No. 20 in a Series of MiniLectures.
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SOCGRAD MINI-LECTURES
by
Last time, I set forth some of the social sources of postmodern critique as
well as some of the technology which makes the production and reproduction of images
such that the originals of the song, text, story, theory painting, print, or social form
are impossible to find. Today, I want to share with you the effort, on the part of Ihab
Hassan and Pauline Rosenau to make sense out of the very special words/terms/concepts
which are the currency of postmodern speech.
Those of you who have Pauline Rosenau's book will have her glossary
on How to Speak Postmodern. Hassan's article, 'Toward a Concept of
Postmodernism' is in the 1987 "The Postmodern Turn" put out by Ohio State U.
Press. In that article, Hassan lists some antinomies which are helpful in trying to grasp
the complexity of the postmodern era. I don't agree with some of what they say, so what
appear below must be charged against my bill rather than theirs.
Modern |
Postmodern |
| Nouns | Verbs |
[In postmodern modality, one is more concerned with the activity of producing knowledge and art more so than the product per se] |
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| Centers | Margins |
[modern science, art and politics attempts to 'center/privilege/celebrate one 'ideal' form, interpretation, standard or authority while pomo looks at the margins to see what has been assumed, left out, degraded or forgotten]. |
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| Forms | Antiforms |
[Modernist thought tries to discover the boundaries and inclusions within a form; pomo looks at the connections/shadows/openings in the forms set forth. |
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| Hierarchy | 'Anarchy' |
[Modernists look for stages, layers, strata and vertical rankings of power, authority, status, competence, ability, wealth, skill, talent, beauty or brains. Pomo's look for variety, diversity, multiplexity, alternativity. |
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| Creation/Totalization | Deconstruction/reconstruction |
The task of the modern science is to finish off history and reach the end or top of the process at hand; a final unified theory, a grand covering theory, the 'solution,' the 'answer,' or the 'last word;' pomo sensibility attempts to return to the creative process and show what was left out in that work; then to recombine the lost part(s) to show how it could have been otherwise. Reconstruction is a more affirmative dimension of the postmodern which is viewed with suspicion by the more nihilistic pomo's. |
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| Synthesis | Antithesis |
The hegelian/marxist dialectic is a never ending process in which quantity changes into quality; a quality changes into its opposite; two or more qualities merge to produce still a new and quite different, emergent quality. Modernists are said to focus on the synthesis or the final product of two qualities while postmodernists are thought to focus upon that which still remains out there unincorporated, unexplained uninvited. |
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| Noumena | Phenomena |
Modern science presumes there is an underlying reality which can be known given the method of successive approximations and a competent research design with which to pursue ever more adequate representations of 'that which really exists.' Postmodernists tend to think that all is phenomena; culture is so pervasive that every theory, every story, every painting, every dance is a unique creation, the sharing or knowing of which is impossible. Impossibility in this case is set by the standards of modernity itself...Roger Penrose, in his evocative, The "Emperor's New Mind" says that a SUPERB theory predicts with an accuracy of 1 part in 10 to the 24th power. |
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| Original | Simulacra |
Baudrillard has made much of the point that, given mass and massified media, the marketplace, church, university and government offers only images for which an original does not exist; one sells the 'sizzle' instead of the steak. In all this is the midline between 'reality' and make believe is lost. In this the capacity to speak of fraud is lost; there can be a sociology of fraud only if there is an authentic form against which copies/imitations/substitutes or facsimiles can be compared. |
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| Sanity/madness | Exploration/peculiarity |
| normality/deviance | Variation/rebellion |
| Rationality | Desire |
| happiness/despair | Politics/Poetry |
The social psychology of modernism has a model against which to measure happiness and despair; madness and sanity. Postmodernists, without overlooking the pain and problems of deviance and despair, do not overlook the pain and problems of normality and conformity. Indeed the rationality of modern governance, modern management, modern criminology and modern bureaucracy bespeaks a larger madness in which justice prevails over mercy; rules trump compassion and logic is an inexorable enemy to change and renewal...all this in the postmodern critique. |
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| Signified/writer | Signifier/reader |
Modern criticism holds that there is an original thought/idea/teaching which is signified by an author/teacher and can be known by the artful, careful critic/interpreter. Postmodernity argues that each iteration of a story, poem, painting or theory is created anew; that each critic, interpreter, teacher or theorist is reading part of her/his own politics and poetics into that 'original.' The point will not have escaped the astute reader of this lecture regarding both the minilecture and the ongoing response of the recipients. |
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| Narrative/Grand History | Antinarrative/story |
The attempt of Comte, Toynbee, Marx, Freud or Parsons to offer a grand explanation of the sweep of history or the range of cultures or the variations in human endeavor are, for the postmodernists, ventures into fiction. In response to these narratives, there is an 'antinarrative' in which that which is omitted, that which is falsified, that which is inexplicable is made visible...for Thomas Kuhn, there is an end this process at which a master paradigm will emerge; for postmodern phil of science, there is no such end; only an Ackerman Tower of Paradigms built out of the incredible complexity of the physical, natural, and social life worlds, all of which are undergoing constant change faster than the paradigms which try to catch them. |
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| Genital/Phallic | Androgyny/Polymorphous 'perversity' |
There are several things going on when one sees this/these terms in a text. First there is the rejection of a social order oriented to domination, control and perfect predictability. Second, there is an insistence that the number of genders to be embodied in a social life world cannot be reduced to and only to two...or three or four. Then too, there is the effort to validate ways of pleasure not permitted in a given society...along with a stubborn refusal to be labelled a 'pervert' when one takes/makes or forsakes forms of pleasure. Finally, since it is a Sunday, I will conclude with a minidiscourse on pre-modern and postmodern concepts of God: |
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| God, the Avenging Father | The SuperOrganic/Society Embodied |
Premodern religion offers a very personal god concept which has all the
righteous anger and violent discipline of the patriarchal father. Modern science offers a
god concept which is very remote, very intellectual and very precise...a clockmaker if
you will.
Postmodern religion and theology argues that all god concepts are human products; that
every iteration in every sermon offers a different version [simulacra] of that which does
not exist prior to the embodiment of the god concept/teachings in the lived experience of
the believer(s). Sanctification is possible as is profanation but these are human/social
processes and cannot be shoved off on the gods or devils invented in premodernity. Such
a theology places responsibility for the good and evil we do each other on our own desire;
upon our own social practices and upon the ways we embody the god concept.
May you go in peace with your god.
T. R. Young