Any critique of relativism in the current period must take into account the impact of postmodernism on social and political thought, and acknowledge the scope of its influence. Throughout this thesis, many of the major themes of postmodernism are apparent: the rejection of rational and universalising theories; the celebration of difference and diversity over common values; and the treatment of ‘reality’ as a discursive or conventional phenomenon. But understanding the extent to which postmodernism delimits these themes is problematic, not least in relation to the definitional imprecision of the terms ‘modernism’ and ‘postmodernism’, ‘modernity and ‘postmodernity’. Therefore, despite being well established in the lexicon of contemporary social theory, it is important to highlight the different ways in which these terms are applied to social, economic and cultural phenomena before we can clarify both the temper of current intellectual trends and the need to explore the wider sources of the epistemological relativism that undergird postmodernist thought.
Postmodernism has come to be associated with a variety of developments within aesthetics, literary theory, philosophy and social theory. The term was first applied in relation to innovations in art and architecture, music, film and literature. In these particular fields, postmodernism came to represent the rejection of much of the modernist agenda, including the idea that originality is the highest expression of artistic endeavour, best accomplished through experimentation with aesthetic forms. From the 1950s onwards, the move towards eclecticism, pluralism, irony and pastiche became the most recognisable features of a postmodern aesthetic. Wider concerns about the relationship between representation and originality, the status of the ‘author’ and the ‘mediatization’ of reality accorded with the influence of postmodernist social theory, which began to emerge as a more or less distinct body of thought by the 1970s.
The many tracts produced in its name suggest that ‘postmodernism’ does not imply a consistent method of analysis towards the aesthetic, philosophical, cultural and political themes that it denotes. But what we can say is that by rejecting broadly rationalist notions of society and progress, as well as the idea of an intelligible, objective reality, the leading figures of postmodernism accelerated a tendency towards relativism throughout the social sciences.
Postmodernist philosophers and social theorists justify their celebration of indeterminacy, in part, by claiming to have exposed the restrictions that humanism and universalism have placed on the analysis of identity, culture and ‘difference’. Later in this chapter, I address this question by focussing on some of the ways in which poststructuralism and deconstruction have provided the intellectual framework through which the universal human project commonly associated with the Enlightenment and its heritage has been challenged. At this stage, however, in order to clarify the use of the terms, ‘postmodern’, ‘postmodernism’ and ‘postmodernity’, I want to concentrate on the ideas of two authors in particular: Lyotard and Baudrillard. Lyotard and Baudrillard are both associated, to a greater or lesser degree, with poststructuralism, but what sets them apart from other leading contemporary figures associated with the emergence of postmodernism is that much of their work centres around the characterisation of the current conjuncture as an identifiable shift in social, economic and cultural life. Their conceptions of this new ‘reality’ differ in focus, but they both identify postmodernity as a more or less distinct historical phase in the evolution of capitalism, and share a concern to address the philosophical problems borne of this alleged transformation.
In his seminal work, The Postmodern Condition (1979), Lyotard sets out to clarify the intellectual orientation of postmodern thought: ‘Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives’. The ‘metanarratives’ against which Lyotard’s scepticism is directed can be characterised as any attempt to make sense of the human experience by relating it to general or determinate tendencies in social development. During the last two centuries, Lyotard argues, this has given rise to four more or less distinct discourses: ‘the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, [and] the creation of wealth.’ Each of these expressions of allegiance to ‘Progress’, he maintains, anticipates the gulag and the gas chambers. ‘The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given us as much terror as we can take’, he remarks. It is therefore imperative that we abandon such ‘grand narratives’, insofar as they have been applied to legitimate science, politics and ‘the modern’.
