Lyotard & Postmodernism (theories & Methodologies Essay 2)

STUDENT: 316773

Year I

Theories & Methodologies Spring 2001

“Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable”. (Jean Francois Lyotard). Discuss. Lyotard’s “report on knowledge”1 makes key assumptions: that in preceding eras authorities controlled knowledge and metanarratives applied universal rationality to the unexplainable, while generalising away differences. This narrow view of modernism leads to an inaccurate definition of the postmodern as a complete reaction against such concepts. Its predictions have often proved accurate, but the model is too prescriptive. Here, “postmodernism” denotes characteristics of - what I perceive as - an era of post-industrial but late rather than post capitalism, where buying and selling have been expanded rather than surpassed. I restrict focus to western society over the last twenty-five years2, allowing us to judge Lyotard’s legacy against the accelerating new economic order. This essay contends that postmodern knowledge is a diverse field in which the context of consumer capitalism is the only constant. While state and academic authorities decreasingly control knowledge, it has become a tool of corporations, causing “hyperreality”. Here, “ability to tolerate the incommensurable” is not necessarily positive, as anything outside commoditization is potentially incommensurable. Yet postmodern knowledge is not entirely negative, and I will demonstrate its paradoxical ability to both sensitise and desensitise us to differences. Examples of the deployment of postmodern knowledge will mainly be taken from literature, though other cultural forms are also utilised. Postmodern knowledge expands modernist dismissal of conventional authority. Damien Hirst and John Cage challenge academic authority over what art and music actually are. Modernism has inevitably become an institution itself, against which some

Student 316773 Theories & Methodologies Essay: "Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable". Discuss.

postmodernism is aimed. Art as “high culture” is attacked, not so much shifting towards populism as through what Jameson regards as “broadening the cultural realm”3. Mass culture exists outside academic - even state – authority. The Postmodern Condition hints at ascension from academic authority to market forces, yet its rejection of privileged paradigms does not degrade authority in any simple manner. In literary criticism “incredulity towards metanarratives”4 crucially reflects the rise of marginalized minority groups, ironing out inaccurate generalisations. Yet theory remains the realm of academic institutions, albeit ones of broader social base. Shift beyond objectivity has also led to more subjective perceptions of scientific authority, but it cannot be delegitimised on Lyotard's terms. He felt that legitimacy only came through autonomous rules within narratives, and that science avoids narrative legitimisation until it is forced to, forming political institutions. However, as Connor points out, the autonomous performative narrative science rejects (“it is because it is”) is not the same as the narrative group of social interaction, organisation and hierarchy. Moreover, Lyotard has attacked the scientific metanarrative using one of his own creation – that of isolated linguistic clusters. He negates the overlapping of metanarrative collapse and implementation of the postmodern condition. The broadening cultural sphere has not led to increased academic-information access as Lyotard hoped, but greater inequality. This may be a result of Jameson's “demolition”, pursued by intellectuals since the Enlightenment. That is, increasing the realm of what we do not understand by pushing away folklore. This created space for a new authority whose paradigms are amorphous, subtly implemented and more widely encompassing. The great postmodern authority over knowledge is that of late capitalism. As Jameson puts it, “postmodernity replicates or reproduces – reinforces, the logic of late consumer capitalism” 5. This is ever clearer as the “digital and communications revolution” accelerates. Local

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Student 316773 Theories & Methodologies Essay: "Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable". Discuss.

