Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of
Narrative
By Wendy
B. Faris
Ordinary Enchantments investigates magical realism as the most
important trend in contemporary international fiction, defines its characteristics
and narrative techniques, and proposes a new theory to explain its significance.
In the most comprehensive critical treatment of this literary mode to date,
Wendy B. Faris discusses a rich array of examples from magical realist novels
around the world, including the work not only of Latin American writers like
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but also of authors like Salman Rushdie, Gunter Grass,
Toni Morrison, and Ben Okri.
Faris argues that by combining realistic representation with fantastic elements
so that the marvelous seems to grow organically out of the ordinary, magical
realism destabilizes the dominant form of realism based on empirical definitions
of reality, gives it visionary power, and thus constitutes what might be
called a "remystification" of narrative in the West. Noting the radical narrative
heterogeneity of magical realism, the author compares its cultural role to
that of traditional shamanic performance, which joins the worlds of daily
life and that of the spirits. Because of that capacity to bridge different
worlds, magical realism has served as an effective decolonizing agent, providing
the ground for marginal voices, submerged traditions, and emergent literatures
to develop and create masterpieces. At the same time, this process is not
limited to postcolonial situations but constitutes a global trend that replenishes
realism from within.
Wendy B. Faris is professor of English and comparative literature at the
University of Texas at Arlington. She is the author of Carlos Fuentes
and Labyrinths of Language: Symbolic Landscape and Narrative Design in
Modern Fiction, as well as co-editor of Magical Realism: Theory, History,
Community.
Learn
more about Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification
of Narrative from Vanderbilt University Press.
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Realism in the Details
By Dr.
Wendy B. Faris
One of the most extraordinary ways in which magical realism mixes the extraordinary
with the ordinary is the accumulation of realistic details in describing
an impossible event. This technique is a particular strength of García
Márquez's fiction. The trail of José Arcadio's blood, by now
an icon of magical realist description, is an outstanding instance:
A trickle of blood came from under the door, crossing
the living room, went into the street, continued in a straight line across
the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along
the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the
left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the
closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain
the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid
the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed
without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson
to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the
kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to
make bread.
— Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred
Years of Solitude
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Because a trail of blood cannot normally climb curbs and turn corners at
right angles and does not possess a humanlike capacity to direct it's own
progress, the more realistic details the trail of blood accumulates (such
as the name of the street, the kind of flowers, and the exact number of eggs),
the more magical its progress appears.
These details weave a textual fabric that joins different worlds, one in
which such a stream of blood exists in the ordinary world of precise identities
and measurements and one in which is possesses magical properties. But
here, those worlds are woven together. Such a combination of the real and
the magical is a central paradox of magical realism.
A Little Personality Goes A Long Way
Furthermore, because the trail of blood originates at the scene of José
Arcadio's death but also participates fully in the concerns of everyday
life, such as taking care not to stain the rugs and avoiding the dining table,
as it traverses Macondo, it seems to join the different cosmic regions
of the living and the dead. And because it brings together both the household
everyday reality and the magical qualities of autonomous motions and sensibility,
it also links the different discursive regions of realism and fantasy.
Ultimately, this example suggests that what we think we control may in
the end control us. Individual and social wills are subject to the unpredictable
forces that transcend them. Like realistic tales, with their uncanny coincidences
that proclaim truth to be stranger than fiction, and God to know infinitely
more than man, magical realism highlights life's surprises; but it does
so with more than uncanny means.
Excerpted from Dr. Wendy B. Faris's book on magical realism and the "remystification
of narrative," Ordinary
Enchantments.
Paranoiac-critical method
From Wikipedia
The Paranoiac-critical method is a surrealist
technique developed by Salvador Dalí in the early 1930s and often
employed in the production of paintings
and other artworks.
Origins
The Surrealists related theories of psychology to the idea of creativity
and the production of art. In the mid-1930s Andre
Breton wrote about a ‘fundamental crisis of the object’. The object began
being thought of not as a fixed external object but also as an extension
of our subjective self. One of the types of objects manifested in Surrealism
was the phantom object.
According to Dali, these objects have a minimum of mechanical meaning,
but when viewed the mind evokes phantom images which are the result of unconscious
acts.
