And another thing . . .
Whenever I write on postmodernism, I usually get one of four basic responses. The first is a popular one these days with folks who have one remaining screw set firmly in the one remaining hinge. It involves setting up witty websites at my expense, with the wit employed showing rudimentary photoshop skills and the acuity of a bowling ball. I could give you a link, but no sense in administering poisons just to try to demonstrate my skill with antidotes. And of course, this kind of response is not just for when I write on postmodern stuff, but is also deployed when I write on anything else.
The second response to any manifestations of my pomo jag is of the go-fight-win variety. Push ’em back, push ’em back, waaay back, repeat, etc. Some folks like it when I got my pomojo working.
The third response is complete silence. For example, my argument (that modernity involves all the laws we have in the secular state, and is also the philosophical basis for them, and therefore that genuine postmodernity must mean, at a minimum, a rejection of this whole set-up) is viewed as egregiously bad manners on my part. And when confronted with bad manners in extremis this way, the well-bred person looks the other way and sniffs disdainfully. No need to say anything just yet. Perhaps he will go away. That’s what comes from inviting boorish clod-hopping fundamentalists to a soiree.
But the last is an approach that I want to take a moment to answer here. Among those responsible folks (who are far more pomo-friendly than I have any capacity to be) the approach appears to be a wish that I would stick to my skill-set and write another marriage book or something. When I gather up the loins of my mind, as the apostle Peter instructeth, and start heaving around the names of Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger the Nazi, Leotard, his more famous (and less fashion-conscious) cousin Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, and Rorty, a pious wish ascends heavenward from these people. “Lord, Thou knowest he hasn’t done anything in philosophy proper since 1979!” Incidentally, for those who believe my satiric propensities have no brakes, I just want to point out that I could have written about Lyotard and his less gifted cousin Reotard, but I refrained.
So, what about it? What business does a busy pastor have in dealing with this stuff at the bumper-sticker level? At the assistant professor at a land-grant cow college level? The cry goes up that such an one cannot hope to understand real postmodernism until he has read Wittgenstein more recently than twenty-five years ago. I also have to read Heidegger the N, and I have to agree beforehand to be suitably impressed by his pointy wizard hat.
Real postmodernism, eh? That would be the postmodernism found in turgid books full of words, and lots and lots of abstract (and opaque) propositions? People who reason this way are still in the grip of modernity. They want, of all things, a Platonic form for postmodernism. But there is no such thing as a Watchtower Society governing what all the card-carrying postmodernists out there think, say and do. There is no authoritative voice “at the top” that settles all disputes. There is no top, and that is one of the points made in countless ways on the street. And the street is where pastors live and work and try to keep people from screwing up their lives.
For a different example, what is Marxism? Is it the faith that actually ruined a good portion of the globe, or is it a bit of esoteric trivia that old Karl took to the grave hidden away in the recesses of his black little heart? The faith of a people is exhibited where and how they live, and how they justify it to you when you ask them about it at the laundromat. Theology comes out the fingertips, and what comes out the fingertips is your theology. All this to say that the bumpersticker versions of postmodernism are postmodernism, and not some kind of heretical departure from Holy Writ.
Past a certain point, it doesn’t matter if Nestorius was a Nestorian, if Calvin was a Calvinist, or Barth was a Barthian. It matters to those who want to vindicate the reputation (or not) of the individual concerned, but it means nothing to the nature of the movements that bear their names. In a similar way, I have argued before that postmodernism is nothing more than modernity confused and/or depressed. When I have looked at some of the “authorities” in the movement, particularly among the evangelical adapters, I have seen nothing fundamentally at odds with the bumpersticker understandings — relativism, individualism, autonomy, and syncretism are rampant. But even at those places where there are differences (and don’t forget nuances!), it is still the case that postmodernism is as postmodernism does.