:UNDUE. Simonm223 (talk) 13:23, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Haha! "Commercial"? Do you mean to say that all pomo journals and all books written by pomos are free?

You sound exactly like a theologian or astrologer when someone does not accept their worldview. Those who disagree are simply defined to be "ignorant" without justification - see also Courtier's reply - and voila: the acceptance turns out to be unanimous.

When the subject is science, as with philosophy of science, rejecting scientists as ignoramuses is disingenious. If their criticism is fallacious, that can be explained. That is what scientists (especially scientific skeptics) do when ignoramuses attack them. --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:35, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Can we maintain a discussion here without resorting to personal attacks and name calling? It is counterproductive. Thanks. freshacconci (✉) 16:07, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Why is this placed as a response to my contribution? Can you tell the difference between an attack on a person and an attack on a person's reasoning? --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:38, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

It's a response to you because calling someone an ignoramus is a personal attack. And attacking a person's reasoning (your wording) is in fact a personal attack. freshacconci (✉) 15:29, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:NPA is about attacking other Wikipedians. If you had actually read and understood both sentences in my contribution which contain the word - it is not that difficult - you would have noticed that I did not call anyone an ignoramus, not even any non-Wikipedians. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:49, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

None of what you wrote is civil. If you can't contribute without attacking others, indirectly or otherwise, you should excuse yourself from the discussion. freshacconci (✉) 13:15, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

None of what you wrote is more than a straw man. If you can't contribute to the subject, but can only make false accusations, you should not discuss at all. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:24, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

I think it would be helpful if instead of "commercial magazine article written by an anthropologist", we could refer to The War on Science, Anti-Intellectualism, and ‘Alternative Ways of Knowing’ in 21st-Century America by ecological anthropologist Homayun Sidky for the Skeptical Inquirer. Just so that we're clear on what exactly we're talking about. Vexations (talk) 16:08, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

And I reiterate that a position of "postmodernism is anti-science" depends on a highly selective and poorly informed grasp of the relevant literature. I'm sorry if my suggestion that critiques of an academic discipline be founded in an understanding of that discipline's literature make me sound like "a theologian or astrologer". Although I'm sure theologians would be very impressed to see such respect for their scholarship in an encyclopedia project. Simonm223 (talk) 16:23, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Can you provide some insight into what the relevant literature is in this case? It can't only be the postmodernist authors, so who is qualified to criticise postmodernism? Vexations (talk) 19:35, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, we don't dismiss WP:RS because we personally deem the sources not to have understood what the postmodernists were really saying. Crossroads ^-talk- 06:18, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Simonm223 you didn't answer my question, but would Habermas (in particular his The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity be acceptable as "the relevant literature"? (I know I have a copy if the German edition somewhere, but I can't find it right now) Vexations (talk) 21:51, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

I suppose I would be part of the alleged "fandom". My comment on the specific source is at the FTN discussion. To the extent that this is about how to present postmodernism's relationship to science in general, personally I could be convinced by RS explaining that it is not in fact associated with certain antiscientific claims (or that these claims are misunderstandings, etc), with sufficient weight for this to be placed prominently in the article. It is definitely a significant outside perception, and if it is simply mistaken then that should be emphasized.

In other words, I'd want the level of support that would let us treat these issues as being caused by misinformation rather than being legitimate criticism. I think that's unlikely given the sources we already have, but there could be individual instances that qualify. Or it could be that the issues are caused by a few fringe postmodernists who are generally rejected by the rest, in which case again that should be put in the article. I can definitely agree that certain authors never intended to say certain things (Latour comes to mind, from my comment at FTN), and I would gladly support the inclusion of content discussing that. However, I don't have the impression that this applies to the field as a whole. In addition, it's still important that people have (mis)interpreted them as saying those things regardless. Sunrise (talk) 09:43, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Hello, I'm a bit dismayed by Wiki's entry on 'postmodernism' - especially the early paragraphs. The several references to Encyclopaedia Britannica's brutally simplistic and misrepresentative entry on the subject rather paint the Wiki entry into an unfortunate corner. Time for a rewrite by scholars more steeped in the subject? 121.200.6.23 (talk) 04:30, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Vague expression of discontent is not helpful. What exactly is wrong with it? --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:40, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I don't actually think this article is accurate.