The paranoiac-critical arose from similar Surrealistic experiments with
psychology and the creation of images such as Max Ernst’s
frottage
technique, which involved rubbing pencil or chalk over on paper over a textured
surface and interpreting the phantom images visible in the texture on the
paper.
Description
The aspect of paranoia that Dalí was interested in and which
helped inspire the method was the ability of the brain to perceive links
between things which rationally are not linked. Dalí described the
paranoiac-critical method as a "spontaneous method of irrational knowledge
based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and
interpretations of delirious phenomena."
When employing the method when creating a work of art, an active process
of the mind is used to visualise images in the work and incorporate these
into the final product. An example of the resulting work is a double image
or multiple image in which an ambiguous image can be interpreted in different
ways.
André Breton hailed the method, saying that
Dalí's paranoiac-critical method was an "instrument of primary
importance" and that it "has immediately shown itself capable of being
applied equally to painting, poetry, the cinema, the construction of typical
Surrealist objects, fashion, sculpture, the history of art, and even, if
necessary, all manner of exegesis."
External links
Postmodernism is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments
in critical theory, philosophy,
architecture,
art, literature,
religion, and culture, which are generally characterized as either
emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism.
In architecture, art, music and literature,
postmodernism is a name for many stylistic reactions to, and developments
from, modernism.
Postmodern style is often characterized by eclecticism,
digression, collage, pastiche,
and irony.
Some artistic movements commonly called postmodern are pop art,
architectural deconstructivism, magical realism in literature, maximalism,
and neo-romanticism. Postmodern theorists see postmodern
art as a conflation or reversal of well-established modernist systems, such
as the roles of artist versus audience, seriousness versus play, or high
culture versus kitsch.
In sociology, postmodernism is described as the result of economic,
cultural, and demographic changes. These changes include the rise
of the service economy, the importance of the mass media,
and the rise of an increasingly interdependent world economy. Related terms
in this context include post-industrial society, late capitalism, information age, globalization,
and global village. (See also Postmodern
and Media theory).
As a cultural movement, postmodernism is an aspect
of postmodernity, which is broadly defined as
the condition of Western society after modernity.
The adjective postmodern can refer to aspects of either postmodernism
or postmodernity. According to postmodern theorist Jean-François Lyotard, postmodernity
is characterized as an "incredulity toward metanarratives", meaning that in the era of postmodern
culture, people have rejected the grand, supposedly universal stories and
paradigms
such as religion, conventional philosophy, capitalism and gender that have
defined culture and behavior in the past, and have instead begun to organize
their cultural life around a variety of more local and subcultural
ideologies,
myths and stories. Furthermore, it promotes the idea that all such metanarratives
and paradigms are stable only while they fit the available evidence, and
can potentially be overturned when phenomena occur that the paradigm cannot
account for, and a better explanatory model (itself subject to the same fate)
is found. See La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (The
Post Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge) in 1979, and the
results of acceptance of postmodernism is the view that different realms
of discourse are incomensurable and incapable of judging the results of other
discourse, a conclusion he drew in La Differend (1983).
In philosophy, where the term is extensively used, it
applies to movements that include post-structuralism, deconstruction, multiculturalism, gender studies and literary theory, sometimes called simply "theory".
It emerged beginning in the 1950s as a critique of doctrines such as positivism
and emphasizes the importance of power relationships, personalization and
discourse
in the "construction" of truth and world views. In this context it has been
used by many critical theorists to assert that postmodernism
is a break with the artistic and philosophical
tradition of the Enlightenment, which they characterize
as a quest for an ever-grander and more universal system of aesthetics,
ethics,
and knowledge.
They present postmodernism as a radical criticism of Western philosophy. Postmodern philosophy draws on a number
of approaches to criticize Western thought, including historicism,
and psychoanalytic theory.
The term postmodernism is also used in a broader pejorative sense
to describe attitudes, sometimes part of the general culture, and sometimes
specifically aimed at postmodern critical theory, perceived as relativist,
nihilist,
counter-Enlightenment or antimodern,
particularly in relationship to critiques of rationalism,
universalism,
or science.
