Trump Validates Postmodernism

                I’m a postmodernist, an unapologetic one at that.

                I’ve spent years reading and hearing about how bad that is and how we are responsible for the moral decline of the West (like they had any morals to decline).  Mostly, people bemoan the fact that postmodernists have destroyed something they call “truth.”  Lately this has been a common theme among people responding to the election of Trump and demanding that institutions, particularly schools, get back to the business of teaching what is true, or this perceived decline in values will continue.

                My reading of the election of Trump and the appointment of his cabinet of rich, white guys is just the opposite.  I think this administration is about to prove once again (as if we haven’t seen this movie often enough already) just how dangerous “truth” can be.  I don’t think we will have to venture all that far into the world according to The Donald before the skeptical insights at the heart of postmodernism will be more and more valuable.  I think we’re about to get more “truth” than any of us can stand.

                For too many people, postmodernism is nothing more than surrender to moral and cultural relativism.  From a strong postmodern perspective, the observations about relativism are merely descriptive.  We look at a world where honest people acting in good faith see the same things and respond to them differently.  We look at a world where languaging creates not one but many “realities” that all claim a moral and objective high ground.  Pointing this out is not some kind descent into unresolved futility, it is simply recognizing that we live in a world where no single standpoint is adequate or just.  From this perspective it makes sense to distrust narratives about progress, freedom and justice because they are always already constructed out of only part of the whole.  Derrida teaches us that these kinds of hinges work both ways, that the free always contains the not free, that the just always contains the unjust.  The object is not to throw up our hands and say it’s too hard to figure out what we should say is true, but to recognize that it will take a lot of work and dialog among dissonant standpoints to arrive at a provisional truth.  All of us are blind to some things, whether that be privilege or bias, that are only exposed in contact with others. There are people who call themselves postmodernist who stop at the relativity part or engage in clever but bloodless word games, but I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss the more substantial parts of the philosophy because of them.

                I always find it amusing when people blame postmodernism for the decline in moral clarity.  They make it sound like a few poorly funded post-docs in English and Philosophy have destroyed the world.  These are people who often can’t even pay their rent.  The real destroyers of moral clarity are the regular suspects, the rich and the powerful.  They are the ones who shut off dissent and engagement to strangle the facts in support of their position.  They want to live in an oligarchy or plutocracy instead of a democracy.  With Trump taking office, they are closer than ever to getting their wish.  Neither Trump or the people he has surrounded himself with believe in dissent or alternative points of view.  They believe they – and only they – possess the truth.  They do not make good neighbors.  They are about to try and bring moral clarity to your world on their terms.  They are about to make “truth” the ugly and dangerous thing it has always been to those on the other side.

                Democracy is inherently an unstable form of governance.  When that instability gets mixed with unhealthy amounts of fear and clan identity it can get ugly.  The era of Trump is an ugly era.  The natural response is to defend ourselves from the anger and fear, but that is a flawed response.  We need to defend the other – the people least like us and most vulnerable.  If we’re going to continue to evolve as a democracy (and that’s a long way from certain), it is their voices and their perspectives that will take us there.  I think the insights of postmodernists are critical to this effort.  We have to expand our definition of who we are and not contract it.  We’ve been plodding along as if the future was guaranteed to us – it never is.  We have to make it. This will be hard work.  It is more dialogical than it is political in the sense that the institutions we’ve built to sustain a democratic society are in ruins.  Building a new, more diverse and decentralized social order will be difficult and take time and imagination, but the only way forward is often the hardest way.  See ya on the other side.