journal 2

,,,, I 1111 1•1111111 111 IIIUI

24. Juno Jordan, ()n C.111/: 1101/t/, u/ I NN,1y, (llmli111 '" ,1111, I lttl It I 1f1 I, 111 2~. The no~ion. of litorac~ n~ ,\ form of rnll 111 ,1I polllli - 1111,1 , 111111 .. 11, 1 p,lll lt 111,11 11.,ct

gog,cal practice Is most evident in the works o f f',Hdo 11 11111, ,.,., 1111 , •~~lllfilo, l',ill ln re1r:, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Uorgman 11,111 11,~ (Nnw Ymk : ~IH•i>III ) ress, _1968); Paulo Fre,re and Donaldo Macedo, Literacy: Rc11tllnH !ho \l\\nd and r/11,

orld LSouth Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey, 1987). 26. Jordan, On Cati, 29.

27. Martha Nus.sba~m's comment on the narrowness of Bloom's reading of the fruit~ f Western c1vrl1zatton Is worth repeating:

His special love for these books fthe old Great Books of the ancient philosophers] has certainly prevented him from attending to works of literature and phi losophy that lie outside the tradition they began. for he makes the remarkable claim that "onlv in the Western nations i e th · fl , , .•, ose in uence~ by Greek philosophy, is there some w ill ingness to doubt the 1den1_1f1cat1on of the good with one's own way." This statement shows a startling ignorance of the critical and rational ist tradition in classical Indian tho.ugh!, of the arguments of classical Chinese thinkers, and beyond this, of countless examples of philosophical and nonphilosophical self-criticism from many parts of the world. (Nussbaum, "Undemocratic Vistas," 22)

a F P W

o CHAPTER 3

POSTMODERNISM AND THE DISCOURSE OF

EDUCATIONAL CRITICISM

Genealogical practice transforms history from a judgment on the past in the name ofa present truth to a "counter-memory" that combats our current modes of truth and jus­ tice, helping us to understand and change the present byplacing it in a n ew relation to the past. Jonathan Arac, Postmodernism and Politics

The Crisis of Modernism in the Postmodern Age

Educational theory and practice have always been strongly wedded to the language and assumptions of modernism. Educato rs as d iverse as John Dewey (1916), Ralph Tyler (1950), Herb Gintis (Bowles and Gintis, 1976), John Goodlad (1984), and Martin Carnoy (Carnoy and Levin, 1985) have shared a faith in those modernist ideals that stress the ca­ pacity of individuals to think critically, to exercise social responsibility, and to remake the world in the interest of the Enlightenment dream of reason and freedom. Central to th is view of education and modernity has been an abiding faith in the ability of individuals to situate them­ selves as self-motivating subjects within the wider discourse of pub lic life. For many educators, modernism is synonymous w ith ''the contin­ ual progress o f the sciences and of techn iques, the rational division of industrial work, and the intensification of human labor and of human domination over nature" (Baudri l lard, 1987, 65-66). A faith in rational-

57

,II I I 1'11', I M l ti ti l<N l',M t\NI 1 11 II II 11

ity, science, and technology bull1 t•<1-.1,., tlw 11111,h 1111 1111 th f 111 I"'""• nent change, and in the continual ,md fHOK1,,1111 lv1 1111f11ldl t1H 111 hl11 l111y Similarly, education p rovides the soclaliz lng J>1111 ' """'" ,111cl l0Hllli1h1ll1111 codes by which the grand narrative of progrcs:-i and 111111111n dt•v11lnp ment can be passed on to future generations.

The moral, politica l, and social technologies that structure and drlVt the imperatives of publ ic school ing are drawn from the modernist vlnw of the individual student and educator as the guarantor of the dolk ,111' balance between private and public life, as the safeguard who t ·,111 guarantee that the economy and the democratic state w ill functio n i11 ,, mutually determining manner. Within the discourse of modernism, knowledge draws its boundaries almost exclusively from a Europc,111 model of cultu re and civilization. Civilization in this script is an extc 11 sion of what Jean-Frarn;ois Lyotard (1984) calls the "great story" of tht• Enlightenment. ln addition, modernism has been largely drawn front cultural scripts written by wh ite males whose work is often privileged as a model of high cu lture informed by an elite sensibility that sets it off from what is often dismissed as popular or mass culture. While it is not the purpose of this chapter to w rite either the story of modernism1 or its specific expressions in the history of educational theory and prac­ tice, it is important to note that modernism in both its progressive and reactionary forms has provided the central categories that have given rise to various versions of educational theory and practice. To question the most basic principles of modernity redefines the meaning of schooling, and also calls into q uestion the very basis of our history, our cu ltural critic ism, and our manifestations and expressions of public life. In effect, to challenge modernism is to redraw and remap the very nature of our social, political, and cu ltural geography. It is for this rea­ son alone that the challenge currently being posed by various post­ modernist discourses needs to be taken up and examined critically by educators.

In th is chapter, we want to argue that the challenge of postmodern­ ism is important for educators because it raises crucial questions re­ garding certain hegemonic aspects of modernism and, by implication, how t hese have affected the meaning and dynamics of present-day schooling. Postmodern criticism is also important because it offers the promise of deterritorializing modernism and redrawing its political, so­ cial, and cultural boundaries, wh ile simultaneously affirming a politics of racial, gender, and ethnic difference. Moreover, postmodern criti­ cism does not merely challenge dominant Western cultural models with their attendant notion of universally valid knowledge; it also re­ situates us w ithin a world that bears little resemblance to the one that

I 11 IM 1111 NNI M NI 11 1111 ,\IIt tNfll 1 10 11< l'iM 11 •'•

lllll cl the w ,111d 11,111,111\'1.. 111 M111 .. ,11111 I r1•11d. 111 t•ffN I, postmode_rn Ill! l1i 111 , ,,11 ,. ,1111•11111111 111 1111' "11111111g bound,,rlcs related to the ,n­

t 1011,K l11lhw111 c• of 1111 ulnc 1t o 11 k mass media and information tech­ n11l11H), 1111• c ll11t1Klt1g 11,111111• of dass and social format ions in post in-

111 11 l,dl11•d 1,1pl t,1l lsI socl<•1'ics, and the growing transgression of 1111111,d,11 !11~ l>c•lwoon li fe and art, high and popular culture, and image

11d 11111l l ty. w,, wlll , 11 guc in this essay that postmodern criticism offers a com­

ltl11 ,1ll1111 o f roaclionary and progressive possibilities, and that its vari­ " ' ' " cll~c·ourscs have to be examined with great care if we are to benefit 111 1ll! li ,,lly and pedagogically from its assumptions and analyses. We ~ 111 1111>0 ,lrgue that a crit ical pedagogy is not to be developed on the 111111111 of a cho ice between modernism and postmodernism. As Ernesto I , 11 l,111 ( 1988) aptly states, "Postmodern ism cannot be a simple rejec­ llc lll o( modernity; rather, it involves a different modulation of its th11111cs and categories" (65}.2 Moreover, both discourses as forms of , 11llural criticism are flawed; they need to be examined for the ways in wll lC"h each cancels out the worst dimensions of the other. They each 111nlain elements of strength, and educators have an opportunity to l,1'lh lon a critical pedagogy that draws on the best insights of each.

