Who’s Afraid of Post Modernism?

So, I was watching Hilary Layne (of The Second Story fame)’s video: Modern Villains are Pitiful and Impotent. I had been subscribed to her for a while now, as she was releasing pretty good videos on writing technique and all that good stuff. When she started to pivot towards more politically charged content I was intrigued, I was curious to hear what she had to say. And oh boy, she doesn’t understand Post Modernism. In fact, she seems to not understand what post modernism even is outside of the nebulous evil that the average conservative tends to assign it to.

I was so annoyed by such a utterly incorrect definition that I had to write this, just to talk about why people are so scared of this philosophy for the utterly wrong reasons.

In the unlikely event Hilary Layne reads this, I just want to say.

Hi, I know that we probably don’t see eye to eye politically, and that is fine within reason. I find your videos very interesting to watch, you are genuine and you write fiction rather than use your fiction to puppet your political views. It is very rare to see a right-wing creative that is creative rather than a mere propagandist. I am going to be critical, but I hope that I can show how you might be misunderstanding Post Modernism as a critical lens, philosophy and style. I am not coming from a place of malice; I am just a fellow author and aspiring scholar looking to connect with people and provide some insight into the social sciences.

In this blog post I want to chat about Post Modernism, how conservatives misuse the concept and what Post Modernism really is and why it might be scary or dangerous in a more real sense. I hope that I can help cut through the culture war chaff, and maybe it will be good for all of us.

So, Hilary, if you are willing to hear me out, I shall try to explain to you what Post Modernism is and where I believe you are mistaken. Along with your fan base and the larger conservative movement.

What really is Post Modernism

So, what even is Post Modernism? That can be a slippery concept, as there are the philosophical, the theoretical and the stylistic approaches to the concept. I will be focusing on these three as I don’t have the knowledge to explain what Post Modernist architecture is. The MI6 building is very pretty but I cannot for the life of me explain why it should be considered Post Modern or how it embodies the core tenets of the architectural movement. The same goes for music, I have no idea what Post Modern music is, but it exists. So, I shall focus on literature and film for this blog post.

As said before, Post Modernism can be rather difficult to define properly, however the one that I believe to be the best way to describe is as a form of skepticism. The rejection of the notion of objective reality. It follows in the modernist tradition of skepticism towards grand narratives and rejection of such narratives. What differs post modernism from modernism is that the latter rejects grand narratives in favour of finding the truth in its rejection. Lovecraft rejected the notion that humanity was in any way special and revealed our insignificance in the wider universe. James Joyce and Virginia Woolf rejected religiosity and heterosexual orthodoxy as another example. Kafka rejected the notion that through hard work you will gain respect and recognition in society etc. There is an inherent iconoclasticism in modernism either on the technical level (James Joyce and Woolf with stream of consciousness) or on the thematic level (Lovecraft and Kafka) that rejected naturalistic styles that marked the Augustan and Romantics with their epic tales of good and evil etc.

 Post Modernism, aside from being skeptical of truth, is more interested in ironic explorations of history. Coupled with the blurring of between high and low culture, intertextual influence and self-referral texts. Think American Psycho, that book is all about the ironic revisitation of the 80s from the perspective of a potentially murderous wall street banker. The low culture of the exploitation novel mixed with the high culture of historical fiction.

Scream’s self-referential, heavily intertextual narrative interweaves with the ironic revisitation of 80s slashers, offering critique and satire while being a horror movie about the subject it is criticizing. The subversion of many tropes, all self-aware, allow for an experience that invigorated the horror genre for a whole new generation.

These are some of the mainstream examples of Post Modernist literature/cinema. Other instances would be Final Destination’s use of narcissistic narrative to turn props into elements of murder and has characters interpreting the foreshadowing set up by the movie. As well as the rejection of any meaning to death’s sadistic plans. There is also Gone Girl with the rejection of genre conventions, the irony of the murdered wife not being that and the use of narrative to dissolve truth itself. Can’t forget about the use of intertextuality through sleazy talk shows and blurring of high and low culture with romance and the murder mystery.

I deliberately chose mainstream examples to illustrate my point, not once do the people so scared of Post Modernism ever point to the likes of American Psycho or Scream. Instead, they include Marxism, Feminist and Queer themes for whatever reason. They believe that these critiques, with their well-defined heroes and villains (Prols vs bourgeoisie, Women vs Patriarchy and queer people vs homophobia) and epic tales of struggle between the two warring factions are Post Modernist. This brazen display of double think is extremely frustrating to watch.

Maybe I spoke too soon, Hilary Layne and people like her seem to genuinely believe there is no contradiction. 

It’s not a double think if they don’t know what they are talking about, it’s not a double think if they lack the information fed to them by Big Brother.

