“We’ve been publicly funding extremely radical, postmodern leftist thinkers who are hellbent on demolishing the fundamental substructure of Western civilization. And that’s no paranoid delusion. That’s their self-admitted goal,” proclaims University of Toronto psychology professor and YouTube star Jordan B. Peterson (qtd. in Philips). In the current climate of campus wars and free speech movements, each socially conservative influencer has a unique diagnosis for the “radical politics” of the Left, whether it be Marxism, communism, socialism, identity politics, political correctness, or a combination of these. Petersen, however, employs <postmodernism> as an umbrella term that accounts for all of these disparate “isms” and political projects upon utterance, and weaves them into a coherent, nefarious narrative. His use of the term started to emerge in his social commentary with his loud opposition to Bill C16, which amended the Canadian Human Rights Act to in include gender expression and gender identity to its prohibitable grounds for discrimination. He posits that the bill and the policies surrounding it, as implemented by universities and corporate HR departments, are establishing putative measures for one’s failure to use compelled speech. Peterson received aggressive backlash, especially from students of the University of Toronto, because of his refusal to observe alternative gender pronouns on the grounds that “authoritarianism… [is] started by people's attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory" (qtd. in Murphy). Petersen argues that the “radical left”, who is largely in support of and partially comprised of the transgender community, has been socially pathologized by the <postmodern> “doctrine” dominating humanities departments. However, Petersen is not the first academic who has publicly cast aspersions on this body of philosophic thought.
In 1996, New York University physics professor Alan Sokal found himself in the academic and public spotlight for his infamous Hoax article “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”. After the parody article was published in the cultural studies journal Social Text, Sokal exposed that the contents of his article were complete nonsense that merely pandered to <postmodern> intellectual’s progressive political views and “exposed” their low academic standards. To his surprise, the hoax transcended the academy and was widely discussed in the press, even making it to the front page of The New York Times (Scott). After making it into the public eye, Sokal decided to bring his message to an even wider audience with his book, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science. While Sokal alluded to some of the social phenomena that Petersen highlights as consequences of <postmodernism>, he was more concerned with how the intellectual movement was undermining the scientific worldview. Nevertheless, his characterization of <postmodernism> and the narrative the press built around it equated the term with academic incompetence and progressive ideology. Twenty years later, Petersen revitalizes this sentiment and places a greater emphasis on its social and political consequences.
In this essay, I employ Michael Calvin McGee’s conception of the “ideograph” to trace <postmodernism> as used in public discourse from the Sokal affair to the rise of Jordan B. Petersen. Both of these scholars present themselves as disciplinary outsiders capable of interpreting the intellectual project of <postmodernism> and its consequences. They are able to do so effectively by exploiting the ambiguity of the term and using it to condense various ideas and attitudes in tension with their own political projects into one word. By starting with Sokal’s use of the term, I demonstrate how it was first constructed as a pejorative in public discourse, which set a precedent for how Petersen is using the word today. Specifically, I argue that Petersen uses the <postmodernism> ideograph to summarize a host of threats to individualism and responsibility and uses it to scapegoat his opposition, the proponents of transgender rights. The following sections of this essay will describe the nature of “ideographs”; provide an analysis of the Sokal Hoax and the publicity surrounding it; and finish with a textual analysis of speeches, interviews, books, and editorials by Petersen to interrogate the rhetorical function of <postmodernism> in his discourse.
“Ideograph” and the “Resources of Ambiguity”
Michael Calvin McGee (1980) coined the term “ideograph” to describe shorthand summations that ideologically bind one to a set of attitudes and corresponding actions that arise in specific political contestations. He defines an ideograph as:
…an ordinary language term found in political discourse. It is a high-order abstraction representing collective commitment to a particular but equivocal and ill-defined normative goal. It warrants the use of power, excuses behavior and belief which might otherwise be perceived as eccentric or antisocial, and guides behavior and belief into channels easily recognized by a community as acceptable and laudable. (McGee 15).
Furthermore, they are linked to clusters of other such terms that together form the foundational vocabulary for a dominant political consciousness. There is a necessarily kairotic quality to ideographs - they tend to emerge out of political controversies and often become sites of controversy themselves. In this sense, ideographs function similarly to slogans, except they dissimulate the explicit political sentiment that slogans expose. Because of this dissimulation, “they are also imbued with the power to craft public identification with normative collective commitments” (Kelly 458) in subtle ways. For a contrasting example, “Make America Great Again” is a slogan explicitly used for Donald Trump’s political campaign, and when any American familiar with his agenda encounters this message, a web of political attitudes and corresponding commitments emerge. The message implies a nostalgic, conservative sentiment, namely that America was great and represented a host of values and qualities that we wish to revive. Ideographs, however, can pack the same sort of proclivities without presenting themselves as slogans. For example, Trump’s affectionately employed phrase <Fake News> can read objectively on its surface as merely false reporting, but takes on a distinctly adverse meaning towards characteristically left-leaning media outlets such as CNN and The New York Times when taken in context of the Trump administration’s frequent use of it.
