Helen Pluckrose outlines some of the arguments later explored in depth in her bestselling 2020 book, Cynical Theories (co-authored with James Lindsay). The essay charts the pernicious influence of postmodernist thinking on two generations of academics and activists. If you want to understand how we got to a place where microaggressions are denounced as violence but the brutal terrorism of an intifada is considered righteous, this is an important primer.

[Note: Pluckrose has no particular respect or appreciation for Christianity, but there is certainly more wheat than tares in her overall analysis of the postmodernists SH]

Top postmodernists (besides Michel Foucault) include Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Richard Rorty, Gilles Deleuze, and Judith Butler.

Postmodernism mischievously dismantles grand narratives, embracing ambiguity, skepticism, and the instability of meaning, while hermeneutics explores interpretation as a subjective, evolving process shaped by context and culture.