Postmodernism is Conservative: “You may not be an old-fashioned girl, but you’re still gonna get dated.”
By Helen RittelmeyerI should start off by confessing that this post isn’t at all topical, except insofar as Freddie has challenged the Pomocon stable to explain why postmodern conservative doesn’t just mean "a conservative who should know better" (TM). So, with that half-hearted protestation—"No, Brer Fox, don’t throw me in the theory patch!"—and with the clarification that I’m a conservative for whom God doesn’t do a lot of philosophical heavy lifting, here’s the short (-er, by my standards) version of what a nice girl like me is doing in an ideology like this.
Unlike Nicola, who kicked off this thread, I never really had an existential crisis, which is probably why I’ve never taken to the argument that tradition is important because it gives our lives meaning. (It’s probably just as well. Isn’t that like saying God exists because I really, really want Him to?) My conservative turn had a conversion moment, but it was much less dramatic—I heard my grandfather, a former high school English teacher, recite this verse by Alexander Pope:
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
That like a wounded snake, drags it slow length along.
He dragged out the last line exactly like a wounded snake dragging its slow length along, and I realized in a flash that this moment of aesthetic bliss was brought to you by Formal Structure and Tradition. Traditional constraints like rhyme might not make meaning possible—it’s totally possible to find meaning without them, in poetry as in life—but they do make layers of meaning possible. Pope’s "needless Alexandrine" has no free verse equivalent.
If the point about layers of meaning is still unclear, consider the quick analogy of everyday conversation. Sometimes I mean exactly what I say and nothing more, but sometimes the message I want to send is more subtle, in which case it helps to be able to rely on traditional scripts ("I expected Helen to say one thing, but she said something different; in deciphering her meaning, I need to consider both what she said and the gap between what she said and what both of knew I was expecting her to say"), or genre (what is flirtation if not a way of indicating that, while the content of your conversation hasn’t changed, it has switched genres, and what is genre if not a tradition?). If you don’t have these implicit expectations, contexts, and scripts to play around with, your conversations can’t work on multiple levels; you’re stuck at the level of literal meaning. My hunch is that these scripts don’t work in "communities" as small as half a dozen people nor in communities as big as humanity, which is why I think individualism and humanism won’t get me where I want to go but traditionalism will.
When I wound up editing my high school’s lit mag, I was notorious for pushing students’ poems back across my desk with the clipped suggestion "Make it rhyme." I was indifferent to counterargument that the rules of a sonnet are arbitrary, or that free verse poetry is a more accurate representation of the poet’s inner thoughts. Yes, forms are arbitrary, but still objectively better (that, in case you missed it, was a non-theological conclusion doing some heavy lifting). Yes, they’re less authentic, but I don’t care. "Always be who you are, unless you suck," right?
The other thing I learned by observing teenage poets in their natural habitat, and my last point before getting to postmodernism, is that following the rules of a sonnet or a villanelle doesn’t just make better poetry; it makes more individual poetry. Ask a hundred high school students to write a free verse poem; then ask them each to write a sonnet. Generally speaking, the hundred sonnets will reveal more of the individual poet’s personality; the free verse poems will all sound the same. Eve has more on the relationship between individuality and authenticity here:
Submission to authority always involves a degree of awe; thus it approaches the sublime. And an encounter with the sublime will necessarily draw people out of our usual submission to culture and to whim; it will change us and, under certain circumstances…it will make us more our own than we could ever have been without that awe.
Bottom line of my pre-postmodern conservatism: submission to authority seemed to be responsible for everything in the world I liked, including formalist poetry, moral virtue, and interesting individuality (as opposed to the tedious kind, which is more common), and I didn’t know why everyone around me seemed to bristle at the idea of submitting to authority instead of seeing it as a challenge and a duty.