Dana Cloud demonstrates how particularly conservative ideographs function in her article “The Rhetoric of <Family Values>”. She argues that in response to the 1992 Los Angeles riots, then Vice-President Dan Quayle blamed the social crisis on a lack of <family values>, specifically in respect to “single parents, racial minorities, and the poor” (Cloud 388). By scapegoating these social and racial groups, Quayle deflected the public’s attention away from structural issues and onto the “privatized” failings of individuals to live up to an ideal familial structure (i.e. the nuclear family). The <family values> ideograph, along with <responsibility> and <opportunity>, accumulated a host of bipartisan political attitudes that helped shape public disapproval for social services for lower class citizens. The <postmodernism> ideograph functions in a similar way: for Sokal, Cultural Studies and Science Studies are scapegoated to uphold the value of the sciences; and for Petersen, the transgender community and the humanities are scapegoated to uphold <responsibility>, <individualism>, and <the West>.
Ideographic analyses are concerned with how individual rhetors exploit such terms and craft them to subtly suggest the political commitments they desire to instill in their audiences. As Cloud notes, “political rhetors dip into, add to, and reshape the shared cultural stock of ideographs” in ways that create or exacerbate tensions between webs of political values (389). To analyze how ideographs gain meaning through these particular instances of exploitation, McGee suggests we must look at the chronology of their individual uses and analyze the significance they manifest in relation to one another (16). The following analyses will look at the two most influential figures who have brought <postmodernism> into public discourse; each of which bring unique ideological underpinnings to the ideograph and effect unique sets of political tensions therein. Prior to these analyses, I’ll highlight how ambiguity functions in ideographs in general and in <postmodernism> specifically.
McGee’s conception of the ideograph is appears to extend Kenneth Burke’s concept of “philosophical myth”, which is closely related, if not synonymous with ideology (1). The terms “high-level abstraction” and “equivocal and ill-defined” found in McGee’s definition of “ideograph” closely resemble Burke’s conception of ambiguity and the resources available therein. In Grammar of Motives ([1945] 1969), he writes:
Occasionally, you will encounter a writer who seems to get great exaltation out of proving, with an air of much relentlessness, that some philosophic term or other has been used to cover a variety of meanings, and who would smash and abolish this idol. As a general rule, when a term is singled out for such harsh treatment, if you look closer you will find that it happens to be associated with some cultural or political trend from which the speaker would dissociate himself; hence there is a certain notable ambiguity in this very charge of ambiguity, since he presumably feels purged and strengthened by bringing to bear upon this particular term a kind of attack that could, with as much justice, be brought to bear upon any other term (or “title”) in philosophy (xviii)… instead of considering it our task to “dispose of” this ambiguity by merely disclosing the fact that it is an ambiguity, we rather consider it our task to study and clarify the resources of ambiguity. (xix)
Ambiguous language is characterized by indistinct, incoherent, and even contradictory meanings that can be strategically manipulated by individuals, especially for political ends (Zhang and Han 194). Sokal and Peterson are successfully able to “transform” <postmodernism> to suit their rhetorical purposes because of the inherently ambiguous nature of the word. Furthermore, the transformative power they yield in each case is obtained through their purported ability to eliminate this very ambiguity. This “clarification” essentially functions to cluster other terms under this “ultimate” term: for Sokal these are social construction, cultural studies, poststructuralism; for Petersen echoes these terms and adds “neo-Marxism”, “radical Left”, “intersectionality”, and “social justice” the list. Both are received as experts on the subject because they are deemed competent by their respective audiences in their assessments of <postmodernism> and the terms it subsumes. As McGee points out, ideographs only have “meaning insofar as [one’s] description is acceptable, believable” (10). <Postmodernism> serves as a ripe term to exploit for political aims due to its inherent and notorious ambiguity.
We can observe several ambiguities in <postmodernism> prior to and outside of Sokal and Petersen’s uses that make it so malleable for situational political use. First of all, this “philosophic term” resists a firm definition; one key characteristic of <postmodernism> is that meaning inevitably arises in a context of history, culture, and one’s personal experience (Dockery 12). Furthermore, given that everyone necessarily brings his or her unique interpretive framework to bear in any given read of a text or situation, one can hardly avoid imbuing their assessment with value. Definitions of <postmodernism> range from pessimistic…
Postmodernism is contemporaneity, a morass of deferred solutions on every level, featuring ambiguity, the refusal to ponder either origins or ends, as well as the denial of oppositional approaches, "the new realism." (Zerzan)
...to optimistic…
postmodernism… both encourages, through critical analysis of deconstruction, the fragmentation of the older modernist framework and the ambiguity, openness, and multiple ways of seeing [knowing] which are essential in the new globalized world (Cook 25).
