Close Encounter with Postmodernism of the First Kind. 2

How do we understand the word "post" in "postmodernism"? There is a sense in which one could treat postmodernism as coming chronologically and historically "after" modernism. Yet paradoxically, we find at the same time that many different postmodern artists are apparently practising exactly the same esthetics as the modernist . How do we account for this?

Some theorists such as Jürgen Habermas and Alex Callinicos argue that in some formal ways, postmodernism may be seen as merely the continuation and the completion of the modernist project and is a cultural practice which seeks to negate the critical edge of the modernist esthetics as a formal cul-de-sac. Some theorists argue that postmodernism is not merely a chronological period coming after modernism but is even more a way of seeing, thinking and doing things. Thus in his book Intimations of Postmodernity (91), Zygmunt Bauman, a social theorist, says, for example that postmodernity is merely "modernity conscious of its true nature" or a self-reflexive mood within modernity. Todd Gitlin in his Postmodernism: Roots and Politics (in Ian Angus and Sut Jhally (eds) Cultural Politics in Contemporary America (89), says "Modernism tore up unity and postmodernism has been enjoying the shreds". Thought it is true that some postmodernists are doing what the modernist does, they celebrate it not repent it. "Instead of lamenting the loss of the past, the fragmentation of existence and the collapse of selfhood, postmodernism embraces these characteristic as a new form of social existence and behavior." Therefore it is best to see their differences as differences in mood or attitude, rather than differences in time or esthetic practices. As Woods says, "Postmodernism is a knowing modernism, a self-reflexive modernism, a modernism that does not agonize about itself but celebrates its differences from modernism: instead of lamenting the loss of the past, the fragmentation of human life, the collapse of selfhood, postmodernism embraces and celebrates these characteristics as a new form of social existence: a different mood or attitude."

There is a debate over the extent postmodernism is a continuation of modernism as thought by Habermas, and the extent to which the legacy of the Enlightenment values like belief in the power of reasoning and in progress are still valuable resources in social and cultural analysis. Philosophers like Rousseau, Kant and Hegel had great faith in reason as a means of ensuring and preserving freedom but after the Holocaust, it became doubtful to Jean-François Lyotard whether reason alone could lead to moral conduct. Sabina Loribond said in the article "Feminism and Postmodernism" in New Left Review 178 (89), "The Enlightenment pictured the human race as engaged in an effort towards universal moral and intellectual self-realization and so as the subject of a universal experience, it also postulated a universal historical reason in terms of which social and political tendencies could be assessed as being "progressive or otherwise (the goal of politics being defined as the realization of reason in practice).Postmodernism rejects this picture...the doctrine of the unity of reason. It refuses to to conceive of humanity as a unitary subject striving towards the goal of perfect coherence (in its common stock of beliefs) or of perfect cohesion and stability (in its political practice)" Whilst modernism is founded on what it conceives of as the "universal  belief" of the human self as individual  ("individu" in Latin meaning "undivided") stable, rational subject with a unified self with agency capable of using  it to alter, shape and change the world in which he lives for the better, postmodernism is suspicious of or otherwise rejects any beliefs in such a supposedly undivided, coherent and rational self who is able to find "universal" truths without regard to time and place and is capable of effecting historical progress .

Woods thinks that it is necessary to distinguish between postmodernity and postmodernism. For him, postmodernity refers to our socio-economic, political and cultural conditions: people in the West now live in a postindustrial society in which the economy is based more on information and on the provision of services  where even shopping and other forms of  consumption are done more and more on the internet as we communicate by email, voice-mail, fax, tele-conference on videolink, and the world-wide web and even entertainment are increasingly sought through the high-speed AV images on the computer screen in the form of video games, wired or wireless television etc. Postmodernism refers broadly to certain esthetic and intellectual theories in a postmodern society. Thus minimalist art challenges the notion of art as ego-centred self-expression of the "inner self" and some literary works take pleasure in "playing" with language for its own sake rather than serve to portray the world "realistically" and provide any moral lessons. Postmodernism may also refer to "the post-structuralist philosophy's claim that ideas which  maintain that centres of truth which escape or stand outside the logic of language are merely convenient or ideologically motivated illusions."