And it’s a shame, because Post Modernism in its style and theoretical framework can all be extremely enjoyable and vulnerable to the culture. Less well-known books like If on a Winter’s Night, A Traveller is one of the wildest books I have had the pleasure of reading, primarily because it messes with what even makes a book, delivering an experience like none other. Undertale, Doki Doki Literature Club and Superhot all deliver amazing experiences that test the genres they are a part of and provide some of the most memorable stories in gaming.

To reject Post Modernism dogmatically, doesn’t just deny the existence of good from such a style and such a framework, but damages the culture by restricting what you can do with art. Restricting creativity and stifling innovations because people are too scared of things they don’t understand. They stifle because they fear the notion that reality is malleable, they want to feel like they are in control of their reality, that their reality is the one true reality. Post Modernism threatens that security, Post Modernism reveals how fragile our realities can be, or how realities can be constructed.

It is ironic then, that the rejectors of Post Modernism, due to the lack of education, unwillingly indulge in the very thing they are so scared of.

The Accidental Post Modern Conservative

Spend any time online, especially in more conservative circles and you might stumble across mentions of the idea of Post Modernism. This is often spoken in hushed tones, often with the bemoaning of the loss of western culture through this evilness.

Post Modernism is according to the conservative political commentator/audience member is one of the many nebulous evils that are tearing apart western culture through it’s pervasive rot. Often conflated with other critical theories like Feminist, Queer and Marxist critical theory.

Former intellectual and full-time culture warrior Jordan Peterson appears to be the instigator of introducing Post Modernism into the culture war. His Famous Postmodern Neo Marxism describer for all things wrong in Academia sounds scary and plausible to his audience.

But, as established previously, to lump Marxism, let alone Neo-Marxism (whatever that is supposed to mean) with Post Modernism results in a nonsensical piece of word salad. The two are mutually incompatible due to the presence of an epic tale of class struggle vs skepticism of any absolutes and the desire to erase said absolutes.

Assigning such word salad to Post Modernism unironically is a Post Modern act, as it not only erases the concept of the generally agreed upon terms for the concept, and replaces it with a whole new, vague concept that is ultimately meaningless. The intertextual usage of Marxist with Post-modernism, the mixture of genres as related to critical theory and the aforementioned irony as all made manifest through the usage of Post Modern Neo Marxism.

When conservatives like Hilary Layne use this kind of terminology, such as when she strangely grouped Feminism with Post- Modernism in her video “The Antihero Is a Lie”. Never mind that Feminism is chiefly about studying gender relations depicted within texts, such as the manifestation of patriarchy within The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe for example. The Post Modernist wouldn’t be as interested in gender relation or roles, rather interested in engaging in ironic discourse with the subject or examining the high and low culture intersection in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe as some examples.

 Hilary Layne is educated, but that education is limited by the tribal dogma of her political affiliation. While I don’t think the whole constellation of beliefs has taken root yet, the fact that she has no idea what she is talking about regarding Post Modernism suggests that she is at risk of consuming more dogma. And given what the right wing is like in the US right now, I would rather try to disrupt that any way I can.

Another thing I have noticed with Hilary Layne, is her insistence that there is a right way to study things and a wrong way of doing so. Close reading, structuralist readings of texts it seems according to her are the only good readings to do. And while I do agree with her to an extent, close reading is the approach I believe to be the fairest way to meet a text on its own terms.

However, there is a limit to that, sometimes a critical lens can be used to study a particular aspect of the text, be it the Post-Colonial analysis of Gone with the Wind in how it depicts slavery. Or Marxism analysis of Neuromancer or even Psychoanalysis readings of Hamlet. Yes, I fucking hate Psychoanalytic theory as it feels like I am writing academic fanfiction, but there is some merit in there. Not as much as Queer or Feminist theory but it is there. To dismiss all critical theories out of hand, out of the dogmatic reaction to what has been deemed corruptive of literary readings is not only incurious, but also downright anti-intellectual.

I can agree that theories can be mishandled and misused by the student, including Post Modernism, which results in strange readings of texts of which meaning is mangled beyond repair. Much like any tool, theory must be used with care and respect to the text to ensure you are enhancing your reading rather than imposing your view onto the text (which is what I felt most often with Psychoanalytic criticism). So yes, Hilary Layne, I do agree with you that there are problems with a purely theoretical framework, but I disagree with you on your dismissal of the whole concept of theory.

I fear that you, much like so many of your tribe are seeing reality being erased, that the reality is denaturalised in favour of the narcissistic focus on what the tribe deems to be real, deems to be proper, ironically appealing to a past that doesn’t exist but instead of a vague notion of a fictionalised past. Your audience seems to think the same as well, getting Post Modernism and Marxism into the same to create some strange ideological monster to be afraid of.

