Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION AND POSTMODERNITY
and thereby what brings us as citizens together, should be ignored. On the one
hand, this is because the identification of a ‘common culture’, whether in the
Arnoldian sense of the ‘best that is thought and said’ or simply in the sense of
‘all that is of value to our society’, is usually expressive of power which can be
exclusionary and impositional on many groups in our society (the ‘great tradition’
in English literature may not have much appeal for ethnic minorities, the
working class or the young in contemporary Britain). On the other hand, however,
postmodernists argue that it also presumes that people have difficulty living with
fragmentation, that if things are not consistent and whole, then we shall
experience alienation, anxiety and depression.
But the postmodern outlook positively thrives on differences and hence
prospers, too, with a fragmentary culture. What is wrong with, for example,
reading a bit of Shakespeare as well as listening to reggae music? For a long time
cultural custodians have presumed to tell people what and how they ought to
read, see and hear (and to feel at least a twinge of guilt when they deviated from
the prescribed works and judgements). Behind this moral stewardship is a typically
modernist apprehension that fragmentation is harmful. Against this,
postmodern culture, having spurned the search for ‘true meaning’ (‘Englishness
means you are familiar with and appreciate this history, these novels, that poetry’),
suggests that fragmentation can be and is enjoyed without people getting much
vexed about conflicting messages or values. The outcome is celebration of a
plurality of sources of pleasures without meaning: the neon lights, French cuisine,
McDonald’s, Asiatic foods, Bizet, Madonna, Verdi and Franz Ferdinand. A
promiscuity of different sources of pleasure is welcomed.
Furthermore, it will be easily understood that behind the modernist apprehension
about a fragmentary culture lurks the fear that the self itself is under
threat. Such fear presupposes that there is in each of us a ‘real self’, the authentic
‘I’, which must be consistent, unified and protected from exposure to widely
diverging cultural signals. How, for instance, can true intellectuals sustain their
sense of self if they read Plato and then go dog racing? How can major thinkers
immerse themselves in their discipline and simultaneously support Tottenham
Hotspur Football Club? How can Christians simultaneously practise their religion
and enjoy pornography? How can honourable people cheat at cricket? How can
the integrity of the self be maintained if the same person is exposed to role
models as diverse as Clint Eastwood, Wayne Rooney and Woody Allen?
Rather than get wrapped up trying to unravel such contradictions, postmodern
culture denies the existence of an essential, true self. The postmodern
temper insists that the search for a ‘real me’ presupposes an underlying meaning,
an authentic being, which is just not there – and hence not worthy of pursuit.
Instead, the advocacy is to live with difference, in the wider society and within
one’s being, and to live this without anxiety about meaning, jettisoning restrictive
concepts like ‘integrity’ and ‘morality’, and opting instead for pleasure. It is
only intellectuals, goes the postmodern refrain, who worry about fragmentation
of the self. The rest of us are happy enough to have a good time and do not
bother to get upset because a few eggheads believe that our ‘true self’ might find
itself in turmoil.
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