…to relative indifference, if only on a surface level…
I define postmodernism as incredulity toward metanarratives (Lyotard xxiv).
The first two definitions, respectively right and left leaning in their sentiment, both highlight this feature of ambiguity, which is also implied by the third – if all-encompassing narratives of societal foundations lose their credence, we are left with a succession of culturally individuated substrata.
In addition to this definitional ambiguity, it is rare to find anyone who would regard themselves “postmodernist”. The figures that Sokal and Petersen denounce, such as Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Lacan, never identified as such, and it is likely that very few scholars in the academy today do either. However, it is this attribution of denial to those denounced academics that allows Sokal and Peterson to claim they are exposing something hidden, respectively, academic incompetence and ideological subjugation. This is especially true for Petersen, who claims these French theorists used skillful deception to promulgate their ideological movement and now university professors are extending this project to their students. In both cases there is contestation on behalf of the accused regarding their academic rigor or necessity of their political project. But even though “the structure of an ideograph is susceptible to redefinition as different communities… work to ossify or unsettle its meaning” (Kelly 2014), there is no publicly visible group of advocates standing up for postmodernism as a philosophical or political movement. Rather, each group subsumed by the ideograph is liable to stand up for that which they actually identify as, academically or politically. Since there are very few who self-identify as “postmodernist” and outright seek to exonerate it of its pejorative meaning, it leaves it up to the public “experts” on the subject to draw boundaries around who falls into this category. These elements inherent in <postmodernism> allow Sokal and Petersen unique authority over its transformation for their individualized pragmatic ends. Thus, ambiguity serves as “a central component of a strong epistemic rhetoric—a discursive resource that makes new knowledge” (Journet 53). In these cases, the academy and the public are guided to know <postmodernism> as an insult to the pursuit of truth and a covert political movement that seeks to erode tradition. The following sections will expand on how our subjects of analysis utilize this resource and the epistemic potential they gain in public discourse by doing so.
Sokal Introduces <Postmodernism> to the Public
In the Spring of 1996, NYU physicist Alan Sokal’s article “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” was published in the cultural studies journal Social Text. The essay is heavily laden with academic jargon, excessive citations, and intentionally non-sensical statements, which aimed to parody a postmodern analysis of the natural sciences. Sokal’s suspicion of academic incompetence in cultural studies and science studies inspired him to if the editors would publish a paper that merely “sounded good” and affirmed their progressive political views. Quotes such as “[the natural scientists] cling to the dogma imposed by the long post- Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook” and “The content and methodology of postmodern science thus provide powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project” give us a sense of the obscure and politically charged claims Sokal made (“Transgressing the Boundaries” 217; 219). To back these claims up, the article offers a laundry list of authoritative references (221 in total) and roughly 10 pages worth of notes, and yet is barren of sound reasoning.
Shortly after the publication hit the shelves, Sokal published an exposé piece in an American academic magazine, Lingua Franca, under the title, “Revelation: A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies”. In this article, he comes clean about the article being a mere test of “prevailing intellectual standards” written in a way that “any competent physicist or mathematician (or undergraduate physics or math major) would realize that it is a spoof” (“Revelation” 50). Sokal further explains the nonsensical tenor of the paper by demonstrating that his bold claims were unsupported, his interdisciplinary synthesis was really an intriguing, yet unfounded pastiche, and his conclusion that objective reality ceases to exist in light of postmodern science was miserably unjustified. He writes, “Nowhere in all of this is there anything resembling a logical sequence of thought; one finds only citations of authority, plays on words, strained analogies, and bald assertions” (“Revelation” 51). The fact that it was published led Sokal to concerning conclusion: that science and objective reality are rendered subservient to the ‘progressive’ political agenda implicated in <postmodern> thought. While many have regarded this conclusion overblown, his immoderation gave the press a striking narrative that helped thrust him into the public sphere. He goes on to argue that, under this school of thought “Incomprehensibility becomes a virtue” and “allusions, metaphors, and puns substitute for evidence and logic”, thus undermining the prospect of concrete progress that can be achieved through the natural and social sciences (“Revelation” 52). At the end of his revelation, Sokal makes a remark that effectively widened the epistemological rift the academic left by identifying himself as a “leftist (and a feminist) because of evidence and logic, not in spite of it” (“Revelation” 53).
To be sure, Sokal got away with making some audacious, sweeping claims in both the original article and its revelation. If we wish to understand the contention between <postmodernism> and its critics today, we need to look back to the hoax and its subsequent publicity to see how these bold, polarizing claims found their way into public discourse and shaped its meaning such that Sokal’s contemporaries have been able to transform it for similar political aims. For starters, it is worth looking into the rhetorical dimension of the article itself and the responses from the editors of Social Text. The rest of this section will provide a literature review that seeks to answer the question: Why did the Sokal hoax have such a profound impact on the public and academic conception of <postmodernism>?