community knowledge of the early Twentieth Century, informed by aphorism and “old wives tales”6, is now informed by advertising jingles and global television. Community knowledge was often inaccurate but wholly for the good of those sharing it; postmodern knowledge has the ulterior motive of continuing the process of buying and selling. The state and academia never held power at this level, and are decreasingly influential as a result. As Lyotard predicted, knowledge is decreasingly related to the training of minds7. For the first time abstracts8 have become commodities. Multinational corporations now possess more wealth than many small nations9. Nevertheless, academic institutions still dictate “literature” to a greater extent than that sold. There is little analysis of contemporary works focussing on “mass” appeal rather than “academic” postmodern concepts, Larkin's poetry a rare example. Here lies a central paradox. Postmodernity dismisses metanarratives and objective generalisation, in which case we cannot speak in periodizing terms, of “Spirits of the Age” such as postmodernity, anyway. Lyotard's tolerance of the incommensurable partly covers this. His isolated “linguistic clouds”10 of existence are a necessary paralogical tool. Fragmentation is similarly prevalent in postmodern literature. The Tesseract presents gangster boss Don Pepe as a series of contradictory anecdotes. Upon his death the narrator reflects that: “These fragments, and others like them, were the form in which the mestizo continued to exist. Together, they represented his life as accurately as a shoal of milkfish represents the South China Sea”11. Postmodern knowledge is fuelled by tensions. Lyotard's prophesy of corporate and state conflict when corporations possess the greater technology12 has come to pass with multinational drugs companies refusing Third World discounts despite governments’ requests13. “Alternative” pop music is a perfect example of commoditization encompassing the subversive, once the “line between high art and commercial forms is increasingly difficult

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Student 316773 Theories & Methodologies Essay: "Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable". Discuss.

to draw”14

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. Naomi Klein provides a case study of marketing compromising culture and

education16. Such conflicts inspire cyber-punk fiction, where “sign and signifier twist toward the sky in the unending ritual of commerce”17. Its worlds are intentionally little removed from contemporary society, gritty prose extolling bathos behind technology. Modernist science fiction was similarly a reaction against utopian fantasy, yet Orwell and Huxley’s feared authoritarian states are not only superseded by threatening capitalism, they may have come about through corporate hands. “Big Brother”esque CCTV allows authorities to observe every move in public space, but many cameras are actually owned by multinational companies in their outlets, rather than the state18. This authority causes existence in “hyperreality"19, where reality scrambles to fulfil technological demands of representation20. This is far fetched, but carries weight. A personal anecdote21: I was at a rural house when the television evening news reported that a train had killed two girls across nearby marshland. It was only then that I looked out of the window to discover the lights of the emergency services in the distance. Reality was secondary to its representation. Perception is media conditioned, a copy of a dubious, if not false, outside reality Baudrillard dubbed simulacra. Even postmodern youth movements, from punks onwards, appear simulacra clawing at the spirit of genuinely oppressed historical youths, the Edelweiss Pirates or jeunesse dorée. At conditioning’s limit, Norman Finkelstein identifies a “holocaust industry” manipulated by corporations and states for their own ends. His claim of an over-horrific holocaust representation is dubious, but as an event beyond normal comprehension it seems tangible for postmodern society to build a misrepresentative detached model. So whilst postmodernism may not simply be a tool of the authorities their influence cannot be underestimated. Nonetheless, I feel the last two years may have hinted at late

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Student 316773 Theories & Methodologies Essay: "Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable". Discuss.

capitalism reaching terminal velocity. Saul Landau22 believes its unprecedented strength arose from the universal disarray of socialist systems. Recently there have been rumblings of labour movement recurrence, under the anti-corporate banner23. It is unrealistic to expect “Reclaim the Streets” protests and Seattle riots to damage such an ingrained system, but they may prove a turning point24. If late capitalism was the zenith of postmodernism, we may be on the verge of a new era.

Postmodern knowledge can both sensitise and desensitise us to differences. Its sheer breadth and diversity is sensitising; a novel by Irvine Welsh is barely comparable with an Ian McEwan one. Lyotard regarded postmodern knowledge as sensitising where isolated linguistic clusters usurp metadiscourses. Yet his differentiation is based on perception looking outside clusters that must overlap. Otherwise we would not be able to ingratiate ourselves with other cultures – class, race, gender – unable to acknowledge their existence. There is individualism to Lyotard's theory (surely the logical end of linguistic incompatibility is that we can only communicate with ourselves) at odds with postmodern death of the subject. Jameson felt the prevalence of pastiche25 in postmodernism desensitises us to differences as we define ourselves through others’ voices: “today we are almost unable to focus on our own present, as though we have become incapable of achieving aesthetic representation of our own current experience”26. This is unnecessarily pessimistic. All work must have influences; the expansion of intertextuality is not empty cannibalism but reflective of knowledge’s democratisation. Pastiche and nostalgia sensitise us to differences built through history27. Any invocation of the past inevitably reflects our own time, a vocalised response against our cultural backdrop. The Color Purple presents a universal human rights message through the aesthetic of Twentieth Century abuses, indirectly reflecting the rise of

