I have been revisiting some of my old postmodern haunts lately. This was motivated by one Dr Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist who, amongst other things, has been highly critical of the manner in which (he supposes) postmodern ideas have permeated tertiary institutions. This infiltration has lead to a wholesale sacking of the Western tradition and it's replacement with systems of discourse which radical questions all truths, traditions, narratives and authorities.

In some sense this is correct. The verities thrown up by The Enlightenment and which worked their way through into modernity, assumptions upon which so many disciplines were built, have been under an assault in the last 30 years. The Bachelor of Arts that I did in the late 1970's was a rigorous and classical one (though no Greek or Latin), in which novels, plays, poems and the like could be studied in their own right, experts could be trusted and one could proceed as if there were truths or knowledge that could be counted on. When I look back on the Bachelor of Communications that my ex did in the late 1990's, and which I confess I had a hand in completing for her, one can see an entirely different philosophy at work. A whole new layer of jargon had been added to explain a radical scepticism towards knowledge and knowing. Courses reflected this new relativism and scepticism. I really enjoyed myself but I thanked my lucky stars that I had that earlier BA (and an MA) under my belt. Without them, I would have been lost at sea as far as rational, critical thinking was concerned.

Which brings me to Jean Baudrillard. I was re-reading a summary of some of his most important ideas. On a simplified level Baudrillard argued that representation (by which he meant all manner of media, advertising, TV, radio, internet, newspapers, magazines, cameras, packaging and so forth) had so saturated reality that experience can only occur at one remove from it. We experience the world through a filter of preconceptions and expectations fabricated in advance by a world swamped with images. He wrote this before the advent of the smart phone, social media and augmented reality, all of which only feed into his thesis. While walking through the city yesterday, I was thinking about Baudrillard and how, despite the hyperbole in some of his writing, he was probably correct on some level. No matter where I looked, people were absorbed by brands, advertising or were staring into their phones. Their activities were likely already socialised by previous experience, perhaps many times over. What is original or authentic in such a world?

So Dr Peterson, I urge you not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are elements of the postmodern project that are interesting, challenging and valid. PoMo is a many-headed beast and not every head needs a-chopping.