What's Postmodern Anyway

7/28/2019 What's Postmodern Anyway

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What's Postmodern, Anyway?

Peter Mnz

Philosophy and Literature, Volume 16, Number 2, October 1992, pp.

333-353 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/phl.1992.0047

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Critical Discussions

WHAT'S POSTMODERN, ANYWAY?

by Peter Mnz

We have known ever since Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectics ofthe Enlightenment (1944) that the Enlightenment was not the

smooth ride into modernity it had been cracked up to be. Bacon's New

Atlantis, far from being full ofimpersonally accumulated, universallyvalid knowledge, mechanically acted upon to promote happiness anddignity, turned out to be Weber's "iron cage," inhabited by Riesman's"lonely crowd," which, sensibilities dissociated (T S. Eliot), is sufferingfrom Fromm's "fearoffreedom," fororiginality, though welcomed asneverbefore, has become a mass phenomenon (Saul Bellow). Somethinghad to give and postmodernity had to come. The question is whether

postmodernity has come with a rational or an irrational face.

The poststructuralism of this book is the dominant idiom of theirrational side ofpostmodernity. Let me then briefly begin by explainingthe nature ofpostmodernity and the reasons forthe ascendancy ofthepoststructuralist idiom. Postmodernity began long before the end ofmodernity. Its first manifestation may well have been the remarkby deMaistre that there is no such thing as "mankind," but only Lithuanians,

An essay on Poststructuralism and the Question ofHistory, edited by DerekAttridge, Geoff Bennington, and Robert Young; viii & 292 pp. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1989, $17.95 paper.

Philosophy and Literature, 1992, 16: 333-353


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334Philosophy and Literature

Prussians, Piedmontese, Frenchmen, etc. Thus he inaugurated the post-modern frame ofmind by insisting that all people are different, cannot

communicate with one another, and that there can be no overarchingmetanarrative to explain these differences. The last great manifestationofmodernity came a hundred years laterin the anthropology ofLvi-Strauss who explained that no matter what myths tell and no matterhow they tell it, they always tell it in the same rational manner byopposing two unreconcilable positions and by repeating these opposi-tions as redundant messages. He affirmed that no matter how greatthe differences, there is an underlying rational pattern (a metanarrative)

which is common to the most primitive and the most "advanced" think-ing. It may seem odd that the postmodern should have preceded themodern by a century; and it will even seem more odd when I add thatthe seminal idea which is the foundation ofthe postmodern was hatched

by Friedrich Nietzsche after and not before the beginning ofthe post-modern age. The weirdness ofthis sequence is itselfa typical exampleof good postmodern perceptionaccording to which, though storieshave a beginning, a middle, and an end, the parts do not necessarilycome in this order.

Whatever the sequence, the insight which stands at the heart as wellas at the beginning ofpostmodernity was first clearly put forward byNietzsche when he discovered that language is not just a simple de-scription ofthe world, but that different languages and different formsofrhetoric actually construct different worlds, rather than describe oneand the same world in different ways. With this insight he not onlydealt a fatal blow to smug Victorian modernism's hitherto tacit as-sumption that words are merely obedient means or instruments and

that theirusefulness can be ascertained by comparing them to the worldthey are supposed to describe, but also unhinged the typically modernposition, dominant since Bacon and Locke, that knowledge ofthe worldis something enjoyed by people who are watching from a transcendentalwatch-tower. Forit had been assumed not only that language is a totallytransparent description ofall the facts, but also that the human nervoussystem which mediates knowledge does nothing but mediate. Nietzscheshowed, in brief, that the assumption that we have a transparent lan-

guage which simply tells the truth is a dream.1 Nietzsche has beencredited with orblamed forall mannerofinsights. But ifI were askedto pinpoint the centerofhis thought, I would say that it was the dem-olition of this modern dream.

Nietzsche's most telling work on this subject was published in 1882under the title Die frhliche Wissenschaft, infelicitously known in English


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as The Gay Science. Nietzsche's intention was to defy the conventions of

positive, bourgeois science in a light-hearted mannerbecause he ques-tioned and rejected not only the ponderous rationality ofconventionalknowledge, but also the very arguments by which it had been established.For this reason he introduced his questioninghis "theorizing knowl-edge," as poststructural jargon would have it todayby a series ofsatirical and sardonic poems and by stringing togetheraphorisms ratherthan reasoned arguments. The overall impression he left the readerwith was that what is called knowledge is really a form ofdiscoursewhich does not refer to an outside world which exists objectively butwhich creates a world as a projection from the speaker's or scientist'sstandpoint and ifit says anything much, says a lot about that subjectivestandpoint. In this way, Nietzsche called the entire project ofa rationallyobjective understanding ofthe world into question and highlighted theself-serving nature ofthe knowledge we think we have. But since hewas also a man dedicated to the Enlightenment, he concluded that forthese reasons, all knowledge is highly suspect.

In this argument he went beyond both Marx and Freud and the way

in which he did so, is crucial forthe emergence ofpostmodernity. Marxtoo had drawn attention to the self-serving nature ofmuch knowledgeand shown how people in powerconstruct knowledge to buttress theirprivileges. But Marx had held fast to one kind ofoverriding knowl-edgea metanarrativewhich was not only not suspect but whichserved to explain why all other knowledge was suspect. He believedthat he understood the course ofhuman history and was thus able toassess the degree ofsuspicion warranted forotherbeliefsystems. Thesame is true for Freud. Like Marx, albeit for different reasons, he

considered beliefin God, mother-love, and all culture in general, sus-pect. But he himself had an overarching theory which was beyondreproach and which explained quite rationally why all otherbeliefsys-tems were suspect. Nietzsche, on the other hand, was much more radicalthan Marx. For he said that it is not only people in power who useknowledge to support their privileges. People who are in an inferior

position are doing exactly the same in order to protect themselves.Where Marx had merely spoken ofthe insincere morality ofthe upper

classes, Nietzsche spoke also of the insincere morality of the lowerclassesi.e., "slave morality." Where Freud spoke only ofthe insincerityofthe ego and the super-ego, Nietzsche also suspected the id. Nietzsche,in short, had something in common with Stalin who was alleged to havesaid that he trusted nobody, not even himself. Nevertheless, postmod-ernity did not continue in the shape which Nietzsche had given it and