Post-modernism isn't a "stance" it's an area of discourse. Specifically an area of discourse that questions how meaning can be created, transformed, and destroyed. This is why an artist like Charles Krafft, or a website like 4chan is just as much postmodernism as Derrida is. So I think Wikipedia really has gotten this topic wrong by declaring it an ideological stance. That's like saying poetry is an ideological stance, or abstract expressionism is an ideology. Not really true. 194.223.13.28 (talk) 02:54, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

If you are so knowledgeable about the subject, it should not be a problem for you to find sources that express that idea. Without sources, we cannot do anything. --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:45, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Concur. Please go ahead and propose WP:RS that support this change. Unfortunately The Postmodern Condition doesn't mention 4chan. Simonm223 (talk) 12:12, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Section on "Origin of Term" Is Inaccurate

The statement that Chapman used the term "postmodern" in 1870 is unfounded. See Oxford English Dictionary for documented early uses of "postmodern" and related terms. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.36.7.1 (talk) 03:19, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Intellectual vs. Anti-Intellectual

72.197.187.131 made the following two edits: [1] [2], changing the first line from:

Postmodernism is an intellectual...

to:

Postmodernism is an anti-intellectual...

I explained on the the editors' talk page that we require sources, and eventually the editor provided this as a source:

Kuntz, Marcel (2012-10-01). "The postmodern assault on science". EMBO Reports. 13 (10): 885–889. doi:10.1038/embor.2012.130. ISSN 1469-221X. PMC 3463968. PMID 22986553.

I know enough about Postmodernism to know that the above source is not representing Postmodernism correctly; however, I am not familiar with the WP:RS in this article. I am hoping someone else who is more familiar with topic and the sourcing can explain the issues with the above source and why it would not be sufficient to make such a drastic change to the WP:LEDE. I also don't know enough about the publication to know if that source is reliable.

My assumption is that the author Marcel Kuntz is not an expert in an appropriate field, e.g. Philosophy, Semiotics, Critical theory, Literary criticism or Postmodernism. His expertise is in biotech. GMO is mostly what the article is actually about. The author seems to have no familiarity with the major issues with Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy) that go back to the Ancient Greeks and probably before them. Although Nietzsche's work was the first thing we read in my Postmodernism class, anyone with knowledge of Ancient philosophy and Modern philosophy knows the problems of subjectivity, Metaphysics, and what can be known (Epistemology) with certainty. These issues have been with us a long time. Descartes pondered this. David Hume had a scathing attack on the use of inductive reasoning in Empiricism in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. And Kant came up with a fantastic response in Critique of Pure Reason where he posits the Thing-in-itself. All this long before Nietzsche's scathing criticism of Western morality in works like On the Genealogy of Morality, which caused Analytical Philosophers like Bertrand Russell to attack him and his works. Based on my knowledge and the sources I have read, Kuntz does not seem to be familiar with any of this (or inexplicably omits it). What I also find so puzzling in Kuntz's writing is that he makes no mention of Uncertainty principle or the subjectivity inherent in the Theory of relativity. --David Tornheim (talk) 04:49, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Author goes on about deconstruction at length, fails to mention Derrida once. Simonm223 (talk) 17:21, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

flagging weak entry

This description of postmodernism is poor: relies too much on thin accounts of postmodernism. Why isn't Fredric Jameson cited? I always ck wikipedia when writing lectures as some students will get info here. This account is misleading and unclear. 2600:1700:6237:D400:1885:E491:ACAC:E8E8 (talk) 16:57, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Great suggestion for improvement. Do you have some proposed text to bring Jameson in? He's definitely an appropriate source. Simonm223 (talk) 17:02, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the article needs a lot of work, some of which I have been doing—at an admittedly plodding pace (see above). Jameson does appear in Criticism_of_postmodernism#Marxist_criticisms, but I agree he is important enough to merit mention as a critic in this article, perhaps also to be cited in a rewritten Definition(s) section. Left to my own devices, he probably will crop up somewhere. But if either of you have any specific language you want to see, please consider adding it yourself or sharing it here.

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 17:16, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

This section from the start of his postmodernism book is a good place to start shaping something probably.

