(no subject)
At work, someone asked me if I could explain the difference between modernism and postmodernism. Like any sane, reflective person, my immediate answer was, "No." That kind of question is murky at best, and hopeless at worst. But given that my only options were to come up with something more verbose or go back to work, I felt the need to spin something together. It went something like this (only shorter):
We could define the beginning modernism as the moment when the subject appears in discourse. We always used the personal pronouns, of course, so I can't mean anything quite as banal as that. What I mean is that the fact that 'objective' reality isn't something we could ever have access to as such, but is only ever experienced through someone's subjectivity. In visual art, this was experienced as the challenge posed to realism by impressionism, expressionism, cubism, etc... The transparency of subjectivity was challenged, and the act of seeing became part of the art itself. In literature, it was the self-conscious use of literary forms. Literary form itself becomes part of the story, rather than the transparent medium through which it is told. Think of Don Quixote. Philosophically, the appearance of the subject happened partially in Descartes, with his method of starting from subjectivity, but far more fully in Kant's famous Copernican turn. For my money, Kant captures the spirit of modernity better than anyone: the analysis of subjectivity must come first, and anyone purporting to examine reality without having first acknowledged that we apprehend reality as subjects is just out to lunch.
Ok, so what's postmodernism then? Postmodernism is an extension of this modernist eruption of the subject into discourse. We became post-modern the moment we began to experience the necessary presence of the subject as a negation of some of the value or validity of discourse. We have seen our own hand in creating what we previously took to be objective reality, and the post-modern experience is that this undermines the realness of reality. (note: I say "we", but it's just as likely that this doesn't apply to you. Not everyone alive today is 'post-modern' in this sense... some of us aren't even modern) This experience is the infamous post-modern irony, a kind of self-awareness that at once upholds and undermines a given discourse. Hutcheon writes in The Politics of Postmodernism, "Postmodernism paradoxically manages to legitimize culture (high and mass) even as it subeverts it. [...] As producers or receivers of postmodern art, we are all implicated in the legitimization of our culture."(p.15) For examples, see just about any Simpsons episode - a typical television gag will be put forward (wait for laughter), then that very gag will be made the subject of a further gag, and the joke becomes a joke on us. We are made to laugh at ourselves as viewers for laughing at ourselves laughing, ad infinitum. Or perhaps better, watch A Clockwork Orange with this in mind. After feasting on the visual pleasure of ultra-violence in the first half of the movie, our own gaze is then captured, as Alex's is, and turned around on us, and we are made to feel sick at ourselves. The movie implicates itself, and actively, even violently, shows us our own place in it (watch that movie with 'the gaze' in mind, srsly)
The flagship philosopher of this negation is probably Baudrillard. His notion that everything shold be understood as Simulacrum is precisely the experience of negation that we feel when our own participation in constructing reality is lain bare. We are left with nothing but "copies without originals". It should be obvious by now why postmodern analysis is always self-reflexive, and therefore must always unravel itself. Derridean deconstruction works precisely on this principle of unraveling. By showing how the apparent (conscious) meaning of a text is actually constituted by its relation to the implicit, possible meanings, any possibility of providing a fixed meaning disappears. By making the unconscious dimension of a text (what I've been calling the presence of the subject) conscious, what was originally taken as the conscious meaning is experienced as negated.
Though they would be horrified to hear it, I would place the early Analytic philosophers right at the turning point between modernism and postmodernism. Their work was explicitly anti-psychological: anything subjective, empirical or psychological was to be expunged from their philosophy, leaving only "pure objectivity" behind. The fanatical vigour with which they persued this project is testament to the threat they felt the modernist insight to hold. Truly, the Analytics felt this negation as acutely as anyone. The only difference between them and so-called 'postmodern' philosophers is that the reaction of the Analytics was to try to claw their way backwards, back to the Enlightenment before the position of the subject became impossible to ignore. But the cultural impetus that moved them is the same as any postmodern philosopher.
It's important, I think, to keep in mind that this negation isn't always a bad thing. The critical eye which has been turned on our language and way of making meaning has exposed much of what was or is rotten about our culture... I'm thinking especially of Foucault and his critique of psychiatry and body-politics, but there are other examples, such as post-colonial studies. These are good and useful projects, imho.
But I can't help but feel that this experience of negation cannot last, and should not last, at least in the immature form it is in now. We, as a culture, are struggling through the early stages of coming to terms with the unconscious. We are becoming aware of how the social, cultural and biological conditions into which we were born shape us, which is a necessary step in the development of consciousness. To see our own (unconscious) hand in shaping the world is necessary. And the shock of this experience will, probably also necessarily, be hard to get over. But the next step is to begin to develop a more mature attitude with respect to our cultural unconscious. It shapes us: of this we should have no doubt. But by coming to awareness of that fact, we can begin to have a hand in shaping it, consciously. Rather than undermining our experience of meaning, self-reflexive awareness will begin to underwrite it, to be the foundation upon which we build.
