Postmodernity and the Politics of Fragmentation

* Article: Postmodernity and the Politics of Fragmentation. By Otto Paans. Borderless Philosophy 3 (2020): 264-310.

URL = https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/e2a905_aa59f14974e145fc9389843caa688b9e.pdf

Contextual Quote

1.

"The cultural attitude of the early 21st century may perhaps one day be known as “the assault on concentration.” In an endless stream of information, the “new” is what counts. And when the “new” is endlessly replenished, concentration is superfluous. One does not need concentration when reality effortlessly floats by like a series of fragments, images, stimuli, informational content, episodes of a TV series, or handy slogans "

2.

"The proliferation of individual, yet acceptable viewpoints obfuscate a vantage point that becomes less visible over time: namely, that as an individual, one can generate universal insights. To deny this is to fully accept and internalize the postmodern assumption and its associated nihilism. To hold that one’s position “is just another narrative” is to submit oneself already to the postmodern mode of cultural production, and thereby succumbing to its oppressive and invasive logic of production. To treat one’s own convictions as mere narratives devoid of universality is to internalize the postmodern mode of cultural production, severing oneself from the exercise of one’s autonomy. If anything, a renewed and radicalized subjectivism is not the ultimate weapon of postmodernity, but against it. It is an attitudinal disposition that refuses to regard itself as a mere cog in the machine, and that actualizes the power of its own autonomy and validity through the liberating power of its subjective determinations. It does away with the bland relativism that reality is the sum total of viewpoints, thereby overcoming the postmodern, projected fear that one reasons “just from one’s own privileged perspective”, and that therefore one has to distance oneself from one’s innermost convictions. I use the term “subjectivism” as a deliberate provocation. The philosophy of high modernity abhorred subjectivism because it was seen as a nonsensical aberration that would have no place in the project of modernity. In postmodern culture, the only type of subjectivism on offer is the watered-down and marketable variety. In both cases, the exercise of individual autonomy is deeply mistrusted and undermined. Nevertheless, what appears from the viewpoint of high modern and postmodern culture as a cultural dead end appears from the viewpoint of radical subjectivism as the way forward—and more importantly, as the road to liberation and the free exercise of autonomy."

- Otto Paans [1]

Description

Otto Paans:

"Contemporary postmodern culture can be seen as a counter-response to the extremities of high modernism, yet also simultaneously as its latest re-iteration.

Instead of seeking to reduce the phenomenon of postmodernity to a single, all-encompassing definition, its very mode of existence must be understood as being radically split asunder. One consequence of this constitutive rift in postmodern culture is the gradual emergence of “the politics of fragmentation.” The genesis and the consequences of this fragmentation will be the subject of this essay.

My overall line of argument has three basic steps:

1. Postmodernity is not as “post” modern as it proclaims. It is the inevitable culmination and radicalization of some of modernism’s implicit, instrumental tendencies. Moreover, Postmodernity is the latest manifestation of a modern culture that is reflexively affecting its own development. (Section II)

2. This Modern-rather-than-Postmodern culture has created the conditions for a new kind of politics: the politics of fragmentation. This fragmentation is dependent on a number of cinematographic techniques that mediate our access to reality. (Section III)

3. The politics of fragmentation can be observed in a number of contemporary cultural and political trends such as: the return to nationalism; the emergence of neofascism; the occurrence of multiple forms of neo-modernism; the deterioration of prolonged solidarity; and furthermore, self-commodification. (Section IV)"

(https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/e2a905_aa59f14974e145fc9389843caa688b9e.pdf)

Excerpts

Defining Postmodernity

Otto Paans:

"There seems to be a broad consensus that either

(i) postmodernity as a whole is a reaction against the extremes of modernism in all spheres of life, such as artistic practice, scientific views, and industrial production, or

(ii) postmodernity is the combination of modernity with a host of other factors that mitigate or diversify modernism’s extremes.

This recombination defies narrative logic, questions conventional forms of knowledge production that developed during modernism, creates new forms of social organization and a anticipates new, flexible economy. Alternatively, terms like “Empire,” “post-industrial society,” or “multinational capitalism,” are used to describe a new and still developing world order.

One of its most salient features is highlighted by David Harvey:

- I begin with what appears to be the most startling fact about postmodernism: its total acceptance of the ephemerality, fragmentation, discontinuity, and the chaotic that formed the one half of Baudelaire's conception of modernity. But postmodernism responds to the fact of that in a very particular way. It does not try to transcend it, counteract it, or even to define the 'eternal and immutable' elements that might lie within it. Postmodernism swims, even wallows, in the fragmentary and the chaotic currents of change as if that is all there is.

