Postmodernism, how I loathe you!

[eskimopencil]

I was recently reminded of postmodernism and, to tell you the truth, from the moment I found out about this theory, it pit a pit in my stomach and made me feel ill, literally.

I like to boil postmodernist theory to this: It's the greatest, most complex excuse intellectuals/liberals have ever come up with for not doing anything (i.e. activism).

I'm

Comments

[kill_a_fascist]

I am coming from a man's perspective, so I don't know how much weight this holds, but it seems to me like sexism far predates capitalism; though, as marxists, I think it is important to see in what ways it is bound up in capitalism today and realize that the greatest hope for the abolition of patriarchy lies in the abolition of capitalism.

[eskimopencil]

Well, "seems" doesn't carry much weight. I think you're being a man doesn't make much of a difference. I'm going to be reading Engels' book because it's a very close analysis of an anthropological account. Why I think patriarchy is an insufficient concept is it is ahistorical. It may "seem" that racism has been around before capitalism, but it's not true. Sure, people had been bigots before, but African-American and Carribean historians will tell you that before the Atlantic slave trade, racism as a system did not exist. It became necessary to justify slavery, which was one of the reasons the industrial revolution was able to happen. Sexism predated capitalism, but not class society. With the sexual division of labor and agriculture came women's oppression. I know this because I've read. As a woman, cannot sense if this is true, as a revolutionary, I know it's true.

Thanks for your insight though, it really interests me what people think on this subject.