So maybe one of you galaxy brains can help me out here, as I am not too familiar with postmodernism.
So I was watch this contrapoint video on lobsterman, and she said this youtu.be/4LqZdkkBDas?t=17m51s lets ignore that we also put right wing idpol into the same catagory, but the next part is important
This postmodernist take seems to fit what I see on leftypol. The view that race, gender, sexual orientation, etc, are socially constructed and will stop existing as catagories or identities, will or should stop existing as meaningful catagories of people.
Now I am not sure if this is true, does postmodernism actually say this? If so, is the anti-idpol seen aspoused on leftypol a sort of postmodernist take, seemingly at odds with the modernist view of marxism. Marxism sees the world as a struggle between two definate groups, the proles and the bourgs, it is a modernist philosophy. Is my thinking correct? If it is, is it even at odds with each other? Can it not be compatible by postulating that class is not something that can be deconstructed as it is rooted in economic ownership, whereas race is deconstructable, as it is not rooted in anything concrete? Or is leftypol anti-idpol definitively different from this postmodernist view?
He is right about what pomos want, but it is not the opposite of general identity politics. Rather, pomos believe in consensus reality and that these social constructs are real and need to be accepted as facts.
Marxism and postmodernism are fundamentally incompatible. Period. There is absolutely no exception. In fact, the rise of postmodernism was spurred by anti-Marxist sentiments in left wing philosophy (which were in turn partially the result of COINTELPRO).
David Morris
dont buli contrapoints
Do you have any interesting things that I can read watch that explains postmodernism to people with not enough free time?
Thomas Mitchell
Googled it, didn't know he was a tranny. You get the point. Postmodernism is the most convoluted school of philosophy by a substantial margin, so, no. It's confusing and difficult to tell what postmodern writers really mean because their language is extremely obscure.
Cameron Russell
Fair enough
Wyatt Garcia
From my limited knowledge of postmodernism, it postulates that literally everything is a social construct. This isnt as memey as it sounds, but it goes back to Nietzsche, who was the first to theorize that the physical world was less important that the meaning humans assign to it. It is this meaning that defines how humans relate to the world, because it constructs how they understand themselves in relation to it. Furthermore this meaning is the product of social and power relations to a large degree, Nietzsche points this out by looking at language and its evolution. For example he takes a word like "noble", which is obviously a word for the feudal ruling class, but also means "good, admirable, righteous", etc. He points out that this is no accident, and that the association is a direct product of the dominant position of the noble class.
Postmodernists take this understanding of society and reality and attempt to use it for the purposes of emancipation, arguing that by breaking down the webs of meaning in our language, media, culture, etc. we can better understand our power relations and hopefully improve them. Despite this however postmodernists tend to be incapable of creating any positive political project, since any political order will have a new set of power relations inherent in it, which themselves will have to be deconstructed. Its kind of like running on a treadmill.
As for how this relates to race, it inevitably leads to a kind of gender/racial abolitionism that many on leftypol would admire, but because it rejects materialism it is forced to turn to shit like representation, pronouns, safe spaces, etc. that we currently associate with SJW nonsense. I dont necessarily think that this is a necessary conclusion of postmodernists, in fact I think it had more to do with basic bitch liberals than anything else, but many postmodernists are also SJWs.
Connor Cox
cry me a river
This is precisely why I despise idpol leftists. If this is the justification for idpol, then you sound like a retard when you criticize nationalists.
Can someone explain how idpol leftists can say that Gender is a social construct but also that transgender people exist? Wouldn't the existence of transgender prove essentialists correct. Saying there is a such a thing as a female brain (or mind) implies that female is a meaningful distinction and not socially constructed.
idpol is dumb my brain hurts.
Kevin Bennett
Definitely read some Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil and The Geneology of Morals are good places to start. Just remember that Nietzsche has a tendency (imo on purpose) to weave his own personal sentiments into his critiques, so if you read some hyper reactionary sounding shit (strong dominate the weak, etc), its probably just his own opinion, and not the logical conclusion of his deconstruction of morality and meaning.
Only bit of Eastern philosophy I've read so far was the Bhagavad Gita and I loved it. Unfortunately my reading list is backed up by a book on medieval catholic theology right now.
Lincoln Campbell
That wasnt the point of my post though… I am against idpol as well, I was just curious if this angle towards identity politics was a sort of postmodernism or not.
Interesting
is nietzsche really as big of an edgelord as they say?