Thus, abstract expressionism in painting, existentialism in philosophy, the final forms of representation in the novel, the films of the great auteurs, or the modernist school of poetry (as institutionalized and canonized in the works of Wallace Stevens): all these are now seen as the final, extraordinary flowering of a high modernist impulse which is spent and exhausted with them. The enumeration of what follows then at once becomes empirical, chaotic, and heterogeneous

But it's rather too long to use as a quote. Simonm223 (talk) 17:26, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Later we have every position on postmodernism in culture— whether apologia or stigmatization—is also at one and the same time, and necessarily, an implicitly or explicitly political stance on the nature of multinational capitalism today. - which is an excellent turn of phrase. Simonm223 (talk) 17:28, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

structural issues

Hey all,

I'm looking at doing some edits to the top of this article (i.e., above Manifestations section) with stronger sourcing to academic works by actual subject-matter experts. There are also, however, some structural issues I wanted to check in on before beginning.

Is there a reason for treating Origin and History separately? I haven't yet worked through the material in detail, but I would default to combining these into one section, probably entitled Etymology, to precede Definition (or perhaps, as with the work I've been doing on Irony, something more along the lines of The Challenge of Definition).

The Theories and Derivatives section is confusing to me. Structuralism and post-structuralism are precursors to postmodernism that were after-the-fact co-opted under that umbrella term. This should be clear in the article. Post-postmodernism seems like it ought to belong to a Legacy section that does not exist (and so maybe should just be its own section after Manifestations until it does?).

I don't love that the header Manifestations suggests there is some one thing called postmodernism that has been theoretically articulated and appears under various guises in different media. My objection is not that this is contrary to postmodern theory, but just that it is a dubious claim that should not be presented as fact without strong sourcing. Lastly, shouldn't Philosophy, to the extent that it has not already been covered incidentally by Etymology and Definition, fall under this header (whatever the best term may be), rather than as its own section above what are currently presented as "manifestations"?

Any input appreciated!

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 21:11, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I have not abandoned this. The structure now makes sense to me except for the question of where to put the precursor movements of (post-)structuralism and deconstruction. The next thing on my agenda, which is arguably the main thing, is the section currently titled Definition. I might incorporate them there—although this would probably require condensing them a bit, which I haven't worked through, but don't love.

Right now, the Definition section is sourced primarily to Britannica, which is not a good source on philosophical topics, and to notes from an old PBS series with no authorship attribution. A few look good, but lack page numbers. I haven't checked all of them, but Bryant, Ian; Johnston, Rennie; Usher, Robin (2004), at least, does not support the claim for which it is cited. My plan is to start fresh, but incorporate as much of what is there as is verifiably and due. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 21:06, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

I finally got a draft into good enough shape to post to the mainspace. There is obviously a great deal that could (and should!) be added, but I think that it is nevertheless an improvement over the previous version—particularly with respect to sourcing.

I plan to give it a few days in case anyone has serious objections. Then I will rewrite the lead to summarize the current version of the article.

In the future, I also hope also to flesh out the philosophical part of the article as much as is appropriate when there is a child article, postmodern philosophy. I might also fiddle with the later parts of the article, but I have no plans to rewrite that material.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 21:45, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Items for further improvement:

• "In various arts" should have a section devoted to film.
• The "In theory" section should be rewritten to focus on the influence of Derrida in the 1970s and Foucault in the 1980s. Probably coverage of Lyotard should be expanded beyond what is included in "Usage/Later developments". Baudrillard needs to be covered, and (per multiple sources) Richard Rorty. Barthes and Lacan would also be justified by the literature, but appear secondary. Anything more than this is probably best left to the postmodern philosophy child article.
• "In theory" should also have a subsection on postmodern theology.
• The "In society" section should have a subsection on the deployment of the term in non-academic political/cultural/popular discourse. It's remarkable that such a messy academic term should attain such currency outside of the academy. Suggestions for sourcing on this would be most welcome. I'm not even sure where best to look.
• Per overview sources, "Criticisms" should give a paragraph each to both Jürgen Habermas and Fredric Jameson. More detailed discussion is best reserved for criticism of postmodernism.

