Postmodernism and Material Hierarchies

There are certain obvious problems in presenting any conclusions, or even substantive arguments, upon the basis of research that is still in progress. Lines of thought are liable to be revised, and conclusions to be modified or even reversed upon the basis of subsequent reading. These problems are, perhaps, particularly apparent in any work upon evasive theories such as postmodernism. As Fredric Jameson argued, in Postmodernism, 'the concept is not merely contested, it is also internally conflicted and contradictory.' (xxii) This is, at least in part, because it is, as Terry Eagleton observed in The Illusions of Postmodernism, 'a portmanteau phenomenon'. (viii) As a consequence, any analysis of it must consider, not of an accepted set of principles, but a network of competing texts. Conclusions on the subject must therefore inevitably be partial, and those drawn from research in progress particularly so. For these reasons, I would prefer not to submit, at this stage, any version or draft of the paper I intend to present to the conference at the end of November. However, there nevertheless seems, for myself, to be considerable value in submitting some preliminary observations intended to clarify or expand upon the issues and questions with which any 'final' paper will be concerned. These observations, will, ideally, serve two functions. In the first place, such clarification is itself part, indeed frequently the dominant part, of any theoretical investigation. In the second, a submission of this type may function as a 'consultative' document, inviting criticism and comment. For these reasons, I hope I might be excused in submitting an outline actively intended to be incomplete.

In The Postmodern Condition, Jean-François Lyotard defined postmodernism primarily as the 'incredulity toward metanarratives' or toward ' the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation'. (xxiv) This is a product of the development, indeed transformation, in the conditions of knowledge and communication in advanced capitalist society. The evolution of productive and social relations, enabled by technological advances such as those in computing, result in a corresponding change in the 'prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as "knowledge" statements.' (4) This is also accompanied, or conceivably initiates, theoretical insights into the process of communication as such. Postmodernism implies the rejection of the principles that, it maintains, previously legitimised knowledge and identities. Instead, as Eagleton maintained, it insists that the world is 'contingent, ungrounded, diverse, unstable, indeterminate, a set of disunified cultures or interpretations'. (vii) This fluidity parallels the notional free exchanges of the market, and in fact Jameson argued that the 'various postmodernisms', although 'even more wildly different from each other than the various modernisms, all at least shared a resonant affirmation, when not an outright celebration, of the market as such.' (305) In this reading, it is precisely this 'resonant affirmation' that enables these otherwise contradictory works and theories to be classified as 'postmodern'.

An 'incredulity toward metanarratives' does not itself, of course, define postmodernist communicative theories, if such a thing is even possible or desirable, but it does enable us to note and extrapolate, at least provisionally, certain things. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is that this model of 'ungrounded' interaction is opposed to theories, such as those of Habermas, that posit stable conditions of communication. For Lyotard, 'the heterogeneity of the rules and the search for dissent', which he insists are implicit to communication, contradict the idea that 'humanity as a collective (universal) subject seeks its common emancipation through the regularization of the "moves" permitted in all language games and that legitimacy of any statement resides in its contributing to that emancipation', an idea that he claims 'still underlies Habermas's research'. (66) There is, Lyotard suggests, neither a 'collective (universal) subject' nor a 'regularization' of linguistic 'moves', but instead contracts governing to individual instances of communication, contracts that can be explained only by a 'theory of games which accept agonistics as a founding principle.' (16) In place of Habermas' claim, as expressed in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, that 'communicative' exchanges are those which enable participants to 'coordinate their plans of action consensually, with the agreement reached at any point being evaluated in terms of the intersubjective recognition of validity claims', (58) Lyotard proposes a model of inherent competition that replicates the logic of the market, a competition that has no inherent 'objective'.