Alternatively — and this line of thinking coheres with my outlook— postmodernity is regarded as a transformation of modernity. For instance, Charles Jencks maintains that postmodernity is modernity combined with a number of additional factors that diversify it. For example, in architectural design, the modernist emphasis on functionalism and aesthetic austerity is, in postmodernity, enriched with an exuberant and deliberately ironic aesthetic, while the modernist, functionalist modes of thinking are still alive under the colorful surface. A slightly different interpretation of this transformation is provided by the sociologist Ulrich Beck. His thesis of “reflexive modernity” entails that the ceaseless development and acceleration of modernity starts to affect the process of modernization itself. Modern society becomes an object of concern for itself. In a reflexive gesture, the process of modernization changes its own functioning and future development. Consequently, a global risk society emerges, in which old securities disappear and individuals are “condemned to be free.”6 That these concepts of “liquid modernity” or “reflexive modernity” lead easily to bold statements can also be discerned in Jean-Francois Lyotard’s hallmark study, The Postmodern Condition.

Notably, his claim that the “metanarratives” of history had ceased to function was taken as a mission statement of postmodernity, but it can also be read as simply a diagnosis that modernity had reached a new stage. The subtitle of the Postmodern Condition is “A Report on Knowledge,” and indeed, a significant part of the book is about knowledge-production during a time when computers, automation-of-information, and digitalization more generally, took over. In this process, job prospects, education, institutional structures, and the role of “knowledge procedures” changed in ways that were unprecedented. Lyotard’s assertion that the “metanarratives” were obsolete was not a political assertion in the sense that he advocated a new era of political engagement. Rather, it was the diagnosis of a historical situation: none of the existing metanarratives could do justice to the fluidity of the present. That Lyotard overplayed his hand here is clear: to judge that the metanarratives are obsolete is to place oneself in an external, extra-historical position. Moreover, if the claim is that all metanarratives anywhere are obsolete, one thereby creates a new narrative, assuming that it has universal validity. However, this statement reflects something of the overwhelming transformation of reality that was underway. If many old certainties melt into air, the response may be to exclaim that all hitherto developed ways of thinking are insufficient to comprehend what is happening.

If the traditional ways of thinking are obsolete, ineffective or insufficient, then a new set of intellectual strategies, tactics, and modes expression need to be invented. Thus, postmodernity exploits the fragmentation, disjointedness, and incoherence to which it bears witness, employing them as tools in a strategy for comprehension and sensemaking in a world that is perceived as being out of joint. Consequently, this choice is reflected in artistic and cultural production. Tactics like collage, pastiche, bricolage, and mixed media (and more recently “transmediality”) claim pride of place, suggesting themselves as the expressive tools that will succeed in capturing the cultural currents of today."

(https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/e2a905_aa59f14974e145fc9389843caa688b9e.pdf)

Politics in an Era of Attitudinal Fragmentation: Social Media as an amplifier of all thoughts

Otto Paans:

"In a culture of fragmentation, social media and mass media function like an amplifier of all thoughts. Often, they force users to condense their thoughts in the extreme (in the case of Twitter or Facebook) or to reduce them to images (in the case of Instagram). Surveillance footage is the supreme example of a fragment: only the transgression is televised, often from a single viewpoint (the hidden God’s-eye-view of the camera) without any context or explanation. The result is a cacophony of voices, images, half-formed opinions, idealized representations, and textual snippets. Public space is self-evidently not a Rawlsian “marketplace of ideas” where we argue reasonably and rationally about political measures or preferences, about neutral topics, or about the best alternative for solving a problem.

The fragmentation of reality undermines the very idea of an agora as a level playing field. It turns out that the uneven playing field is not the only problem, but equally the problem is the kind of language games that are being played on it. Virtual protests, vitriolic Twitter exchanges, voting actions that run via talk shows (vote for candidate X or Y), and the careful selections of footage, are all orchestrated and pre-structured by media that function like cinematographic instruments, continuously cutting, pasting, editing, overlaying contents, and presenting choices that are merely “formal” in the Marxian sense. According to Marx’s distinction, they are merely formal (or phoney) instead of real (or genuine) because the possibilities themselves have already been preselected by others. Such choices artificially represent the moment of choice, and they do so in a way that turns them immediately into their opposite. By limiting the possibilities for making a real choice, they highlight to what degree the presented options are preselected and above all insincere.

