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The Forum > Article Comments > The postmodern left: part one > Comments

The postmodern left: part one : Comments

By Niall Lucy and Steve Mickler, published 28/3/2007

On what pages is it written or implied that the aim of postmodernism is 'the neo-Marxist conquest of Western cultures by stealth'?

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There is something very frightening happening in workplaces today, especially the public sector, where people are put under such pressure they are willing to behave very badly towards others in the name of efficiency. A lot is driven by envy and competition instilled in us by popular culture or an overzealous protestant work ethic, or a great desire not to be "working class". Do you think the "professions" were created to make a whole group of intelligent people separate themselves from the "working class" as the working class is very much needed to keep the society ticking over but for some reason are not seen to merit a decent and respected life? It is true; which party is actually representing the "working class". It is scary when you think how conditions were 100 years ago and how so many attitudes now seem happy to go back there. Where has this snobbery come from in "egalitarian" Australia?
Posted by jillham, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 12:23:46 PM
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As a former ALP media adviser, I have to say, please don't help.

Here's why from French post modernist theorist Gilles Deleuze:

"In the first place, singularities-events correspond to heterogeneous series which are organised into a system which is neither stable or unstable, but rather 'metastable', endoweed with a potential energy wherein the differences between series are distributed ... In the second place, singularities possess a process of auto-unification, always mobile and displaced...

It's hard to get up in front of automobile industry employees who might lose their jobs before Christmas and give them this type of stuff.

There are no insights here. I thought post modernisms time, like the IRA, had come - and gone. I mean no disrespect, and I'm certainly not crowing for Pearson, Windscuttle, et al but it's time to move on.
Posted by Cheryl, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 12:43:26 PM
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I hope that I'll learn more from part two. I'm sorry to say that I found part one hard to make good sense of: too much anger, too much confidence, too many words. And too much denunciation, Luke Slattery a 'conservative'? Come on!
Posted by Don Aitkin, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 12:49:02 PM
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Any chance someone could actually translate this article? It's not written for lay people. It's written for the egos of the writers, no more. And accordingly means nothing at all.

It's a typical example of overeducated and under achieving students. Trying to use all the words they don't really understand to BS the audience. We've seen this constantly and it is now known as "Weasel Words". Attempted intellectual rubbish.

It's a tactic used constantly by people who don't really know the topic and are scared stiff someone will know more than them. You see these people in workplaces everywhere, paranoid and afraid of all. Unable to teach and help others they protect their ignorance by using their own language.

Any reasonable writer knows you must write to your audience, not yourself. Learn boys, learn.
Posted by Betty, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 3:39:53 PM
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'Attempted intellectual rubbish.'

Much like the majority of post-modernism itself. Although I would advise not to 'rubbish' something that you have already admitted is over your head.

As for the topic, I've always been bewildered by the politicising of post-modernism. It's quite obvious it has nothing to do with the left or right, although both sides have weilded it as a weapon against the other.

The right most often criticises it (or what they consider to be it, at least), despite using its influence, and the influence of relativism, to justify such positions as Bush's on creationism being taught alongside evolution.

But anyway. Its all BS innit.
Posted by spendocrat, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 5:06:01 PM
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Excellent point Betty, and one that shouldn't be lost on postmodernists. Lyotard anyone?

Basically, if you think workers are getting a bum deal more and more, but CEOs and other corporate heavyweights are drowning in wealth at everyone else's expense, you'd agree with what Lucy and Mickler have to say.

If you agree that Australia was once aboriginal and isn't any more, and that aborigines got a bum deal (to put it mildly), you'd agree with the article.

If you think that political parties have stopped talking about whose interests they really stand for and turned instead into big self-promotion agencies, you'd agree with the article.

If you think that real democracy happens when the people know exactly what's going on, no spin and no fibs, you'd also agree.

And if you think that the idea that people who agree with all of the above are automatically communists is a load of tosh, you'd agree with the whole point of the article.

It's a shame that people with such sensible things to say couldn't have been a bit more democratic with their language.
Posted by chainsmoker, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 5:12:28 PM
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If anything, this article suffers from multiple personality disorder, spewing forth a bunch of contradictory and emotive statements, for no discernible reason.

What are we supposed to take away from this article? Is it trying to distance postmodernism from "the left"? Is it trying to ridicule the ALP or defend it? Is it trying to resurrect old Marxist philosophy? Or is it simply a brilliant postmodern piece? :)

Actually, on re-reading the article, I just figured it out. It's an advertisement for Lucy and Mickler's book. All is revealed!
Posted by Gekko, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 5:14:37 PM
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Indeed you can almost see these two chaps rambling into the night over numerous bottles of cheeky reds, as they draft and redraft their semiotic twaddle into their iMac ...
Posted by stormont, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 6:13:26 PM
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Couldn't understand what they were getting at, and still don't really.

Except the bit at the end they got about right - postmodernism is actually anti-Marxist - it was a reaction to Marxism.

A fundamental premise of Marxist philosophy is that there is an objective truth (i.e. something which exists outside of our subjective thoughts about it) about which we can gain knowledge (however not necessarily know the absolute truth). Postmodernism attacks this fundamental premise by denying that there is objective truth.

