Alternative Postmodernism: A Phenomenon without a Name

Unmasking Postmodernism to reclaim Tradition and transcend Modernity

Alexander Dugin argues that Postmodernism fulfills the nihilistic logic of Modernity, yet by reclaiming its inherited elements — phenomenology, myth, the sacred, and differentialist anti-racism — we can create a traditionalist alternative beyond the deviant liberal order.

Deconstructing Postmodernism

Several essential aspects of Postmodernism require clarification. Postmodernism is not a unified phenomenon. Although it was postmodernist thinkers themselves (notably Derrida) who introduced the concept of “deconstruction” — itself grounded in Heidegger’s notion of Destruktion from Being and Time — Postmodernism can be deconstructed in turn, and not necessarily in a postmodernist manner.

Postmodernism emerges from the foundations of Modernity. It partially critiques Modernity and partially continues it. As the movement developed, its determinations of what precisely it opposes in Modernity, and what it chooses to carry forward, became philosophical dogma and immune to critique. This self-reinforcing system is what defines Postmodernism as such. It is neither good nor bad; it simply is. Without this structure, Postmodernism would have dissolved entirely. But this has not occurred. Despite its irony, evasiveness, and rhetorical slipperiness, postmodernist discourse possesses a clear core of foundational principles it never abandons and delineates boundaries it never transgresses.

Should one adopt a position critically distant from this core and cross these boundaries, it becomes possible to examine Postmodernism from the outside and ask: Can we extract certain currents that Postmodernism appropriated from elsewhere and recombine them differently? Can we ignore its self-imposed limits and moral imperatives, dismantling Postmodernism into its components without concern for its theoretical protests?

Dismantling Modernity: What Is Valuable in Postmodernism?

Let us offer some general observations. We will first identify in Postmodernism those currents that are of interest from the standpoint of a radical critique of Modernity, stripped of postmodernist moral framing. Then we will list those features so entwined with that morality that they cannot be separated from it.

What attracts the radical critic of Western European modernity in Postmodernism?

• Phenomenology and the exploration of intentionality (Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, Ehrenfels, Fink)

• Structuralism and the autonomous ontology of language, text, and discourse (Saussure, Trubetzkoy, Jakobson, Propp, Greimas, Ricœur, Dumézil)

• Cultural pluralism and interest in archaic societies (Boas, Mauss, Lévi-Strauss)

• The recognition of the sacred as a fundamental existential factor (Durkheim, Eliade, Bataille, Caillois, Girard, Blanchot)

• Existentialism and the philosophy of Dasein (Heidegger and his followers)

• Acceptance of psychoanalytic topology as continuous “dream work” undermining rationality (Freud, Jung, Lacan)

• Deconstruction as contextualization (Heidegger)

• Emphasis on narrative as myth (Bachelard, Durand)

• Critique of Western racism, ethnocentrism, and supremacism (Gramsci, Boas — Personality and Culture, new anthropology)

• Critique of the scientific worldview (Newton) and its Cartesian-Lockean rationalist foundation (Foucault, Feyerabend, Latour)

• Exposure of the fragility, arbitrariness, and falsehood of Modernity’s core assumptions (Cioran, Blaga, Latour)

• Pessimism about Western civilization and debunking of utopian myths of “progress” and a “bright future” (Spengler, the Jüngers, Cioran)

• Functionalist sociology (Durkheim, Mauss), demonstrating the illusion of individual freedom from society

• Unmasking the nihilism of Modernity (Nietzsche, Heidegger)

• The relativization of the human subject (Nietzsche, Jünger)

• Discovery of inwardness and interiority in man (Mounier, Corbin, Bataille, Jambet)

• Political theology (Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben)

Postmodernism’s Progressivism and Censorship

All of these intellectual trends emerged before Postmodernism and existed independently of it. Each contributed something essential to Postmodernism and, over time, began to develop within its context, merging to varying degrees. Still, all approaches, their intersections and points of dialogue, real or imagined, remain viable entirely outside the postmodernist paradigm.

Postmodernist thinkers will object. To them, any non-postmodernist interpretation of these movements has already been preemptively invalidated by Postmodernism. Outside the postmodern framework, these traditions are seen as merely archaeological.

