The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

42 The passage from modernity to postmodernitymight entail. Modernist sentiments may have been undermined, deconstructed,surpassed, or bypassed, but there is little certitude as tothe coherence or meaning of the systems of thought that may havereplaced them. Such uncertainty makes it peculiarly difficult to evaluate,interpret, and explain the shift that everyone agrees has occurred.Does postmodernism, for example, represent a radical break withmodernism, or is it simply a revolt within modernism against acertain form of 'high modernism' as represented, say, in the architectureof Mies van der Rohe and the blank surfaces of minimalistabstract expressionist painting? Is postmodernism a style (in whichcase we can reasonably trace its precursors back to Dada, Nietzsche,or even .' as . Kroker and Cook (1986) prefer, to St A usgustine'sConfesswns m the fourth century) or should we view it strictly as aperiodizing concept (in which case we debate whether it originatedm th 1 950s, . 1960s, o 970s)? Does it have a revolutionary potentialby vItue of Its pOSItIOn to all forms of meta-narratives (includingarxIsm, FreuIalllsm, and all forms of Enlightenment reason) andIts close attentIon to 'other worlds' and to 'other voices' that havefo: too ong bee silnced (w?en gays, blacks, colonized peoplesWIth theIr own hIstorIes)? Or IS It SImply the commercialization anddom .esticatio of .modernism, and a reduction of the latter's alreadytarlllshed aspIratIOns to a laissez-faire, 'anything goes' market eclecticism?Does it, therefore, undermine or integrate with neo-conservativeoliics? And do we attach its rise to some radical restructuringof capItaltsm, the emergence of some 'postindustrial' society, view it,even, as the 'art of an inflationary era' or as the 'cultural logic of latecapitalism' (as Newman and Jameson have proposed)? e can, I think, begin to get a grip on these difficult questions bycastmg an eye over the schematic differences between modernismand postmodernism as laid out by Hassan (1975, 1985; see table 1.1).Hassan sets up a series of stylistic oppositions in order to capture theways in which postmodernism might be portrayed as a reaction tothe modern. I ṣay 'might' because I think it dangerous (as doesHassan) to depIct complex relations as simple polarizations, whenalmost certainly the true state of sensibility, the real 'structure offeeling' in both the modern and postmodern periods, lies in themanner in which these stylistic oppositions are synthesized. N evertheless,I think Hassan's tabular schema provides a useful startingpoint.There is much to contemplate in this schema, drawing as it doeson lds a diverse as linguistics, anthropology, philosophy, rhetoric,polttIcal SCIence, and theology. Hassan is quick to point out how thedichotomies are themselves insecure, equivocal. Yet there is muchmodernismTable 1.1 Schematic differences between modernism andpostmodernismromanticism/Symbolismform (conjunctive, closed)purposedesignhierarchymastery /logosart object/finished workdistancecreation/ totalization/ synthesispresencecentringgenre/boundarysemanticsparadigmhypotaxismetaphorselectionroot/depthinterpretation/ readingsignifiedIi sible (readerly)narrative/ grande histoiremaster codesymptomtypegenital! phallicparanOIaorigin/ causeGod the FathermetaphysicsdeterminacytranscendenceSource: Hassan (1985, 123-4)postmodernismparaphysics /Dadaismantiform (disjunctive, open)playchanceanarchyexhaustion/ silenceprocess / performance/happeningparticipationdecreation/ deconstruction/ antithesisabsencedispersaltext/ intertextrhetoricsyntagmparataxismetonymycombinationrhizome/ surfaceagainst interpretation/misreadingsignifierscriptible (writerly)anti-narrative/petite histoireidiolectdesiremutantpolymorphous/ androgynousschizophreniadifference-difference/ traceThe Holy GhostIronyindeterminacyImmanence