Oblivious Maximus
I am the worm
The Glaring Blind Spot of the 'Me Too' Movement
I hope the irony of the authors last name is not lost on her.
I hope the irony of the authors last name is not lost on her.
If Mort Divine ruled the world
- Thread starter Zephyrus
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Einherjar86
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CiG
Room with a View
So you're completely fine with throwing around criticism of him while you also admit you're ignorant of his views? Sure I'll get over myself, I'll use your immensely humble disposition as my standard.
Also, yes you do act like you know all his views and I wouldn't call it a crusade but for someone who pretends not to care about him enough to actually go deeper you sure do post drivel anytime he's even mentioned slightly.
This is the kind of thing that annoys me and I wish I could just ignore it and move on, but it's pretty clear when someone says something like this that they haven't watched or read too much of his work. He doesn't conflate postmodernism and Marxism, he often puzzles over why he finds that the two things are linked today, why there is an overlap of people who ascribe to the thinking present in both worldviews.
He's expressed confusion over it many times and has attempted explanations many times.
Could you provide an example of Peterson being a reductionist when it comes to postmodernism and Marxism?
no country for old wainds
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- Nov 23, 2002
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well 'postmodernism' is a little like the alt-right (which peterson is always quick to avoid pigeonholing) except even moreso, in that it wasn't a conscious, focused ideological movement, just a loose sprawl of ideas which arose as a response to modernism (which itself was pretty loose and sprawling) - it's a pretty hard thing to define in a satisfying way. peterson does make it clear that he's using the term to mean a disdain for and dissolution of hierarchical structures though, so while you can quibble about whether it's a correct use of the term (i'd say it's limited but not wrong as such, that's surely one of the most common ideas running through it), it doesn't really matter once you know what he means by it. i don't think he equates postmodernism and marxism either so much as believing that postmodernism (as described above) inevitably morphs into marxism because it isn't sustainable as an ideology itself.
all that said, i do wish he'd stop using it in such a buzzwordy way, it doesn't really come across very well and stops a lot of serious scholars from engaging his ideas from what i've seen.
all that said, i do wish he'd stop using it in such a buzzwordy way, it doesn't really come across very well and stops a lot of serious scholars from engaging his ideas from what i've seen.
CiG
Room with a View
no country for old wainds
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i find he's pretty maligned as a pseud on philosophy boards (though he has his defenders too) and his use of 'postmodernism' seems to be the main bugbear people have, especially because he takes a lot of his ideas about postmodernism from a particular book (i forget the name but he mentions it now and again) that isn't very well respected either, and has admitted himself he hasn't read derrida and the like directly because they're 'unreadable'. i do find that pretty pedantic at times though, so long as he makes it clear what he means by the word does it really matter? i don't mind people criticising him whatsoever but many of his critics very obviously haven't listened to him for more than like 10 or 20 minutes (and many of them think that's enough ammo to publish snarky articles about how dangerous he is apparently).
Dak
mentat
Notable writers like Foucault were intensely focused on undermining Western hierarchies. There is similar language of struggle and oppression. Fans of people like Foucalt tend to not also choose Adam Smith as their favorite economist.
Einherjar86
Active Member
One example, bravo.
Lyotard is probably considered to be more genuine as a postmodernist than Foucault (if there’s such a thing as genuine postmodernism—no country already covered this) and he wasn’t interested in undermining Western hierarchies. In fact, he abdicated responsibility during the student riots.
You think that representational critique, a la Baudrillard and Derrida, translates into political motivations toward disorder. This isn’t the case. Social critics aren’t looking to overthrow the patriarchy, they’re just tracing various avenues of cultural representation. Derrida wasn’t out to undermine hierarchical social structures, and neither was Luhmann, Deleuze, Baudrillard, etc. Foucault determines your entire perspective on postmodernism, and that’s why your view is reductive.
