The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism

Stuart Sim, Stuart Sim

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136698323
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This fully revised third edition of The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism provides the ideal introduction to postmodernist thought. Featuring contributions from a cast of international scholars, the Companion contains 19 detailed essays on major themes and topics along with an A-Z of key terms and concepts. As well as revised essays on philosophy, politics, literature, and more, the first section now contains brand new essays on critical theory, business, gender and the performing arts. The concepts section, too, has been enhanced with new topics ranging from hypermedia to global warming. Students interested in any aspect of postmodernism will continue to find this an indispensable resource.

Part I Postmodernism: Its History and Cultural Context

1 Postmodernism and Philosophy

Stuart Sim

DOI: 10.4324/9780203813201-1

Philosophy, particularly the recent French philosophical tradition, has been both a prime site for debate about postmodernism and a source of many of the theories of what constitutes postmodernism. Probably the leading figure to be cited is Jean-François Lyotard, whose book The Postmodern Condition is widely considered to be the most powerful theoretical expression of postmodernism.¹ Lyotard's plea that we should reject the ‘grand narratives’ (that is, universal theories) of Western culture because they have now lost all their credibility, sums up the ethos of postmodernism, with its disdain for authority in all its many guises. There is no longer any point in engaging with, for example, Marxism, the argument goes; rather, we should ignore it as an irrelevance to our lives. Postmodern philosophy provides us with the arguments and techniques to make that gesture of dissent, as well as the means to make value judgements in the absence of such overall authorities.

One of the best ways of describing postmodernism as a philosophical movement would be as a form of scepticism – scepticism about authority, received wisdom, cultural and political norms and so on – and that places it in a long-running tradition in Western thought that stretches back to classical Greek philosophy. Scepticism is a primarily negative form of philosophy, which sets out to undermine other philosophical theories claiming to be in possession of ultimate truth, or of criteria for determining what counts as ultimate truth. The technical term to describe such a style of philosophy is ‘anti-foundational’. Anti-foundationalists dispute the validity of the foundations of discourse, asking such questions as ‘What guarantees the truth of your foundation (that is, starting point)?’ Postmodernism has drawn heavily on the example set by anti-foundationalist philosophers, perhaps most notably the iconoclastic nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose call for a ‘revaluation of all values’ constitutes something of a battle-cry for the movement.²

Before considering postmodernism's sceptical credentials in greater detail, however, it would be helpful to say what, and who, can be regarded as falling under the heading of postmodern philosophy. It will be understood here to mean not just the inclusion of commentators on postmodernism itself like Lyotard, but also the various discourses, such as deconstruction, that go under the name of poststructuralism. Poststructuralism's rejection of the structuralist tradition of thought is yet another gesture of scepticism towards received authority, and can be treated as part of the postmodern intellectual landscape. Although postmodern philosophy is a somewhat disparate area, we can note certain recurrent features, such as that gesture of scepticism, an anti-foundational bias, and an almost reflex dislike of authority, that make it reasonable to discuss it as a recognizable style of philosophy in its own right.

Poststructuralism is a broad cultural movement spanning various intellectual disciplines that has involved a rejection not just of structuralism and its methods, but also the ideological assumptions that lie behind them. It is to be regarded as both a philosophical and a political movement therefore, as is postmodernism in general. Poststructuralism called into question the cultural certainties that structuralism had been felt to embody: certainties such as the belief that the world was intrinsically knowable, and that structuralism gave us a methodological key to unlock the various systems that made up that world. Structuralism takes its cue from the theories of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who revolutionized the study of linguistics in his posthumously published Course in General Linguistics.³ Saussure's major point about language was that it was above all a system: a system with rules and regulations (or internal grammar) that governed how the various elements of language interacted. Language was made up of signs, and signs consisted of two parts, a signifier (word) and a signified (concept), which combined, in an act of mental understanding, to form the sign. Although there was no necessary connection between a word and the object it named (they were ‘arbitrary’, as Saussure admitted), the force of convention ensured that they did not change at anyone's whim. There was at the very least a relative stability to language and the production of meaning, and language was to be viewed as a system of signs which induced a predictable response on the part of the linguistic community.

