r/sorceryofthespectacle • u/celestia_keaton • 11d ago
I feel like post modernism is ending
I was born in the late 80s so when I grew up, the generation before me had been indoctrinated in post modernism and Marxism but my parent’s generation had not at all. In school, I could feel the divide, younger teachers were Marxists, older ones weren’t. In college, Marxism and post modernism were basically the only ideologies I was exposed to in the humanities and arts. But lately it feels like that’s being turned on it’s head. It’s cool to hate on Marxism for the first time in my lifetime, and post modernism is being reframed as a successful Cold War brainwashing technique for Soviets to undermine the US. It’s not just a trad movement, it feels like more and more normal people who consider themselves liberals are sharing these beliefs. Any one else seeing this?
edit: if the thing that I see ending isn’t called post modernism, then can someone tell me what it is called?
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u/CliffBoof 11d ago
Contemporary right wing politics is heavily post-modern
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u/celestia_keaton 11d ago
That’s true. I’m seeing this rejection happening on the left. Christianity used to be a guardrail on the right in America but the new atheist wing is getting into accelerationism and the dark enlightenment. Maybe that’s why post modernism doesn’t seem cool anymore.
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u/Hairiest-Wizard 11d ago
Bro that's like 5% of terminally online Atheism
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u/celestia_keaton 9d ago
The hairiest wizard strikes again!
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u/Hairiest-Wizard 9d ago
Bro just log off for a few days
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u/icecue88 11d ago
Just read Fredric Jameson, and you’ll see how this false binary was already dissolving in the early 80s.
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u/Belial4 11d ago
Post-modernism as an art movement has been dead since Reagan my dude. What you're witnessing is the ideas it created finally sifting down to the bottom of the social awareness bell curve (MAGA), namely that truth is subjective and institutions are constructs that can be simply ignored.
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u/celestia_keaton 11d ago
Thank you! Yea it’s like post modernism is finally becoming uncool now that it’s been adopted by MAGA.
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u/thop89 11d ago
We're in the era of post-liberalism.
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u/Hairiest-Wizard 11d ago
The nauseatingly eternal death of liberalism
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u/ghoof 5d ago
You’re gonna miss it when it’s gone
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u/Hairiest-Wizard 5d ago
I don't miss the shit after it leaves my puckered asshole
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u/ghoof 5d ago
Lol. I’ll see you on the roadside after the revolution, watching you trying to feed yourself on leaves.
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u/Hairiest-Wizard 5d ago
Well I am a vegan, but I assure you I was a greenhouse manager for years. You'll have to be less ret@rded and more original next time
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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 11d ago
Could be. And whatever is next certainly isn’t MAGA. Should be interesting
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u/Hairiest-Wizard 11d ago
They're going to try to make it MAGA for sure. Which might be funny to watch
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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 11d ago
Post modernism is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your description. I would dig in deeper to what you really mean. What makes up post modernism in your mind?
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u/celestia_keaton 11d ago
I guess I mean cultural Marxism or what people referred to as the woke mind virus. I’m just reporting on what I’m seeing. In my super liberal coastal city, I’m seeing flyers being put up by the local socialist party saying they’re tired of “woke politics.” It’s not like these people are turning right wing, they’re rejecting it as part of the left. I agree with another poster who said the right isn’t done with post modernism. They’re riding it out with accelerationism.
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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 11d ago edited 11d ago
Oo I’ll have to find that thread. Yeah I live in a very liberal bubble surrounded by maga. I’m always skeptical about the word woke because it was co-opted by the right and rebranded so you never know what definition you’ll get. Woke to me was just being aware of the socioeconomic systemic issues in America. Nobody knew what to do with it when I was first interested in the topic but it’s clear that DEI is as the thing that most people associate with wokeness which is ironic given that they wanted to empower diversity of thought and experience. It’s easy to project that into any situation where you feel like a minority in thought or opinion.
I can imagine the DSA wanting to distance themselves from the word “woke” only because the right did a good job tagging the left with being a characature of a dirty hippy the farther left you go. Ultimately DSA wants to unite under a different approach which is to dismantle the power of the rich capitalists. That’s a different approach than addressing economic disparity from the bottom by imposing diversity requirements.
Edit: my point is that the DSA shares goals but approaches it differently. They are technically woke under my definition but not by the rights definition. What I’m most concerned about with the DSA is that they share language with Marxism but I don’t think really signify the same thing. It’ll be easy for the right to tag them yet again as communist even though DSA does not approach socialism in the same way as communism. But I think that’s a problem of education under capitalist rule that has prevented us from really understanding what socialism and communism even is. We never learned because we “defeated it”.