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in ourown day, though the Nietzschean lineaments are still visible, is

presenting itselfin a much more extravagant and irrational guise. Theirony is gone and where in 1882 Nietzsche's Wissenschaft had beenfrhlich, ourpoststructuralist practitioners ofpostmodernity are deadlyearnest, utterly irrational, and do not suspect theirown suspicions aboutthe transparency oflanguage. How has this come about?

In the Victorian bourgeois world Nietzsche's revelations soundedstrange and excessive. But they gained, unwittingly and without dueacknowledgment, a new lease on life after the First World Warwhenthese certainties were punctured by the advent of quantum mechanics.This demonstrated that one could do a lot ofcorrect scientific calculation

without necessarily knowing much about realityi.e., one could trackphotons accurately without knowing whether they were waves or par-ticles. At about that same time, Bronislaw Malinowski showed an aston-

ished and incredulous world, still in the grip ofVictorian assumptionsabout "inferior"primitives, that beliefsystems vary from place to placeand that ethical behavioris not guided by Kant's overarching categoricalimperative, but by local custom.2

And then came Ludwig Wittgenstein, who in the second phase ofhis life proved something ofa Nietzsche redivivus. At first, Wittgensteinhad merely summed up the certainties ofnineteenth-century conven-tional wisdom by proclaiming that all problems ofknowledge could besolved ifone realized that the sum ofatomic sentences correspondedto the sum total of atomic facts. With this demonstration he thoughthe had obviated the need for all further thought and had erected alasting monument to modernity. But in the second part of his life

Wittgenstein came to fully Nietzschean conclusions. Knowledge, he ar-gued, is discourse-sensitive and the meaning ofwhat we say and thinkcannot be determined by any experience of the objective, real world

becausesince ourlanguage is not transparently referentialthere can-not be ostensive definitions. Instead, he argued, meanings are deter-mined by the conventions of our speech which differ from speechcommunity to speech community. Since this kind of Nietzschean ar-gument would contradict itselfif it were put forward in a coherentlyreasoned manner, Wittgenstein imitated Nietzsche's aphoristic style andstrung together a long series ofdisconnected remarks.

He, too, as ourpostmodernists would now say, was "theorizing knowl-edge." The very expression "theorizing knowledge," is telling. It meansthat Wittgenstein was not theorizing about knowledge or putting for-ward a theory ofknowledge. He was, on the contrary, making knowl-edge a highly questionable phenomenon. Unlike Nietzsche, however,


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Wittgenstein had no sense of irony. Where Nietzsche had concludedthat his insights into the nature oflanguage made all knowledge highly

suspect, Wittgenstein simply concluded that all knowledge was goodknowledge as long as it was knowledge couched by and received in acommunity according to the community's prevailing rules oflanguage,whatever they were. In thus depriving Nietzsche ofthe ironical twist,he helped to push the Nietzschean argument into an extreme corner.To Wittgenstein, there was nothing suspicious or self-serving aboutknowledge. Knowledge was simply a convention nurtured in a certainform of life or community and was relative to a practicing speech

community. Where Nietzsche had been absolutely suspicious of allspeakers and writers, Wittgensteinbecame totally tolerant ofall speakersand writers as long as they could be shown to be following the rules ofa speech community. With this last proviso, which was like an overarch-ing theory about meaning, he was clinging to modernity's apron-strings.

After the Second World War, the Nietzsche-Wittgenstein thrustgained further momentum and ushered in what we now recognize to

be fully fledged postmodernism. Its apostles are Foucault and Barthes,Derrida, Lyotard, and Baudrillardall fiery French intellectuals who

practice what they preach: the world is not rationally intelligible andwhatever we are saying and thinking about it is really a projection ofourown standpoint and ourown being, adorned and expanded by ourimagination. These gurus not only repeat the Nietzsche-Wittgensteinrejection ofa text's claim to be transparent, but also insist that there isno context outside the narrative pattern of the texts themselves andthat the signified slides perpetually under the signifier because everytext inevitably undermines its own claim to determinate meaning. In

English translation the French original formulas tend to retain theirhighly indeterminate meaningand this should be taken as sure proofthat meanings are indeterminate; for ifthey were not and ifone couldstate clearly what one means, the poststructuralist idiom would reduceitself ad absurdum. Here, as an example, is Baudrillard in Englishsummation: "To read Baudrillard ... is to enter a terroristic universe,

whose staged communications and abstract codings undergo massiveand feverish redoublement where power, truth, history, capitalthewhole arc ofreferential finalitiesprepare to entertheirown simulacra.. . . [he] is above all, a theorist ofthe cynical commodity."3

I will not subject this quotation to analysisfor in demanding thatit should conform to the standards ofmeaning enjoyed by me as unhomme moyen raisonnable, I would be demanding that it be subject tosomething that does not exist in postmodernism, i.e., a rational standard;


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and since such a standard does not exist, I would be seen to be "rapingthe text and committing an act ofterrorism." Confronted by statements

ofthis kind, I can only repeat what Alice said: "Is it not lucky that Ido not like asparagus; for ifI did, I would have to eat it and I wouldnot like that at all." A close reading ofLewis Carroll would make shortshrift ofpoststructural idiom and show that where it proceeds beyondNietzsche and Wittgenstein it becomes nonsensical. But poststructur-alists have fortified themselves against close readings, be it of LewisCarroll or anybody else. In modernism, close reading amounted to ascrutiny by impersonal reason. In postmodernism, such close reading

amounts to subjecting somebody's text to one's own text and in doingso, to preferring arbitrarily one's own text to somebody else's. In theworld ofpostmodernism this can onlybe an assault and act ofterrorism.Ifone takes one's stand with Nietzsche, one must suspect these post-structural locutions. They are not dictated by any reality, let alone bya perception ofreality. They must, therefore be self-serving, even asChristian morality is the self-serving morality preached by slaves. Anappeal to Nietzschean standards would be perfectly in order because

Nietzschemaintained

that all discoursenot

justthe discourse

ofRichard Wagner, Otto von Bismarck, and Jesus Christis suspect. Ofthis more later.