The linguistic model set up by Saussure formed the basis of structuralist analysis, which applied it to systems in general, making the assumption that every system had an internal grammar that governed its operations. The point of structuralist analysis was to uncover that grammar, whether the system in question was tribal myth, the advertising industry or the world of literature or fashion. Ultimately, what poststructuralists object to is the overall tidiness of the structuralist enterprise, where there are no loose ends and everything falls neatly into place. Thus for a thinker like Claude Lévi-Strauss, or the early Roland Barthes, every detail of a narrative was significant in terms of the structure of the final product (there being no random elements), and narratives fell into specific genres, of which particular instances – say, a given tribal myth – were merely variations on a central theme.⁴ From such a perspective one system (or narrative) comes to seem much like any other, and the analysis of its grammar turns into a fairly predictable exercise, almost as if one knew before-hand what one was going to find. One could even argue, and poststructuralists did, that the analytical techniques being used by the structuralist determined the results. What structuralism seems to allow little scope for is chance, creativity or the unexpected. For a poststructuralist these are much more important than all the similarities between systems, and there is what amounts to a commitment to locating, and dwelling on, dissimilarity, difference and the unpredictability of analysis among poststructuralist thinkers.

Jacques Derrida's deconstruction became one of the most powerful expressions of the poststructuralist ethos. Deconstruction was directed against the system-building side of structuralism, and took issue with the idea that all phenomena were reducible to the workings of systems, with its implication that we could come to have total control over our environment. Derrida was concerned to demonstrate the instability of language, and indeed of systems in general. Signs were not such predictable entities in his view, and there was never any perfect conjunction of signifier and signified to guarantee unproblematical communication. Some ‘slippage’ of meaning always occurred. For one thing, words always contained echoes and traces of other words, with their sound quality, for example, invariably putting one in mind of a range of similar-sounding words. Derrida provided evidence of this slippage in action by means of a concept called ‘différance’, a neologism derived from the French word différence (meaning both difference and deferral).⁵ One could not detect which of the two words was intended in speech (they are pronounced the same), only in writing. To Derrida, what was revealed at this point was the inherent indeterminacy of meaning.

Linguistic meaning was an unstable phenomenon: at all times, and all places, différance applied. (It is worth noting that Derrida denies that différance is a concept; for him it is merely the identification of a process embedded within language itself.) The fondness for pun and word-play within deconstructive writing – a recurrent feature of all its major practitioners – has as its goal the illustration of language's instability, as well as its endlessly creative capacity to generate new and unexpected meanings. Meaning is therefore a fleeting phenomenon that evaporates almost as soon as it occurs in spoken or written language (or keeps transforming itself into new meanings), rather than something fixed that holds over time for a series of different audiences. Derrida contends that all Western philosophy is based on the premise that the full meaning of a word is ‘present’ in the speaker's mind, such that it can be transmitted, without any significant slippage, to the listener. This belief is what he calls the ‘metaphysics of presence’, and for Derrida it is an illusion:⁶ différance always intrudes into communication to prevent the establishment of ‘presence’, or completeness, of meaning. The emphasis on difference, and on what fails to conform to the norm or to system-building, that we find in deconstruction is very characteristic of the postmodern philosophical ethos.

Michel Foucault is another thinker who turned against the system-building and difference-excluding tendencies of structuralist thought. Once again, it is the fact of difference that is emphasized. In Foucault's case, there is a particular interest in marginalized groups whose difference keeps them excluded from political power; groups such as the mentally ill, prisoners and homosexuals. Post-Renaissance culture has been committed to the marginalization, even demonization, of difference, by setting strict norms of behaviour. Foucault has written a series of case studies describing how these norms were implemented in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Western Europe, such that a whole new range of regimented institutions – insane asylums, prisons, hospitals – came into being in order to deal with the ‘different’.⁷ For Foucault these institutions are expressions of political power, and of the way that a dominant faction in society can impose its will on others.

