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06/11/2008
One more on why atheists shouldn't hate on postmodernism ...
I'm fairly sure that at this point I've already run the idea that the most recent wave of atheists is unfairly critical of postmodernism and uncritically supportive of Enlightenment-style empiricism into the ground. During my 15-hour train ride to Toronto last week, however, I found a passage in Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion that quite eloquently (and ironically, considering that Dawkins takes several swings at Foucault in the book) sums up one of the reasons why we need postmodernist thought:
"There is something breathtakingly condescending, as well as inhumane, about the sacrificing of anyone, especially children, on the altar of 'diversity' and the virtue of preserving a variety of religious traditions. The rest of us are happy with our cars and computers, our vaccines and antibiotics. But you quaint little people with your bonnets and breeches, your horse buggies, your archaic dialect and your earth-closet privies, you enrich our lives. Of course you must be allowed to trap your children with you in your seventeenth-century time warp, otherwise something irretrievable would be lost to us: a part of the wonderful diversity of human culture."
Dawkins astutely points out that the trope of 'preserving diversity' can easily become racist, classist, and can all-too-easily privilege the group that is supposed to be doing the 'preserving' over the 'preserved.' Perhaps surprisingly to those who would critique Foucault & friends, this is what postmodernist thought is often about: rethinking not only Enlightenment / colonialist / liberal humanist forms of thought but also noticing the ways in which attempts to 'preserve diversity' can easily fall into the traps of colonialist thought.
Again, what many of the "new atheists" seem to be critiquing is not postmodernism, but feel-good, New Agey, 'everyone should have a voice' misreadings of postmodernist thought.
10:55 Permalink | Comments (4) | Email this | Tags: postmodernism, atheists
Comments
The passage above is a tricky one, especially in relation to indigenous people living in remote communities
Posted by: squib | 06/11/2008
squib,
Good point. I think that's why Dawkins admits that there's some merit to the nonracist versions of this type of thinking (where culture is preserved for its own sake, not for anyone else's benefit). In this passage, he's referring specifically to the American Amish, who are permitted to take their children out of schools in the eighth grade.
Posted by: PrimroseRoad | 06/11/2008
Yes I guessed he was talking about the Amish but I was wondering how far it could be applied to indigenous communities here in Australia. I am wondering, if you are trying to preserve a culture by supporting traditional communitites and yet in doing so are locking those children into places that have long had record mortality and child sexual abuse rates, unemployment, and so on, I wonder is it right?
That's what I meant by tricky
Posted by: squib | 06/12/2008
I see ... there seem to be similar issues w/indigenous communities, then. I may have misunderstood your original comment because I'm jetlagged from my daily commute from NY to Nebraska. ;)
Posted by: PrimroseRoad | 06/12/2008
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