Of course if you subscribe to postmodernist theory you must contort your argument, and mind, because it basically says there is no truth and you are therefore subscribing to a theory which can't be true - but you say it is true.

However because there is no absolute truth, you can have your "truth" and I can have my "truth". The rich can have their "truth" and the working class, well, who cares what their "truth" is?

Postmodernists, and probably the wakademics who wrote this article, spend so much time formulating nonsense in order to justify their cushy little positions. They used to adapt to the Stalinists in the ALP, because that was where the funding came from, now they are sucking up to the neo-cons.

I could be wrong about the authors because as I said, I can't understand what they are trying to say, and can't be bothered trying because it is such gibberish.

The article is a load of garbage.
Posted by tao, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 11:38:38 PM
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I find it hard to disagree with the posters on article. I thought the authors were struggling to differentiate between measures of LEFT and what is Conservative politics wanting to fold in cultural Marxism. I don't personally see where post modernism exist in Left or Conservative thinking. Obviously each has extremes stretched along the political balance beam and that in itself argues any post modernist "the being of the not being relative thought" crap. There is far too much of the Left (particular Left) that distills and perpetuates cultural Marxism, and this has indeed brought into our collective psyche a moral and ethical dissatisfaction. A committed self depreciation. Everyone is blaming someone for their not being according to their expectations rather than their merit. What is lacking is personal ownership of choice and effort applied to individual life decisions. Way too much time spent peeking over the fence at what the Jones have to enjoy what they really could have. Pity really but, not post modernism. There is no post modern era in effect. We are still dealing with the modern era and a hang over of the Industrial Era.
Posted by aqvarivs, Thursday, 29 March 2007 12:01:46 AM
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Post modernist thinking makes as much sense as one hand clapping makes sound.

I won't even bother with the article. Tao expressed it... everyone has their own truth.

The book of Joshua says it differently "In those days there was no judge in Israel, and each man did what was right in his own eyes"

Bottom line, we need a reference point in life.
1/ Love God
2/ Love your neighbour.

Dispute '1' for all ur worth, but then try to give me a valid reason for '2' :)

Without '1' we may as well make it up as we go, and today "Yes..I'll be nice to Smithy next door" but tomorrow "Screw that Smithy, he had his sound system too loud last night, I'll dump rubbish at his front door"
And the next day "Hmmm.. I'd be much better off materially if I had Smithies car, so I'll just take it, and kill him"

Oh ? I hear you say "But the law will stop me annoying or hurting Smithy" yes.. correct :) but will it stop my desire to do so ?

Jesus said "If a man looks at a women with lust in his heart, he has comitted adultery with her"

Matt 5:21"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother[b]will be subject to judgment.

Nothing other than spiritual renewal will take away our basic fallen humanity. "Unless a man is born again he will not see the kingdom of heaven"

Postmodern thinking, is like being tossed around in a washing machine. This way..then that.. and back.
Posted by BOAZ_David, Thursday, 29 March 2007 6:12:14 AM
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cheryl, without actually checking my books, i think that passage is from Deleuze's book _The Logic of Sense_, isn't it? Or it could be from his essay "How do we recognise Structuralism?" written around the same time as _TLoS_.

What is fantastically ironic about you quoting from this text is that Deleuze discusses the relationship between nonsense and sense, and specifically how sense emerges in the nonsense of language. (The incoporeal movement of sense [singularity-event] between at least two series -- signifier and signified.) If you actually tried to understand Deleuze's philosophies then you might think twice about quoting from the _TLoS_ in particular to demonstrate what you think is nonsense. lol
Posted by glen_fuller, Thursday, 29 March 2007 11:49:48 AM
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The fog of Postmodernist Vs Modernist aside - yes Labour has become rather sterile or rather as sterile as Liberal. I thnk there is a third era coming into being here where all the ideological posterings which served to justify the existence of both Labour and Liberal have come to nought. What does Howard stand for? What does Rudd stand for?? I dont know and compared to 10 years ago I no longer care. Its time to move on from those Coo-eee dinosaurs and do the panel thing. "Did you arrest green house gasses in light that it has been a problem we have known about for 25 years? Have you brought the living standards of Indigenous Australia equal to the mainstream? Do women have operationalised equal rights and equal pay? In view of technology has the life expectancy increased, chronic illness decreased ? Have you prepared for wellbeing of an aging population? Have you supplied clean energy and brought down its costs? Have you provided equal education ? ect,ect.

The Liberals have proved incapable of effective government and Labour under Rudd warns it will be more of the same self serving drivel as we have had since the late 1970's.

How about voters fill in a report card at the ballot box to sack ministers who the nation deems as liabilities?
Posted by West, Thursday, 29 March 2007 2:23:20 PM
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You ask: "Where, beyond the fear-mongering accusations and alarmist spin, would you find this new “totalitarianism” that the “middle-class, tertiary-educated left” has produced, out of loathing for the West and hatred for Australia, from the utterly preposterous idea that there is no such thing as truth?"