To demonstrate how sexual difference had been demonized in modern society, Foucault turned back to classical times in his three-volume study The History of Sexuality (1976–84) to investigate how homosexuality functioned in Greek and Roman culture.⁸ Greek society was more tolerant of sexual difference than our own, although no less moral in its outlook. In Foucault's parlance, it had a different discourse of sexuality in which no one practice was privileged over others, but homosexuality and heterosexuality flourished side by side. Foucault contrasted this unfavourably to modern times, when heterosexuality was turned into a norm from which all other forms of sexual expression were treated as deviations. This insistence on the norm at the expense of the different is all part of the authoritarianism that thinkers like Foucault associate with modern culture.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus (1972) represented yet another poststructuralist attack on authoritarianism; in this case the authoritarianism embedded within psychoanalytic theory, which, through the mechanism of theories like the Oedipus complex, seeks to control the free expression of human desire. For Deleuze and Guattari individuals are ‘desiring-machines’, who lack the sense of unity we generally associate with individual identity, but who find the opportunity to realize their desire being curbed by the socio-political authorities (with fascism as the most potent example of how the process works).⁹ Psychoanalysis becomes for Deleuze and Guattari a symbol of how desire is suppressed, and in opposition to it they posit ‘schizoanalysis’, based on the experience of the schizophrenic – who in their scheme becomes some kind of ideal model of human behaviour.¹⁰ The political dimension to poststructuralist thought, often somewhat hidden under cloudy metaphysical discussions in deconstruction, is unmistakably foregrounded here.

Difference feminism can also be included under the heading of poststructuralism, in that it queries the supposed rigidity of gender categories. The argument is that gender identity, particularly female, is not fixed, but is instead a fluid process that cannot be reduced to any essence or norm of behaviour (in this instance a patriarchally derived norm of behaviour). Theorists such as Luce Irigaray have used this form of argument to challenge the assumptions of patriarchy, in particular the assumption of specifically male and female gender traits that lead to gender stereotypes that our society still largely adheres to, and uses as a basis for the suppression of women.¹¹

The most influential voice of postmodern philosophy is Jean-François Lyotard, and there is a consistent thread of anti-authoritarianism running through his philosophical writings that we can now recognize as quintessentially postmodern. In his early career Lyotard can be described as a Marxist. He was a member of the group Socialisme ou Barbarie (Socialism or Barbarism), who were dedicated to subjecting Marxist theory to a searching critique from the inside, and he acted as the spokesperson on Algeria for the group's journal. Lyotard's writings on the Algerian war of liberation in the 1950s and 1960s reveal someone who is far from being an orthodox Marxist, and more than willing to call Marxist principles into question.¹² The major objection he registers is that Algeria was being treated by the Communist Party hierarchy as a classic case of proletarian revolution, when in reality it was a peasant society where Marxist categories had little practical value.

After the break-up of Socialisme ou Barbarie in the 1960s Lyotard self-consciously distanced himself from his Marxist past. Like many French intellectuals of his generation he was disenchanted by the pro-establishment position adopted by the French Communist Party in the 1968 Paris événements, and in works such as Libidinal Economy he vented the frustration he felt by then towards official Marxism.¹³ Libidinal Economy claimed that Marxism was unable to encompass the various libidinal drives that all individuals experienced, since these drives lay beyond any theory's control (the argument is similar to the one expressed in Anti-Oedipus). What was precisely wrong with Marxism was that it tried to suppress these energies, and in so doing revealed its latent authoritarianism. Behi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• Preface to the third edition: the modern, the postmodern and the post-postmodern
• Part I Postmodernism: its history and cultural context
• Part II Critical terms, A–Z
• Bibliography
• Index