Postmodernism as a reactionary intellectual movement.

Abstract

Postmodernism emerged in the 1970s as a movement in art, music,architecture, social theory and Philosophy. In the areas of social theory and Philosophy it is often criticized as either being so mundane and simplistic as to be useless or so meaningless as to be total nonsense. Yet postmodernism managed to gain such access to academia as to determine the direction of the fields of Sociology,Political Theory, Literature and Philosophy. While agreeing with the criticism that postmodern works are so meaningless as to be nonsensical, I believe that the real dangers of postmodern writers are the degrading and reactionary tendencies that they engender. After demonstrating the meaninglessness of works by Jacques Derrida and other postmoderns, I argue that this meaninglessness is important to academia because in an environment of publish or perish, academicians are so desperate for publications that they find it easy to offer interpretations of these works. Obviously works that have no internal meaning, such as those of Derrida, can be interpreted in anyway and seem reasonable. Some of these interpretations actually contradict one another. Therefore postmodernism is popular just because its nonsensical nature allows for equally meaningless publications. Postmodernism is also reactionary. After the social revolutions of the 1960s and the turn to the left of academia with the rise of such schools as neo-Marxism and Critical Theory, those who had power in academia and political society welcomed a movement that would use up intellectual energy in useless exercises, futile interpretations of pointless publications or pursuits of mundane social phenomena.