Postmodern philosophy is often misunderstood, partially because it is very nuanced, partially because they appear deliberately obscure, but often because people do not fully understand the presuppositions that postmodernists rely on, nor do they understand the critique of modernity.
In this video, I react to a video by Youtuber Ryan Chapman called “What is Postmodernism?” Chapman attempts to explain postmodernism and show its secret links to so-called Leftist identity politics.
I have also provided a plethora of citations, including the one’s Chapman uses in his video, but doesn’t provide.
Derrida, Jacques. Limited Inc. Northwestern Univ. Press, 2008. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. Buy here!
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 2006. Buy here!
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Buy here!
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Vintage Books, 2011. Buy here!
Friedrich, Hegel Georg Wilhelm. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford University Press, 1994. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard, Vintage Books, 2006. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Buy here!
Deere, Don T. “TRUTH.” The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon, edited by Leonard Lawlor and John Nale, Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 517–527. Buy here!
Lyotard Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Geoff Bennington, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2010. Buy here!
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What did Foucault have to say about the Gulag Question?
In the late 1970s, as the revelations of the brutality of the Gulags in the USSR became common knowledge, some Leftists attempted to use French Philosopher Michel Foucault’s writings on the prison system to explain away the reality of the Gulag. They would claim, “Everyone has their own Gulag, the Gulag is here at our door, in our cities, our hospitals, our prisons, it’s here in our heads.” While Foucault agreed that the technologies of the Gulag share a history with other forms of incarceration in the West, the politics which lead to the creation of the Gulags were very different than other forms of incarceration. Foucault believes the the problem of the Gulag is a unique to socialist states, and therefore, it requires a critique of the very principles of socialism.
Psychology professor Dr. Jordan B. Peterson–who will only be referred to as DADDY—often pronounces his deep disdain for po-mo no-mos, i.e., post-modern neo-marxists. Despite there being no such thing as a po-mo no-mo (because the philosophies of post-modernism & neo-marxism are opposed to one another), one po-mo no-mo Daddy often brings up is another type of Daddy, French philosopher Michel Foucault. I react & respond to a video by Daddy where he is heavily criticizing Foucault to answer the question: Who’s Your Daddy?
Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. History of Madness, translated by Jean Khalfa, Routledge, London, 2009. Published in French in 1961. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard, Vintage Books, 2006. Published in French in 1964. Buy Here!
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 1975. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: an Introduction. 1976. Buy here!
Happy Holidays strange thinkers! Don’t forget! ALL HOLIDAYS MATTER!!! So Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Merry Festivus, Happy Kwanzaa, Get your Saturnalia on, or however your holy days self-identify. Here are books you need in your life!
Aristotle. Complete Works Part 1. Translated by Jonathan Barnes, Princeton Univ. Press, 1995. Buy here!
Aristotle. Complete Works Part 2. Translated by Jonathan Barnes, Princeton Univ. Press, 1995. Buy here!
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan(New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 20-21. Buy here!
Michel Foucault, Power: (The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, Vol. 3), trans. R. Hurley, ed. J. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 2015). Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: an Introduction. Translated by Robert J. Hurley, Vintage, 1990. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, edited by Colin Gordon, by Michel Foucault, Longman, 1980, pp. 109–133. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the collège De France, 1975-76. Translated by David Macey, Picador, 2003. Buy here!
Pull Yourself Together: A True Story of Alternate Realities, Spiritual Healing, and Dimensional Wholeness. Buy here!
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton, Columbia University Press, 1994. Buy here!
Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Autonomedia, 2014. Buy here!
Farmer, Philip Jose. Riders of the Purple Wage. Buy here!
Laozi. Tao Teh Ching 1. Translated by John C. H. Wu, Shambhala, 2003. Buy here!
Wang, Bi. The Classic of the Way and Virtue: a New Translation of the “Tao-Te Ching” of Laozi as Interpreted by Wang Bi, translated by Richard John Lynn, by Lao Zi, Columbia University Press, 1999. Buy here!
Laozi. Tao: A New Way of Thinking: A Translation of the Tao tê Ching with an Introduction and Commentaries, translated by Chung-Yuan Chang, Singing Dragon, London, 2014. Buy here!
Laozi. Tao Te Ching a Bilingual Edition. Edited by Wang Bi. Translated by Dim Cheuk Lau, The Chinese University Press, 2001. Buy here!
Zhuang, Zhou. The Essential Writings: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Translated by Brook Ziporyn, Hackett, 2009. Buy here!
Popper, Karl Raimund. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Routledge, 2002. Buy here!
The Ecology of Attention by Yves Citton. Buy here!
Einstein, Albert. Relativity, the Special and the General Theory: A Popular Exposition by Albert Einstein. Translated by Robert W. Lawson, Crown Publishers, Inc., 1961. Buy here!
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature, Barnes & Noble, New York, NY, 2005. Buy here!
Schulman, Sarah. Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility and the Duty of Repair. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017. Buy here!
Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson, Columbia University Press, 1986. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, translated by Walter Kaufmann, Vintage Books, New York, 1974. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Translated by Walter Kaufman, The Viking Press, 1966. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, Vintage Books, New York, 1989. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ. Translated by Reginald John Hollingdale, Penguin Books, 2003. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. Hackett Pub. Co, 2009. Buy here!
Singal, Jesse. The Quick Fix Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2021. Buy here!
“Mythology tells of how the victories of giants have gradually been forgotten and buried, of the twilight of the gods, of how heroes were wounded or died, and of how kings fell asleep in inaccessible caves. We also have the theme of rights and privileges of the earliest race, which were flouted by cunning invaders, the theme of the war that is still going on in secret, of the plot that has to be revived so as to rekindle that war and to drive out the invaders or enemies; the theme of the famous battle that will take place tomorrow, that will at last invert the relationship of force, and transform the vanquished into victors who will know and show no mercy. Throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, and even later, the theme of perpetual war will be related to the great, undying hope that the day of revenge is at hand, to the expectation of the emperor of the last years, the dux novus, the new leader, the new guide, the new Fuhrer; the idea of the 5th monarchy, the third empire, the third Reich, the man who will be both the beat of the Apocalypse and the savior of the poor. It’s the return of Alexander, who got lost in India; the return expected for so long in England, of Edward the Confessor; it’s the two Fredericks—Barbarossa and Frederick the second—waiting in their caves for their people and their empires to reawaken; it’s Charlemagne sleeping in his tomb, and who will wake up to revive the just war; it’s the king of Portugal, lost in the sands of Africa, returning for a new battle and a new war which, this time, will lead to a final, definitive victory.” – Michel Foucault
