You really have a 30 video because a cartoon said one sword was better lol

I think a case can be made also that the hypocrisy present in the first epsiode doesnt come from the implied power of patriarchy (in the worlds logic) but from the difference in class. Ryuko is shamed by others at points for her wearing senketsu but Satsuki and the rest of the student council arent shamed for their lewd clothing. The only difference being their position in society. It's similar to the perception of drug use in the real world, poor people doing drugs is seen negatively but rich people doing them is glamorized. It's a clever way that the show can have its cake and eat it too as it can function as a critique of systems of patriarchy but the world itself be women dominant.

Excellent work. Thank your for sharing.

Awesome video! I usually don’t watch KZbin videos about philosophy because I don’t trust random people to give accurate readings of philosophers, but you demonstrated some serious rigor and did such a good job of providing an engaging, text-focused analysis! Thanks for shining some light on this important subject, and I’ll keep an eye out for more of your videos in the future!

Oh yea. I am so ready for this. Only just became aware of Hicks and my sus-ometer went off immediately. He's just got the vibe of those Christian apologists who deny evolution. This is my first video of yours btw Instant subscribe

> The world does not speak, only we do. As someone who doesn't know anything about anything, that sounds right to me. But what about stuff like, "2 is a prime number"? Like, is that a "description" - so it comes from me - or is that just the way the world is? It feels kind of funny. Kind of half way between. Like if I flipped it a bit it could be either. If prime-ness is just a label that's useful for people, sure, it comes from me. But if prime-ness is something intrinsic to numbers then it's real. And prime-ness is something intrinsic to numbers. Or, I think so. There's math that only works with prime numbers and that's real. It's not just in my head. But does that math matter? Is *it* real? Maybe all of that math's in my head. Our head. We do all agree on it. Does that matter? You can use the math to predict the way real things work. Does that matter? Does that make it more real? Where can I read more? This sounds fun.

Very well put together video and while i do get what u mean, i still wanted to share what the show felt for me and why i think its still important. While the message may not be in tune with being an in depth critique/call to action into the faults of our system i do feel it excells at just making people who have been hurt by our system, the silent majority, feel seen. There are a lot of examples on how the show does this (and you mentioned a bunch already too!) but one that resonated with me is from season 3 where Retsuko, whos been portrayed as the stand in for the ordinary person and haw she has this silent, almost push over ish way to cope with being crushed to not be able to escape being the everyday everyman, and then how she reacts by being presented an avenue to maybe be extraordinary and to inspire others by being idol. I especially love Manaka and how she despite being older than retsuko and als working a 9 to 5 still pursues this because she understands the feeling of being that ray of light to others. What i love about season 5 is how it also refernces this looming feeling of insatiafaction specially felt by gen z , how we were born and instantly told our world is shit , how it will end soon bc of global warming, war and all this issues happening at the same time. A lot of people are utterly crushed by our system by work by our shitty bosses by coming exhausted home by being too different or too broken. At that point we try to distract ourselves with games or anime or whatever which is why i feel a lot of people dont even watch political stuff on KZbin or even comment, heck, i feel like a lot of us here on the comments would love to make a KZbin channel one day but cant (or feel "whats even the point"). A lot of ppl feel like Shikabane amd I like how Haida puts it: " some people learn to give up young and settle with the scraps". I felt really seen by this, even if Retsuko didnt win/overthrow the system i felt that what the show was telling me is to start having hope. I fucking love what Retsuko represents, how she is a stand in for the average joe but at the same time being this force that inspired, fought back and came so far (also Haida and the others helped too), it just showed how even just raising up in a small scale can be something, even if they didnt win. I felt this resonated the most on the last scene, Retsuko again on the train station representing again the everyday struggle but this time acknoledging this force that builds up in all of us, all our rage and pain, and how it will eventually explode again. Seeing how shikabane now its taking steps to at least get out of her situation, it did made me feel really inspired that maybe all of us are not that powerless, i feel it was pretty hopeful, that i should try to stand on my own feet because maybe one day i could make a change. While the show, and well, all media (from full anime productions to youtube videos) is made and affected by capitalism and the corporations (KZbin(Google), Sanrio) i still like that most often than not you can hear the cry of the people shouting "we are here". I did felt i heard it with Aggresuko despite being from such a capitalist company. Im hella grateful to Rarecho (writer), voice actors and the whole team that made it possible. And of course also this KZbin video talking about it too. Ultimately season 5 is mostly about coping with the system rather than focusing on criticizing it/dismantle it, but i dont think those two need to be opposites. And yeah the show is not only about social struggles, its also a very well animated, funny, relatable, with likeable characters and also showing a lot of good things about life too. Its just a show thats very special to me that started when i was just dipping my toes into being a legal adult and has been with me until it ended last year. Hope i dont sound rude by all of this, i mostly wanted to share my reading onone of my favorite anime. Extreme respect and adoration for putting your voice out there with this very well put together video and i hope someone also appreciates mine too. :) (Edit: Writing is hard :S)

I was expecting a rehash of CCK Philosophy’s video, but was pleasantly surprised. You provide quite a convincing argument without even touching on his treatment of the rest of the Western Canon. I look forward to seeing what you make next!