It is also sometimes used to describe social changes which are held to be
antithetical to traditional systems of morality,
particularly by evangelical Christians.
The role, proper usage, and meaning of postmodernism are matters
of intense debate and vary widely with context.
The development of postmodernism
Features of postmodern culture begin to arise in the 1920s with the
emergence of the dada movement, which featured collage and a focus on the
framing of objects and discourse as being as important, or more important,
than the work itself. Another strand which would have tremendous impact on
post-modernism would be the existentialists, who placed the centrality of
the individual narrative as being the source of morals and understanding.
Einstein's theories and the rise of quantum physics began undermining the
view of science as objective truth and lent scientific support to postmodern
notions of subjective truth. However, it is with the end of the Second World War that recognizably post-modernist
attitudes begin to emerge.
Central to these is the focusing on the problems of any knowledge
which is founded on anything external to an individual.
Post-modernism, while widely diverse in its forms, almost invariably begins
from the problem of knowledge which is broadly disseminated in its form,
but not limited in its interpretation. Post-modernism rapidly developed a
vocabulary of anti-enlightenment rhetoric, used to argue that rationality
was neither as sure or as clear as rationalists supposed, and that knowledge
was inherently linked to time, place, social position and other factors from
which an individual constructs their view of knowledge. To escape
from constructed knowledge, it then becomes necessary to critique it, and
thus deconstruct the asserted knowledge. Jacques Derrida argued that to defend against
the inevitable self-deconstruction of knowledge, systems of power, called
hegemony
would have to postulate an original utterance, the logos. This "privileging"
of an original utterance is called "logocentrism". Instead of rooting knowledge
in particular utterances, or "texts", the basis of knowledge was seen to
be in the free play of discourse itself, an idea rooted in Wittgenstein's
idea of a language game. This emphasis on the allowability of free play within
the context of conversation and discourse leads postmodernism to adopt the
stance of irony, paradox, textual manipulation, reference and tropes.
Armed with this process of questioning the social basis of assertions,
postmodernist philosophers began to attack unities of modernism, and particularly
unities seen as being rooted in the Enlightenment.
Since Modernism
had made the Enlightenment a central source of its superiority over the Victorian
and Romantic periods, this attack amounted to an indirect
attack on the establishment of modernism itself. Perhaps the most striking
examples of this skepticism are to be found in the works of French cultural
theorist, Jean Baudrillard. In his book Simulacra
and Simulation, he contends that social 'reality' no longer exists in
the conventional sense, but has been supplanted by an endless procession
of simulacra.
The mass media, and other forms of mass cultural production, generate constant
re-appropriation and re-contextualisation of familiar cultural symbols and
images, fundamentally shifting our experience away from 'reality', to 'hyperreality'.
Along this line, it is significant that the beginning of postmodern architecture
is not considered to be the construction of any great building, but the destruction
of the modernist Pruitt-Igoe housing project (see Minoru Yamasaki).
Postmodernism therefore has an obvious distrust toward claims about truth,
ethics, or beauty being rooted in anything other than individual perception
and group construction. Utopian
ideals of universally applicable truths or aesthetics give way to provisional,
decentered, local petit recits which, rather than referencing an underlying
universal truth or aesthetic, point only to other ideas and cultural
artifacts,
themselves subject to interpretation and re-interpretation. The "truth", since
it can only be understood by all of its connections is perpetually "deferred",
never reaching a point of fixed knowledge which can be called "the truth."
This emphasis on construction and consensus is often used to attack science,
as the Sokal Affair shows.
Postmodernism is often used in a larger sense, meaning the entire trend
of thought in the late 20th century, and the social and philosophical realities
of that period. Marxist critics argue that post-modernism is symptomatic of
"late capitalism" and the decline of institutions, particularly the nation-state.
Other thinkers assert that post-modernity is the natural reaction to mass
broadcasting and a society conditioned to mass production and mass political
decision making. The ability of knowledge to be endlessly copied defeats attempts
to constrain interpretation, or to set "originality" by simple means such
as the production of a work. From this perspective, the schools of thought
labelled "postmodern" are not as widely at odds with their time period as
the polemics and arguments appear, pointing, for example, to the shift of
the basis of scientific knowledge to a provisional consensus of scientists,
as posited by Thomas Kuhn. Post-modernism is seen, in this view,
as being conscious of the nature of the discontinuity between modern and
post-modern periods which is generally present.