The hoax article itself is a rich ground for rhetorical analysis because it sheds light on the ethical issues of Sokal’s rhetorical stance as a hoaxer as well as the values it put at stake. In their article, “A Rhetorical Perspective on the Sokal Hoax”, Marie Secor and Lynda Walsh take both of these features of the article to task. The first important observation they make is how Sokal’s unorthodox critique via hoax was central to his plentiful and far-reaching publicity. This approach, which fundamentally relies on deception, “was all the more stinging because it duped sophisticated academic professionals rather than an inexpert public” (Secor and Walsh 73). Furthermore, parodies and satires are typically used to lampoon issues that are already being discussed in the public and are foreseeably rich grounds for criticism. In this case, Sokal successfully escalated an issue that had yet to receive much attention. On top of his ability to give the issue salience, he made his intentions clear and demonstrated, in grandiose fashion, that his conclusions were to be taken seriously. This gave him favorable control over the public response, which was a crucial in helping him shape <postmodernism>.
The unexpected publicity that followed the prank not only constructed the nature of the debate, but the character of Sokal himself. The deceptive nature of his critique and his personal revelation secured him the status of “notorious expert”, the “roguish savant who could tell us how things really stood in the kingdom of cultural studies” (Secor and Walsh 74). His choice to pull off the stunt and his role in its subsequent publicity lead the afore-mentioned authors to believe that Sokal was making deliberate attempts to gain notoriety. They point out that his choice to pull of the prank, rather than publish an opinion essay, tells us that he somewhat solicited the inflated response. Following the revelation, Sokal actively tended to the public conversation he fueled rather than continue research in his field of expertise. Within three years, he also published a book, Intellectual Impostures, with co-author Jean Bricmont to expand on and explain his original claims in “non-technical terms”, geared towards a wider audience (Sokal and Bricmont x). This original version was written in French as means to confront the epicenter of the <postmodern> intellectual movement but was soon introduced to English audiences in 1998 under the infamous title, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science. According to Lexis Nexis, the use of the word “postmodernism” peaked the same year, only to remain on an almost steady decline for the next two decades. Over the three years following the original article, his intended audience continued to expand, and the reputation of science studies and cultural studies grew increasingly unfavorable (Secor and Walsh 75).
Of course, the contextual features of the Hoax also had to align just right for Sokal to rise to this level of notoriety. As an outsider of the scholarly community he was critiquing, he had to gain credulity that he was capable of making such a scathing critique, aside from the fact that he was able to get the article published. For one, the epicenter of the affair took place in New York, where the hoaxer, the hoaxed, and the media interest surrounding it all resided. Sokal himself was a professor at the prominent New York University along with the well-known Social Text editor, Andrew Ross (Secor and Walsh 76). On top of that, the New York Times was the first to publish a front-page story about the hoax, which was followed by international commentary. These stories allowed audiences far and wide to either identify with Sokal or those he “duped”, which functioned as synecdoche for the incompetent academic Left en bloc. Secor and Walsh argue this far reaching publicity offering contending options for identification “not only expanded the arena of influence for Sokal’s hoax, but it also positioned him as the notorious expert available for enlistment to any cause attacking cultural studies” (76) and the <postmodern> intellectual movement therein. This granted Sokal the special privilege of shaping the narrative around his target of critique, much to the dismay of those associated with the duped journal.
In a reflection piece written by Andrew Ross, a New York University Sociologist and editor of Social Text at the time, highlights the unique nature of the Sokal hoax and its ripple effect it had in both academic and public realms starts to become clear. He points out that the Spring/Summer 1996 volume of the journal that contained the parody article sold under 800 copies, which meant the original article, though widely discussed, was read by a relatively small audience. It was the coverage about the original article, by Sokal himself and an array of media outlets, that began to shape the narrative about cultural studies’ impotence. Ross writes:
Lingua Franca’s scoop of the Sokal hoax framed the story to fit the template of a particular kind of yellow media exposé, and virtually all the press reports ran a version of the Sokal/Lingua Franca narrative without questioning any of its inflated claims. As a result, public discussion was limited to this frame in its treatment of concepts with complex intellectual background. Social constructivism and other approaches in science studies were reduced to the status of disbelief in the physical world, a blatantly dishonest reduction introduced by Sokal himself. So, too, ideas associated with postmodernism/cultural studies/poststructuralism/critical theory – widely perceived, much for the same reasons, as interchangeable terms – were reduced to the status of gibberish, in the name of no-nonsense appeals to the moral fundamentalism of plain speech and thinking. (my emphasis added 245)
Here we begin to see the political and epistemological elements of <postmodernism> begin to take shape as it is conceived in public discourse today. The charge of moral relativism and its slippery slope to nihilism rises from the absurd conclusion of that objective reality is a mere social construction are reflected in this recapitulated characterization. Meanwhile, its faithful attempts to critique the overwhelmingly dominant epistemologies of the natural and social sciences are filtered out, making <postmodernism> (and its associated disciplines) out to be intellectually laughable, if not destructive.