. Most important, we will argue that those ideals of the project of mo­ d1•rnity that link memory, agency, and reason to the construction of a 1h•mocratic public sphere need to be defended as part of a discourse of 1 l'lt lcal pedagogy with in (rather than in opposition to} the existing con­ ditions of a postmodern world. At issue here is the task of delineating tho broader cultural complexities that inform what we shall call a post­ modern sensibility and criticism. Such a delineation needs to take place within t he boundaries of a pedagogy and politics that recl~i':11.s ,md reinvigorates, rather than denies o r is indifferent to, the poss1b1lt­ tlcs of a radical democracy (Giroux, 1991}.

The argument that is developed here unfolds as follows: first, we will provide some theoretical groundwork for developing a broad map of what constitutes the meaning of postmodernism, and what can be called the postmodern condition. Briefly put, the postmodern condi­ tion refers to the various discursive and structural transformations that characterize w hat can be called a postmodern cult ure in the era of late capitalism. Second, we w ill articu late some of the central and most crit­ ical themes that have emerged from the various discourses on post­ modern theory. In this section we will examine the conservative and radical implications of these positions. Third, we will argue that in or­ der to develop a more adequate theory of schooling as a form of cul­ tural politics it is important that contemporary educators integrate the

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central theoretical fealurcs of u post111odc-111l.,111 111 " 111 111111 wllli 1111• more radical elements of modernist dist 0 111 s1•.

The Meaning of Postmodernism

Though postmodernisrn has influenced a wide variety of fields that in­ clu~e music, fiction'. film, drama, architecture, criticism, anthropology, sociology, and the visual arts, there is no agreed-upon meaning for the term.3 In keeping w ith the multiplicity of difference that it celebrates, postmodernism is not only subject to different ideological appropria­ tions, it is also marked by a wide variety of interpretations. This can be illustrated by briefly looking at the different views of postmodernism articulated by two of its leading theorists, Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard (1984} and Fredric Jameson (1984).

Lyotard has described postmodernism as a rejection of grand narra­ tives, metaphysical philosophies, and any other form of totalizing thought. In his view, the meaning of postmodernism is inextricably re­ lated to the changing conditions of knowledge and technology that are producing forms of social organization that are undermining the old habits, bonds, and social practices of modernity. For Lyotard, the post­ modern is defined th rough the diffusion throughout Western societies of computers, scientific knowledge, advanced technology, and elec­ tronic texts, each of wh ich accents and privileges diversity, locality, specificity, and the contingent against the totalitizing narratives of the previous age. According to Lyotard, technical, scientific, and artistic in­ novations are creating a world where individuals must make their own way w ithout the benefit of fixed referents or traditional philosophical moorings. Total mastery and liberation are dismissed as the discourses of terror and forced consensus. In its place postmodernism appears as an ideological and political marker for referencing a world without sta­ bility, a world where knowledge is constantly changing and where meaning can no longer be anchored in a teleological view of history.

Fr~d ~i_c Ja,:nes~n'.s _(1984, 1988) writings on postmodern ism challenge the nihilism 1mphc1t In many such theories. Jameson defines postmod­ ernism as the "cultural logic" that represents the third great stage of late capitalism, as well as the new cultural dominant of the times in W~stern societies. For Jameson (1984), postmodernism is an epochal shift that alerts us to the present remapping ofsocial space and the crea­ tion of new social formations. If postmodern ism represents new forms of fragmentation, the creation of new constellation s of forms, and the emergence of new technological and artistic developments in capitalist

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111 h ly, l ,1111«1111111 d111 11111 11 "<p11111l l1y c 11lll11g lo, tlw death of grand 111111,1tlv111, 111 l1y 111l1•l11,11l11K 111.. 1111•< t1011k spectacles that substitute 11111tH"" Int 11111llly. 111"111 ,u l , lw M!;ll '!i fo r new cognitive maps, different 1111111" 111 rop wM1n1uIlui1 !hut provide a systematic reading of the new

••II«' I >oui;l,,s Kellner (1988) is right in arguing that Jameson's view of post-

11111dc11•11lsm is quite different from that of Lyotard and a number of nll11•r prominent theorists of the postmodern. Kellner wri tes:

In any case, one sees how, against Lyotard, Jameson employs Ihc form of a grand narrative, of a totalizing theory of society ,ind history that makes specific claims about featu res of postmodernism--which interprets as "the cultural log_ic of_ capital" rather than as a code word for a new (post)h1stoncal condition - as do Lyotard and Baudrillard (however much they reject totalizing thought). Obviously, Jameson wishes to preserve Marxism as the Master Narrative and to relat ivize all competing theories as sectorial or regional theories to be subsumed in their proper place within the Marxian Master Narrative. (262}

Postmodernism's refusal of grand narratives, its rejection of univer­ s.al reason as a foundation for human affairs, its decentering of the hu­ manist subject, its radical problematization of representation, and its celebration of plurality and the politics of racial, gender, and ethnic dif­ ference have sparked a major debate among conservatives, liberals, and radicals in an increasingly diverse number of fields. For example, conservative cu ltural critics such as Allan Bloom (1987) argue that post­ modernism represents "the last, predictable stage in the suppression of reason and the denial o f the possibility of truth" (379). In a similar fashion, conservatives such as Daniel Bell (1976) claim that postmod­ ernism extends the adversarial and hedonistic tendencies of modern­ ism to destructive extremes. For a host of other conservatives, post­ modernism as it is expressed in the arts, music, film , and fiction is pejoratively dismissed as " a reflection of .. . the present wave of (destructive] political reaction sweeping the Western world" (Gott, 1986, 10).