Postmodernism insists that these disciplines and schools have become mere objects within the postmodern subject, which now possesses absolute interpretive control. All such lines of thought are regarded as surpassed, sublated in the Hegelian sense, and thereby stripped of sovereign interpretative rights. They are only permitted to exist within Postmodernism, according to its rules. Taken on their own, they are not simply outdated but toxic when severed from the postmodern context.

Yet all these directions arose around the turn of the twentieth century and represent a systemic turn within Modernity itself. In these currents, Modernity confronts its deepest crisis, its incoherence, and its inevitable end. Importantly, this confrontation occurred before Postmodernism assumed its definitive characteristics. These traditions nourished Postmodernism, shaping its intellectual climate, its language, and its conceptual apparatus. Yet within Modernity, they existed in a different context, policed by the “guardians of orthodoxy” whom Postmodernism originally sought to challenge. Just as Modernity overthrew the premodern under the banner of anti-dogmatism but soon erected its own dogmas, and just as communist regimes seized power by opposing oppression only to establish even greater violence and control, so too has Postmodernism rapidly assumed an exclusivist and tyrannical character.

The paradox is this: Postmodernism elevates relativism to the status of universal value and then defends this “achievement” through the harshest, most absolutist globalist measures. Transgression transforms from possibility to imperative. The pathological becomes normative. Everything preceding this new order is subject to ruthless exclusion.

A close look at the aforementioned traditions reveals that while many frame themselves within Modernity, they also highlight its deficiencies. Others go further, portraying Modernity as an inherently dark, distorted, nihilistic, and erroneous phenomenon.

What Must Be Rejected in Postmodernism?

Let us now identify the features of Postmodernism likely responsible for its totalitarian turn:

• Progressivism, now paradoxical: “progress” means the dismantling of belief in utopia and the future. This could be called “black progressivism” or the “Dark Enlightenment” (Nick Land)

• Materialism, redefined as the apex of postmodernist doctrine, surpassing older, more “idealistic” materialisms. A new “real” materialism must be justified (Deleuze, Kristeva)

• Relativism, in which all universals, taxonomies, and hierarchies are rejected, even as relativism itself becomes dogma (Lyotard, Negri & Hardt)

• Post-structuralism, seeking to overcome structuralism’s limitations, especially its inability to accommodate historical and social dynamism (Foucault, Deleuze, Barthes)

• Radical critique of Tradition, viewed (especially by Hobsbawm) as a bourgeois fiction, a narcotic for the people. This erases any sovereign ontology of spirit.

• New universalism, defined by ironic decomposition and distrust of all unifying claims, shifting focus to ontic fragments and heterogeneity

• The morality of total liberation, celebrating boundless transgression (Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Bataille)

• Anti-essentialism, a distorted inference from Heidegger’s Dasein: essence is rejected entirely; being becomes sheer becoming

• Abolition of identity, as identity becomes transient, performative, and morally suspect. Only its overcoming is virtuous.

• Gender theory, imposing radical relativization of gender, age, and species identity (Kristeva, Haraway)

• Postmodern psychoanalysis, seeking to dismantle Freud and Lacan’s structural maps (Guattari)

• Hatred of hierarchy, rejecting vertical order in favor of schizo-masses and “parliaments of organs” (Latour)

• Nihilism, no longer a diagnosis but a celebration of Nothingness — a will towards Nothing (Deleuze)

• Abolition of the Event, replaced by recycling (Baudrillard)

• Posthumanism, surpassing the human as too traditional, advocating hybrids, cyborgs, and chimeras (B.-H. Lévy, Haraway)

• Apologia for minorities, equating organic archaic cultures with artificial, mechanical subcultures; promoting networked pervert and mentally ill communities

Postmodernism as the Nihilistic Finalization of Modernity

Upon closer inspection of the aforementioned traits, it becomes clear that Postmodernism does not merely inherit from Modernity; it completes the moral trajectory of the modern age, carrying it to its logical conclusion. This list of postmodern features no longer reflects a conflicted relationship with Modernity, as in the earlier list, but instead shows a critique from the Left: a lament that Modernity failed to fully realize its own principles. Postmodernism now offers to finish that task. In this sense, Postmodernism reveals itself as the consummation of Modernity, the realization of its telos. Yet whereas Modernity attempted its emancipatory project against the backdrop of traditional society (the premodern), Postmodernism begins by attempting to overcome Modernity itself. Hence the totalitarian, Bolshevik character of postmodernist epistemologies, which embrace revolutionary terror as a theoretical necessity. Modernity must be abolished precisely because it was insufficiently modern, because it failed in its mission. The entire logic replicates that of Marxism: just as the bourgeoisie was a progressive class in relation to feudalism, yet had to be overthrown by the more progressive proletariat, so too is Modernity more progressive than Tradition, but must now be surpassed by Postmodernism. It is a dialectic of leftward overcoming.