We could define the beginning modernism as the moment when the subject appears in discourse. We always used the personal pronouns, of course, so I can't mean anything quite as banal as that. What I mean is that the fact that 'objective' reality isn't something we could ever have access to as such, but is only ever experienced through someone's subjectivity. In visual art, this was experienced as the challenge posed to realism by impressionism, expressionism, cubism, etc... The transparency of subjectivity was challenged, and the act of seeing became part of the art itself. In literature, it was the self-conscious use of literary forms. Literary form itself becomes part of the story, rather than the transparent medium through which it is told. Think of Don Quixote. Philosophically, the appearance of the subject happened partially in Descartes, with his method of starting from subjectivity, but far more fully in Kant's famous Copernican turn. For my money, Kant captures the spirit of modernity better than anyone: the analysis of subjectivity must come first, and anyone purporting to examine reality without having first acknowledged that we apprehend reality as subjects is just out to lunch.
Ok, so what's postmodernism then? Postmodernism is an extension of this modernist eruption of the subject into discourse. We became post-modern the moment we began to experience the necessary presence of the subject as a negation of some of the value or validity of discourse. We have seen our own hand in creating what we previously took to be objective reality, and the post-modern experience is that this undermines the realness of reality. (note: I say "we", but it's just as likely that this doesn't apply to you. Not everyone alive today is 'post-modern' in this sense... some of us aren't even modern) This experience is the infamous post-modern irony, a kind of self-awareness that at once upholds and undermines a given discourse. Hutcheon writes in The Politics of Postmodernism, "Postmodernism paradoxically manages to legitimize culture (high and mass) even as it subeverts it. [...] As producers or receivers of postmodern art, we are all implicated in the legitimization of our culture."(p.15) For examples, see just about any Simpsons episode - a typical television gag will be put forward (wait for laughter), then that very gag will be made the subject of a further gag, and the joke becomes a joke on us. We are made to laugh at ourselves as viewers for laughing at ourselves laughing, ad infinitum. Or perhaps better, watch A Clockwork Orange with this in mind. After feasting on the visual pleasure of ultra-violence in the first half of the movie, our own gaze is then captured, as Alex's is, and turned around on us, and we are made to feel sick at ourselves. The movie implicates itself, and actively, even violently, shows us our own place in it (watch that movie with 'the gaze' in mind, srsly)
The flagship philosopher of this negation is probably Baudrillard. His notion that everything shold be understood as Simulacrum is precisely the experience of negation that we feel when our own participation in constructing reality is lain bare. We are left with nothing but "copies without originals". It should be obvious by now why postmodern analysis is always self-reflexive, and therefore must always unravel itself. Derridean deconstruction works precisely on this principle of unraveling. By showing how the apparent (conscious) meaning of a text is actually constituted by its relation to the implicit, possible meanings, any possibility of providing a fixed meaning disappears. By making the unconscious dimension of a text (what I've been calling the presence of the subject) conscious, what was originally taken as the conscious meaning is experienced as negated.
Though they would be horrified to hear it, I would place the early Analytic philosophers right at the turning point between modernism and postmodernism. Their work was explicitly anti-psychological: anything subjective, empirical or psychological was to be expunged from their philosophy, leaving only "pure objectivity" behind. The fanatical vigour with which they persued this project is testament to the threat they felt the modernist insight to hold. Truly, the Analytics felt this negation as acutely as anyone. The only difference between them and so-called 'postmodern' philosophers is that the reaction of the Analytics was to try to claw their way backwards, back to the Enlightenment before the position of the subject became impossible to ignore. But the cultural impetus that moved them is the same as any postmodern philosopher.
It's important, I think, to keep in mind that this negation isn't always a bad thing. The critical eye which has been turned on our language and way of making meaning has exposed much of what was or is rotten about our culture... I'm thinking especially of Foucault and his critique of psychiatry and body-politics, but there are other examples, such as post-colonial studies. These are good and useful projects, imho.
But I can't help but feel that this experience of negation cannot last, and should not last, at least in the immature form it is in now. We, as a culture, are struggling through the early stages of coming to terms with the unconscious. We are becoming aware of how the social, cultural and biological conditions into which we were born shape us, which is a necessary step in the development of consciousness. To see our own (unconscious) hand in shaping the world is necessary. And the shock of this experience will, probably also necessarily, be hard to get over. But the next step is to begin to develop a more mature attitude with respect to our cultural unconscious. It shapes us: of this we should have no doubt. But by coming to awareness of that fact, we can begin to have a hand in shaping it, consciously. Rather than undermining our experience of meaning, self-reflexive awareness will begin to underwrite it, to be the foundation upon which we build.