Postmodernism has manifestations in many modern academic and non-academic
disciplines: philosophy, theology,
art, architecture, film, television,
music, theatre,
sociology,
fashion,
technology,
literature,
and communications are all heavily influenced by postmodern trends and ideas,
and are thoroughly scrutinised from postmodern perspectives. Crucial to these
are the denial of customary expectations, the use of non-orthogonal angles
in buildings such as the work of Frank
Gehry, and the shift in arts exemplified by the rise of minimalism
in art and music. Post-modern philosophy often labels itself as critical theory and grounds the construction
of identity in the mass media.
(Note: "post-modern" tends to be used by critics, "postmodern" by supporters.
This may be because postmodern is considered merely a symbol and its meaning
(as obtained through simple linguistic analysis) can be ignored.)
Postmodernism was first identified as a theoretical discipline in the
1980s, but
as a cultural movement it predates them by many years. Exactly when modernism
began to give way to postmodernism is difficult to pinpoint, if not simply
impossible. Some theorists reject that such a distinction even exists, viewing
postmodernism, for all its claims of fragmentation and plurality, as still
existing within a larger 'modernist' framework. The philosopher Jürgen Habermas is a strong proponent of
this view, which has aspects of a lumpers/splitters problem: is the entire 20th
century one period, or two distinct periods?
The theory gained some of its strongest ground early on in French academia.
In 1979 Jean-François Lyotard wrote a short
but influential work The Postmodern Condition : a report on knowledge.
Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, and Roland Barthes (in his more post-structural work)
are also strongly influential in postmodern theory. Postmodernism is closely
allied with several contemporary academic disciplines, most notably those
connected with sociology. Many of its assumptions are integral to feminist
and post-colonial theory.
Some identify the burgeoning anti-establishment movements of the 1960s as the
earliest trend out of cultural modernity toward postmodernism.
Tracing it further back, some identify its roots in the breakdown of Hegelian
idealism, and the impact of both World Wars (perhaps even the concept of
a World War). Heidegger and Derrida were influential in re-examining the
fundamentals of knowledge, together with the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and his philosophy of action, Soren Kierkegaard's and Karl Barth's
important fideist approach to theology, and even the nihilism
of Nietzsche's philosophy. Michel Foucault's application of Hegel to thinking about the body
is also identified as an important landmark. While it is rare to pin down
the specific origins of any large cultural shift, it is fair to assume that
postmodernism represents an accumulated disillusionment with the promises
of the Enlightenment project and its progress of science, so central to modern
thinking.
The movement has had diverse political ramifications: its anti-ideological
insights appear conducive to, and strongly associated with, the feminist
movement, racial equality movements, gay rights
movements, most forms of late 20th century anarchism,
even the peace movement and various hybrids of these in
the current anti-globalization movement. Unsurprisingly,
none of these institutions entirely embraces all aspects of the postmodern
movement, but reflect or, in true postmodern style, borrow from some of its
core ideas.
Early usage of the term
In an essay From Postmodernism to Postmodernity: the Local/Global Context,
[1] (http://www.ihabhassan.com/postmodernism_to_postmodernity.htm)
Ihab Hassan points out a number of instances in which the term postmodernism
was used before the term became popular:
- John Watkins Chapman, an English
salon painter, in the 1870s, to mean Post-Impressionism.
- Federico de Onís, 1934, (postmodernismo)
to mean a reaction against the difficulty and experimentalism of modernist
poetry.
- Arnold J. Toynbee, in 1939, to mean
the end of the "modern," Western bourgeois
order dating back to the seventeenth century.
- Bernard Smith, in 1945, to mean the
movement of socialist realism in painting.
- Charles Olson, during the 1950s.
- Irving Howe and Harry Levin, in 1959 and 1960, respectively,
to mean a decline in high modernist culture.
