The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

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25Responses to time- s pace.compressIonThere ha : e been vario s responses to the travails of time-spacecompreSSIOn. The first lme of defence is to withdraw into a kind ofshell-shocked, blase, or exhausted silence and to bow down before he . oṿerwhelming sense ? f how vast, intractable, and outside anymdlvldual or even collectIve control everything is. Excessive information,t .transpires, is one of .the best inducements to forgetting.The qualItIes of postmodern fictlon - 'the flattest possible charactersi t?e,flattest possible landscape r ndered in the flattest possibledIctIOn (above, p. 58) - are suggestIve of exactly that reaction. Thepersonal world that Wenders depicts in Paris, Texas does likewise.Wings of Desire, though more optimistic, still replies in the affirmativeto the other question which Newman poses: 'Have the velocitiesof recent change been so great that we do not know how totrace their lines of force, that no sensibility, least of all narrative, hasbeen able to articulate them?'This aspect of postmodernism has been reinforced by the activitiesof he deconstructionists. In their suspicion of any narrative thataspIres to co .herence, and in their rush to deconstruct anything thateven looks lIke meta-theory, they challenged all basic propositions.To the degree that all the narrative accounts on offer containedhidden presuppositions and simplifications, they deserved criticalscrutiny, if only to emerge the stronger for it. But in challenging all onsens al standa ds of ruth and justice, of ethics, and meaning, andm pursumg the dISSolutIon of all narratives and meta-theories into adifuse universe of langu . ge gam s, deconstructionism ended up, inspIte of the best mtentlons of ItS more radical practitioners, by.reducmg knowledge and meaning to a rubble of signifiers. It therebyproduced a condition of nihilism that prepared the ground for there-emergence of a charismatic politics and even more simplistic propositionsthan those which were deconstructed.Responses to time-space compression 351The s cond reaction amounts to a free-wheeling denial of thecompleXIty of the world, and a penchant for the representation of itin terms of highly simplified rhetorical propositions. Slogans abound,from left to right of the political spectrum, and depthless images ared pl yed o capture complex meanings. Travel, even imaginary andvlcanous, IS supposed to broaden the mind, but it just as frequentlyends up confirming prejudices.The third response has been to find an intermediate niche forpolitical and intellectual life which spurns grand narrative but whichdoes cultivate the possibility of limited action. This is the progressiveangle to pos : modernsm which emphasizes community and locality,place and regIOnal reSIstances, social movements, respect for otherness,and the like (above, p.113). It is an attempt to carve out at least oneknowable world from the infinity of possible worlds which are daily hown to us o the television screen. At its best it produces trenchantImages of p ? s lble other worlds, and even begins to shape the actualworld. But I l ha d to stop the slide into parochialism, myopia, ands lf-ref rentlalIty m the face of the universalizing force of capitalCIrculatlon. At worst, it brings us back to narrow and sectarianpolitics in which respect for others gets mutilated in the fires ofco .mpetition between the fragments. And, it should not be forgotten,thIS was the path that allowed Heidegger to reach his accommodationwith Nazism, and which continues to inform the rhetoric of fascism(witness the rhetoric of a contemporary fascist leader like Le Pen).The fourth response has been to try and ride the tiger of timespacecomp ession through construction of a language and an imageryth t .can mIrror and hopefully command it. I place the freneticwntmgs of Baudrillard and Virilio in this category, since they seemell-b nt on fusing with time-space compression and replicating itm theIr own flamoyant r?etor .ic. We have seen this kind of responsebefore, .most speCIfically m NIetzsche's extraordinary evocations inThe wtll to power (above, p.274). Compared to that, however, itseems as if Baudrllard reduces Nietzsche's tragic sense to farce (butthen postmoderlllsṃ al:v ys has .tro ble in taking itself seriously).J arneson, for all hIS bnllIance, lIkeWIse loses his hold on both thereality he is seeking to represent and on the language that mightproperly be deployed to represent it in his more protean writings.Indeed, the hyper-rhetoric of this wing of the postmodern reactioncan diss ,o lve into the m ? st alar ing irresponsibility. In readingJameson s account of schlzophrellla, for example, it is hard not toimpu e euphorc qualities to the hallucinogenic rush of intoxicatingexpenence behmd the surface appearance of anxiety and neurosis.But as Taylor (1987, 67) points out, Jameson's selective quotations
