COMS 633 Postmodern Rhetoric Lecture Notes: 17 September 2002 Bernardo Attias

Introduction to Postmodernism Judith Butler best frames the problematic of postmodernism when she emphasizes the question, "what is postmodernism?," and even "is there, after all, something called postmodernism?" Her refusal to engage the question as one that can be answered in systematic terms allows her to articulate notions of postmodernism - postmodernisms, perhaps - without reducing postmodernism to an overly simplistic synthesis of propositions. What Butler is describing, at least in part, is the tension between (1) the desire to stand on firm theoretical foundations when grounding a politics on the one hand and (2) the postmodern insistence that all such foundations are the effect-structures of discourse rather than ahistorical and ontological realities. Her understanding of postmodernism, and of the importance of avoiding the disciplinary logic of discourses which purport to explain categories in absolutist and totalizing terms, is fundamentally consistent with the theoretical impulses driving this course. Nevertheless, pedagogical circumstances require at least some such simplification and the corresponding textual violence. The "post-" of postmodernism inevitably brings up the question of periodization. "Post-" clearly means "after," but it is usually interpreted as marking an abrupt and even violent break between the before and the post-. In some cases the post- is interpreted as "anti-" or against. With postmodernism, and to a lesser extent poststructuralism, the break between before and after is posited as quite radical, even a revolution or at least a subversion of modernism (and structuralism). The readings from the 2 dictionaries lay out several possible understandings of postmodernism; it is worth detailing these:
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Postmodernism as an artistic practice This notion of postmodernism presumes a kind of artistic practice categorized as "modernist" and understands postmodernism as a specific group of artistic practices which followed modernism. Modernism, sometimes "high modernism," generally refers to artistic movements of the early twentieth century, including Dada, Surrealism, Futurism, and Cubism, as well as writers such as Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. Postmodernism in this sense is not anti-modernism -- it rather rejects certain tenets of high modernism (tenets which are in fact shared with Romantic Realism and other movements that high modernism purported to reject). These tenets include the determinacy of meaning and the primacy of the unified subject. Determinacy of Meaning Saussere, langue/parole, chain of signification, "infinite regress" of signifiers Modernists sought "higher truths" even as they engaged in disrupting the play of signification (e.g. collage, Dada sound poetry)

Unified Subject Notion of the unified individual self as the origin, arbiter, center, essence, and telos of theory and practice. (discuss ... Kantian/Hegelian philosophical background for this notion)

In artistic practice, this view of postmodernism emerges as a kind of play, transgressions of the traditional conventions of modern art. More specifically, we see postmodern art forms blurring the boundaries between art and commerce (e.g. Warhol) or mixing styles in disruptive ways (postmodern architecture; hip-hop). Such practices foreground the indeterminacy of meaning (since they disrupt easy categorization and defy linguistic determinism) and the decentering of the subject. At the same time, other high modernist concepts - for example, themes such as alienation and absurdity, and the desire to subvert dominant modes of thought - often find their way into postmodern art and architecture. Thus, it is important to distinguish postmodernism from a nihilistic antimodernism that would reject everything modernist. Many theorists focus only on the discontinuous aspects of postmodern practice while ignoring the continuity that is also an aspect of its relation to modernism. [Note: Distinguish "Modernism" or "High Modernism" as the art movements of the twentieth century from "modernism," usually identified as a set of philosophical perspectives on the unified subject, etc., that is inherited from the Enlightenment. The naming conventions I tend to use - the capital "M" for the artistic movements - are not universal, but may be useful to keep these things distinct].
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Postmodernism as cultural practice Subvert "high" vs. "low" culture boundaries Another characteristic of postmodernism as generally defined is the breaking down of boundaries between high and low culture, or between elite culture and "popular" culture. Postmodern theory tends to question this hierarchy, and to point out its disciplinary function. While the works of Beethoven and Shakespeare have received praise and serious scholarly attention over the centuries as works of "high art," popular and mass cultural products such as dime store novels or television shows have only recently been deemed worthy of such attention. Art vs. commerce Another binary hierarchy that is subverted in postmodern cultural practices is the distinction between art and commerce, or, more precisely, between art as a cultural practice and art as a commercial practice. Andy Warhol is, of course, the exemplar of this kind of art. Of course, art and commerce have been intertwined for as long as artists have wanted to make a living. But the rise of advertising at the end of the 19th century, the rise of mechanical reproduction of artistic forms, and the move from Romantic Realism to modernism all contributed to an ideology of artistic integrity as something irrevocably opposed to the commercial marketplace. [Note - While such an ideology can be found throughout the history of art, I would argue that the form it takes in the twentieth century semiotic glut is unique]. Thus Warhol is notable not only for breaking down the high/low art distinction (putting Marilyn Monroe's face in a museum) but also for subverting this artistic ideology (the infamous Campbell's soup cans). Pastiche vs. parody Postmodern art and culture is also noted for its endless collage of signifiers - freely indulging in appropriation (like the modernists), but doing so in a manner which resists easy interpretation of context. Rather than parody, in which artists appropriate content in order to forward a coherent critique or subversion of the original text, postmodern pastiche involves taking texts out of their contexts completely and

