Postmodernism is MT Thinking
Exposing the PoMo Shell Game
Totality Claims
If you’ve followed my writing for any amount of time, then you have probably encountered me stating more than once that Postmodernism and its various offshoots — e.g. Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, and so on — are opposed to all forms of essentialism. What you may not be aware of is the fact that they are opposed to logic as well because it has metaphysical entailments that demonstrate their attacks on essentialism are nothing but a shell game. Here’s what I mean.
Broadly stated, postmodernism attacks what I will call totality claims, or TCs. What are TCs? TCs are (a.)claims in which something is predicated of an object, objects, or group of objects in any given context (i.e. absolutely), or (b.)they are claims in which something is predicated of all objects of a particular class (i.e. universally). The laws of logic are TCs, seeing as they rest upon the law of identity, in which the abstract object A is A. That is to say, logic teaches us that for all objects, it is the case that they are self-identical. The law of identity, A:A, (a.)applies in all contexts, and (b.)applies to all objects. And seeing as the law of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle follow necessarily from the law of identity, they are also TCs.
I’m using the term object to refer to any logical subject of predication (e.g. a proposition, a body, an animal, etc). And this, I think, should help you see the problem postmodernists have with logic. The laws of logic imply that if there exists any object A (1.)it has an essential and unchanging nature that (2.)makes it distinct from other objects, and which, therefore, (3.)must be differentiated from other objects. Note that (1.) is the law of identity, (2.)is the law of non-contradiction, and (3.)is the law of the excluded middle. The laws of logic, then, are clearly TCs that must be repudiated by the postmodernists and their successors.
And so they seek to overthrow logic by providing counterexamples to variously formulated TCs. For instance, if one claims “All men have testes,” the postmodernist will attempt to argue from the existence of a supposed counterexample that this is not the case. The reasoning here is that if it is the case that all males have testes, then we should not expect to find any male lacking testes. If a counterexample can be found, thinks the postmodernist, then it is clear that the TC is false.
The entire corpus of writings produced by postmodernist historiographers rests upon this kind of reasoning which we can call a dialectical negation. For example, Foucault’s History of Sexuality challenges a commonplace TC about the Victorian Era’s relationship to sexuality (viz. the Victorian Era was stringently opposed to entertaining ideas about sexuality) by pointing to expressed attitudes, or the implied presuppositions of expressed attitudes, toward sexuality that possible serve as a counterexample. This is a strategy followed by other postmodernists in their various fields (e.g. Derrida looks for variations in meaning in a text to overturn the text’s essential meaning).
Postmodernism Relies on MT (Modus Tollens) Thinking
The reason for using this dialectical negation is simple: It seemingly avoids putting the postmodernist in the awkward position of making a positive claim about the object in question, as such a claim would be a TC. However, does it actually avoid making a positive claim TCs? Well, no, seeing as the postmodernist is engaged in a deductively valid form of argumentation called modus tollens, which rests upon his acceptance, as a necessary and irreformable foundation, the laws of logic, which are TCs.
Modus Tollens is Latin for method of denying, and it takes the following form —
If p, then q.
￢q.
Therefore, ￢p
In order to be a postmodernist, in other words, one must strictly adhere to the laws of logic, seeing as postmodernist argument against any particular TC takes the following form —
If your TC were true, then there would be no counterexamples to it.
However, there is at least one counterexample to your TC.
Therefore, your TC is not true.
The postmodernists are not content with strictly adhering to the laws of inference in the case of particular refutations of particular TCs, however, and apply this way of thinking to the very possibility of formulating a true TC at all.
This creates another problem for the postmodernists (and all of their like-minded children), for if they are leaping from the particular to the universal without giving a persuasive inductive basis for that movement then they are guilty of the fallacy of hasty generalization. On the other hand, however, if they make the movement from the particular to the universal by assuming that TCs all have an essential identity (A is A), which is unique (A is not ~A), and that consequently must be identified in distinction from all other claims (Either A or ~A), then they are assuming the laws of logic, which are TCs. This is a problem they can’t ignore by just giving another counterexample, since giving a counterexample merely repeats the modus tollens argument, and modus tollens entails all that has been laid out above.
Expose the PoMo Suppression of Truth
What this implies about postmodernists is that they are not merely strict adherents to the laws of logic and rules of necessary inference, but that they, like all reasoning creatures, know logical and metaphysical truths. They wholeheartedly accept and operate on the assumption of these truths, only to squirm when placed under their objective scrutiny.
Postmodernists hide their commitment to these logical and metaphysical truths under the shell of a disciplinary-specific critique (e.g. historiography in the case of Michel Foucault, or literary theory in the case of Jacques Derrida), in the hopes that you will be dizzied by their constant shuffling of critiques, and consequently agree with their totality claim about totality claims.
They are banking on you not seeing that if their critique of totality claims is true then it is, necessarily, false. Don’t fall for their sophistry. Call them out for the logical truths they are using, and show them how their commitment to these truths is also an implied commitment to the very metaphysical truths which they are trying to overturn.