352 The condition 0/ postmodernityfrom the autobiography of a schizophrenic girl eliminate the terrorthat attaches to her unreality states, making it all seem like a wellcontrolledLSD trip rather than a succession of states of guilt, lethargy,and helplessness coupled with anguished and sometimes tempestuousdislocation. Deleuze and Guattari, applauded by Foucault, likewiserecommend that we accommodate to the fact that 'everywhere capitalismsets in motion schizo-flows that animate "our" arts and "our" sciences,just as they congeal into the production of "our own" sick, theschizophrenics.' Revolutionaries, they advise, 'should carry out theirundertakings along the lines of the schizo process,' because theschizophrenic 'has become caught up in a flux of desire that threatensthe social order.' If this is indeed the case, then I am left contemplatingthe following account from the Associated Press, 27 December 1987,as a possible epitaph on 'our' civilization:Mr Dobben had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic .... OnThanksgiving Day, the police say, Mr Dobben took his twosons, Bartley Joel, 2 years old, and Peter David, 15 months old,to the Cannon-Muskegon Corporation foundry where heworked and put them inside a giant ladle· used to carry moltenmetal. He then heated it to 1,300 degrees while his wife, unknowing,waited outside in the car. Now Bartley James Dobben,26, sits under suicide surveillance.In case this be thought a too extreme vision, I quote also KennyScharf (an East Village 'Day-Glo' painter) whose sequence of paintingsof Estelle escaping time-space compression with a one-wayticket to outer space has her, in the final picture, 'just kind of havingfun by herself, floating and watching the world blow up' (Taylor,1987, 123). And if that is judged too imaginary, then I quote AlanSugar, Chairman of the Amstrad Corporation: 'If there was a marketin mass-produced portable nuclear weapons then we'd market themtoo.'26The crISIS of historical materialismThe odd thing is how radical some of these diverse responses appeared,and how difficult it has been for the left, as opposed to theright, to cope with them. On reflection, the oddity disappears easilyenough. A mode of thought that is anti-authoritarian and iconoclastic,that insists on the authenticity of other voices, that celebrates difference,decentralization, and democratization of taste, as well as thepower of imagination over materiality, has to have a radical cuttingedge even when indiscriminately used. In the hands of its moreresponsible practitioners, the whole baggage of ideas associated withpostmodernism could be deployed to radical ends, and thereby beseen as part of a fundamental drive towards a more liberatory politics,in exactly the same way that the turn to more flexible labour processescould be seen as an opening to a new era of democratic andhighly decentralized labour relations and co-operative endeavours.From the standpoint of the traditionalist right, the excesses of the1960s and the violence of 1968 appeared subversive in the extreme.Perhaps for that reason, Daniel Bell's description in The culturalcontradictions 0/ capitalism, though launched entirely from a rightwingperspective that sought the restoration of respect for authority,was probably more accurate than many of the left attempts to graspwhat was happening. Other writers, like Toffler and even McLuhan,saw the significance of time-space compression and the confusions itgenerated in ways that the left could not see, precisely because it wasso deeply embroiled in creating the confusion. Only recently has theleft come to terms with some of these issues, and I think it significantthat Berman's book, published in 1982, recuperates some of thesethemes only by treating Marx as the first great modernist writerrather than as a Marxist who could see through what modernism wasall about.The New Left was preoccupied with a struggle to liberate itselffrom the dual shackles of old left politics (particularly as represented
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The Conditionof PostmodernityAn Enq
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12IntroductionMarshall Berman (1982
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