Wikipedia exists for a reason you know.
In fact it even has the Daniel Dennett quote I like: "Postmodernism, the school of 'thought' that proclaimed 'There are no truths, only interpretations' has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for 'conversations' in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster."
In a nutshell postmodernism is the rejection of knowledge, truth, scientific method, reason, basically all of the enlightenment ideals, because those ideals were conceived to consolidate the power of white males to the detriment of all other groups. Whereas marxism was concerned with instigating class warfare leading to revolution and the forming of a socialist utopia, postmodernism is concerned with instigating identity warfare.
I asked you because I have read the wiki page, and pomo seemed boring and difficult, and I didn't quite get the "spectre haunting the world" feeling that you get from it. Indeed, I particularly don't get the sense that "postmodernism is concerned with instigating identity warfare" which is absurd for many reasons, firstly that postmodernism seems far too incoherent to do anything let alone instigate war.
From all that I've read, the core of postmodernism is a challenge of grand narratives. (This includes Marx's narrative of history being produced as a result of class struggle.)
Postmodernism has indeed challenged the notion that scientific truth is necessarily objective. History has shown that this could well be the case:
1. The measured skull size of Mongloids surpassed that of Caucasoids in the mid-late 20th c, while in the 19th c Caucasoids had consistently higher skull size than other races. This occured at the same time as Asian companies gained a global profile. No genetic changes can occur in 1-2 generations and sweep across the population rapidly enough to create such a gross phenotypic change. The change is either in sampling or measurement.
Full article -
http://bactra.org/sloth/lieberman-on-rushton.pdf
2. Psychiatry as led by the American Psychiatric Association determined that homosexuality was a mental disorder, but the profession completely reversed itself recently. This occurred at the same time as the gay rights' movement gained strength.
3. Max Planck, pretty much the founder of quantum mechanics, said: "Science advances one funeral at a time". He was referring to his observation that scientists who have a powerful position within the academy tend to be older, have fixed views, and by virtue of their position their views persist as the 'consensus' of seemingly objective science.
4. Early psychiatry said that many medical symptoms in women were caused by female hysteria.
I will use the last example. This is an example from the post-enlightenment west. The concept of hysteria (at least according to wiki) is millenia old in the west, and started with male Greek philosophers. In the 19th c, the existing diagnosis of hysteria, a pre-enlightenment concept, was continued and dramatically expanded by doctors, who were all post-enlightenment men of science.
Thus we see that science is capable of reproducing existing societal prejudices packaged in a more objective fashion. I think it is safe to assume that this diagnosis was a product of the prevailing norms regarding the state of women, which itself were the product of male dominance of society over millennia. This diagnosis could be used to keep women in line, or more directly it could be used as sexual stimulation for the male doctors when they treated their patients. Hence this is indeed an example of enlightenment, objective science, created by men, in the service of their own (gender) interest. The 1st and 2nd case can be analysed similarly. In fact there is much about race science to which the same applies.
Since you brought up the enlightenment and its rationalism, I will talk about the race science of Enlightenment thinkers. Some will be quotes without comment, others I'll add a note.
When comparing
Europeans to
Negroes,
Voltaire compared them to different breeds of dog:
The Negro race is a species of men different from ours as the breed of spaniels is from that of greyhounds. The mucous membrane, or network, which Nature has spread between the muscles and the skin, is white in us and black or copper-colored in them.
Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), the Swedish physician, botanist, and zoologist, modified the established
taxonomic bases of
binomial nomenclature for fauna and flora, and was a pioneer researcher in biologically defining
human race. In
Systema Naturae (1767), he labeled five
[20] "
varieties"
[21][22] of human species. Each one was described as possessing the following physiognomic characteristics
"varying by culture and place":
[23]
- The Americanus: red, choleraic, righteous; black, straight, thick hair; stubborn, zealous, free; painting himself with red lines, and regulated by customs.[24]
- The Europeanus: white, sanguine, browny; with abundant, long hair; blue eyes; gentle, acute, inventive; covered with close vestments; and governed by laws.[25]
- The Asiaticus: yellow, melancholic, stiff; black hair, dark eyes; severe, haughty, greedy; covered with loose clothing; and ruled by opinions.[26]
- The Afer or Africanus: black, phlegmatic, relaxed; black, frizzled hair; silky skin, flat nose, tumid lips; females without shame; mammary glands give milk abundantly; crafty, sly, lazy, cunning, lustful, careless; anoints himself with grease; and governed by caprice.[27]
My comment: Linnaeus is the most important figure in pre-Darwinian biology, and his influence and ideas continue today in the way we analyse and cluster species.
