Immigration, Postmodernism, and Feminism: An Integral Reckoning

From David Marshall:

It is often said that those who criticize identity politics or third-wave postmodernism too harshly don’t understand that postmodernism is a stage of development (e.g., Robert Kegan’s 4.5 or Green), so they must be Orange criticizing Green, or at best a weak form of Teal (e.g., Teal with Green allergy).


However, Robert Kegan writes that certain types of people “may very well make use of the materials, rhythms, and critiques of postmodernism not to transcend a fourth order but to construct one.” Here is the passage:


“But the most interesting and easily misunderstood relationship to postmodern discourse is this: some of us who are laboring along in our transformation from the third to the fourth order of consciousness — especially those of us who may not be white or male or heterosexual or Christian or middle-class or able-bodied, those of us who are likely to make the perfectly natural or dignifiable move of using our marginalized status as the axis around which we will organize our personal authority — we may very well make use of the materials, rhythms, and critiques of postmodernism not to transcend a fourth order but to construct one!


“There is a big difference between the challenges to culturally dominant ideologies brought by a postmodern critique of the absolutism of *any* ideology, and those brought by yet another contending ideology. The postmodern analyses of knowledge, after all, got their start as much from a restiveness with the absolutism of Marxist ideologies as with that of the dominant statism or capitalism. Genuinely postmodern, fifth-order analyses should be as disruptive to left-leaning feminist, Afrocentric, or any other liberation theology as they are to status quo ideologies of the right. But something confusing happens when the rhetoric of postmodernism is used to establish an ideological beachhead on the shores of the status quo. Now traditional theories or social arrangements are called ‘privileging,’ ‘valorizing,’ ‘hierarchizing,’ ‘advantaging,’ ‘normatizing,’ or ‘generalizing’ not to indicate their identification with ideology in and of itself but to indicate that they are the captives of a particular, repudiated ideology. Now a language that was created originally to proclaim the withering of the authority of absolutism is being used to advance contending brands of absolutism.” (In Over Our Heads, p. 337-8)


Although you’ve talked about two types of postmodernism, you have often framed them as two types of Green (a nice version and a mean version), but if Kegan is right much of what we are seeing these days on the Left is not Green but Amber on its way to Orange, only with postmodern surface features.


However, you have also mentioned studies on Vietnam War protesters that found only a minority who protested for post-conventional reasons, and you mention various kinds of fundamentalism in The Religion of Tomorrow, including fundamentalist Marxism and fundamentalist feminism, so this suggests you are also in agreement with Kegan.


It seems that both can be true: there is a Green meme, a Mean Green Meme, and various other first-tier memes with postmodern surface features, especially since children have been raised with postmodern surface features since the 1970s and there have emerged various kinds of Marxist and post-Marxist liberation theologies and anti-theologies that people might pass through rather than the monotheistic religions Clare Graves talked about at Blue.


So I am wondering whether you can help us identify these third-order folks or movements (whether mythic or mythic-rational) who are using postmodern materials in an attempt to achieve fourth-order consciousness or perhaps just for third-order ends.
It seems to me that we need additional descriptions of each level to reflect these new developmental possibilities and avoid various kinds of pre/trans fallacies (e.g., elevating third-order consciousness with postmodern surface features to fourth or fifth order because those postmodern surface features were originally associated with 4.5 or Green).


If you agree, could you please offer detailed descriptions of each level that account for these new developmental possibilities? Could you show us, for example, specific examples and descriptions of third- and fourth-order feminism using postmodern materials? Or perhaps offer updated descriptions for each level on both the political Left and Right?