Also, many cite Charles Jencks' 1977 "The Language
of Postmodern Architecture" among the earliest works which shaped the use
of the term today.
Postmodernism's manifestations
Postmodernism in language
Postmodern philosophers are often regarded as difficult to read, and the
critical theory that has sprung up in the wake of postmodernism has often
been ridiculed for its stilted syntax and attempts to combine polemical tone
and a vast array of new coinages. However, similar charges could be levelled
at the works of previous eras, such as the works of Immanuel
Kant, as well as at the entire tradition of Greek thought in antiquity.
More important to postmodernism's role in language is the focus on the
implied meaning of words and forms, the power structures that are accepted
as part of the way words are used, from the use of the word "Man" with a capital
"M" to refer to the collective humanity, to the default of the word "he"
in English as a pronoun for a person of gender unknown to the speaker, or
as a casual replacement for the word "one". This, however, is merely the most
obvious example of the changing relationship between diction and discourse
which postmodernism presents.
An important concept in postmodernism's view of language is the idea of
"play". In the context of postmodernism, play means changing the framework
which connects ideas, and thus allows the troping, or turning, of a metaphor
or word from one context to another, or from one frame of reference to another.
Since, in postmodern thought, the "text" is a series of "markings" whose meaning
is imputed by the reader, and not by the author, this play is the means by
which the reader constructs or interprets the text, and the means by which
the author gains a presence in the reader's mind. Play then involves invoking
words in a manner which undermines their authority, by mocking their assumptions
or style, or by layers of misdirection as to the intention of the author.
This view of writing is not without harsh detractors, who regard it as
needlessly difficult and obscure, and a violation of the implicit contract
of lucidity between author and reader: that an author has something to communicate,
and shall choose words which transmit the idea as transparently as possible
to the reader. Thus postmodernism in language has often been identified with
poor writing and communication skills. The term pomobabble
came to be within pop culture to illustrate this trend.
Postmodernism in art
Where modernists hoped to unearth universals or the fundamentals of art,
postmodernism aims to unseat them, to embrace diversity and contradiction.
A postmodern approach to art thus rejects the distinction between low and
high art forms. It rejects rigid genre boundaries and favors eclecticism,
the mixing of ideas and forms. Partly due to this rejection, it promotes parody, irony, and playfulness,
commonly referred to as jouissance
by postmodern theorists. Unlike modern art, postmodern art does not approach
this fragmentation as somehow faulty or undesirable, but rather celebrates
it. As the gravity of the search for underlying truth is relieved, it is replaced
with 'play'. As postmodern icon David Byrne, and his band Talking Heads said:
'Stop making sense'.
Post-modernity, in attacking the perceived elitist approach of Modernism,
sought greater connection with broader audiences. This is often labelled 'accessibility'
and is a central point of dispute in the question of the value of postmodern
art. It has also embraced the mixing of words with art, collage and other
movements in modernity, in an attempt to create more multiplicity of medium
and message. Much of this centers on a shift of basic subject matter: postmodern
artists regard the mass media as a fundamental subject for art, and use forms,
tropes, and materials - such as banks of video monitors, found art, and depictions
of media objects - as focal points for their art. Andy
Warhol is an early example of postmodern art in action, with his appropriation
of common popular symbols and "ready-made" cultural artifacts, bringing the
previously mundane or trivial onto the previously hallowed ground of high
art.
Postmodernism's critical stance is interlinked with presenting new appraisals
of previous works. As implied above the works of the "Dada" movement received
greater attention, as did collagists such as Robert Rauschenberg, whose works were initially
considered unimportant in the context of the modernism of the 1950s, but who,
by the 1980s,
began to be seen as seminal. Post-modernism also elevated the importance
of cinema in
artistic discussions, placing it on a peer level with the other fine arts.
This is both because of the blurring of distinctions between "high" and "low"
forms, and because of the recognition that cinema represented the creation
of simulacra which was later duplicated in the other arts.
Postmodernism in architecture
Main Article Postmodern architecture
As with many cultural movements, one of postmodernism's most pronounced
and visible ideas can be seen in architecture. The functional, and formalized,
shapes and spaces of the modernist movement are replaced by unapologetically
diverse aesthetics; styles collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and
new ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound.