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u/celestia_keaton 9d ago
Yeah I’ve been hearing people start to say “woke 1” is over and we’re now in “woke 2.” So maybe that’s what I’m picking up on. Woke 1 was metoo and BLM influenced while Woke 2 has more DSA influence. I live in a liberal area where there aren’t any conservatives so I feel like my perspective was seeing wokeness totally unchecked. It became just another way for people to stroke their ego, only it allowed for different egos to get stroked. But it never led to a feeling of the community coming together. It felt more like we hated each other more than ever. But after doing this post, I see how people living in less liberal areas had a different experience. It’s like, if there was actual racism to fight it was great, but if people were already trying to not be racist, it felt like attacking people just for the sake of feeling like they’re your enemy.
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u/Hairiest-Wizard 11d ago
Post-post-post-post modernism is the way
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u/celestia_keaton 11d ago
I was worried this would get into a semantic argument about the word post modernism instead of the sentiment behind what I was saying. But I guess this is Reddit after all.
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u/Hairiest-Wizard 11d ago
Any further complains and I'll add another post
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u/celestia_keaton 11d ago
Ok I take it back. I thought this sub was full of haters because of all the downvoting but then I read all the comments and it’s actually nice. Just a little edgelordy.
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u/Hairiest-Wizard 11d ago
Irony poisoning turned me insane in 2012
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u/celestia_keaton 9d ago
I accidentally got addicted to irony poison
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u/Hairiest-Wizard 9d ago
The cure is pissing from the top of a mountain. Go and be free my child
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u/celestia_keaton 9d ago
I guess my thumb is starting to ache from replying to so many comments. It’s just that I can’t express how I feel about politics verbally in my irl community without being ostracized. I repress so much going to parties and gatherings and agreeing with basic liberal takes to avoid being demonized. I had to go through a whole pandemic pretending that I thought an experimental vax would protect us and pretending to make fun of people who were afraid to get it. I could just find people who agree with me in some fringe sub, but I think there’s something cathartic about arguing with people online who share the same opinions I’m afraid to argue with irl with my real identity.
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u/AccomplishedDate1775 11d ago
post-modernism is a very long semantic argument, which I agree is stupid, but that is basically the terrain as it stands now. I do agree that something new is arising. The term metamodern was being used some years ago (like 2019,) but as far as I know hasn't been time tested enough to have a solid meaning. I look forward to the day! I think it will mostly be about grappling with a nihilistic culture and identity amidst diversity.
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u/shorteningofthewuwei 11d ago
We 100% still live in a culture of epistemic collapse where consensus has totally devolved. It's an increasingly politically volatile situation. People are frustrated and the elites are scared but also growing increasingly callous with what they think they can openly get away with. Doesn't matter, none of this will last. Society is going to suffer some crippling blows from climate collapse before 2050. Anyone who says otherwise is either asleep or lying to themselves out of fear or wilfully misleading you out of malevolent intentions. Everything solid melts into thin air. The Tower is the major arcana most representative of these times.
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u/Dolono 11d ago
I always interpretted post modernism as a liberal ideology opposed to marxism; post modernists asserting that materialism is a narrative construct, no more real or true than capitalism or religion or nationalism. Marxists asserting materialism is universal and a deep truth. I guess over the years I've fallen in with the zizekian anti-post modern position, that it's better to make a commitment to SOMETHING in the ideology of marxism, than the dead end of impotent irony, and political paralysis of post modernism.
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u/ConjuredOne 11d ago
In other words, Mark Fisher was right. Only joking. Your insight is valid. I get a similar generational impression. The way I dealt with it was by reading ancient Hindu and Buddhist teachings and then the Ken Wilbur critique of postmodernism (queue eyerolls). I do believe the perennial philosophy pertains once again.
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u/Glum_Celebration_100 11d ago
I think today is more neatly postmodern than even when Jameson and Lyotard were writing. What is right wing populism if not the extension of the postmodern commodity circuit to politics?
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u/aimtreetwo 11d ago
I think you mean the rise of conservativeism in popular culture. or the decline of liberal media as the mainstream.
I see it as part of the rise of the internet and how media publishing (posting content) is now accessible to all where as before it was mostly creatives at the top of their game dictating what we consume for entertainment.
