The “Mocking Varlets” of the Postmodern Left: Political Correctness, Education, and Empire

Abstract

The use of the adjective “postmodern” punctuated the launch of a vogue. It was not attributed to Foucault himself—who, fearing to lose ground, mocked the cliché at once—but to a massive nouvelle vague of second-rate imitators of his, pundits like Lyotard, or Baudrillard.² The United States welcomed them all. Postmodernism was a French import, which followed in the wake of the Foucauldian sensation, but the phenomenon has been unquestionably American. Postmodernism became the new mannerism of the Left. And before one could begin to assess what it was actually made of, academia was busy reconfiguring curricula, form, and logistics around this American prototype running on a Foucaldian engine: the institution of “cultural studies.”

And next come our philosophers, reverenced for their gowns and beards; they look upon themselves as the only knowledgeable ones and all others as fleeting shadows. How sweet it is to see them rave while they frame in their heads innumerable worlds. […] In the meantime Nature laughs at their conjectures. In fact, as proof of their not knowing anything with certainty would suffice their arguing about the explanation of every single phenomenon. These, though they know nothing, profess to know everything; not knowing even themselves and, at times, not being aware of the pothole or the block that lies in their way, whether because they’re half blind, or because their wits wander in some other place, contend that they have discovered ideas,… separate forms. […] Most of all, they loathe the profane populace.

Erasmus, In Praise of Folly ¹