I'm not going to do all of this, but I welcome comments on the above or, as always, other suggestions. Even just establishing a good TOC enables and encourages productive edits.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 20:14, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

still to do

Since I take the structural issues discussed above to be mostly resolved, I'm starting a new thread. Mostly what I'm interested in here is other improvements to the article could be made without too much research in a way that might encourage and facilitate contributions from those with more subject-matter expertise. Here's my current list:

• "In various arts" needs a section lead to provide even just a superficial explanation of why all these different things are grouped together as specifically postmodern.
  • It also needs a film section and a dance section. Even if these are very short, they can Wikilink out to their respective pages.
  • There are some mostly unsourced lists that need to be trimmed back or removed.
• "In theory" needs to be rewritten in view of the "Theoretical development" section above. It might go back to "In philosophy" since the article can now dispense with most of the material on poststructuralism already covered. There are a few other names that show up in the literature that should be at least mentioned: D&G, Rorty, Habermas (again), Jameson (again), and Baudrillard (again) and possibly a few others who appear in some surveys (but are completely ignored in others). But since the article has a child page and some of this has been partially covered above, I expect it to be shorter when I am finished.
  • Follow up: I have just done some of this in a limited way, mostly to create space for other editors with greater interest to contribute. I will try to also add a section on Jameson (maybe together with Harvey) if I can find an appropriately concise high-quality source to work from. Deleuze and Baudrillard, however, are going to have to wait for someone else—I've read only enough of their work to know that I do not care to read more. Redundancies in this section with earlier sections of the article remain an issue. I'll try to do something about this, but please step up if you have an elegant solution. Cheers, Patrick (talk) 17:18, 14 September 2024 (UTC)
• The "Criticisms" section is at least 80% criticisms of a specifically philosophical position (that, incidentally, very few people actually hold). I will probably move much of this to postmodern philosophy and see if there is anything at criticism of postmodernism that ought to be restored here to help keep this an appropriately general article.
• I removed the the rather useless sidebar from its place at the top of the article. Trying to put it at the bottom, however, I learned that to do this requires it be reproduced according to a different template. If I can cut-and-paste my way through most of that, I'll do it. Otherwise, it's on someone else.
• I'm pretty sure that postmodern theology is enough of a thing to merit inclusion somewhere.
• The article lead needs to be rewritten to properly summarize the article for a general audience. Once that is done, I believe the maintenance banner can be safely removed.

Is there anything obvious I am missing?

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 22:45, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I addressed "Criticisms" as per above. Probably even the remaining material should be integrated into sections above where applicable. It's difficult to meaningfully criticize such diverse phenomena in a general way. (And the problems with using "postmodern" as a general term are already highlighted near the top of the article.) Patrick (talk) 19:17, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

In search of clarity

The article is hugely better now than when I came to it around five years ago, looking for a super-basic explanation of postmodernism, which it failed to deliver. Still, even now, it doesn't quite nail it for me. When I have to click the modernism link, I feel like I'm in a house of mirrors, and it's downhill from there.

Here's an explanation of postmodernism from Reddit that was really clear. Maybe it could be helpful here, for some ideas. Tsavage (talk) 21:48, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Tsavage,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! The problem with providing a super-basic explanation is that — to the best of my knowledge, per scholarly consensus — there isn't any consensus: "postmodernism" means different things in different contexts/fields, and, even within specific contexts, there is sometimes no consensus about its meaning.

If, however, the invocation of the also polysemous term "modernism" generates perhaps unnecessary confusion, that might be possible to remedy. Could you elaborate or suggest, in even a very general way, what kind of additions might help to make the article more broadly accessible by clarifying this concept?

Also, with respect to film, if you could get some general (i.e., not just interpretations of individual films) references from the participants on that Reddit thread, I might be able to incorporate them into a subsection of "In various arts", in which film is conspicuously absent.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 22:12, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

The current intro has gotten as far as, "What they have in common is the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of representing reality." That's pretty easy to understand. Can these "previous ways of representing reality" be described more precisely, that statement can't be open-ended? Tsavage (talk) 01:06, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

In The Order of Things, Foucault links the crisis in representation to Kant's "Copernican Revolution", which he claims presents us with the challenge of representing the act of representation. But this alleged crisis, on his account, inaugurates the Modern Epistémè. ("Postmodernism" was not yet a philosophical term.) So to lean into this, which I'm not sure is supported by RS, would require reformulating postmodernism as an intensification of modernism, which some scholars say that it is, but others reject.