Underlying postmodernism in its various manifestations, one may discern certain common motifs viz. distrust of any all-encompassing rationality, any metanarratives, any totalising discourses, any attempts to offer a universalist account of existence and a rejection of the values of the Enlightenment, especially its belief in the possibility of infinite moral and social progress through the application of reason and its strict requirements for  intelligibility, coherence and its rejection of authority. The truths of postmodernism are therefore always subjective, local, provisional, seldom objective, universal and absolute.

According to Woods, postmodernism seems to appeal to societies in which the demise of their former economic, cultural and political superiority has led to nostalgia and frustration and hence many decry the loss of direction and doubts about the legitimacy of various academic, professional and cultural areas like literature, film, visual and plastic arts, architecture, psychology, anthropology, sociology, law, classical, classical and pop music, feminism and finally cultural theory. Because it touches so many areas and disciplines, the term "postmodernism"  is not always understood the same way and often the same word or phrase may lead to different or even contradictory implications and conclusions. In addition, the impact of postmodernism in different disciplines is not uniform and it emerge in different disciplines at different dates--late 1950s for art, late 1960s for architecture, early 1980s for cultural theory, late 1980s for many social sciences and its influence may be observed in the way we think about sources of money, models of government, literary experimentation, commercial exploitation, physical movement of the body and urban design. In all these disciplines the influence of linguistic theory is evident. There is thus, Woods says, an "impressive body of working exploring how metaphors, narrative patterns, rhetorical structures, syntax and semantic fields affect scientific discourse and thought" eg. Donald McCloskey's The Rhetoric of Economics (86), Charles Bazerman's Shaping
Written Knowledge (88), Bruno Latour's Science in Action (87) and Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (70).

The relations of a trend, a movement or "fashion" in thought with its predecessor is never easy to define. The relationship between modernism and postmodernism is no exception. Whilst postmodernist theorists and practitioner engage in a politics of "demystification of patriarchy, imperialism and humanism, there are still inevitable connections and points of similarities with earlier movements like Marxism, Feminism and post-structuralist analysis, although both Marxism and Feminism have their own theories of political action, there is no such theory in postmodernism. Apart from the notable exception of an Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, there are not many high profile women architects and music, politics and philosophy are still dominated by men. Many criticize postmodernists for confusing the collapse of certain ideologies about the real and the social with the collapse of reality and society.

In his own words, Woods treats postmodernism as a "discursive event" embracing a whole of disciplines. But the word "discourse" is a slippery word and is "often understood as the institutionalised practice through which signification and value are imposed, sanctioned and exchanged." To him, "discourses are the variety of different linguistic structures in which we engage in dynamic interchanges of beliefs, attitudes, sentiments and other expressions of consciousness, underpinned ...by specific configurations of historical, social and cultural power." He thinks that in some fields, the agreements over the importance of the relevant issues, texts and authors are better developed and more advanced than in others. In other words, we should expect to find very different degrees to which postmodernist values may have penetrated in different cultural fields and discourses. Woods is aware of the risk of his book being treated as a modernist survey of postmodernist culture and that the cataloguing approach is inimical to the postmodernist's desire for fluidity of boundaries, a free play of information system and its suspicion of any form of reductionist tabulation. He adopts the postmodernist ethic of always talking about various topics of discourse in their specific contexts. The various discourses always exist in tension with no one providing a dominant or definitive position.

As Woods says, he aims to emphasize the interconnection of different disciplines by repeating a series of 6 thematic issues: how the historical past is represented in contemporary culture, an exploration of the nature everyday in contemporary culture, the political role of esthetic adornment/ornament, how the body as part of the human self is represented, the importance of the metaphor of space in contemporary social experience and the "textualism" of modern knowledge and life. He wishes his book to "function as an introductory guide to students and teachers of cultural theory, modernism and postmodernism in various secondary, further and higher education whose interests mainly lie in the fields of literary and cultural studies." No wonder there is almost no serious treatment of any postmodernist theology or religious thought!