Moreover, the informational fragments of reality from which we can chose and that are cobbled or stitched together are themselves idealizations. They are either a copy with an idealized original, or an idealized past:

- In fact the heritage museum, such as the one at Beamish in the north-east of England, epitomizes the postmodern process whereby a past is nostalgically recreated as a form of substitute reality. Ex-miners are employed to inform the rest of us about mining in a time in which they did not live, while the need for 'real' mining has all but disappeared. We pay our money and are entertained by consuming second-hand experiences which once formed the basis of social life. To a significant extent we have become tourists in our own cultures.

The idealized media presence of on-line culture deals in images that are substitutes depicting substitutes. The sad fact that young people photograph themselves with an empty Starbucks cup, because the image is more important than reality, is a supercharged simulacrum that not even Baudrillard could imagine. Reality is substituted by images, idealizations, experiences, fragments, and further substitutions. For the spectator, these images present formal or phoney choices: we can choose to like them, dislike them, or ignore them, but in reality, such images are only cut-out and idealized portions of someone else’s lives. They omit as much as or even more than they tell. Any meaningful action about or towards such pictures simply cannot be carried out, because too much is omitted. Their fragmentary, idealized and incomplete nature makes it impossible to meaningfully engage with them. Flashy images of success or a feel-good moment spur only a momentarily enthusiasm that is regulated by the modes of expression of social media. Given the inherently artificial character of such idealization, social media excite a kind of engagement that rarely lasts. They encourage superficiality over prolonged commitment; the heat of the moment over reflection; incessant shouting over rational arguing; and the demand for instant gratification over the complexities of realizing sustainable, institutional, and structural changes. The actions inspired by social media emerge as the total sum of fragmented, individual viewpoints that lack a real collective, trans-individual structure. The shared camaraderie, solidarity, or understanding within a group (e.g., Marx’s idea of “class”) is lacking in the virtual spaces of social media. The cinematographic fragmentation of reality results in a lack of belonging. It presents individual viewpoints as a mass of subjective experiences not united by any overarching structure. Or rather: the mass of subjective viewpoints is brought together by a technological structure that presents itself as a neutral platform but is nevertheless structuring, cutting and cinematographically dividing and fragmenting reality. The platform stratifies, segments, fragments, and structures the space, literally functioning as a script for behavior.

Like speed bumps, security gates, traffic lights, and floor lining, the digital platform nudges or outright coerces users into predefined patterns and sequences.

It creates a choreography of behavior that supports the structuring system — again, nothing but a series of formal or phoney choices. It should also be pointed out that contemporary mass media and social media are themselves products. And they are maintained and refined by corporations for whom users are also themselves products. Everything is commodified. All our clicks, likes, preferences, and choices are meticulously logged, analyzed, dissected, and forcefully yet manipulatively directed back at us in the form of “customized advertisements” or targeted talk shows. This is their business model for colonizing behavior. If Marx could witness the operation of contemporary social media, he would be awestruck by its seamless efficiency, its almost-too-obvious integration with everyday life and its ceaseless, global, 24/7 production cycle.

...

This immersive servitude is genuinely new, especially since the mechanisms responsible for the control (dopamine production to facilitate addiction, tricks to play on personal guilt or the feeling of missing out, and the subtly manipulative idea of being “in on the joke”) have become our favorite playthings that we won’t give up. It fundamentally alters the way in which we see and experience our everyday lives. Our immaturity is self-incurred because we refuse to discard the toys that enslave us. Moreover, this type of enslavement is not without serious consequences for our cognitive and practical capacities.

Confined to such enslavement, it is hard to focus on a single topic, to maintain a dialogue, and indeed to discriminate between fact and fiction. The endless presence of mass media and social media deteriorates this situation. Currently, we perceive reality as disjointed, turning the core theoretical tenet of postmodernity into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This has deep consequences for our ability to act as a collective, especially for our capacity to realize lasting political changes. By means of a perfected “divide and conquer” strategy, the potential for sustainable political change is eroded. The assault on concentration has turned it into a rarity: our public spaces and private spaces are permeated with an oppressive demand for immediate action and an equally oppressive presence of distractions. The more fragmented, disjointed, and rich in “content,” the better. The culture of gratification demands change now but fails, because it cannot work up the necessary concentration and political longevity to realize an enduring political vision beyond the immediate confines of the present.

