Postmodernism is, in short, a kind of value negative ether, wherein society, life, truth and experience is broken into a self-defeating relativist framework that purports that all things exist in a false equilibrium, wherein realism is separated from reality, and as such, all problems must be confronted in a purely abstract vacuum that produces in its adherent a material inertia.
It is, in its essence, a cycle of idealism and criticism wherein one begets another as you go through life in a kind of fluid conviction that purports to be everything, and yet purports itself as nothing.
This is why, when Foucault talks about his panopticon, his biopolitics, his technology of the self, the audience is tricked into mistaking observation for criticism. This is why both police and anarchists alike will gladly praise Foucault as a genius. Even if, in truth, he was little more than a sexually monstrous stage magician, whose only true talent was hidden compartments, smoke, trapdoors and mirrors.
Postmodernists will often be pedantic, and say “I am not a postmodernist, I am a poststructuralist!” And upon the day that poststructuralism hits the common vocabulary, they will invent some new phrase in order to hide in obscurity.
What is so wonderful about postmodernism is that it is very much the perfect way in which to deflect criticism. By constantly obfuscating and redefining everything through deeper and deeper layers of the same recycled abstracts, as the law becomes morality, and morality becomes philosophy, and philosophy becomes culture, and culture becomes anthropology, and anthropology becomes psychology and psychology becomes culture. And culture becomes philosophy, and philosophy becomes morality, and morality becomes law.
We can see how they put an extraordinary effort into saying absolutely nothing, and if you’re not willing to participate in this painful ceremony of pretense, then they get to call you an idiot.
In fact, what’s even more brilliant is that you don’t even need to study postmodernism in order to be a postmodernist, because it has become so fundamentally impenetrable and void of any kind of tangible arguments that you can say anyone doesn’t understand it and get away with it.
And there is a simple reason for that: Postmodernism cannot be tested, you cannot prove a negative. Postmodernism exists to remove the driving forces of history in some futile effort to preserve neoliberalism. It exists to create a universe wherein good, evil, right, wrong, truth, lies, fact, fiction, society and wasteland are one and the same.
Where everyone is right, because no one is wrong. Where if you have a problem, you solve it rationally rather than materially, as to permit everyone a perverse rebellion which mediates to itself that to be indifferent to power is somehow distinct from being obedient to power. That to rebel in any meaningful sense is to partake in some kind of falsehood, some kind of incorrectness wherein the slave owner and the abolitionist are identical, since both of them have an objective understanding of their condition.
An existence wherein even power itself is stripped down into some sterile value neutral element, that callously purports an arbitrary monochromatic flurry of senseless violence wherein the Fascist and the Jew are but equal participants in a chaotic waltz towards nothing.
A worldview wherein convictions only exist on a technicality, as to avoid the barbaric notions of sincerity, wherein feeble people can get knocked over by a feather.
Postmodernism is to exist in a state of ideological defection, wherein you are religiously, fanatically even, devoted to moving between ideas. Where you never have a singular coherent purpose, as to permit some kind of determination, but is always running away from significance. It is the highest form of slave morality.
Wherein people become so subjugated and broken by the miserable esoterica that rests within the analysis of the analysis of the analysis, that they no longer have a relationship to the world around them. A state they call subjectivity.
Wherein the correct answer is always the path of most resistance, wherein life presents itself as an incoherent impossibility, and the only recourse is some tragic escapism into niche radicalism that promises lofty ideals and ramshackle achievements.
As people retreat into themselves, and in doing so, elude the authentic existence that may only be afforded to those who are fanatically devoted to a righteous path. Who lays down every single deed with utmost sincerity and belief, who is hardened by principles, and educated by experience, who is governed by honour; Who do not hide in the superficies of fleeting spectacle and self-affirmation.