Implicit Critical Theory

Let us now revisit the currents previously marked as of interest. Once separated from Postmodernism — and especially from its unacceptable features — they form a coherent constellation. This coherence becomes visible only after Postmodernism has itself been deconstructed. The fact that these intellectual movements developed independently of, and prior to, Postmodernism shows that we are dealing with an entirely different and autonomous complex of ideas. These theories all recognize the fundamental and decisive crisis of contemporary Western civilization (cf. René Guénon’s The Crisis of the Modern World), attempt to locate the historical moment of decisive error that led to the present condition, identify the central trends of nihilism and decline, and propose various exit strategies, ranging from course correction to open revolt or Conservative Revolution. Their focus on the nihilism of Western modernity, particularly its purely negative phases in the twentieth century, links them with Postmodernism and allows for some degree of integration. But on closer inspection, these movements may be harmonized — albeit relatively — through a completely different semantic trajectory. They aim to liberate Modernity from precisely those aspects that Postmodernism has enshrined.

In other words, twentieth-century intellectual culture has reached a bifurcation point. Its shared critique of Western civilization — its philosophy, science, politics, and culture — has split into two major streams:

1. Postmodernism, which explicitly claims interpretive and axiological sovereignty and asserts its exclusive legitimacy.

2. A second phenomenon that lacks a name — expelled, fragmented, and reshaped by Postmodernism itself.

The absence of a name, structural unity, or institutional consolidation for this second stream — along with its acceptance of isolated existence and focus on localized, sectoral issues — has so far prevented us from treating it as a coherent intellectual formation.

The only real attempt to unify these diverse strands was made by the French New Right. They achieved this partially, but their intellectual movement was marred by marginalizing labels and distorted framing. Thus, the phenomenon we call “alternative Postmodernism” or “non-Postmodernism” remains without a name, structure, or institutional form.

Yet this does not mean we must dismiss this branch of critical thought as ephemeral or accept Postmodernism’s hegemonic claims. We may interpret the sum of these intellectual vectors as a coherent, though implicit, worldview. This becomes obvious once we adopt the standpoint of an alternative history of ideas. History does not guarantee that the victors — whether in war, religious disputes, elections, revolutions, or philosophical battles — are necessarily aligned with truth, goodness, or justice. Outcomes vary. We may apply this principle equally to Postmodernism and its alternative: alt-Postmodernism.

Phenomenology

Phenomenology is important because it affirms the primacy of the subject — its ontological sovereignty. This shatters the materialist axioms of Modernity, placing the object of intentionality within the process of thought and perception itself. The very term intentio — to be directed towards something — implies interiority. Franz Brentano, the founder of phenomenology, drew this idea from European scholasticism, especially from radical Aristotelianism within the Benedictine order (e.g., Friedrich von Freiberg and the Rhenish mystics), who emphasized the immanence of active intellect in the human soul. Brentano’s dissertation was on Aristotle’s doctrine of active intellect. While later developed by Husserl and brought to metaphysical heights by Heidegger, phenomenology reveals a pre-modern style of thinking that transcends nominalism, materialism, and atomism. It thus simultaneously reaches beyond Modernity and resonates with classical and medieval thought.

Structuralism

Structuralism is compelling because it restores the priority of language — again, the domain of the subject — over non-linguistic reality. This subverts positivism’s faith in real objects and their atomic facts. While groundbreaking in linguistics, logic, and philology, this view mirrors traditional society’s veneration of the Logos, of the ontology of speech and reason. Although the assertion of a sovereign textual ontology may appear grotesque, in the positivist context — conscious or unconscious — it revives pre-nominalist, realist attitudes. The medieval debate over universals essentially pitted those who affirmed the autonomous ontology of names (realists and idealists) against the nominalists who denied it.

