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However, this response to
fragmentation has one difference; whereasmodernism registers a
deep nostalgia for an earlier age when faith andauthority were
intact, post-modernism joyfully responds to
disintegration.Ezra Pound sees his poetry as a "rag
bag" and regrets that this is all thatis possible in the
present times. Eliot bemoans the impulse towardsparataxis or a
heap of broken images: "These fragments I have shored
againstmy ruins". There is grief, despondency, a kind of
lamentation here which ismissing in post-modernism that
accepts the idea of fragmentation withanimation, exhilaration
and celebration, a liberatory move that reactsagainst the
claustrophobia of fixed systems. The difference is,
therefore,in tenor and mind-set or mood.
Grave
modernist asceticism stands opposed by over-indulgence in
gaudiness, in mixing the popular with the high, or the bad
taste mixtures of qualities so visible in Craig Raine's poetry
where peculiarly colourful mixtures of imagery and vocabulary
exist only at the surface and are joyful in their existence
without any depth or significance.
If this
difference is clear we can respond to last few decades that
havewitnessed many radical changes in our social and political
existence, withtraditional ideas and ways of living
increasingly being called intoquestion. Such questioning has
lead to a crisis of authority that goesunder the general name
of "post-modernism". The gaps, the
inconsistenciesand incoherence that expose the myth of
"coherence" in the systemic andsystemic values
advocated by the ruling ideology indicate the rituals
anddiscourses of institutions endeavouring to remain at the
centre. The powerof the institutional discourse to form the
individual's unconscious andthereby construct the subject is
clearly the role of repressive andideological structures. The
autonomous subject does not exist and this isthe obsession of
post-structuralist Marxists who reduce virtually any aspectof
contemporary society to a symptom of bourgeois ideology. All
thinkingis necessarily affected and largely determined by
prior ideologicalcommitment, or a theoretical perspective.
Therefore, in
a general sense, post-modernism is to be regarded as
arejection of most of the cultural certainties on which life
in the West hasbeen structured ever since the Enlightenment
which promised culturalprogress and an ever-improving quality
of life. This "Enlightenment project"now stands
under scrutiny and suspicion as what it promised in the
areasof emancipation of mankind from economic want and
political oppression hasmiserably failed. In the view of
Lyotard, Braudillard, Foucault, Derridaand Jameson this
project, laudable though it may have been at one time,
hasinstead come to oppress mankind, forcing it into certain
set ways of thoughtand action. Resistance to this is in turn
the project of the post-modernistswho are invariably critical
of universalising theories. As Lyotard writes,"Instead of
totalising and unifying narratives at the centre of culture,
anyformer hierarchy of learning has now given way to an
immanent and, as itwere, flat network of areas of
inquiry."
Knowledge now
consists of aheterogeneity of competing local knowledges in
which there are simply"islands of determinism".
Uncertainty about traditional humanism and ideasof progress
urges all to wage a war on totality and authoritarianism.
Eachdiscourse is now judged in terms of a "paralogy",
the ability of parallelrather than hierarchically arranged
knowledges. There is thus a weakening of any sense of central
social authority in favour of a plurality ofacceptable ethics
and lifestyles. Progressive conflict between the narratives
has unfortunately resulted in a scenario where one of the
major concerns of contemporary theory has been the question of
language. Language here is taken to have no fixity and or
correspondencewith reality. Everything is a linguistic
construct which conditions andpredetermines what we see,
giving rise to infinite webs of meaning. Theview that the sign
is not a unit and that the nature of signification
isessentially unstable brought into the debate the questioning
of alloverarching truths. This anti-essentialism was the
result of the fluidnature of all basic givens of our gender
identity, our individual selfhoodand all notions of
literature. Stereotyping and the view that there arefixed and
reliable essences in the construction of the "other"
in areas ofrace, class and gender now stood challenged as all
these are taken to becontingent categories denoting a status
which is temporary, provisional andcircumstance-dependent.
To deny this
is to put one's position beyond scrutiny. The post-modernist
thus distrusts all totalising notions, allergic as he is to
any appeal to a generalised human nature that denies the
heterogeneity and relativeness of women, minorities or lesgays.