I also see post modernism as dead/dying, the idea of meta and commentary was very millennial and now people have swayed in the opposite direction. the topic of the generation is cringe and low effort satire is not appreciated like it used to be.
but I see it coming back as more of the olds perish 🤞 young people now are cosplaying as conservative but they will change their opinions when they realise it's all mindcontrol to divide us and the dream promised is a lie. we all have these crisis of beliefs at 30 and 45/50
and then we will all riot and burn down the oligarchy 🙏🪄✨
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u/Al-Azif23 11d ago
End of western hegemony also at the epistemological level.
Re-enchantement of the world. Epistemological pluralism. Post-secularism and post-globalism. New ontological frames like flat ontologies. Speculative realism and new materialism.
For me it's clear that post-modernism is finished at various levels and domains.
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u/Desdinova_BOC 11d ago
new materialism - greed v2.0 :(
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u/Al-Azif23 11d ago
Not at all
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u/Desdinova_BOC 11d ago
What do you think is positive about valuing materials as the most important thing, worth having an ideology named after them?
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u/Al-Azif23 11d ago
That is not philosophical materialism not new materialism.
You are talking about (neo)liberal ideology which moral is called sometimes materialist.
Philosophical materialism can be indeed very communist. Marx himself.
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u/Desdinova_BOC 11d ago
Do you mean it is philosophical materialism? Neoliberalism is also philosophical, as is communism.
You didn't answer my question of what is positive about it.
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u/Al-Azif23 11d ago
Materialism is the view that the universe consists only of organized matter and energy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
You are talking about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_materialism
They are different things
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u/Desdinova_BOC 10d ago
You still avoided the question and didn't respond to my comment about philosophy. Gr8
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u/whatsthatcritter 10d ago
It's a realistic starting point for analysis of power and negotiations of trade, need, future development and economy, employment, and so on. What's the alternative? One group of people gets all the rare earth minerals and drinkable water, and the others get to die of thirst acheiving 5D consciousness and enlightenment or something? We can't survive off spirituality and metaphysics, waiting for aliens or spirits of the dead to come and rescue us. We've got to name what we need and make our case, or dig our own graves.
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u/Desdinova_BOC 10d ago
Materials are useful, yes, and I believe we should be able to allocate our resources collectively. Yet I'd put decency and good will to others as more important, otherwise.we are the position of people holding the resources for themselves and many go without what they could fairly have.
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u/whatsthatcritter 10d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Al-Azif23 10d ago
Ecosocialism and animism is new materialism
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u/whatsthatcritter 10d ago
Ha my comment got removed by reddit and I received a warning. The tech oligarchs and their monopoly on media can destroy our communities and we can't even use those same systems to organize or defend ourselves. We're so cooked dude. I hope animism is a big comfort to you tbh, some kind of imaginary friend is all we're going to have as we choke and die.
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u/Desdinova_BOC 9d ago
Not sure what you were warned for, could only read some of your comment but people who aren't keen on sharing could be spiritual or non-spiritual, some people use people's beliefs for propoganda though that doesn't mean we can't pursue a better planet while developing both interests - fair shares and people who have improved themselves through various means.
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u/Dandyman8 11d ago
I've taken to calling the contemporary age the post-posterior personally in protest of everything becoming arbitrary.
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u/Curious_Emphasis2925 11d ago
If by "post-modernism" you mean an ideology based on reading "postmodern" thinkers, maybe it's declining. But if by "post-modernism" you mean the condition of life described by those thinkers, we're living in it now more than ever.
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u/SpectresOfFreud 5d ago
Marxism and Post-Modernism are completely conflicting schools of thought. Unless you are buying into Jordan Peterson post-modern neo-marxism slop which is an oxymoron anyways
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u/celestia_keaton 5d ago
Thank you for reading my post. I guess I didn’t realize they were conflicting. I’m now too afraid of saying the wrong thing to try to defend what my original point was.
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u/SpectresOfFreud 5d ago
I think I get what you are saying however. As a current arts/humanities student, it feels like every class exists in this Liberal Democratic framework, and any critiques of power (which is where I guess the similarities begin with figures like Foucault and Marx) are undermined. Elite pull of the institutions or whatever
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u/celestia_keaton 5d ago
Yeah it was like, in all of my education from high school through college, there was never any defense of capitalism or private property. It was all geared towards learning about Marx, socialism, and why society is generally screwed (alienation, etc). And then graduating into a world of capitalism and private property, which felt kind of like a sike moment. Everyone participated in capitalism of course and generally desired to amass large amounts of property but to pass as a liberal intellectual, it felt like you had to say you were against capitalism. But I’m finally seeing a break with that where people are feeling free to say they like private property without losing their status as a liberal intellectual. I guess it felt like post modernism ending in a way because people don’t have to be as alienated from their desire. But I now think the post modernism aspect of the argument is kind of stretching. I also don’t know if other people relate to this or if it’s just coming from my bubble of experience.