II

Let us take a closerlookat the thinking ofLyotard, perhaps the mostcentral figure in this last phase ofthe development ofpostmodernity.Nietzsche had insisted that the subject is central to all knowledge and

cannot be discounted because all knowledge is somebody's. Wittgensteincarried the argument furtherby showing that subjects, in speaking, arefunctioning in a community and can make themselves understood onlyin virtue ofthe rules the othermembers are following. This conclusionmade him excessively tolerant of all speech communities. As long asthere were rules that can be followed, whateverwas being said, thought,and written in virtue ofthese rules, made sense. Lyotard goes one better.Rules or no rules, he maintains, people say what they say and do what

they do and that is that. Nietzsche's postmodernity had been iconoclasticand emancipatory, because he had alerted us to the likelihood ofself-interest and self-service in everything that was thought and believed.Wittgenstein's postmodernity is relativistic and infinitely tolerant oflan-guage games and speech communities; but there is lurking, in his aph-orisms, a residual un-Nietzschean assumption that there are general


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principles, stated in words, which mean what they say. Lyotard purgesWittgenstein of the last vestiges of metanarrative contained in suchgeneralizations as "there is no private language" and "meaning equalsuse" because, language being nontransparent, these generalizationshave no determinate meaning. By insisting that there can be no meta-narratives, not even a Wittgensteinian metanarrative, Lyotard has takena Nietzschean hammer to Wittgenstein and is ushering in a post-modernity which is chaotic in that it not only tolerates but encouragesthe expression and affirmation ofinconsistent, disparate, and contra-dictory opinions and actions. In Lyotard's world all persons say what

they say and like God, see that it is good (Genesis, I, 25). In Lyotard,speech is not, as in Wittgenstein, rule-following, but a battle; and insteadofrule-following, he speaks ofthe "agonistics oflanguage."4

The initial Nietzschean insistence that the subject plays a vital rolenow reaches its final fruition. Nietzsche had been able to argue with

people and enlighten them as to theirself-serving self-interest. Holdingfast to some overarching belief in the power of biological drives, henever doubted his own ability to form judgments about the question-

ability ofpositions not similarly grounded. Wittgenstein did not argue,but demonstrated very plausibly that meaningful speech and rule-fol-lowing are identical. However, forall practical purposes, Wittgenstein'svery plausibility condemned him to some sort ofcultural particularism.For if a blunderas he used to sayis only a blunder in a certainlanguage game, it follows that a true assertion is only true in a certainlanguage game and that there can be no metatheory or metanarrativeto explain how the several language games hang together. Even themetanarrative assertion that meaning comes from rule-following can

only be true in a certain language game and cannot possibly apply toall language games.

Wittgenstein always shrank from this last conclusion ofhis own wayofarguing. But in his heart ofhearts he knew that this conclusion wasinevitable. During his last years in Cambridge he kept telling his studentsthat he was becoming more and more "stupid." Devoted as they were,they took this to be a sign offalse modesty. What he really meant wasthat he lacked the courage of his conviction and could not let go of

rationalism. Finally, in a truly postmodern happening, Wittgenstein gaveup and retired from Cambridgea gesture which anticipated Lyotardwho did have the courage ofWittgenstein's convictions. Lyotard pushedthe Wittgensteinian argument to its final conclusion. IfWittgenstein isright, there can be no overarching metatheory which says that he isright and there can be no critique ofa language game from the vantage


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point ofanotherlanguage game. Ifcriticism is expressed, it cannot berational, but amounts to an irrational attackon somebody else's position.Hence the claim that any critique and all questioning are acts ofter-rorism. In Lyotard's world, people cannot argue and as a result ofLyotardian thinking, any attempt to argue, even an attempt to provethat meaning follows from rule-following, is an assault on what some-

body is saying and a rape oftheir personal integrity.At first sight, Lyotard's famous The Postmodern Condition: A Report on

Knowledge, reads like a parody ofKuhn, complete with the referencesto Wittgenstein. But where Kuhnmore true to Wittgenstein than

Lyotardwas completely open-minded about all paradigms and couldsee, for example, no great difference between Ptolemy and Einstein,Lyotard shows a dogmatic preference for nonexplanatory, primitiveparadigms which claim to be self-legitimizing. For that matter, Kuhnbelongs to the Wittgenstein phase ofpostmodernism and most certainlyregarded his account as a historical metanarrative and said so in theopening sentence ofhisbook, thus exempting historical knowledge fromthe strictures to which he claimed all other knowledge is subject. Lyo-

tard's account, too, decidedly reads like a historical metanarrative. Butthere is no comparable disarming admission ofthis fact in Lyotard andwe seem therefore expected to view his book as a postmodern chantwhich legitimizes itself because, and for no better reason than that, itis being chanted.