Thus, structuralism — although born in a different philosophical and cultural context — resonates with realism and idealism and with Premodern thought.

Moreover, considering the ties between leading structuralists — such as Trubetzkoy and Jakobson, founders of phonology — and the Eurasian movement, as well as the traditionalist leanings in Dumézil’s work on Indo-European tripartite ideology, and the parallels between Propp, Greimas, and sacred worldviews, this connection deepens significantly.

Rehabilitation of Archaic Societies

The rigorous and unbiased study of archaic societies — grounded in myth and belief — has refuted the superficial and often erroneous conclusions of progressive and evolutionist anthropology. It has revealed new perspectives on culture, which, as Franz Boas and his school insisted, must be understood on its own terms, with its semantics and ontology intact.

This leads to the affirmation of cultural pluralism and a minimal core of properties that might be called universal. Systems of exchange, although universal in function, take distinct forms in different societies and shape their ontological and epistemological horizons.

The Sacred

The rediscovery of the sacred as a distinct phenomenon occurred simultaneously in sociology, comparative religion, and traditionalist philosophy. Traditionalists embraced the sacred, viewing its loss in modern civilization as a sign of decay. Sociology confined itself to description, while comparative religion — and certain strands of psychoanalysis, notably Jung — demonstrated the enduring presence of sacred patterns even in rational-materialist societies.

Postmodernism engages the sacred only to intensify its critique of Modernity, accusing it of failing to realize its own ideals. Rather than disenchanting the world (as Max Weber claimed), Modernity simply generated new mythologies. Postmodernism does not rehabilitate myth; it seeks to eradicate it even more fundamentally than the Enlightenment. This agenda is foreign to sociologists, comparativists, pragmatists (like William James), and Traditionalists alike. The sacred can thus be studied entirely apart from postmodernist objectives.

Philosophy of Dasein

Heidegger’s philosophy constitutes a vast and self-sufficient field of ideas. His project of a New Beginning for philosophy has nothing in common with the foundations of Postmodernism. What reached Postmodernism were echoes of Heidegger via selective and distorted readings by French existentialists (Sartre, Camus, etc.), later warped into postmodernist discourse.

Deleuze’s rhizome concept might faintly echo Heidegger’s Dasein, but the resemblance is superficial — closer to a materialist parody than a faithful continuation.

Psychoanalysis

Like Heidegger’s thought, psychoanalysis far exceeds Postmodernism. Its greatest value lies in its assertion of an autonomous ontology of the psyche — especially the unconscious — whose significance does not derive from rational subjectivity but from complex dream mechanisms. Psychoanalysis need not be confined to any single school — Freudian orthodoxy, Jungian theory, or Lacanian models. The Anti-Oedipus of Deleuze and Guattari, and feminist psychoanalysis, are marginal variants that — despite postmodernist attempts — do not nullify other interpretive frameworks. In many respects, psychoanalysis revives myth and sacred structures, especially in Jung’s tradition, aligning it with Traditionalism and anti-rationalist critique. The Eranos seminars exemplify these intersections.

Deconstruction

Derrida’s deconstruction is an extension of Heidegger’s philosophical destruction, as introduced in Being and Time. Heidegger meant the placement of a school, theory, or terminology within a philosophical-historical structure — namely, the progressive forgetting of Being, culminating in the suppression of the ontological question (ontologische Differenz). Deconstruction can be used across disciplines to restore foundational positions, akin to Wittgenstein’s idea of “language games.” It entails a precise semantic analysis: tracing concepts and narratives from their origin, through shifts and distortions. Heidegger’s model is highly useful, but not the only one.

Myth Analysis

The study of myth as a durable script connecting images, figures, and events reveals patterns across diverse epochs and cultures. If deconstruction seeks the originary kernel of knowledge systems, myth analysis (e.g., Gilbert Durand) identifies recurrent patterns and algorithms of cultural consciousness.

Sometimes myth analysis overlaps with Jungian psychoanalysis; at other times it informs sociology, anthropology, political science, and cultural theory.

Differentialist Anti-Racism

Criticism of ethnocentrism and cultural hierarchies need not rest on extreme individualism or the blanket validation of minorities. Cultural plurality is a semagenetic law: meaning arises only within culture, and each has its own standards. Societies must be understood on their own terms.

