Postmodernism and the Corruption of the Critical Intelligentsia

Abstract

The destruction of truth is now so advanced in capitalist culture that it perhaps comes as no surprise that even in the halls of Critical Theory, imagined sanctum sanctorum of independent consciousness and conscience, truth is now openly profaned and condescended to by those once charged with sheltering its sacred flame—the intellectuals. 1 If, as the Yiddish proverb goes, “the truth never dies, but is made to live as a beggar,” let us note that no intellectual movement of recent memory has so beggared the truth as thoroughly as post-structuralism has. 2 With the postmodernist turn, truth became a dirty word, and affirmation of truth came to be seen as a sign not of resistance to power, but of one’s pitiable naivete.