The lack of political strength and the ubiquity of divided attention make postmodern culture an easy target for capitalist marketing and divisive political strategies: the endless proliferation of sexualities, cultural backgrounds, political universes, language games, and narratives can be marketed and controlled without too much effort. They are presented as choices, decisions that can be made individually and that can be cobbled together into self-absorbed personal universes. No wonder then, that massive multinationals like Shell, Google, or Exxon Mobil advertise their “diversity.”

...

As contemporary social and mass media fragmentize our reality, they shatter our commitments, our capacity for prolonged attention, and our consequently our capabilities for solidarity, slowly obliterating the realization that we can organize ourselves without the subtle interference of social media tech giants. Benjamin Fong correctly describes this feature of social media as the “atomizing of individuals.”46 Each of us has a tailored universe, furnished to one’s—carefully manipulated— preferences, but we start to lose the collective dimension necessary for lasting, sustainable, and reasonable political change. That is not to say that people have completely lost the capacity to organize themselves. One should stay clear of such a deterministic, all-out skeptical conclusion. Individual autonomy is not removed by the politics of fragmentation, but its development is hindered and stunted. The “self-incurred immaturity” of contemporary society is a direct consequence of this stunted growth, resulting in an inability to escape this state of immaturity. Therefore, Fong’s point must be taken to its final conclusion in order to describe our predicament fully.

Not only are individuals atomized through social media. Individuality itself is atomized, fragmented into pieces of reality. We cannot be of one mind any longer, because our minds are torn apart through an extreme fragmentation of our attention. Our attitudinal disposition towards reality is fragmentized in a continuous cinematography. The postmodern suspicion of “grand narratives” is not a theoretical choice now: it is the inevitable outcome of a process of existential fragmentation and loss of coherence. In a world controlled through touchscreens and buttons, a grand narrative cannot but appear like an absurdity. What melts into air through the mediation of social media is our grasp on reality. This, then, is Attitudinal Fragmentation. As we have seen, cultural production, when driven back into the monadic subject leads to a mode-of-being that is increasingly subjected to control, distraction, surveillance and manipulation. If our cognitive capacities are stunted and diminished, and reality itself becomes a resource that is directed at us and projected on us, this cannot but have political consequences. Regulative ideals implicit in marketing, surveillance, community guidelines, and self-commodification are not neutral. In a globalized and post-9/11 world, these technologies are quickly turning into political categories.

...

Recapping the argument so far, we can say that postmodern culture has encouraged the creation of personal bubbles. These tailored universes are customizable for everyone’s individual preferences. Via screens, subscriptions, personalized advertisements, tablets, streaming services, notifications and smartphones, the contents of these universes become entrenched in our worldview as they permeate and mediate our access to reality. As commercial products, they exert an undeniable influence on their users, leading to an attitudinal fragmentation. They provide substitute access to a hyperreality that becomes itself a substitute for an ephemeral and fleeting “authenticity” that seems to veer out of reach as soon as one attempts to grasp it. The creation of bubbles does not occur only on a personal level. Entire political universes are conjured out of thin air. A quick survey around the globe proves the point: emerging nationalist parties on the European continent demand a return to a political universe that is protectionist and conservative; hardline Brexiteers hanker after a time when the British Empire ruled the world and controlled trade relations; nationalism in the US has promoted a protective Pax Americana view backed by Evangelicals who strive to realize a Christian political universe; China has made no secret of its expansionist agenda, driven by a strict party policy to maintain a single, state-authored identity; and Russia flirts with the idea of Novorussia—a new nation with a single identity centered around “traditional values.

...

Such bubbles are fiercely protected, their inhabitants ferociously combative and single-minded. This feature alone is worth some reflection: in a world that is cinematographically fragmented, political and ideological universes provide “safe spaces.” They conjure up a world in which one can be authentically single-minded again. In such bubbles, one can ignore all historical evidence and adhere to a fascist vision of the world; one can disregard all other religious affiliations and view them as mere heathens; or one can steadfastly believe in a flat Earth, even despite all evidence to the contrary. The simultaneous absence and caricaturizing of the “Other” characterizes these political universes. Such places provide a new fragmentation of reality while at the same time claiming to overcome it. In a fluid reality, they are driven by the easy-to-excite group-think, obsessive fears, and insider vs. outsider frames of reference. One important case-in-point here is the emergence of neofascism, a political orientation long thought dead, buried or at least marginalized. However, in a postmodern, connected, globalized, and fragmented world, it thrives. It emerges as a vaguely familiar but dislocated political vision, yet it has adapted to a new and fragmented world.

