I never imagined I’d say this, but I miss postmodernism.

I was a foe of postmodernism back when it was still at the centre of intellectual life, and my criticisms of it – for its self-contradictory relativism as well as its political self-undermining – still stand. Yet for all those flaws, I sometimes find myself pining for the days when postmodernism ruled the intellectual roost.

Postmodernism was terrible at achieving political change – in contrast to the Social Justice movement, which did make valuable change around gender (even as it failed around race). But sometimes political change isn’t the most important thing.