An odyssey of truth: an overview of post-modern paradoxes

Postmodernism has been the center of debate and confrontation for over 50 years now. The feudal hierarchy of academia has done its part in writing about it, some defending it, some poking holes in it. Some however, still defining it, which is arguably most essential.  Our world in the future, or extended present will be nothing less than a post-modernist confinement. A void with no escape, a pit with no truths, an abyss with no linguistic capacities and a graveyard of morals. A cloud of blurred rationale will soar high and will have everyone bewitched. All truth will be hidden, relativised and deduced to non-existence. 

I would like to mention that I use the common academic meaning of post-modernism in this text and not in its layman sense of an extension of modernism and so on. Post-modernism is almost like a worldview, or rather a questioning of all worldviews. Covering a variety of concepts such as culture, philosophy, aesthetics etc but things don’t really stop here. There is a certain risk in defining post-modernism. I can call it broad epistemological skepticism, I can label it ethical and moral subjectivism, just a general suspicion of all reason, or how ideology plays a role in maintaining the Foucauldian notion of power. 

The risk is, objections arise in these very definitions, and the ones raising objections are post-modernists themselves. A common example is that of Foucault and Derrida when Derrida labels Foucalt as a historicist who tends to reduce reason to history. This might seem like a small disagreement but it laid the foundation for Derrida’s entire post-structuralist theory. Disagreements are always inevitable in this entire realm of theory, but it leaves the layman with no distinct sense of definition. 

According to renowned academic Ziauddin Sardar,  

“This entire movement is merely a continuation of the Western trajectory that started with colonialism, and expanded to occupy the minds of non-western individuals and societies.” 

This definition, brings forward the “imperialistic” nature of post-modernism. Postmodernism, in its entirety, in its strong sympathies with pluralism, diversity, multi-culturalism and so on, has done the exact opposite of it all. In the pursuit of diversity, post-modernism engineers a terrifyingly covert hegemony. An illusion of compassion and embracement. The knight in shining armour, standing tall against the evils of religion, heteronormativity and base morality. The French intellectuals who are said to be the pioneers of the movement, and are most quoted by the modern-day liberal left, they themselves couldn’t put forward a persuasive or I should say “read-able” rationale. As Akbar S Ahmed says in his book titled “Postmodernism and Islam”: ‘The idea of plain and simple language sometimes appears to elude the post-modernist masters in spite of their claims of accessibility, the de-mystifiers and de-constructionists are themselves in a need of de-mystification and deconstruction”.

The most common criticism that postmodern theorists face is that of their never-ending compassion for jargon, abstruse terms and this fascination with the “esoteric” style. To some extent, Professor Noam Chomsky’s criticism is no different, it is rather unconvincing as well. As he tends to categorize all “French intellectuals” in one holistic manner which can be seen in various interviews, he really ignores the vast complexities that all those other than Foucault have to offer. This can be said to be an intellectual cop-out for someone at his level. However he is not wrong about the reinforcement of this high-brow impression of most post-modernist thought through thick layers of jargon. Scott Lash writes ‘post modern culture seems to proclaim itself an avant-garde, while at the same time announcing that avant-gardes no longer exist”.  Such are the many paradoxes within post-modernism. Being a post-modernist might seem to one as delving deep into the nature of things, but I think its quite the opposite, in post-modernism we are limited to external. There are no depths, just surfaces. A signifier has no signified, as there’s no reality to signify, ‘nothing exists outside the text’.  

The thing is, as much as the post-modernists reject and belittle a possibility of ultimate truth, they themselves indirectly claim bourgeois liberal truth to be an ultimatum. If we let the kingpins of this movement tell us how objective truths are driven by interests of Power, it is we who will suffer in the extended present. Indeed a world with no objective truth, ethical sense and a world where a hegemony of some individuals who consider themselves the grand arbitrators of all truths, will be a very dark world. I for one, am not ready to take up the challenge of defying something I don’t possess the capacity of comprehending. My limited sensory apparatus is just one of the many things that keep me from doing so. The death of truth, brings the death of hope, brings the death of expectance, leaves us with nothing to live for, Godlessness prevails, the miniscule amount of good that is left of the world and its people reaches limit. We all are nothing less than modern-day Odysseuses, walking our own respective journeys. 

“Lets us leave modern men to their ‘truths’, and let us be concerned only about one thing; to keep standing amid a world of ruins” – Julius Evola