Josiah Rivera
Yes, he's extremely elitist and misanthropic, but he's still brilliant and everybody should read him. He's also a bit of a cunt to his readers in that he intentionally mixes his own personal subjective sentiments into his critiques and analyses, so you kind of have to sift through his writing to separate the two. For example when he talks about the weakness and inferiority of the herd and the nobility of the strong, that's his own opinion, as well as a pessemistic assessment of the capacities of the average person. However he's not saying that you necessarily have to hold the same ideals and value the same things he does, and in fact if you read Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he actively encourages his readers to do precisely the opposite, to reject Nietzsche's values and create their own.
Adrian Myers
In my opinion it's a mix of contempt, misery, but also hope. Nietzche was sick most of his life, suffering from a brain tumor, syphilis, and having a mental breakdown upon seeing a horse being beaten by its owner, he wasn't really misogynistic but was butthurt about being turned down by the love of his life 3 times. As he continues to suffer from said syphilis the books get more and more grandoise as they go on, you'll notice this if you read them in order (and you should for any series imo).
Wyatt Howard
How's the working class not an identity tho? Im a brainlet who still has ways to go, but I just dont feel connection to the broader working class, and I work construction without any union or registration and basically if I get injured I dont know what I'll do and my pay is kinda shitty too.
Listen, I get people are legitimately exploited and that rent is bullshit and that capitalism is an extremely harmful way of organizing society to the majority of people. But just blaming everyone else and never taking any personal responsibility doesnt get you far either. What about the workers who stink like piss? What about all these fucks I have to smell who do not shower for weeks and we all carry heavy bags of materials in the scorching sun 10 hours a day? What about the lazy ones who do not show up for work and then the boss yells at you for their part not being done? What about functioning retards who you just know are getting severely injured by the end of the week and you just dont want to be around when it happens? What about the boozed up forklift drivers ripping up whole cement bags you gotta shovel manually back into containers or your pay gets reduced?
This might sound really edgy but I hate the capitalists AND the working class. I need to start feeding street dogs or something, if it keeps going on like this I might end up in a mental institution one day.
This PDF maybe for a basic historical overview. Stanford encyclopedia is also generally good for philosophy explanations. The only "postmodernist" primary texts I have read are by Baudrillard. Like says the writing is pretty obscure, and while it can be interesting at times, I wouldn't recommend it to someone with little free time. If you really have a hard-on for primary texts I know that Lyotard wrote a book called "the postmodern explained to children" (not sure if that title accurately reflects the content though).
Short answer: Yes Long answer: "I know my fate. There will come a day when my name will recall the memory of something frightful—a crisis the like of which has never been known on earth, the memory of the most profound clash of consciences and the passing of a sentence upon all that has before been believed in, demanded and sanctified. I am not a man, I am dynamite. And with it all there is nothing of the founder of a religion in me. Religions belong to the rabble; after coming into contact with religious people I always feel that I must wash my hands."
Carson Rivera
Would add Twilight of the Idols, i liked that one best and it's very short, seems like a good introduction
The "working class" is an identity only if it's something you wish to affirm and preserve. Marxists seek to abolish the proletariat, which as you say, is a shitty stunted existence, defined by alienation from the means of production. Being proletarian tend to prevent people from properly developing as a human being, producing much of the shitty antisocial behavior you see around you. It's only through the abolition of capitalism that you will be free form this crap. So don't organise with your fellow workers because you like them and wish to help them, do it because you have a shared interest in getting rid of a society that not only treats you like shit, but produces the very idiots that you wish to escape from.
Christian Davis
That is why it is not an identity: it matters in your life, regardless of your personal feelings regarding it. It is not a part of who you are as a person.
Austin Reed
You are working class no matter how you feel about it, no matter where you are, no matter how much culture changes.You are working class so long as capitalism exists. And when we abolish capitalism, classes seek to exist.
Why?
The point about class is that despite you hating their guts, you both have the same interest. The smelly guy, the forklift guy, etc. Your boss exploits you, capitalism exploits you, you all have a vested interest in both unionizing and abolishing capitalism.
Elijah Rivera
seize
Camden Ross
Minority view at best. Socialism does not seek to and does not in itself abolish any of these identities. Neither will it end racism, homophobia, and so on, though one would hope that it somehow what takes the sting out of it via the more egalitarian and objective relations of production.