All attempts at realising the Enlightenment project, Lyotard concludes, are ‘totally obsolete’. However, whilst distancing himself decisively from the ideological narratives of socialism and capitalism, and from the wider intellectual foundations of ‘modernity’, Lyotard does not read postmodernism simply in terms of the supercession of ‘modernism’. At the same time as identifying the exhaustion of ‘the modern’, Lyotard’s conceptualisation of the postmodern is also oriented towards realising the potential of many of modernism’s aesthetic concerns. In their own attempt to define postmodernism, Robin Usher and Richard Edwards write: ‘Perhaps it is best understood as a state of mind, a critical self-referential posture and style, a different way of seeing and working, rather than a fixed body of ideas’. But although his ideas are consistent with this interpretation of postmodernism as an ‘intellectual mood’, Lyotard offers a definition of postmodernism that proves to be altogether more revealing, especially in light of his concern to highlight its affinity with modernism. Hence postmodernism, Lyotard claims, ‘is not modernism at its end but in its nascent state’.
This celebration of postmodernism as an extension of a progressive dynamic within modernism can be read as an attempt to fully realise the potential suggested by the aesthetic experiments undertaken by the major figures of ‘high modernism’. In the case of literature, for example, the shift from the supposed objectivity provided by fixed, all-knowing third person narratives – the ‘God’s-eye view’ – to the notion of multiple, discontinuous narratives is, according to Lyotard, consistent with his own emphasis on the incoherence and fragmentation of meaning that he sees as constitutive of the postmodern condition. Indeed, for Lyotard, ‘the postmodern’
would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia of the unattainable; that which searches for new presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable. A postmodern artist or writer is in the position of a philosopher: the text he writes, the work he produces are not in principle governed by preestablished rules, and they cannot be judged according to a determining judgement, by applying familiar categories to the text or to the work…. Postmodern would have to be understood according to the paradox of the future (post) anterior (modo).
Presented in this way, Lyotard’s vision of postmodernism appears to coincide with the aesthetic ambitions of modernism, inasmuch as, for instance, the works of modernist authors – from dos Passos and Doblin, to Joyce, Eliot and Pound – capture ‘our inability to experience reality as an ordered and integrated totality’.
Nonetheless, whilst Lyotard’s postmodernist outlook rejects all universalist political ambitions as grand narratives that have outlived their usefulness, the fragmented view of both the Subject and ‘History’ associated with modernism did not preclude (at least, ostensibly) aspirations towards social change and emancipation. Similarly, modernism’s articulation of regret at the loss of certainty and meaning in the modern world was accompanied by a celebration of modern life’s thriving creativity. Like Marshall Berman’s vision of the archetypal modernist, the postmodernist, too, may find him or herself ‘at home in the maelstrom’ of a world ‘in perpetual disintegration and renewal, trouble and anguish, ambiguity and contradiction’. And yet Lyotard turns away from the kind of nostalgia for wholeness that saw modernists, despite the prominence that they gave to aesthetic innovation, obsess over a past they felt compelled to reconstruct. Instead, Lyotard identifies ‘the unpresentability of the whole’ and the fragmentation of history and subjectivity as primarily opportunities to promote a liberating social and political diversity in the present. Thus instead of the belated application of modernism’s most experimental ideas, postmodernism is a body of thought that welcomes and interprets the contingency and provisionality of social relations as an arena for the reconfiguration of radical thought.
This returns us to the second dimension of the postmodern. Lyotard presents the postmodern condition as a specific historical situation – ‘postmodernity’ – marked by distinct ideological, philosophical, social, cultural and technological trends. The disunity and fragmentation that Lyotard embraces in the modernist aesthetic finds its social and economic counterpart in a distinct stage in the development of late, ‘consumer’ capitalism. For Lyotard, ‘postmodernity’ represents the transformation of knowledge. The ‘computerisation of society’, he reasons, has ensured that the primary criterion of the social order, along with technology itself, is the statutory competition over information at a national and international level. From this perspective, ‘computerised knowledge’ has become ‘the principal force of production’, such that knowledge that cannot be transformed into computerised information is no longer applicable.
