The question of postmodernism is surely a question, for is there, after
all, something called postmodernism? Is it an historical characterization,
Tahir: Good starting point. There is an interesting history here. Postmodernism as a philosophical term coincides in its use historically with the decline of the 'communist' countries and the discrediting of official marxism. Before that the term was mainly used in aesthetics (e.g. architecture), but now it became increasingly used to stake out a philosophical position. In particular it provided a space that would be critical of the social order and capitalism, but at the same time it would use a kind of 'tour de force' of language which would make it immune to the liberal criticisms of marxism that so embarrassed leftists in the wake of the marxist decline that I mentioned. It had to dissociate itself from that marxism, even while borrowing some of the latter's themes (e.g. 'class' -- you have to mention'class' every now and again). To do this it associated itself quite openly with some of the most severe critics of marxism, especially Nietzsche and the nazi Heidegger. The word 'deconstruction', which the pomos tend to like, is first attested in a nazi journal according to a critique cited on Loren Goldner's website. But pomos are not nazis. In wrapping themselves up in the protective armour of obfuscatory language, to protect themselves against liberal critiques, they became liberals themselves and took over most university campus humanities faculties at an opportune moment in history. Their project was partially intended to wipe out academic marxism, that embarrassing legacy of their own youthful enthusiasms. Here in South Africa, formerly Trotskyist academics signed on for this project in their droves.
a certain kind of theoretical position,
Tahir: Yes, with a capital 'T'. The two things that normally go with theory though are practice and empirical verification. However, those were associated with science and science is now bad so now we just have 'theory' with no apparent practical consequences and 'theory' which is not verifiable or falsifiable just because it is not coherent.
and what does it mean for a term that has described a certain aesthetic practice now to apply to social
theory and to feminist social and political theory in particular?
Tahir: It means that you now have 'theory' which is quite literally useless. In fact even the academic theory machines are starting to wind down with fatigue from a project that delivers nothing. Socially useless knowledge cannot disguise itself through the linguistic tour de force forever.
Who are these postmodernists? Is this a name that one takes on for oneself, or is it more often a name that one is called if and when one offers a critique of the subject, a discursive analysis, or questions the integrity or coherence of totalizing social descriptions?
Tahir: In my experience, both.
I know the term from the way it is used, and it usually appears on my horizon embedded in the following critical formulations: "if discourse is all there is . . . ," or "if everything is a text . . . ," or "if the subject is dead . . ' . ," of "if real bodies do not exist . . . ." The
sentence begins as a warning against an impending nihilism,
Tahir: Nihilism is too dramatic. My favoured term, on the level of discourse, is incoherence; on other levels I refer to stupidity, arrogance, self-deception and bandwagonism.
for if the conjured content of these series of conditional clauses proves to be true, then, and there is always a then, some set of dangerous consequences will surely follow.
Tahir: They have already followed, by virtually eclipsing all politically useful talk on university campuses. But that tide will turn; it is already turning. Now here I am going to cite the much despised but courageous Camille Paglia, who, in her brilliant essay on 'Junk bonds and corporate raiders', suggested that when the tide turns there must be no forgetting. When they try to tell as that that ugly zebra-striped furniture was lovely when it was in fashion, we must be clear that it was always ugly and that they were just stupid to buy it. Ridicule has its place politically, a very, very important place.
So 'postmodernism' appears to be articulated in the form of a fearful conditional or sometimes in the form of paternalistic disdain
toward that which is youthful and irrational.
Tahir: Youthful? What evidence is there of this? Most of its leading lights are already dead white males. By the way the nazi Heidegger's irrational philosophy was also cloaked in the disguise of youth. In his debates with figures like the jew, Ernst Cassirer, the latter were also portrayed as an old order type and he the rebellious young turk. But many of those youthful supporters at Davos, no doubt some of them jews, were very ashamed later when the import of their previous enthusiasm became clearer. But irrational? Certainly. I'm glad you used the word. One needs to tell irrational philosophers that that's what they are, and that we could have just stuck with Zen, which we already had, and rather used their salaries, paid from the taxes of working people, for better purposes.
Against this postmodernism, there is an effort to shore up the primary premises, to establish in advance that any theory of politics requires a subject, needs from the
start to presume its subject, the referentiality of language, the integrity of the institutional descriptions it provides.
Tahir: OK so you don't really exist; the language that you are using doesn't mean anything. Therefore any attempt to criticise you and what you are saying is futile. That's the nub isn't it? But anything that is beyond critique is useless, precisely because it is saying nothing.
For politics is unthinkable without a foundation, without these premises. But do these claims seek to secure a contingent formation of politics that requires that these notions remain unproblematized features of its own definition? Is it the case that all politics, and feminist politics in particular, is unthinkable without these prized premises? Or is it rather that a specific version of politics is shown in its contingency once those premises are problematically thematized?
Tahir: Why don't you spell out the alternative politics that you are hinting at? I'll tell you straight: it doesn't exist and you are perpetuating a massive fraud by pretending it does and hiding this fact in obfuscatory language. Go ahead, give us some idea of this alternative politics (I will 'bracket' the question of whether you exist or whether your language means anything just for the moment).
To claim that politics requires a stable subject is to claim that there can be no political opposition to that claim.
Tahir: I'm not sure that anyone believes in the stable subject post-Freud. But read Adorno or Gillian Rose on the question of subjectivity and why there is no escape from it. There isn't, and you are perpetuating a fraud, a new dawn that can never come.
Indeed, that claim implies that a critique of the subject cannot be a politically informed critique but,
rather, an act which puts into jeopardy politics as such. To require the subject means to foreclose the domain of the political, and that foreclosure, installed analytically as an essential feature of the political, enforces the boundaries of the domain of the political in such a way that that enforcement is protected from political scrutiny.
Tahir: Oh what unutterable rubbish. Why don't you come out and say which politics fits these various descriptions? I'll tell you who "forecloses the domain of the political", Lacan. Or maybe you prefer the politics of the (anti-humanist) nazi Heidegger? Is that the political that you don't want foreclosed?
The act which unilaterally establishes the domain of the political functions, then, as an authoritarian ruse by which political contest over the status of the subject is summarily silenced.'
Tahir: More stupid shit. The ruse is entirely on your side.
more at:
http://blog.pulpculture.org/contingent-foundations/
Tahir: I will look at this and I will respond in due course, without any pretence at politeness. Unless Doug, that staunch defender and flatterer of 'difficulty', prevents me from doing so. (Tell me Doug, do you find Hegel easy to read?) In the meantime I would like this alternative politics to be spelled out. I have made it quite clear -- and sometimes the only way to do that is to be impolite -- that I don't believe that such a thing exists or can exist and that consequently the discourse that you are perpetuating is without any value whatsoever.
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