Enter postmodernism. What does it mean to submit to authority in a world where the legitimacy of that authority has been undermined? Doesn’t leave us with the two options of either playing the God card ("Uno!") or admitting that, at the end of the day, we just playin’? I don’t like invoking the Almighty in situations like this, and for a long time I ran on the assumption that traditionalism is a kind of play-acting, but such satisfying play-acting that its underlying relativism doesn’t really matter. Then I came across this paragraph in Raymond Guess’s introduction to Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy:
One has failed to experience the tragedy if one sees only one’s friend and fellow actor up there on the stage parading around in an odd mask. One has also failed if one thinks that it really is Oedipus up there, that the blood dripping down from his eyes is real blood, etc.
A good play can change not just a man’s life but his identity, but only if he "believes" it in a very particular way. He can’t really believe it—if he does, he’ll rush onstage to try and stop Oedipus from blinding himself!—but neither can he keep in the front of his mind that it’s just his friend Jeff in an Oedipus mask. That’s the kind of belief I have in my traditions, especially those that can’t be traced back to divine revelation. More on why traditionalism isn’t relativism here. I’d excerpt, but this post is long enough already; let it suffice to say that Oscar Wilde was my kind of conservative.
So that’s my deal. I didn’t use the words "foundationalism" or "religion," but I hope I’ve answered at least some of Freddie’s questions, especially his quip that one cannot choose to be premodern, since the act of choosing is postmodern and essentially unconservative. (Incidentally, my Normblog profile, published this morning, has more on my philosophical autobiography and autobiographical philosophy. I thank Norman Geras very much for the opportunity, made that much sweeter by the fact that Solidarity in the Conversation of Humankind has been an important book to me. Curious about which philosophical thesis I consider it most important to combat, and which I find it most important to disseminate? My favorite proverb? Political hero? Click through!)
Tags: carnage, freddie deboer, i got your cloud cuckoo land right here, nicola karras, postmodern conservatism
October 10th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
zomg.
Did you miss this Helen?
EVERYONE in the house becomes to some extent, a vamphyre.
Otherwise they leave the house.
Some might be atheists, Like Jeff Goldstein or Allahpundit, but they still endorse the Vamphyre Bill of Rights, ie no-samesex marriage, no-abortion, culture of LIFE uber alles, conservo judges, etc, etc.
October 10th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Well, I’ll only say that while I’m prepared to believe that postmodernism can get you there (wherever the right ‘there’ for conservatism is), I’m still not convinced that you actually need it in any particular way. It also may be the case that postmodernism is in some way parasitic (I use the term in a non-judgmental Marxist kind of way) on those who are not post-modern: it trades the ability to create for the ability to comment. Nietzsche makes the observation (if he’s the first to make it, and not, say, Aristotle), but Sophocles (or Shakespeare, or Moliere) writes the play.
October 10th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
And yes…pretty much everyone here seems to be vamphyrish.
Except for Connor.
Connor might be Helsing.
October 10th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Helen..your submission to authority, Niccola’s traditionalism, Jeff Goldstein’s intentionalism, Allahpundit’s teamspirit, those are all just different ways to stay in the house.
October 10th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Helen: You’re cheating, on two points.
First, your claim that obedience to forms, even arbitrary ones, is “objectively better” does appear to be a non-theological conclusion which seems to do an incredible amount of work for you. But I submit that this isn’t strong enough to do the kind of work you want it to do unless you make it theological, because without some standard against which objectivity is measured, you’re left with a claim of personal preference, which gets you nowhere. I recognize I’m coming at this from a really elementary level, but this would seem to be the essence of postmodernism. You can’t just posit objectivity and expect everyone to smile and nod, and I’m rather surprised that you seem to attempt this here. I can think of several justifications which you might offer, but you haven’t offered any. “That’s just the way it is,” doesn’t cut it.
Second, for one who claims to place such a premium on submission to authority, from what you’ve written here I don’t see much of a willingness to do that. It sounds to me like you like the stability and virtue that authority brings, and are willing to go along with those things which get you want you want. But when it comes to things which your Catholic tradition requires, like, oh, putting God at the center of your intellectual life, you punt. If you’re serious about submission to authority, that means doing and believing what that authority says, whether or not you like it. There’s a distinction between “submission” and “tagging along,” and what you’re doing sounds more like the latter than the former.