Postmodern architects include: Philip Johnson (later works), John
Burgee, Robert Venturi, Ricardo Bofill, James Stirling and Frank
Gehry. Postmodernists might retroactively claim Charles Willard Moore as a postmodernist
architect on the basis of his love of stylistic collisions, but his aesthetic
allegiances were plainly elsewhere. The architect with the best postmodernist
credentials is perhaps Peter Eisenman.
Postmodernism in literature
Main article Postmodern literature
Postmodern literature argues for expansion, the return of reference, the
celebration of fragmentation rather than the fear of it, and the role of
reference itself in literature. While drawing on the experimental tendencies
of authors such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf in English, and Borges in
Spanish, who were taken as influences by American postmodern works by authors
such as Thomas Pynchon, John Barth,
Don
Delillo, David Foster Wallace and Paul
Auster, the advocates of post-modern literature argue that the present
is fundamentally different from the modern period, and therefore requires
a new literary sensibility.
Postmodernism in music
Main article: Postmodern music
Deconstruction
Main article: Deconstruction
Deconstruction is an important textual "occurrence"
described and analyzed by many postmodern authors and philosophers,
beginning with Jacques Derrida, who coined the term. Deconstruction
has to do with the way in which the "deeper" substance of text opposes the
text's more "superficial" form. As a result of deconstruction, according
to Derrida, texts have multiple meanings, and the "violence" between the
different meanings of text may be elucidated by close textual analysis.
Popularly, close textual analyses describing deconstruction within a text
are often themselves called deconstructions; as envisioned by Derrida,
however, deconstruction was not a method or a tool, but an occurrence within
the text itself. Writings about deconstruction are perhaps more aptly referred
to as deconstructive readings.
Deconstruction is far more important to postmodernism than its seemingly
narrow focus on text might imply. According to Derrida, one consequence
of deconstruction is that text may be defined so broadly as to encompass
not just written words, but the entire spectrum of symbols and
phenomena
within Western thought. To Derrida, a result of deconstruction is that no
Western philosopher has been able to successfully escape from this large
web of text and reach the purely text-free "signified" which they imagined
to exist "just beyond" the text.
Postmodernism in philosophy
Main article: Postmodern philosophy
Many figures in the 20th century philosophy of mathematics are identified
as "postmodern" due to their rejection of mathematics
as a strictly neutral point of view. Some figures in the philosophy of science, especially Thomas Samuel Kuhn and David
Bohm, are also so viewed. Some see the ultimate expression of postmodernism
in science and mathematics in the cognitive science of mathematics,
which seeks to characterize the habit of mathematics itself as strictly human,
and based in human cognitive bias.
The term "Neo-liberalism" has been used in a
theological sense (http://www.adrian.warnock.info/2004/12/why-neo-liberal.htm,)
as a drive to deliberately modify the beliefs and practices of the church (especially
evangelical)
to conform to post-modernism
Postmodernism and post-structuralism
In terms of frequently cited works, postmodernism and post-structuralism
overlap quite significantly. Some philosophers, such as Francois Lyotard,
can legitimately be classified into both groups. This is partly due to the
fact that both modernism and structuralism owe much to the Enlightenment
project.
Structuralism has a strong tendency to be scientific in seeking out stable
patterns in observed phenomena - an epistemological attitude which is quite
compatible with Enlightenment thinking, and incompatible with postmodernists.
At the same time, findings from structuralist analysis carried a somewhat
anti-Enlightenment message, revealing that rationality can be found in the
minds of 'savage' people, just in forms differing from those that people
from 'civilized' societies are used to seeing. Implicit here is a critique
of the practice of colonialism, which was partly justified as a 'civilizing'
process by which wealthier societies bring knowledge, manners, and reason
to less 'civilized' ones.
Post-structuralism, emerging as a response to the structuralists' scientific
orientation, has kept the cultural relativism in structuralism,
while discarding the scientific orientations.
One clear difference between postmodernism and poststructuralism is found
in their respective attitudes towards the demise of the project of the Enlightenment:
post-structuralism is fundamentally ambivalent, while postmodernism is decidedly
celebratory.