Liberals such as Jurgen Habermas and Richard Rorty take opposing positions on the relevance of postmodernism. Habermas (1983) sees it as a threat to the foundations of democratic public life, while Rorty (1985) appropriates its central assumptions as part of the defense of lib­ eral capitalist society. Among left-wing radicals, postmodernism runs a theoretical gamut that ranges from adulation to condemnation to a

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cautious skepticism. R..idlc;.11 nllll's MH 11 ,,~ h•11 y I AHie 11111 11'1111, ), I11 111 y Anderson (1984), and Barbara ChrlstiJ11 ( 11/11/ ) 111•1 1111,.1111111l11111l'i111 ,111

either a threat to or a flight fro m the rea l world ot pulll It " ,11 ic I 11111tl-(l{l1• Hal Foster (1983), Andreas Huyssen (1986), Stua, I I l,1II (1 11 Cros~htllK, (1986), and a number of feminist critics such as ll! l'('~il de La u1·1•ll'I (1987), Meaghan Morris (1988), and Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicho lson (1990), approach the discourse of postmodernism cautiously by int(•I rogating critically its claims and absences. Radical avant-garde theorisl~ such as Jean Baudrillard (1988) and Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard (1984) utili.t.t ' postmodern discourses as a theoretical weapon to articulate either th(• nihilism of capitalist society and its alleged collapse of meaning or thl' tyranny implicit in the totalizing narratives characteristic of modernity.

While it would be easy to dismiss postmodernism as simply a code word for a new theoretical fashion, the term is important because it di• rects our attention to a number of changes and challenges that are a part of the contemporary age. For some social theorists, postmodern­ ism may be on the verge of becoming an empty signifier, while others credit it with a theoretical and heuristic relevance deriving from its ca­ pacity to provide a focus for a number of historically significant de­ bates. As Dick Hebdige (1986) points out, there can be little doubt that the term "postmodern" appears to "have occupied a semantic ground in which something precious and important was felt to be embedded" (79). The discourse of postmodernism is worth struggling over, and not merely as a semantic category that needs to be subjected to ever more precise definitional rigor. Rather, it is important to mine its contradic­ tory and oppositional insights for possible use in the service of a radi­ cal cultural politics and a critical theory of pedagogy. At the same time, to provide a basis for understanding its cultural and political insights, we want to argue that postmodernism in the broadest sense refers to an intellectual position, a form of cultural critici sm, as well as to an emerging set of social, cultural, and economic conditions that have come to characterize the age of global capitalism and industrialism. In the first instance, postmodernism represents a form of cultural criti­ c ism that radically questions the logic of foundations that has become the epistemological cornerstone of modernism. In the second in­ stance, postmodernism refers to an increasingly radical change in the relations of production, the nature of the nation-state, the develop­ ment of new technologies that have redefined the fields of telecom­ munications and information processing, and the forces at work in the growing globalization and interdependence of the economic, political, and cultural spheres. All of these issues will be taken up below in more specific detail.

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11, ,11111• 1•11111111 1111111H wlr ,, w 1· thl11!- ,111 1 tlw l><tsl< assumptions that 1h11 v,11 I111I., d h , 11111 1o , .., 111 I11 ,-.1i11111h•1 nlsm have in common, we want to 1t,1i,lly 11l,1llllt ,1tn 1111 ""'"' ' o l th<• conditio ns that have come to charac- 11111, , 1 wh,,t c,111 lw 1 ,1llod ,1 postmodern age. We don't believe that 1111•, t111o d11rnlsm represents a drastic break or ru_pture fr?':11 modernity ,,11 111u r h ns it signals a shift toward a set of social cond1t1ons that are 11 11 onstlluting the social, cultural, and geopolitical map of the world, wllll t' simultaneously producing new forms of cultural criticism. Such a ,.1,1(1 represents a break away from certain definitive features of mod- 1•m ism, " with the emphasis firmly on the sense of the relational move ,1wny" (Featherstone, 1988, 197). At the same t ime, we believe that_the v.irious discourses o·f postmodernism have underplayed the continu­ it ies t hat mark the transition from one age to another w ithin the cur­ rPnt capital ist countries. Modernism is far from dead - its central cate­ KOries are simply being written within a plurality of narratives that ar~ ,11\empting to address the new set of social, political, technical, and s~1- t1ntific configurations that constitute the current age. Stuart Hall (1n Grossberg, 1986) captures the complexity of the relationship between modernity and postmodernism in the following comment:

But I don't know that w ith "postmodernism" we are dealing with something totally and fundamentally different from that break at the turn of the century. I don't mean to deny that we've gone through profound qualitative changes between . then and now. There are, therefore, now some very perplexing features to contemporary culture that certainly tend to outrun the critical and theoretical concepts generated in the early modernist period. We have, in that sense, to constantly update our theories and to be dealing with new experiences. I also accept that these changes may constitute new subject-positions and social identities for people. But I don't think there is any such absolutely novel and unified thing as the postmodern condition. It's another vers ion of that historical amnesia characteristic of American cultu re- the tyranny of the New. (47)

In what follows we will discuss some of the major features of the post modern condition. In doing so, we will draw on a vari~ty of differ­ ent theoretical perspectives regarding the nature and meaning of these conditions.

The postmodern condition has to be seen as part of an ongoing shift related to global structural changes as well as a radical change in the way in wh ich culture is produced, circulated, read, a_nd consumed. Such shifts cannot be seen as part of the old Marxist base/super-

