The advance tickets are sold out for Friday’s talk at the University of British Columbia, but here’s a link to the event site. I’ll be speaking on themes out of my Explaining Postmodernism with special application to today’s campus wars.
The advance tickets are sold out for Friday’s talk at the University of British Columbia, but here’s a link to the event site. I’ll be speaking on themes out of my Explaining Postmodernism with special application to today’s campus wars.
Hi Dr. Hicks, first thank you for this event tonight in Vancouver. It was great to attend despite the initial disruption without an argument. There wasn’t time for my question and I will ask here since I was hoping to get more thought on your comment above “with special application to today’s campus wars” which the presentation didn’t deeply address. I would like to see the next part focusing on the current.
In your 1998 presentation Postmodernism Part 2 https://youtu.be/bChKoll81r4?t=1h6m one of the Q&A questions on Pomo will not survive another generation. Your answer about the future of Pomo was “4 reasons why it won’t succeed” “it’s inbred movement without any new ideas saying the same stuff over and over”
It’s now 20 years later, do you have an update to this question and your 4 points ?
Cheers,
Jimmy G
Good question, Jimmy. Pomo has not survived as an intellectual movement, as it has continued to be stale and inbred. But it has succeeded as an activist movement, especially in the universities. Predictions about the latter are almost always guesses, as they depend not only on intellectual factors but also marketing, psychological, and political factors. Mostly, though, the pomo of a generation ago succeeded in cloning themselves in larger numbers and in institutionalizing themselves. So while it’s an intellectually-failing movement it’s currently an activist-successful movement.
Thanks for the answer Dr. Hicks. As a follow up, it’s been popularly said by Jordan Peterson and others that the Universities and especially the Humanities are activist factories for “inbred clones”. Since there’s no new intellectual ideas generated, the classic arguments, reason and data (as you outlined) should have ceased the Pomo movement but hasn’t extinguished it.
Fighting against activism doesn’t sound like something you can market to the general public since “activism” is traditionally regarded as favourable. Is there another argument to unmask this slight of hand ?
As Steve Pinker argues in Enlightenment Now the data and results are on the side of reason but the emotional victim claim gets the sympathetic ear.
As a computer engineer, I still cannot understand how to engage with non-rational and non-reason people but I continue to see the entrenchment into my industry and damaging it.
Thanks you for your effort and time.
Jimmy G