It is this alleged shift in the condition of knowledge that suggests parallels between Lyotard’s ideas and theories about the transition to a ‘postindustrial’ age. Later in this chapter, we will see that what concerns Lyotard above all is the question of whether or not knowledge, ‘scientific’ or otherwise, can be grounded in truth. What is clear however is that Lyotard’s approach to understanding the transition to a postmodern age confirms and complements a wider belief in the exhaustion of both ‘modernity’ (understood as the implementation of the Enlightenment project) and a Subject-centred society (through which the individual is understood to acquire self-knowledge through reason and rationality).
This question of the ‘decentred’ Subject is a key theme for philosophers and sociologists working within the orbit of postmodernism. Deriving principally from structuralist anti-humanism, it is of central importance, for instance, to radical interpretations of the political role and constitution of gender, race and ‘difference’ more generally. The idea of the decentred Subject takes on renewed significance for poststructuralists. The radical implications of this for social and political thought are touched upon in some detail later, in both this and subsequent chapters. What I want to stress here is how the relativist trajectory of poststructuralist and postmodernist ideas arose partly as a consequence of the breakdown of (structuralist) semiology. This is reflected in the work of Baudrillard, the second of postmodernism’s most prominent theorists to have provided ‘lengthy philosophical commentaries on the present’, and whose ideas about the ‘depthlessness’ of postmodern capitalism I now want to turn to.
Notes:
A. Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. G. Walsh and F. Lehnert,
(London, Heineman, 1976); P. L. Berger and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, (London, Penguin, 1967). Although its theoretical origins lie with Edmund Husserl, the dictum that ‘reality is a social construct’ is commonly attributed to the Austrian sociologist Alfred Schutz. It is also associated with the American sociologist Peter Berger, who, together with the German sociologist Thomas Luckmann, ‘moved American sociology irretrievably out of the positivist orbit with his phenomenologically inspired’ work. J. Heartfield, ‘American Pragmatists’, Intellectual
Currents of the Twentieth Century, (http://www.heartfield.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/pragmatic.htm, July 1997)
‘Modernism’ was the movement in the visual arts, literature, music and drama that
emerged at the turn of the twentieth century and which challenged broadly Victorian ideas about the production and meaning of art. ‘Modernity’ is often equated with ‘capitalism’. It can also be understood as the accumulation of capitalism’s social, cultural and technological forms. Alan Hudson suggests that ‘modernity is merely the phenomenal form of capitalist social relations embodying all the contradictions of that society.’ A. Hudson, ‘Introduction’, in F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, (London, Junius, 1995), p. xxxiii. For James Heartfield, meanwhile, ‘the idea of ‘modernity’… is hopelessly imprecise’:
After all, which modernity are you talking about? The one with the bakelite fixtures and the telegraph wires, or the one with the formica and the mainframe? Modernity was always a useless category because it fixed not on social determinants, like the free market, but on technical features, like ‘heavy industry’. Being itself an imprecise category, qualifications like postmodernity are even less satisfactory, since we do not necessarily agree on what modernity is, let alone what comes after.
J. Heartfield, ‘The Risk Zone’, Living Marxism, No. 80 (June 1995), p. 48. Broadly speaking, postmodernists use the terms ‘modern’, ‘modernism’ and ‘modernity’ interchangeably as the embodiment of the Rationalist and Enlightenment ideas of the 17th and 18th centuries, and their implementation throughout the 19th and 20th.
