Postmodernism Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Postmodernism is a philosophic and analytical perspective traversing multiple disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Its roots—while perhaps found in early twentieth century Ger man idealism (Georg Lukács and Karl Mannheim), the Frankfurt school and its critical theory (Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer), and to a lesser extent phenomenology—is attributed primarily to various French scholars such as poststructural anthropologist Claude LeviStrauss, deconstructionist Jacques Derrida, and social scientists such as Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser. While the major tenets of postmodernism have been intensely debated and disagreed upon by most proponents, an underlying agreement derives from the basic assumption that modernity—often considered to have begun sometime around the Enlightenment or the onset of Industrial Revolution in the seventeenth century—has passed in most developed societies; as such, a new conceptualization of postindustrial, postmodern societies is necessary.

Development

Two types of postmodernist works prevail in the social sciences. The earlier work was a critical philosophy in its agenda (led by Jean-Francois Baudrillard and Jean Lyotard) and the more recent work either looks back at the early work self reflexively or attempts to integrate the disparate scholarship of the earlier period. For instance, Zygmunt Bauman, in Craig Calhoun and colleagues’ book Contemporary Sociological Theory (2002), asserts that postmodernity is, essentially, “modernity emancipated from false consciousness . . . [and is] marked by the overt institutionalization of the characteristics which modernity . . . set about to eliminate and, failing that, tried to conceal” (429).

More often couched in a critique of either modern society or the social sciences’ attempts at positivistic methods, postmodernists prefer to see the social world as: fragmented and, therefore, not a clean system; constructed out of the efforts of individuals and not external and objective; and impossible to apprehend, test, or measure using scientific instruments. At the heart of this thread of postmodernism is an epistemological critique positing cumulative social sciences as an impossible task because culture, reality, and experience are relative.

More recently, Kenneth Allan and Jonathan Turner attempted to put forth a formal theory of postmodernism. They identify four phenomena of interest that crosscut postmodern theory: (1) the increasing importance of culture vis-àvis the material world, which is considered more modern; (2) the destabilizing effects caused by the prominence and intensified penetration of culture; (3) the increasing importance of the individual; and (4) a decentering process caused by hyper differentiated societies. Allan and Turner posit that certain capitalist processes contribute to the transformation of modern societies into postmodern universes. First, advanced capitalism leads to a mushrooming in the number, size, and level of penetration of markets, caused, in part, by the means of advertising. Second, as Marx once predicted and as the Frankfurt school cogently pointed out, advanced capitalism transforms everything into commodities further contributing to the growth of markets. Third, capital becomes less fixed in advanced capitalist societies, leading to its rapid movement across physical spaces and, consequently, deconcentration. Fourth, communication and transportation technologies grow so fast and so efficiently that time and space become radically altered in ways that are unnatural to human biology, leading to destabilizing, rapid changes as well as more effective economic penetration in everyday life. The world, in a sense, grows smaller, while human biological adaptivity does not change.

Finally, advanced capitalist, postmodern societies witness the rise of means of reproduction and the decline of means of production. Imaging techniques, the Internet, and television become the primary source of economic growth while manufacturing is “farmed out.” The penetration of new mass media leads to new means of domination as well as exploitation. Everyday life speeds up. The number of roles a person can assume, or imagine assuming, exponentially grows. Some of the results include discombobulation, disorientation, and high levels of anomie, as well as newfound individual self-reflexivity and the elevation of the individual over the group and the community.

Debate

Whether or not postmodernism is a theory, a philosophy, a critique, or an amalgam of the three has been a key area of debate. On the one hand, there is widespread disagreement among self-proclaimed postmodernists as to what it is and what its major tenets should be. Moreover, as a critique of positive, cumulative science, it is difficult to conceive of how its propositions can be tested empirically—or whether testing would defeat the purposes of its practitioners in the first place. On the other hand, postmodernism offers a lens in the same vein as the Frankfurt school for comparing the so-called modern world and the arguably different structural elements of (post)industrial societies such as the United States, Germany, or Japan.

Finally, some question has been raised as to whether or not postmodern theory is or was a fad, as postmodernists rarely tried to create traditions or schools, focusing more on deconstructing those metanarratives—worldviews that encompass all of human or natural history—and rationalist theories already extant. While efforts like Bauman’s or Allan and Turner’s are directed toward synthesizing the disparate parts, the recent wars in the Middle East, the continued reliance on fossil fuels, and the continued prominence of industrial production in most of the world are stark reminders of the staying power of modernity. Thus, some have suggested that postmodernity is better termed late modernity.

Bibliography:

Adorno, Theodor. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. London: Routledge Classics, 1991.
Allan, Kenneth, and Jonathan H.Turner. “A Formalization of Postmodern Theory.” Sociological Perspectives 43, no. 3 (2000): 363–385.
Baudrillard, Jean. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. Translated by C. Leven. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1981.
The Mirror of Production. Translated by Mark Poster. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1975.
Bauman, Zygmunt. Postmodernity and Its Discontents. New York: New York University Press, 1997.
Berger, Peter, and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor Books, 1966.
Calhoun, Craig, Joseph Gerteis, James Moody, Steven Pfaff, and Indermohan Virk. Contemporary Sociological Theory. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002.
Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. New York: Pantheon, 1972.
Gergen, Kenneth. The Saturation of Self. New York: Basic Books, 1991.
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Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Continuum, 1944.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. Vols. 1–2. New York: Basic Books, 1976.
Luhmann, Niklas. The Reality of Mass Media: Cultural Memory in the Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.
“Why Does Society Describe Itself as Postmodern?” Cultural Critique 30 (Spring 1995): 171–186.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia. Translated by L.Wirth and E. Shils. New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1936.
Marcuse, Herbert. One-dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.
Parkinson, G. H. R., ed. Georg Lukács:The Man, His Work and His Ideas. New York:Vintage Books, 1970.
Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.
Schutz, Alfred. Phenomenology of the Social World. Translated by G.Walsh and F. Lehnert. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1967.

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