Postmodernism
Description
(written in the context of therapeutic practice)
By Emiliano Gonzalez & Marie Faubert:
(and Phenomenology)
"An alternative perspective to Modernism is postmodernism. Klages (2005) states that modernism gave way to postmodernism. Stapa (2016) affirms that the arrival of postmodernism was the end of modernism. The term “postmodern” can be traced to the historian Arnold Toynbee in the late 1940’s who applied this concept as a way to critique the rigid rationalism of the modernist approach, especially in what he called the “schism of the soul” experienced after World War II; however, he provided no definition.
Stapa (2016) states postmodernism tends to be complex and over time the definition changes making it difficult to define. He further states that specific and fixed terms, boundaries and truths are almost non-existence. This is important in how we understand counseling perspectives that have developed within a postmodern perspective. Toynbee was emulating the art historian Roger Fry who used the term “Postimpressionism” as a way to distinguish the artistic style made after society accepted Impressionism; the prefix “post” meant very little, except that time had transpired from one movement to another, but not that the previous style had expired (1911). In other words, Postimpressionism’s very definition and existence depended on the persistent advancements made by Impressionism; likewise, what is sometimes referred to as postmodern counseling today tends to be grounded in modernist practice approaches. With that said, modernism assumed, somewhat naively, that people were developing towards complete rational behavior and objectivity in an evolutionary sense. On the other hand, postmodernism recognizes that people and human behavior is complex, sometimes rational and sometimes emotional, and thus subjective. Crouse (2005) states that in postmodernism, there is “no one (true) world view that offers an explanation to all life’s issues and that paradigms are valid only within a community.”
Agger (1991) posits from a pragmatic perspective that the “social world from the multiple perspectives of class, race, gender and other identifying group affiliations” are examined to deconstruct existing versions of social reality and give voice to the ‘other’ whose voice may have been lost due to the positivism/modernism approach. Agger (1991) further adds that knowledge tends to be contextualized by its historical and cultural nature and that particular modes of knowledge can be defined by the multiplicity of people’s subject positions. Other authors emphasize this but also consider the different social, historical, political, financial, spiritual, cultural, and linguistic aspects, and each person’s varied experiences (Stapa, 2016; Crouse, 2013; Akuul, 2010; Ghisi, 2008; Schulte & Cochrane, 1995). From the perspective of postmodernism, clients are authorities of their own lives (Anderson, 1997).
Akuul (2010) suggests that there is always more than one perspective and each perspective represents a particular world view. As such, collaborative-dialogic practice requires counselors to relate to clients from an open, accepting, and respectful perspective (Schulte & Cochrane, 1995). And, to try to understand a client’s reality and world view. Clients understand themselves better than anyone else. Therefore, Collaborative-dialogic counselors want to listen to hear, wondering and being curious, and always wanting and trying to make sure they understand what they hear, what the client wants them to understand. Prochaska & Norcross (2010) suggest Collaborative-dialogic counselors guide clients through the processes of change in general. That is, most clients come to counseling because they want to change or want something in their lives to change. They may even have successfully changed in the past and may have developed strategies and techniques (their knowledge) with which they are already comfortable and competent.
Durning (1993) states that postmodernism rejects the tenets of positivism and uses phenomenology to interpret the nature of knowledge by using a hermeneutic paradigm of inquiry. The ideas of order, coherence, sequence, scientific truths, cause and effect are questioned and challenged; and life experiences and situations may be thought of as open-ended.. Acknowledging the client’s knowledge of their life is part of a redistribution or equalization of power and allows counselors to participate and walk with their clients in a process of deconstructing, constructing and reconstructing their knowledge and thus new ways of knowing evolve. The client is involved in this process of making decisions. Not every counselor is comfortable with this approach. A redistribution of control over the direction of therapy can be seen as a loss of power or being in charge; many have no qualms with moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar while for others, this process can be nerve wracking (Castillo, 1983).
Anderson (1997) and Anderson & Gehart (2017) point out the subjective view of clients about their own lives is essential to effective outcomes in therapy. Anderson (1997) uses the phrase not knowing to describe this sensitivity to the world views and perspectives of clients. Another way of thinking about collaborative-dialogic practice is to think of counselors walking with clients. The conversation between them is mutual and reciprocal as they engage with each other in a dialogic process of looking into what the client is concerned about. The word dialogic in collaborative-dialogic practice is essential. Dialogic implies equality and equity between counselors and clients. counselors can be dialogic with clients only when they respect clients as equal human beings, equal persons; when there is no one true world view (Crouse, 2013)."
Characteristics
By Emiliano Gonzalez & Marie Faubert:
1. "All aspects of the universe are interconnected; it is impossible to separate figure from ground and subject from object;
2. There are no absolutes; thus, human functioning cannot be reduced to laws or principles, and human behavior cannot be reduced to notions of cause and effect;
3. Human behavior can be understood only in the context in which it occurs;
4. The subjective frame of reference of human beings is the only legitimate source of knowledge;
5. Truth is relative from one individual to another as personal views and opinions differ respecting and valuing inclusive beliefs of each individual; and
6. Events occur outside human beings. As persons understand their environment and participate in these events, they define themselves and their environment."
