Teach Yourself Postmodernism

• Book:Teach Yourself Postmodernism. By Glenn Ward

Summary

Michel Bauwens, 2003:

- Modernity can be seen as characterized by a faith in

   - Progress
   - Optimism
   - Rationality
   - the search for absolute 'objective' knowledge
   - the search for a 'true self'

- By contrast, postmodernity can be seen as characterized by:

   - the erosion of the distinction between low and high culture
   - fascination by the domination of visual media
   - the recognition that we live in a universe of signs
   - definitions of human identity are changing
   - scepticism about grand narratives

- Postmodernism is about:

   - I. Changes in society
   - II. Changes in art and culture.
   - Thus about the world, and our interpretations about it.

- The main themes of postmodern discourse seem to be:

   - the end of history: there is no progress
   - the end of 'man': humankind is a social construction and is now challenged by machines
   - the death of the real, as we live in a universe of signs

- Expressions in literature

   - From Realist fiction and the all-knowing author to modernist literature of a selective, struggling author to:
   - Postmodern literature as meta-fiction, conscious of itself, capable of using irony

- Expressions in art:

   - Uses 'plural coding'; it allows myriad access points, an infinitude of interpretative responses; it is a constant testing and playing with boundaries
   - Modernist art had a spiritual mission, struggling both against tradition and against mass culture: postmodernism has abandoned that struggle

- Planet Baudrillard: The world has emancipated itself, only referring to other signs, and no longer to any underlying reality. We live in a world of images ruled by the principle of simulation, "in a centerless network of communication". It is in fact the simulation which produces the real. This then generates 'panic', and a rush to experience reality, hence a hyper-reality is manufactured, such as extreme sports, reality TV, piercing ... But of course, they are also simulations

Chapter 5: Structuralism and after

- The 3 theses of structuralism:

   - Language constructs reality: reality cannot be separated  from its representation
   - Meanings can only happen in relation to structures: no single thing gives meaning by itself
   - Language demonstrates the structural/relational properties of meaning.

Structuralism does not look at history, but at the present workings of a system; not on the content of what it studies, but on the relationship between its elements; it sees everything as texts.

Just as language, society is also made up of signs, whose structure can be examined (the science of semiology/semiotics)

A language consists of rules of combination, and so are other systems, such as fashion, etc .. These systems of signs precede any individual intention, and this also applies to art and literature (and thus questions the romantic notion of the original author with unique works).

The meaning of a sign is never its own property but is the product of its difference with other signs. Thus the key question of structuralism is: where does meaning come from ?

Post-structuralism continues the quest, but refuses the give any single answer. It is centered around 3 overlapping ideas:

   - I. language cannot point outside itself
   - II. language produces, rather than reflects, meaning
   - III. language does not express individuality

So 'post' means that it goes even further in the radicality of its conclusions:

   - I. it is more anti-foundational (there is no underlying ground, texts are just flat surfaces)
   - II. It is less all-embracing: you cannot step out of reality to have an all-encompassing point of view
   - III. It makes more of difference: a text is no longer complete, it is full of holes; thus differences come to the foreground.

In conclusion: where structuralism looked for order, poststructuralism looks for the chaos behind the illusion of coherence

Derrida and the meaning crisis

Derrida argues that truths and meaning are always framed by socially and historically specific conditions of knowledge. It is these frames, which are contingent, that Derrida wants to deconstruct. Nothing has to be considered 'natural' or obvious. Derrida rejects 'presence', as in assuming that meaning is present in a text. He also rejects depth of meaning, differing from structuralism that was still looking for deep structures.

'Difference' is a word play on both difference (a word has meaning because it differs), and 'deferance' (i.e. no word can be known without knowing other words), so that the final meaning is foever delayed. All thought is based on arbitrary splittings of binary oppositions (f.e. 'science' vs 'magic'), in which one term is always inferior, but these binaries are dependent on each other, f.e. postmodernism 'creates'modernity. Thus, there is always 'differance'.

All texts create coherence by leaving things out, though they are embedded in term, and this is what deconstruction aims to show (i.e. the preservation of any coherence)

Derrida: Centrality is created by marginality

In texts, Derrida looks for present absenses' or 'productive silences'. Structuralism sought the facts behind texts, but poststructuralism sees no facts, only interpretations. Neither speech nor writing both seen as texts, are neutral or transparent. They are opaque, never directly reflecting thoughts. As a result, many cultural products have become self-distancing, clearly aware, and not hiding behind artificiality.

More information

Documentation 1: Three works exemplifying structuralist analysis

   - 1. The system of objects. Jean Baudrilard, 1968: furniture and interior decoration as a system of signs
   - 2. Sign and meaning in the cinema. Peter Watson, 1972: John Ford's work as exemplary of a series of binary oppositions referring to each other
   - 3. Decoding advertisements. Judith Williamson, 1978: the product as signifier, the ads as signified, but also the other way around.

Documentation 2: Key poststructuralists works

- 1. Pierre Macherey. Theory of Literary Production, 1966: texts as hiding chaos. 'Marxist' poststructuralism, highlighting how cultural texts are meant to bind us to our conditions.

- 2. Julie Kristeva: a) Revolution in Poetic Language, 1974; 2) Desire in language, 1980: avant-garde works as subversive attempts to free the self from fixed identities. 'Feminist' poststructuralism showing the emancipatory possibilities for marginalized women