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How the real world became a fable

Arguments such as those of Baudrillard or Lyotard would scarcely have achieved such prominence - or be taken seriously by so many commentators - had they not coincided with the widespread drift toward varieties of ultra-relativist thinking in matters of historical, political and ethical judgment. Postmodernism is merely the most extreme [...] version of this desire to have done with all truth-claims beyond what is presently and contingently 'good in the way of belief'. It goes along with the current new-pragmatist line, as argued by thinkers like Rorty and Fish, that the only kind of truth that counts is the power to persuade members of one's own interest-group 'interpretive community', or professional guild.

In which case clearly the Gulf War issue must resolve into a matter of consensus opinion among those - chiefly the US and 'Alied' communities - whose understanding of events will dominate discussion and determine how the story gets told over the next few months, years or decades. It would then serve no purpose to resist or contest that account on factual, historical, political or ethical grounds, since such arguments could only prevail to the extent that there already existed a more or less receptive climate of opinion, a communal readiness to grant them a hearing and view them as somehow fitting in with a sense of what the war was really about. [p.63]

Uncritical Theory: postmodernism, intellectuals, and the Gulf War (1992)
Christopher Norris

Posted on:
2009.12.08 -0600

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