Does anyone else get the sense that Lupenis took an Introduction to Postmodernism course and has been shoehorning in ‘truth is relative, truth is subjective, my truth is my truth’ wherever he can? It’s as though he read an ‘Idiot’s Guide to Derrida’ and ‘Baudrillard for Dummies’, misunderstood what they were about (particularly in reference to millenia-old social structures and archetypes) and then selected certain women to be his ‘perfect victim’.
This is one of the great problems of the current age, and indeed throughout history: stupid people who have half-understood a concept and use their public platform (very limited in Lupenis’s case) to hammer in every nail they perceive. Lupenis sees Malice’s ‘plight’ as part of the great misogynist plan to demerit women everywhere. In so doing, he’s quite happy to argue that black is white - just as long as he is able to depict IG as an example of the gender-driven power-structure’s ability to victimise their female counterparts. IG thus becomes the definition of toxic masculinity; Bianca represents 1950s gender mores (vulnerable yet rapacious, passive yet a femme fatale); Malice’s femininity becomes the battleground on which Lupenis tilts his lance at the forces of oppression.
What he fails to comprehend is that there *are* absolute truths. (I hate postmodernism, by the way: it’s caused nothing but conflict, grief and collective superficiality*.) Truths that exist in physics and metaphysics, philosophy and, most pertinently, in the Law. Bleating about an apparent ‘lack of context’ (which speaks to an internal contradiction: if truth is entirely subjective, why does it need context to substantiate it?), he writes off official court documents, ignoring the fact that should IG have lied within those evidentiary pages, he could and would be imprisoned. Perjury is a real thing and is not treated lightly or glibly by justice systems around the world. Simultaneously, and hypocritically, he accepts Malice’s ‘evidence’ and ‘truth’ at face value.
All this goes to prove that he considers women, personified in Malice, as naturally weaker and in need of male protection. His internal logic is so inconsistent that it is surprising he can dress himself in the morning. If we therefore summarise Lupenis’s position: postmodernism = deconstruction of white, male, Western-dominated ideas and hegemonies. Incorporating feminism, he states that Malice’s evidence-free ‘truth’ is the literal truth because she says so and, as a victim, she is being persecuted by those masculine hegemonies. But then, swiftly skipping over feminism, he renders Malice weak and helpless in order to White Knight for her.
It must be overwhelmingly awful to live a logic- and evidence-free life.
(*Did I mention that I hate postmodernism?
Sorry for this pretty verbose analysis: Oh-for-God’s-Sake (kitten) woke me at four by killing my micellar cleansing water + cottonwool pads. Then knocked a steep pile of books on to the floor and thought it was immensely funny to jump all over them and me. Naughty little blighter.)