Moral condemnation of postmodernism is a category mistake

Evidence

Yet if Postmodernism is a historical phenomenon, then the attempt to conceptualize it in terms of moral or moralizing judgments must finally be identified as a category mistake. All of which becomes more obvious when we interrogate the position of the cultural critic and moralist; the latter, along with all the rest of us, is now so deeply immersed in postmodernist space, so deeply suffused and infected by its new cultural categories, that the luxury of the old-fashioned ideological critique, the indignant moral denunciation of the other, becomes unavailable. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 153

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is the crux of the reader’s falsifiability question: if every critic is ‘infected’ by the categories they denounce, is there any external standpoint from which the cultural-dominant claim could be tested? Worth pressing.
• DEEPTHINKING: The self-immunizing structure — critique’s impossibility doing double duty as the theory’s defense — is dense enough to sit with. Any totalizing claim that renders its own refutation ‘unavailable’ deserves scrutiny.
• XREF: connects to: Postmodernism theory cannot produce a stable inside-outside position for its own observers — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 197; Postmodernism abandons ideology critique for cynical reason — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 21; Postmodernism cannot be defined once and settled; it must be reworked each use — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 33 (+3 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Postmodernism theory cannot produce a stable inside-outside position for its own observers — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 197; Postmodernism abandons ideology critique for cynical reason — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 21; Postmodernism cannot be defined once and settled; it must be reworked each use — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 33 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Postmodernism theory cannot produce a stable inside-outside position for its own observers #complicates (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 197
• Postmodern ideas’ acceptance, not their content, is what needs materialist explanation #complicates (0.76) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 617
• Postmodernism theory itself exemplifies the allegorical structures it describes #complicates (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 392
• Postmodernism abandons ideology critique for cynical reason #complicates (0.72) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 21
• Postmodernism treats consensus itself as an illusion produced by discourse #complicates (0.71) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 736