The term Postmodernism
has come to occupy an significant, even central, place in contemporary theories
of society and culture. The sheer breadth of its usage was neatly laid out in a
critical piece written by Dick Hebdige in 2006, and quoted here at length for
emphasis:
Hebdige’s
point was that such wide application reveals a lack of substantive meaning, and
in the decade
since this was written, the situation has not become clearer. Postmodernism may
have matured from critical fad into the default term for all the dislocations,
transformations, and threats of today’s world, but it did not gain much in transparency
along the way. There appears to be a general sense that we live in Postmodern
times, but what this means beyond vague feelings of instability and unease is
not well understood. In short, the relationships between the preeminent
intellectual movement of the last half-century and the challenges facing the
peoples and nations of the world today remain unclear.
Breadth of
usage is only part of the problem. Postmodern thought developed out of the work
of a disparate group of intellectuals who were at best loosely united by shared
critical and epistemological attitudes, rather than adherents to a coherent
school or system of thought. There is no set of foundational principles or universally
recognized canon of texts to establish a common framework, just disjointed
critical interventions in virtually every area of cultural expression, from
academic study, to advertising and media, to art and fashion. The interventions
themselves seem to be universally sloppy, extrapolating narrow readings of
specific phenomena into sweeping characterizations of intellectual and cultural
history with a stilted prose style that resists internally consistent
argumentation or expository clarity. Together, these qualities make it almost
impossible for the curious reader to begin to engage with this material in a
meaningful way.
The lack of
first principles or unitary origins hasn’t received much attention, but it
merits a closer look, since it is so different from how systems of thought are
usually conceived. Compare this with a traditional intellectual movement like Scholasticism,
the dominant philosophical current in the cathedral schools and universities of
late medieval Europe. The Scholastics are unified by their use of Aristotelian
logic to integrate the growing knowledge base of the later middle ages with
Christian doctrine, and while individual thinkers disagree in on specific
points, their arguments unfold from a common set of assumptions.
Lippo Memmi, The
Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas, ca. 1332-40, tempera on panel, 375 x 258
cm, Museo nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa
Memmi depicts St. Thomas, greatest of the Scholastics, as a
wellspring of truth. The interconnected, cumulative nature of knowledge is
apparent in the composition, in which a central Thomas gathers and disseminates
In
contrast, the thinkers most often recognized as pioneers of Postmodernism
emerge from a variety of fields, and display little in common beyond a general
hostile hostility towards the intellectual and cultural traditions of the West.
Jacques Derrida’s linguistic focus, Michel Foucault’s historiography, Paul De
Man’s literary criticism, Judith Butler’s sociology and gender, Gilles
Deleuze’s economics and psychology, all depart from different disciplinary
positions. Furthermore, each of these figures draws on an eclectic and
idiosyncratic group of sources and reads them in unconventional and often
hostile ways. As a result, any attempt to trace Postmodernism back to its
origins can ends in bewildering fragmentation that leads in an endless number
of different directions.
Still from Charlie Chaplin's The Circus, 1928
The fragmented origins of Postmodernism make tracing its development an adventure.
If
Postmodernism has any intrinsic unity, it is in the critical attitude that
always seeks to destabilize or upend traditional cultural assumptions and
knowledge structures. The subjects of critique are inevitably over-generalized
and poorly defined, with uncritical straw man such as “the western metaphysical
tradition” commonplace. Inevitably, some decentred system is posited that replaces
the integrity of the human subject with a superficial play of signifiers that
ultimately mean nothing beyond their own endless operations. Of course, no one
offers anything approaching proof for their sweeping claims; the incoherence of
the prose, absence of effective argumentation, and lack of founding principles
provide a formidable defence against potential critics.
