Re: "Postmodern critique"

My humble contribution to the work to be done (I agree
about that)is that:
(1) a power structure always meets with some kind of
internal resistance to it, which is obviously operated
by the people who do not have the power or have less
power (whatever PmC is, such a remark is well known)
(2) maybe the left does not need any kind of
"universalism", whereas it has to improve on the
ability to deal with (reciprocal) differences (X is "=
not Y" from Y's point of view; Y is "= not X" from X's
point of view). 

Francesco

--- Chris <chris.borst@utoronto.ca> wrote:
> Seyed Javad writes:
> 
> >Within academia there have been many who argued
> that the
> >postmodern critique is nothing but a shambolic move
> by some
> >irrationalists who don't comprehend the very basic
> assumptions of
> >knowledge pursuit. ... I think there is more to the
> deabtes of
> >relativism versus rationalism
> 
> With no disrespect intended towards Seyed, who seems
> to be 
> questioning these claims, not asserting them, can I
> just make a 
> general plea that people stop making such idiotic,
> uninformed, 
> sweeping, reductionist statements about "the
> postmodern critique"? 
> Can we get over primitive, trite cliches about
> "irrationalism" and 
> "relativism"? I realize that thinking is hard work,
> and that most 
> people are infinitely better at handling "empirical
> data" than at 
> handling conceptual relations, but can we at least
> *try*?
> 
> "The postmodern critique" (though there are actually
> several quite 
> distinct, and mutually antagonistic, such critiques)
> turns on two 
> principal realizations:
> 
> (1) that resistance, including heterodox theory, is
> a necessary part 
> of any power structure - with the obvious next
> question of how to 
> resist given this recognition; and
> 
> (2) that modernist universalisms were anything but
> universal (were, 
> in fact, generalizations of self-images of the
> reigning 
> particularism) - with the obvious next question of
> how a genuine 
> universalism is possible in the face of irreducible,
> unabstractable 
> particularity.
> 
> These are real questions, arguably the most
> important questions 
> facing the left today. Yes, they involve disposing
> of the easy, naive 
> notions of "reason", "truth", "reality",
> "exteriority" and 
> "interiority", "self" and "other", etc., that have
> become so familiar 
> - and so beholden to power. Yes, they even involve
> reconceptualizing 
> the relation of "intellectuals" to "the movement".
> But that is no 
> excuse for seeking convenient outs by recourse to
> antique, 
> reactionary theoretical pseudo-debates. There is
> work to be done. 
> Let's do it!
> 
> Chris


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