That last isn’t intended to be at all personal; I’ve never met you let alone gotten to know you. So that’s not intended to be a comment on your personal, spiritual life as much as it is on your public, intellectual one.
Makoto: I really don’t know what you’re trying to say, but it doesn’t strike me as being terribly productive. Also: learn to spell.
October 10th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
One thing I think postmodernism, in the main, and conservatism, in its abusive forms, share is that neither want to raise the truth question. To which authority should we submit? Which traditions should we conserve? Postmodern conservatism seems to me to be interesting and truthful but incomplete. Don’t we need recourse to something beyond both postmodernism or conservatism simpliciter to avoid relativism on the one hand and blind dogmatism on the other? I don’t really think we have to play the divine trump card (at least, not at the outset; possibly not at all). What do you think?
October 10th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Sorry: should read “interesting and useful.”
October 10th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
“Also: learn to spell.”
No…I’m a math major, I don’t have to.
Helen likes the tribal substrate, right?
Here is what I’m saying.
Pomoconservativism is simply an attempt to reconcile concurrent membership in two antipathic tribes, the contemporary GOP and the tribe of the upper right tail of the bellcurve.
October 10th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
And heeeeere’s nishi/matoko/Kate… it would help if she neither lied nor displayed ignorance.
We, today, generally use the word “authority” as if it were synonymous with “power”, and it’s clear that Tom Harmon, in particular is using it that way — as if authority were essentially arbitrary. This leads to reading “Question Authority” as a command to defy authority. Our political leaders endorse that assumption, by claiming “authority” when what they are really exerting is power.
But that isn’t necessarily the best or even most correct meaning of the word. True authority is characteristic of the person who “wrote the book” — that is, of the person who knows the subject and is therefore entitled to give directions, because those directions are based on knowledge and are likely to yield correct action. Taken in that sense, “Question Authority!” is much more useful advice. It means to check, to make sure that the supposed “authority” in fact has the knowledge necessary to support that claim. All too frequently the answer is “No, that person is exerting power in ignorance.” On the occasions when authority genuinely does exist, it is not merely wrong but foolish to ignore or defy it.
If you have to qualify “conservative” with “postmodern” in order to salve your own conscience or satisfy academic prejudices, go for it. Nonetheless, a conservative speaks from the authority of experience. That’s what the word means, and it is not improved by qualifiers. Present-day customs are the product of some tens of thousands of years of evolution. It passes belief that nobody, ever, in all those millenia, thought of some of the policies we now call “progressive”. If societies tried them, they did not survive and the customs do not occur in the record. This does not mean that nothing can ever change, that the way it was done by Austropithicenes must be the way it’s done for ever and ever, but it does mean that customs and policies that have stood the test of time should not be discarded with sneers.
As for “objective”, I advise you to put it out of your mind. Philosophers have been trying for millenia to determine the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything, and Dougas Adams’s answer is as good as any of them. Better to proceed as if there were an objective Universe, by faith if necessary, and align your activities according to that. Experience tells us that you step in fewer bear traps that way.
Regards,
Ric
October 10th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
“If you have to qualify “conservative” with “postmodern” in order to salve your own conscience or satisfy academic prejudices, go for it. Nonetheless, a conservative speaks from the authority of experience. That’s what the word means, and it is not improved by qualifiers.”
What i say?
We own the house.
lol
October 10th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Ryan: On your point two, I think you are too unkind. I read Helen’s narrative as: she discovered her love of forms and traditions through the experience of “aesthetic bliss” and tasting the sublime, and that love grew into belief, not in God - whom Helen no doubt already believed in - but in a sort of Keatsian “beauty is truth, truth beauty” way of seeing things.
I suspect that Helen loves truth and beauty, and their forms and layers, and the Authority which makes them both Real and sublime, and God, all at once, and not all compartmentalized-like, as you seem to have suggested.
And really, to question someone you don’t even know as to whether God really sits at the center of her intellectual life (just because she didn’t go there in this post) is quite a thing to do, don’t you think?
October 10th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
E: As to your last comment, you may be right, but as Helen essentially said she was trying to do just that earlier in the post, I didn’t think it out of bounds to say as much.