This rejection of a 'regularization' of linguistic moves produces a communicative economy in which specific interactions have their own logic, and are not simply the fragmentary realisations of some broader function or meaning. This disparate economy, which, it is argued, resists interpretation in terms of metanarratives, is replicated in the postmodern 'text', a flexible concept which, amongst other things, replaces the traditional idea of the artistic 'work'. Jameson, argued that such texts could be 'defined as a structure or sign flow which resists meaning, whose fundamental inner logic is the exclusion of the emergence of themes as such in that sense, and which therefore systematically sets out to short-circuit traditional interpretative temptations'. (91-2) This indeterminacy is enabled by a method of production that attempts to use material without subscribing to the categories that defined their original 'meanings'. Postmodernism, Jameson insisted, 'no longer produces monumental works of the modernist type but ceaselessly reshuffles the fragments of preexistent texts, the building blocks of older cultural and social production, in some new and heightened bricolage: metabooks which cannibalize other books, metatexts which collate bits of other texts'. (96) This practice, by tearing signifiers from their 'original' contexts, destabilises the values implicit in prior cultural forms, and initiates a theoretically free play of signification irreducible to any single principle of meaning. It is this notion of indeterminacy and play that, I would argue, is the most important single inference about postmodern communicative theories to be drawn from the 'incredulity toward metanarratives' insisted upon by Lyotard.

There, however, a number of apparent problems with this concept, and it is these that I intend to explore in my conference paper. 'Metanarratives' are, I would argue, not independent entities, sustained by their own coercive rhetorical or intellectual logic, but are dependent upon their relation to material conditions, including the hierarchies incorporated in these conditions. It is this relationship, between material conditions and the concept of legitimacy, that has been explored in theories of 'ideology' such as those produced by Althusser. This material component raises a number of questions, however, about the value of the concepts of communication and signification outlined above. If categories of interpretation, such as those of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and nationality, not to mention, of course, class, are reinforced by the system of economic organisation, how far can their terms be evaded on the level of theory or representation alone? How 'free', in other words, is the circulation of texts, given that these structures are not only a matter of philosophical speculation but concrete practice? Does such practice not limit the potential for reinterpretation? If this were true, it would, of course, be most obvious in those circumstances in which material conditions were most oppressive. It would, therefore, logically seem that postmodern theories of 'ungrounded' existence and free circulation must confront oppression generally and violence, its most concentrated form, in particular, for it is here the objective reality returns most insistently. Is, for example, a scepticism of 'metanarratives' possible, when these are reinforced by practices ranging from economic oppression to direct persecution, such as imprisonment or torture? There are certain hierarchies it would seem impossible to either dislocate or think ourselves 'outside', frequently those, such as gender, 'race' and class, reinforced by violence. Postmodern scepticism appears singularly inappropriate and impoverished in these conditions, and this, perhaps, explains its uneven diffusion. Why, after all, as Eagleton asked, 'does the good news of the end of ideology appear to have seeped through to Berkeley or Bologna, but not to Utah or Ulster?' (19) Would the tensions in either region be dissolved by 'incredulity' in the absence of other, more concrete, practices? Is it possible that the circulation of signifiers is constrained, and that meanings are imposed upon the impoverished and dispossessed as a result of material hierarchies realised in economic, political and military power?

None of this is to deny the contributions postmodernism has made to philosophical analysis. It is, however, to suggest several things. The first, and most important, is simply that meaning can and is imposed as a result of material practices. The second, subsequent, argument is that one must therefore question claims to free circulation or signification, which is not, of course, to claim that texts cannot resist stable interpretation. I would suggest, however, that one of the most useful text in English in considering this is in fact James Joyce's Ulysses, an example of the modernism from which we are assured postmodernism distances itself. There are also a number of more general questions that might be asked at this stage. How helpful is Lyotard's dismissal of realism, a form that, I would argue, acknowledges and works within these problems of imposed meaning? To what extent does postmodernism, in its 'affirmation' of the market, simply replicate its restrictive categories? To what extent, in addition, is postmodernism less a theory, as such, and more an advertising logo, aiding the sale, whether commercial or intellectual, of academic and artistic works?

I would accept Eagleton's statement that, due to the diversity of postmodernism, 'it is hard to see how one could in some simple sense either for or against it, any more than one could be for or against Peru.' (21-2) This does not, however, as indeed The Illusions of Postmodernism testifies, mean that elements of these competing postmodernisms are not open to criticism and analysis. This paper is intended to explore one particular avenue of investigation, and I would invite any comments or advice on the areas outlined.

Bibliography

Eagleton, Terry, The Illusions of Postmodernism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996

Habermas, Jürgen, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. 1983. Massachusetts: 1990

Jameson, Fredric, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London: Verso, 1991.

Lyotard, Jean-François, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. 1979. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999