“Bread crumbs”(perhaps how you got here)

(Originally posted September 25th, 2008)

"Post-Modern" buildings in The Hague, Netherlands (see Images of Hoftoren by Kohn Pedersen and Fox in The Hague).

The fascinating Web site (Digital Imaging Project at Bluffton University) containing this and many other wonderful pictures tells us that these are "Post-Modern" buildings.

No word so frequently found among intellectuals is more abused than "post-modernism." Here are some examples of attempts to define the term:

1. "That postmodernism is indefinable is a truism. However, it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning." (Postmodernism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
2. "The postmodernist critique of science consists of two interrelated arguments, epistemological and ideological. Both are based on subjectivity. First, because of the subjectivity of the human object, anthropology, according to the epistemological argument cannot be a science; and in any event the subjectivity of the human subject precludes the possibility of science discovering objective truth. Second, since objectivity is an illusion, science according to the ideological argument, subverts oppressed groups, females, ethnics, third-world peoples (Spiro 1996)." (Postmodernism and Its Critics, Shannon Weiss & Karla Wesley, anthropological context, extended by the following: "Modernity came into being with the Renaissance. Modernity implies the progressive economic and administrative rationalization and differentiation of the social world (Sarup 1993). In essence this term emerged in the context of the development of the capitalist state. Anthropologists have been working towards studying modern times, but have now gone past that. The fundamental act of modernity is to question the foundations of past knowledge ...  Logically postmodernism literally means after modernity. It refers to the incipient or actual dissolution of those social forms associated with modernity" (Sarup 1993).)
3. "Perhaps the easiest way to start thinking about postmodernism is by thinking about modernism, the movement from which postmodernism seems to grow or emerge. Modernism has two facets, or two modes of definition, both of which are relevant to understanding postmodernism ... The first facet or definition of modernism comes from the aesthetic movement broadly labeled "modernism." This movement is roughly coterminous with twentieth century Western ideas about art (though traces of it in emergent forms can be found in the nineteenth century as well). Modernism, as you probably know, is the movement in visual arts, music, literature, and drama which rejected the old Victorian standards of how art should be made, consumed, and what it should mean." (Mary Klages, Postmodernism; extended into the following:

“From a literary perspective, the main characteristics of modernism include:

1. an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing (and in visual arts as well); an emphasis on HOW seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on WHAT is perceived. An example of this would be stream-of -consciousness writing.

2. a movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third -person narrators, fixed narrative points of view, and clear-cut moral positions. Faulkner's multiply-narrated stories are an example of this aspect of modernism.

3. a blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more documentary (as in T.S. Eliot or ee cummings) and prose seems more poetic (as in Woolf or Joyce).

4. an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random -seeming collages of different materials.

5. a tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about the production of the work of art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways.

6. a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs (as in the poetry of William Carlos Williams) and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories, in favor of spontaneity and discovery in creation.

7. A rejection of the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture, both in choice of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming art.


Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject."

4. "Merriam-Webster attempts to describe the term as either of, relating to, or being an era after a modern one or of, relating to, or being any of various movements in reaction to modernism that are typically characterized by a return to traditional materials and forms (as in architecture) or by ironic self-reference and absurdity (as in literature), or finally of, relating to, or being a theory that involves a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culture, identity, history, or language.[1] The American Heritage Dictionary describes the term as Of or relating to art, architecture, or literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional or classical elements of style or by carrying modernist styles or practices to extremes: “It [a roadhouse] is so architecturally interesting . . . with its postmodern wooden booths and sculptural clock” (Ruth Reichl, Cook's November 1989).[2]" (Wikipedia)

Obviously, no two of these definitions are even slightly similar, in part (but only in part) because of differences in the underlying concepts of modernism.