The media coverage of the hoax was particularly unique in its and impact on the Culture Wars. There was already plenty of literature in circulation that questioned the intellectual rigor and conclusions of <postmodernism>. In fact, the hoax article was inspired by biologist Paul Gross and mathematician Norman Levitt’s book Higher Superstition, which casted aspersions on those writings that, apparently, sought to relativize the sciences and grant credence to “other ways of knowing” (Desilet 339). At first, Sokal was suspicious of these authors claims, but upon his own extensive research into the primary sources discussed in their book, he came to realize they were on to something real. The result of the publicity following his parody article was a black and white dichotomy in which one could sustain their allegiance to Enlightenment values, especially its epistemological assumptions, or to <postmodernism>, which was non-sensical, subversive, and inherently political. The problem with this, Ross finds, is that it reifies the notion that science is ‘off-limits’ to critique by other disciplines, and polarizes the epistemologies in a way that stymies fruitful conversation. Furthermore, the publicity surrounding the article “played into and reinforced many of the divisions that have been opened up in the Culture Wars’ prolonged backlash against feminism, multiculturalism, and the queer renaissance” (Ross 247). Twenty-years later, we are seeing a similar surge of backlash in public discourse surrounding the rise of Jordan Petersen. In the next section, I will demonstrate how Petersen adopts and pathologizes this conception of <postmodernism> in a way that that reproduces and widens the aforementioned divisions. One might even be tempted to extend Ross’s characterization of the hoax’s impact to Peterson’s polemic: “What made the Sokal affair unusual, but germane, event in the Culture Wars was that it gave rise to an outbreak of old-style correctness, complete with impatient calls for purges of a faux left”, which Ross deems “a sad spectacle, especially when it features anti-intellectual sentiment masquerading as ‘sufficient’ political consciousness” (247).
Pathologizing Postmodernism
Petersen’s characterization of <postmodernism> emerged in his advocacy against Bill C16, which amended the Canadian Human Rights Act to add “gender identity or expression” to its “Prohibitable Grounds for Discrimination” ("Government Bill [House of Commons] C-16”). While these amendments were made to protect transgender and gender non-conforming individuals from hate crimes and identity-based discrimination, Petersen argues it also writes compelled speech into Canadian law. He fears that if one refuses to use another’s preferred gender pronouns, this defiance could be interpreted as actionable hate speech. Concerned for the state of free speech, he published a series of YouTube videos on his channel under the heading “Professor Against Political Correctness”. Within days of his first upload, published on September 27th, 2016, Petersen became widely disputed, at first by his campus’s newspaper (Yun) and soon after by international media outlets (Kivanc; Bothwell). Several weeks later, University of Toronto students, especially members and allies of the LGBT community, demonstrated against him on campus. In the following weeks, videos of this demonstration became widely viewed, he was featured in an interview on the Canadian TV program The Agenda, and was a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Although he was advocating against a Canadian bill, he legitimized his characterization of <postmodernism> as an international problem through these outlets. For Peterson, <postmodernism> is a subversive ideology dominating humanities departments throughout the West that affects worrisome social and political change. The extents of this change will be elaborated throughout the rest of this section. For now, we can start with looking at how he framed Bill C16 as a warning sign for the rest of the West: if we do not recognize the threat of <postmodernism> to our most cherished ideals (i.e. free speech), similar authoritarian policies will continue to spread.
In his advocacy against the bill, Peterson frequently evoked <postmodernism> as the ideology that brought this harmful legislation about. In a November 9th National Post article titled “The Right to be Politically Incorrect” Peterson states:
[The preferred gender pronouns “zhe” and “zher”] are at the vanguard of a postmodern, radical leftist ideology that I detest, and which is, in my professional opinion, frighteningly similar to the Marxist doctrines that killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century… Those who formulated it and who are pushing it and its sister legislation are dangerous people.
This excerpt introduces three themes that remain consistent in Petersen’s future addresses, namely the scapegoating function of <postmodernism>; the link between <postmodernism> and the destructive results of Marxism; and his purported expertise in accurately characterizing <postmodernism>. Peterson scapegoats the main benefactors of Bill C16, the transgender community, by trivializing their social and political grievances and then discounting the bill’s advocates as legitimate representatives. Nowhere in this article, nor in his subsequent commentary does he concede there are structural issues faced by the transgender community that the legislation seeks to mitigate. While Peterson occasionally hints at the legislation providing some benefits, he consistently fails to mention what they are. Instead, he routinely shifts the discussion to its immanent negative consequences. In doing so, he frames the advocates of Bill C16, which was introduced to protect an identity group, as the dangerous rather than the endangered. More specifically, he centers our focus on the values of freedom and liberty in danger rather than the potential discrimination and violence faced by the trans community. <Postmodernism> therefore functions to circumvent discourse about transgender issues and avert his audience’s attention to the slippery slope conclusion that the legislation entails.
