blargblog
An expulsive extension of
Post-modernism is dead, y'know. So says that bellweather of theoretical fashion, The Christian Science Monitor. All of your bourgeois preconceptions about the fallibility of knowledge and the ineluctability of truth are being, well, not subverted per se by a new paradigm, but more, like, ignored. Academia is moving on. No more Karl Marx on the reading list. We're gettin' back to modern.
Oh. Well. Fuck me.
Okay, so I'm being a tad snarky. But in reading this article's take on post-modernism, I had a hard time recognizing the stuff I studied in college. For one thing, Marx was rarely, if ever, on the reading list. Sure, certain Marxists (or Marxians, depending on which side of The Pond you sit), like Terry Eagleton or Lacan or Barthes or, yes, the inevitable Foucault. But not Marx himself. Why? Cuz Marx wasn't post-modern. He was, in fact, very modern. All that 19th Century system-building and research and economics and whatnot. Truth and reality were quite real things for ole Karl. Complex, contradictory messes at times, sure, but he knew they were there, by godless, and he had dialectical materialism—The Method, maaan, the Rosetta Stone of Like Reality. Why else would a positivist like Lenin years later proclaim dialectical materialism as a bone fide scientific method? (Well, there may be more cynical reasons, but I think Vlad was a true believer to the bone.) And in Stalin's hands? Fuck nuance. This shit went fundamentalist.
Which is sad. And which is, in part, why pomo was born. Eagleton et al. drew from what they wanted from Marx—class struggle, ideology, the superstructure, etc.—and ran off in their own directions. They rejected the teleological necessities of the vulgar marxist narrative and developed tools for cultural criticism, for skepticism, for recognizing that we are surrounded by mediagenic hype and institutional distortions that promote the agenda of power at the expense of the weak, the vulnerable, the powerless and the protorevolutionary. That such tools have become shibboleths of the intellectual elite while remaining out of the hands of the oppressed is probably why Eagleton has so recently reconsidered his own past contributions to the field. Well, more or less.
So be it. As you might expect, the folks at Bad Subjects offer their own critique on postmodernism in decline.
A self-identified Left Theory — poststructuralist, post-Marxist, postcolonial, post-you-name-it — has failed to make good on its promise: to decode, destabilize, and intervene into les grands recits (hegemonic master narratives). Despite constant outings that window-shop a new look, academic theorizing of the world-as-text, localized epistemic ruptures vs. globalized hegemony, and so on, certainly haven't curtailed our speedy spiral towards absolute barbarism. The world today looks bleak with skyrocketing unemployment and homelessness rates, delirious dissipation of basic civil rights, and gaping genocidal wounds worldwide. Heady Left academic ideas, solipsism, and obscurantist phraseology ("aporia", the "slippage of signifier and signified", difference, "politics of savagism", for example) simply don't make sense to those with common sense — especially when basic civil rights such as education, representation, health care, transportation, and communication are slipping.Ouch. And they're only getting started. But I don't think postmodernism—like jazz or feminism, those other 20th Century advances that pundits try to bury every so often—has so much died as become part of our regular vocabulary. Advertising self-consciously pomo-poses for shits and giggles. Those who do not get sucked up into the machinery of hype and cognitive dissonances that constitute our present political discourse can still employ the more accessible tools of post-modernism to deconstruct the hucksterism. What was so revolutionary about Barthes' Mythologies has become absorbed by our own cultural awareness; we be media-savvy.
But we should, as Eagleton and Stanley Fish and others have begun to do, acknowledge post-modernism's limitations. That's a rule of thumb for any critical methodology—yet from all the evidence of true believers and fundies, still so little understood.
Posted by kevinmoore at February 6, 2004 08:10 PM | TrackBackYeah, but what about Janet Jackson's tittie?
Posted by: J. Pinkham at February 8, 2004 09:10 AMj. pinkham -
LO freakin' L.
until i have ascertained that journalists, columnists, pundits or other popular media opinionators have actually read any marx for themselves, much less derrida et al, or foucault, or johnny rotten, or the instructions on a shampoo bottle, i will forego considering their opinions. it is a great american pastime to opine "i haven't read ______, but i think it's a lot of hokum just the same."
most people who say that "the fall of the wall proves that marxism is a failure" don't know much about marx, any more than most people under soviet communism had much exposure to a critical reading of marxist text, much less gave a crap about it. marx's influence on economics and the understanding of history is all over the wall street journal, if one cares to look for it, but few do. all that most people know is that marx was a bad guy, probably ate babies, and ronald wilson reagan was the greatest american president who ever lived, etc. the same people have read about as much post-structuralist thought as i have read hammurabi in its original cuneiform.
if one tenth of the people out there who talk about these things knew as much about them as, for instance, you do, i think we'd probably have a different president. i'm not just giving you empty flattery here, i'm cranking and crotcheting about the shallowness of the pond. it's deeply depressing. and i don't even complete more than a semester and a half of college!
Posted by: r@d@r at February 9, 2004 04:31 PMuh, that's didn't. me spel prety wun dae
Posted by: r@d@r at February 9, 2004 04:32 PMWhat the po-mos (and particularly the ones quoted in the first section of the Bad Subjects link) don't realize is that obscurist writing often goes unread and un-understood. It's not "edgy" or "from the margins of society," it's *boring* and ineffective.
Judith Butler is just one example I'm familiar with - unnecessarily obscure and poorly written essays, even when they're political in nature. Her writing style detracts from her message. She needs a freakin' editor!
None of my political views were influenced by the professors I studied "texts" with in college. In fact, the righties should encourage po-mo studies on campus - it'll make leftist thought so dry and inaccessible that the less liberal professors who teach understandable theories will be the ones to influence students.
Don't look at me. I still don't understand the whole meme or meta thing. I also never understood why postmodernism's founders had to *coin* the term postmodern for their damn incomprehensible theories in the first place. All it does is make life more confusing by not allowing me to use the term "modern," aparently, if I mean something that's just come down the plank this week.
If someone comes along and creates post-contemporayism or post-currentism I'm quitting the world of words altogether. So there !
But I am listening to a really nifty latin jazz combo called Purple Cha Cha Heels as they dismantle Haydn and reassemble it into strange-yet-familiar patterns. Also, I bought a new kalleidoscope. Is that ironic ? Oh, fuck it. Who cares ? Let's groove, cartoon-boy ! Lookit the colors ! THE COLORS !! :p
Posted by: Amy S. at February 10, 2004 08:09 PMOh, Amy...You're so post-apocalyptic.
Posted by: Kevin Moore at February 10, 2004 11:16 PMNow THAT term I understand. ;)
Posted by: Amy S. at February 11, 2004 07:02 AMThe new term is post-superbowlnipplism.
Posted by: J. Pinkham at February 11, 2004 08:08 AMPinkham's Ma weaned him too early. I know, you're all as shocked as I am.
Posted by: Amy S. at February 11, 2004 06:34 PMI don't remember, but I wouldn't be surprised. And unfortunately I don't see any ads in the phone book advertising wet-nurse therapy for thirtysomething men to make up the deficit. So, I'm pretty much doomed.
Posted by: J. Pinkham at February 11, 2004 08:12 PM