Post modern theory(critical interrogations) by Nadia Saeed

Postmodern Theory
Critical Interrogations
STEVEN BEST and DOUGLAS KELLNER

Scheme of Presentation
Brief Introduction of the Book
Postmodernism and General Characteristics of
Postmodernism
Brief Discussion on Chapters
Conclusions

Postmodern Theory: Critical
Interrogations
In this book, the authors has systematically analyzed the
Postmodern Theory to evaluate its relevance for critical social
theory and radical politics today. Best and Kellner, the
authors of the book has provided:
An introduction and critique of the work of Foucault,
Deleuze and Guattari, Baudrillard and Lyotard, which
assess the varying contributions and limitations of
postmodern theory.

Postmodern Theory: Critical
Interrogations
A discussion of postmodern feminist theory and the
politics of identity
A systematic study of the origin of the discourse of the
postmodern in historical, sociological, cultural, and
philosophical studies.
The authors claim that while postmodern theory provides
insights into contemporary developments, it lacks adequate
methodological and political perspectives to provide a
critical social theory and radical politics for the present age.

Postmodernism: General
Characteristics of Postmodernism
 Postmodernism is a late 20th-century movement in philosophy and literary
theory that generally questions the basic assumptions of Western philosophy in
the modern period (roughly, the 17th century through the 19th century).
 Postmodernism is a broad movement that developed in the mid- to late 20th
century across philosophy, the arts, architecture, and criticism, marking a
departure from modernism.
 The term has been more generally applied to describe what postmodernists
believe to be the historical era following modernity and the tendencies of this
era.
 Postmodern Theory – A Broad and Ambiguous View of Reality Postmodern
theory is a broad and somewhat ambiguous belief system tied to the
philosophical and cultural reaction to the convictions of Modernism
(sometimes equated with Humanism).

Postmodernism is a broad movement that developed
in the mid- to late 20th century across philosophy,
the arts, architecture, and criticism, marking a
departure from modernism.
The term has been more generally applied to
describe what postmodernists believe to be the
historical era following modernity and the tendencies
of this era.
Postmodernism: General
Characteristics of Postmodernism

Difference between Post-modernity and
Postmodernism
• One position maintains that post-modernity is a
condition or state of being, or is concerned with changes to
institutions and conditions (Giddens 1990) – whereas
postmodernism is an aesthetic, literary, political or social
philosophy that consciously responds to postmodern
conditions, or seeks to move beyond or offers a critique of
modernity.

Postmodern Theory – A Broad and
Ambiguous View of Reality
Postmodern theory is a broad and somewhat ambiguous
belief system tied to the philosophical and cultural
reaction to the convictions of Modernism (sometimes
equated with Humanism).
Postmodernism is the philosophical proposal that reality is
ultimately inaccessible by human investigation, that
knowledge is a social construction, that truth-claims are
political power plays, and that the meaning of words is to
be determined by readers not authors.
In brief, Postmodern theory sees reality as what
individuals or social groups make it to be.

Postmodern Theory – Important
Points
The impact of Postmodern theory is clearly seen in
cultural perceptions regarding truth and morality.
According to George Barna, "There is no such thing
as absolute truth; two people could define truth in
totally conflicting ways, but both could still be
correct.”
"There are no absolute standards that apply to everybody in
all situations."

Chapter-One
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.
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.

Modernity entered everyday life through the dissemination of
modern art, the products of consumer society, new technologies,
and new modes of transportation and communication. (1)
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, in-
dustrialization, cultural differentiation, commodification, urbani-
zation, bureaucratization, and rationalization which together have
constituted the modern world. (1)
Chapter-One

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. (2)
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 (newness), and
dynamism (energy) (Berman 1982). (2)
Chapter-One

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. (3)
Chapter-One

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. (3)
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. (3)
Chapter-One

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. Defen-
ders of modern theory, by contrast, attack postmodern relativism,
irrationalism, and nihilism. (4)
Chapter-One

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 (4)
Some postmodern theory accordingly rejects the totalizing
macroperspectives on society and history favored by
modern theory in favor of modern theory and
micropolitics. Postmodern theory also rejects modern
assumptions of social coherence and notions of causality
in favor of multiplicity, plurality, fragmentation, and
indeterminacy.
Chapter-One

Archaeology of the Postmodern
In addition, postmodern theory abandons the rational
and unified subject postulated by much modern theory
in favor of a socially and a linguistically decentred and
fragmented subject. (5)
Toynbee described the age as one of anarchy and total
relativism. (6)

[For Daniel Bell] The postmodern is age is thus a
product of the application of modernist revolts in
everyday life, the extension and living out of a
rebellious, hyper individualistic, hedonistic lifestyle.
(13)
Postmodern theory appropriates the poststructuralist
critique of modern theory, radicalizes it, and extends
it to new theoretical fields. (26)
Archaeology of the Postmodern

Chapter-Two
Foucault and the Critique of Modernity
Foucalt's project has been to write a 'critique of our
historical era' (1984:42) which problematizes modern
forms of knowledge, rationality, social institutions,
and subjectivity that seem given and natural but in
fact are contingent sociohistorical constructs of
power and domination. (35)