In accordance with this deflective function of <postmodernism>, Peterson also leads us to believe the transgender community is an instrument of the ideology rather than supporters of it. In his May 17th, 2016 testimony at the Canadian senate hearing for Bill C16, he explains how the connection between the bill and <postmodernism>. He states:
I believe that this is a vanguard issue in a kind of ideological war and that I’m not going to participate on the side of the people whose ideological stance I find unforgivable and reprehensible, especially the Marxist element of it. I announced that I wasn’t going to use [preferred gender pronouns] because I don’t believe they are instantiated to protect anyone’s rights. I believe the ideologues who are pushing this movement are using unsuspecting and sometimes complicit members of the so-called transgender community to push their ideological vanguard forward. (qtd in Clark)
Evoking language similar to Sokal, Peterson frames the issue as an extension of the ideological campus wars. However, Sokal was relatively concrete with the scholars and disciplines he was critiquing. His critique in the initial hoax article was addressed to the editors of Social Text and his book Fashionable Nonsense had whole chapters dedicated to authors such as Julia Kristeva, Lucy Iragary, Jacques Lacan, and Jean Baudrillard. While Peterson does evoke names of suspect scholars on occasion, he typically uses abstract, generalizing language to draw an ambiguous boundary around who counts as <postmodernist>. The phrase “ideologues who are pushing this movement” does not point to any group of people in particular. In the context of Peterson’s other discourse on the topic, he seems to be pointing to instructors found in humanities departments in general. By leaving the boundary so ambiguous, his audience is left to draw their own conclusions as to who fits this description. Without a clear target of who to blame for pushing <postmodernism>, the focus remains on the ideology itself. Furthermore, these unspecified ideologues are charged of using the “complicit… so-called transgender community” as instruments to push their ideology forward (qtd in Clark). In doing so, the focus is again deflected from the issues raised by the community and shifted to their role in the elaboration of a political movement. They are rendered a mere effect of an underlying ideology.
Peterson further discredits the transgender community itself when he brings its representatives into question, which once again refocuses the attention to <postmodernism> itself. Earlier in this senate testimony, he states:
I would also like to point out that the people who are promoting this legislation claim to be acting on behalf, say, of the transgendered community, but they were not elected nor appointed to act as such representatives and are doing it on their own say-so. I’ve received many letters, at least 30 now, from transgendered individuals indicating they are not in accordance with the claims of these so-called representatives to be representing or with the intent of the legislation, which has actually made them more visible rather than less visible, and the less visible is what they had preferred.
He delegitimizes the transgender community here by highlighting its lack of homogeneity and organization, which in turn puts its advocates into question. The objective of these ambiguous representatives is once again to propagate <postmodernism> rather than mitigate issues faced by an identity group. Immediately after he writes off these advocates as self-appointed and unrepresentative of the group they purport to speak for, Peterson appears to commit the same offense: He appoints himself as a spokesperson for part of the community that allegedly disagrees with the legislation. Not only does he elicit authority by mentioning the relatively small and arbitrarily numbered sample of letters sent to him by “actual” members of the community, but claims that, as a whole, they are against the bill. Furthermore, he grants agency to those who he’s claiming to defend as if they do not fit into the category of <postmodernist>, who he has made out to be ideological pawns. Those who do not want to be visible do not fit the category of the radical left since they are allegedly against the bill. The consequence is that Peterson’s audience make him out to be someone who is not categorically opposed to the transgender community. Rather, he is opposed only to the ideology animating the more radical advocates.
But what are the components of this ideology that he finds so dangerous? How does he draw a connection from seemingly innocuous preferences for gender pronouns to dangerous doctrines that pose a threat to the Western substrate? And given these colossal leaps in logic, why do people believe him? An appropriate starting point is to look into one of Peterson’s most commonly cited sources: Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault by Stephen Hicks.
Peterson opened his February Manning Center conference speech regarding “Censorship on Campus” by suggesting Hicks’ book to the audience. This suggestion became commonplace in his subsequent interviews and public commentary on <postmodernism>. On the surface, this title sounds like a neutral, merely descriptive treatment of the philosophic movement. However, Peterson consistently excludes the subtitle, Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, which reveals its political dimension. The book has been described as “not a purely historical work,” but also “a critique, and in many places… vigorously polemical” (Sanders 111). On the first page, we begin to see language that Petersen adopts to express his sentiment towards postmodern thinkers. Hicks labels the originators of postmodern thought its “leading strategists” and activists “against the coalition of reason and power” (2, 3). This notion of <postmodernism> as a coherent Leftist political movement with an agenda and leaders is frequently echoed in Peterson’s discourse. He calls the pioneers of this philosophical genre “tricksters”, and his aversion towards them is explicit: “Fortunately the postmodern philosophers, most of them are dead [sic], so that’s a good thing” (“2017/02/25: Jordan Peterson”).