Lyotard's opinionit would be unfair to him to referto it as "think-ing"is the kingpin ofcontemporary postmodernism. Although it car-ries the initial Nietzschean insight to the point ofabsurdity, it has caughton; and cultural particularism is widely fashionable not only in politics,

but also in the academic classrooms in which more and more students

talknonsense and reject criticism on the ground that the teacher's viewis just one view among many. Every person presents a position. Tosubject such a position to criticism in terms of a metatheory is, sincewhat is alleged to be metatheory is just one more position, no morethan an attempt to deprive people oftheir freedom by making decisionsfor them. This view of decision-making has invaded the practice ofmedicine and social care and is beginning to invade the practice oflaw.

It has not yet invaded the territory ofengineering because people stillhave enough common sense to deferto the expert authority ofairplanedesigners when they fly.

One comes across different explanations ofthe rise ofthis postmod-ern fashion. David Harvey simply links it to a majorshift in systems ofrepresentation and ofphilosophical sentiment brought about by max-


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imal change in the bases for reproduction of the social order.5 Thisargument is so general that it is devoid ofexplanatory power. The viewof Fredric Jameson is more specific.6 He sees postmodernism as thecultural correlate ofthe last stages ofcapitalism in which positions andworks are produced as a form of consumption, without regard towhether there is any demand, let alone need, forthem. Jameson writesfrom within Marxism and appraises postmodernism negatively. I wouldprefer a proper Marxist explanation which links postmodern philo-sophical sentiment or argumentif one can call it thatto powerfulsocial and political pressures. During the second halfofour century

we are seeing a rejection ofcolonialism, a rejection ofmale chauvinismand patriarchy, a rejection of the exploitation of the working classesand a general respect for the disadvantaged and the disabled. Thistrend is entirely good and is underpinned ideologically by Lyotard'scontention that every position is deserving oftotal respect, that it shouldnot be criticized from the point ofview ofanother position, and thatit legitimizes itselfby the mere fact that it is a position.

With this conclusion we find ourselves in a difficult situation. Where

art and architecture are concerned such anarchy is an exciting andpleasing spectaclesomething we are already used to because we areaccustomed to museums in which the most diverse objects are exhibitedside by side. But when we come to knowledge and literature, we arein the realm of language, that is, in the realm of reproductive andrepresentative arts, where such anarchy poses rather than solves prob-lems. This is because we are living in a real world and are not touristsin a museum.

Ill

In rejecting overarching theories, poststructuralism not only dismissesthe modern natural and social sciences but also creates a special problemfor our view of the past. The past as such is not all that accessible,

because its vastness and the intricacies ofits myriad strands by farexceedthe extent ofany conceivable narrative. One ofthe time-honored waysofviewing the past is the explanatory way in which events are linked

in causal sequences because they explain one another. When anecdotesand particular stories were connected to make one long "History,"chroniclers became historians and started to look upon the past in theexplanatory mode. Ifthe earlier explains the later, one gets a chron-ological sequence which is intelligible and which leads to a present seenas the outcome of the past.7 It is no surprise to find that Nietzsche


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dismissed such explanatory metanarrative out of hand and distin-guished only three modes ofviewing the pastthe monumental, thecritical, and the antiquarian. Historians at first took little notice ofNietzsche's book on the subject published in 1874. But a hundred yearslater Nietzsche's rejection ofthe explanatory mode has become ortho-doxy. The road towards this poststructural randomization ofthe pastas ajumble ofincoherent events each ofwhich happens singly to be ofinterest to a historian writing in the present, has led, like the road topostmodernity itself, from Nietzsche, via Wittgenstein, to Lyotard andhis minions. To be precise, Wittgenstein himself happened not to be

interested in the past. But his followerThomas Kuhn was. Despairingofthe coherent explanatory mode in the writing ofthe history ofscience,Kuhn postulated that the history ofscience comes in discrete fragmentswhich have nothing to do with one anotherand are not causally relatedto one another. Kuhn's history ofscience preserved no more than themerest modicum of a metanarrative.

Nietzsche's monumental and critical histories both place the subjectwho is viewing the past at the centerand, following in the footsteps of

Nietzsche, poststructuralism takes it for granted that history is writtenin order to legitimize this subject's position or to criticize one's adver-saries. So much so that the past is studied in so far as and because thepresent throws light on itthat is, a complete inversion of the moretraditional reason for studying the past because it throws light on the

present. The result is that postmodern historians do not offercoherentnarration in which one event leads to the next, but ajumbled assortmentoffacts and information which they make appear in the order theywant because they appear to be of interest to them. For this reason,postmodern historians, in making themselves the center of the past,endlessly call attention to the arbitrariness and constructiveness oftheiror any view of the past. In all schools and universities ofthe English-speaking world, courses on the past are no longerordered sequentiallyso that the earlierexplains the later, but postmodernistically, as isolatedtopics and periods which do not stand in an intelligible relationship toone another.

In this situation, thebottom falls out ofthe past, forthe randomization

of the past in poststructuralism goes far beyond the mere selection ofevents and yields only the rambling assortment ofanecdotes and sto-ries"one damned thing afteranother," as Jean-Luc Godard, the film-maker of the sixties, used to put it. In the nineteenth century it had

been discovered that meanings, and especially the meanings ofinten-tions, change and that historians, ifthey want to recover the past, have


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to be sensitive to the meanings past persons and events had for the

persons ofthe past; that these meanings differ from their own; andthat these, now lost, meanings are an essential part ofwhat they wantto recover.8 Historians, it was then thought, must not inflict theirownmeanings upon the past by interpreting it as it suits them. Those "his-toricist" historians, best known as followers of Dilthey, Croce, and/orCollingwood, took care not to place themselves in the centerwhich they

believed to be occupied by the persons they were writing about. Butthe poststructuralist insistence that no person and no event has an

absolute or fixed meaningnot even the meaning the authorof

thetext or the event had intendedrejects the notion that a person ofthepast has a meaning which canbe respected and recovered by a historian.It concludes, on the contrary, that all authors are dead, including thosethat are really dead; and that the modern reader and historian candrive any coach and four through the testimonies ofthe past.

