More often than not, I find that postmodernist thought obscures rather than illuminates. But I also see useful elements in it. Here’s my very un-postmodern attempt to “steel man” (i.e., find the value in) ideas related to postmodernism:
1. Narratives Serve Power – powerful groups do tend to have a substantial influence on narratives, beliefs, and what’s “normal.” Something “obvious” or “objective” or “a fact” may just (invisibly) be a part of the narrative you’re immersed in and subtly be serving those in power.
2. Categories Bleed – just about any dichotomy or grouping will be leaky and imperfect (e.g., male/female, straight/gay). Some won’t fit any categorization, and there’s a subjective choice of where to draw boundaries. Yet we often treat categories as reality, forgetting their arbitrariness.
3. Intersectionality Can Matter – being perceived to be part of two categories can cause different treatment/perceptions than the sum of the effects of each category alone (i.e., there is non-linearity). A Chinese woman’s experience isn’t just Chinese experience + female experience.
4. Truth Is Elusive – many assumptions are baked into our interpretations. The truth is incredibly complex; epistemic modesty is warranted. Many have attempted to (or claimed to) use “science,” “objectivity,” or “rationality” yet have come to conclusions that were incorrect and harmful.
5. Values Differ – it’s very hard to argue in a principled way that one set of common intrinsic values is superior to another. For instance, if one culture values honesty and loyalty more than other values, and another values freedom and happiness instead, who’s to say one of those cultures is “right”?
6. Word Choice Can Have Consequences – for instance, suppose person P takes action X, and person Q dies. It matters if society calls that action “murder,” “manslaughter,” or “an accident.” Beyond legal questions, it matters socially (for the victim’s family and the perpetrator).
7. Universals are Rare – people claim to find universals (in economies, societies, individual psychology), yet almost none of them stand up to scrutiny as being actually universal. Truth turns out to be contextual with lots of variation. Even our theories of physics get supplanted.
8. Normal Is Not Better – what’s “normal” is often considered superior, and yet normal in one place and time may be weird in another. Much of human behavior is trying to fit in/be normal/be in fashion, which can help you to be liked, but normal is in flux and is not inherently better.
9. Art Is Arbitrary – stories tend to be linear and to follow the hero’s journey, architecture has a certain look based on location, and paintings in one era tend to be in a similar style to each other. But stories, art, etc., can still be compelling when fragmented, non-linear, convention-violating, or subversive. A much broader range of things can produce the effects of art than the limited array we usually see created.
10. Our Qualia are Unique – it is genuinely extremely hard to know what it’s like to be another person or to have had their experiences. We tend to overestimate our ability to relate. Those who have had an experience often do have unique information critical for understanding it.
11. The Oppressed Should Be Helped – some people continue to be oppressed, and those who are should obviously be helped. It’s important to remind ourselves of this oppression and try to stop it.
12. Context Often Matters – knowing who was saying something, what point in history they were saying it, who the audience was, the history of people saying similar things, and so on, can substantially change the meaning of what was said.
13. Some Things Are Said Without Being Said – meaning can be implied without saying something directly (e.g., through dog whistles, euphemisms, and by hinting at something). Even the omission of an idea that one would expect to have been said can imply a meaning.
The elements I listed above related to postmodernism are those that I find most helpful or useful. On the other hand, while I’m far from an expert on the topic, my perspective is that a number of aspects of postmodernist thought are quite unhelpful or mistaken.
Here is what I most dislike about the postmodern way of thinking (and related ways of thinking, like through the lens of critical theory):
1. It can ignore genuine progress made towards truth and a better society.
2. It can assume that word usage/language choices are more powerful than they are.
3. It can deny useful categories.
4. It can be self-undermining (if you apply its critiques to itself).
5. It’s not (I think) that effective at changing the problems it points out (since its proposed solutions to these problems seem, in my opinion, unlikely to achieve their own aims).
6. It can overemphasize the importance of certain problems over other equally or more important ones.
7. It uses obscure language/complex sentence structure that makes it confusing or even impenetrable.
8. It can be overly cynical about society and human nature.
9. It can seem to be in denial that many valuable things were discovered using reason, rational thinking, science, etc., and some of these have greatly improved people’s lives.
10. It can view society through too much of a zero-sum lens, not sufficiently acknowledging the importance of the many opportunities for positive-sum interactions.
11. It can overemphasize the value of information gained from the personal experience of individuals relative to aggregate information and scientific evidence.
12. It can treat large groups as monoliths, as though there really is an “X” perspective (for some large group, X).
13. It sometimes uses non-standard definitions for common words in a way that leads people to draw confused conclusions (assuming the conclusion applies to the common-sense meaning when it only applies to the non-standard one).
14. It can sometimes come across as idealizing those who are oppressed, creating weird incentives for some people to emphasize (or, in extreme cases, exaggerate) the oppression they experience in order to gain social points, or it can even create competition over who is more oppressed.
15. It can act as though feelings are facts, and that person A being upset by person B’s actions or words implies that A was wronged by B.
16. It doesn’t do a good job of summarizing itself, meaning that it can take a large time investment to begin to have a sense of what it even is.
17. It can fall into moral relativism and so runs the risk of being too reluctant to condemn harmful cultural practices of some societies (e.g., a practice of sometimes killing people for having premarital sex).
Overall, while I think that postmodern thinking contains some important ideas, I also believe that reliance on it tends to make things more confused rather than less and that many of its proposed methods and solutions don’t stand up well to scrutiny.
This piece was first written on March 29, 2021, and first appeared on this site on July 2, 2023.
What were the most important sources you found for learning about postmodern thought?