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struct ure model. Instead, they have 10 bt• vl1•wc•cl ''" 111111 111 ,, ..,.,1,,1; of uneven developments that have emerged out of tfw, 1111fllt I l11•lwm•11 traditional economic models and new cultu ral fon1111tl011'I 1111cl 111od11'I of criticism, on the one hand, and related discourses th,1I 111,1rk out thu terrains of certain aspects of modernism and postmodernism on tlw other. On an ideological level, the deterritorialization and remappinf( characteristic of the postmodern condition can be seen in the effort by many theorists and critics to challenge and rewrite in oppositional terms the modernist idea ls of rationality, totality, certainty, and progress along with its "globalizing, integrative vision of the individu­ al's place in h istory and society" (Richard , 1987/1988, 6). But the struggle against the ideals of modernity is not limited to the rewriting of its major texts and assumptions. For example, such a struggle cannot be seen exclusively as a matter of challenging a privileged modernist aesthetic, which calls into question the oppressive organization of space and experience that characterizes institutions such as schools, museums, and t he workplace ; nor can the struggle against modernity be read simply as a call to open up texts to the heterogeneity of mean­ ings t hey embody and mediate. These sites of struggle and contesta­ tion are important, but the postmodern condition is also rooted in those fundamental political and technological shifts that undermine the cent ral modernist notion that there exists "a legitimate center - a unique and superior position from which to establish control and to determine hierarch ies" (Richard, 1987/1988, 6). This center refers to the privileging of Western patriarchal culture, with its representations of dominat ion rooted in a Eurocentric conception of the world, and to the technological, political, economic, and m ilitary resources that once were almost exclusively dominated by the Western industrial coun­ tries . In effect, the basic e lements of the postmodern condition have been created by major changes in the global redistribution of political power and cultural legitimation, the deterritorialization and decenter­ ing of power in the West, the transformations in the nature of the forces of production, and the emergence of new forms of cultural crit­ icism. In what follows, we will spell these out in greater detail.

The economic and political cond itions that have come about in the Western nations since the Second World War have been extensively analyzed by theorists such as Stanley Aronowitz (1987/1988), Scott Lash and John Urry (1987), and Jean Baudrillard (1988). Although these theo­ rists hold differing positions on the importance of postmodern ism, each of them believes that postmodernism can only be understood in terms of its problell)atic relationship w ith central features of the mod­ ernist tradition. Each of their analyses is impo rtant. For Aronowitz

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11'111 /1'11111), 111111l1•1111ty II f,1lllt 1111111 1 , ..,1 11111 11t,11t· Ii-, rcc;cding o n a world­ wide lc•wl ''" th,• 1111, ' '" 111 p1 11drn 11011 thal drive tho global economy 14111 h11111,t'llllHIY dl11111 111111d through the multinatio nalism of corpo ra­ '" •11• u11cl tlw o irH rgP11< '<.l of economic powers outside of the Western 1111 l11 11 ttl,dl1od nations. M o reover, Aronowitz believes that the modern­ I t l1•Hlllrni1Iing narratives of public life no longer have the power of , , •11vl1 IIon o r the ideological cohesiveness they once had. Ideological •111ppoI t has given way to bad faith. This can be seen in the various ways 111 which sexual and power hierarchies, electoral politics, and faith in h11h1sl rlalism are now under attack from a wider variety of groups at 1h11 •,11mc time that they are more deeply entrenched in elite publ ic dis­ , 11111 sc and politics.

I or Lash and Urry (1987), capitalism has become increasingly disor- 11,111ILcd. They argue that this process, while not contributing directly lo the development of postmodernist culture, represents a powerful lw·c·c in the emergence of many elements making up the postmodern , ondition. The central changes that Lash and Urry point to include the d,•concentration of capital as national markets become less regulated l1y national corporations; the decline in the number of blue-collar workers as deindustrialization reconstructs the centers of production ,ind changes the makeup of the labor force; a dramatic expansion of Ilic white-collar workforce as well as a distinctive service class; an in­ <rcase in cultural pluralism and the development of new cu ltural/ 1 lhnidpolitical formations; and demographic changes involving the fi­ nancial collapse of inner cities and the growth in rural and suburban populations. And, finally, though they touch on a number of other con­ siderations, Lash and Urry emphasize the appearance of an ideological/ cultural apparatus in which the production of information and symbols not only becomes a central aspect of the making and remaking of ev­ eryday life, but contributes to the breakdown of the division between reality and image.

In Jean Baudrillard's (1988) discourse, the postmodern condition represents more than a massive transgression of the boundaries that are essential to the logic of modernism; it represents a form of hyper­ reality, an infinite proliferation of meanings in which all boundaries collapse into models of simulation. In this perspective, there is no rele­ vance to an epistemology that searches out the higher elevations of truth, exercises a depth reading, or tries to penetrate reality in o rder to uncover the essence of meaning. Reality is on the surface. Ideology, alienation, and values are all jettisoned in this version of postmodern discourse, and are subsumed within the orbit of a society saturated w ith media messages that have no meaning or content in the rationalist

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sense. In this view, information as noli>l' b p,1,,lvd ) , 1111 11111, d by the masses, whose brutish indifference obliterates 1h11 g1111111d ol nu•dl,1 tion, po litics, and resistance. In emphasizing the glitter ol tlw 1•vcryd,1y as spectacle, Baudrillard points to the new forms of techno logy and 111 formation that have become central to a reproductive order that blur, the lines between past and present, art and life, and commitment and experience.

But Baudrillard's (1988) society of simulatio ns, a society in which "signs replace the logic of production and class conflict as key constitu• ents of contemporary capitalist societies" (Kellner, in press, 11), trans­ lates less into a provocative analysis of the changing contours and fea­ tures of the age than it does into a nihil ism that undermines its own radical intent. Fatalism replaces struggle, and irony resigns itself to a " mediascape" that offers the opportunity for a form of refusal defined simply as play. Foundationalism is out, and language has become a sig­ nifier, floating anchorless in a terrain of images that refuse definition and spell the end of representation. In Baudrillard's postmodern world, history is finished, subsumed in a vertigo of electronic fantasy­ images that privilege inertia as reality. For theorists like Baudrillard, the masses have become the b lack hole into which all meaning simply dis­ appears. Domination now takes place through the proliferation of signs, images, and signifiers that envelop us without a hint o f either where they come from or what they mean. The task is not to interpret but to consume-to revel in the plurality of uncertainties that claim no boundaries and seek no resolutions. This is the world of the spectacle and the simulacrum, a world in which the modernist notion of the "aura" of a work, personality, o r text no longer exists (Benjamin, 1969). Everything is a copy, everything and everyone is networked into a com­ munication system in which we are all electronically wired , pu lsating in response to the simulations that keep us watching and consuming. In Baudrillard's world, the postmodern condition is science fict ion, mean­ ing is an affront to reality, and pedagogy vanishes except as form be­ cause there are no more experts.