As to your first ones, I’m not really sure what you’re getting at.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
R: You wrote: “If you’re serious about submission to authority, that means doing and believing what that authority says, whether or not you like it. There’s a distinction between “submission” and “tagging along,” and what you’re doing sounds more like the latter than the former.”
I read “tagging along” as “going along with It because you like It” (rather than going along with It because you believe you should, i.e. because your belief in God compels you), and what I was getting at was that according to Helen’s telling if things, her liking It was what made her notice It, and the recognition of Its goodness and her submission to It came after, and that is fine. To go at it lightheartedly, is she to be judged lacking because she *liked* skipping along with It, as opposed to trudging along dutifully with It, and making sure she wore God on her sleeve as she did so?
One can willingly tag along and be serious (about submission to authority) at the same time, I think, and Helen seems to be when she says, “submission to authority seemed to be responsible for everything in the world I liked, including formalist poetry, moral virtue, and interesting individuality…and I didn’t know why everyone around me seemed to bristle at the idea of submitting to authority instead of seeing it as a *challenge* and a *duty.*”
In this post she said It was both a joy AND a duty; what more could one possibly want from a servant?
Also: she wrote: “That’s the kind of belief I have in my traditions, especially those that can’t be traced back to divine revelation.” This is not a small point. Not all tradition comes to us from the lips of angels, so in those cases - the cases of societal/cultural or academic/intellectual traditions and conventions - though one’s intellect may well be centered in God, where do you look for authority, and on what basis, and how do you believe? Helen tried to explain how, and I don’t see the fault.
October 11th, 2008 at 12:50 am
Some authority is true authority, some “authority” is false authority claiming to be true authority. My point was that neither conservatism nor postmodernism, simpliciter, contain the resources within themselves, to judge which is true and which is merely apparant. The act of conserving must be guided by something; the eclipse of judgment in postmodernism rules knowing the truth out of bounds from the outset. My question is: doesn’t a postmodern conservative need recourse to something else from postmodernism and conservatism in order to resist falling victim to falsehood? What might that be?
October 11th, 2008 at 11:01 am
My question is: doesn’t a postmodern conservative need recourse to something else from postmodernism and conservatism in order to resist falling victim to falsehood? What might that be?
Science.
That would be my preference.
October 11th, 2008 at 11:04 am
By that I mean the biological basis of behavior and evolutionary theory of culture.
It is fine to be a believer as long you understand why you believe.
Believers that are thinkers too.
October 11th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
matoko_chan: But isn’t appealing to science as the authority “modern” rather than “postmodern”? If you’re truly postmodern, can you do that?
October 11th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Science is not an assumption.
October 11th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Here’s what I’d like to see the pomocon project do: As Tom Harmon pointed out, postmodernism rules out knowing the truth. (This puts conservatives and liberals on an equal footing, by the way, which is interesting given that my perception is that postmodernists are predominantly liberals.)
We need to develop an intellectually defensible position that a postmodern age should be conservative. That means either:
- Finding good reasons why conservatism is the most reasonable position, even in the face of postmodernist rejection of truth as knowable. I suspect that this isn’t possible; whatever you say postmodernism can reject.
- Or, it means finding solid, persuasive reasons why postmodernism should be rejected, and converting the functional viewpoint of the culture. (Postmodernism refutes itself - in postmodernism, if you can’t know the truth, you can’t know the truth of postmodernism - but I doubt that’s a strong enough reason to do the job.)
Whichever course is taken, though, it’s important that it doesn’t stop with the intellectuals. The key test is developing the ability to clearly communicate it to someone with only a high-school education. Here’s a guy who’s sixty, and he’s worked in a factory since he was 18, and his postmodernism he has picked up from his co-workers, the TV, movies, and music. He doesn’t even know he’s postmodern. Conservatives have failed to stick to their positions, true, and they have failed to have intellectually solid positions, but they have also failed to explain those positions to the person on the street. This is one of the most frustrating things about the presidential debates for the last several election cycles - the “conservative” candidate can’t or won’t clearly and simply articulate the conservative position.