Well, how about this one from the Manning Clark Professor of History at ANU, Ann Curthoys, from Meanjin, 1991:

"Most academics in the humanities and social sciences, and as far as I know in the physical and natural sciences as well, now reject positivist concepts of knowledge, the notion that one can objectively know the facts. The processes of knowing, and the production of an object that is known, are seen as intertwined. Many take this even further, and argue that knowledge is entirely an effect of power, that we can no longer have any concept of truth at all."

You'll find plenty more like it in The Killing of History (1994) or try my website www.sydneyline.com.

How about an apology guys. Thanks.
Posted by keith windschuttle, Thursday, 29 March 2007 9:23:29 PM
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Keith, maybe Ann Curthoys was (and is) wrong, and that neither humanities/soc.sc nor natural sciences academics do possess such views. She was, after all, offering an opinion, not standing as the fountainhead of knowledge. As it happens, I don't know many academics who do hold such opinions!
Posted by Don Aitkin, Thursday, 29 March 2007 9:37:25 PM
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Don, please look at the quotation again. Ann Curthoys put this forward not simply as her opinion but as a factual statement about the incidence of views that prevailed in universities at the time she wrote in 1991. At the time, there were so many people saying the same thing in various guises that I thought the subject deserved a book.

In their opinion piece, Lucy and Mickler, by way of rhetorical questions, accuse me of inventing "the utterly preposterous idea that there is no such thing as truth?" That is, they accuse me of lying about the issue. On the strength of Curthoys's statement alone, they owe me an apology.
Posted by keith windschuttle, Thursday, 29 March 2007 10:30:34 PM
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Keith,

I read that statement as her opinion or, to move your way a little, as her belief as to the state of things. Since she gives no source and no evidence for the assertion, I regard it simply as an opinion — an unsupported assertion, if you like. My own opinion (which may be quite wrong, but I do and did encounter a lot of academics and am interested in these issues) would be that only a small minority, say less than 10 per cent, of academics in the social sciences and humanities would hold that there is no such thing as objective truth, and that that the proportion among natural scientists and in those in the professional faculties would be quite tiny.
Posted by Don Aitkin, Thursday, 29 March 2007 11:30:22 PM
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Keith and Don can discuss the various quotes as if they were just a little chunk of academia, but I hope we are also looking at the real world implications of Manning Clarkes quote, as provided by Keith, that any idea of the absense of truth is catastrophic for education and morality.

I wonder why any person would want to 'teach' if they were convinced that all is relative and simply 'opinion'.

We can have many opinions about real events, but that doesn't change the core event reality.

I wonder why anyone would want to live in any other way than hyper hedonism in such a situation ?

If Manning Clarke is right, we have in one brief paragraph basically destroyed the foundations of Western society, and its just a matter of time before most people wake up to that, and the true depths of philosophical decay begin to destroy us from within.

If all truth is simply relative, then so is the position of the materialist determinist left, they have nothing to offer, or be passionate about.

While I point to Christ, and His resurrection from a 'faith' viewpoint, I also do so from an evidentiary one.

Without a love for and from God, it's only a matter of time before the nihilism we are left with eats away at our social and individual souls, leaving empty shells of humanity, and we are in the world of Mad Max.
Posted by BOAZ_David, Friday, 30 March 2007 6:57:04 AM
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A strange article, attempting to defend a strange phenomenon.

No definition of post modernism was put forward by the authors, before launching an attack on critics.

What is it that is being defended? A mental aberration alleged to be a philosophy.

The sad aspect of this is that a great thinker, Nietzsche, was posthumously coopted as a supporter of the basic tenet that there is no such thing as truth.

A quote taken from his lament, that no attention was paid to truth, and expressing his regret at its elusive nature; “There is no truth. Anything is allowed” is asserted to support the opposite of his meaning, and misrepresented to assert that there is no such thing as truth.

How such an abomination of an idea ever received consideration is difficult to fathom, since justice, love, reason and other pillars of our thinking process, have the same disability as the concept of truth, in their claim to existence

All those words in that long article, wasted on a nonsense. And that is only part 1.
Posted by Nick Lanelaw, Friday, 30 March 2007 5:51:12 PM
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It was Hassan-i Sabbah of the Order or Assassins, who is alleged to have said on his deathbead that "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." This statement has been quoted by artists and writers such as William S. Burroughs, Bryon Gysin and Hakim Bey.

Nietzsche, however, said "There are no facts, only interpretations", which is widely understood as meaning that a 'fact' has no meaning without interpretation. But there are various interpretations of Nietzsche's 'perspectivism'. ;)

I'm new here, so am not in a position to say whether the article was appropriate for this web site, however I tend to sympathise with Glen's frustration (over at part 2) at some of the responses here. Encountering the unfamiliar is an opportunity to learn and grow. Too often we reject that which we don't understand - I think that's one of the greatest political and ethical challenges that we face. We should all try to take care to be more open and generous with each other.

That said, I pretty much agree with the thrust of the article, and with Chainsmoker's comment above.
Posted by aliasfreq, Saturday, 31 March 2007 10:02:34 PM
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