Chapter 1

In Search of the Postmodern

For the past two decades, the postmodern debates dominated the cultural and intellectual scene
in many fields throughout the world. In aesthetic and cultural theory, polemics emerged over
whether modernism in the arts was or was not dead and what sort of postmodern art was succeeding
it. In philosophy, debates erupted concerning whether or not the tradition of modern philosophy
had ended, and many began celebrating a new postmodern philosophy associated with Nietzsche,
Heidegger, Derrida, Rorty, Lyotard, and others. Eventually, the postmodern assault produced new
social and political theories, as well as theoretical attempts to define the multifaceted aspects of
the postmodern phenomenon itself.1

Advocates of the postmodern turn aggressively criticized traditional culture, theory, and politics,
while defenders of the modern tradition responded either by ignoring the new challenger, by
attacking it in return, or by attempting to come to terms with and appropriate the new discourses
and positions. Critics of the postmodern turn argued that it was either a passing fad (Fo 1986/7;
Guattari 1986), a specious invention of intellectuals in search of a new discourse and source of
cultural capital (Britton 1988), or yet another conservative ideology attempting to devalue emanci-
patory modern theories and values (Habermas 1981 and 1987a). But the emerging postmodern
discourses and problematics raise issues which resist easy dismissal or facile incorporation into
already established paradigms.

In view of the wide range of postmodern disputes, we propose to explicate and sort out the
differences between the most significant articulations of postmodern theory, and to identify their
central positions, insights, and limitations. Yet, as we shall see, there is no unified postmodern
theory, or even a coherent set of positions. Rather, one is struck by the diversities between theories
often lumped together as ‘postmodern’ and the plurality - often conflictual - of postmodern
positions. One is also struck by the inadequate and undertheorized notion of the ‘postmodern’ in
the theories which adopt, or are identified in, such terms. To clarify some of the key words within
the family of concepts of the postmodern, it is useful to distinguish between the discourses of the
modern and the postmodern (see Featherstone 1988).

To begin, we might distinguish between ‘modernity’ conceptualized as the modern age and
‘postmodernity’ as an epochal term for describing the period which allegedly follows modernity.
There are many discourses of modernity, as there would later be of postmodernity, and the term
refers to a variety of economic, political, social, and cultural transformations. Modernity, as
theorized by Marx, Weber, and others, is a historical periodizing term which refers to the epoch
that follows the ‘Middle Ages’ or feudalism. For some, modernity is opposed to traditional
societies and is characterized by innovation, novelty, and dynamism (Berman 1982). The
theoretical discourses of modernity from Descartes through the Enlightenment and its progeny
championed reason as the source of progress in knowledge and society, as well as the privileged
locus of truth and the foundation of systematic knowledge. Reason was deemed competent to
discover adequate theoretical and practical norms upon which systems of thought and action could
be built and society could be restructured. This Enlightenment project is also operative in the
American, French, and other democratic revolutions which attempted to overturn the feudal world
and to produce a just and egalitarian social order that would embody reason and social progress
(Toulmin 1990).

Aesthetic modernity emerged in the new avant-garde modernist movements and bohemian
subcultures, which rebelled against the alienating aspects of industrialization and rationalization,
while seeking to transform culture and to find creative self-realization in art. Modernity entered
everyday life through the dissemination of modern art, the products of consumer society, new
technologies, and new modes of transportation and communication. The dynamics by which
modernity produced a new industrial and colonial world can be described as ‘modernization’ - a
term denoting those processes of individualization, secularization, industrialization, cultural
differentiation, commodification, urbanization, bureaucratization, and rationalization which
together have constituted the modern world.

Yet the construction of modernity produced untold suffering and misery for its victims, ranging
from the peasantry, proletariat, and artisans oppressed by capitalist industrialization to the exclu-
sion of women from the public sphere, to the genocide of imperialist colonialization. Modernity
also produced a set of disciplinary institutions, practices, and discourses which legitimate its modes
of domination and control (see our discussion of Foucault in Chapter 2). The ‘dialectic of
Enlightenment’ (Horkheimer and Adorno 1972) thus described a process whereby reason turned
into its opposite and modernity’s promises of liberation masked forms of oppression and
domination. Yet defenders of modernity (Habermas 1981, 1987a, and 1987b) claim that it has
‘unfulfilled potential’ and the resources to overcome its limitations and destructive effects.