However, in the best sophist fashion, we can say something: whatever "postmodernism" is, it must be somehow reflective of whatever came after "modernism." This notion is annoying, because it means that "modernism" is a moving target. In 1800, it meant something quite different from what it meant in 2000. Indeed, in the world of typography, Bodoni, a typeface first released in 1798, is often held up even today as the supreme example of a "modern" typeface, largely because its creator, Giambattista Bodoni, said it was "modern" when he created it. I suppose this means that all typefaces designed after Bodoni must be postmodern. This covers quite a large territory.

But Bodoni was not an idiot, and his intention was not stupid. He attempted to design a typeface based on the best available knowledge of his time, in an effort to create something that was not only supremely legible but also richly expressive of a commitment to rationality - indeed, we could go so far as to say a commitment to a "scientific" or even "revolutionary" attitude. To this day, many scientific publications are set in Bodoni; the use of this typeface is actually proverbial among book designers ("You can't go wrong with Bodoni").

So, maybe I am too heavily influenced by Bodoni, but I would have to say that modernism must be based on a commitment to the prevailing intellectual currents.

This, in turn, must mean that "postmodernism" is based on a commitment to the intellectual currents that will follow whatever currents defined modernism.

Since a wide and deep belief in the efficacy of science and its foundation, mathematics and logic, has been a dominant trait of European and American intellectuality for roughly two and a half centuries or more, postmodernism must, I conclude, be a commitment to whatever is not rational, whatever is not supported by mathematics and logic.

The buildings pictured at the beginning of this page sure don't look postmodern, if my notion of postmodernism is right. In fact, they show a commitment to the same geometry that gave us the buildings of people like Gropius. Perhaps a better title for the buildings would be something like "buildings of a more recent version of modernism." Certainly the buildings are not deeply anti-modern.

But there is a larger point to all of these ruminations: something is frightening in a commitment to anti-rationality. While I'm willing to admit that, at least in some circumstances, rationality cannot lead us to thoughts that truly comprehend reality, it is suicidal or worse to believe in the wisdom of a deliberate rejection of the practice of giving reasons and using logic to reach conclusions.

At least since the days of Socrates, Western Civilization, for good or for ill, has been built on the fundamental supremacy of mathematics (and logic, which can be viewed as nothing more than a special branch of mathematics). If postmodern intellectuals want to reject this heritage of more than two millennia, they risk not only abandoning the most highly productive intellectual system of all time, but also the impairment of our ability even to notice that abandonment. To be devoted to irrationality is to fall into an abyss that has no bottom.

The nature of that abyss and the potential division of society relating to the acceptance of irrationality are the chief subject of The Bacchae, perhaps the greatest work of Euripides. What is interesting about that play is that it identifies power and rationality as one pole of political activity, and mob rule and irrationality as the opposite. Neither pole is attractive; eventually the play reaches a point at which the "messenger" says,

"Whoever this god may be,
sire, welcome him to Thebes. For he is great
in many other ways as well. It was he,
or so they say, who gave to mortal men
the gift of lovely wine by which our suffering
is stopped. And if there is no god of wine,
there is no love, no Aphrodite either,
nor other pleasure left to men."

(l 768 f, tr. William Arrowsmith)

In other words, once postmodernism and its foundation of irrationality have begun to affect the population, that very foundation of irrationality becomes identified with love and pleasure. This is a vast leap, made far better and more adroitly by Euripides than I can do in mere prose. But it is a fatal, profoundly disturbing vision. We must hope that Euripides was not writing for generations that were not even dimly glimpsed in his day. We must hope that his was a mere mirage of the spirit, not a realistic appraisal of reality.

Oops. Can it be that Euripides was warning us? Can it be that "postmodernism" is dangerous precisely because it leads us blindly through the corridors of delusion to the inmost chamber of unbridled lust?

Or is it merely that the advent of the deeply anti-intellectual, anti-rational rants of "conservative" intellectuals are the same thing as the drunken murmurs of the left?

Meanwhile, the buildings in The Hague are occupied, used, and we accept them and their severe, logical geometry. They are not arbitrary, not silly, not the demented visions of minds that have given up on the hope of rational thought.

 All text on this page is the work of J W Durham and is licensed only under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Other licensing terms may be available. E-mail me