Another difference is the nature of the two positions. While post-structuralism
is a position in philosophy, encompassing views on human beings, language,
body, society, and many other issues, it is not a name of an era. Post-modernism,
on the other hand, is closely associated with "post-modern" era, a period
in the history coming after the modern age.
Postmodernity and digital communications
Technological utopianism is a common trait in Western history - from the
1700s when Adam Smith essentially labelled technological progress
as the source of the Wealth of Nations, through the novels of Jules Verne
in the late 1800s, through Winston Churchill's belief that there was
little an inventor could not achieve. Its manifestation in the post-modernity
was first through the explosion of analog mass broadcasting of television.
Strongly associated with the work of Marshall McLuhan who argued that "the medium
is the message", the ability of mass broadcasting to create visual symbols
and mass action was seen as a liberating force in human affairs, even at
the same time others were calling television "a vast wasteland".
The second wave of technological utopianism associated with post-modern
thought came with the introduction of digital internetworking, and became
identified with Esther Dyson and such popular outlets as Wired Magazine. According to this view digital
communications makes the fragmentation of modern society a positive feature,
since individuals can seek out those artistic, cultural and community experiences
which they regard as being correct for themselves.
The common thread is that the fragmentation of society and communication
gives the individual more autonomy to create their own environment and narrative.
This links into the post-modern novel, which deals with the experience of
structuring "truth" from fragments.
Postmodernism and its critics
The term postmodernism is often used pejoratively to describe tendencies
perceived of as Relativist, Counter-enlightenment or antimodern.
Particularly in relationship to critiques of Rationalism,
Universalism
or Science.
Sometimes used to describe tendencies in the society which are held to be
antithetical to traditional systems of morality,
particularly by Evangelical Christians.
Charles Murray, a strong critic of postmodernism, defines the term:
- "By contemporary intellectual fashion, I am referring to the constellation
of views that come to mind when one hears the words multicultural, gender,
deconstruct, politically correct, and Dead White Males. In a broader sense, contemporary
intellectual fashion encompasses as well the widespread disdain in certain
circles for technology and the scientific method. Embedded in this mind-set
is hostility to the idea that discriminating judgments are appropriate in
assessing art and literature, to the idea that hierarchies of value exist,
hostility to the idea that an objective truth exists. Postmodernism is the
overarching label that is attached to this perspective." [1]
Though Murray's arguments against postmodernism are far from facile, critics
have cautioned that Murray's own work in The Bell Curve arrives at racially-charged
conclusions through research and argumentation that may not live up to the
standards he defends.
One example is the figure of Harold
Bloom, who has simultaneously been hailed as being against multiculturalism and contemporary "fads" in
literature, and also placed as an important figure in postmodernism. If even
the critics cannot keep score as to which side of a supposedly clear line
figures stand on, the best conclusion that can be drawn is that conclusions
about membership in the post-modern club are provisional.
Central to the debate is the role of the concept of "objectivity" and
what it means. In the broadest sense, denial of objectivity is held to be
the post-modern position, and a hostility towards claims advanced on the
basis of objectivity its defining feature. It is this underlying hostility
toward the concept of objectivity, evident in many contemporary critical theorists, that is the common point
of attack for critics of postmodernism. Many critics characterise postmodernism
as an ephemeral phenomenon that cannot be adequately defined simply because,
as a philosophy at least, it represents nothing more substantial
than a series of disparate conjectures allied only in their distrust of modernism.
This antipathy of postmodernists towards modernism, and their consequent
tendency to define themselves against it, has also attracted criticism. It
has been argued that modernity was not actually a lumbering, totalizing monolith
at all, but in fact was itself dynamic and ever-changing; the evolution,
therefore, between 'modern' and 'postmodern' should be seen as one of degree,
rather than of kind - a continuation rather than a 'break'. One theorist
who takes this view is Marshall Berman, whose book All
That is Solid Melts into Air (a quote from Marx)
reflects in its title the fluid nature of 'the experience of modernity'.
As noted above (see History of postmodernism), some theorists such
as Habermas even argue that the supposed distinction between the 'modern'
and the 'postmodern' does not exist at all, but that the latter is really
no more than a development within a larger, still-current, 'modern' framework.