See C. Jencks, What is Postmodernism?, (London, Academy Edition, 1986); E. Lucie-
Smith, Movements in Art Since 1945, (London, Thames and Hudson, 1992)
See H. Foster, Postmodern Culture, (London, Pluto, 1985); S. Connor, Postmodernist
Culture: An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary, (Oxford, Blackwell, 1989); D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, (Oxford, Blackwell, 1989); F. Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, (London, Verso, 1991); M. Morris, The Pirate’s Fiancée: Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism, (London, Verso, 1988); R. Young (ed.), Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader, (London, Routledge, 1981); S. Sim (ed.), The Icon Critical Dictionary of Postmodern Thought, (Cambridge, Icon Books, 1998), especially S. Sim, ‘Postmodernism and Philosophy’, pp. 3-14; A. Easthope, ‘Postmodernism and Critical and Cultural Theory’, pp. 15-27; I. H. Grant, ‘Postmodernism and Politics’, pp. 28-40; D. Morgan, ‘Postmodernism and Architecture’, pp. 78-88; C. Trodd, ‘Postmodernism and Art’, pp. 89-100; M. O’Day, ‘Postmodernism and Television’, pp. 112-120; B. Lewis, ‘Postmodernism and Literature (or: Word Salad Days, 1960-90)’, pp. 121-133, D. Scott, ‘Postmodernism and Music’, pp. 134-146; L. Spencer, ‘Postmodernism, Modernity and the Tradition of Dissent’, pp. 158-169
See J.-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, (Manchester,
Manchester University Press, 1984); P. Dews, Logics of Disintegration: Post-Structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory, (London, Verso, 1987); M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed. C. Gordon, (Brighton, Harvester Press, 1980); J. Derrida, Between the Blinds: A Derrida Reader, ed. P. Kamuf, (London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991)
J.-F. Lyotard, ibid., p. xxiv
Ibid., p. xxiii
Ibid., p. 81
Ibid., p. xxiii
M. Featherstone, ‘In Pursuit of the Postmodern: An Introduction’, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 5, No. 2/3 (June 1998), p. 198
R. Usher and R. Edwards, Postmodernism and Education, (London, Routledge, 1994),
p. 2
S. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1996), p. 12
J.-F Lyotard, op. cit., p. 79
Ibid., p. 79.
A. Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique, (Cambridge, Polity, 1989), p.
18
I say ‘ostensibly’ because it would be wrong to take modernism’s radical credentials for
granted. In 1992, the conservative critic, John Carey, upset the received wisdom of the liberal intelligentsia when, after exposing the explicitly anti-democratic credentials of many of modernism’s leading figures, he cast doubt on the presumed connection between modernism and progressive thought. J. Carey, The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939, (London, Faber & Faber, 1992)
M. Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, (London, Verso, 1983), p. 345
Ibid., p. 346
M. Sarup, An Introductory Guide to Poststructuralism and Postmodernism, (London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), p. 133
See D. Bell, The Coming of Postindustrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting,
(New York, Basic Books, 1973); V. Mosco and J. Wasko (eds.), The Political Economy of Information, (The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988); A. Callinicos, op. cit., pp. 121-127
A. Callinicos, ibid., p. 170
A. Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. G. Walsh and F. Lehnert,
(London, Heineman, 1976); P. L. Berger and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, (London, Penguin, 1967). Although its theoretical origins lie with Edmund Husserl, the dictum that ‘reality is a social construct’ is commonly attributed to the Austrian sociologist Alfred Schutz. It is also associated with the American sociologist Peter Berger, who, together with the German sociologist Thomas Luckmann, ‘moved American sociology irretrievably out of the positivist orbit with his phenomenologically inspired’ work. J. Heartfield, ‘American Pragmatists’, Intellectual
Currents of the Twentieth Century, (http://www.heartfield.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/pragmatic.htm, July 1997)
‘Modernism’ was the movement in the visual arts, literature, music and drama that
emerged at the turn of the twentieth century and which challenged broadly Victorian ideas about the production and meaning of art. ‘Modernity’ is often equated with ‘capitalism’. It can also be understood as the accumulation of capitalism’s social, cultural and technological forms. Alan Hudson suggests that ‘modernity is merely the phenomenal form of capitalist social relations embodying all the contradictions of that society.’ A. Hudson, ‘Introduction’, in F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, (London, Junius, 1995), p. xxxiii. For James Heartfield, meanwhile, ‘the idea of ‘modernity’… is hopelessly imprecise’:
After all, which modernity are you talking about? The one with the bakelite fixtures and the telegraph wires, or the one with the formica and the mainframe? Modernity was always a useless category because it fixed not on social determinants, like the free market, but on technical features, like ‘heavy industry’. Being itself an imprecise category, qualifications like postmodernity are even less satisfactory, since we do not necessarily agree on what modernity is, let alone what comes after.
