POST-MODERNISM
Best, S., and Kellner, D. (1991) Post-Modern Theory: Critical
Interrogations, New York: Guilford Press.
-
'modernization' - a term denoting those processes of individualization,
secularization, industrialization, cultural differentiation, commodification,
urbanization, bureacratization, and rationalization which together have
constituted the modern world. 3
-
Postmodern theorists, however, claim that in the contemporary high tech
media society, emergent processes of change and transformation are producing
a new postmodern society and its advocates claim that the era of postmodernity
constitutes a novel change of history and novel sociocultural formation
which requires new concepts and theories. Theorists of postmodernity claim
that technologies such as computers and media, new forms of knowledge,
and changes in the socioeconomic system are producing a postmodern social
formation. 3
-
Modern theory - ranging from the philosophical project of Descartes, through
the Enlightenment, to the social theory of Comte, Marx, Weber and others
- is criticized for its search for a foundation of knowledge, for its universalizing
and totalizing claims, for its hubris to supply apodictic truth, and for
its allegedly fallacious rationalism. Defenders of modern theory, by contrast,
attack postmodern relativism, irrationalism, and nihilism. 4
-
postmodern theory provides a critique of representation and the modern
belief that theory mirrors reality, taking instead 'perspectivist' and
'relativist' positions that theories at best provide partial perspectives
on their objects... 4
-
Some postmodern theory accordingly rejects the totalizing macroperspectives
on society and history favored by modern theory in favor of modern theory
and micropolitics. Postmodern theory also rejects modern assumptions of
social coherence and notions of causality in favor of multiplicity, plurality,
fragmentation, and indeterminacy. 4 In addition, postmodern theory abandons
the rational and unified subject postulated by much modern theory in favor
of a socially and a linguistically decentred and fragmented subject. 5
-
Toynbee described the age as one of anarchy and total relativism. 6
-
[For Daniel Bell] The postmodern is age is thus a product of the application
of modernist revolts in everyday life, the extension and living out of
a rebellious, hyperindividualistic, hedonistic lifestyle. 13
-
postmodern theory appropriates the poststructuralist critique of modern
theory, radicalizes it, and extends it to new theoretical fields. 26
-
Foucalt's project has been to write a 'critique of our historical era'
(1984:42) which problematizes modern forms of knowledge, rationality, social
institutions, and subjectivity that seem given and natural but in fact
are contingent sociohistorical constructs of power and domination. 35
-
[Nietzche's claim] knowledge is perspectival in nature, requiring multiple
viewpoints to interpret a heterogeneous reality. 35
-
Foucalt attempts to detotalize history and society as unified wholes governed
by a center, essence, or telos, and to decenter the subject as a constituted
rather than a constituting consciousness. 39
-
Perhaps the fundamental guiding motivation of Foucalt's work is to 'respect...differences'
(Foucalt, 1973b: p.xii). 39
-
Since the world has no single meaning, but rather countless meanings, a
perspectivist seeks multiple perspectives of a phenomena and insists there
is 'no limit to the ways in which the world can be interpreted' (Nietzsche
1967: 326). 39
-
Following Nietzsche, Foucalt rejects the philosophical pretension to grasp
systematically all of reality within one philosophical system or from one
central vantage point. 39
-
Foucalt seeks to destroy historical identities by pluralizing the field
of discourse, to purge historical writing of humanist assumptions by decentering
the subject, and to critically analyze modern reason through a history
of the human sciences. 46
-
Foucalt emphasizes that knowledge is dissociable from regimes of power.
51
-
Foucalt defines power as 'a multiple and mobile field of force relations
where far reaching, but never completely stable effects of domination are
produced' (1980b: 102). 51
-
'What I am attentive to is the fact that every human relation is to some
degree a power relation. We move in a world of perpetual strategic relations'
(Foucalt 1988d: 168) 54
-
There is no locus of great Refusal, no soul of revolt, source of all rebellions,
or pure law of the revolutionary. Instead there is a plurality of resistances,
each of them a special case' (Foucalt, 1980b: 95-6). 56
-
Foucalt exposes the links between power, truth, and knowledge, and describes
how liberal-humanist values are intertwined with and supports of technologies
of domination. 69
-
Since his emphasis is on the microlevel of resistance, Foucalt does not
adequately address the problem of how to achieve alliances with local struggles
or how an oppositional political movement might be developed. If indeed
it is important to multiply and autotomize forms of resistance to counter
the numerous tentacles of power, it is equally important to link these
various struggles to avoid fragmentation. The question becomes, how can
we create, in Gramsci's terms, a 'counter-hegemonic formation'. 71
-
the neglect of macro theory and political economy is a recurrent lacuna
of all postmodern theory.72
-
we find a complex, eclectic mixture of pre-modern, modern, and postmodern
elements in Foucalt, with the postmodern elements receding even further
into the background of his work. 73
-
their [Deleuze and Guattari] central concern is with modernity as an unparalleled
historical stage of domination based on the proliferation of normalizing
discourses and institutions that pervade all aspects of social existence
and everyday life. 77
-
There is no being beyond becoming, nothing beyond multiplicity, neither
multiplicity nor becoming are appearances or illusion. (Deleuze 1983: 23-4).