In spite of the different politics and analyses presented by each of these positions, they all respectively conced e that we are living in a transitional era in w hich emerging social conditions call into question the ability of o ld orthodoxies to name and understand the changes that are ushering us into the twenty-first century. Whether these changes suggest a break between modernity and postmodernity may not be as important an issue as understanding the nature of the changes and what thei r implications might be for reconstituting a radical cultural politics appropriate to our own time and place. We need to understand

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1111111. 1 11,, ly wh,,1 , ti .11 , . 11 1,,k pl,ICt' In various artistic, intellec- 111111 , ,111 d ,u t1,111 11I1t ,,pl 1111111, 11%1rdl11g tile produclio n, distribution, and '"' 1•pt lo11 ol v,11 I1111', th1•111lt''t ,ind discourses. We also ne~d to un?er­ " '''"" lw t11 •1· how ., h t<htdcr shift in lhe balance o f power in the wider 111lt 111,11 sphere cltlwr opens up or restricts the possibilities for d~~el­ oplnK a discourse of public l if~, one tha_t can dra~ fro m both a entreat modernism and a postmodermsm of resistance. Finally, ~e need to ~n­ d!'rstand how the field of the everyday is being reconstituted not sim­ ply as a commodity sphere but as a si_te of cont~stat ion that_ offers new possibilities for engaging t he memo ries, hrsto~•~s, and s!ories of thos~ who offer not simply otherness but an oppos1t1onal resistance :o vari­ ous forms of domination. All of these concerns and changes involve pedagogical and political issues, because they focu.s on the w_ays in which power is being redistributed and taken up by d_1fferent soc_1al for­ mations making new and rad ical demands both within and outside so­ cieties and also because they illuminate the need to understand how these ~hanges are actually taken up by different groups in particular historical and cu ltural contexts.

'"H' "'H

Postmodern Problematics: Reactionary versus Progressive Appropriations

In what follows, we shall address productive contradictions inherent in important thematic considerations that cut across a number of.po~t­ modernist discourses. Following Linda Hutcheon (1988), we maintain that the various theories and practices that constitute the postmodern field represent what can in effect be called postmodern problematics : "a set of problems and basic issues that have been created by t_he var­ ious discourses of postmodernism, issues that were not particularly problematic before but certainly are now" (Hutcheon, 1988, 5). T_he prob lematics that wi ll be analyzed below make clea~ some of the m~J~r paradoxes of postmodernist discourse; they also rlluminat~ the d1ff1- culties and possibilities for rereading and rewriting the ma1or catego­ ries of educational theory and cultural criticism.

Postmodernism and the Crisis of Totality and Foundationalism

We have paid a high enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and the one for the reconciliation of the concept and the sensible, of th~ transparent and the communicable

l~I I'< IS I Ml II >I KNISM ,\NI I 11 II 11 11(

experience.... Let us wage wc1r on tot,,llly, ht 11 111 wll111'""''!i to the unpresentable; let us activate tht• dlfl1'11•1111 ,11111 111c1vl' the honor of the name. (Lyotard, 1984, 81-82)

In the above quotation, Lyotard articulates an antagonism that has lw come a central feature of postmodernist discourse. That is, postmod ernism rejects those aspects of the Enlightenment and Western philo sophical tradition that rely on master narratives "which set out to address a transcendental Subject, to define an essential human nature, to prescribe a global human destiny or to proscribe collective human goals" (Hebdige, 1986, 81). Within this perspective all claims to univer­ sal reason and impartial competence are rejected in favor of the par" tiality and specificity of discourse. General abstractions that deny the specificity and particu larity of everyday life, that generalize out of ex­ istence the particular and the local, that smother difference under the banner of universalizing categories are rejected as totalitarian and ter­ roristic.

The postmodern critique of totality also represents a rejection of foundational claims that wrap themselves in an appeal to science, ob­ jectivity, neutrality, and scholarly disinterestedness. Validity claims that rest on essentializing and transcendent metadiscourses are viewed with suspicion and skepticism, and are regarded as ideological expres­ sions of particular discourses embodying normative interests and legiti­ mating historically specific relations of power. This is especially true of those grand narratives that encompass sweeping global claims regard­ ing human destiny and happiness. In this case, postmodern discourse rejects, for example, the totalizing theories of Marxism, Hegelianism, Christianity, and any other philosophy of history based on notions of causality and all-encompassing global resolutions regarding human destiny. For Lyotard (1984), totalizing narratives need to be opposed as part of the w ider struggle against modernity.

I will use the term modern to designate any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse of this kind making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth. (xxii)

But there is more at stake here than simply an argument against the grand narrative or the claims of universal reason; there is also an attack on those intellectuals who would designate themselves the emancipa­ tory vanguard, an intellectual elite who have deemed themselves

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wh , 111t ~ 1 lc•lullK•' I 1•1111,) c ,,II-. ,111 " 11I11-.ory I austian ommp_oten~e1 Ill In ,, , v,, ,.11 ,., 11 111tlw u,-.tnmdcrn, to tality and _foundatronahsm 111111 1 11i1 h•,ul 111 tlw 11 11111 m tu l'rnanc.lpation, but to periods of grea! su~­1111111

h 1 , ,,ttd vlolonco. 1 ho postmodernist attack on t~e grand nar~at1ve is 1111 , 11,, , u 1y a criticism of an inflated teleological sel~-co~f1dence, 11 111 111 0 11

11 till •nt of a dangerous transcendentalism, and a re1e~_1on of the 11 1111 1

,,. ltinl n.urator (Feher, 1988, 197-98). Read in_more pos1t1ve ~erms,1111111 1 ,, dornbts are arguing for a plurality of voices and narrat1ves­

111111 10 \11i,t ,., for different narratives that present the unrepresentable, for

h•~ that emerge from historically spec_ific st~ug?les (Welc~, 1990). 1111 ',hllll,trly, postmodern discourse is attemptrng, with rts emphasis o~ t~e p1idflc and the normative, to situate reason and knowledg_e w1th1n ,tlwr than outside particular configurations of space, ~lace, time, and

1 ,:uwcr. Partiality in this case becomes a political nece~srty as ~art of the dllj( ourse of locating oneself within rather than out~1d~ of h~story and ldt•ology. Stanley Aronowitz (1987/1988) captures this issue rn the fol-

lnwing comment:

Postmodern thought ... is bound to discourse, lit~rally narratives about the world that are admi!tedly _pa~1al. ln_deed, one of the crucial features of discourse Is the 1_nt1mate tie between knowledge and interest, the latter being ~nderstood as "standpoint" from which to -~rasp "re~lity." Putting these terms in inverted commas sigmfres the wrll to a_ba~don . . scientificity, science as a set of propositions claiming ~al1d1ty by any given competent investi?atory._ What postmodermsts deny is recisely this category of ,mpart,al competen_ce. For co~petence is constituted as a series of exclusions- of women, of people of color, of nature as a historical agent, of the truth value of art. (103)