...

The postmodern rejection of any overarching field of reason is no longer just an epistemological position, but instead a political reality. The rejection of the modernist engineer has delivered each of us in the hands of the bricoleur. Mass media provided conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and religious fanatics alike with communicative platforms to showcase ideas that were originally beyond mainstream credibility. However, their presence in the “arena of debate” appears to legitimize their points of view. The fluidity of the present is characterized by its refusal to take on a solid form, to crystallize into something tangible or even coherent. The ever-changing shape of our cognitive landscape coats yesterday over with the presence of a forced forgetfulness. The visual representation of the “swipe” on a touchscreen is the postmodern visual par excellence: any vertical hierarchy is gone, and the center of attention can be swept away to the left or right at any moment. It appears as optional and replaceable, expendable even. If reality does not deliver what is desired, it can be replaced by a more convenient picture. Reality itself becomes an image, a two-dimensional representation that can be manipulated, cut, switched off, transported, uploaded, downloaded, and infinitely copied. If reality itself appears as non-fundamental or optional, it is no wonder that cinematographic fragmentation becomes a lethal political tool. The fact that political elites can harness a targeted cinematography and that citizens seem to tolerate it only vindicates its power. This is not to say that societal unrest and dissent have disappeared in a media-controlled landscape of distractions and fragments. Due to attitudinal fragmentation, this uneasiness simply refuses to crystallize into something lasting and even coherent. A part of the problem here can be traced back to the disintegration of collective power. No longer is State power concentrated in the hands of a single person or social institution. It is distributed according to a different principle. What Baudrillard called “the axiological, directive, and salvageable phantasm of power” is not salvageable anymore. One cannot aim one’s arrows against a political power that appears as spectral, fragmentary and fluid.

...

What is so unsettling in this situation is that the traditional understanding of dignitarian democracy, truth, and integrity is treated as if it will vanish overnight because it is irrelevant in the current order of things. In a political reality that is thoroughly fragmented, seemingly discordant elements and events appear together in a surrealistic tapestry. In a world built of fragments, the institutions of the past are only useful as nostalgic symbols, invoked when a sense of weight and tradition is required. This is why the return to Statist nationalism is a postmodern gesture, closely correlated to the re-emergence of neo-fascism. In both cases, the symbols of a long-lost world are invoked to create a more-real-than-real political universe in which the problems of the present are conveniently conjured away. The ultimate fluidity is reflected in the phenomenon of globalization: it connects the entire world population, and all of its cultures, customs, conflicts and viewpoints. Against this image of maddening complexity and plurality, the populist political response is to “keep things simple” by arbitrarily cutting out a convenient portion of reality. Whether one chooses to discriminate between one’s nation and the rest of the world, or between white and colored people matters little: the gesture is one of willfully looking away in the face of the hyperreal world—it is better to have gratification now than to work through the effort of having to face a traumatically fragmented reality. The problem here is not just the creation of an “Other,” but its negative mirror image: the world is too complex and a new universe—a simpler one, preferably—is needed to impose a sense upon reality. The political universe creates not only an “Other,” but necessarily also an “Us.” And in a world that is already fragmented, such a strategy yields only heavily distorted images that defy any fixed interpretation. The old critique of ideology in the age of Nazism or Communism did at least have the advantage that it had to deal with clumsy narratives and all-too blatant lies. In such a situation, it was clear that State ideologies were artificial constructions.48 However, the fragmented images let loose on citizens in contemporary media culture are not capable of—and not intended to—cohere into something intelligible or articulable at all. This highlights a core characteristic of the informational fragment: it is a distraction, a commercial or a simplistic ideological image that depicts a reality that is ridiculously simplified, or all-in-one, one-stop shopping. Often, it is a distraction that doubles as a commercial that doubles as an ideological representation. A commercial may distract one from thinking about one’s predicament, especially if it is often repeated or entertaining; yet, it is also an ideological representation, because it addresses one as a consumer, or as the stereotypical middle-age male, or as an empowered businesswoman. The fact that one is pressed into a predefined role, but that this is covered up is typical of postmodern culture. Careful irony and purposive nostalgia are the keywords of the postmodern political order."

