Poststructuralism, Postmodernism

Intro

• What was/is Modernity?

• Why is ,postmodernity’ different?

• Theory: some main themes in

poststructuralism/ postmodernism

• Some criticisms

Intellectual background to

Modernity

• Renaissance: human-centeredness

and the decline of religion

• ENLIGHTENMENT: Reason,

science, progress, universalism

Modernity

• Humans can transform world; humanity is

perfectible

• Rationalisation, standardisation, uniformity

• Industrial production and market economy

• Particular institutions: nation-state and mass

(parliamentary) democracy

• A society which, for first time, lives in the future,

rather than the past (Giddens)

• (first Telegram 1844)

• 1877 Edison - phonograph
• 1879 Edison – incandescant filament bulb
• 1889 – Eiffel Tower completed
• 1895 Lumiere brothers – camera/projector
• 1898 Skłodowska-Curie –

Radium/radioactivity

• 1901 Marconi - radio
• 1903 Wright brothers – flight

Darwin (Origin 1859) & Marx

(Kapital 1867)

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection undermined

religious certainty

Human beings were driven by the same impulses as "lower

animals" - difficult to reconcile with the idea of an
ennobling spirituality

Marx’s theory problematised capitalism and debunked the

bourgeoisie & bourgeois culture

Important strands in establishing modernism

Freud (the Unconscious,1899) and Einstein

(Relativity,1905)

The psyche/the person

and

The cosmos

far more complex than previously

understood

•The cultural response to

the new world:

Modernism

Postmodernity

• Postmodernity is characterized by a

perceived general breakdown of the

conditions of production of modernity as

capitalism enters a new phase

• From production to consumption

(Baudrillard)

• WW1 – technological civilisation = progress?

• Since 1945 harder to defend the assumptions

of modernity, modernism and progress after

the holocaust (Bauman, Derrida).

• Weakening of faith in humanity/humanism?

Characteristics of

‘postmodernity’

• Decline of modernity’s grand narratives

• Weakening of the authority of modern institutions

• The Information Age and the 2

Industrial Revolution: a

world of signs

• Mass media saturation distorts/produces new reality –

representations and surfaces

• Decontextualization, randomness, heterogeneity

• Time and space distortion – the shrinking world

Postmodern forms?

• Cultural eclecticism and no basis for high/low distinction

• Architecture: eclecticism (historical style-mixing), irony, jokiness

• Cinema : pastiche and intertextuality

• TV: as inherently postmodern

• Advertising: self parody, irony, representations rather than the

things themselves

• Popular music: collage (cut and paste), pastiche, remix,

quotation, mashups replace pop-modernism (Ray Charles,

Beatles, Dylan…)

Modern and Postmodern

Culture?

• Seriousness - Irony

• Striving for coherence - embracing

fragmentation

• Development - Pastiche

• Integrity – Eclecticism

• Reality – No ‘reality’

Extremely influential theories a) across
academic disciplines, and b) ‘progressive’
political thinking

Intellectual foundations of PC - relativism &
anti-foundationalism

The ‘Linguistic Turn’

Social Construction

‚Posts’

University radicalisation,

US counterculture &

French theory

• From a critique of capitalism to a

• Critique of modern culture &

• Condemnation of The Enlightenment

Scepticism about Reason

• From (Frankfurt School style)

AMBIVALENCE (reason has been
corrupted)

• REJECTION (reason itself is the

problem – pessimism)

Repudiating Marx

• Marx as Enlightenment figure

• The unconscious forces that pervade

human life cannot be overcome –
Marx is not pessimistic enough

Nietzsche becomes the new guru:

Reason is oppressive and modern society is

sick

• The Apollonian: discipline, control,

restraint, orderliness

suppresses

• The Dionysian: impulsiveness,

adventurousness, creativity, imagination

Dionysus suppressed

= an imbalanced, sick civilisation:

People remained dual-natured & the Dionysian aspect became

supressed

The mind is DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF: culture is the product of

the ‘higher mental powers’

Nietzsche questions this opposition between rationality and

impulse/passion

Rationality and science =

• Science is an example of the will to power, not the ‘neutral’

triumph of reason over unreason

• (Christianity = sheeplike docility)

• Foucault – discipline, passivity and the manipulable modern

person; spiritual desolation and disenchantment (after Weber)

• The critique of a dominant but spiritually impoverished bourgeois

culture (Freud – Civilisation and its Discontents)

• Science is ideological and must therefore

be exposed knowledge itself examined
and exposed (anti-foundationalism, radical
scepticism)

• Science is mentalistic (mind/body

dualism) and disciplining

Science

Foucault

• Examines historical circumstances that

gave rise to the modern type of person

• Madness, Punishment, Government, and

Sexuality and Subjectivity – disciplining
the ‘Dionysian’ subject

• Discourses of ‘otherness’

Deconstruction

• Linguistic (and other) structures must be undone, desedimented

• A text is not a separate whole but contains a number of

irreconcilable and contradictory meanings

• Deconstructions work entirely within the studied text to expose

and undermine the frame of reference, assumptions, and
ideological underpinnings of the text – SUB-TEXT

The Postmodern Condition: A Report

on Knowledge (1979)

• Meta- or grand- narratives -

sometimes 'grand narratives'

• Large-scale, totalising theories and

philosophies of the world, such as
the progress of history, the
knowability of everything by science

Hyperreality and Simulacra

Our inability to distinguish reality from fantasy in

technologically advanced postmodern cultures.

How consciousness defines what is actually "real" in

a world where a multitude of media can radically
shape and filter an original event or experience.

The Gulf War did not happen…

Virtual Reality

Simulacra

Pre-modern period: the image is clearly an

artificial marker for the real item

Industrial Revolution: distinctions between image

and reality blur due to the proliferation of mass-
produced copies. The item's ability to imitate
reality threatens to replace the original version

Postmodernity: simulacrum precedes or replaces

the original and the distinction between reality and
representation breaks down

Postmodernism (or anti-

foundationalism)

Pluralism of value

No objective truth; relativism

Rejection of the "modern" scientific mentality

Rejection of ‘grand narratives’

In opposition to modernity

• Deliberate lack of clarity?

• Complex ideas for a complex world?

• Academic careers – ‘tenured radicals’

• PC, diversity and bourgeois self loathing?

• Excessive individualism

• Is it all gibberish?

The Sokal Hoax (’96)

Purpose: to see if Social Text would “publish an article

liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b)
it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.”

Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative

Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity

Argument: quantum gravity is a social and linguistic

construct

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals'

Abuse of Science,

Sokal and Bricmont (1997)

Three articles of Julia Kristeva contain excessive use of

mathematical or physical technical terms

Also found in the writings of Lacan, Deleuze, Baudrillard etc.,

intended to impress a reader who does not have
knowledge that would permit judging whether the use of
these terms is well-grounded

Anti-Humanism?

• Part of a longer term assault on:

• coherence, meaningfulness, value, objectivity, integrity of

character…Humanism

• Collapse of confidence in progress, science, truth and the whole,

dignified person… the ‘minimal self’

• A two-pronged attack (Heartfield, The ‘Death of the Subject’

Explained):

1) on objective knowledge
2) on the Enlightenment concept of the human subject; the ability to

possess knowledge and use it rationally

Concerning the human

subject…

Identities are ‘fragmented’, or ‘fractured’, or ‘multiple’

Political person and pessimism about the person

Individuals as weak, fragmented, anxious, insecure, vulnerable…

minimal selves (and groups) in need of continual therapeutic

support

(Lasch, The Minimal Self. Furedi, Therapy

Culture)

Document Outline