combining them in ways which often don't even refer to the original text. The first definition in the reader points out with respect to postmodern fiction, for example: "With these works it is not always possible to tell if one is reading an autobiography, a history, a novel, or literary criticism. Part of the point of such works is to exploit these distinctions as artificial and to emphasize the fragmentary quality of all texts." (235) Some critics (e.g. Jameson) have criticized pastiche as the creation of a depthless present in which history flounders meaninglessly. Others emphasize the potentially progressive qualities of such art -- Russell Porter's analysis of rap music as a discourse of fragments is an excellent example. Porter writes: "Hip-hop's triad of graffiti, dance, and rap are post-apocalyptic arts, scratches on the decaying surface of post-industrial urban America; they are not monuments to some romanticized 'human spirit,' but fundamentally anti-monumental arts.... Instead of grand projects cut from a single block, hip-hop rebuilds art from parts, mobile and recombinant," (8).
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Postmodernity as a technological & political-economic era Semiotic Glut & the Decline of Originality The twentieth century has seen an explosion of signification thanks to the rise of mass media technologies, commercial advertising, film, television, and the Internet. We are experiencing the semiotic glut discussed by Bender and Wellbery in what they call the age of rhetoricality. The return of rhetoric described by Bender and Wellbery is due to this rapid proliferation of signs throughout Western culture. An important development here is the development of technologies of mass reproduction, and the ability to create works of art that can only be reproduced (e.g. there is no "original" for a photograph). Walter Benjamin pointed out that such technologies fundamentally subvert the ideologies of original genius in modern art. Thus a common theme is the "death of the author" or the "end of the original." This is also related to the dispersal of the subject. War Technology Another characteristic of the postmodern era is the rapid proliferation of war technology throughout the twentieth century. While modernity is associated with the war technology of World War I (brutal trench warfare and endless wars of attrition; cf. the opposing takes on war technology forwarded by Dada and Futurism), postmodernity is associated with war technologies of aerial bombardment and nuclear weapons. There is movement from wars of attrition to wars of annihilation. There is a fundamental distancing from the horrors of war thanks to the use of the airplane -WWI was seen as horrifying and devastating; the airplane promised quick victories and total annihilation of the enemy without having to confront their destruction firsthand. But most significant was the development of the atomic bomb and the Nazi Holocaust. Both demonstrated the human capability for brutal annihilation of ourselves. The bomb showed that total annihilation was technologically feasible; the Holocaust showed that it was emotionally and politically feasible. Both threw radically into question any easy notion of technological and historical progress. (More on this below). Late Capitalism: Flexible Accumulation and Globalization The latter part of the twentieth century is characterized by a major economic shift in international capitalism that is often associated with postmodernity. This new era has been described by Ernest Mandel as "late capitalism," which he notes has the same underlying structures as previous forms of capitalism, but with important shifts in the marketplace. From Edgar & Sedgwick: "[David] Harvey argues that the postmodern can be taken to signify a decentralised, diversified stage in the development of the market

