Chris Trottier on Nostr: The best criticism I’ve seen of post-modernism, specifically Michel Foucault’s ...

The best criticism I’ve seen of post-modernism, specifically Michel Foucault’s flavour of it, comes from Karl Rove—former U.S Presidential advisor to George W. Bush:The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore." He continued "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."In other words, by the time you analyze how power structures work, those in power change the reality of those power structures.

Which means by the time those who critique realize what’s happening, conditions change. It’s too late. With the time it took to analyze, you didn’t act fast enough to resist the “new reality”.

This is how the right wing hijacks postmodernism.