J. Heartfield, ‘The Risk Zone’, Living Marxism, No. 80 (June 1995), p. 48. Broadly speaking, postmodernists use the terms ‘modern’, ‘modernism’ and ‘modernity’ interchangeably as the embodiment of the Rationalist and Enlightenment ideas of the 17th and 18th centuries, and their implementation throughout the 19th and 20th.
See C. Jencks, What is Postmodernism?, (London, Academy Edition, 1986); E. Lucie-
Smith, Movements in Art Since 1945, (London, Thames and Hudson, 1992)
See H. Foster, Postmodern Culture, (London, Pluto, 1985); S. Connor, Postmodernist
Culture: An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary, (Oxford, Blackwell, 1989); D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, (Oxford, Blackwell, 1989); F. Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, (London, Verso, 1991); M. Morris, The Pirate’s Fiancée: Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism, (London, Verso, 1988); R. Young (ed.), Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader, (London, Routledge, 1981); S. Sim (ed.), The Icon Critical Dictionary of Postmodern Thought, (Cambridge, Icon Books, 1998), especially S. Sim, ‘Postmodernism and Philosophy’, pp. 3-14; A. Easthope, ‘Postmodernism and Critical and Cultural Theory’, pp. 15-27; I. H. Grant, ‘Postmodernism and Politics’, pp. 28-40; D. Morgan, ‘Postmodernism and Architecture’, pp. 78-88; C. Trodd, ‘Postmodernism and Art’, pp. 89-100; M. O’Day, ‘Postmodernism and Television’, pp. 112-120; B. Lewis, ‘Postmodernism and Literature (or: Word Salad Days, 1960-90)’, pp. 121-133, D. Scott, ‘Postmodernism and Music’, pp. 134-146; L. Spencer, ‘Postmodernism, Modernity and the Tradition of Dissent’, pp. 158-169
See J.-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, (Manchester,
Manchester University Press, 1984); P. Dews, Logics of Disintegration: Post-Structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory, (London, Verso, 1987); M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed. C. Gordon, (Brighton, Harvester Press, 1980); J. Derrida, Between the Blinds: A Derrida Reader, ed. P. Kamuf, (London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991)
J.-F. Lyotard, ibid., p. xxiv
Ibid., p. xxiii
Ibid., p. 81
Ibid., p. xxiii
M. Featherstone, ‘In Pursuit of the Postmodern: An Introduction’, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 5, No. 2/3 (June 1998), p. 198
R. Usher and R. Edwards, Postmodernism and Education, (London, Routledge, 1994),
p. 2
S. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism, (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1996), p. 12
J.-F Lyotard, op. cit., p. 79
Ibid., p. 79.
A. Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique, (Cambridge, Polity, 1989), p.
18
I say ‘ostensibly’ because it would be wrong to take modernism’s radical credentials for
granted. In 1992, the conservative critic, John Carey, upset the received wisdom of the liberal intelligentsia when, after exposing the explicitly anti-democratic credentials of many of modernism’s leading figures, he cast doubt on the presumed connection between modernism and progressive thought. J. Carey, The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939, (London, Faber & Faber, 1992)
M. Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, (London, Verso, 1983), p. 345
Ibid., p. 346
M. Sarup, An Introductory Guide to Poststructuralism and Postmodernism, (London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), p. 133
See D. Bell, The Coming of Postindustrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting,
(New York, Basic Books, 1973); V. Mosco and J. Wasko (eds.), The Political Economy of Information, (The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988); A. Callinicos, op. cit., pp. 121-127
A. Callinicos, ibid., p. 170
No comments:
Post a Comment