The War on English: An Answer to the Question, What is Postmodernism? By Niall Lucy & Steve Mickler

Our first task, then, is to decide what “postmodernism” means, according to its detractors. What are its alleged key features? This question occupies the initial section of the paper, which includes a series of counter arguments in response to what postmodernism is supposed to be guilty of “undermining” or “destroying.” In section two we move to a discussion of particular problems associated with so-called “postmodern” English, before focusing (in section three) on the widely reported views of a strident adversary of contemporary English studies: Kevin Donnelly. Our comments here are confined to a discussion of Donnelly’s most recent book, Dumbing Down (2007), which we take for a mature and considered expression of his approach to education. We conclude by way of pondering the question, whose interests are served by attacking postmodernism?

1. Postmodernism

1.1
Postmodernism is denounced for consisting (allegedly) of five broad features, all of which are meant to be equally damning:
postmodernism holds there to be no such thing as truth
postmodernism equals moral relativism
postmodernism is leftist
postmodernism is anti-liberal
postmodernism holds there to be no such thing as history.

Under postmodernism, as historian Keith Windschuttle puts it, “the pursuit of something as objective as the truth becomes a mere pipe dream” (“Struggle”). So ingrained is this assumption – that for postmodernism there is no such thing as truth – that Sydney Morning Herald journalist Miranda Devine refers to “a destructive era of postmodern truth-twisting” in one of her columns (“Riding”), without feeling obliged to explain what she means by that expression. It comes as no surprise therefore that another newspaper columnist, Giles Auty, should accuse postmodernism of disillusioning the nation’s youth by teaching them to disrespect the truth:

Since the advent of postmodernism almost every worthwhile certainty and
traditional virtue has not just been called into question but has come under
increasing assault – usually in our centres of further education and supposed
enlightenment. When the concepts of truth, honour, objectivity, altruism,
justice and religious faith are treated with contempt or scepticism by those who
instruct our young, is it any great wonder that some of the young should seek
refuge in oblivion or narcolepsy? (“Postmodernism’s Assault”)