Opacity is
power if the reader is unaware that what is in front of them is fundamentally
meaningless. When tortured, incoherent prose is passed off as too complex for
straightforward understanding, the failure of the writer is dishonestly shifted
onto the shoulders of the reader. Authority also accrues to those empowered to
“interpret” these gnomic ramblings, which can be bent to support whatever cause
the interpreter values. Since there is
no actual center to pin down, any serious attack or challenge can he dismissed
as a lack of understanding, which transforms the critic’s recognition of
fundamental meaninglessness into an indictment of his own intelligence and
perspicacity. Furthermore, in today’s academia, the appeal of Postmodernism
extends well beyond the lure of gnosis. New “readings” of established subjects
provide a ready source of material for the publication and conference mills
without requiring the mastery of knowledge domains needed to recognize gaps and
offer new contributions. Many profess a Postmodern perspective without ever having
seriously engaged the foundational material beyond reading excerpts in
anthologies and discussions in secondary sources, confident in the incoherence
of the material to shield them from exposure.
Vilhelm Pedersen, Illustration for 1st edition of
The Emperor's New Clothes by Hans
Christian Anderson, 1849
There is an analogy between the empty vanity of Postmodern
criticism and Anderson’s famous monarch, only it is unclear whether most professed
Postmodernists realize their king has no clothes.
University methodology classes and textbook summaries repackage these idiosyncratic, contentious, and often poorly reasoned meditations as straightforward findings or conclusions to be regurgitated like axioms. When the instructors themselves lack understanding, the shaky foundations of these ideas are pushed even further from direct scrutiny. Suspect figures become totems that stand in for concepts distilled from their writings, but without consideration of the problems and limitations that plague those writings. Derrida becomes representative of the indeterminacy of language, and Butler the non-binary nature of gendered identity, in the same way that Newton represents gravity or calculus. It is simply taken on faith that we exist in an endless cycle of self-referential superficiality, where everything is relative, and everyone fungible, within flickering semiotic webs. Well, everything save certain injustices that are plucked from their historical contexts and held up as perpetual signs of collective evil, in the name of overturning nebulous hierarchies of oppression that reveal no signs of objective existence.
Finally,
the curious reader must answer the question, which Postmodernism? The term is
applied differently in different areas of cultural expression, so understanding
how it is used in one domain may not help you much in another. For example, Jacques
Lacan is generally considered a contributor to the foundations of Postmodern
thought by challenging the integrity of the Cartesian subject, (the “I” in
Descartes’ famous “I think therefore I am”) which was central to post-Medieval
concepts of knowledge of the self and world. In its place, he offers a process
of identity formation as interactive social embodiment, wherein the notion of
self is inextricably linked to the gaze of other people, and pure,
self-contained subjectivity impossible. In the visual arts, however,
Postmodernity refers to a return to referential art after the abstract purity
of Modernism, only the relationship to the world is determined by the
subjectivity of the artist rather than by formal rules. Here, the self is
empowered as the seat of judgment behind whatever critical statement the work
is making. Is the “I” dissolving, or is it a newly-empowered wellspring of
creativity? It is possible to reconcile the two, but to do so requires a
generous critical effort to overcome so overt a first-order contradiction.
Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup Cans, synthetic polymer paint on 32 canvases, each 51 x 41 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Pop is considered an early form of Postmodernism in the
visual arts, because it abandoned Modernist abstraction for images that
represented recognizable things. Without the rules that shaped pre-modern art,
the artist has complete freedom to choose subject matter and technique.
Given the
amorphous, inchoate nature of the field and its central importance to
contemporary culture, it is important to work though the tangles and
contradictions of Postmodernism to clarify its dishonest and dyscivilizational
nature. Societies cannot be built on deception and hiding fundamental errors
beneath a fog of obscurity merely delays the reckoning while running up the eventual
bill. At the same time, the fragmentary origins and broad applications of the
term make it poorly suited to longform analysis of any scope, since any single
piece requires a degree of thematic consistency for coherence. This blog takes
a different approach, gathering a series of distinct posts on different facets
of Postmodernism that will gradually probe this bizarre concept from many
perspetives. It is a venue to collect my own thoughts and reflections from years
spent working with and around Postmodern theory, and, hopefully, for the
observations and insights of others who have considered this subject. Anyone
who reads these posts and wishes to add their thoughts to this discussion is
welcome.
So this is where it all begins!
ReplyDeleteIt is an honor to read this blog. May it help usher in the return of sanity to the Western World.