Postmodernism is an intellectual dead end; it’s central premise seems to be derived from a saying of Nietzsche’s, “There are no facts; only interpretations”, which is thought to mean that each one of us views “reality” through our individual perspective. This is true to a degree, but as with so many aphorisms, there are limits to its validity; let’s say person x thinks a temperature of 20 C is a warm day; that is a fact for person x. Person y finds 20 C to be cool; a fact for person y. Both, however, would agree that 60 C is too hot, since that would be close to a record breaking high temperature on earth. We have some wiggle room for debate, but beyond a certain point, we have to acknowledge that there are actually facts upon which we can agree.
Postmodernism seeks to deny the existence of unbiased truth, and claims that all interpretations, particularly of a text, are equally “valid”; In “The Ship of Fools”, Michele Foucault attempts to argue that mental illness is not something that can be defined outside of a dominant cultural paradigm of what is considered to be sanity. There is a degree of truth to this, but as postmodernists tend to do, he carries the point too far; followed to its logical conclusion, a “madman’s” conviction that he is Napoleon Bonaparte is just as valid as a “sane man’s” conviction that he is not. The madman is not, in fact, “mad”; he’s just “different”.
Since postmodernism promotes a highly subjective epistemology, it concludes that what is promoted in society as objective truth is actually nothing of the sort, but rather a subjective view of reality that is imposed through power. Yet again, there is a degree of truth to this; in communist countries, the “truth” of the Marxist-Leninist sociopolitical model was imposed by a dictatorial one