Many who make this argument are left academics with Marxist
leanings, such as Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, and David Harvey (social
geographer), who are concerned that postmodernism's undermining of Enlightenment
values makes a progressive cultural politics difficult, if not impossible.
How can we effect any change in people's poor living conditions, in inequality
and injustice, if we don't accept the validity of underlying universals such
as the 'real world' and 'justice' in the first place? How is any progress
to be made through a philosophy so profoundly skeptical of the very notion
of progress, and of unified perspectives? The critics charge that the postmodern
vision of a tolerant, pluralist society in which every political ideology
is perceived to be as valid, or as redundant, as the other; may ultimately
encourage individuals to lead lives of a rather disastrous apathetic quietism.
This reasoning leads Habermas to compare postmodernism with conservatism and
the preservation of the status quo.
Such critics often argue that, in actual fact, such postmodern premises
are rarely, if ever, actually embraced — that if they were, we would be left
with nothing more than a crippling radical subjectivism. That the projects of
the Enlightenment and modernity are alive and well can be seen in the justice
system, in science, in political rights movements, in the very idea of universities;
and so on.
To some critics, there seems, indeed, to be a glaring contradiction in
maintaining the death of objectivity and privileged position on one hand,
while the scientific community continues a project of unprecedented scope
to unify various scientific disciplines into a theory of everything, on the other. Hostility
toward hierarchies of value and objectivity becomes similarly
problematic when postmodernity itself attempts to analyse such hierarchies
with, apparently, some measure of objectivity and make categorical statements
concerning them.
Such critics see postmodernism as, essentially, a kind of semantic gamesmanship,
more sophistry than substance. Postmodernism's proponents are often criticised
for a tendency to indulge in exhausting, verbose stretches of rhetorical gymnastics,
which critics feel sound important but are ultimately meaningless. (Some
postmodernists may argue that this is precisely the point.) In the Sokal
Affair, Alan Sokal, a physicist, wrote a deliberately nonsensical
article purportedly about interpreting physics and mathematics in terms of
postmodern theory, which was nevertheless published by the Left-leaning Social
Text, a journal which he and most of the scientific community considered
as postmodernist. Notable among Sokal's false arguments published in Social
Text was that the value of π changed over time and that the strength of Earth's gravity
was relative to the observer. Sokal claimed this highlighted the postmodern
tendency to value rhetoric and verbal gamesmanship over serious meaning.
Sokal also co-wrote Fashionable Nonsense, which criticizes
the inaccurate use of scientific terminology in intellectual
writing and finishes with a critique of some forms of postmodernism. Ironically,
postmodern literature often self-consciously
plays on the format and structure of scientific writing, emphasizing
the distinction between the complex content of the world and its understanding
in written form. To borrow a phrase from René Magritte, some postmodern literature
and art says "This is not a pipe", pointing out
that the form of technical writing is not necessarily connected to
its content. The Sokal affair also generated political controversy,
with conservative pundits parading it as proof of the irrelevance of the
academic left, while leftists criticized Sokal of serving a conservative
agenda. Sokal, meanwhile, identified himself as an "unabashed Old Leftist."
Some critics feel that postmodernism is so strongly linked to politics
that it does not qualify as a philosophy. These critics claim that, inasmuch
as many postmodernist arguments rely on charges of racism and
ethnocentrism in traditional Western science,
it is little more than an out.
Further reading
- Berman, Marshall All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience
of Modernity (ISBN 0140109625)
- Grenz, Stanley J. A Primer On Postmodernism (ISBN 0802808646)
- Harvey, David The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the
Origins of Cultural Change (ISBN 0631162941)
- Hicks, Stephen R. C. Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism
from Rousseau to Foucault (ISBN 1592476465)
- Jameson, Fredric Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
(ISBN 0822310902)
- Lyotard, Jean-Francois The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
(ISBN 0816611734)
- Sokal, Alan and Jean Bricmont Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals'
Abuse of Science (ISBN 0312204078)
See also
Postmodern art
-
Theoretical postmodernism
-
Cultural and political postmodernism
-
External links
