AMKent books

I dislike postmodernism, I dislike its key figures like Walter Benjamin and his fragments. I attended a theory school based on his work, and as usual, he is a postmodernist garbage dispenser dressed as something abstract and symbolic. Postmodernity is inherently defeatist, and so is Benjamin, and all the assemblage theory, ANT, Deluzian singularity nonsense that spewed before and after his ‘Arcades Project’. Postmodernity emerged in late-imperial, post-industrial Western society. it shifts the move of progression, something that traditionalist Modernity had held as a key narrative. Postmodernity immediately presupposes an infrastructure stable enough to critique itself endlessly, the flagellation of what had even got us this far. It arises when a civilisation turns its critical apparatus inward with nothing external left to contest.

The problems with Postmodernity, like Postmodernity’s function, are endlessly self-critical. Mirroring the chaos of existence, the ontology of something vastly more complex than our primal state is not the same as surviving with it. Exposing the illusions of social constructs, our desperate need for continuity, and stitching time into narratives serves no ascension. It is the acid that burns through everything; it cannot be contained. It is nihilism on steroids, the suicidal seed of society. Humans are metabolically incapable of living without continuity, yet philosophically tempted to dissolve it. Postmodernities’ fatal escalation is that it begins with a valid critique of narratives, and then claims, ‘If a category is constructed, it is optional.’ 

If X is socially constructed, X is negotiable; this logic leads to some very dark places. Age and language spring to mind as examples here. The problem is that postmodern logic cannot tell you which layer has priority. So, we rely on two things, consensus and institutional power (Which ironically shifts the consensus more than the latter). The cyanide pill here is named anti-narrative, and we should think hard before swallowing it. What postmodernity actually does is erase natural hierarchy (biology, development, constraint) and replace it with opaque human hierarchies (status, power, enforcement). That is not resisting hierarchy, but deforming it.  I am a nihilist to a degree; well, I am ontologically indifferent. I do not deeply care how humanity addresses the dissolution of structure. Everyone can applaud their ancestors’ structural societal cohesion dissolving if that is the move we hairless apes think is the right one. I think there are a lot of hidden agendas at play. Postmodernity certainly seems to be a primarily Western disease, but it’s all conjecture and conspiracy theory there. We are all just a sea of pebbles criticising each other before the tide rolls in anyway. I get the anarchistic idea behind it, though, in a deeper philosophical sense, it is mirroring the chaotic foundations of existence. However, humans cope via the Cartesian demon of continuity, so we are making a cyanide pill for food in trying to emulate the body to which we are less than atoms. Meaning may exist at scales, strata, or regimes that do not consult us; our fiction is the biological load bearer.