a takedown of postmodernist thinking

As much as I love Camille Paglia, I chafe at the fact that she has never written a systematic takedown of postmodernism, a point of view she claims to despise. She casts insults and aspersions at certain famous PoMo thinkers like Foucault and Derrida on occasion, but I've always wanted to see a full-on, comprehensive attack. None has been forthcoming, not even in the one or two books of hers that I've read.

So I take my takedowns where I find them, and Dr. V has proven to be a pretty good source for meaty arguments against PoMo thinking. In a recent Substack piece, Dr. V criticizes the PoMo-inflected "thinking" of philosopher John D. Caputo, who argues that reason is a white-male, Eurocentric construct. In responding to Caputo's assertions, Dr. V critiques much of postmodernism, making his essay a very interesting read for me. Here's an excerpt:

People with basic common sense know that there is such a thing as taking inappropriate offense and that one should not cater to the whims of the absurdly sensitive. In this connection I remind you of the case of the poor schlep who lost his job because of his use of the perfectly innocuous English word 'niggardly,' which, of course, has nothing to do with 'nigger.' By the way, I just mentioned the word 'nigger'; I did not use it. I said something about the word; I did not apply it to anyone. (Is your typical Continental philosopher aware of the use-mention distinction?)

The purveyors of POMO need to be reminded that thinking is not association of ideas: if you associate 'niggardly' with 'nigger,' that is your problem and no basis for an argument to the conclusion that a user of 'niggardly' is a racist. And now, dear reader, are you offended by what I just wrote? If you are then you are taking inappropriate offense. I am making a serious and important point. Would you take [offense] at the mention of such epithets as 'dago' and 'kike'? Are you willing to be consistent? No? Why not? I’m inviting you to think. That’s all. If you take [offense], that is your problem, not mine.

[...]

Caputo is here instantiating the role of Continental mush-head: he is not thinking but engaging in argument by association, which is not argument at all, any more than another Continental favorite, argument by incantation, is argument at all.

But it is worse than this because Caputo is engaged in a sort of philosophical smear job. Here we have a great philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who is undertaking to evaluate the cognitive 'reach' of pure reason. His project is to assess the capacity of reason unaided by sensory input to secure knowledge in special metaphysics (metaphysica specialis) whose main objects are God, the soul, and the world as a whole. Corresponding to these objects are the highest concerns of humanity: God, freedom, and immortality.

And what does Caputo do? He conflates the purity that Kant speaks of with racial purity and then goes on to associate, scurrilously and irresponsibly, pure reason with "terror and deportation" and "colonialism." This of course is right out of the cultural Marxist's playbook.

The whole essay, which isn't long, is worth a read.