Really? No.

Reports of Death Greatly Exaggerated

Post-modernism or "pomo" to the initiated, has been a great boon to us all if you have the perspective of an ancient Assyrian.  In the pre-classical Middle East, when "the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold" everyone knew that bad times were a-comin'.  In expanding their empire, the Assyrians believed they needed to rebuild everything from the bottom up; thus, first they had to destroy everything before them, reduce buildings and people to rubble, and only then could a new order be constructed.  The Assyrians believed order could only come if were preceded by nihilism.  It was the "ultimate solution" of the ancient world.  But what then?  What came after?  What was the "new world order"?



The Enlightenment bravely tried to create a new world of the rational scientific man without the superstitions of God and religion.  But much of its edifice was built upon de-sacralised Christian foundations.  Pomo came along and removed these vestigial Christian foundations; the Enlightenment (as ideology) collapsed in a screaming heap of feathers.  Western civilisation--its greatest boast--is fast following.   

Now, we are told, pomo itself is dying, if not already dead.  The Assyrians have moved on to other fields of conquest.  The West can commence to lick its wounds and rebuild.  Edward Docx, writing in Prospect, performs the duty of the herald bearing glad tidings whilst on a heap of Western rubble, in a piece entitled, Postmodernism is dead. Whew!  What a relief. 

There are two parts to his piece: the first is a helpful summary of what pomo is all about.  The second is a risible attempt to convince us that pomo is, itself, now dead.

Postmodernism first appeared as a philosophical term in the book The Postmodern Condition (1979) by Jean-François Lyotard, the French thinker. Lyotard drew on Wittgenstein’s idea of the “language game,” which had pointed out that different groups of people use the same language in different ways, which in turn can lead to their looking at the world in quite separate ways. So, for instance, the priest might use a word, say “truth,” in a very different way to the scientist, who in turn would understand the term in quite a different way to the policeman, the journalist, the philosopher, or the artist.

In this way, the notion of a single, overarching view of the world—a dominant narrative (or to use the jargon, meta-narrative)—vanishes. There is no single narrative, no privileged standpoint, no system or theory that overlays all others. Hence, Lyotard argued, all narratives exist together, side by side, with none dominating. This confluence of narratives is the essence of postmodernism. (Lyotard was an adherent of Marxism, one of the most potent meta-narratives of the modern age. But he turned his back on Marx. In this way, the origins of postmodern thought can be seen as, in part, a rejection of the totalitarian impulse—also, and not coincidentally, at its most powerful in the 1920s and 1930s.) . . . . 

That's not a bad historical summary.  Pomo attacked the great meta-narrative of the Enlightenment--that the apogee of civilisation was rational scientific Man conjuring the world after his own image.  Along the way, of course, like a true Assyrian, it attacked everything else, leaving a heap of rubble in its wake.

Docx hastens to assure us that this rampant cultural destruction was not all a bad thing.  Pomo tore down some bad things as well.  Totalitarian ideologies (Marxism, Nazism) for one.  Oppressive power structures for another. 

And the epistemic confrontation of postmodernism, this idea of de-privileging any one meaning, this idea that all discourses are equally valid, has therefore lead to some real-world gains for humankind. Because once you are in the business of challenging the dominant discourse, you are also in the business of giving hitherto marginalised and subordinate groups their voice. And from here it is possible to see how postmodernism has helped western society understand the politics of difference and so redress the miserable injustices which we have hitherto either ignored or taken for granted as in some way acceptable.

You would have to be from the depressingly religious right or an otherwise peculiarly recondite and inhuman school of thought not to believe, for example, that the politics of gender, race and sexuality have been immeasurably affected for the better by the assertion of their separate discourses. The transformation from an endemically and casually sexist, racist and homophobic society to one that legislates for and promotes equality is a resonantly good thing. No question.

Hah!  Gotcha! So, it turns out that pomo has its own meta-narrative after all.  Equality--legislated for and promoted--is a resonantly good thing.  Really?  Really! But Docx--in a willing suspension of disbelief--overlooks that pomo has a secret meta-narrative of its own.  Its meta-narrative is that tearing everything down is a universally good thing. 

A little bit of pomo can help the old Enlightenment medicine go down. It can be used as a pointed stick on which to impale the last survivors of the "depressingly religious right"--as Docx deploys it.  But, of course, pomo is a universal acid.  It does not stop there.  It tears everything down, including itself.  It leaves only rubble.  But that is appropriate.  That is inevitable.  In the end, Enlightenment rationalism turns into pomo irrationalism.  Fallen, autonomous rational Man always ends up that way. 

Pomo is not over; it's only got started.  The rumours of its death are greatly exaggerated.  The end of pomo is nihilism.  That's where the West is heading.  But, as in the ancient world, philosophical Assyrianism will pass.  And we have a fair idea as to what will take its place.  When everything lies in rubble, there are only two ways to rebuild.  Either men in the West will return to the God of their fathers, leading to the re-emergence of a second Christendom. Or they will turn to Power--to the forced totalitarian enslavement of man. 

The ancient Assyrians, of course, deployed absolute state power to rebuild.  Power grew out of the pointed trunk of their impaling stick.  If God does not show us mercy, we will inevitably have its equivalent in the West once again.  After all, a hundred blows to the back of a fool make no impression.  We have been through this once in the first half of the twentieth century in the West; we will go through it again.   

Unless . . . . Unless we humble ourselves before God and acknowledge that from Him--and Him alone--comes every good thing, and the He alone can give us a future and a hope.  He alone gives us meaning and truth.  Really?  Yes, really! 

The universal acid of pomo shows once and for all that, apart from Him, there is no hope, nothing.  Only the diabolical nihilism of the damned.  May God have mercy upon us.