The postmodern attack on totality ~nd grand nar~atives needs to b~ dialectically construed if it is to contribute to a_ r_ad1cal theory of edu cation and cultural politics. At one level the cnt,que of master _narra­ tives is important because it makes us attenti~e to those mythic ele­ ments of foundational ism that give history, society, natu_re, and huma~ relations an ultimate and unproblematic meaning. In this case, the cri­ tique of master narratives is synonymous with an attack on those forms of theoretical terrorism that deny contingency, values, struggle, a_nd human agency. Moreover, by denying an ultimate_ground upon w~ich human action is construed, the critique of totahty/ma~ter narratives opens up the possibility for a wider proliferation of discourses and

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forms o f political action (Lacl«u, l'>IIB, 711 7')) . 111 !'ff• 11 11t1 111111111f, ,1 tique rejects totality and the mastor narr,1llv11 , , ,, 1 ► 11t11l11 111t ,,I 1101 1011,.

On the other hand, to reject all notions o f to tality 1~ 111 11111 lltt• rl-.k 111

being trapped in particularistic theories that cannot 1•xpl,1ln how 1h1 1

various diverse relations that constitute larger social, political, and glo bal systems interrelate or mutually determine and constrain oat Ii other. In order to retain a relationship between postmodern discourst• and the primacy of the political, it is imperative that the notion of tu tality be embraced as a heuristic device rather than as an ontologic,d category. In other words, we need to preserve a notion of totality that privileges forms of analysis in which it is possible to make visible thos,, mediations, interrelations, and interdependencies that give shape and power to larger political and social systems. We need theories that ex• press and articulate difference, but we also need to understand how the relations in which d ifferences are constituted operate as part of a w ider set of social, political, and cu ltural practices. Doug Kellner (1988) is incisive on this issue as he modifies the postmodernist position on totality with a more critical and dialectical view by arguing for a distinc­ tion between what he cal Is grand and master narratives:

Against Lyotard, we might want to distinguish between "master narrtives" that attempt to subsume every particular, every specific viewpoint, and every key point into one totalizing theory (as in some vers ions of Marxism, feminism, Weber, etc.) from "grand narratives" which attempt to tell a Big Story, such as the rise of capital, patriarchy or the colonial subject. (253)

Postmodernism, Culture, and the Problematic of Otherness

Related to the critique of master narratives and theories of totality is another major concern of postmodernism: the development of a poli­ tics that addresses popular culture as a serious object of aesthetic and cu ltural criticism, on the one hand, and signals and affirms the impor­ tance of minority cultures as h istorically specific forms of cultural pro­ duct ion, on the other. Postmodernism's attack on universalism has translated, in part, into a refusal of modern ism's relentless hostility to mass culture, and its reproduction of the elitist division between high and low culture (Foster, 1983; Huyssen, 1986). Not only has postmod­ ernism's reaffirmation of popular culture challenged the aesthetic and epistemological divisions supportive of academic discip lines and the contours of what has been considered "serious" taste, it has also re-

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11111 d 1111ww 111111111111 ,111. w 1lll11p.1 lll111111i1klt1g, 11 11<1 types of aesthetic 1

1111 111 ,.... 1,11, 11111 l1o111 •, h11ll ,11 ly, pn•,t rnoclt•rnlsm has provided the con- 1111 11111,. 11111 "'''•"Y 1111 ,,,.,pl111h11{ und recuperating tradit ions of various 1111111" ul <>lh1111u•si. .,s ,1 ltt11d~1mcr'ltal d imension of both the cultural ,11d 1111 1 '111< lopollllcul spheres.

Wl i.11 postmodcrnism has done in problemat izing the cultural pl11•111h1 lhrcofold. First, it has pointed to those changing conditions

111 I• 111 ►wl odgo embedded in the age of electronically mediated culture, , ~ l,11111otk steering systems, and computer engineering (Lyotard, 1'111•1) , Sucond, it has helped to raise new questions about the terrain of , 1111111 0 as a field of both domination and contestation. More specifi­ ' ,illy, vnrious discourses of postmodernism have challenged the ethno­ , 1111trlcity that rests on the assumption that America and Europe repre- 1111•111 universalized models of civil ization and culture (Ross, 1988). In d11l11g so postmodernism has helped to redefine the relationship be­ twmin power and culture, representation and domination, and lan- 1111,1ge and subjectivity. Third, postmodernism has provided a theoret- 1! nl foundation for engaging the Other not only as a deterritorialized 111,jcct of domination, but also as a source of struggle, collective resis­ t,1nce, and historical affirmation. In other words, postmodernism's

·•11 rcss on the problematic of Otherness has included a focus on the im­ portance of history as a form of counter-memory (Kaplan, 1987); an 11mphasis on the value of the everyday as a source of agency and em­ powerment (Grossberg, 1988); a renewed understanding of gender as ,In irreducible historical and social practice constituted in a plurality of ~elf- and social representations (de Lauretis, 1987; Morris, 1988); and ,in insertion of the contingent, the discontinuous, and the unrepre­ sentable as coordinates for remapping and reth inking the borders that define one's existence and place in the world.

By pointing to the increasingly powerful and complex role of the electronic mass media in constituting individual identities, cultural lan­ guages, and social formations, the various d iscourses of postmodern­ ism have provided a powerful new language that enables us to under­ stand the changing nature of domination and resistance in late capitalist societies. This is particularly true in its understanding of how the conditions for the production of knowledge have changed within the last two decades with respect to the electronic and information­ processing technologies of production, the types of knowledge pro­ duced, and the impact they have had both at the level of everyday life and in larger global terms (Kellner, in press). By incorporating these changes in the cultural sphere into its discourse, postmodernism ques­ tions the relevance of traditional discourses such as Marxism, and

'll I l'1l',IM11111 l'Nl',M /\NI 1111111 AIII Ill I M

raises serious Ideological quc:-. tlom, ,11>1111 1 tlu 111 11111 111h 111 ,1111d,11 I • that structure the organization of co110111, 1111d k, 11 ,wli•dw• f111111,,t1111111

