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culture, subculture and counterculture - Facultatea de Litere

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STELUŢA STAN, MICHAELA PRAISLER<br />

there is a loss of emotional content <strong>and</strong> of ‘objective’ or critical distance. The<br />

past is recoverable now only as pastiche […]. The individual, formerly alienated<br />

un<strong>de</strong>r monopoly capitalism, now becomes ‘schizophrenic’, all sense even of a<br />

lost authenticity gone.” (Brooker 1992: 22)<br />

From the neo-Marxist perspective, postmo<strong>de</strong>rnism appears as ‘weak’<br />

discourse, one that has very little in common with Vattimo’s “pensiero <strong>de</strong>bole”,<br />

a discourse characterized by ‘platitu<strong>de</strong>’, ‘weakness’ or lack of moral st<strong>and</strong>ards,<br />

political actions, historical <strong>de</strong>pth <strong>and</strong>, un<strong>de</strong>rlining all these negative categories,<br />

by subjectivity. An empty subject, divised, fragmented <strong>and</strong> politically neutral,<br />

the subject as ‘lack’, claims to become the true postmo<strong>de</strong>rn subject. Precariously<br />

constituted round the margins of its interior void, this subject manifests itself<br />

through the continuous assertion of its lack of authenticity; it appears like an<br />

intertextual phenomenon, as collage, agglutination of styles, expressions, pieces<br />

<strong>and</strong> parts belonging to other cultural i<strong>de</strong>ntities.<br />

In a similar note, professor David Harvey approaches the problematics<br />

of postmo<strong>de</strong>rnity as social condition in The Condition of Postmo<strong>de</strong>rnity. An<br />

Enquiry into the Origins of Social Change (1997). In the cracked postmo<strong>de</strong>rn<br />

surface of reflexion, Harvey sees the ground allowing for new angles <strong>and</strong><br />

perspectives, the only question being whom they represent. The source of<br />

inspiration for the social commentator willing to i<strong>de</strong>ntify a future ethics is the<br />

new social movements <strong>and</strong> changed attitu<strong>de</strong>s to race, peace <strong>and</strong> ecology; this<br />

gives him confi<strong>de</strong>nce in a “historico-geographical materialism” contributing to<br />

the accomplishment of the re-oriented project of Enlightenment. The main<br />

preoccupation of the post/neo-marxist Harvey is economic <strong>and</strong> geo-political<br />

themes, the new “casino-economy”, as he calls it, leading to a new <strong>culture</strong>,<br />

attentive to the symbolic capital, fashion, <strong>de</strong>sign <strong>and</strong> the quality of urban life, on<br />

the one h<strong>and</strong>, but also to the otherness of the poor, the shelterless, powerless <strong>and</strong><br />

hopeless (1997: 330).<br />

At this point of our study, we shall take a change of direction towards<br />

another type of approach to postmo<strong>de</strong>rnism. Due to the rather contested relation<br />

between (French) postmo<strong>de</strong>rn theory <strong>and</strong> politics (see Currie 1998: 71-95), the<br />

one between feminism <strong>and</strong> postmo<strong>de</strong>rnism is also cautious. Many feminists<br />

regar<strong>de</strong>d with impatience the philosophical arguments, hard to un<strong>de</strong>rst<strong>and</strong>, that<br />

surroun<strong>de</strong>d the epistemological basis, <strong>and</strong> concentrated instead upon studies of<br />

historical inspiration about social conditions. Nevertheless, such an approach<br />

<strong>de</strong>rives ultimately from the tenets of French theory: the hostility of Western<br />

thinking towards <strong>and</strong> the fascination for the “other” (Derrida), the social<br />

constituance <strong>and</strong> the discipline of the “sexual i<strong>de</strong>ntity” (Foucault), the<br />

interpretation of the “feminine sexuality” (Lacan).<br />

In the essay, Feminism: the Political Conscience of Postmo<strong>de</strong>rnism?,<br />

Laura Kipnis, critic, essayist <strong>and</strong> professor of media studies at Northwestern<br />

University, gives a short presentation of the differences between Anglo-<br />

American feminism, essentialist <strong>and</strong> traditionally liberal, <strong>and</strong> continental<br />

feminism, which, after operating a radical structural analysis – “falogocentrism”<br />

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