79
-
For D & G, 'power centers are defined much more by what escapes them
or by their impotence than by their zone of power'. (1987:217) 102
-
The macrological struggle against the state and mode of production is impossible
without resisting micrological sites of domination and normalization, just
like micrological struggles against the institutions of control are ultimately
powerless without transforming the larger economic and political forces
that shape them. 105
-
[Baudrillard] If modernity is the era of production controlled by the industrial
bourgeoisie, the postmodern era of simulations by contrast is an era of
information and signs governed by models, codes, and cybernetics. 118
-
Post-modernism is described as a response to emptiness and anguish which
is oriented towards 'the restoration of a past culture'. 127
-
Lyotard has emerged as the champion of difference and plurality in all
theoretical realms and discourses, while energetically attacking totalizing
and universalizing theories and methods. 147
-
The idea is to create a mediatory concept, to construct a model which can
be articulated in, and descriptive of different cultural phenomena. This
unity or system is then placed in relation to the infrastructural reality
of late capitalism. (Jameson 1989:43). 182
-
Our central problem is to identify the discursive conditions for the emergence
of a collective action, directed towards struggling against inequalities
and changing relations of subordination (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:153) 192.
-
[Lyotard] He calls for a further pluralization and fragmentation of knowledge
and politics on the grounds that totalities, systems, and consensus produce
terrorist oppression. 223
-
Habermas discusses the processes whereby the state and public bureaucracies
come to penetrate both the economic realm and the private realm. .... The
state takes over public functions such as education, mediating in social
conflicts, and providing social welfare... 235
-
As Hassan puts it, postmodern theories are part of a culture of 'unmaking'
whose key principles include:'decreation, disintegration, deconstruction,
decenterment, displacement, difference, discontinuity, disjunction, disappearance,
ecomposition, de-definition, demystification, detotalization, deligitimation.'
(1987:92) 256
-
social theories provide mappings of contemporary society: its organization;
its constitutive social relations, practices, discourses, and institutions;
its integrated and interdependent features; and its structures of power
and modes of oppression and domination. Social theories analyze how these
elements fit together to constitute specific societies, and how societies
work or fail to function. Social theories therefore provide guides to social
reality, producing models and cognitive mappings of societies, and the
'big pictures' that enable us to see, for example, how the economy, polity,
social institutions, discourses, practice and culture interact to produce
a social system. 260.
-
And no postmodern theorist provides a theory of society as a systemic organization,
as a mode of production with specific social relations, institutions, and
organization. 261
-
Postmodern theory wants to decenter the economy in order to focus on microphenomena...
262
-
Most postmodern theories neglect political economy and fail to present
adequately connections between the economic, political, social, and cultural
levels of society. 263
-
Dialectical analysis thus relates particular social phenomena to the constitutive
forces and relations of a society, showing how, on the one hand, the structures
and dynamics of capitalist society constitute specific phenomena and how
their analytical dissection can shed light on broader social forces. 264
-
Different subject positions therefore provide different perspectives on
social and cultural phenomena and a multiplicity of positions often provides
more comprehensive and illuminating analyses. Perspectives are thus specific
optics informed by theoretical positions. ... we are using perspective
to delineate the range of existing positions available to theory at a given
moment in history. 266
-
From the political standpoint, a multiperspective critical theory would
involve bringing people together with various standpoints, articulating
their common interests, and respecting their differences. 267
Deleuze, Gilles, 1983, Nietzche and Philosophy, NY, Columbia University
Press.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Felix, 1987, A Thousand Plateaus, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Foucalt, Michel, 1973b, The Order of Things, NY, Vintage Books.
", ", 1980b, Herculin Barbin, Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs
of a Nineteenth Century French Hermaphrodite, NY, Pantheon.
"," 1988d, in Lawrence D. Kritzman (ed.), Michel Foucalt: Politics,
Philosophy, Culture, NY, Routledge.
Hassan, Ihab, 1987, The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory
and Culture, Columbus.
Jameson, Fredric, 1989, Regarding Postmodernism (interview w/Anders
Stephanson), in Kellner (ed.) (1989c)
Laclau, Ernesto, and Mouffe, Chantal, 1985, Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy: Toward a Radical Demorcratic Politics. London, Verso Books.
Nietzche, Friedrich, 1967, The Will to Power, NY, Random House.