W ithin many postmodernist discourses, th • t•1,l11hll 111,d ,11 ,11lrn11l1 1 11n

ons are criticized for ignoring the socially cor1stru<ti•d 11 11111ro o( tlt11h form and content and for narrowly defining their rol,1tlonship lo ,11111 impact on the largerworld. The importance of this form o f postmod1•1 11 criticism can be seen in the ways it has been taken up in the varlo1111 debates on the status and ideological nature of the canon in hlgh1•1 education.5

Of course, there is no systematic theory of cu lture at work in p(,1,t modernism; instead, there are a variety of theoretical positions and cultural practices ranging from Baudrillard's (1988) darker vision of the collapse of meaning into simulations or simulacra to less pessimis t ic theoretical attempts to challenge new forms of cultural production and domination wh ile simultaneously creating alternative artistic and cultural spheres (Foster, 1983; Kellner, 1988). At stake here are a politics and cultural analysis that provide the conditions for challenging the formalist and institut ionalized boundaries of art and culture that characterize those public spheres that trade in and profit from the re­ production and production of signs, images, and representations, w hether they be the museum, school, city planning commission, or !he state. Similarly, there is also an increasing proliferation of pastiche, irony, and parody, forms of cultural criticism that allow us to deepen our understanding of "the kinds of men, women, and biographical ex­ periences that the late postmodern period makes available to its mem­ bers" (Denzin, 1988, 461).

The postmodern problematic of culture and Otherness is not with­ out its ambiguities and problems. Postmodern ism may display dazzling cultural criticism, but postmodern critics say very little regarding how the characteristic experiences of the postmodern are actually experi­ enced and taken up by different groups. There is little if any sense of pedagogy in this discourse, w hich is overly focused on the reading of cultural texts, without a concomitant understanding of how people in­ vest in signs, signifiers, images, and discourses that actively construct their identities and social relations. Similarly, postmodern ism has a ten­ dency to democratize the notion of d ifference in a way that echoes a type of vapid liberal pluralism. There is in this discourse the danger of affirming difference simply as an end in itself without acknowledging how difference is formed, erased, and resuscitated within and despite asymmetrical relations of power. Lost here is any understanding of how difference is forged in both domination and opposition. While the re­ d iscovery of difference as an aesthetic and cultural issue is to be ap-

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pl1111d1•1I, th1•11• 111 11 tlu 1111 th ,,I tc •11d1111e y 111 mnny postmodernist _d_is- 1111tl'u'" lo 1,1t..1i.11 t th1• p, h,1111 y of tlw rolatlons o( power and politics 1111111 1111 • dl'l<'ll'I 11111 ol 111111gl11,1ll.1.cd Others. Difference in this sense 11111111 •.llp:-. Into:, tlwoi otl<'ully har~less and politically der~cinated no­ tic ,11 of p,lstlchc. As Corne I West points out, the re~olt

11

a?a1nst the cen- 1111 by &hose constituted as marginals [should be viewed m t:rms ~f] ~n

11pposltlonal difference.... These Americ~~ attacks on universality m llto name of difference, these 'postmodern issues of Otherness (Afro­ A,mirlcans, Native Americans, women, gays) are in fact an implicit cri­ tique of certain French postmodern discourses about .otherness that 111t1lly serve to hide and conceal the power of the voices and move- 111t1nts of Others" (Stephanson, 1988, 273).

fhe position that West is criticizing is best exemplified in the work of the liberal postmodernist Richard Rorty (1979, 198~)- Rorty's p~stn:iod- 1 rnism attempts to allow space for the diverse voices of marg1~al1zed woups by including them in conversations that expan_d the n<?t1o~s ~f se>lidarity and human community. But in Rorty's version, soli~anty 1s Klven a liberal twist that removes it from relations of po~er, resistance, and struggle. The community in which Rorty's conversation takes place <ingages a notion of pluralism in which vari~us_groups appear to h~ve equal voices. As George Yudice (1988) convincingly reveals, there 1s a failure within this type of thought to develop forms of social analysis, critique, or understanding of how particular voices a_nd ~ocial forma­ tions are formed in oppositional struggle, rather than in dialogue. That is there is little or no theoretical attempt to illustrate how dominant a~d subordinate voices are formed in the ideological and material con­ texts of real conflict and oppression. In Rorty's position there is no clear understanding of why marginalized Others may not be able or w illing to participate in such a conversation. Simi larly~ ~here is little sense of how subordinate groups, as part of an oppos1t1onal cultural politics, first need to participate in the struggle to constitute them­ selves as both subjects and objects of history. Put another way, some versions of postmodern discourse want to recognize and pri~ilege th: marginal without engaging the important issue of what s?c,al condi­ tions need to exist before such groups can actually exercise forms of self-and social empowerment. In similar fashion , what needs t? be dealt with in postmodernist discourse regarding the problematic of Otherness is how subordinate groups can struggle collectively to cre­ ate conditions that enable them better to understand how their iden­ tit ies have been constructed within dominant and subordinate rela­ tions of power, and what it takes to struggle for their own .voices and visions while simultaneously working to transform the social and ma-

terial conditions that have opprossod tlw,11 (11,ut"w i.. , 11111 , Y11dlt ,, ,

1988). There is no pure space from which to dcv,•lop 1•ltlw1 ,1 pnllll< ~ 111 resistance or a politics of identity. Indeed, the strugglo 101 voico 1111d collective empowerment has to be forged within, not outside, the llH•

diating t raditions and histories that link the center and the margins ol late capitalism.

Within the postmodern discourses of culture and Otherness, there• is a privileging of space, textuality, signs, and surfaces that runs the ri !.k of abandoning all forms of historicity. While some cri t ics rightly argu,, that postmodernism offers the opportunity to repossess those human histories barred from the script of dominant historical narratives, as well as the possibility of reworking history from another vantage point (Chambers, 1986; Feher, 1988), more often than not, such opportuni­ ties remain concretely unrealized. For in the vast territory of postmod­ ern commentary and cultural production, history either gets lost in the effacement of boundaries orchestrated in the reworkings of pastiche or is displaced into forms of parody and nostalgia. For example, films like Blue Velvet and Wetherby depict a postmodernist experience that, while sometimes fascinating, effaces most connecting boundaries be­ tween the past and the present (Denzin, 1988). In these films, history either collapses into an attack on nostalgia that becomes synonymous with terror, as in Blue Velvet, or, as in Wetherby, dissolves in the de­ struction of narrative structure itself. In both films, historical under­ standing gives way to a pastiche in which the f ilm characters become so free-floating as to become lost in a web of self-parody. In these films, style is subsumed into celebration of the grotesque, collapsing into a display of the strange and unrepresentable, and impeding the audience's ability to engage critically the politics of the film. In these films, style disguises rather than illuminates the underlying political machinery. For instance, Blue Velvet may successfully employ parody in its depiction of small-town America, but it also denigrates working­ class life and women in nothing less than reactionary terms. Otherness in these films is depicted within hegemonic categories that undermine and restrict a progressive reading and do not invite identification with subordinate groups. These are films without a critical sense of history and politics. To a large extent, these films reflect some of the deeper problems characteristic of postmodern cultural forms and criticism in general.