I won’t go into the surprising fluidity of reality, the irony poison and the intermingling of highbrow and low brow culture clashes on the right. I don’t believe those are relevant to you Hilary Layne, but I do urge you to examine other factions of your party to spot some of these Post Modernist elements in your tribe, through Qanon, your current government or your own reflexive reactions towards anything outside of close reading.

And the most trying element of this whole garbled ideological rejection is that they miss the very real, very dangerous misuse of Post Modernism as the philosophical framework. Which I shall get into now, because, despite what people have sometimes said about my willingness to work with the concept.

What is scary about Post Modernism

To reiterate, theory and philosophy are tools which can be used to better understand the world around us and the literature we consume. I first became interested in Post Modernism after I studied and understood what it even was and witnessed the continued fragmentation of reality over social media and how that has affected us. I am interested in how people see the world and how societies construct their realities.

That I think is what makes Post Modernism useful as a framework, you have to acknowledge the fluidity of reality to better understand how people see the same thing in different ways. This is particularly useful when examining evil, such as with Patrick Bateman or Amy Dunne, both monstrous characters with very distorted views on the world and themselves.

Evil has a very hostile relationship with reality, nobody wants to be seen as evil, so they bend their own perceptions to make themselves be the good guys. For reference see most genocidal governments or authoritarian states. They have to construct a reality where they are the good people fighting evil. No matter how much erasure of the real, the inducement of irony or reframing culture into what is high, acceptable culture against what is low or quote on quote degenerate art, they are always the good guys.

But there is a darker side to Post Modernism, a point that Hilary Layne makes: That villainy is subjective, or that evil is not something definite. Everyone has tragic backstories; everyone is just one bad day away from killing people. Moral greyness reigns supreme in Post Modernism since such a lens is suspicious towards the claim that absolute good or evil exists.

While there is truth to the notion that people don’t kick puppies for fun. When moral greyness is used to excuse or downplay good or evil, this is an example of Post Modernism being misused by the author.

The other, more insidious misuse by the theorist comes from the rejection of reality itself. While not a unique element to the human experience, Post Modernism provides a philosophical lens for which any reality can be rejected for whatever reason. In Beginning Theory, An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Peter Barry describes how Baudrillard “maintained that the Gulf War….never happened, that was really took place was a kind of televisual virtual reality….”[1] This sentiment has become all the more important recently, as AI generated images and videos further distort reality and allow for bad actors to sow distrust in what is even real. Post Modernism as a framework, as a philosophical concept, allows for the destruction of reality, the rise of a Phillip K Dick dystopia where reality is always in flux, where what you believe in, what you believe to be real, might just be a complete hallucination.

Notice, that all of this is never talked about by the likes of Hilary Layne or people within her tribe. Because she doesn’t understand what Post Modernism is, she cannot comprehend the very real damage such a concept can do when it is mishandled or abused. Instead, it becomes part of the Post Modernist abuse of reality, a nebulous thing that she and others like her can cower before but end up perpetuating the threat it holds.

Because you, Hilary Layne, know what is real, you know what real academic study is and what is the threat to western culture is. Never mind the fact that you group incompatible concepts together, never mind that you exclusively focus on left wing violence but never seem to be interested in what your side perpetuates. You are not always the good guys, neither am I. We must reject the narcissistic focus on our own stories to see the other and consider what is true, rather than what we believe to be true. To be afraid of Post Modernism, we must be afraid of it for the right reasons. We need to put reality back together in order to live together.

Who is Afraid of Post Modernism?

So, who is afraid of Post Modernism? Well, I for one am. My fascination with the topic is born in part out of fear from its misuse and the destruction wrought upon our minds and ability to perform civil discourse. I also love it for the ways it can wonderfully explore the nature of evil and how we perceive ourselves, how we build up our little pockets of reality, and how cultures create their own reality.

Hilary Layne and her ilk are afraid of it but not for reasons actually real. They view it as part of academia’s (the left’s) attack on the American way. They view it as part of the left wing’s eldritch attempts to subvert and destroy what they believe to be America, whatever that might be.

They are afraid of it as it embodies everything they fear about the opposition, the cosmic horror nightmare they have dreamt up.

Those who however understand the term Post Modernism will know to fear it for the threat it poses to reality itself.

We as a society need to work against the creation of pseudo realities, we cannot work together if we cannot occupy the same plane of reality.

Hillary, if you have read this far, I know I have said some harsh things towards you and your political group. I hope that I have offered an alternative perspective and some information for you to consider. If you ever want to chat about books and literature, I would love to do so.

 And so this marks the end of the year! Thank you so much for a great year of books and intelligent conservation. Here is for the next round

Footnotes:

Beginning Theory: An introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, Peter Barry, Manchester University press Oxford 2009

[1] Beginning Theory: An introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory p91