Please ask a question regarding the conversation (Marxism, Postmodernism and Current Issues) with Reuven Seidler.

Thank you very much.

If you could also tell me your opinion on the following statement by Gadi Taub, I would greatly appreciate it.

I highlighted in red, below, the main argument; I did not see that anyone other than Taub had raised this idea; discourse on the structure of reality means the annihilation of fantasy (which is a term that certainly exists in Lacan, p. 84 in Dylan Evans's dictionary t.ly/McDU )

I asked, do you have any reservations about this statement or do you agree with it?

Thank you very much.
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The Postmodern Attack on Imagination

We need an alternative to reality, otherwise everything that inspires human existence will disappear in favor of the educational, unifying, and political. What happens when art too turns from a psychological release into another postmodern burden

24.01.2018 12:47

Gadi Taub

Many adherents of the postmodern position are unaware that they have been trading in counterfeit philosophical banknotes for some time: the postmodern attack on the concept of truth turned out to be a clear failure, and the philosophical ground has slipped from under the feet of radical theories of discourse and social construction. But the trading routine on the deconstruction stock exchange continues, and it has caused, and continues to cause, serious damage to our spiritual world, just as counterfeit money in large quantities can damage the economy (and probably in other ways that money does not).

There is, of course, a degree of irony in this, because the philosophical defense of truth-denying positions tends to point to their consequences, rather than to their truth, which is logically impossible. So the question—for those who hold these positions—should not be whether their positions are “right,” but to what extent they are useful. But even this diversion of the discussion does not provide much relief to believers, especially when it becomes increasingly clear that the harms of the postmodern position probably outweigh any benefits they hoped to derive from it.

I will deal here with two of the many types of this harm: the denial of the category of the fictional and the attack on the space of imagination and art; and the transfer of the arena of legitimate argument from the substance of an issue to the substance of a person. Finally, I will mention, in rough outlines and for those interested in the professional debate between philosophers, how the banknotes turned out to be counterfeit, and why philosophy departments have not generally bought into the postmodern legend of the “death of truth”.

Abolishing the space of fiction

What compares to the postmodern position with a flash of audacity is directly related to the denial of truth: our discourse, those who hold such positions believe, does claim to describe reality, but in fact constitutes what we think reality is.

Thus we have learned to search behind texts that indicate themselves to be research, for the way in which, for example, the Western Orientalist “constitutes” himself as a subject and the Oriental as the object of his research. We have learned to suspect that behind literary works that supposedly deal with universal human experience, for example, there is hidden the construction of the gay as other—what we now call a “heteronormative position.” We have also learned how an apparently innocent joke reproduces, for example, gender relations of subordination. And so on, and always with abysmal seriousness.

But if discourse structures reality, the possibility of distinguishing between the two is logically eliminated. And so is the very possibility of a distinct, separate space of imagination. When the gap between the fictional and the real closes, fantasy, play, and humor also lose the ability to be an alternative to the real and become the real itself (or what seems to us to be real, which is what we are, for the purposes of our concern). The end result is that art too falls prey to the boots of didactic vulgarity.

Michel Foucault. According to him, truth is an internal function, for which there is no objective test outside of discourse, but we need an alternative to reality. It fulfills a psychological and spiritual need that is fundamental to man. Its absence cripples us. Because in the gap between discourse and reality lies our ability to examine and recognize the demons in the closet, the fears in the attic, the aggressions, the full spectrum of emotions and the possibilities—and limitations—of releasing them. In the realm of imagination, a child can get even with the teacher who insulted him with terrible revenge without causing him or her any harm, and then return to the path of routine. In a video game, he can “kill the bad guys” without harming anyone. Later in life, in adulthood, we also find outlet and solace in fiction, fantasy, imagination, and humor. There we touch on frightening desires and existential anxieties, and in this way we can take out some of the sting. If sexual fantasy ceases to be an arena in which to discover the limits of that transgression of boundaries that is human sexuality, if there it is impossible to connect and untie the connections between desire and aggression, omnipotent dreams and anxieties, then we bring the whole raw, unprocessed cocoon into interpersonal reality itself. If daydreams cease to be a way of recognizing the fluidity between love

Hello.
I think attacking postmodernism is a blessing in disguise. The bottom line is that all these attacks are nothing more than one argument in different shades: if there is no truth, your claims are also baseless. You can't argue anything. In other words, postmodernism declares a vacuum, but implicitly it makes quite a few assumptions.
This attack you brought also uses cannons to kill mice. In a world where all discourse is self-interested construction, there is also no art and there is no difference between discussion and truth. Obviously, but that's because there is no truth and there is no meaning to discussion, all of that itself. So what's the point of raising such arguments?
What's more appropriate to do is describe postmodernism and leave it to the reader to decide.
See columns 178-184 on my website.

It certainly doesn't depend on talent. There are quite a few talented people who fall into these realms. Sometimes it seems to me that this happens mainly to the talented. Someone once said (Wilde?) that there are such big nonsenses that only intellectuals can say them. This is completely serious. Sometimes a disconnected but consistent logical structure that will make no impression on a simple person who acts with common sense will impress an intellectual who is willing to live on a logical plane disconnected from common sense. Some see this as the essence of intellectuality (I don't). This is mainly said of mathematicians, whose main concern is with consistent theories, in whatever form they may be, that is, with validity regardless of correctness and logic.

It is common to attribute the Mimra to George Orwell, but wikiquote says about it:
Possibly a paraphrase of Bertrand Russell in My Philosophical Development (1959): “ This is one of those views which are so absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them.” It is similar in meaning to Orwell’s line from Notes on Nationalism (1945): “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” However, Russell was commenting not on politics, as Orwell was, but on some philosophers and their ideas about language.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Orwell#Misattributed

Chen Chen.