110 <strong>The</strong> passage from modernity to postmodernityAbove all, revolutions in productive force, in technology and science,open up new vistas for human development and self-realization.It is particularly useful to look at these conceptions in relation to'heroic' modernism's jousting with mythology. <strong>The</strong> latter, Marxargues, 'controls and fashions the forces <strong>of</strong> nature in the imaginationand through the imagination; it disappears therefore when real controlover these forces is established.' Mythology is, in short, a humanlyconstructed, intermediate, and historically determined link, whichdisappears when human beings acquire the the capacity to make theirhistory according to conscious choice and design (Raphael, 1981,89). Revolutions in technology rendered possible by the division <strong>of</strong>labour and the rise <strong>of</strong> the materialist sciences had the effect <strong>of</strong>demystifying the processes <strong>of</strong> production (aptly called 'mysteries'and 'arts' in the pre-modern period) and opening up the capacity toliberate society from scarcity and the more oppressive aspects <strong>of</strong>nature-imposed necessity. This was the good side <strong>of</strong> capitalist modernization.<strong>The</strong> problem, however, was to liberate us from the fetishisms<strong>of</strong> market exchange and to demystify (and by extension demythologize)the social and historical world in exactly the same way.This was the scientific task that Marx set himself in Capital. But it isalways possible, particularly in the face <strong>of</strong> the uncertainties andfragmentations to which capitalism is prone (economic crises forexample), to re-mythologize, to seek once again to control andfashion the social forces in imagination and through imagination,under conditions where all semblance <strong>of</strong> control over these forcesseems to be lost. <strong>The</strong> struggle to create a 'de-mythologized' art andscience <strong>of</strong> history (both perfectly feasible projects in Marx's view)has to be seen as part and parcel <strong>of</strong> this broader social struggle. Butthat battle (for which Marx believed he had prepared a powerfulfoundation) could be won only through the transition to an allencompassingand powerful socialism, which would render appropriation<strong>of</strong> the natural and social world through myth redundant andirrelevant. Meanwhile, the tension between the mystifications, fetishisms,and mythological constructions <strong>of</strong> the older order, and thepenchant for revolutionizing our conceptions <strong>of</strong> the world has to beappreciated as central to intellectual, artistic, and scientific life.It is out <strong>of</strong> the tension between the negative and positive qualities<strong>of</strong> capitalism that new ways to define our species being can beconstructed:Thus capital creates the bourgeois society, and the universalappropriation <strong>of</strong> nature as well as <strong>of</strong> the social bond itself byM oderniz ation 111the members <strong>of</strong> society. Hence the great civilizing influence <strong>of</strong>capital; its production <strong>of</strong> a stage <strong>of</strong> society in comparison towhich all earlier ones appear as mere local developments <strong>of</strong>humanity and as nature-idolatry. For the first time nature becomespurely an object for humankind, purely a matter <strong>of</strong>utility; ceases to be recognized as a power for itself; and thetheoretical. discovery <strong>of</strong> its <strong>autonomous</strong> laws appears merely asa ruse so as to subjugate it to human needs . . . , Capital drivesbeyond national barriers and prejudices as much as beyondnature worship, as well as [beyond] all traditional, confined,complacent, encrusted satisfactions <strong>of</strong> present needs, and reproduction<strong>of</strong> old ways <strong>of</strong> life. It is destructive towards all <strong>of</strong> this,and constantly revolutionizes it, tearing down all the barrierswhich hem in the development <strong>of</strong> the forces <strong>of</strong> production, theexpansion <strong>of</strong> needs, the all-sided development <strong>of</strong> production,and the exploitation and exchange <strong>of</strong> natural and mental forces.(Grundrisse, 410)<strong>The</strong>re is more than a hint <strong>of</strong> the Enlightenment project in passages <strong>of</strong>this sort. And Marx gives us plenty <strong>of</strong> advice on how we might fuseall the sporadic though widespread resistances, discontents, and strugglesagainst the oppressive, destructive, fragmenting, and destabilizingaspects <strong>of</strong> life under capitalism so as to master the maelstrom andbecome collective creators <strong>of</strong> our own history according to consciousplan. '<strong>The</strong> realm <strong>of</strong> freedom actually begins only where labour whichis determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases . . ..Beyond it begins that development <strong>of</strong> human energy which is an endin itself, the true realm <strong>of</strong> freedom.'What Marx depicts, therefore, are social processes at work undercapitalism conducive to individualism, alienation, fragmentation,ephemerality, innovation, creative destruction, speculative development,unpredictable shifts in methods <strong>of</strong> production and consumption(wants and needs), a shifting experience <strong>of</strong> space and time, as well asa crisis-ridden dynamic <strong>of</strong> social change. If these conditions <strong>of</strong> capitalistmodernization form the material context out <strong>of</strong> which bothmodernist and postmodernist thinkers and cultural producers forgetheir aesthetic sensibilities, principles, and practices, it seems reasonableto conclude that the turn to postmodernism does not reflect anyfundamental change <strong>of</strong> social condition. <strong>The</strong> rise <strong>of</strong> postmodernismeither represents a departure (if such there is) in ways <strong>of</strong> thinkingabout what could or should be done about that social condition, orelse (and this is the proposition we explore in considerable depth in
112 <strong>The</strong> passage from modernity to postmodernityPart II) it reflects a shift in the way in which capitalism is workingthese days. In either case, Marx's account <strong>of</strong> capitalism, if correct,provides us with a very solid basis for thinking about the generalrelations between modernization, modernity, and the aestheticmovements that draw their energies from such conditions.6POSTmodernISM orpostMODERNism?How, then, should postmodernism in general be evaluated? Mypreliminary assessment would be this. That in its concern for difference,for the difficulties <strong>of</strong> communication, for the complexity andnuances <strong>of</strong> interests, cultures, places, and the like, it exercises apositive influence. <strong>The</strong> meta-languages, meta-theories, and metanarratives<strong>of</strong> modernism (particularly in its later manifestations) didtend to gloss over important differences, and failed to pay attentionto important disjunctions and details. Postmodernism has beenparticularly important in acknowledging 'the multiple forms <strong>of</strong>otherness as they emerge from differences in subjectivity, gender andsexuality, race and class, temporal (configurations <strong>of</strong> sensibility) andspatial geographic locations and dislocations' (Huyssens, 1984, 50).It is this aspect <strong>of</strong> postmodernist thought that gives it a radical edge,so much so that traditional neo-conservatives, such as Daniel Bell,fear rather than welcome its accommodations with individualism,commercialism, and entrepreneuralism. Such neo-conservativeswould, after all, hardly welcome Lyotard's (1980, 66) assertion that'the temporary contract is in practice supplanting permanent institutionsin the pr<strong>of</strong>essional, emotional, sexual, cultural, family, andinternational domains, as well as in political affairs.' Daniel Bellplainly regrets the collapse <strong>of</strong> solid bourgeois values, the erosion <strong>of</strong>the work ethic in the working class, and sees contemporary trendsless as a turn towards a vibrant postmodernist future· and more as anexhaustion <strong>of</strong> modernism that surely harbingers a social and politicalCrISIS III years to come.Postmodernism also ought to be looked at as mimetic <strong>of</strong> thesocial, economic, and political practices in society. But since it ismimtic <strong>of</strong> different facets <strong>of</strong> those practices it appears in verydifferent guises. <strong>The</strong> superimposition <strong>of</strong> different worlds in many apostmodern novel, worlds between which an uncommunicative
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