Videos debunking pseudo-intellectual hacks AND Marxist readings of FFVII?! SUBSCRIBED

Please consider not adding the sound effects to other videos or heavily reducing the volume, they were oddly distracting to what was otherwise an enlightening video.

Imagine making this video and calling someone else “bad faith”.

Derrida, Foucault, Lacan and Rorty are rolling in their graves, but I doubt Hicks would care.

The irony could not be greater: Explaining Postmodernism is a "postmodernist" work par excellence in almost the exact straw-man sense in which the book defines it: dishonest rhetoric utilized in order to hammer in a narrative motivated by a dogmatically and uncritically held political ideology. Absolute projection. The only difference is that Hicks pretends to be an advocate of "standards of Reason and Serious Scholarship" (while violating them in every paragraph in most obscene fashion) instead of attacking them, and that he is not a Marxist but a fanatical Randroid. If it is so easy to be "postmodern" without affirming it, why should one affirm it? Wouldn't this be like liar confessing that one is a liar? Some food for thought. *** The main problem in debunking nonsense like Hicks's is that it is unlikely to have much effect once the virus is out: anyone capable of being convinced by junk scholarship as profoundly debased as Explaining Pomo, is very unlikely to be able to grasp an argument that proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the book is garbage. Classical Dunning Kruger logic: there is a level of ignorance at which the ignorant is too ignorant to grasp any argument proving his ignorance. Does a single serious person take Hicks seriously? I doubt. I read half of the book (it was enough), and as to its quality of scholarship, it was probably the worst printed thing I've ever held in my hands. I mean, no serious scholar EVER uses quotes in the manner Hicks does, without any exegetic discussion, discussion, dialectics, etc (for comparison, take Sokal and Brickmond: they are quite careful in this regard, whatever you think of their readings otherwise). Even if you haven't read Derrida, Rorty, or whatnot and know nothing about them, or even if you're familiar with them and regard as charlatans, if your nose doesn't react, there is something seriously wrong with it.

As far at I can tell Hicks is a "realist" opposed to anything that threatens his world view. I argue this in the comments of kzbin.info/www/bejne/a4aZiZKodpucl9Esi=yrjytoQgl7n8ClaD when i change that Hicks has a 'No True Scotsman' approach to categorising and critiquing post modernity. In my reading of Hicks, if he doesn't agree with it it's Post Modern.

I always enjoy it when someone adeptly scrutinizes a bad faith argument. Well done!

Solid critique of Hicks, though I wouldn't go so far as to say that the thesis that pomo is in large part the result of a certain kind of disillusionment with Marxist materialist metaphysics is entirely wrong. It's just not a 'conspiracy' but rather a very reasonable progression from a kind of modernist, rationalistic outlook on epistemics and politics that had become obviously implausible.

LoL

This is a fantastic video. I'm glad more people are putting in the work to address the misinfo around PoMo furthered by people like Hicks. I thought I'd leave a comment affirming what you're doing in case anyone is unkind. Videos like this take a ton of work to research and write, and this one was absolutely worth doing.

For those looking for recommendations for intro texts for postmodern theory two texts I'd highly recommend would be: "A Primer to Postmodernity" by Joseph Natoli. It was written for people who lack any background in philosophy or critical theory more specifically, and so is very accessible. It is, however, written with a, uh let's call it "playfully postmodern" framing device. The other suggestion would be: "Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations" by Steven Best and Douglas Kellner. It's a bit denser than Natoli's text, it is written with an undergraduate readership in mind, but it's still very accessible. It's structured around individual theorists (Foucault, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari, and also some broader examinations of where Postmodernism fits with contemporary academic streams like marxism, feminism, critical theory (more broadly) and so on. In terms of availability, they are both no longer in print (afaik), but they aren't too difficult to get aftermarket. And of course, there are usually ways of obtaining digital versions in the wake of the unavailability of physical copies.

I'm very much in the group you described at the end. No philosophy background, but wants to understand / read about postmodernism. Could you recommend some secondary literature to me? Something that is maybe a little bit more accessible than the primary texts? Thank you!