place, in which the Fordist rationale of production concentrated in a single site (the factory) has been replaced by a form of manufacture which coordinates a diversity of sources (e.g. parts of one final product are made in more than one place and then shipped elsewhere for purposes of assembly) in search of greater flexibility of production. In turn, this has had the effect of producing workforces which are mobile and disposable in a way in which the earlier labour markets of Fordism were not," (294). Harvey sees postmodernity as the way in which late capitalism has been able to manage its own contradictions in order to avoid systematic collapse or revolution. Thus, postmodernity from this perspective emerges as international capitalism responds to the crises of the modern era -- the great confrontations between labor and capital at the turn of the twentieth century, for example, the rise of livable working conditions in the industrialized nations, etc. Flexible accumulation is the technical term for the structural shift in capitalist market systems, while globalization is the much more popular term for the effects of this shift across the globe. The situation at the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the 21st is the decline of significance of national boundaries and the emergence of truly global capitalist exploitation (e.g. NAFTA, Nike, Shell...)as well as the corresponding emergence of global forms of resistance (e.g. Zapatistas, the Internet, WTO protest). Some theorists (e.g. Jameson) criticize these developments as a new apologetics for capitalist exploitation, while others (e.g. Burbach) call attention to their significance as potentially liberating forms of resistance emerge.
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Postmodernism as a philosophical stance Decentering of the Subject - structuralism and poststructuralism This is a dominant theme of postmodernism in general and poststructuralism in particular: the subject that experiences is no longer seen as the origin, arbiter, telos, center, or referent of theory and practice. Technically, this is actually a lesson of structuralism: structuralism posits that human consciousness and experience are not objective, ahistorical "essences," but rather are symptoms or effects of complex relationships. This is structuralism's fundamental critique of humanism; it teaches us that the "subject" is not an autonomous free agent but rather a part of a larger structure. Structuralism is a depth hermeneutic - it teaches that by focusing on the individual pieces of the structure we might see the larger structure underneath. Individuals are simply manifestations of larger, more powerful structures. Barthes' definition of structuralism - cited by Best and Kellner (18) - may be useful here: "The aim of all structuralist activity ... is to reconstitute an object, and, by this process, to make known the rules of functioning, or 'functions,' of this object. The structure is therefore effectively a simulacrum of the object which ... brings out something that remained invisible, or, if you like, unintelligible in the natural object." Best and Kellner continue, "The structuralist revolution thus described social phenomena in terms of linguistic and social structures, rules, codes, and systems, while rejecting the humanism which had previously shaped the human and social sciences," (19). Poststructuralism teaches that individual parts of the structure may also subvert the structure - that while the individual may be a manifestation of a larger structure, it also has the power to bring the structure to crisis, to help the structure mutate into something other than itself. Thus poststructuralism takes the lessons of structuralism quite seriously, but develops a theory that more coherently accounts for historical change.

Judith Butler notes that the centering of the subject - the "impossible two-step" by which we (must) pretend that what is decentered (the subject) is actually whole and complete - is actually a disciplinary mechanism. The decentering of the subject, sometimes even referred to ominously as the death of the subject, has roots beyond structuralism, in the critiques of the subject leveled in the work of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. [more about that next week] Death of Metanarratives and the Crisis of Foundations This perspective, popularized by Jean-Franois Lyotard's influential (but often incoherent) book The Postmodern Condition, holds that the grand narratives of the modern era -- such narratives as the inevitability of progress, the triumph of individuality, the primacy of scientific truth, the march of revolution -- are not just oversimplified but also oppressive, even tyrannical. Our very understanding of what constitutes "truth" or "knowledge" has been transformed by the postmodern era -- Edgar and Sedgwick argue that here "the postmodern [is] conceived of in terms of a crisis in our ability to provide an adequate, 'objective' account of reality," (295). The postmodern is characterized in part by a radical skepticism toward claims of absolute truth and toward any foundational proposition that is thought to ground theory and practice. Critiques of Truth and History The rise of "rhetoricality" discussed in Bender and Wellbery is a renewal of the critiques of truth and objectivity we saw in ancient Greece. Nietzsche's work in particular undermined the notion of stable truth and objectivity. Postmodern theorists develop this argument in various contexts, showing how "truth" is the product of human labor and intention rather than something objective and ahistorical. Truths do not exist outside of human social relations - they are imbricated in power relations, and we produce knowledge through the exercise of power, and vice versa. Knowledge can itself be an exercise of power and disciplinarity. Postmodern theorists offer various evaluations of history and historicity that are informed by this critique of truth. Jameson, for example, suggests that there is a structural transformation in postmodern conceptions of history from a chronological progression from past to present to an endless chain of signifiers without context. Foucault, on the other hand, offers organic metaphors of history as genealogy. Historical Context of Postmodern Philosophy If none of this sounds particularly new, it is worth noting as Butler does that "the postmodern ought not to be confused with the new," (6). Nonetheless, three significant historical events (along with the other technological changes mentioned above) contextualize the renewed significance of these claims in the latter twentieth century and beyond: WWII, Stalin, and May '68. v WWII As noted above, WWII marks a fundamental departure from the history of warfare because of the technological ability and the will to human annihilation. The impact of these events on the world is incalculable, and it looms like a shadow over the history of Western philosophy. Some have marked it as a fundamental challenge to the Hegelian narrative of progress towards Absolute Knowledge. Leo Strauss wrote "Hegel's rule over Germany came to an end the day Hitler came to