My problem has to do with Peterson’s use of postmodernism as a buzzword, like no country said. He appeals to it as a specific focus of study when in fact it’s a grab bag of different political perspectives, allegiances, and methodologies.
Dak
mentat
I haven't read Baudrillard beyond some quotes/passage selections, and only a little Deleuze, so I can't speak definitively as to "what they were looking to do", but it seems as if you think that they can only have been looking to undermine hierarchy if they joined riots. Questioning any narrative is inherently undermining, to some degree, regardless of the accuracy of the critique. Secondly, the degree to which these writers are read and regurgitated to undergraduates and tumblrites with no broad framework for nuanced interpretation, familiarity with the history of philosophical discourse, basic principles of logic, etc., leads the the writers to becoming sources of bitesize justification for "fighting the man", which in this case is "capitalism", of which the easily available opposite is communism. Not everyone has spent a decade getting to your familiarity with the subject, and most people in undergraduate studies lack the cognitive tools to do so even if they wished to, to say nothing of tumblrites. Peterson may be wrong about postmodernism qua postmodernism, but he is right about what it means to his targets, as well as the combination of "postmodernism" and economic marxism.
Einherjar86
Active Member
I’ll agree that representational critique exhibits subversive tendencies, but it’s really nothing like the kind of radical political action associated with traditional Marxism. I understand that he’s speaking to people for whom the difference is negligible; but if it’s going to become a firebrand to motivate people politically, then I’m going to take issue with how he uses the word.
I have familiarized myself with these writers, but not contemporary behavioral psychologists. These vague “postmodernists” aren’t going out of their way to malign current psychological discourse—they leave that to the experts in the field, i.e. psychologists. When Peterson reduces all of postmodernism to some form of post-Foucaultian neo-Marxism he does a disservice to his listeners/readers.
rms
Active Member
Oblivious Maximus
I am the worm
Dak
mentat
Dak
mentat
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mb3ybp/what-being-gored-by-a-bull-taught-me-about-healthcare
"I engage in reckless behavior and am mad not everyone is bending over backwards to pick up the pieces it leaves."
"I engage in reckless behavior and am mad not everyone is bending over backwards to pick up the pieces it leaves."
rms
Active Member
Dak
mentat
Well that piece was philosophically incoherent, but parts are true in isolation. People wouldn't think my wife is a veteran (for instance), and there are female veterans that obviously are vets and don't reintegrate well. Not exactly novel problems for veterans regardless of sex, but the "damned if you do/don't" nature of this sort of leftist female word vomit gets old.
CiG
Room with a View
This is essentially what I took away from it. I'm ignorant to what it's like to be a veteran but it seems to me that this damned if you do damned if you don't attitude is the philosophical underpinning of so much leftist writing. Seems to me to come from a fundamental rejection of the idea that you should take responsibility for the outcome of your actions.
Responsibility is a leftist's Beelzebub.
The Ozzman
Melted by feels
HamburgerBoy
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- Sep 16, 2007
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Including those Old Spice commercials dilutes the value of that compilation tbh. Clicking around (didn't watch nearly all of them) others were stretches as well. The problem isn't anti-white commercials/sentiment, it's that there's an absence of anti-black commercials/sentiment. These commercials are meaningless and any white person offended may as well kill themselves, but perpetuating positive stereotypes causes real harm that convinces failing minority groups that they're doing fine because they are perceived to be doing fine in some inconsequential aspect of life (e.g. sports). The leftist myth of stereotype harm/reinforcement is one of the biggest loads of shit. Sports were (and probably still are) the most violent and cliqueish aspect of the average American adolescent male's life, yet despite it all blacks managed to overcome many legal prohibitions and social hurdles when managers realized there were many capable black athletes out there. That flies right in the face with the idea that blacks (or women or whatever other group) avoid becoming engineers because of insurmountable stereotypes, which must therefore be remedied by social conditioning presenting and government lawyers demanding underrepresented minorities in those positions regardless of the actually qualified proportions relative to the total population.
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