It is also common to hear Petersen talk about <postmodernism> and (neo-)Marxism in close relation, often conflating the two. Again, this notion was likely born of or reaffirmed by Hicks’ analysis. In his chapter “The Crisis of Socialism”, he traces how Marxism’s predictions had failed miserably on both moral and economic fronts. Socialist ideology had to be reframed and in the 1970’s and Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault, and Rorty were able to do so by reimagining the ideology’s epistemological foundations. Hicks’ writes:
If one is an academic foe of capitalism, then one’s weapons and tactics are not those of the politician, the activist, the revolutionary, or the terrorist. Academics’ only possible weapons are words. And if one’s epistemology tells one that words are not about truth or reality or in any way cognitive, then in the battle against capitalism words can be only a rhetorical weapon (172).
Peterson’s reactionary discourse is squarely concerned with this strategic element of <postmodernism>, especially as it is used for rationale to radicalize university students. Indeed, he summarizes Hicks’ analysis in a similar way when he describes the roots of <postmodernism’s> political agenda. However, Petersen takes his characterization one step further than Hicks by regarding it as a “philosophical doctrine” - an ideology that is a spin-off of Marxism, precisely, “the new skin that Marxism inhabits.” While it is fair to say that several of the French theorists that have come to be described, properly or otherwise, as <postmodern> were influenced by Marxism, Peterson makes them out to be leaders of some coherent ideological movement, an ungrateful collective “driven by resentment.” This, he pleas, is a dire force to combat because of the long, dark history behind the ideas. He aims to convince his audience that French intellectuals “put their head in the sand” about the failings of Marxism. Granted, Marxist inspired governments were some of the deadliest regimes in modern history. Hicks points out that “over 110 million human beings were killed by the governments of nations inspired by the Left, primarily Marxist, socialism” (149). While this is true, Peterson still makes a giant leap that these theorists were willfully ignorant of the harm it caused, further degrading their reputation.
Several tensions arise throughout all of these charges. First of all, Peterson sets up a tension between resentment and responsibility. By directing his audience to believe that collectivism is driven by <postmodern> ideology rather than concrete and structural issues that people face, he suggests they have a false sense of resentment. In denouncing this outlook, he indirectly advocates for individualism and the responsibility that follows from one’s agency therein. Similar to Cloud’s argument that Dan Quayle’s use of <family values> creates a “privatized set of identifications and commitments” (391), <postmodernism> based on Peterson’s assessment asks people to identify as an individual and commit to a suspicion of the collective social justice efforts. Furthermore, it lends the individual a positive sense of their own political consciousness; by having an awareness of <postmodernism> and its eventual consequences, one is able to find themselves outside of it and in resistance to it. In short, Peterson constructs a way for people to have a noble advocacy against social justice efforts.
Conclusion
Throughout this paper I have traced two instances of <postmodernism> as used by its most infamous denouncers, Alan Sokal and Jordan Peterson. In the context of their rhetoric, <postmodernism> functions ideographically, meaning it functions as a slogan that houses unique clusters of value commitments and often dissimulates the rhetors political intentions. I’ve argued that the word has an inherent ambiguity that each rhetor is able to exploit for their unique purposes by claiming to eliminate this ambiguity. Both are commenting on <postmodernism> and its influence on the humanities from positions outside of the discipline – both are trained scientists that are suspicious of the academic rigor and underlying political ideology behind its methods and practice.
I’ve demonstrated that the word <postmodernism> was first brought to the public’s attention with Alan Sokal’s hoax article and the publicity surrounding it. The dense and diverse theoretical works that one might consider <postmodern>, such as science studies, post-structuralism, and social constructivism were made out to deny the possibility of an objectively reality and the authors were regarded as intellectual phonies. From the beginning of its public life, <postmodernism> was made out to be a political move of the Left that was willing to sacrifice intellectual rigor for progressive goals. While this is minimally emphasized by Sokal and the publicity surrounding him, it becomes the central feature that Jordan Peterson highlights. Furthermore, Peterson use of <postmodernism> functions to scapegoat the transgender community by shifting the attention away from their collective concerns and onto the ideology that allegedly is animating them to advocate for amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Code. Peterson makes a link between social justice efforts in general, and the trans community specifically, to Marxist ideology, suggesting they are actually pushing for a dangerous socialist agenda. In doing so, Peterson guides his audience to accept a private set of commitments to personal responsibility and individual agency.
Works Cited
“2017/02/25: Jordan Peterson: Postmodernism: How and why it must be fought.” YouTube,
uploaded by Jordan B. Peterson, 25 February 2017,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf2nqmQIfxc
Bothwell, Ellie. "Canadian professor slams university ‘political correctness’ | Times Higher
Education (THE)." Academic & University News | Times Higher Education
(THE). Times Higher Education, 4 Oct 2016. Web.