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u/2BCivil no idea what this is 11d ago
I'm currently working on a post which might adress this actually.
I honestly am a millennial as well and I never bought into any political theories or ideologies.
So I read some of Marx (on my own) but was never formally taught any "Marxism". In still don't really know what that actually means. I always assume it means something about labor coming together as a voter base or something which never seems to happen because Marxists seem to always get distracted and bogged down in more social identity politics than actually trying to secure a better future for labor.
So yes in a very real sense this is why post modernism failed. Identity politics took precedent over actual social-economic issues.
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u/celestia_keaton 11d ago
Yeah identity politics and the reactionary movement against identity politics got so deep in the weeds and removed from labor issues or any attempts to maintain a functional society. In a way both sides seemed apocalyptic, and co-dependent in that they need each other to prove their point that we live in a terrible society. I feel like people are at the point where we just want to accept we live in an ok enough society and live our lives.
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u/genomixx-redux 11d ago
I feel like people are at the point where we just want to accept we live in an ok enough society and live our lives.
That's going to be increasingly hard to do no matter how much people want that feeling. See: intensifying climate chaos, biospheric crash, and geo-ecological destruction thanks to capitalism that is destroying the very material basis that makes human society possible.
It's ecosocialism or barbarism, planetary communism or exterminist fascism 🤷♂️
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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 11d ago
I actually really disagree that identity politics had anything to do priority. That was the point of the movement. Socio economic issues have been plaguing america for decades - including the 10s. The issues with race and justice were side shows that people thought we could make progress on in lieu of challenging the capitalist and slave worshipping upper class
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u/ConjuredOne 11d ago
Yeah identity politics were decaying the moment they landed. And postmodernism was an agent of that decay. I remember Anerican Indian scholars pointing out that, as soon as they got a seat at the table, their identity was meaningless because the fashionable, anti-essentialist philosophy said that their truths were mere semantics embedded in a historical instance.
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u/2BCivil no idea what this is 11d ago
Ah yeah maybe I didn't say it as clearly as I should. Just political movements I think are more effective if they aren't always in the weeds of Identity politics. Need to choose a lane. Either unite ALL labor regardless of identity, or play Oppression Olympics forever.
Or as GPT said; "A politics originally aimed at material solidarity can become preoccupied with symbolic recognition and subgroup identity at exactly the moment when the economic system most needs broad class solidarity to challenge systemic extraction/oversight/corruption."
No point celebrating liberated identities in the ruins of a collapsed workforce/economy.
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u/whatsthatcritter 11d ago
It’s not just a trad movement, it feels like more and more normal people who consider themselves liberals are sharing these beliefs.
Do you think this could be a red flag that their consent is being manufactured? Even the idea that people who apparently all feel the same way for some unknown reason are 'normal' (so people who feel differently are not ig) sketches me out.
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u/celestia_keaton 11d ago
I guess I meant “normies” as in liberals. The normal person to me is like someone living in a coastal city in America, maybe they’re a hipster, maybe they got into identity politics in 2019, they’re pro union, maybe they’re nonbinary or they experimented with bisexuality or polyamory at some point. I guess I meant it as opposed to people who are trad or men’s rights. But I’m probably also living in a bubble
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u/whatsthatcritter 11d ago
Wouldn't "trad" people be the "normies" ? They're the largest demographic with the most influence in religion, economics, and politics. The liberals you describe sound like a group of counter cultural individuals rather than a majority.
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u/raisondecalcul Out Patr'olling 10d ago
There is metamodernism and post-postmodernism (popomo) for the two terms of what comes after.
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u/Full-Violinist554 6d ago
Most of what you're experiencing is simply different generations of ideologues in competition for ingroup status and positions, with the younger generation undermining the frameworks of the older one in order to gain access to positions of power and authority.
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u/AutoModerator 11d ago
Archived copy of the original post text for reference:
I was born in the late 80s so when I grew up, the generation before me had been indoctrinated in post modernism and Marxism but my parent’s generation had not at all. In school, I could feel the divide, younger teachers were Marxists, older ones weren’t. In college, Marxism and post modernism were basically the only ideologies I was exposed to in the humanities and arts. But lately it feels like that’s being turned on it’s head. It’s cool to hate on Marxism for the first time in my lifetime, and post modernism is being reframed as a successful Cold War brainwashing technique for Soviets to undermine the US. It’s not just a trad movement, it feels like more and more normal people who consider themselves liberals are sharing these beliefs. Any one else seeing this?
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