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Criticisms of postmodernism are intellectually diverse, including the belief that postmodernism can be meaningless, promotes obscurantism and uses relativism (in culture, morality, knowledge) to the extent that it cripples most judgement calls. Criticism of postmodernism is usually not a comprehensive attack on the various diverse movements labelled postmodern. Criticism often refers to specific branches of postmodernism which may vary greatly such as postmodern philosophy, postmodern architecture and postmodern literature. It may also be limited to certain tendencies in postmodern thought such as post-structuralism, cultural relativism and "theory". For example, a philosopher may criticize French postmodern thought yet still appreciate postmodern cinema. Conversely Ashbee criticises most creative postmodern works (works of art, books, films etc.) without broadly attacking the entire inventory of varied post-modern projects. ==Vagueness== Philosopher Noam Chomsky has argued that postmodernism is meaningless because it adds nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge. He asks why postmodernist intellectuals won't respond like people in other fields when asked: :Seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc? These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames.〔(Noam Chomsky on Post-Modernism )〕 Christopher Hitchens in his book, "Why Orwell matters", writes, in advocating for simple, clear and direct expression of ideas, ""The Postmodernists' tyranny wears people down by boredom and semi-literate prose.".〔Christopher Hitchens. Why Orwell matters,Basic Books. ISBN 978-0465030507〕 Hitchens also criticized a postmodernist volume, "The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism":〔Christopher Hitchens. Transgressing the Boundaries. NY Times, May 22, 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/books/review/transgressing-the-boundaries.html〕 "The French, as it happens, once evolved an expression for this sort of prose: la langue de bois, the wooden tongue, in which nothing useful or enlightening can be said, but in which various excuses for the arbitrary and the dishonest can be offered. (This book) is a pointer to the abysmal state of mind that prevails in so many of our universities." In a similar vein, Richard Dawkins writes in a favorable review of Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's ''Intellectual Impostures'':〔Richard Dawkins (1998/2007). (Postmodernism disrobed ). Retrieved 30 March 2013. Originally published in Nature 394:141–143.〕 :Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content. Dawkins then uses a quotation from Félix Guattari as an example of this "lack of content". It has been suggested that the term "postmodernism" is a mere buzzword that means nothing. For example, Dick Hebdige, in "Hiding in the Light," writes: :When it becomes possible for a people to describe as ‘postmodern’ the décor of a room, the design of a building, the diegesis of a film, the construction of a record, or a ‘scratch’ video, a television commercial, or an arts documentary, or the ‘intertextual’ relations between them, the layout of a page in a fashion magazine or critical journal, an anti-teleological tendency within epistemology, the attack on the ‘metaphysics of presence’, a general attenuation of feeling, the collective chagrin and morbid projections of a post-War generation of baby boomers confronting disillusioned middle-age, the ‘predicament’ of reflexivity, a group of rhetorical tropes, a proliferation of surfaces, a new phase in commodity fetishism, a fascination for images, codes and styles, a process of cultural, political or existential fragmentation and/or crisis, the ‘de-centring’ of the subject, an ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’, the replacement of unitary power axes by a plurality of power/discourse formations, the ‘implosion of meaning’, the collapse of cultural hierarchies, the dread engendered by the threat of nuclear self-destruction, the decline of the university, the functioning and effects of the new miniaturised technologies, broad societal and economic shifts into a ‘media’, ‘consumer’ or ‘multinational’ phase, a sense (depending on who you read) of ‘placelessness’ or the abandonment of placelessness (‘critical regionalism’) or (even) a generalised substitution of spatial for temporal coordinates - when it becomes possible to describe all these things as ‘Postmodern’ (or more simply using a current abbreviation as ‘post’ or ‘very post’) then it’s clear we are in the presence of a buzzword.〔Dick Hebdige, ’Postmodernism and "the other side"’, in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A reader, edited by John Storey, London, : Pearson Education .2006〕 Postmodernists or postmodern-friendly intellectuals such as the British historian Perry Anderson defend the existence of the varied meanings assigned to the term "postmodernism", claiming they only contradict one another on the surface and that a postmodernist analysis can offer insight into contemporary culture.〔Perry Anderson, in "The Origins of Postmodernity", London: Verso, 1998.〕 Kaya Yılmaz defends the lack of clarity and consistency in the term's definition. Yılmaz points out that because the theory itself is "anti-essentialist and anti-foundationalist" it is fitting that the term cannot have any essential or fundamental meaning.〔Yılmaz, K 2010, "Postmodernism and its Challenge to the Discipline of History: Implications for History Education", Educational Philosophy & Theory, 42, 7, pp. 779-795, Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 April 2012.〕 Sokal has critiqued similar defenses of postmodernism by noting that replies like this only demonstrate the original point that postmodernist critics are making: that a clear and meaningful answer is always missing and wanting. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Criticism of postmodernism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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