I'll review Bertens, which is the source of that language, to see if he provides a better answer. Because I do agree that the article ought to provide something more specific if it is at all possible; if it is not, then that statement should probably be removed from the lead. Patrick (talk) 21:34, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Re modernism: If it's possible, if it can be supported, extending the reference to modernism by summarizing what it is could work! For example, something like: "... claim to mark a break from modernism's belief that there is a proper way to do things."

Maybe developing "Although postmodernisms are generally united in their effort to transcend the perceived limits of modernism, "modernism" also means different things to different critics in various arts" a bit further would help with the intro. What are (some of) the perceived limits of modernism? Tsavage (talk) 01:22, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Skimming the modernism article and mulling it over, one way to make the distinction might be to say that, whereas modernism is marked by a sense of loss and alienation, postmodernism responds to the same situation with acceptance and often even joy.

Right now this is SYNTH, but it could probably be sourced to discussion of the loss/rejection of meta-narratives, which is a central concept in postmodernism that is currently only indirectly mentioned in the last paragraph of the lead. Postmodernism asserts as an empirical fact that meta-narratives have lost their authority—to which it adds that, not only do we not need them, we are actually better off without them.

I'm personally much more of a continuity guy than a rupture guy, so this is tough for me, but I fully agree that further specification would be helpful. Maybe we could illustrate this with a simple example presented as no more than one "for instance"?

I'll review the sources and see what I can turn up. In the meanwhile, further thoughts are most welcome!

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 21:51, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Doing a bit of online reading and skimming and came across this overview. The article was for me way easier to understand than, say, the postmodernism article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (which has too many words and terms I need to look up practically every sentence). This explanation worked particularly well:

For instance, Isaac Reed (2010) conceptualizes the postmodern challenge to the objectivity of social research as skepticism over the anthropologist’s ability to integrate the context of investigation and the context of explanation. Reed defines the context of investigation as the social and intellectual context of the investigator – essentially her social identity, beliefs and memories. The context of explanation, on the other hand, refers to the reality that she wishes to investigate, and in particular the social actions she wishes to explain and the surrounding social environment, or context, that she explains them with.

There's also (the article's emphasis):

The term “postmodernism” is somewhat controversial since many doubt whether it can ever be dignified by conceptual coherence. For instance, it is difficult to reconcile postmodernist approaches in fields like art and music to certain postmodern trends in philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. However, it is in some sense unified by a commitment to a set of cultural projects privileging heterogeneity, fragmentation, and difference, as well as a relatively widespread mood in literary theory, philosophy, and the social sciences that question the possibility of impartiality, objectivity, or authoritative knowledge (Boyne and Rattansi 1990: 9-11).

That was fairly effective in connecting the content with framing from my everyday experience. I don't think of things in terms of "heterogeneity, fragmentation and difference", so I'm interpreting that as something like favoring uniqueness and diversity (rather than one set "right" way)... Tsavage (talk) 00:19, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

We cannot use this as a source because it was written by grad students and has not been peer-reviewed. We could follow its citations, however, to fill in any gaps in the coverage of our article. Some are primary, but there are also a lot of secondary sources not currently represented here. Patrick (talk) 21:27, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

To the restatement in your own words, that seems fair to me. I think the postmodernist would prefer to say something like "acknowledging and celebrating" diversity (as a basic fact), rather than subjectively preferring it, but I'm nitpicking here. Richard J. Bernstein has a book, A New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity, similar to Habermas's, in which he likewise engages directly with figures the postmodern tradition, similarly at odds with his own Enlightenment orientation. He finds Heidegger irredeemable, but otherwise was impressed to find such a deep ethical concern for those excluded from official discourse, even in philosophers like Derrida, who are too often dismissed as just engaged in pointless wordplay. Patrick (talk) 22:07, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Readability

These two New York Times articles could be helpful in the area of readability: The Promiscuous Cool of Postmodernism (1986) and Modern and Postmodern, the Bickering Twins (2000). They are both readable because they don't resort to subject-specific terminology as shorthand, which is where readers can get frustrated and lost. They maintain accessibility (maybe with the help of a dictionary here and there) to allow the reader to gain understanding from context. (Both articles, by their authors, would qualify as RS as well.) IMO. Tsavage (talk) 03:29, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for finding these! I like the Denis Donoghue (academic) piece in particular. I thought it would read as dated, but it seems still pretty on the mark to me—and sometimes funny to boot!

