Nothing Mat(t)ers: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism

8 NOTHING MAT(T)ERSThere is no clear conception of the meanings of poststructuralism andpostmodernism, their relation, distinction or significance. Profoundly elusive,purposively ambiguous, these are terms which are not used systematically, and aboutwhich there is no consensus. Yet they have come to dominate the critical andcultural landscape. 8 For Ihab Hassan (1987, p. xvi), postmodernism andpoststructuralism share many affinities, but “postmodernism appears larger, isinternational, in scope. Art, politics, technology, all of culture, fall within itscompass…” Andrew Ross, in Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism,sees poststructuralism as “a late modernist phenomenon” (1989, p. xi) and locates itas a symptom and cause of the larger context of postmodernism (1989, p. xi). PeterDews (1987, p. xi) considers the “post-structuralist” work of Jacques Lacan, MichelFoucault, Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard as moving towards aconceptualization of postmodernity, the condition of the “present age”.With respect to deconstruction, Young (1981, p. viii, Preface) writes: “There isnot a great deal of consensus about what, if anything, post-structuralism is, apartperhaps from the recognition that it involves the work of Derrida.” Rajchman claimsthat the nouveau roman is postmodernist literature about itself, and “postmodernismis sometimes said to be the art of deconstruction” (1991, p. 121). Ragland-Sullivanfinds that poststructuralism is associated mainly with the name of Jacques Derrida,whom she criticizes for making “the text—Writing, Language—the condition ofitself (1989, p. 56). She agrees with other writers who support Lacan’s claim that“everything in Derrida is already in his [Lacan’s] work” (1989, p. 42) with thisdifference: “Where ambiguities, opacities, slipperiness, and gaps in discourse are afinal point for Derrida, this was the place from which Lacan began to ask questions”(1989, p. 62).Deconstruction is a certain masturbation with the text, playing with the terms athand. Derrida demonstrates the careful, contingent manipulation of meanings and theendless deferral of sense:The movements of deconstruction do not destroy structures from the outside.They are not possible and effective, nor can they take accurate aim, except byinhabiting those structures. Inhabiting them in a certain way, because onealways inhabits, and all the more so when one does not suspect it. Operatingnecessarily from the inside, borrowing all from the old structure…theenterprise of deconstruction always in a certain way falls prey to its own work(1976, p. 24, italics in original).In other words, Derrida interrupts (coitus reservatus) but does not abstain! ElizabethGrosz defines deconstruction 9 as the procedure of investigating the binary logic ofmetaphysical texts through an operation of reading which involves reversal,displacement and indetermination:8. A 1991 Seminar is devoted to “The Genealogy of Postmodernism: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derridaand Rorty,” under the direction of Bernd Magnus, Center for Ideas and Society, University ofCalifornia, Riverside.9. See her useful glossary of terms which introduces Sexual Subversions.