IV

Poststructuralism and the Question ofHistory looks like a welcome con-tribution to this problem. But the readeris soon disappointed because,apart from the introduction in which Bennington and Young "pose theproblem," no critical light is shed on anything. The contributors to thisvolume simply practice postmodernism and display postmodernity with-out giving reasons for doing so. For to give a reason for this practiceand this play would be to question postmodernism or, if it is to becommended, to provide a metanarrativeand, as Alice said, that would

not be postmodern at all. The contributions fall into three unequal anddisparate parts. "Meaningfully" and not incidentally, these three partsdo not correspond to the foursections in which they are divided in thetable ofcontents. There is first the informative part with the Intro-duction by Geoff Bennington and the essays by Jonathan Culler andMark Cousins. Bennington usefully poses the question by explainingthat poststructuralism had to come because structuralism had been tooexclusively concerned with "decentering" the subject which holds knowl-edge and had believed, as indeed all modern thinking had done, thatthere is an impersonal, transcendentally Olympian stance from whichone can have knowledge ofthe value-free "facts." Cullerexplains howpoststructuralism affects the American university and its cousins andwhat contribution Foucault has made to the poststructural investigationofthe past.

Second, there are a number of unrelated studies, written in thor-


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oughly postmodernjargon, on texts, on history as language (Attridge),

on the erasure ofhistory (Maud Ellmann), on the phonograph in Africa(Pietz), and on the phallograph in Milton (Mary Nyquist). The essayon Milton is a tediously long explanation ofMilton's Paradle Lost, 9,103466, in which the author rightly claims that some readers in the

past have misunderstood Milton. She singles out poor J. M. Evans (p.219) who bowdlerized the interpretation, not the text, because he wasediting it for schools. For the rest, Mary Nyquist claims that Milton'sdiscourse is phallocentric and that she had to place herself(p. 238) inthe position ofan Other to decipherwhat "neitherAdam nor the textwould seem to know." As faras I can make out, she "deciphers" exactlywhat stares into the eye ofevery reader of the text. But if one takesher literally, herclose reading ofthe text cannot reveal anything otherthan that Mary Nyquist is no more than one ofthe many players in thelong history ofMilton reception. In this history one can locate herplacewith great precision, outpace the Other, Mary Nyquist claims (p. 215)that the modern reading is a "misreading" which must be set against areading which is "correct." Since Milton is deadand since we have it

on the good authority ofboth Foucault and Barthes whom she quotes(p. 214) to this effect, that, as author, she herself is poststructurallydeadwhat are we to make ofthis "Other" who eventually comes upwith the correct reading which does not differfrom what the text actuallysays? The general confusion she succeeds in creating is not helped bythe misprint on page 224 where, in the course ofa crucial part of theso-called argument, we read "illusion" when we shouldpresumablyread "allusion." Orshould we? Forthat matterthere ought to have been

at least a passing reference to Robert Graves's famous bookon Milton'swife, for the author of The White Goddess has impeccably phallogocen-trifugal credentials!

Bennington, in an essay entitled "Demanding History," plays on thedouble meaning of"demanding" because history is both demandingand demanded; and spends much time in telling us that Barthes claimstoo much for a poststructuralist view ofthe past and Terry Eagleton,too little. Bennington's soliloquy about these two writers does not, how-ever, touch upon exactly how much would be required for poststruc-

turalism and why ofall people, these two deviationists should be singledout. G. C. Spivakspeculates on Marx afterhaving read Derrida withoutwondering whetherit would have been more rewarding to reverse theorder. Marian Hobson writes on "History traces" in which she defendsDerrida by insisting among otherthings, that the child's play "describesits own description" (p. 107). Good Derridian that she is, she believesthat "what is written about doesn't precede the writing." But it is not


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clearwhetherthe "it" in "it describes its own description" ofthe followingclause, refers to the play or to Freud's speculation about it. Whichever

way, her argument is yet anothervery poorly constructed repetition ofthe stock thesis ofpoststructuralism that the signified sooner or later,and usually sooner than later, disappears behind the signifier. If, onthe otherhand, the "it" refers to the child's play, then she is repeating,again clumsily, Lyotard's argument that children's play, like Cashinahuachanting, is self-legitimizing. With this contention even so unregeneratean anti-Lyotardian as myself would not quarrel; except that I am askingmyselfwhy, in this case, she should then insist that that play is not prior

to Freud's speculation about it? Afterall, even Lyotard admits that theCashinahua were chanting before he used theirchants in his bookonpostmodernity.

Ann Wordsworth in her "Derrida and Foucault: Writing the historyof historicity" is making very heavy weather of a very simple point.Since Foucault has been writing about both madness and sex as iftheyhad an intelligible history, he has been accused by Derrida ofclinging

by the skin ofhis teeth and in the face ofeverything Derrida is standingfor, to some form of metanarrative. For reasons which are not clear,

Ann Wordsworth sides with Derrida and also defends him against TerryEagleton. In the end (p. 124) she rephrases Nietzsche's old discoverythat "writing is not a mere transmission ofcontent" in Derrida's mostunattractive jargon. We are told that "to back out ofthis voluminouselement is ... to move from the isolation of texts in their pre-givenorders, the certainties ofdestination and identity, and to attend to thenon-ideal exteriority ofwriting, the graphics ofexpropriation, diffrance[sic], the trance, supplementarity, etc." There is no telling what the

author meant by this sentence, but since she is poststructurally dead,herintentions do not matter and we are entitled to a little deconstructionofour own. To initiates, the overall effect ofthe sentence is a tinglingexcitement. With "expropriation," we are being teased into the vestibuleof erogenous zones and are beginning to feel really good vibrations,for we are politically correct in being indignant because somebody orsomething is being taken advantage of. With the word "diffrence," thereal foreplay begins, for we are now sensing the master's firm handtitillating our spine. But the differences in the meaning of diffrencetantalizingly prolong suspension in the plateau phase and deferentiallydefertruly intellectual orgasm to the word "supplementarity." Touched

by that word, we get weakin the knees and, submitting now to Derrida'smasterful authority,9 we are savoring the full flush ofRousseau's auto-eroticism.10

