Abstract
This paper offers a critique of postmodernism as it attempts to become a metatheory for the politics of difference or identity politics, and of postmodernism's tendency to conflate Marxism or dialectics with modernism. In contrast we distinguish between modernism, postmodernism, and a dialectical tradition that offers an alternative to both. We argue that the postmodern theory of language constitutes a form of nominalism that parallels the nominalism of speculative, monetarist capitalism and that postmodernism's understanding of language as a "play of power" corresponds to the political realism of contemporary international relations. This metatheory of postmodernism helps to undermine the development of any rational alternative to contemporary political economy and the current world (dis)order.
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