Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND POSTMODERNITY
of higher knowledge, of ‘truth’) to impose their favoured ‘rationalities’ on others.
For example, designers who presume to be able to identify the ‘really’ fashionable
and chic, to set standards for the rest of us of how we ought to dress and
present ourselves, find their privileged status challenged by postmodern culture.
Again, functionality is resisted on the grounds that the ‘most efficient’ way of
building houses reflects, not some ‘rationality’ of the technically expert architect
or town planner, but an attempt by presumptuous professionals to impose their
values on other people.
What will be obvious here is that the postmodern mood is quizzical of judgements
from anyone on high. To this extent it contains a strong streak of, as it
were, democratic impudence, something manifested in ready rejection of those
who would define standards for the rest of us. Of particular note here is the
antipathy postmodernism expresses towards received judgements of ‘good taste’
or the ‘great tradition’ in aesthetics. For instance, the influential literary critic
F. R. Leavis (1895–1978) confidently selected the best English novelists, in his
revealingly titled The Great Tradition (1948), as Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry
James and Joseph Conrad. For Leavis this was the literature worthy of canonical
status. Against this, the postmodernist insists that ‘If Jeffrey Archer is your
bag, then who are these literature professors to tell you what is better?’
Those who set standards in the past are routinely decried. Thus Leavis might
confidently assert that his ‘true judgement’ came from an especially close reading
of the English novel, but the postmodernist readily enough demonstrates that the
literary critics make a living out of their criticism, their writings bringing them
career advancement and prestige (hence they are scarcely disinterested seekers
after truth). Moreover, it is an easy task to reveal that the critics’ valuations rest
heavily on particular assumptions, educational background and class preferences
(in the case of Leavis it is commonplace to observe his provincialism, his lifetime
commitment to Cambridge, and his idealisation of a mythic ‘organic community’
towards which he believed great literature might lead us). In short, partialities
of critics are exposed and thereby the basis of their claims to impose their
judgements on the rest of us undermined.
Unmasking the pretensions of ‘true’ thinkers, postmodern culture testifies to
aesthetic relativism – in each and every realm of life difference is to be encouraged.
This principle applies everywhere (Twitchell, 1992): in music (‘Who is to
say that Mozart is superior to Van Morrison?’), in clothing (‘Jaeger doesn’t look
any better than Next, it just costs more’), as well as in the live arts (‘Why should
Shakespeare be privileged above Andrew Lloyd Webber?’). This has a liberatory
quality since at postmodernism’s centre is refusal of the ‘tyranny’ of all who set
the ‘right’ standards of living one’s life; against these postmodern culture thrives
on variety, on the carnivalesque, on an infinity of differences. Thus, for example,
in housing the Wimpey estate and the high-density tower block designed by those
who presumed to know what was ‘best for people’ and/or ‘what people want’
are resisted, in their place the climate of opinion becoming one which tolerates
individuating one’s home, subverting the architects’ plans by adding a bit here,
knocking a wall down there, incorporating bits and pieces of whatever one
pleases and let those who say it is in poor taste go hang.
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