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Student 316773 Theories & Methodologies Essay: "Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable". Discuss.

female African-American authors of the time it was written28. Similarly, Welsh Eisteddfod festivals may be simulacra for a non-existent druidic past29, but are still a topical statement of identity for a newly devolved state. Pastiche sensitises us to differences between narratives, subverting subconscious conventions thus drawing our attention to them: And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Ricksmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything . . . This is not her story. (Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy) Rather than a sign of postmodern nihilism, “intertextuality”30 is not straightforwardly detached from previous referencing/influencing of other authors. Instead, absorption of the past loses its ability to sensitise us due to increasing repression31. This April an Atlanta federal court placed a publication injunction on Gone With The Wind pastiche The Wind Done Gone, for piracy32. It appears pastiche violates capitalist property rights. Metafiction and the manipulation of time and space similarly increase our sensitivity to difference, sometimes through multiple viewpoints. The authorial narrator addressing us from the text (compounded in Slaughterhouse 5 when the authorial narrator comments on the protagonist nearly encountering the author’s historical self) shifts attention from sign to signifier. When Fowles suddenly addresses us from his Victorian novel pastiche, his crisis of narrative expands to one of existence itself: “My characters still exist, and in a reality no less, no more, real than the one I have just broken”. Minus objective reality, Vonnegut defines the importance of an author as merely “a trafficker in climaxes and thrills and characterization and wonderful dialogue and suspense and confrontations”33. As Slaughterhouse 5’s protagonist is “spastic in time”34 so is the narrative. Suspense is debunked by revealing its

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Student 316773 Theories & Methodologies Essay: "Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable". Discuss.

conclusion and opening within the introduction. The death of time has social implications, as death is no longer important. Hence the repetitive meiosis of “So it goes” whenever death is encountered. Conventionality makes this shocking, but we are now aware of the conventions themselves. The Tesseract similarly views the same events through different characters. But do multiple points of view allow for depth of characterisation seen in modernist streams of consciousness? Slaughterhouse 5 is a profound work, but Billy Pilgrim is not psychologised to the level of Mrs Ramsay or Holden Caulfield. Moreover, whilst postmodernity may be best represented through the disorientation and artificiality metafiction provides, we should not ignore the element of voguish aesthetic (the difference now being incommensurability behind the aesthetic). Metafiction's self-referentiality has been used since Elizabethan times to the same end, to bring out the author as “an idiot”: Life's but a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing. (Macbeth, Act V.v) Postmodern knowledge can even be indicative of increased homogeneity. The breakdown of artificial divisions merged philosophy, literary criticism et al as Theory. Heightened awareness of the performative, exemplified by Queer Theory, denotes more similarity than difference between people. Lyotard and Baudrillard both reflect the crisis of representation felt by postmodernists, that there can be no judgement now there are no objective paradigms to legitimate it. Their work is a compromise, identifying floating groups of meaning against a backdrop of meaninglessness. We exist in a bubble, in linguistic clusters or simulacra. In its broadest sense, postmodern knowledge can only have a negative effect on sensitivity. Infinite subjectivity derived from death of objective truth means there can no

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Student 316773 Theories & Methodologies Essay: "Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable". Discuss.