(https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/e2a905_aa59f14974e145fc9389843caa688b9e.pdf)

What the Hyperreal World Demands from Us Is Our Participation in its Mode of Production

Otto Paans:

"What the hyperreal, postmodern world demands from us .. is our participation in its mode of production. We are seduced to look at this, watch that, read on and on, and also to view the commercials in-between. Without a steady stream of deflected or divided attention to what is being offered, the postmodern strategy of fragmentation is thereby defused. Fragmentation works only then when it succeeds in disintegrating the concentration to such a degree that autonomous thought is stunted and hampered. But take the hyperreal away, and the entire edifice crumbles. The contemporary response to such a stance would be that one “misses out on” all the benefits and niceties of the world. This thought is so ingrained in a consumer culture that it is hard to see it for what it is: namely, it is the ideological correlative of the politics of fragmentation. The fear for missing out is an irrational aberration for which no proof is provided, and that is regarded as true by stipulation. If I read this particular paper, I cannot read five other ones. Saying that I therefore “miss out on” something is both banal and a tautology. The real question is whether this is problematic at all. The feeling of “missing out on” things is fed and nourished once one gives in to it. By believing it to be true, the accompanying fear increases, leading one to breathless running after the “new,” “trending,” or “innovative.” By questioning the validity and indeed usefulness of the hyperreal, its structure appears as what it is: a mere screen onto which our deepest insecurities are projected and mirrored back at us. To exercise one’s autonomy, one must not criticize postmodernity from within, but radically subtract oneself from it. In using this term, I appropriate and extend Alain Badiou’s similarly named concept for a purpose for which it was most likely not intended. Subtraction is “the affirmative part of a negation.”49 The idea is simply that subtraction is a conscious repositioning that creates a new opening, a way to reconceive the current order of things, whether this concerns a system of cultural production or a political situation. The opening is a chance to define a new form of coherence, thereby undermining the realpolitikal statement that “this is just how things are.” The development of new possibilities over against an existing situation creates “a new subjective body.”50 This body can be a political body or group of like-minded individuals, but more importantly, such a body can be a literal body—that is, an essentially embodied human being. This is not a retreat into an external, pseudo-critical bubble, or a relapse into fatalist quietism, but the unrepentant imposition of a rift between oneself and one’s cultural environment. The difference between retreat and subtraction can be illustrated by thinking of retreating as removing a piece from a jigsaw puzzle. Even without the missing piece, the puzzle is still a puzzle. Subtraction, however, leaves a scar. It is a forceful tearing-oneself-apart from the system of cultural production in which we are situated. Here os Badiou’s description: Ultimately, I am saying something very simple. I am saying first that to open a new situation, a new possibility, we have to have something like a new creativity of time and a new creativity of the situation, something that is really an opening. I name this opening “event.” What is an event? An event is simply that which interrupts the law, the rules, the structure of the situation, and creates a new possibility.51 The “event” is a disruption of the structural logic of an existing cultural, artistic, or political state of affairs. The Copernican Revolution, the Reformation, Marx’s notion of “revolution,” the Darwin/Wallace theory of evolution, or the discovery of the laws of genetic inheritance, can count as major disruptions that upset an entire cultural and/or political order. This undermining paved the way for rethinking the coordinates that structure everyday reality. Not coincidentally, entire political universes revolve around denying that such subtractions took place. For instance, the laws of genetic inheritance disprove outdated theories of race, and the neo-fascist political universe is dedicated to undermining the effect of the prior event, as their worldview hinges on the truth of such theories. The new possibilities that stem from subtraction need the new “subjective body” in the most literal sense of the word. One must recalibrate oneself with regard to the postmodern system of cultural production if one is to subtract successfully. This requires a new mindset, and a new cognitive and affective, yet fully embodied orientation towards postmodernity.