Discussion
What a critic of modernity can appreciate in the postmodern critique
Alexander Dugin:
"What attracts the radical critic of Western European Modernity to Postmodernism is:
1. Phenomenology and working with the notion of intentionality (Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, Ehrenfels, Fink).
2. Structuralism and the identification of an autonomous ontology of language, text, discourse (Saussure, Trubetskoij, Jakobson, Propp, Greimas, Ricœur, Dumézil).
3. Cultural pluralism and interest in archaic societies (Boas, Mauss, Lévi-Strauss).
4. The discovery of the sacred as the most important factor in existentialism (Durkheim, Eliade, Bataille, Caillois, Gerard, Blanchot).
5. Existentialism and the philosophy of Dasein (Heidegger and his epigones).
6. Acceptance of psychoanalytic themes as a continuous 'dream-work' that subverts the mechanisms of rationality (Freud, Jung, Lacan).
7. Deconstruction as contextualisation (Heidegger).
8. Attention to narration as myth (Bachelard, J. Durand).
9. Critique of racism, ethnocentrism and Western supremacism (Gramsci, Boas - Personality and Culture, New Anthropology).
10. Critique of the scientific image of the world (Newton) and the rationality that justifies it (mainly Cartesian-Lockian) (Foucault, Feyerabend, Latour).
11. Demonstration of the fragility, arbitrariness and falsity of the basic attitudes of Modernity (Cioran, Blaga, Latour).
12. Pessimism towards Western European civilisation, unmasking the utopian mythologies of the 'bright future' and 'progress' (Spengler, brothers Jünger, Cioran).
13. Sociology - primarily functionalism (Durkheim, Mauss), which shows the illusory nature of the individual's claims to freedom from society and rational-psychological sovereignty.
14. Exposition of the nihilism of the New Age (Nietzsche, Heidegger).
15. Relativeisation of man (Nietzsche, Jünger).
16. The Discovery of Man's Interiority (Mounier, Corbin, Bataille, Jambet).
17. Political theology (Schmitt, Agamben)."
(https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/alternative-postmodernism-unnamed-phenomenon)
What is to be radically rejected in Postmodernism?
Alexander Dugin:
"Let us now highlight the characteristics of Postmodernism that are probably responsible for this totalitarian renaissance.
1. Progressivism. This time, however, it is paradoxical, since 'progress' is now seen as the dismantling of faith in a 'bright future', the overthrow of utopia and the project. We can call it 'black progressivism' or 'dark enlightenment' (N. Land).
2. Materialism. This is not simply an uncritical inheritance from Modernity, but a superior attitude, since earlier forms of materialism are recognised as too 'idealistic'. Now 'real materialism' must be justified. (Deleuze, Kristeva).
3. Relativism. All universalism is criticised, i.e. the reduction to unifying higher instances of the surrounding multitude, which is projected onto all forms of vertical hierarchies and taxonomies. Relativism itself is elevated to unquestionable dogma (Lyotard, Negri and Hard).
4. Post-structuralism. Recognition of the structuralist method as insufficient because it does not cover historical and social dynamics and prohibits (or consciously preaches) mutations. Hence the call to overcome structuralism. (Foucault, Deleuze, Barthes).
5. Radical criticism of Tradition. Tradition is regarded (in the spirit of Marxism - especially by Hobsbawm [8]) as a "bourgeois fiction", "opium of the people". In this way, any hint of a sovereign ontology of the spirit is completely eliminated. Modernity itself is seen as a 'resurgence of Tradition', and this observation has the status of a verdict.
6. A new critical and sceptical universalism. The obligation to subject all generalisations to ridicule and ironic decomposition, in parallel with the shift of attention to heterogeneous fragments, ontic fractals.
7. The morality of total liberation and the overcoming of all boundaries. Transgression. (Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, Bataille)
8. Anti-essentialism. From Heidegger's analysis of Dasein, a hasty and perverse conclusion is drawn about the viciousness of the very concept of 'essence', and being is so placed in becoming (even in bodily becoming) that the question of essence, let alone species, is rejected at the root.
9. The annulment of identity. All identity appears temporary, playful, accidental and arbitrary. Only the overcoming of identity, not its construction, becomes moral.
10. Gender theory (gender). The discovery of autonomous ontologies of oppressed minorities and classes becomes a total compulsion to relativise gender as well as age, within the limits of any species identity. (Kristeva, Haraway)
11. The construction of postmodern models of psychoanalysis with the attempt to overcome the structural themes of Freud and even Lacan (Guattari).
12. Fierce hatred for all hierarchy and verticality (against the metaphor of the tree). Radical democratism up to the apologia of schizo-masses and dividends, dismembered into sovereign and separate constituent organisms, the 'parliament of organs' (Latour).
13. Nihilism. Here the affirmation of modern nihilism is transformed into a conscious valorisation of nothingness, into a "will to nothingness" (Deleuze [15]). Nothingness ceases to be a pejorative concept and is assumed as a goal.
14. The annulment of the event. The transition to recycling (Baudrillard).
15. Post-humanism. The exhaustion of the human beginning as the bearer of a too traditional verticality (B. Levy). The invitation to transcend the human into hybrids, 'desire machines', cyborgs and chimeras. Deep ecology and Cthulhucene theories (Haraway)."
(https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/alternative-postmodernism-unnamed-phenomenon)