October 11th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
mantoko_chan: I didn’t say that science was an assumption. You are claiming that science gives truth, and I’m saying that that is a modern position, not a postmodern one. I believe that a true postmodernist can claim that we can’t really know truth, even from science.
I’m not claiming that we can’t know truth through science, but then, I’m not really a postmodernist. I would disagree with the claim that we can know truth *only* through science, so I’m not really a modernist either…
October 11th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
As I understand it, postmodernism deals in the reappraisal or replacement of modern assumptions about culture, identity, history, or language.
Science is simply not an assumption.
Freddie asks if pomocons are conservatives that should “know better”.
But scientifically, pomocons are conservatives that are trying to reconcile membership in two antipathic tribes: the contemporary GOP and the right tail of the bellcurve. Thus tribal behavior like punishment for defectors, see Red State, Parker, Brooks. Also tribal teamspirit behavior, the same behavior that causes homosapiens sapiens to root for a NFL team or the Cubs.
Postmodernism simply becomes one tool to allow them to rationalize staying in the GOP.
October 11th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Perhaps I should phrase it better…..Science is a pretty broad term…the biological basis of behavior is not an assumption.
Alternatively….a superset instead of a subset…..knowledge is not an assumption.
And…..it is obvious to me at least that membership in the righthand tail of the bellcurve cannot be surrenderred easily.
October 11th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Ah…then I understand your position Mike.
In my position, science is defining postmodernism as one type of behavior.
One tool to deal with the human condition, among many.
“We need to develop an intellectually defensible position that a postmodern age should be conservative.”
I think this is impossible then, because I am not sure that position can exist.
For one thing, it is simply impossible to explain this to the 40percenters, Reihan and Ross’ working class.
For the other, science and technology will simply advance and destroy the pomo premise of unknowable truth.
Manzi and I have this argument all the time about genetic determinism.
October 11th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
AH, but wait! It may be “impossible to explain” this to the working class…but it may be that lots and lots of people nowadays are “practical postmoderns,” and that the explanation needed isn’t a modern/rational one but a postmodern/narrative one.
October 11th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Ok James….then think about this.
Perhaps religious belief is just practical postmodernism.
October 11th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
My position anyways is that religion is self-esteem for the portion of the bellcurve that isn’t high enough in IQ to understand science.
October 11th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
and then…..perhaps postmodernism is just an attempt to cloak religious belief in intellectualism.
October 11th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Look…the rightside intelligentsia seriously needs some education in Evolutionary Theory of Culture.
So that you can understand your own motivations, and thus be able to profit from your upcoming exile in the political wilderness.
Some truthsay.
Religious belief is both hardwired, and a good thing, evolutionarily speaking.
It increased reps by extending a kinship benefit to a wider tribe of memetic kin in the EEA (environment of evolutionary advantage).
The bellcurve is simply an immutable fact that you have to deal with.
Postmodernism is an intellectualization of religious/supernatural belief.
“the unknowable truth”
We are hardwired for certain tribal behaviors that gave a fitness benefit in the EEA, but which now are about as useful as our genetic predilection for eating sugar and fat whenever we can get it.
Strategically, you need to inspire and recover your reps.
The youth demographic.
You can stage tactical battles over appoints of supreme court judges, but that is like choosing new faucets while the house is burning down.
Is postmodern conservatism your strategy for recovering your youth demographic?
October 11th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Mike,
Bah. Post-modernism itself is an ignorant overgeneralization of quantum theory. “Overgeneralization” because it tosses out the most important part, from the scientist’s point of view: It’s useful. Manipulating the results gives you, among other things, tunnel diodes, an important component of cell phones. Quantum theory is inherently classical-liberal — you cannot predict, or even reliably manipulate, an individual particle, but their behavior in the mass can be worked with. Postmoderns argue that since individual truths cannot be known, no truth exists — and that’s a lie.