The third part of the book, right in the middle, is reserved for a


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contribution by the masterhimself, Lyotard, on "The Sign ofHistory,"first delivered in 1982 in Milwaukee. Lyotard's discourse is unintelligible

to a reader like me, prepared to take his courage in his hand andperpetrate an unspeakable act ofterrorism on it by threatening to askwhat it could mean in terms ofany to me conceivable standard. Lyotardsays himselfthat the title is enigmatic and when one has finished readingthe paper, the title certainly remains so.

The paper is an endless discourse on Kant who is alleged not onlyto be the beginning and end ofmodernity but also gets full marks for

being the beginning of postmodernity (p. 163, bottom). The reader's

difficulty is compounded, ifthat is at all possible, by the fact that Lyotardis not only not all that familiar with the German language ofwhich hemakes abundant use, but also not very knowledgeable about Kant inany language. All this is very confusing because there is no obviousreason why he should blame his discourse on Kant at all. But since hedoes, let me briefly point out that in German Teilnehmung (p. 170) doesnot mean "taking sides" but "having sympathy with" and whateverequivocations one can get out ofthe English word "participation," therecan be no comparable muddle in German because Germans distinguishclearly between "taking sides," i.e., Partei ergreifen, and "empathizing,"i.e., teilnehmen. The editors do not make it clear whether these German

words in brackets are their own or Lyotard's explanations. But sincethe text also often omits the diresis on German words, authororeditor

or both detract from the comprehensibility ofthe text in more waysthan one. This is surprising, because in poststructuralism a text is sup-

posed to be very important and, since the author is dead, all we have.But then again, with the author dead, there is perhaps no great obli-

gation on the editors of a deceased person's text to take care, eventhough Lyotard is not really dead, but only pretending to be. I find allthis very postmodern indeed and I get no help at all from the fact thatLyotard seems less than familiar with Kant's treatment ofantinomies(p. 174). But since Lyotard throughout is writing as if Kant were notonly physically but also poststructurally dead, he must feel very free todrive a steam-rollerover Kant's dead body. It is also by no means clearwhether he is dwelling on Kant's idea ofprogress to criticize it or to

praise it. I suppose that none ofthis matters: for Lyotard, practicinghere what he has been preaching, is doing nothing more and nothingless than imitating the self-legitimizing "narrative pragmatics" of theCashinahua of section 6 of his own The Postmodern Condition.


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Apart from the fact that the Cambridge University Press should bewilling to include such a text (and a badly edited one at that) in one oftheir books, there is another aspect of postmodernism which neverceases to amaze me. Postmodernism is really a form of intellectualatavism, because it is by all standards, pre- rather than postmodern. Itrevives five old and decidedly premodern positions and in doing so,combats modernism by harking back to some time-honored stances. Iwill list five striking ones.

(1)I have already alluded to the cultural nominalism ofpostmod-ernism which results from an excessive application ofOccam's Razorto the structuralist contention that behind all cultural diversities there

lie universal binary oppositions ofcategories, as well as to the evolu-tionary contention that all diversities are variations on the universaltheme ofadaptation. Such nominalism squarely places postmodernismwith Linnaeus and otherpremodern forms ofpre-Darwinian and pos-sibly Biblical and Creationist thinking. ForDarwin, among otherthings,

provided a most unpostmodern metanarrative explanation ofLinnaean

taxonomy.(2)There is a strong touch of old-fashioned Romanticism in the

rejection ofmetatheories and metanarratives on the ground that anysubsumption detracts from the intensity oforiginal experience. The

postmodern man and woman wish to seize the intensity ofthe momentand hope to do so by avoiding metadiscourse. But this hope will bedashed not only by metadiscourse, but by all discourse. As Schillerobserved two centuries ago: Tf the soul is speaking, alas!, the soul is

no longer speaking." Lyotard, not exactly an inspired poet, providesa pedestrian paraphrase: "work and text . . . come too late for theirauthor. . . ."n

(3)Postmodernism claims that a work of literature is truly post-structural when it is not just a mirror but also self-reflexive.12 But thismuch vaunted quality ofpostmodern literature is a characteristic ofallliterature forwe call language "literary" when words stand out as wordsoreven as sounds rather than being assimilable to meanings13 and thehallmark ofall literature is a disproportion between signified and sig-nifier.14

(4)To a postmodern reader, a text is a montage/collagenot a dis-course governed by the way it refers to ordescribes, let alone mirrors,an outside reality. R. G. Collingwood observed decades ago that themost old-fashioned way ofconstructing a text is to do it with scissorsand paste.


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(5) Postmodernism prides itselfon having discovered that languagecreates a referential illusion. When we speak or write we seem to bereferring to a referent. This too is hardly a new discovery. Both Vicoand Rousseau pointed out that referential discourse is a very late andvery secondary manifestation of language and that initially men usedto speakpoetically, in tropes, that is, nonreferentially.