It's me. I'm afraid of Frederic Jameson! (Big books ; ;)

It's pretty amazing the knots these people tie themselves into in order to combat or deny gender equality, worker equity, and human dignity. Folks like Hicks, and the purist classist libertarian capitalists that back him are the real counter enlightenment peddlers of the day. They want to tear down meaning and truth and replace it with a suppression of thought and human spirit. I hope I live long enough to see the tide switch on this, to be beaten back by reality and gravity itself.

Descartes onwards was bad for philosophy in general. These so called "postmodernists" are more "ultramodernists" and post, really...

I have not made a response of sorts to this video. mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/04/study-of-swords-is-not-wrong-about.html

Maybe ditch the sound effects brother, unnecessary and will save you time. Yeah, Hicks is, similar to Jordan Peterson (both Canadian... coincidence?) are the greatest postmodernists of all time. They're talking incomplete information and using it to deconstruct a mera narrative they don't fully understand, all whilst appealing to the enlightenment. It's a really sad irony, conservative postmodernists don't even know they're post modernists and find themselves peddling their own nihilism for money. Philosophy is supposed to be about discovering truth and observing phenomenon, naming, describing, and exploring them and their implications. Philosophy is not supposed to be dogmatic or prescriptive, and when it's not, it's really unfair to critique it like that. Some people think it is, and that's a viable critique to get into when it raises, but such a critique on postmodernism would be a critique on philosophy itself, or practically anything else for that matter. And I just adore how they forget that things like socialism were also about society, economics, and history, and politics, not just philosophy. Where it's flawed in its various politics and economic prescriptions and worthy of criticism for that, it shouldn't be wholesale discarded along with postmodern philosophy arbitrarily when both of their criticism and allusions are of high and imperative value. If only thinkers like these could build careers out of building on what came before instead - ironically, deconstructing everything - maybe our moment in history as of let's wouldnt be snagged on these cold war anxiety hangups. I suspect Jordan Peterson must've had Hicks on his night stand while he lost his mind the first time.

YES

Fantastic video contributing to online discourse about Stephen Hicks' "Explaining Postmodernism." Your exploration of Hicks' dishonest misuse of quotes was insightful! The example with Lilla and Derrida was remarkably alarming. It was also really interesting that you included the section about the Atlas Society at the end, because that already would have been enough for most people to dismiss the book altogether, but you spent a lot of time going through what the book argued about postmodernism. You did a good job contextualizing the quotes far better than Hicks by looking through the chapters they're from and reading longer passages from the sections used by Hicks. Lastly, it was insightful how you looked at what was excluded by Hick! You had a lot of interesting commentary on Baudrillard because you went through a lot of his work. I don't hear many people talk about Integral Reality.

As "every accusation is a confession", or colloquially, a self-projection; it's just as easy to see Hick's construement of a Marxist-Postmodern conspirement to back-door Leftist thought into academic positions, while himself playing "the enlightened neo-liberal preserving Western identity" politicking through hi-jacking the image of Post-Modernism and monopolozing a carciature of it to deter any discussion. Obviously just repeating the end thesis, tho it is appreciated the level of Citation-checking didn't even need to be particularly deep (were the quotations literally contradicted on the same page they were cited on????), but it is a wonder or tragedy that Academic Skeptism to the point of paranoia is manufactured by the ones most guilty yet charged as their modus operandi against their academic/political targets. Hypocrisy and illegitimacy seem almost baked in to the ideological strategy and behavior, whether lacking in self-reflection or deliberately maintaining ignorant for dismissiveness, that in order to even fabricate an opponent, "they [the Left] must be as underhanded as we [Hicks + company] already are", and in no other way. Character/intellectual curiosity assassination is the name of their game but in doing so, Hicks and other Conservatives can only explain an opposition as "doing what we are but better". They can only try to kill what they know, but if you can't admit to "not knowing what you don't know", then you can't really fight against anything that isn't a reflection of you. Well thanks for another good work in debunking tho I guess it's up to the algorithm if this response ever gets the coverage to undo some of the damage "Explaining PostModernism" has caused in its establishment

This is excellent. I will note another philosopher that Hicks ignores you mentioned briefly is also telling in Deleuze - whose work on the metaphysics of difference was probably just too difficult for Hicks to understand. ;)

Not only did that book missed the mark, but missed the MARX in it's theorists

Hicks trying not to take a philosopher out of context or misrepresent them: *impossible*

Oh god, having seen Jonas Čeika's dissection of Hicks' work way back, I know this is going to be… is "fun" the right word here?