Foucalt attempts to detotalize history and society as unified
wholes governed by a center, essence, or telos, and to
decenter the subject as a constituted rather than a constituting
consciousness. (39)
Perhaps the fundamental guiding motivation of Foucalt's
work is to 'respect...differences' (Foucalt, 1973b: p.xii). (39)
Since the world has no single meaning, but rather countless
meanings, a perspectivist seeks multiple perspectives of a
phenomena and insists there is 'no limit to the ways in which
the world can be interpreted' (Nietzsche 1967: 326). (39)
Chapter-Two

Following Nietzsche, Foucalt rejects the philosophical
pretension to grasp systematically all of reality within one
philosophical system or from one central vantage point. (39)
Foucalt seeks to destroy historical identities by pluralizing the
field of discourse, to purge historical writing of humanist
assumptions by decentering the subject, and to critically
analyze modern reason through a history of the human
sciences. (46)
Foucalt emphasizes that knowledge is dissociable from
regimes of power. (51)
Chapter-Two

 Foucalt defines power as 'a multiple and mobile field of force
relations where far reaching, but never completely stable effects of
domination are produced' (1980b: 102). (51)
 'What I am attentive to is the fact that every human relation is to
some degree a power relation. We move in a world of perpetual
strategic relations' (Foucalt 1988d: 168) (54)
 There is no locus of great Refusal, no soul of revolt, source of all
rebellions, or pure law of the revolutionary. Instead there is a
plurality of resistances, each of them a special case' (Foucalt, 1980b:
95-6). (56)
Chapter-Two

 Foucalt exposes the links between power, truth, and knowledge, and
describes how liberal-humanist values are intertwined with and
supports of technologies of domination. (69)
 Since his emphasis is on the microlevel of resistance, Foucalt does not
adequately address the problem of how to achieve alliances with local
struggles or how an oppositional political movement might be
developed. If indeed it is important to multiply and autotomize forms
of resistance to counter the numerous tentacles of power, it is equally
important to link these various struggles to avoid fragmentation. The
question becomes, how can we create, in Gramsci's terms, a 'counter-
hegemonic formation'. (71)
 the neglect of macro theory and political economy is a recurrent
lacuna of all postmodern theory.(72)
Chapter-Two

We find a complex, eclectic mixture of pre-modern,
modern, and postmodern elements in Foucalt, with
the postmodern elements receding even further into
the background of his work. (73)
Chapter-Two

Chapter-Three
Deleuze and Guattari:
Schizos, Nomads, Rhizomes
 Deleuze and Guattari expressed metaphysical relationship between identity and
difference. Traditionally, difference is seen as derivative from identity: e.g., to say that
"X is different from Y" assumes some X and Y with at least relatively stable identities
(as in Plato's forms). To the contrary, Deleuze claims that all identities are effects of
difference. Identities are neither logically nor metaphysically prior to difference,
Deleuze argues, "given that there exist differences of nature between things of the
same genus."[43] That is, not only are no two things ever the same, the categories we
use to identify individuals in the first place derive from differences. Apparent identities
such as "X" are composed of endless series of differences, where "X" = "the
difference between x and x'", and "x'" = "the difference between...", and so forth.
Difference, in other words, goes all the way down. To confront reality honestly,
Deleuze argues, we must grasp beings exactly as they are, and concepts of identity
(forms, categories, resemblances, unities of apperception, predicates, etc.) fail to attain
what he calls "difference in itself."

Deleuze and Guattari do not explicitly adopt the discourse
of the postmodern, but they do present new models of
theory, practice, and subjectivity which they counterpose
and offer as alternatives to modern models. (76)
We live today in the age of partial objects, bricks that have
been shattered to bits, and leftovers ... We no longer
believe in a primordial totality that once existed, or in a
final totality that awaits us at some future date (Deleuze
and Guattari 1983: p.42). (92)
Chapter-Three

 their [Deleuze and Guattari] central concern is with
modernity as an unparalleled historical stage of
domination based on the proliferation of
normalizing discourses and institutions that pervade
all aspects of social existence and everyday life. (77)
There is no being beyond becoming, nothing beyond
multiplicity, neither multiplicity nor becoming are
appearances or illusion. (Deleuze 1983: 23-4). (79)
Chapter-Three

Deleuze and Guattari have been political militants and
perhaps the most enthusiastic proponents of a
micropolitics of desire that seeks to precipitate radical
change through a liberation of desire. Hence, they
anticipate the possibility of a new postmodern mode of
existence where individuals overcome repressive modern
forms of identity and stasis to become desiring nomads in
a constant process of becoming and transformation. (74-
75)
Chapter-Three

For both Deleuze and Guattari, the collaboration over their
first joint work, Anti-Oedipus (published in France in 1972,
and sub-titled Capitalism and Schizophrenia) may be seen as
synergistic from earlier (though different) commitments and
intellectual influences, and as an innovative direction which
was to be developed over the following decade.
Deleuze and Guattari’s first collaboration, Anti-Oedipus (1984)
was both an attack on Lacanian psychoanalysis and the
formulation of a radical ontology.
Chapter-Three

Chapter-Four
Baudrillard en route to Postmodernity
Simulacra and Simulation
A philosophical treatise that was published 1891 by
Baudrillared. In this treatise, the author describes the
relationship among reality, symbols and society. He was of
the view that images play a very important role in
contemporary literature.
He claimed that our society has replaced all reality and
meaning with sumbols and signs and that human
experience is a simulation of reality.