Now of course any of these distinctions can be used by the capitalists as a vector for dividing the working class against itself, to market products, to create a pseudo-struggle for people to throw their time and passions at while capitalist class relations remain firmly in place or are even strengthened by incorporating previously marginalized groups, etc., so more often than not socialists will have to deal with the ill effects of idpol, left or right. We are anti-idpol mostly in that sense. But that's about as far as you can go with general statements.
beleave it or not, I mistyped this on my keyboard in the early morning. English is my second language, seek and seize only has one phonetic letter different and I am dyslectic.
Juan Butler
There's an issue with saying things like this though, post-modernism isn't a single school of thought. Some of it is (not intersectionality in my opinion because it ignores material dialectics) like Baudrillard, who added sign value to use and exchange value, some of it isn't.
I know what social construction means. If gender is social constructed, how can someone be transgender?
Lucas Phillips
If gender is socially constructed then it isn't an innate characteristic
If it isn't an innnate characteristic, then how can someone be born into the wrong body?
Luke Reyes
wrong is a social construct
Kevin Morales
I think that there's a difference between dysphoria which is a medical phenomenon that exists whether or not gender is a social construct, and not conforming to the traditional gender spectrum, which often implies that gender is in fact innate. I would argue that validating the identity of those with dysphoria does not contradict the notion of gender as a social construct, as their condition has a biological basis, while validating the second group would come into conflict with that belief.
What is and isn't classified as a medical phenomenon is also a societal determination. Neither the biological nor medical exist in a categorical pure land. They exist here and now, with us, and are therefore too constructions of this society.
That isn't to say, however, they have no basis in material reality; it is to say that this material reality is purposed by ideology, technical knowledge (insofar as it's separate from ideology), and our technological capabilities.
That would contradict gender being a social construct as directly as possible, supposing that the identification with the alternative arises solely from biology. One is judging oneself to be the other gender based on that internal identity at odds with the outward sex.
Matthew Cook
I would argue that dysphoria could have a basis in sex, which is not a construct, rather than gender (ie. someone experiences dysphoria due to being unhappy with their assigned sex rather than assigned gender). I would say that trans people are subject to the societal pressures of gender roles just as much and probably much more so than cis people, so being uncomfortable with assigned sex is therefore closely associated with being uncomfortable with assigned gender, but I think what defines dysphoria from a material perspective would be the rejection of one's birth sex rather than gender. Also I believe there is at least some evidence of dysphoria having a material basis. I think the science is still very new however, so I'm not sure if there is a generally accepted consensus.
Nolan Thomas
If class is a metaphysical force outside of you that implies on the opposite end of the dialectic bourgeoisie isn't apart of porky. They're guiltless and anyone practicing capitalism is completely innocent, it was an immeasurable metaphysical force. You are just being prejudice against innocent people caught up in a system. You have made class consciousness impossible without transmuting it into an identity to internalize it and have lost the moral justification for any type of revolution or even anti-capitalist laws.
This anti-idpol nonsense is a poison pill to save face, but it will cost you dearly in the long run.
Landon James
Attempts that are intrinsically futile. If all that forms us are oppressions, then the only thing that could be freed from those oppressions is an oppression itself. This is why feminists in particular are so into BDSM.
i believe the word you're looking for is 'cease', as in 'classes cease to exist'
hasty and rude
Jaxson Young
One experiences the contradiction between assigned sex and identity not as a purely physical contradiction but as a contradiction between the body and mind. Calling this "sex" because it has a biological basis seems too much like wordplay to me, to avoid the admission that gender identity must be inherent to biology for the argument.
I never said that it didn't have a material basis; I said the opposite, in fact. Gender also has a basis in material reality; the recognition too that gender can be detached from sex has a basis in material reality. Gender roles and the elimination of gender roles each have specific functions within different developments of capitalist society; the latter becomes more prevalent when such a society requires women to join the workforce. Gender roles in later stages of capitalism impede the full integration and exploitation of women as workers. The situation is similar to race and racism in that regard.
Juan Parker
From the very start, you're already steering wildly off course. A force doesn't need to be metaphysical to be external, nor did the other poster talk about class as a force of any sort.
Guilt and innocence are entirely beside the point.
David Martinez
nething persennel, kulak family
Lucas Rivera
Okay, I guess that it seems fairly reasonable that gender is a social construct with some material basis. I'm wondering then what would distinguish someone who feels opposed to their assigned sex and wishes to transition from someone who does not feel this way but identifies as gender that does not conform with the traditional binary, or is that not an important distinction to make?