To subtract oneself so radically is a necessity. If one chooses for one of the options outlined above, one is still trapped in a hyperreal without exit. To fashion an exit, one must not seek to step outside the system, since one is then trapped in a fictional outside that is still inside. Instead, one must seek a position that does not define itself opposite to the postmodern system of cultural production at all, but that creates the opening that topples the entire system. Such a radical form of subtraction takes postmodern culture up on its core premise: namely, that all expressions are narratives that can be molded and manipulated at will. But what if one took up a position that does not fit the postmodern cultural production? What if one took up a position that was so unrepentantly subjectivist that it lies beyond the grasp of postmodern cultural production or, in other words, what if one simply refused to stay inside the dotted lines? Fully to believe in the autonomy of one’s vantage point on the world must nowadays appear as a nightmare. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion in the postmodern system of cultural production, but what if one’s opinion does not fit the scheme of acceptable expressions? What if it does not result into new source materials to be used in the politics of fragmentation? Such a subtraction is possible because it drives the core premise of postmodern culture (namely: every viewpoint is inherently subjective, that is, not universally valid) to its existential endpoint. As argued before, if every viewpoint is inherently subjective, and each position therefore a kind of first-person narrative devoid of universal meaning, this must apply to the postmodern assumption as well.

The best counterpunch, then, is to turn the entire picture around: the initial opposition between “universal” and “narrative” is itself a narrative, and no better way to expose the nihilist fatalism of this cultural attitude than to show how the subjective can generate the universal. The entire postmodern strategy rests on denying that an individual viewpoint can generate something that is universally valid. The result of this attitude is that each viewpoint becomes a malleable fragment in an economy of acceptable and marketable expressions. The proliferation of individual, yet acceptable viewpoints obfuscate a vantage point that becomes less visible over time: namely, that as an individual, one can generate universal insights. To deny this is to fully accept and internalize the postmodern assumption and its associated nihilism. To hold that one’s position “is just another narrative” is to submit oneself already to the postmodern mode of cultural production, and thereby succumbing to its oppressive and invasive logic of production. To treat one’s own convictions as mere narratives devoid of universality is to internalize the postmodern mode of cultural production, severing oneself from the exercise of one’s autonomy.

If anything, a renewed and radicalized subjectivism is not the ultimate weapon of postmodernity, but against it. It is an attitudinal disposition that refuses to regard itself as a mere cog in the machine, and that actualizes the power of its own autonomy and validity through the liberating power of its subjective determinations. It does away with the bland relativism that reality is the sum total of viewpoints, thereby overcoming the postmodern, projected fear that one reasons “just from one’s own privileged perspective”, and that therefore one has to distance oneself from one’s innermost convictions. I use the term “subjectivism” as a deliberate provocation. The philosophy of high modernity abhorred subjectivism because it was seen as a nonsensical aberration that would have no place in the project of modernity. In postmodern culture, the only type of subjectivism on offer is the watered-down and marketable variety. In both cases, the exercise of individual autonomy is deeply mistrusted and undermined. Nevertheless, what appears from the viewpoint of high modern and postmodern culture as a cultural dead end appears from the viewpoint of radical subjectivism as the way forward—and more importantly, as the road to liberation and the free exercise of autonomy."

(https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/e2a905_aa59f14974e145fc9389843caa688b9e.pdf)

More information

• "This essay is an elaboration and extension of an argument presented in three blog posts on the Against Professional Philosophy site during the summer of 2019. The first two posts were in response to a short essay written by

1. Andrew D. Chapman, “Thoughts on the Relationship between Postmodernism and Fascism,” Against Professional Philosophy (10 April 2019), available online at URL = <https://againstprofphil.org/2019/04/10/thoughts-on-the-relationship-between-postmodernism-andfascism/>, and the third post was a response to a short essay by
2. Michelle Maiese, “Smithereens: Reflections in a Black Mirror,” Against Professional Philosophy (24 June 2019), available online at URL = <https://againstprofphil.org/2019/06/24/smithereens-reflections-in-a-black-mirror/>. See also, respectively,
3. O. Paans, “Thoughts on Postmodernity 1: An Impossible Presentation,” Against Professional Philosophy (16 August 2019), available online at URL = <https://againstprofphil.org/2019/08/16/thoughts-on-postmodernity-1-an-impossible-presentation/>;
4. O. Paans, “Thoughts on Postmodernity 2: The Tensions of the Past and the Fluidity of the Present,” Against Professional Philosophy (6 September 2019), available online at URL = <https://againstprofphil.org/2019/09/06/thoughts-on-postmodernity-2-the-tensions-of-the-past-andthe-fluidity-of-the-present/>; and # O. Paans, “Fragments of Reality, Fragments of Solidarity,” Against Professional Philosophy (23 August 2019), available online at URL = <https://againstprofphil.org/2019/08/23/fragments-of-reality-fragments-of-solidarity/>."