The other one would also be an acceptable source, although Wikipedia should not engage in the sort of open-ended rhetorical questions with which it concludes. Patrick (talk) 21:48, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

new article lead

I've drafted a new lead for the article. It's an imperfect summary of a far from perfect article. Please share ideas for improvement!

Keep in mind that the lead is just a plain-language overview of the content of the article. Anything that is conspicuously missing or wrong in the lead needs to be added to the body of the article with supporting sources before changing anything non-egregiously wrong at the top. For the same reason, per WP:CITELEAD, the body of the article is the source of the lead; individual citations are not recommended except to prevent interventions by editors not aware of this policy. (Probably that will prove to be the case here, but I suggest we wait and respond just to issues that actually emerge.)

Here's the draft that, absent objections, I will soon publish to the article:

Postmodernism is a term used to refer to a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break with modernism. What they have in common is the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of representing reality. Still, there is disagreement among experts about its more precise meaning even within narrowly defined contexts.

The term began to acquire its current range of meanings in literary criticism and architectural theory during the 1950s–1960s. Building upon poststructural theory, postmodern thought defined itself by the rejection of any single, foundational historical narrative. This called into question the legitimacy of the Enlightenment account of progress and rationality.

In opposition to modernism's alleged self-seriousness, postmodernism is characterized by its playful use of irony and pastiche, among other features. Critics claim that it supplants moral, political, and aesthetic ideals with mere style and spectacle.

In the 1990s, "postmodernism" came to denote a general – and, in general, celebratory – response to cultural pluralism. Proponents align themselves with feminism, multiculturalism, and post-colonialism. Critics, however, allege that its premises lead to a nihilistic form of relativism. In this sense, it has become a term of abuse in popular culture.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 00:47, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Hello Patrick Welsh, it seems some key points have been taken out of the lead.

• rejects the certainty of knowledge and stable meaning, and acknowledges the influence of ideology in maintaining political power. The idea of objective claims is dismissed as naïve realism, emphasizing the conditional nature of knowledge. Postmodernism embraces self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism. It opposes the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization.
• Critics argue that postmodernism promotes obscurantism, abandons Enlightenment rationalism and scientific rigor, and contributes little to analytical or empirical knowledge.

These appear to be important points. Do you know why they were taken out? Hogo-2020 (talk) 10:57, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Hogo-2020,

Thanks for checking in on the talk page! I will try to respond more promptly to future posts.

My primary issue with the material you've added is that it does not (or at least does not obviously) apply to most of postmodernism, just to some of the philosophy characterized as postmodern. This means that it is not part of the definition of the topic of the article.

I wrote most (all?) of the section you've retitled "Definition", and its point (emphasized in the previous title) is to establish that the term does not have a single definition, and it is not a unitary phenomenon. I did a fair amount of research for the editing I contributed to this article, and I do not believe any of the essays, monographs, or tertiary sources that I consulted failed to open with an explicit acknowledgement of this fact, the truth of which I believe is further substantiated by the rest of the article.

An unfortunate consequence of this that it is very difficult to make highly general or universal claims about postmodernism as such. There is a lot, however, that can be said about specific scholarly debates about the meaning of the term or the characteristics of postmodernism in specific arts, many of which have their own child pages. (Lots of work to be done here!)

You'll correct me if I am wrong, but your interest seems most focus on postmodern philosophy. This is great because this section of the article, and its child page, are extremely underdeveloped. Since diverse and incompatible philosophies have been called "postmodern" (though rarely by their proponents), my view is that it is best to focus upon the specific figures who are best represented in the high-quality tertiary literature (i.e., the sort of handbooks/companions/whatever edited by established scholars and published by university presses).

Nevertheless, generalizations are of course permissible, especially when sourced to high-quality secondary sources. An article that consists too much of such generalizations, however, does not serve readers if they are not then substantiated with some specifics.

If your interest is in criticisms of postmodernism, I'd be happy to provide some suggestions that could be presented as subsections of "In theory". Most conspicuously, the article needs an account of Habermas's arguments, which have probably been the most influential in the discipline of philosophy.

(Oh and, FYI, Britannica is not considered a consistently reliable source. Per WP:BRITANNICA, its articles generally need to be assessed on an individual basis. Since this one was not written by a subject-matter expert it probably flunks as a RS. Fortunately, we have lots of sources that are highly reliable, and so those can simply be used instead.)

