Thread by @deonteleologist

Alrighty folxxx, you asked for it. Here’s my thread on @Hpluckrose’s instant classic, “How French ‘Intellectuals’ Ruined the West: Postmodernism & Its Impact.” Originally published at Areo, lucky enough to get the coveted @NewDiscourses placement. [1/n]

newdiscourses.com/2020/04/french…

Right off the bat, opening paragraph suggests any worldview “which denies a stable reality or reliable knowledge to exist” is thereby inconsistent. Why? No explanation. Moving on! [2/n]

Postmodernism involves a “rejection of the concept of the unified and coherent individual” as well as “philosophy which valued ethics, reason and clarity”—these are parochial (western, middle-class, male). How does one do philosophy without reason? No answer, no citations. [3/n]

Postmodernists, Pluckrose tells us, “attacked science and its goal of attaining objective knowledge” of a mind-independent reality; science = “merely another form of constructed ideology dominated by bourgeois, western assumptions.” This postmodernism is... neo-Marxist? [4/n]

Again, postmodernism targets science, reason, liberalism & humanism; it has always been essentially political and revolutionary, Pluckrose says: contradicts earlier claim that it was first nihilistic, eventually growing into its “revolutionary ‘identity politics’ phase.” [5/n]

Introducing Lyotard (citations, yay!): this paragraph is incredibly vague, esp. at the end. Given what is said in her book, we can safely assume Pluckrose means Lyotard sees science, in addition to Marxism and Christianity, as a metanarrative.

This is simply not the case. [6/n]

Here is what Lyotard says: that modern science—which, he clarifies throughout the book, is a *narrative* (not a metanarrative!)—legitimates itself by positing a (modern) metanarrative, such as Hegelianism, dialectical materialism, or appeal to the Enlightenment. [7/n]

Then we get this paragraph--last sentence is beyond petty.

First: As I read Lyotard, the point about the relationship between language of science and ethics=both are fundamentally structured according to requirement of legitimation. No rejection of science’s objectivity. [8/n]

Second: Though this “erosion” Lyotard speaks of may sound ominous, it is only bc the traditional mode of legitimation (metanarrative) has died out that Lyotard finds a plausible solution: each discrete (postmodern) scientific discipline is a self-legitimating language game. [9/n]

Here’s how Pluckrose tricks the reader. Having given a few cherry-picked quotes, she’s created an illusion of expertise, after which she can produce a paragraph like this, which is just one giant “CITATION FUCKING NEEDED!!!!!”



Literally all of these claims are false. [10/n]

Moving on to Foucault, whom Pluckrose calls a relativist. In a sense, he is a relativist. But *not* the sophomoric and sophistical kind who says that any view is as good as any other. Pluckrose paints postmodernism this way every chance she gets, with zero justification. [11/n]

Oy vey. First: the essay Pluckrose lists as the source in endnote 2 is wrong; the correct source is the book Power/Knowledge (1980). And Foucault is *deeply* invested in the individual. See this excerpt from the essay Pluckrose mistakenly lists in n. 2 (lmfao irony on 100) [12/n]

I have no idea wtf Christopher Butler is talking about & no idea where Pluckrose got the idea that Foucault “presents medieval feudalism and modern liberal democracy as equally oppressive.” I checked the Chomsky - Foucault debate (endnote 4), couldn’t find any such claim. [13/n]

Next, we are told Foucault is an extreme cultural relativist, and also that he thinks people are socialized into one of two social classes: oppressor or oppressed. No citations for that--big surprise! For good measure, here are two that suggest otherwise. [14/n]

Next up, Derrida.

We really need to teach critical thinking in public schools. It just does not follow from the fact that “the author of a text is not the authority on its meaning” that “[t]he reader or listener makes their own equally valid meaning.” & D never says this [15/n]

Here Pluckrose is importing the distinctions man/woman & Occident/Orient. The quote about “violent hierarchy” she cherry-picks is taken out of context from a passage where Derrida is explaining the relationship between his notion of deconstruction and Hegelian idealism. 🤦‍♀️ [15/n]

And once again, immediately after she has had her fill of cosplaying as a scholar of postmodern philosophy, Pluckrose launches into wildly unsubstantiated claims. No citations necessary, she thinks; she clearly knows what she's talking about! [16/n]

This goes on and on... “Morality is culturally relative, as is reality itself,” there is a “moral necessity to smash” Enlightenment values and foreground “lived experience” of marginalized groups. Pluckrose has cited precisely ZERO sources that support any of these claims. [17/n]

I’m only like halfway through the piece, but I truly don't have the patience to go on. It’s just too much. Hope you enjoyed this thread about bunny rabbits. [fin]