Perhaps the best way to proceed is to quit grappling with “truth” as a concept. (We may be able to return to it, later, but for right now it’s a spent force.) Let us replace it with utility. This is the attitude of the engineer, the technician, and the factory worker — the machine either works or it doesn’t, either fulfills its designed purpose or fails to do so. Principles and procedures that make the machine work are useful whether or not they are “true”. There is no such thing as “electric current” — it is merely electrons shoving and jostling one another, none of them moving far from its original position — but the concept is a useful one if you are designing or using electric machinery.
It remains to decide what the purpose of the machine is. This, we are told, is the province of Philosophy, and philosophers have been struggling with it since the concept occurred, back in the dim mists of Time. They have gotten nowhere. So let us make a postmodern choice of truth: The purpose of Life is life; the purpose of Civilization is civilization. From there it is a matter of utility, of devising means to promote life, of selecting concepts and policies that make civilization more pervasive.
If you want to communicate with the factory worker, the independent welder or farrier, the engineer, concentrate on what works and what does not. This is inherently “conservative”, because in order to say what works and what does not we must examine what has worked in the past and is therefore likely to work in the future. Classic conservatism perhaps concentrates overmuch on sticking with the tried and true, and there are things that need changing and improvements that need to be made — but that debate is for the future. At the moment, we have an Augean stable of things that don’t work impeding our movements, and clearing that away will be an entirely sufficient task for a generation.
Regards,
Ric
October 11th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
“Bah. Post-modernism itself is an ignorant overgeneralization of quantum theory. “Overgeneralization” because it tosses out the most important part, from the scientist’s point of view: It’s useful. Manipulating the results gives you, among other things, tunnel diodes, an important component of cell phones. Quantum theory is inherently classical-liberal — you cannot predict, or even reliably manipulate, an individual particle, but their behavior in the mass can be worked with. ”
Bah yourbigself, lol.
The Double-slit experiment? the Quantum Teleportation experiment?
The Large Hadron Supercollider?
shorter Ric Locke: We own the house
October 11th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
[…] FeedPostmodern Conservatism and American ThomismPostmodernism is Conservative: “You may not be an old-fashioned girl, but you’re still gonna get…Sandbox PoliticsCategories Select Category 1 (17) Books (4) Celebs & […]
October 11th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
[…] (Helen at Pomocon) […]
October 13th, 2008 at 8:38 am
I think this may be the stupidest blog post I’ve ever read.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
[…] was a great post over at Postmodern Conservative. The author, Helen Rittelmeyer, was trying to explain her kind of conservativism which is much more […]
October 17th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
[…] quotes Raymond Guess:“One has failed to experience the tragedy if one sees only one’s friend and fellow actor up there on the stage parading around in an odd mask. One has also failed if one thinks that it really is Oedipus up there, that the blood dripping down from his eyes is real blood, etc.” […]
October 19th, 2008 at 11:28 am
This is a great blog! I agree and Get Your Free Niche Search Engine Here.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
[…] while still knowing that it is unreal. This isn’t the first time I’ve referred to Helen Rittelmeyer on this subject, but I really like her way of putting it: “He can’t really believe it—if […]
November 18th, 2008 at 7:43 am
This post is sooo helpful to me. I am a refugee from the New Age (sort of). I recently started a blog to elevate the debate on politics and religion, and a poster challenged me to prove there could be such a thing as a “postmodern conservative.” Coincidentally, a friend sent me a link to this set of blogs, and wow, what an oasis in here! Passionate and dispassionate at the same time.
I am heavily influenced by the Integral Theory of Ken Wilber. He has a map of reality that can have the effect of persuading postmoderns that there is a transcendent but not necessarily theistic direction to growth, and that our purpose is growth to goodness.. Needless to say, it’s a tough sell over there. But now I’m thinking you guys could make better use of Wilber’s tools than most liberals can. Can someone please point me to any “pomocons” who are into integral theory?
To answer my own poster, I quoted Helen’s great line above about theater roles at Transcend & Include. The quote was enough to persuade him regarding two of the three components of postmodernism. Any support much appreciated.
Keep up the good work!
Teri Murphy
November 18th, 2008 at 7:48 am
Oops, sorry, the exchange I referenced above is actually at part 2 of that post on transpartisan values.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:53 am
Oh man, double sorry. I was trying to say Part 2.