>>I wouldn't repudiate anything I wrote in the passage. I'd express it
>>a bit differently, for sure, but I'm not rejecting it. In fact, I
>>think it hints at what Angela was calling for, a material analysis of
>>where "postmodernism" came from. I'm with Jameson when he argues that
>>one can't really be for or against "postmodernism" - it's everywhere,
>>the cultural logic of what's optimistically called "late capitalism."
To which Catherine protested
>I don't like this use of 'postmodernism', why not say 'late capitalism' --
>why confuse it and/or bind it so inextricably to postmodernism as a
>cross-media generic description, except to produce a new version of the old
>base-superstructure thing.
I'm not sure that it speaks directly to this exchange, but I was reminded of a couple of paragraphs from the Radical Chains review of Bhaskar posted here last week. I'll forward with no comment.
Eric
radical chains http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/guest/radical/RCSOCSOC.HTM
The most interesting of the last three chapters is Soper's discussion of postmodernism, critical realism and critical theory. Soper identifies postmodernism as a response to the experience of fascism, stalinism and what she describes as the 'nuclear age and looming ecological crisis' (p.43). These, she argues, have generated doubt, scepticism and a questioning of Enlightenment rationality and conceptions of progress. These real concerns are expressed in the postmodern consciousness. Yet, with postmodernism, conceived not just as a form of social consciousness but as a philosophical project, these legitimate concerns are subjected to a kind of 'theoretical overdrive'. In the end it invites us to 'disown the very aspiration to truth as something unobtainable in principle' (p.45). Thus it degenerates into a total relativism and a form of libertarianism or anarchism 'of distinctly New Rightist overtones' (p.46).
Soper's distinction between postmodernism as a spirit of the age and as an intellectual project is useful. However, while recognising the socio-historical roots of the postmodern consciousness, Soper deals with postmodernism only as an intellectual concern. Thus she appears to think that it can be overcome by showing it to be logically incoherent. But a critique which addresses only the relativism and libertarianism of postmodernism is not sufficient. We need to understand the social processes necessary to the breakdown of the current condition of disorientation and to the emergence of a new rationality. If this cannot be done, then criticism is limited to an essentially conservative reaction, an attempt to restore what is in fact irretrievable.