longer be such a thing as “difference”. So, our “ability to tolerate the incommensurable”. This could be rephrased as “inability to question the incommensurable”. Firstly, “hyperreality” makes anything outside commoditization incommensurable. Secondly, postmodernism is a descendent of Nietzche's infamous declaration of God's death, in which knowledge no longer concerns itself with belief systems but disbelief systems. That the only reality reflected in a text is its own autonomy leads to the New Critics’ notion of textual meaning defined individually by reader. Both may be literally accurate, but are a point at which Theory loses constructive use. The toleration of the incommensurable has led to mind-bending and beautifully ambiguous works, but has also seen the death of the grand gesture. Postmodernity cannot produce texts infused with the sense of self-importance found in Paradise Lost or Ulysses. Writers are concerned that: “the larger the searchlight, the larger the circumference of the unknown”35. In conclusion, Lyotard indicates the importance of late capitalism, but does not predict the extent of its authority over knowledge. Commoditization governs focus on signifiers, though examples through this essay also indicate the powerful influence of the Second World War. Art has responded to postmodernism's idea of infinite subjectivity with works characterised by anxiety, cynicism, irony. An idealistic forecast would be the decreasing conditioning of late capitalism. Art might reconstruct its older values without looking outside personal microcosms. The ironic likelihood, however, is that this concept will be sold to us.

2,231 Words.

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Student 316773 Theories & Methodologies Essay: "Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable". Discuss.

Bibliography Anon (2000) CCTV FAQ PRIVACY INTERNATIONAL http://www.privacyinternational.org/issues/cctv/cctv_faq.html Anon (2001) Glaxo Stops Africans Buying Cheap Aids Drugs GUARDIAN INTERNATIONL NEWS http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/aids/story/0,7369,405804,00.html Anon (2000) Safety Questions Follow Train Deaths BBC NEWS WALES http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/wales/newsid_857000/857525.stm Adams, Douglas The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: A Trilogy In Four Parts William Heinemann: London, 1993 Abrams, M.H. “Modernism and Postmodernism” in Abrams, M.H. A Glossary Of Literary Terms: Seventh Edition USA: Hardcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999 Campell, Harry, ed. (2000) The Eisteddfod GWYBODIADUR: A WELSH INFORMATIONARY http://gwybodiadur.tripod.com/eisteddfod.htm Connor, Steven Postmodernist Culture: An Introduction To Theories Of The Contemporary, Second Edition Oxford: Blackwell, 1997 Ellison, Michael (2001) Frankly, Writer's Estate Gives A Damn About The Wind Done Gone GUARDIAN INTERNATIONAL NEWS http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4172852,00.html Finkelstein, Norman G.The Holocaust Industry: Reflections On The Exploitation Of Jewish Suffering New York; London: Verso, 2000 Fowles, John The French Lieutenant’s Woman Great Britain: Vintage, 1996 Garland, Alex The Tesseract London: Penguin, 1998 Gibson, William All Tomorrow’s Parties London: Penguin/Viking, 1999 Harvey, David The Condition Of Postmodernity: An Enquiry Into The Origins Of Cultural Change

Student 316773 Theories & Methodologies Essay: "Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable". Discuss.

Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1990 Hoggart, Richard The Uses Of Literacy: Aspects Of Working-Class Life, With Special Reference London: Chatto and Windus, 1957 Jameson, Fredric The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings On The Postmodern, 1983 – 1998 New York: Verso, 1998 Klein, Naomi No logo : no space, no choice, no jobs : taking aim at the brand bullies N.London: Flamingo, 2000 Lawson, Mark (2001) It’s A Sin To Kill A Mocking Word GUARDIAN INTERNATIONAL NEWS http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4173460,00.html Lyotard, Jean-François trans. Bennington, Geoff and Massumi, Brian The Postmodern Condition: A Report On Knowledge United Kingdom: Manchester University Press, 1984 Shakespeare, William Penguin Popular Classics: Macbeth London: Penguin, 1994 Vonnegut, Kurt Slaughterhouse 5 London: Vintage, 1991 Walker, Alice The Color Purple London: The Women’s Press, 1992