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 00:51, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Hey again,

I've read the Sim essay from the collection you cited. I am going to cite it in the "In philosophy" section—although probably with attribution, given that it reads to me as an individual "take" that is unusually uncritical.

I am not, however, trying to suppress criticism. The most obvious non-Britannica claim that you've added, however, comes from a volume on educational theory that I am unable to obtain in order to verify. Could you perhaps email me enough of the text for me to do so? It is so categorically critical that I question its reliability—even though Routledge is generally a great press.

Also, there was another citation to a different volume on education that I removed because it was quoted out of context in a way that misrepresented the views of the author. Two academic collections on postmodern pedagogy or educational policy, however, suggest that this might deserve treatment in the article. If you're familiar with the literature, that would be a most welcome contribution. There would be no need in this context to go into any great detail.

With respect to the title I gave the section "The problem of definition" that you retitled "Definition", do you have any suggestions for something that captures a multiplicity of definitions, only some of which are in even potential conflict with one another? Because one of the earliest and most stable definitions is in the field of architecture, but this is hardly in conflict with definitions in literature, some of which are, however, in conflict with one another. And, it's hard to know where to begin with postmodern philosophy since almost none of the major scholars lumped together under this umbrella accept the label. Lyotard versus Habermas has now been mentioned twice, and Jameson, who needs more coverage, could be set off of others as well, but there is, for instance, no Derrida versus Foucault on the nature of the postmodern: they were each just doing their separate things and, to the best of my knowledge, made little effort to respond to the American academics who lumped them together first as poststructuralists and then as postmodernists.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 21:49, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Patrick Welsh, and thanks for your responses.

I think that a number of important points well-supported by the literature are being overlooked.

• rejects the certainty of knowledge and stable meaning, and acknowledges the influence of ideology in maintaining political power.

Are there issues with Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as a source?

Concerning "Adult Education and the Postmodern Challenge: Learning Beyond the Limits", published by Routledge, you can view some of its content through Internet archive. Here are some excepts from the book:

• "Postmodernism challenges and displaces this abstract, transcendental subject, arguing instead that subjects cannot be separated from their subjectivity, history and socio-cultural location. In the postmodern, there are no Archimedean points, the subject is, instead, decentred, enmeshed in the 'text' of the world, constituted in intersubjectivity, discourse and language. Equally, the separation of subject and object, objectivity and subjectivity, is itself a position maintainable only so long as the knower is posited as abstract and decontextualised and the object known posited as the 'other' unable to reflect back on and affect the knower. " (page 205)

• "Postmodersnism highlights the need for science to be much more varied and self-reflexive about its limitations. Science assumes a knowing subject, a known object, and an unambiguous knowledge. The postmodernist argument is that none of these can any longer be taken for granted, all are subject to incredulity." (page 206)

• "Postmodernism argues that all knowledge of the real is textual, i.e., always already signified, interpreted or 'written' and, 'reread'. Hence, there is neither an originary point of knowledge nor a final interpretation. Hence, there is neither an originary point of knowledge nor a final interpretation." (page 207)

Other points from the lead that were removed:

• It opposes the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization.

• Critics argue that postmodernism promotes obscurantism, abandons Enlightenment rationalism and scientific rigor, and contributes little to analytical or empirical knowledge.

Regarding the section title you changed from "The problem of definition" to "An indefinable term," is this your personal perspective, or is there a scholarly consensus supporting this? (If the latter, please provide sources.) I had suggested simply "Definition" because, while definitions may differ, the term can still be defined in various ways. There's no need for us to editorialize the title to emphasize this point, especially if the scholarly consensus doesn't convey this outright.

I agree that it’s nearly impossible to make universal statements about postmodernism, but I feel that some significant points are being overlooked, particularly in the lead. Hogo-2020 (talk) 08:20, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Hey again!

My concern is that the lead adhere to the guidelines outlined in WP:LEAD, in particular, that it be maximally accessible to a general audience and that it includes only material covered in the body of the article—and does so in proportion to the weight it is given in the literature (which should already be reflected in the article itself). Technical language such as opposition to the abstract, transcendental subject or the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization is obscure to pretty much everyone without a post-secondary education in the humanities.