"Postmodern
Thought" constitutes a comprehensive survey of these
radical shifts in human thought and cultural perspective. The
first section throwslight through various essays by eminent
scholars and theoreticians on diverse areas of discourse,
ranging through the arts, social sciences, politics, science,
popular culture, the media and feminist studies. The second
section offers concise and clear definitions of the confusing
terminology of contemporary theory as well as a valuable guide
to the relevant figures who are responsible for the
development of post-modern thought. Derrida's mode of reading
a text with full attention to its multiple meanings remains at
the foundations of the deconstructive unknotting of the
inbuilt instability in all linguistic structures. Rather than
attempting to find a true meaning, a consistent point of view
or aunified message in a given work, a deconstructive reading
carefully teasesout, to use Barbara Johnson's words, "the
warring forces of signification"at play and waiting to be
read, in what might be called, the textualunconscious.
Therefore, at
the end of the day we can argue that such a critical
practiceis interventionist or rather political. A
deconstructive reading turns atext's logic against itself
thereby showing the inconsistencies andcontradictions between
what the author intends and what the languageactually ends up
in doing. The text often glosses over or ignores
theinequalities or hierarchies which are silently or
"absently" present anyway.For instance, centres of
power are often difficult to name, because they areso integral
to our culture. But Derrida argues that we can locate
thesecentres by looking at the hierarchies so clear in the
binary oppositions ofmale over female, nature over culture,
game over play.
We do value
the concept of order more than its opposite "chaos".
Such binary oppositions have to be reversed according to
deconstruction. Theprivileging of one term over and above the
other (such as good over evil,light over darkness, reason over
emotion, master over slave, model over copy,original over
reproduction, literature over criticism, high culture
overpopular culture) reveals the preference for one term and
always works at theexpense or exclusion of the other,
subordinated term. For instance,feminists not only question
the position of women vis-à-vis men orwesterners vis-à-vis
the subaltern, but deconstruct the very system ofconceptual
opposition which has enabled, and still perpetuates,
suchmetaphysical and ideological values in western society.
Deconstruction isone method of exposing, reversing and
dismantling the binary oppositionswith their hierarchies of
values. Western thinking pitches one term againstanother but
fails to see that each term both differs from and defers to
theother term (Derrida's differance captures both senses of
this movementsimultaneously) and thus also fails to
acknowledge that even though "good",for example, is
distinct from "evil" the privileged term
"good" alsodepends for its meaning on its
association with its subordinate opposite"evil".
Therefore, some degree of contamination between opposite
termscannot be ignored; each is a trace of the other and clear
demarcations arenot possible. The obvious corollary to this is
the fact of the unstablenature of meaning.
This view of
"truth" or "meaning" is one way of
politically disrupting thegoverning ideas of our culture by
showing how they have been constructed andhow certain facts,
views or contrary opinions have been left out, pushedaside or
marginalised. It is here that all centres of power are
deprived ofany universality or transcendence. Derrida is of
the view that "languagebears within itself the necessity
of its own critique".
Thus "logocentrism"
or the belief in an extra-systemic presence or centrewhich
underwrites and fixes linguistic meaning but is itself beyond
scrutinystands dismantled. The sense of security provided by a
belief in logos isidealistic and illusory. A constant need to
subvert centres, to recognisethe arbitrariness of their
creation and perpetuation is to begin to allownew
possibilities to exist, to permit a new awareness of the
limitations andpossibilities of one's self and to permit a new
tolerance of others, nomatter how different. However if we
were to return to the question ofnarrative, no single story is
left to present a coherent picture of ourworld; as many
stories are told as there are groups. And no one story hasany
historical or cultural or philosophical priority.
In this context
post-modernism comes along and replaces the story of unity
with the riot of difference. The danger here is one of short
term struggles by small fragmented groups emphasising race,
gender, sexuality, class and ethnicity, leading to the
replacement of the general political will of the people and a
national political credo aimed towards some national goals.
Identitypolitics is a fine liberal movement over the past few
decades, but ittestifies to the disturbed political situations
and genocide almost all overthe world. Post-modernism is thus
nothing but inherently a paradox.
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