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1Notes Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition 2 Late capitalism has not expanded our post-industrial society to a post-industrial world. Instead, the West enjoys its post-industrial status only by shifting the mass of production to the Third World. As Naomi Klein puts it, “the Third World has always existed for the comfort of the first” (No Logo, Introduction pg.xviii). It is important to remember all examinations into the state of academic and cultural knowledge in the West are framed in this cultural context. 3 Jameson, Fredric “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” in The Cultural Turn 4 Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, foreword xxiv. A metanarrative is a narrative that explains other narratives, such as Marxism or science. In postmodern literary theory, metanarratives have been moulded into unique but non-exclusive "micronarratives" that completely fit groups of texts 5 Jameson, Fredric “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” in The Cultural Turn, pg. 20. 6 Hoggart The Uses Of Literary 7 Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition pg. 4 8 Images, representations, styles, even emotions. 9 Klein, Naomi No Logo “A Web Of Brands”, pg.xxi 10 Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, pg.9 11 Alex Garland, The Tesseract, page 323. 12 “IBM sending satellites into space”, Lyotard The Postmodern Condition pg. 5 13 See “Glaxo Stops Africans Buying Cheap Aids Drugs” for one example 14 Jameson, Fredric “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” in The Cultural Turn, pg. 2 15 Music’s constant revivals - mid-nineties Britpop reinvesting in sixties aesthetics - adhere to Jameson's “nostalgia mode”. It is music based on the paradox of global influence and the toleration, often exemplification, of cultural minorities. While the ideology of exemplifying minorities is one of the most liberating in popular culture, it is also one most at risk of relegation to an aesthetic sheen covering commoditization. Hip-hop was initially an evocative symbol of cultural identity. So much so in 1989 that N.W.A. (Niggaz With Attitude) found their debut album banned by the state authority of the American Supreme Court. Yet by 2000 multinational record companies had adopted the genre and Rolling Stone magazine dubbed N.W.A.'s reunion as "Niggaz With Accountants". This adheres to Barthes' idea that capitalism works through cycles that are pushed out of intertia by bursts of innovation that do not, however, significantly alter the cycle itself. A descent to meaninglessness is inevitible under Baudrillard's portrayal of the media as a form that by its very nature dilutes sign to signifier. 16 Klein, Naomi No Code, "No Space", pgs. 3-107. 17

William Gibson All Tomorrows Parties page 6. 18 CCTV FAQ 19 Jean Baudrillard, described in Connor Postmodernist Culture, pgs. 51-60 20 Connected with Paul Virilio's perception of postmodern knowledge opposing nature, described in Connor Postmodernist Culture pg. 255-6 21 Web version of news story, BBC Wales “Safety questions follow train deaths” 22 Connor Postmodernist Culture, pg. 48 23 Klein, Naomi No Logo. 24 Baudrillard felt that the media could not be liberating, as any subversive message was degraded to signifier as part of its very nature. Its great failure was that it is a one way medium (as satirised in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound “whodunit” play, where a member of the audience transpires as the murderer). The Internet is a new media capable of true two-way interaction, even though it is increasingly commoditized, and this is where the anit-corporate movement flourishes. It is a worldwide form of what Baudrillard identified in the (then un-billboarded) street, “the alternative and subversive form of mass media”. 25 Rather than parody, for there is no longer a normative principle from which satire can be derived. 26 Jameson, Fredric “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” in The Cultural Turn pg. 9 27 Linda Hutcheon (Connor Postmodernist Culture, pg. 131) describes “histiographic metafiction” where we believe the falsification of history, at the same time aware it is a lie. Take the bombing of Dresden in Slaughterhouse 5. 28 Take Celie's declaration: "I'm pore, I'm black, I may be ugly and can't cook . . . but I'm here" 29 Gwybodiadur: A Welsh Informationary 30 Literally, directly “cutting and pasting” earlier texts. But in a sense also taking on others’ voices through pastiche. 31 Where music “sampling" was previously outside the authorities” (originally in reggae music, then hiphop and underground “rave”), it is now the realm of “superstar DJs” with extensive royalties on borrowed music 32 The Guardian, “Frankly, Writer’s Estate Give A Damn About The Wind Done Gone”, and “It’s a Sin To Kill A Mocking Word” 33 Slaughterhouse 5, page 4. 34 Slaughterhouse 5, page 17 35 Alex Garland, The Tesseract, pg.329