Postmodern theorists, however, claim that in the contemporary high tech media society,
emergent processes of change and transformation are producing a new postmodern society and its
advocates claim that the era of postmodernity constitutes a novel stage of history and novel
sociocultural formation which requires new concepts and theories. Theorists of postmodernity
(Baudrillard, Lyotard, Harvey, etc.) claim that technologies such as computers and media, new
forms of knowledge, and changes in the socioeconomic system are producing a postmodern social
formation. Baudrillard and Lyotard interpret these developments in terms of novel types of
information, knowledge, and technologies, while neo-Marxist theorists like Jameson and Harvey
interpret the postmodern in terms of development of a higher stage of capitalism marked by a
greater degree of capital penetration and homogenization across the globe. These processes are
also producing increased cultural fragmentation, changes in the experience of space and time, and
new modes of experience, subjectivity, and culture. These conditions provide the socioeconomic
and cultural basis for postmodern theory and their analysis provides the perspectives from which
postmodern theory can claim to be on the cutting edge of contemporary developments.

In addition to the distinction between modernity and postmodernity in the field of social theory,
the discourse of the postmodern plays an important role in the field of aesthetics and cultural
theory. Here the debate revolves around distinctions between modernism and postmodernism in
the arts.2 Within this discourse, ‘modernism’ could be used to describe the art movements of the
modern age (impressionism, l’art pour l’art, expressionism, surrealism, and other avant-garde
movements), while ‘postmodernism’ can describe those diverse aesthetic forms and practices
which come after and break with modernism. These forms include the architecture of Robert
Venturi and Philip Johnson, the musical experiments of John Cage, the art of Warhol and
Rauschenberg, the novels of Pynchon and Ballard, and films like Blade Runner or Blue
Velvet. Debates centre on whether there is or is not a sharp conceptual distinction between
modernism and postmodernism and the relative merits and limitations of these movements.

The discourses of the postmodern also appear in the field of theory and focus on the critique of
modern theory and arguments for a postmodern rupture in theory. Modern theory - ranging from
the philosophical project of Descartes, through the Enlightenment, to the social theory of Comte,
Marx, Weber and others3 - is criticized for its search for a foundation of knowledge, for its
universalizing and totalizing claims, for its hubris to supply apodictic truth, and for its allegedly
fallacious rationalism. Defenders of modern theory, by contrast, attack postmodern relativism,
irrationalism, and nihilism.

More specifically, postmodern theory provides a critique of representation and the modern belief
that theory mirrors reality, taking instead ‘perspectivist’ and ‘relativist’ positions that theories at
best provide partial perspectives on their objects, and that all cognitive representations of the world
are historically and linguistically mediated. Some postmodern theory accordingly rejects the
totalizing macroperspectives on society and history favoured by modern theory in favour of
microtheory and micropolitics (Lyotard 1984a). Postmodern theory also rejects modern
assumptions of social coherence and notions of causality in favour of multiplicity, plurality,
fragmentation, and indeterminacy. In addition, postmodern theory abandons the rational and
unified subject postulated by much modern theory in favour of a socially and linguistically
decentred and fragmented subject.

Thus, to avoid conceptual confusion, in this book we shall use the term ‘postmodernity’ to
describe the supposed epoch that follows modernity, and ‘postmodernism’ to describe movements
and artifacts in the cultural field that can be distinguished from modernist movements, texts, and
practices. We shall also distinguish between ‘modern theory’ and ‘postmodern theory’, as well as
between ‘modern politics’ which is characterized by party, parliamentary, or trade union politics
in opposition to ‘postmodern politics’ associated with locally based micropolitics that challenge a
broad array of discourses and institutionalized forms of power.

To help clarify and illuminate the confusing and variegated discourse of the postmodern, we
shall first provide an archaeology of the term, specifying its history, early usages, and conflicting
meanings (1.1). Next, we situate the development of contemporary postmodern theory in the
context of post-1960s France where the concept of a new postmodern condition became an
important theme by the late 1970s (1.2). And in 1.3 we sketch the problematic of our interrogations
of postmodern theory and the perspectives that will guide our inquiries throughout this book.