Atavism orno atavism, there is a substantial flaw in postmodernism'spoststructural idiom. Foucault described the postmodern world, orrather, the world as seen by a postmodern person, as a heterotopiaa world in which disconnected positions, forms, stances, and beliefs rub

shoulders and jostle side by side. We are well used to such jostling ofheteronomous styles in ourcities, where not all old buildings have beenpulled down, and from museums in which we walk past heterologousstyles in matters of minutes. But when it comes to social institutionsand beliefs, there can be no easy bedfellows and Foucault knew enoughabout politics to realize that such shoulder rubbing and such jostlingwas not likely to be as peaceful as Mazzini and othernineteenth-centurystarry-eyed nationalist particularists had imagined and that it would in

almost all cases lead to violence and that, in the absence of metanar-ratives, all extant discrepancies would have to be resolved by power.This brute view is ofcourse consistent with the belief that criticism can

never be judicious but amounts to rape and terrorism. However thismay be, heterotopia consists in the preservation ofthese disconnectedfragments and the complete acceptance of pluralism. Each position,Lyotard claims, must be protected in its autonomous singularity and its

purity must be scrupulously preserved. This heterotopian pluralist con-

clusion that all the many pluralities cannot be related, let alone reduced,to one another, is reminiscent of pre-Darwinian taxonomy and has adecidedly Creationist flavorabout it. As I said, there is something wronghere and it can best be illustrated by the story ofthe young man whowas arrested afterhe had raped a woman. "Ijust wanted to do my ownthing," he is reported to have told the police. Now a true denizen ofheterotopia ought to have been within his rights in doing his own thing.To deny his authentic wish to rape a woman is to make a decision forhim and, in the absence ofa metadiscourse, such a decision is itselfan

act of rape. Since there can be no cogent argument against rape inheterotopia, genuine, as distinct from faddish, feminists like SabinaLovibond15 argue that feminists should stop flirting with postmodernismand realize that theircause is betterserved by an Enlightenment meta-narrative which concludes in favorofuniversally valid norms ofequalityand dignity. The unholy alliance between poststructuralism and femi-


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nism is based on the gross error ofjudgment that all rationality isphallocentric and therefore to be resisted.

Obviously, there is something wrong in the rejection ofall and everymetadiscourse. Ifone holds that all knowledge is somebody's discourseand that this fact makes all knowledge discourse sensitive and that noreference is intended, one may well come to the conclusion that therecannot be metanarratives ofwhich all these discourses are parts. Butthe ineluctable fact is that while one may have doubts about the viabilityof metatheories, one cannot have doubts about the metasubstance.16

We all live in one and the same world; and its separate parts must be

consistent with one another and cannot be irreducibly disjointed; or, ifthey are now disjointed, there must be a reason why they have becomeso. There may be a vast variety ofdisconnected parts and they may all

be different from one another; but the variety cannot be infinite. Forthis reason, there must be metatheories. The ones we have so far mayall be wrong and the true ones may never be found. But the assertionthat there can be none and that any metatheory is eo ipso mistaken,must be rejected. For that matter, such an assertion is highly suspect

because it is a mere reiteration of medieval nominalism uncriticallyrepeated by William Blake's comment, endorsed by Richard Rorty,17that "to generalize is to be an idiot."

Heterotopia, in other words, cannot possibly be the final word. Anumberofmodern thinkers have pondered this problem. It is a problemindeed, because unless one is an old-fashioned imperialist with militarypower or an old-fashioned male chauvinist with muscles, the facts ofourexperience bring us face to face with the pluralism ofheterotopia.So how can one reconcile these plural experiences with the existence

ofan overarching metatheory which would even allow us quite rationallyto give very poormarks and even discredit points to some ofthe positionsthat form part of heterotopia? Ernest Gombrich keeps reminding usthat in spite ofall differences ofpositions, human beings are very muchalike and that, in short, heterotopia is not nearly as plural as Foucault& Co. believe.18 Perhaps more to the point is the case made by JrgenHabermas. A species which depends forsurvival on cooperative actionand linguistic communication, must ofnecessity rely, in the last resort,on some kind of reason. Consensual and normative statements arise

from reciprocal understanding and thus the role ofa universalizingreason is grounded in daily life and in the dialogical quality ofhumancommunication. More abstract but compelling are the arguments byDonald Davidson19 and Bernard Williams20 to the effect that one could

not even support that there is a plurality offragments, i.e., a heterotopia,


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unless there were an overarching frameworkwhich allows us to see thatthere are differences in the different positions.

The most telling objection to the belief that heterotopia is final andthat there can be no metatheory to connect its several parts, comes froma consideration ofevolution. The universe started with a Big Bang andhas been grinding on relentlessly eversince. Ifone does not wish to go

back to the Big Bang, one can start with the origin ofour planet andfollow the events from then on. Ifthis is too long ago, one can startwith the origin of living cells or, even later, a few million years ago,with the emergence ofthe first anthropoid mammals or, laterstill, with

blackEve, ourcommon ancestor. Whicheverway, ourpresent condition,no matterhow postmodern, is the direct descendant ofan earliercon-dition and we would not be here if that initial condition had been

substantially different orifsubsequent events had taken different turns.In short, all the plural fragments of heterotopia are related to oneanother because they have a common ancestor. This realization forcesa metatheory on us and it is absurd to keep rejecting metatheories andto claim as postmodernism does, that each and every fragment ofhet-

erotopia is uniquely existent and unrelated to all the other fragments.My views may be relative to me or to the culture I am part of; andsomebody else's views may be relative to them and theirculture. But Iand my culture are related to the otherculture and the otherculturesare related to all the other cultures of heterotopia. The relativitiesthemselves are related to each other and there must be a way in whichthese relations can be tracked down. The separate parts would not existhad they not evolved and the discovery ofthe paths and ofthe mecha-nisms of this evolution, if it ever could be made, would be the final

grand overarching metanarrative, the "Theory of Everything" as it iscalled by cosmologists.21

VI

There is then an ultimate error ofjudgment in poststructuralism.The root of this error lies in the basically atavistic nature ofthe post-structural variety ofpostmodern thinking. Nietzsche's skepticism about

the philosopher's dream that there is a total, closed, and transparentlanguage which would tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth,was stormy; but not stormy enough. For Nietzsche, like everybody else

before him and lots ofpeople afterhim, would not let go of the ideathat knowledge can only be knowledge if it is justified or legitimized.

