Massachusetts Daily Collegian

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A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Postmodernism and the ideological corruption of the humanities

The humanities need to take a hard look at the scholarship being conducted in some of it’s disciplines
(Collegian file photo)
(Collegian file photo)

“I fear for the future of the humanities,” said scholar Helen Pluckrose. As should any reasonable individual.

Pluckrose and her colleagues Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay spent the last year deliberately writing fake research papers – making absurd conclusions backed by shoddy scholarship wrapped in fashionable jargon – and submitting them to prestigious peer-reviewed journals in disciplines including cultural studies, gender studies and queer studies. An alarming seven of their articles were accepted and equally as many are in the midst of the peer-review process. One such paper, arguing that dog-humping incidents can be taken as evidence of rape culture, was officially honored as excellent scholarship and placed in the 25th anniversary edition of “Gender, Place and Culture,” a journal which in recent months published works from professors at UCLA, Penn State and the University of Manchester, among many others.

What inspired them to do this? In the late 1990s, Alan Sokal, a professor of physics at New York University, successfully submitted a paper to an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies, arguing that “quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct.” His motive was to test whether a leading North American journal would publish an article “liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.” What came to be known as the Sokal Affair sparked debates regarding the influence of postmodern philosophy on social disciplines. Postmodern discourse is so meaningless, some argued, that not even “experts” can distinguish between people who make sincere claims and those who compose deliberate gibberish. Many years later, Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian engineered Sokal Squared – the original hoax on a much larger scale. The results are disturbing, to say the least.

What is postmodern theory? And how did it result in this ideological corruption of the humanities?  Simply put, postmodernism sees the culture as a web of perpetually competing identities. As Pluckrose explained, “We see in Foucault the most extreme expression of cultural relativism read through structures of power in which shared humanity and individuality are almost entirely absent. Instead, people are constructed by their position in relation to dominant cultural ideas either as oppressors or oppressed.” A key tenet of postmodernism is intersectionality, the idea that human interaction arises not from an individual’s behavior but entirely due to the social group to which he or she belongs, although one could argue that this was not what Kimberlé Crenshaw, the scholar who came up with the idea, intended for it to become.

This form of thinking, as journalist Chloé S. Valdary pointed out, has led to the condemnation of what some refer to as “whiteness,” a pathology that has come to serve as a stand-in for everything from exploitation to abuse to colonization to anything that is bad and malicious in human history. Writer Sarah Haider elaborated, “Just as ‘whiteness’ is often used in the place of what was formerly known as ‘white privilege,’ ‘white’ is increasingly used as a dog-whistle for ‘white supremacist.’ The focus of the derision shifts from the sin (supremacy/privilege) to the sinner (whites).”

Under this garb of intersectionality, nefarious ideas are being peddled into the mainstream. One of the papers written by Pluckrose et. al advocated for college professors to enact forms of “experiential reparations,” to redress the “privilege” of white students, telling them to stay silent in class, or even binding them to the floor in chains. As professor Yascha Mounk pointed out, “This demonstrates the extent to which these disciplines are willing to license discrimination to serve ostensibly progressive goals.”

Another pernicious tenet of postmodern theory is the abandonment of objective science and reason, a Lyotardian privileging of “lived experience” over empirical evidence. Foucauldian critics believe that “all knowledge, being socially constructed, has no objective validity.” What results is the rise of movements like #ScienceMustFall led by progressive students in South Africa, which argues that science – a “product of Western modernity” – should be scrapped in favor of black magic. In a world where anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers continue to persist, the legitimization of such anti-scientific ideologies is seriously harmful.

So deeply is postmodern thought ingrained in certain disciplines of the humanities that they can’t help but view the world from only this lens. What has resultingly emerged is a mono-culture of thought where only certain conclusions are acceptable, and dissenters dare not speak up. I’ve sat in an English class at the University of Massachusetts and witnessed in silence the reduction of “Pride and Prejudice” to “a poster child for misogyny” and that of “The Catcher in the Rye” to “the rantings of a privileged white male.” In such classrooms, there prevails an underlying atmosphere that outlaws disagreement, an unspoken dictum that certain ideas are beyond critique.

Liberalism and the principles of Enlightenment which form the backbone of American universities are being forgotten. Universities must reflect upon the scholarship being conducted in these “grievance studies” departments and reboot the conversations away from the deliberate problematization of every minute aspect of culture toward a more rigorous, open-minded approach. It is imperative that we do so since the alternative, of which Sokal Squared gave us a meager glimpse, is detrimental. Take it from someone who grew up in an education system where points were docked for not quoting the textbook verbatim. I came to the United States because I wanted to spend my formative university years rigorously thinking, not mindlessly memorizing, exploring and challenging ideas, not regurgitating stale grievances.

Bhavya Pant is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at [email protected].

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  • R

    Raymond Ryan RummelSep 8, 2019 at 8:10 am

    I found this short article covering the problems in the humanities departments in our Universities (revealed by the Sokal Squared papers) to be fair, accurate, and informative. Unfortunately it seems that hyperbolic ideologues and reactionaries are more plentiful in the comments sections in this and many other online platforms than is warranted by such reporting. This isn’t to say that the anecdotal examples the author gave pointed to the real issue (scholarship that sacrifices rigor for fashionable ideas)as well as he may have intended, but the polarized politically minded responses were of an uncharitable nature that did little even in comparison to rebut the author’s conclusion.

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  • A

    AHoeschtOct 29, 2018 at 9:07 am

    A postmodern criticism of postmodernism, how droll. How is this article not just another example of grievance studies? Right wing ideologues like student Pant just want to be coddled and babied in college, to be told their ideas are brilliant and right, and they will all be acclaimed as intellectual giants upon graduation, but they are oppressed and held from greatness by “nefarious ideas” and the political correctness of their liberal feminazi, communist professors. Awww, Poor snowflake need a pencil? Student disagrees with his professors. Stop the presses! /s If self-proclaimed right wing scribblers actually believed in academic meritocracy, which they don’t, they would be busy formulating a more coherent response to Foucalt and the postmodernists instead of trying to make non-sensical political arguments ; but you don’t see this. Why? Because political grievance is all they have, which is why they act more like left-wing Maoists rather than the Lockians they pretend to be. The fact that the author was triggered by his English professors tells me only one thing: they did their job and intellectually challenged him. Poor snowflake is still running.

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  • A

    amyOct 25, 2018 at 10:37 am

    “postmodernism’ is pure idiocy like many things that come out of the minds and mouths of intellectuals and professors.

    It has no basis in reality and it’s some sort of delusional belief that we are both in some ‘post modern era;’ and that while in it can be totally understood and comprehended and just so incidentally along the lines that liberals want and believe.

    Eras are only seen in the rear view mirror, in the past, once they are complete and even then they are very hard to understand and to know, to think while your in an era, you can anticipate the next one and what it is, it’s just delusional and stupid.

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  • N

    NITZAKHONOct 25, 2018 at 6:57 am

    “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

    This corruption of young minds is deliberate.

    Reply