Just wanted to say that I'm very thankful for your channel for introducing me to anime studies and other academic texts in general like the ones mentioned in this video. It's become a new passion of mine. I just started reading Lyotard for the first time the other day and was super stoked when I saw this pop up on my feed. I've been increasingly interested in reading more on postmodernism ever since I was first introduced to Lyotard and Baudrillard from Database Animals. I definitely don't buy into all this BS surrounding the term from people like Hicks and Peterson and I do hope to one day have a better understanding of these writers like Derrida and Baudrillard as I do resonate a lot with their ideas from what I've briefly read about them so far. Thank you for all your hard work bro🙏. GOATd video as always.

Most likely a blessing but I haven't touched Stephen Hicks. That being said, I am interested in reading about postmoderism. Do you have any recs? Admitelly, I only made it 10 mins into this, so if the answer is in the video, sorry in advance 😅. Giving you the video like! 👍🏽

All my homies hate Stephen Hicks

LESS GOOOO NEW VIDEO!!!!!

35:19 Revisiting this vid after giving myself the creeps thinking about this pic. What a terrifying creature. Your reveal timing is just right for horror writing. "Xenogears goes one step further, by having the player fight God..." [shows sketch]. That you chose a sketch instead of a screenshot from the game is another good touch, as there is still room for the viewers imagination to fill in blanks. It just falls together so effectively. 👌

The Freudian analysis is interesting, if not somewhat reaching. More convincing is your overall framing of Kill La Kill as a feminist critique of patriarchal systems and the male gaze.

Its been a bit but I'm glad to see you're still creating content. Any interest in survival horror??

hi

great analysis

Imo the queer and castration stuff is kind of a stretch lol great vid tho

Kayanna: So what did Senketsu mean by "I don't want to go back to sleep!"?

Little late on the party but good video but I have to ask what are your thoughts on Watchmen especially since that is probably the biggest example people use as a “Deconstruction”?

I enjoyed your video. I wanted to give a couple of pieces of feedback. This isn't limited to this video, just stuff I noticed over the entire watch. It's mostly nitpicky nothings. Aerith's mom's name is Ifalna, not Ilfana. It's weird that you're a stickler for pronouncing Cait Sith's name, but not the word Mako. Not all mechanical enemies fly apart when destroyed--e.g. the first boss of the game doesn't. Conversely, some biological enemies like Bottomswell (lower Junon fish boss) do fly apart. Carry Armor does both. I think that the video would be better without your few departures into comedy. Especially that one jarring, loud one. I can't remember where it came up in the huge video so I can't go back to it. But I was listening to the video while doing some other task and I found the experience very much interrupted during that. And to a lesser extent, every departure into humor felt off since *most* of the video was so very straight-laced. Thanks for this work, I think you did a fantastic job. Looking forward to your FFT video next. That's my favorite game of all time!

Great vids. All four parts. Thanks!

One element that I think you overlooked here which connects the Tropesian use of "deconstruction" to its earlier formal uses in filmic and literary theory is the 2005 essay "Deconstructing the Hero" by the University of New Mexico philosophy professor and Heidegger scholar Iain Thomson, which analysed Alan Moore's Watchmen through a Derridean lens as an auto-deconstructive text commenting on the inherent contradictions within superhero narratives. I suspect that this essay's circulation outside of academic circles inadvertently popularised the term "deconstruction" in comic book fandom, and due to cross-pollination with the film studies, architecture and culinary senses of the word, an informal use of the word as shorthand for certain types of highly reflexive genre pieces developed in those spaces, which was quickly taken up by TV Tropes early on in its existence, leading to the present grim state of affairs. A close friend of mine (and fellow embittered late '00s TV Tropes veteran) has discussed writing an article on this strange, poorly-documented transformation of the term for years at this point, but unfortunately I may now have to tell her that someone else has nerd-sniped her on this subject! :P As for TV Tropes itself, having been there during most of the years where this back-and-forth was occurring, I find myself reflecting on the ever-present tension between those who viewed the site more in otaku database terms versus those who attempted to frame it in formalised, pseudo-academic terms, and the gradual realisation by those of us who had any meaningful interest in literary theory and analysis that the site's very format was inherently antithetical to such attempts at deeper understanding on a structural level despite various half-hearted efforts to the contrary on the part of the pseudo-academic camp. To be frank, I feel that many "critiques" of the site over the years have been fairly mean-spirited and often bad-faith attacks on the site's eccentric userbase and admittedly abysmal moderation, and as a consequence often misunderstand if not outright ignore many of the salient issues with the project in itself. Conversely, I think that your focus on the site's shifting definition of "deconstruction" as an empty signifier quite fittingly serves to deconstruct the site's central conceit, exposing one of its central contradictions, without resorting to any such pettiness. Well played.