<http://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/canadian-professor-slams-university-
political-correctness>.
Burke, Kenneth. A grammar of motives. University of California Press, 1969.
Clark, Joe. “Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, Canada:
Testimony by Jordan Peterson and Jared Brown, among Others.” Joe Clark, 17 May
2017, joeclark.org/peterson/transcript_20160517.html.
Cloud, Dana L. "The rhetoric of: Scapegoating, utopia, and the privatization of social
responsibility." Western Journal of Communication (includes Communication
Reports) 62.4 (1998): 387-419.
Cook, Terry. "Fashionable nonsense or professional rebirth: postmodernism and the practice of
archives." Archivaria 51 (2001): 14-35.
Desilet, Gregory. "Physics and language—science and rhetoric: Reviewing the parallel evolution
of theory on motion and meaning in the aftermath of the Sokal Hoax." Quarterly Journal
of Speech 85.4 (1999): 339-360.
Dockery, David S. The challenge of postmodernism: An evangelical engagement. Baker
Academic, 2001.
"Government Bill (House of Commons) C-16 (42-1) - First Reading - An Act to amend the
Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code - Parliament of Canada." Parliament
of Canada - Parlement du Canada. Web. <http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-
1/bill/C-16/first-reading>.
Hicks, Stephen RC. Explaining postmodernism: Skepticism and socialism from Rousseau to
Foucault. Scholargy Publishing, Inc., 2004.
Journet, Debra. "The resources of ambiguity: Context, narrative, and metaphor in Richard
Dawkins’s the selfish gene." Journal of Business and Technical Communication 24.1
(2010): 29-59.
Kelly, Casey Ryan. "“We Are Not Free”: The Meaning of in American Indian Resistance to
President Johnson's War on Poverty." Communication Quarterly 62.4 (2014): 455-473.
Kivanc, Jake. "A Canadian University Professor Is Under Fire For Rant on Political Correctness
- VICE." VICE - Original reporting and documentaries on everything that matters in the
world.. 29 Sep 2016. Web. <http://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/7bmjqg/a-
canadian-university-professor-is-under-fire-for-rant-on-political-correctness>.
Lyotard, Jean-François. The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Vol. 10. U of
Minnesota Press, 1984.
McGee, Michael Calvin. "The “ideograph”: A link between rhetoric and ideology." Quarterly
journal of speech 66.1 (1980): 1-16.
Peterson, Jordan B. “Jordan Peterson: The Right to Be Politically Incorrect.” National Post, 21
Nov. 2016, nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-the-right-to-be-politically-
incorrect.
Philips, Joshua. “Jordan Peterson Exposes the Postmodernist Agenda.” Www.theepochtimes.com,
25 Sept. 2017, www.theepochtimes.com/jordan-peterson-explains-how-communism-
came-under-the-guise-of-identity-politics_2259668.html.
Ross, Andrew. "Reflections on the Sokal Affair." Sokal affair: The Sham that Shook the
Academy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. 245-248. Print.
Sanders, Steven M. "Stephen RC Hicks’s Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism
from Rousseau to Foucault: A Discussion." Reason Papers 28 (2006): 111-124.
Scott, Janny. “Postmodern Gravity Deconstructed, Slyly.” The New York Times, 18 May 1996,
www.nytimes.com/1996/05/18/nyregion/postmodern-gravity-deconstructed-slyly.html.
Secor, Marie, and Lynda Walsh. "A rhetorical perspective on the sokal hoax: Genre, style, and
context." Written Communication 21.1 (2004): 69-91.
Sokal, Alan D. "Transgressing the boundaries: Toward a transformative hermeneutics of
quantum gravity." Social text 46/47 (1996): 217-252.
Sokal, Alan D., ed. The Sokal hoax: the sham that shook the academy. U of Nebraska Press,
2000.
Sokal, Alan, and Jean Bricmont. Fashionable nonsense: Postmodern intellectuals' abuse of
science. Macmillan, 1999.
Yun, Tom. "U of T psychology prof decries “political correctness” in YouTube lecture – The
Varsity." The Varsity. 28 Sep 2016. Web. <http://thevarsity.ca/2016/09/28/u-of-t-
psychology-prof-decries-political-correctness-in-youtube-lecture/>.
Zerzan, John. "The catastrophe of postmodernism." Anarchy: A journal of desire armed 30
(1991): 16-25.
Zhang, Juyan and Yi Han. "Testing the Rhetoric of China's Soft Power Campaign: A Case
Analysis of Its Strategic Ambiguity in the Six Party Talks over North Korea's Nuclear
Program." Asian Journal of Communication, vol. 23, no. 2, Apr. 2013, pp. 191-208.
