The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

22Fordist modernism versus flexiblepostmodernism, or theinterpenetration of opposedtendencies in capitalism as a wholeCollage, though pioneered by the m ? dernists, is a .techniq .u thatpostmodernism has very much made Its own. The Juxtaposltlon ofdiverse and seemingly incongruous elements can be fun an .occasionallyinstructive. In this spirit I have taken the Opposltlonsprovided by Ihab Hassan (table 1.1) and by Halal, Lash and Urry,and Swyngedouw (tables 2.6, 2.7, and 2.8) and jumbled up theirterms (adding in a few of my own for good measure) to produce acollage of terms in table 4.1.. . .Down the left-hand side are ranged a senes of llltersectlllg termsto describe the condition of 'Fordist modernity,' while the righthandcolumn represents 'Flexible postmodernism.' The table s ggestsamusing associations. But it also indicates how two rather dlffer ntregimes of accumulation and their associated .modes ? f r .egulatlon(including the materializations of cultural habIts, motlvatl ? n :> , a dstyles of representation) .might ha g togeth r, each as a dlst .lllCtlVeand relatively coherent kllld of sOCla1 formatlon. Two re e ! vatlon .s tothat idea immediately come to mind. First, the opposltlons, hIghlightedfor didactic purpos : s, are never so clear .-cut, and the 'structureof feeling' in any society IS always a synthetIc moment so ewh .erebetween the two. Second, associations are no proof of hlstoncalcausation or even of necessary or integral relations. Even if theassociations look plausible - and many of them do - .someother way has to be found to establish that they form a mealllngfulconfiguration.The oppositions within each profile are .noteworthy. Fordl .st modernityis far from homogeneous. There IS I ? uc here that IS aoutrelative fixity and permanence - fixed capItal III mass productl ? n,stable, standardized, and homogeneous markets, a fixed configuratlOn.l,Fordist modernism/flexible postmodernism 339of political-economic influence and power, easily identifiable authorityand meta-theories, secure grounding in materiality and technicalscientificrationality, and the like. But all of this is ranged arounda social and economic project of Becoming, of growth and transformationof social relations, of aura tic art and originality, of renewaland avant-gardism. Postmodernist flexibility, on the otherhand, is dominated by fiction, fantasy, the immaterial (particularly ofmoney), fictitious capital, images, ephemerality, chance, and flexibilityin production techniques, labour markets and consumption niches;yet it also embodies strong commitments to Being and place, apenchant for charismatic politics, concerns for ontology, and thestable institutions favoured by neo-conservatism. Habermas's judgementthat the value placed on the transitory and the ephemeral'discloses a longing for an undefiled, immaculate and stable present'is everywhere in evidence. It seems as if postmodernist flexibilitymerely reverses the dominant order to be found in Fordist m0dernity.The latter achieved relative stability in its political-economic apparatusin order to produce strong social and material change, whereasthe former has been dogged by disruptive instability in its politicaleconomicapparatus, but sought compensation in stable places ofbeing and in charismatic geopolitics.But what if the table as a whole itself constitutes a structuraldescription of the totality of political-economic and culturalideologicalrelations within capitalism? To view it this way requiresthat we see the oppositions across as well as within the profiles asinternal relations within a structured whole. That idea, outrageousby post modernism's own standards (because it resurrects the ghostof Marxist thinkers like Lukacs and appeals to a theory of internalrelations of the sort that Bertell Ollman advances) makes more thana little sense. It helps explain how it is that Marx's Capital is so richin insights into what the current status of thinking is all about. Italso helps us understand how the cultural forces at work in, say, finde siixle Vienna constituted such a complex mix that it is almostimpossible to tell where the modernist impulse begins or ends. Ithel ps us dissolve the categories of both modernism and postmodernisminto a complex of oppositions expressive of the cultural contradictionsof capitalism. We then get to see the categories of bothmodernism and postmodernism as static reifications imposed uponthe fluid interpenetration of dynamic oppositions. Within this matrixof internal relations, there is never one fixed configuration, but aswaying back and forth between centralization and decentralization,between authority and deconstruction, between hierarchy and anarchy,between permanence and flexibility, between the detail and the