 For D & G, 'power centers are defined much more by what escapes them or by
their impotence than by their zone of power'. (1987:217) (102)
 The macrological struggle against the state and mode of production is
impossible without resisting micrological sites of domination and
normalization, just like micrological struggles against the institutions of control
are ultimately powerless without transforming the larger economic and political
forces that shape them. (105)
 [Baudrillard] If modernity is the era of production controlled by the industrial
bourgeoisie, the postmodern era of simulations by contrast is an era of
information and signs governed by models, codes, and cybernetics. (118)
Chapter-Four

Post-modernism is described as a response to
emptiness and anguish which is oriented towards 'the
restoration of a past culture'. (127)
Chapter-Four

Chapter-Five
Lyotard and Postmodern Gaming
Lyotard criticized metanarratives such as reductionism
and technological notions of human history such as
those of Enlighnment and Marxism.
He argues that they have become untenable because of
technological progress in the area of communication,
mass media and computer science.

Lyotard has emerged as the champion of difference and
plurality in all theoretical realms and discourses, while
energetically attacking totalizing and universalizing
theories and methods. (147)
Lyotard has emerged as the champion of difference and
plurality in all theoretical realms and discourses, while
energetically attacking totalizing and universalizing
theories and methods. (147)
Chapter-Five
Lyotard and Postmodern Gaming

Chapter-Six
Marxism, Feminism, and Political
Postmodernism
The idea is to create a mediatory concept, to construct a model
which can be articulated in, and descriptive of different cultural
phenomena. This unity or system is then placed in relation to the
infrastructural reality of late capitalism. (Jameson 1989:43). (182)
The idea is to create a mediatory concept, to construct a model
which can be articulated in, and descriptive of different cultural
phenomena. This unity or system is then placed in relation to the
infrastructural reality of late capitalism. (Jameson 1989:43). (182)

Our central problem is to identify the discursive
conditions for the emergence of a collective action,
directed towards struggling against inequalities and
changing relations of subordination (Laclau and
Mouffe 1985:153) (192)
Chapter-Six
Marxism, Feminism, and Political
Postmodernism

Chapter-Seven
Critical Theory and Postmodern
Theory
[Lyotard] He calls for a further pluralization and
fragmentation of knowledge and politics on the grounds
that totalities, systems, and consensus produce terrorist
oppression. (223)
Habermas discusses the processes whereby the state and
public bureaucracies come to penetrate both the economic
realm and the private realm. .... The state takes over public
functions such as education, mediating in social conflicts,
and providing social welfare... (235)

Chapter-Eight
Towards the Reconstruction of Critical
Social Theory
• As Hassan puts it, postmodern theories are part of a culture of
'unmaking' whose key principles include:'decreation,
disintegration, deconstruction, decenterment, displacement,
difference, discontinuity, disjunction, disappearance,
ecomposition, de-definition, demystification, detotalization,
deligitimation.' (1987:92) (256)

• social theories provide mappings of contemporary society: its
organization; its constitutive social relations, practices, discourses,
and institutions; its integrated and interdependent features; and
its structures of power and modes of oppression and
domination. Social theories analyze how these elements fit
together to constitute specific societies, and how societies work
or fail to function. Social theories therefore provide guides to
social reality, producing models and cognitive mappings of
societies, and the 'big pictures' that enable us to see, for example,
how the economy, polity, social institutions, discourses, practice
and culture interact to produce a social system. (260)
Chapter-Eight
Social Theory

• And no postmodern theorist provides a theory of society as a
systemic organization, as a mode of production with specific
social relations, institutions, and organization. (261)
Chapter-Eight
Social Theory

Postmodern theory wants to decenter the economy in order
to focus on microphenomena. (262)
 Most postmodern theories neglect political economy and fail
to present adequately connections between the economic,
political, social, and cultural levels of society. (263)
Dialectical analysis thus relates particular social phenomena to
the constitutive forces and relations of a society, showing
how, on the one hand, the structures and dynamics of
capitalist society constitute specific phenomena and how their
analytical dissection can shed light on broader social forces.
(264)
Chapter-Eight
Social Theory

Different subject positions therefore provide different
perspectives on social and cultural phenomena and a multiplicity
of positions often provides more comprehensive and
illuminating analyses. Perspectives are thus specific optics
informed by theoretical positions. ... we are using perspective to
delineate the range of existing positions available to theory at a
given moment in history. (266)
From the political standpoint, a multiperspective critical theory
would involve bringing people together with various
standpoints, articulating their common interests, and respecting
their differences. (267)
Chapter-Eight
Social Theory

Conclusion
The authors claim that while postmodern theory
provides insights into contemporary developments, it
lacks adequate methodological and political
perspectives to provide a critical social theory and
radical politics for the present age.

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