power." Emil Fackenheim noted that there would be no room in Hegel's notion of human progress towards Absolute Knowledge "for an idolatry that revels in the defilement of everything human and blasphemous against everything divine; nor for an anti-society whose factories are geared to but one ultimate produce, and that is death. Leaving room for no absolute evil anywhere, his thought leaves room for it, least of all, in the Christian Europe of modern times. Yet this is precisely the space and time of Auschwitz and Buchenwald." The gas chambers and atom bomb bring the Enlightenment narrative to crisis dramatically. Western philosophy, at least according to the philosophers, most visibly completes itself in modern history; these events are the products not of blundering irrationality or temporary insanity but rather of human rationality and logic carefully and systematically applied to real human problems. They thus constitute an immense and harrowing portrait of the triumph of reason. The critique of reason that emerged in post-WWII Continental philosophy -- which is in some ways simply a playing out of the critique of reason that runs through Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud -- is not necessarily a rejection of reason. At its best, it is a reasoned critique of reason (see esp. Derrida). A critique which takes place through reason while at the same time marking, and even displacing, the limits of reason. v Stalinism The impact of Stalin historically, particularly on the emancipatory narratives of human history, e.g. Marxism, cannot be overestimated. The crisis of Marxism of the postwar era is due to two historical facts: first, the revolutions predicted by Marx (which should have occurred in the industrialized capitalist nations) didn't occur, and second, the revolutions that did occur (in agricultural and feudalist nations) failed spectacularly, producing miserable dictatorships rather than free societies. It was felt that the totalizing reductionism of Marxism had their logical conclusion and most visible completion in the Gulags of Stalin. Various "postmarxisms" developed in response to this historical reality -- most of them offer some kind of Marxist critique of Marxism. Other postmodern philosophies - particularly Baudrillard - develop this critique into a complete reworking of social theory beyond Marxism. v The Events of '68 (esp. France in May) The backdrop is decolonization in the third world, esp. Tunisia, Algeria, and of course Vietnam. There is a growing crisis in powerful institutions in industrialized nations at this time - the civil rights movement in the US, third world liberation movements throughout Africa and the Middle East, and a growing intellectual climate of discontent with contemporary institutions. Franz Fanon published The Wretched of the Earth, with an introduction by the influential philosopher JeanPaul Sartre, in 1967. Against this backdrop, the Spring of 1968 was a climax to a long period of confrontation between institutions of power and the disaffected. While there were things going around all over the world, four events stand out:
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The Tet Offensive in Vietnam: Began in January of 1968, and decisively turned around American elite opinion surrounding the war in Vietnam. North Vietnam's Four-star General Vo Nguyen Giap led a surprise offensive against

American and South Vietnamese forces during their lunar New Year's celebrations ("Tet" is the Vietnamese New Year). On New Year's morning, Vietcong forces attacked every major South Vietnamese stronghold at once. The result, though costly in North Vietnamese lives, was the strategic humiliation of American and allied forces in front of the mass media. The notion that we were winning the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese was decisively refuted not only in the public mind but also in the mind of many leaders. This exposed the futility of the war but also marked a crisis in public trust in leadership.
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Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia: Alexandr Dubcek became Czech president on April 8th and set forth many reforms to create "socialism with a human face." Ludvik Vaculik published a short text called "2000 Words to Workers, Farmers, Scientists, Artists, and Everyone," which was highly influential. The piece called on people to struggle against the things they felt were wrong and to free themselves in their everyday lives. Jazz and other manifestations of "imperialist" popular culture began cropping up throughout Czechoslovakia. On August 20-1, 1968, the Soviet tanks came across the border and put an end to the festivities brutally and decisively. Chicago Democratic Convention (August 1968): Another crisis in American public confidence came when the protests at the Democratic Convention led to unrestrained brutality and bloodletting by Chicago Police. Americans lost faith in their institutions' ability to tolerate active dissent. Paris Uprising (May 1968): A nationwide strike began at universities in France. The groundwork had been laid by the events of Strasbourg in 1966 and the publication of "On the Poverty of Student Life" by the Situationist International, along with Raoul Vanegeim's Revolution of Everyday Life . The strike started at universities but spilled into the streets and factories, eventually shutting down the entire country for a period of time. The strike helped discredit communist and other opposition leaders in France who actually resisted the strike, urging people to go along with the government. It's also important to see the strike as part of a growing revolt against the boredom and angst of contemporary consumer society. Lefebvre's Critique of Everyday Life had been out for some time now and influenced the Situationist tracts. During and briefly after May 1968, most of the Continental philosophers regarded as "postmodern" wrote important texts, including Derrida ("The Ends of Man" following Of Grammatology ), Baudrillard (System of Objects), Deleuze and Guattari (Anti-Oedipus), etc. More importantly, the events of '68 led to an overall dissatisfaction with the political direction of much French social theory, and contributed to a feeling that the late twentieth century was a new period in political and social reality, which required new theoretical tools.