More basically, arguments for changes to the lead cannot be based upon previous versions from the article history, but only on the body of the current article as supported by secondary sources. If, as you contend, there is a problem with the current lead, that probably means that there is a problem with the body that needs to be addressed first. In my assessment, most of what is currently there is well-supported, but some significant material is not covered at all (on which see my posts above). Your suggestions or direct contributions on this front would be most welcome, as would consequent modifications to the lead (although there summarized at more of a fifth-grade level).

As to the heading for the first section of the article, I'm opposed to "Definition" because there is no single definition. This is already supported by seven independent sources in just that section, which, if anything, is already overkill. (If you suspect I am cherry-picking sources, just take the top five search results of any academic database on postmodernism in general: at least four of them will say something along such lines in the first three paragraphs.) I do not, however, particularly love "The problem of definition" or "An undefinable term". So it would be great to collectively brainstorm to find something better.

My current plan for the article is to use the treatment of Derrida and Lyotard from the Sim article to rewrite the relevant sections of "In philosophy" and then to revise the first section (whatever we decide to call it), and then the lead—with an eye towards clarifying, as much as I am able, the points raised by Tsavage.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 16:59, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Patrick, one possible solution would be to properly address this content in the body of the article. We could also revise the language to make it more reader-friendly. Besides that, these seem to be significant points in the literature. If you're fine with this approach, I'll include the points mentioned above in the body, and later reintroduce them to the lead. Hogo-2020 (talk) 06:57, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Of course I'm happy for you to help build out the body. Sorry if I seemed overly possessive. My main concern is just that criticisms — of which there are many with, in my assessment, considerable merits – be tied to the positions people actually hold.

It seems to happen less often than it used to, but sometimes postmodernism is invoked in a culture-war contexts as a sort of catch-all for the alleged perniciousness of higher education, as if Derrida were responsible for the decline in church attendance or some crazy thing like that. (Or, if that's true, then it should definitely be included—only I think it is not, and the sourcing would have to be very good.) Patrick (talk) 13:48, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

I get what you're saying, and I agree that we should try to avoid the "culture-war" angle as much as possible. Thanks for explaining your thoughts—it really helps. I'll share my ideas here before making any edits so we can make sure we're on the same page. Hogo-2020 (talk) 05:53, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

re: "An indefinable term" -- perhaps simply "Definitions", plural, would work well, with a first sentence that immediately points out that there's no single overarching definition, though there are competing ones, as well as definitions specific to the many fields to which postmodernism is applied. Since there are...definitions. Tsavage (talk) 03:36, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

re: "An indefinable term", Renaming the title to something like "Definitions" would definitely improve it. Hogo-2020 (talk) 06:58, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm good with this. Thanks for making the change. Patrick (talk) 13:37, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

new subsections for "In philosophy"

Contrary to what I said above (and to my usual practice of avoiding writing about stuff when I don't know the primary literature), I decided to put together short sections on Deleuze and Baudrillard. They are based on just those parts of the SEP "Postmodernism" article that I felt confident I could summarize. My idea is just that it is much more likely for someone knowledgeable to fix an inadequate treatment than it is for someone to add a new section from scratch.

Somewhere I have a very short treatment of Jameson that I will also add as soon as I can find it. That would round out the cast of postmodernists consistently included in high-quality tertiary sources. Everything should be decided on an individual basis, of course, but additional figures probably belong in the "Postmodern philosophy" article instead. Similarly, although there is always room for improvement of the material here, longer treatments probably belong on that or one of the other child pages instead.

The headers are also now a bit out of control. I will probably try to reorganize, maybe confine the French poststructuralists to a single section, critics to another, and Rorty, I suppose, to stand on his own. In the meanwhile, though, I just want to get the material up for the review of other editors.

I still also plan to rework the material on Derrida and Lyotard in this section.

All this leaves the article as a whole more philosophy-heavy than I would like, but I think the problem is more the inadequacy of its treatment of postmodernity in the arts and in society than it is about including these philosophers.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 23:44, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

I've just started work integrating some of the philosophical material from "Historical overview" into "In philosophy" over in my sandbox. I don't generally do very many saves when I edit in this way, but I'll try to do some in case anyone is following. This move is the best way I can think to avoid redundancy in the article. It will also be helpful to readers just here for the philosophy part. Oh, and I found a serviceable source on Jameson that I will use to slightly expand coverage of his work. Patrick (talk) 19:48, 23 September 2024 (UTC)