Postmodernism is dead, finally killed off after years of sickness as a result of mortal injuries sustained on 11th September 2001.
Ideas don't just die, of course. Intellectual fashions come and go but even at their nadir, there remain traces, legacies and adherents who keep the faith. So postmodernists still exist and postmodernism's influence can still be felt. Nevertheless, philosophically speaking, postmodernism is a spent force.
To justify this diagnosis, it is important to distinguish between postmodernism as an artistic, cultural and social phenomenon and postmodernism as a philosophical position. In the arts, as Lois McNay puts it in the latest issue of the Philosophers' Magazine, postmodernism is characterised by a "rejection of a consistent, coherent aesthetic in favour of a playful, eclectic style which draws on many different sources." This strand of postmodernism is alive and well; its influence can be seen on mainstream films and television programmes. The use of surreal fantasy sequences in the otherwise conventional comedy series Ally McBeal is an example of how postmodernism's influence has eroded the barriers between hitherto distinct genres. James Brown's new magazine Jack is also stereotypically postmodern, mixing high and low-brow with an eclectic aesthetic that draws on escapist adventure stories, National Geographic and women's glossies.
However, neither the production nor the enjoyment of any of these postmodern products requires any commitments concerning the fundamental nature of reality (ontology) or the nature of truth (epistemology). Nor does accepting the postmodern political belief that society has become more fragmented and peoples' identities more blurred. This is tied up with what Jean-Frans Lyotard called the end of "grand narratives": all-embracing philosophical systems which can explain human experience and history.
But that does not amount to a distinct philosophical thesis. Indeed, most of 20th-century Anglo-American analytic philosophy-perhaps the least postmodern alcove in academia-has been based on a rejection of grand systems, such as those of Kant, Hegel and Marx. In its place has been a piecemeal approach to philosophy that is as much opposed to grand narratives as postmodernism.
Nor is the rejection of absolute truth the hallmark of a distinct philosophy. There are many ways to be a relativist, not all of them intellectually disgraceful, as Jonathan Ré¥ has recently pointed out in these pages.
We cannot locate a philosophy that lies behind these various postmodern positions because there isn't one. What is worse, when people do try to make the leap from postmodernism as a social or cultural phenomenon to postmodernism as a philosophy, they tend to make basic mistakes. Consider, for example, how one might read the following statement by John Dickie (Prospect, June 2002) about how mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano managed to calm public anger about the mob: "... Provenzano has grasped a fundamental rule of postmodern society: 'what does not exist in the media does not exist in reality.'"
Understood in one way, this is postmodernism hitting the nail on the head: we tend to form our image of the world based on representations of that world, not the world itself. But understood literally it is nonsense. The whole point of Dickie's piece is that the mafia does exist. The "postmodern rule" is a description of how people think, not a description of epistemological or ontological reality.
So what is postmodern philosophy? It is not so much a position as an attitude. Postmodernism does not just reject the idea of objective truth, it celebrates that rejection and advocates an ironic detachment from any issue which seems to take the idea of truth too seriously. Other relativists who reject the idea of objective truth believe there is a question about what takes its place. But for the postmodernist, that is a foolish question that fails to acknowledge the terminal nature of the loss. Redemption does not come by seeking a surrogate for objectivity, it comes from celebrating its non-existence.
September 11th illustrated why this was not a sustainable position. It was just possible for Jean Baudrillard to argue in 1991 that the Gulf war did not happen. It would be facile to take this statement at face value, but it illustrates the extent to which modern consciousness distances us from events in the "real" world. Few would be prepared to say that the attacks on the World Trade Centre never happened. On that date, the "real world" stamped its imprint on the collective consciousness of the west. It demonstrated what had previously been argued by postmodernism's critics: that to deny the existence of objective reality and celebrate that denial is politically dangerous and intellectually lazy.
Most serious thinkers, including those claimed by postmodernists as their own, such as Foucault and Derrida, have always refused membership of the club and those that did join have been quietly leaving. After 11th September, it is time to move on.
