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Academic Fads & Fashions
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  1. Against Post-Modernism
    A Marxist Critique

    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1982
    Callinocos argues that the relativism preached by post-modernist leaves us with no objective criteria by which to reject those who would falsify the past.
  2. An Annotated Bibliography of Nonsense
    Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
    Published: 1998
    Academic critics today not only question the impact of science upon society, but they also question the very idea of scientific rationality.
  3. Bad Marxism
    Capitalism and Cultural Studies

    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2004
    Cultural Studies commonly claims to be a radical discipline. This book thinks that's a bad assessment. After an introduction critiquing the 'Marxism' of the academy, Hutnyk provides detailed critical analyses of the approaches and theorists of cultural studies.
  4. Descent into Discourse
    The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History

    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1990
    Critique of postmodernist and poststructuralist approaches in history.
  5. Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1998
    The authors criticize postmodernism in academia for its misuses of scientific and mathematical concepts in postmodern writing. Fashionable Nonsense examines two related topics: (1) The incompetent and pretentious usage of scientific concepts by a small group of influential philosophers and intellectuals; (2) the problems of cognitive relativism, the idea that "modern science is nothing more than a 'myth', a 'narration' or a 'social construction' among many others". The stated goal of the book is not to attack "philosophy, the humanities or the social sciences in general...[but] to warn those who work in them (especially students) against some manifest cases of charlatanism," and in particular to "deconstruct" the notion that some books and writers are difficult because they deal with profound and difficult ideas. "If the texts seem incomprehensible, it is for the excellent reason that they mean precisely nothing." The book includes long extracts from the works of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Paul Virilio, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard who are considered by some to be leading academics of Continental philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis or social sciences. Sokal and Bricmont set out to show how those intellectuals have used concepts from the physical sciences and mathematics incorrectly. The extracts are intentionally rather long to avoid accusations of taking sentences out of context.
    Published in French as Impostures Intellectuelles and in the United Kingdom as Intellectual Impostures.
  6. The Illusions of Postmodernism
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1996
    Eagleton explores the origins and emergence of postmodernism, revealing its ambivalences and contradictions. His primary concern is less with the more intricate formulations of postmodern philosophy than with the culture or milieu of postmodernism as a whole. Above all, he speaks to a particular kind of student, or consumer, of popular "brands" of postmodern thought.
  7. Nothing Mat(t)ers: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism
    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 1992
    An explanation of the foundation of recent post-modern theory which also criticises the misogynist and patriarchal work of Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard and Jean-Francois Lyotard.
  8. The Origins of Post-Modernity
    Resource Type: Book
    Perry Anderson's book outlines the cultural changes that have accompanied the victory of global capitalism.
  9. Postmodern Disrobed
    Review of Intellectual Impostures

    Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
    Published: 1998
    An admirable job of exposing the daffy absurdity of postmodernism intellectuals.
  10. Rationality/Science
    Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
    Published: 1995
    Chomsky writes: "It strikes me as remarkable that the left today should seek to deprive oppressed people not only of the joys of understanding and insight, but also of tools of emancipation, informing us that the "project of the Enlightenment" is dead, that we must abandon the "illusions" of science and rationality--a message that will gladden the hearts of the powerful, delighted to monopolize these instruments for their own use."
  11. The Trouble with Theory
    The Educational Costs of Postmodernism

    Resource Type: Book
    Published: 2008
    Postmodern theory has engaged the hearts and heads of the brightest students because of its apparent political and social radicalism. Yet Kitching writes: "At the heart of postmodernism is very poor, deeply confused, and misbegotten philosophy. As a result even the very best students who fall under its sway produce radically incoherent ideas about language, meaning, truth, and reality."
  12. Where Do Postmodernists Come From?
    Resource Type: Article/Report/Letter
    Published: 1995
    Eagleton argues that left intellectuals have adopted postmodernism out of a sense of having been badly defeated, a belief that the left as a political tendency has little future. Culturalism, he argues, involves an extreme subjectivism combined with a deep pessimism, a sense that it isn't worth the effort to learn about the world, to analyze social systems, for instance, because they can't be changed anyway.

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