Did postmodernism have any part to play in the rise of the post-truth era? At first glance that seems very hard to believe. When we see Kellyanne Conway talking about “alternative facts” or Rudy Giuliani saying “truth isn’t truth，我们不会立即认为他们一直在忙着阅读雅克·德里达和理查德·罗蒂的作品。不过，这个问题可能没那么简单。

For one thing, there are a few documented cases of right-wingers explicitly drawing on postmodernist theory. TakeVladislav Surkov, Kremlin ideologist. Or Phillip Johnson, one of the originators of the “intelligent design” idea. (‘‘I told them I was a postmodernist and deconstructionist just like them,”said Johnson, "but aiming at a slightly different target.’’) Or Mike Cernovich, an alt-right conspiracy theorist, who actuallysaid the following: “I read postmodernist theory in college. If everything is a narrative, then we need alternatives to the dominant narrative. I don’t seem like a guy who reads Lacan, do I?”

And even when it comes to folks like Kellyanne Conway or Rudy Giuliani—people who almost certainly did not read anyLyotard—there is perhaps a case to be made for postmodernism having an effect, by creating an environment conducive to their flourishing. Kurt Andersen points out that postmodern ideas didn’t stay locked in the ivory tower but gradually circulated in the wider culture, convincing more and more people that each person has his or her own “truth,” and that it’s impolite (if not downright hegemonic) to say that someone is wrong. The result,according to Andersen？“一旦知识分子的主流彻底接受了许多同样有效的事实和真相，一旦大门和守门的想法不仅在校园，而且在整个文化中都被质疑，所有美国野蛮人的主张都可以得到认真对待。”因此，“后现代知识分子……变成了对美国右翼有用的白痴。”

换句话说，安徒生的观点是，后现代主义帮助创造了一个环境，在这个环境中，康威和朱利安尼夫妇受到的抵制更少，就像一个免疫系统受到抑制的身体。一两个哲学家似乎同意这种评价。Daniel Dennett saysthe postmodernists “are responsible for the intellectual fad that made it respectable to be cynical about truth and facts”;Timothy Williamson says在美国，“那些认为将信仰分为真假在某种程度上是不宽容的人应该意识到，他们为特朗普这样的人提供了一种烟雾弹，让他们更容易接受。”There could well be something to this, even if Donald Trump isn’t staying up all night poring overThe Postmodern Condition.

当然，后真相时代还有许多其他原因，其中许多可能更重要:公平原则的废除、24小时新闻的兴起、互联网、社交媒体……但如果后现代主义也以自己温和的方式做出了贡献呢?这难道不应该成为我们重新思考它是多么伟大的一个想法，对进步政治的贡献是多么重要的一个理由吗?理查德·罗蒂(Richard Rorty)曾经写道:“没有‘事实’这个概念，我们会过得更好”，“科学是‘真相’的来源(注意那些吓人的引号!)”是笛卡尔的概念之一，它将在“他所呼吁的时代”消失。我们现在就生活在那样的未来，它不是乌托邦;这是一个hellmouth。在我看来，我们目前所处的这个反乌托邦，应该让后现代理论的拥趸们三思而后行。他们希望有一个超越真理的世界，这是错误的。

At this point, defenders of postmodernism would probably make a couple of familiar responses. For one thing, they’d probably say that postmodernists werediagnosing the decline of truth, not asserting it, let alone calling for it. Well, that may be true of Baudrillard, but it’s surely not true of Derrida, who famously claimed that words never transmit ideas but just defer meaning endlessly. And it’s also not true of Richard Rorty, who said that “there is no sense in which any [scientific] descriptio[n] is an accurate representation of the way the world is.” (As Bruno Latour pointed out在美国，这种态度会让气候否定者非常高兴。)罗蒂宣称:“词汇……并不是‘更客观’或‘更不客观’”，“任何词汇对对象的描述都不比其他词汇‘更客观’”。换句话说，科学并不比山达基教更客观;天文学并不比占星术更客观。当谈到“寻求真理的哲学教授，他们不只是一个故事或共识，而是诚实地、质朴地、准确地呈现世界的方式”时，罗蒂认为称他们为“老式的伪君子”很有趣。他还告诉我们，阅读一本书的人不应该试图正确地理解它——这是不存在的——而只是“把文本塑造成符合他自己目的的形状”。

And it’s not just what these thinkerssaid; it’s what theydid. Actions speak even louder than words, and postmodernists had a way of revealing just how committed they were to truthfulness. When caught in a bind over an article, Derrida insisted loudly on his rights as an author, forgetting everything he’d said about the evils of the copyright system ("I shall therefore not claim a copyright because this entire matter of the police must be reconsidered”). Similarly, when I once asked Rorty why he kept attributing a view to Nietzsche that Nietzsche didn’t really have, he said “it just makes him into a more interesting and innovative philosopher.” And the journalSocial Texteagerly publishedan article它指出，在其他故意的严重错误中，PI是一个变量。总而言之，我们很难严肃地接受后现代主义者最终是由对真理的强烈热爱所驱动的说法。今天后现代主义的捍卫者正试图用这种方式改写历史——假装德里达及其同伴从未说过他们说过的话——这一事实或许再次证实了我们中的一些人的怀疑，即他们对诚实的承诺并不完全是最重要的。

The best argument for postmodernism, it seems to me, is that it sought to undermine the hegemony, in the intellectual world, of the white, male, heterosexual, Western standpoint. It revealed that purported claims to universality were often just a smokescreen for dangerously Eurocentric and hegemonic attitudes, and thus opened up a space for other ways of thinking to assert themselves and be taken seriously. This is an extremely noble aim, and the changes that have happened over the past decades have been vital and excellent. It’s just not clear to me that we needed postmodernism in order to achieve this. As Anthony Appiah once put it, “their complaint is not with universalism at all. What they truly object to—and who would not?—is Eurocentric hegemonyposingas universalism.” It wasn’t necessary to attack the very notion of universals, in other words, or the very notion of truth. When faced with lies posing as truths, we should just call them what they are, rather than claiming that there’s no such thing as objective truth. Here Du Bois and Beauvoir (among others) can be our models; we do not need the postmodernists.

Did postmodernism contribute to post-truth? We’ll never know for sure. All we can be certain of is that insisting there’s no truth, that claims of objectivity are always driven by interests of power, and that science is no more objective than Scientology is simply not going to help. We need to get the gatekeepers back at their gates. It’s up to all of us.