Nietzsche, unlike most philosophers before him, believed that the only


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available legitimization of knowledge consists in the fact that it is theheartfelt, biologically driven knowledge held by an "I." This may notappear to us a good justification for calling a belief true knowledge.But in Nietzsche's case, that did not matter, for Nietzsche was as sus-

picious of his own "I" as he was of anybody else's "I." But the post-structuralists who followed in his footsteps have ceased to be suspiciousof theirown "I." They concluded that knowledge and meaning couldonly be justified insofar as it could be related to a knowing "I." Withthis conclusion, they were on the road to heterotopia which is, as wehave seen, a place that does not exist. In this sense, Nietzsche must be

seen as a sort ofpied pipera role he himselfmight have been proudof. But this conclusion made Lyotard maintain that the chants oftheCashinahua are the only truly legitimate knowledge there is. All otherknowledge is tarred by having been derived from metatheories and istherefore not legitimized.

It has not yet occurred to Lyotard or any practitioner of poststruc-turalismby their own standards these practitioners ought not to bereferred to as "thinkers" that the Cashinahua have a perfectly good

reason for making sure that their chants are actually false knowledgeand incompatible as well as inconsistent with the chants of any othersocial group. Forthese chants do not legitimize themselves as knowledge,as Lyotard contends; but are used to legitimize the Cashinahua as Cash-inahua, that is, as all those people who are Cashinahua and not somebodyelse. These chants ensure that the chanters cooperate and intermarrywith the people who have the same chants and keep alooffrom peoplewho have different chants. The chants, therefore, ifthey are to fulfillthis role, must be idiosyncratic and, ifthey make any assertions at all,must make idiosyncratic (that is "false") assertions.22

The poststructural confusion about chanting goes backtojustification.The conventional idea was that a belief is justified ifit can be shownthat it was arrived atby the right method. People have varied enormouslyas to what they considered to be the right method. It used to be heldthat the right method is some kind ofrevelation by God ora deductionfrom a self-evident idea or an elaboration of sense-experience. Forcenturies, both philosophers and Inquisitors have debated this question

as to what might be the right method. But it never occurred to any ofthe proponents ofany ofthese methods that they were running aroundin circles. In orderto decide which method would be the right method,one would, first ofall, have to know what kind ofworld one is livingin. But since we cannot know what kind ofworld one is living in withoutknowing what would be the right kind ofmethod forfinding out what


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kind ofworld one is living in, all these arguments and debates werefruitless. Ifthe truth ofknowledge depends on the fact that it isjustified

by having been arrived at by the right method, the entire quest fortruth becomes pointless.

As I said, Nietzsche himselfwould not have been perturbed by sucha conclusion. But the storm he created would have been more fruitful

had he been able to let go ofthe last vestige ofthe old notion that therecan be no knowledge unless it is justified. Had he been able to let goofthis notion, his turbulent influence would not have led to poststruc-turalism and the untenable belief that the world is a heterotopia. The

trouble with Nietzsche was that he was stormy, but not revolutionary;for he continued to believe that knowledge has to be justified. Thefurthest reach ofhis storm was that all knowledge, justified as well asunjustified, is suspect, because all people who have or claim to haveknowledge are dominated by selfish interests.

Victoria University, Wellington

1.See Martin Warner, Philosophical Finesse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), chap. 7,"Nietzsche's Philosophical Hammer."

2.Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts ofthe Western Pacific (London: Routledge, 1922),p. 326.

3.Arthur Kroker and David Cook, TL Postmodern Scene (New York: St. Martin's Press,

1986), pp. 170-71.4.Jean-Franois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester:Manchester University Press, 1984), pp. 10-11.

5.David Harvey, The Condition ofPostmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), p. 239.

6.Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society," in Hal Foster, ed., Post-modern Culture (London: Pluto, 1985), pp. 111-25.

7.See Peter Mnz, The Shapes ofTime (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan UniversityPress, 1976).

8.Friedrich Meinecke, Historicism: The Rise of a New Historical Outlook, trans. J. E.Anderson (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972).

9.See, for example, Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (London:Methuen, 1982), p. 33.

10.Jean Starobinski, J-J. Rousseau: La transparence et l'obstacle (Paris: Pion, 1957), p.220.


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11.Lyotard, p. 81.

12.Harvey, p. 21; Steven Connor, Postmodernist Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), p.5.

13.Geoffrey Hartman, Saving the Text (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,1981), p. xii.

14.Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), p. 2.

15.Sabina Lovibond, "Feminism and Postmodernism," New Left Review 178 (1989).See also Martha C. Nussbaum, TL Fragility ofGoodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedyand Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

16.For a fuller discussion ofthe metasubstance which is in need ofa metatheory see

Peter Mnz, Philosophical Darwinism (London: Routledge, in press), chap. 4.17.Richard Rorty, Philosophy and tL Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1979), p. 38.

18.See, e.g., Ernest Gombrich, " 'They Were All Human BeingsSo Much Is Plain':Reflections on Cultural Relativism in the Humanities," Critical Inquiry 13 (1987): 686-99.

19.Donald Davidson, "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," Proceedings andAddresses ofthe American Philosophical Association 48 (1974): 519.

20.Bernard Williams, Morality (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), p. 37.

21.John D. Barrow, The World Within the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1988), pp. 345; 360.

22.See Peter Mnz, OurKnowledge ofand the Groioth ofKnowledge (London: Routledge,1985), pp. 7475, and "Taking Darwin Even More Seriously," Issues in EvolutionaryPhilosophy, ed. K. Hahlweg and C. A. Hooker (New York: State University ofNew YorkPress, 1989).

What's Postmodern Anyway

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