An Arrow to the Heart: the Love and Death of Postmodern Legal Scholarship

Modernist legal writers, including Dennis Arrow in his well-known Pomobabble article, commonly criticize postmodern legal scholars for being muddle-headed nihilistic thinkers who write indecipherable jargon-filled nonsense and lack political convictions. Professor Feldman responds to these and other related criticisms and, in doing so, explains some key components of postmodernism. For instance, he describes how the pervasiveness of postmodern culture infuses legal scholarship with certain postmodern themes. Ironically, then, even the most vehement critics, like Arrow, display a surprising if unwitting affinity for postmodernism.

Finally, in order to deflect precipitate denunciations of postmodernism, Professor Feldman suggests a refinement of terms, dividing postmodern- ism into antimodernism (more extreme) and metamodernism (more moderate).