This is why the Left has lost nearly all it's ground, it's no longer about justice. Just petty envy and the internalization of loserdom. Fundamentally, if you think class is entirely external, then capitalism is just a force of nature devoid of any humanity and no justice can be had.
If class is physical as opposed to metaphysical, doesn't that mean we can apply physics to it and it can be measured?
I highly doubt you can explain to me why any ideology is morally wrong. Ideology without theory is wrong for leading society, because it's just a fantasy. Idealism is important, because without idealism then there's no dialectic between our current reality and a better future one.
Claims of justice in the social sphere have almost always been attached to envy and resentment. The historical loser appeals to a transhistorical "justice" to right wrongs, real or imagined, when this abstract justice is nothing and can do nothing to right those wrongs.
Class struggle is an historical force, not class per se. History isn't the same as physics, although changes in the class structure within Europe during, for example, the period from late feudalism to early capitalism can be measured, and struggles like the English Civil War and American and French Revolution occurred, although it would be a categorical error to assume that one can apply physics to them or that they should be measured as if physics problems. None of these events were metaphysical.
I never intended or desired to give a moral explanation.
I meant "idealism" in the philosophical sense, not in the common one.
Ethan Young
It isn't important insofar as my point, although, socially, the suggested remedy for each is different. On the other hand, the remedy isn't as different as it seems on the surface: the non-binary identification can imply for some buying certain items so as to render the non-binary identity external in some form (e.g. a man in outward appearance and sex wearing a skirt).
Both would purchase to resemble outwardly their internal identity, although the purchases for a transgender identification require more commitment due to the body modification and medication elements. One shouldn't view this as simply another case of mindless consumerism, however, especially in the case of transgender people; the choices are often very considered and even agonizing. In most such cases, the various contradictions between society, identity and biological reality are strong, driving these toward the market as the medium for bringing forth one's true self. Again, this isn't delusional behavior in any traditional sense but an exigency of many such persons within this stage of capitalism.
Colton Wright
sum1 doesn't know his words
Christopher Flores
History is apart of humanities and not science; legends get muddied with myths, primary sources get lost in fires, phantom time, language reforms, redundant accounts of the same event seen as unique– history is the lie most agreed upon by the rulers to best justify their rule. Historical determinism and cyclical history has been dropped for these many reasons, history is just too uncertain and is left up to conjecture by the bankrolled like pious scribes.
Many of those wars were simply other private societies fighting other private societies that donned the guise of the public after the war has been won to claim moral superiority– detractors are always written out by victors. Soviets' methodology was basically right about everything when it came to trying to make history more science based, they tried to make historical determinism real but they did something so much more. The primary source and moon pill is a real mindfuck if you're new to how history is written.
When you say class isn't an identity and a legal title status, then you're implying it's a metaphysical force. I was illustrating the absurdity of it, my slow newfriend.
David Harris
Postmodernist: Categories such as race, gender, sexual orientation, are contingent social constructs and are potentially oppressive.
Anti-Idpol Marxist: Categories such as race, gender, and sexual orientation, are not usually relevant to the economic mode of production in a given society, and are therefore non-political. Attempting to make them political merely distracts and divides the working class. Obvious exceptions to this would be slavery of certain races, and division of labor between men and women. Our analysis should account for these phenomenon, but should focus on the material basis of unique forms of oppression rather than how it relates to notions of identity.
That's the Peterson take on post-modernism, it's not wrong as such but it merely touches the pop-cultural contraction post-modernism ended up in. The philosophical break post-modernism made with marxism isn't that there are more things like marxian class (a culmination which is a logical expansion of marxism as it found itself outside of the practically ethnically homogeneous rigid class societies of its early days, and as such is more aptly and meaningfully called cultural marxism) that oppress, but that the subject itself is not an essentially ontologically pure entity which exists beneath layers (of oppression), that there can be no fabled state of true freedom. Everything is constructed, there is no state of nature upon we build (social)constructs, nature itself is construction.
Jordan Perry
If you don't think that an analysis of the division of reproductive labor is important then don't call yourself a Marxist.
I don't know anything about post-modernism. I just copied and pasted from the OP.
Present me with another accredited definition and I'll use a different word to better describe my illustrative example if it's causing confusion. I'm more than willing to be proven wrong in the use of language but I'm most certainly not playing freshman semantics on an imageboard.
Of course not. But please go on about how class is physical, like pineapples, and can be abolished, I can wait.
I'm trying to be being nice about it, you don't have to tease everyone.