This leads to differentialism without hierarchy. The liberal moral imperative to emancipate individuals from collective identities undermines cultural wholes. Differentialist anti-racism merely affirms the reality of difference — without applying any “transcendental” measure of value.

This reading of Boas and Lévi-Strauss was embraced by Russian Eurasianists and the French New Right but can extend far beyond those frameworks.

Critique of the Scientific Worldview

Postmodern critiques of science — Foucault, Latour, Feyerabend — can be explored independently. These critiques recall Husserl’s critique of the European sciences, which belongs to phenomenology and constitutes a distinct tradition. We must also revisit premodern scientific models, like Aristotelian ontology and Hermeticism.

Postmodernism avoids this. Its critiques stem from recent theories — relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory — without engaging the sacred sciences of the past. But a synthesis of scientific critique and sacred science could yield a radically new vision. Outside Postmodernism, nothing blocks this.

Critiques of rationalism, Cartesian dualism, and Newtonian mechanics point towards more refined concepts of mind and reality — rehabilitating Plato’s Nous and Aristotle’s “active intellect.” From here, one could reconstruct new scientific ontologies informed by antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Critique of Modernity

Postmodernist critiques of Modernity largely mirror Marx’s critique of capitalism. Marx denounced capitalism as an abomination, yet acknowledged its historical necessity and progressive role compared to earlier systems. On this basis, he drew a strict boundary between critiques from a post-capitalist perspective (like his own) and those who rejected capitalism altogether, including its necessity and utility. The latter included conservatives and agrarian socialists like Ferdinand Lassalle and the Russian narodniks.

Likewise, postmodernists condemn Modernity as a catastrophe, yet embrace its morality and emancipatory goals, which they claim it failed to realize. This critique, although often accurate, shares Marxism’s flaw: it overstates Modernity’s necessity as destiny, rather than seeing it as a historical choice. One can choose Modernity — or something else, such as Tradition. True opponents of Modernity are willing to ally with all its critics. The sharpest critiques come from Traditionalists: French philosopher René Alleau called René Guénon a more radical revolutionary than Marx. When critics like André Gide, Antonin Artaud, Georges Bataille, Ezra Pound, or T. S. Eliot engage seriously with Guénon and Evola, their arguments gain strength. Otherwise, they remain trapped within the very disease they oppose.

Pessimism towards Western Civilization

The same applies to pessimism regarding contemporary Western civilization. It has been criticized from the Left — by Bergson, Sartre, Marcuse — and from the Right — by Nietzsche, Spengler, the Jünger brothers, and Cioran. These camps share much, especially when their critiques extend into the future while drawing inspiration from the past. Yet to view this civilization as anything other than pathological, deviant, or — at worst — a great parody or the Kingdom of the Antichrist is to accept its internal logic and legitimacy.

Outside Postmodernism, dialogue between Left and Right critics remained possible, although difficult. Postmodernism closed this space entirely.

The Relevance of Sociology

As a discipline born in late Modernity, sociology retains substantial insight into the relationship between society and the individual, particularly the primacy of the social. Durkheim called this “functionalism”: individuals are shaped not by their autonomous selves but by a web of social roles, masks, and functions.

From this core principle, many conclusions may follow. Thinkers like Tönnies, Sombart, Sorokin, Pareto, and Dumont showed that no single developmental pattern or universal rule governs society. Societies exhibit cycles, declines, resurgences — but no linear progression. Thus, liberal morality’s dream of liberating the individual from collective identity collapses. The liberal view of history as steady emancipation is a myth. Sociology unmasks many of Modernity’s dominant ideas as mere “myths of law” (cf. Georges Sorel) — instrumental fictions used by ruling elites.

Sociology exposes progress as an unfounded prejudice (cf. Pitirim Sorokin). Postmodernism draws on sociology only to devise new forms of liberation and exotic strategies: transgression, gender fluidity, schizoid mass formations (Deleuze/Guattari), private languages (Barthes, Sollers), and the fragmentation of the self into sub-individual units — “parliament of organs” (Latour) or the “factory of micro-desires” (Deleuze).

