On Getting it wrong

Butler argues that “many postmodern ideas” are “at best confused, and at worst simply untrue.” But he’s pretty sanguine about that: “the essential leading ideas of many cultural epochs are open to the same criticism” – he mentions the Romantic notion of Imagination or the fascination with mesmerism in medical practice a couple centuries ago. He adds: “All extremist intellectual movements in history have this character, and postmodernism is one of them. No one now subscribes entirely to the Romantic view of Imagination, even though the functions of the imagination have remained an abiding and central concern. And 18th-century mesmerism and 20th-century hypnotism are very different from one another.” Postmodernism is likely to follow the trajectory of many radical 20th-century ideas, moving from excitement through disillusion to modification.