Kant argued that human beings were equipped with the same seeds (Keime) and the natural predispositions or characteristics (Anlagen) that when expressed were dependent upon climate and served a purpose due to the circumstance. After this process had occurred, it was also irreversible. Therefore, race could not be undone by changes in climate. "Whichever germ was actualized by the conditions, the other germs would retire into inactivity." Kant stated:
The yellow Indians do have a meagre talent. The Negroes are far below them, and at the lowest point are a part of the American people.
Now, I admit these were easy targets to me since they were pre-Darwinian. But it is important to note that these are all products of the Englightenment. Now, onto post-Darwin - does his theory cut out the batshit in the enlightenment view of race or does it reinforce it?
Franz Ignaz Pruner (1808–1882) was a medical doctor who studied the racial structure of Negroes in
Egypt. In a book which he wrote in 1846 he claimed that Negro blood had a negative influence on the Egyptian moral character. He published a monograph on Negroes in 1861. He claimed that the main feature of the Negro's skeleton is
prognathism, which he claimed was the Negro's relation to the ape.
...
Another
polygenist evolutionist was
Karl Vogt (1817–1895) who believed that the Negro race was related to the ape. He wrote the white race was a separate species to Negroes.
...
Haeckel also wrote that Negroes have stronger and more freely movable toes than any other race which is evidence that Negroes are related to apes because when apes stop climbing in trees they hold on to the trees with their toes, Haeckel compared Negroes to "four-handed" apes. Haeckel also believed Negroes were savages and that whites were the most civilised
(my note: Haeckel is a major influence on current biology)
...
In this book, he classified humanity into various, hierarchized races, spanning from the "Aryan white race, dolichocephalic", to the "brachycephalic", "mediocre and inert" race, best represented by the "
Jew". Between these,
Vacher de Lapouge identified the "
Homo europaeus (Teutonic, Protestant, etc.), the "
Homo alpinus" (
Auvergnat,
Turkish, etc.), and finally the "
Homo mediterraneus" (
Neapolitan,
Andalus, etc.)
I have stayed away from the biggest, most influential and brilliant post-Darwinian statistician, Sir Francis
Galton, Fellow of the Royal Society. As you said, there is always wiki to explore his oeuvre.
All of these were Enlightenment figures, indeed most of them were proud products of the rationalist tradition, who produced utter junk to justify their position in the world and reinforce the world view they had grown up with. Unlike the Pionner fund crowd of today, there was no material reward for any of them to produce the bile they did - they were simply following the scientific method of making an observation, proposing a hypothesis, and in some cases, testing it experimentally.
Finally, you need to read some Marx, and maybe the Standford philosophy page on PoMo; to just be blunt with what I thought the moment I saw your post - your understanding is outrageously shallow and mostly wrong on both subjects.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
was remarkably easy to read
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/
was, like its subject, insanely complex and I gave up midway.
I am a biologist, and these are not my topics. I took a single literature course by a professor who hates social justice and dislikes postmodern literature, the main description she had of PoMo was the challenge to established forms especially to any meta-narrative (narrative to explain other narratives), and google seems to confirm that. I have never read anything by Marx fully on my own, and never touched him academically. But I know enough to tell you that your definitions aren't correct.
@redman5
Please read up on what modernism is. It was exactly the modernist degeneracy that the 30s right opposed, and I have a feeling you won't be a fan.
Further, deconstruction in the context of postmodernism refers to the way postmodernists read and interpret texts, not the way they propose to restructure society.
DMReporter leads the ethics and race relations syllabus.