Beyond this, sociology retains its hermeneutic power, restoring the ontological status of the collective (holism) and centering not the isolated individual but the person (persona).

Nihilism

Nihilism in Western society was identified long before Postmodernism. Nietzsche explored it deeply; Heidegger built an entire ontology around it. For Heidegger, philosophy was a search for paths out of the nihilist labyrinth. He treated the question of Nothing with utmost seriousness.

Postmodernists declared a monopoly on nihilism, trivializing it into irony. Deleuze rebranded the “will to nothing” as a cultural motor of Postmodernism. Thus, they offered a glib answer before understanding the question. Postmodernist nihilism often resembles mockery or performance art, not philosophy. Attempts to elevate this into epistemology — via Laruelle’s non-philosophy or Ray Brassier’s transcendental nihilism — turn a failure of thought into dogma.

Nihilism still demands serious reflection — and perhaps radical overcoming. Nietzsche called the Übermensch “the victor over God and Nothing.” Evola’s Ride the Tiger analyzes this task in depth.

The Relativization of Man

Following Nietzsche’s call to “de-humanize Being,” many twentieth-century thinkers questioned man’s centrality. Ortega y Gasset described art’s dehumanization. Ernst Jünger examined how technocratic systems displaced man’s nature.

This concern led to various fields: Konrad Lorenz’s ethology, Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory, Friedrich Georg Jünger’s critique of technology, Gregory Bateson’s “ecology of mind.”

Postmodernism, however, glorified mutation, calling for hybrid bio-mechanical beings and denouncing all essentialism. Its war on anthropocentrism escalated into a full project to erase man as a species. Futurologists like Harari and Kurzweil praise this in their visions of the Singularity.

The Interior Dimension

The rediscovery of interiority — although summed up by Bataille’s Inner Experience — did not originate with Modernity. Saint Paul wrote of the “inner man.” Traditional religions center on the soul. Modernity, grounded in materialism and evolutionism, erased this dimension, modeling man without a soul.

That avant-garde artists and surrealists stumbled upon the “inner man” in their crisis of Modernity does not make it a twentieth-century invention. Traditionalists like Evola and Guénon offered detailed metaphysical accounts of radical subjectivity. Personalists (after Mounier) developed this further. Corbin and his students (Jambet, Lardreau, Lory) elevated the figure of the Angel — a theme echoed by Rilke and Heidegger.

In Postmodernism, this dimension is marginal. Critical realists reject any turn inward — unless it is into the innerness of things, severed from Dasein (cf. Graham Harman).

Outside Postmodernism, the radical subject remains a central philosophical concern.

Political Theology

Carl Schmitt formulated political theology as a theory of the political. The fact that postmodernist-leaning thinkers (Taubes, Mouffe, Agamben) adapted Schmitt changes nothing about its autonomy. Concepts like “bare life” and “negative katechon” are derivative.

Political theology is best understood within Schmitt’s integral philosophy, which was thoroughly conservative and hostile to Modernity.

Alternative Postmodernism and Traditionalism

This preliminary analysis opens a path forward. Postmodernism has distorted the philosophical landscape, laying claim to the intellectual legacy of humanity. Yet if we reject it wholesale, we risk retreating into premodern positions already superseded — and skillfully dismantled — by Postmodernism. Furthermore, by rejecting Postmodernism entirely, we also reject the critical streams it appropriated.

Postmodernism’s superficial engagement with the sacred and other positive elements threatens to discredit premodern structures by association. A direct return to Tradition, ignoring the deep imprint left by both Modernity and Postmodernism, is impossible. A semantic wall separates us from the premodern. The rays of authentic Tradition either fade or are distorted beyond recognition.

To reach Tradition, one must pass through both Modernity and Postmodernism. Otherwise, one remains trapped in one’s epistemic field.

Thus, the phenomenon we call “Alternative Postmodernism” is of foundational importance. It cannot be bypassed. Its core must be Traditionalism and the radical critique of Modernity. But without a living dialogue with contemporary thought, Traditionalism decays into a lifeless sect. Alternative Postmodernism revitalizes its inner power.

This was already attempted by Julius Evola, who engaged with the challenges of his time — philosophical, political, scientific — fearlessly departing from orthodoxy when necessary. We must do the same.

(Translated from the Russian)