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I', tlr,11 111 tlw 11101,1 l1nporl,111l ft,olurc of postmodernism is its stress on ti,,~h11porl,111n' o f language and subjectivity as new fronts from which 111 11•lhl11k the Issues o f meaning, identity, and politics. Postmodern dis- 1 11111 ¼I' h.is retheorized the nature of language as a system of signs '1 11111 t~r rt'd In the infinite play of difference, and in so doing has under- 111l11od I he do minant positivist notion of language as either a perma- 1111111 genetic code or simply a transparent medium for transmitting ld1•as and meaning. Jacques Derrida (1976), in particular, has played a 111,1jor role in retheorizing language through the principle of what he , ,ills differance. This view suggests that meaning is the product of a lan­ Huage constructed out of and subject to the endless play of differences h11 tween signifiers. What constitutes the meaning of a signifier is de­ lined by the shifting, changing relations of difference that characterize Ille referential play of language. What Derrida, Laclau and Mouffe ( 1985), and a host of other critics have demonstrated is "the increasing difficulty of defining the limits of language, or, more accurately, of de­ fining the specific identity of the linguistic object" (Laclau, 1988, 67) . But more is at stake here than theoretically demonstrating that mean­ Ing can never be fixed once and for all. Postmodernism has also of­ fered powerful new modes of criticism in which various cultural ob­ jects can be read textually in the manner of a socially constructed language. In effect, by constituting cultural objects as languages, it has become possible to question radically the hegemonic view of repre­ sentation, which argues that knowledge, truth, and reason are gov­ erned by linguistic codes and regulations that are essentially neutral and apolitical (Cherryholmes, 1988; Mclaren, 1986). The most politi­ cal ly charged aspect of the postmodern view of discourse is that "it challenges reason on its own ground and demonstrates that what gets cal led reason and knowledge is simply a particular way of organ izing perception and communication, a way of organizing and categorizing experience that is social and contingent but whose socially constructed nature and contingency have been suppressed" (Peller, 1987, 30). For traditionalists, the postmodern emphasis on the contingency of lan­ guage represents a retreat into nihilism, but in effect, such contin­ gency can move against nihilism, by making problematic the very na­ ture of language, representation, and meaning. In this view, truth, science, and ethics do not cease to exist; instead, they become repre­ sentations that need to be problematized rather than accepted as re­ ceived truths.

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The postmodern emphasis on tlw <t<III Iallty 111 111.., 11111 c l1i1r. ,,li,11 •~ suited in a major rethinking of the notion of ~1,l>j1•1 tlvlty 111 p,1111< ular various postmodern discourses have offered a ni,1M,lvn 1 1ltlq111• of thet l iberal humanist notion of subjectivity that is predicated 011 a unlflc•d, rational, self-determining consciousness. In this view, the indlvld11t1I subject is the source of self-knowledge, and his or her view of 11111 world is constituted through the exercise of a rational and autonomoui, mode of understanding and knowing. What postmodern discou,.,c, challenges is l iberal humanism's notion of the subject "as a kind o f free, autonomous, universal sensibility, indifferent to any particular OI

moral contents" (Eagleton, 1985/1986, 101). Chris Weeden (1987) offer~ a succinct commentary on postmodernism's challenge to this position ;

Language is the place where actual and possible forms of social organization and their likely social and political consequences are defined and contested. Yet it is also the place where our sense of ourselves, our subjectivity, is constructed. The assumption that subjectivity is constructed implies that it is not innate, not genetically determined, but socially produced. Subjectivity is produced in a whole range of discursive practices-economic, social and political -the meanings of wh ich are a constant site of struggle over power. Language is not the expression of unique individuality; it const ructs the individual's subjectivity in ways which are socially specific.... subjectivity is neither unified nor fixed. Unlike humanism, which implies a conscious, knowing, unified, rational subject [postmodernism] theorizes subjectivity as a site of disunity and conflict, central to the process of political change and to preserving the status quo. (21)

The importance of postmodernism's ret heorizing of subjectivity can­ not be overemphasized. In this view, subjectivity is no longer assigned to the apolitical wasteland of essences and essentialism. Subjectivity is now read as multiple, layered, and nonunitary; rather than being con­ stituted in a unified and integrated ego, the "self" is seen as being, in Stuart Hall's words, "constituted out of and by difference and remains contradictory" (Grossberg, 1986, 56). No longer viewed as merely the repository of consciousness and creativity, the self is constructed as a terrain of conflict and st ruggle, and subjectivity is seen as the site of both liberation and subjugation. How subjectivity relates to issues of identity, intentionality, and desire is a deeply polit ical issue that is in­ extricably related to social and cultural forces that extend far beyond the self-consciousness of the so-called humanist subject. The nature of subjectivity, and its capacities for self- and social determination, can no

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1111 ,II p11llll1 'l ,111cl 1h11'111111mlt• tor power hasbeen opened up to include 1111 101111'1 ot l,11101111g\ .md Identity.

1111• lhno1t•llrnl status and political viability of various postmodern ill 111111Hc•~ rugording the issues of language, textuality, and the subject 1111 11 111,llter of intense debate among diverse progressive groups. Wh,11 1ppcars to be at stake in these debates is less a matter of accept- 11111 tht• theoretical and political credibility of these categories than of d1•1•p1•t1lng and extending their radical potential for a viable and critical 11!11111y of cultural practice. While the questions raised around these , ,1t1•gories are important and politically necessary, what remains sub- 1,11 I to serious criticism are the theoretical and political absences that lt11v1• characterized the way in which the issues of language and sub­ Im tlvlty have been developed in some American versions of postmod- 11111lsm. In what follows, we will develop some of the more important , 1ltlcisms aimed at radicalizing rather than rejecting the notions of lan- 1111,1ge and subjectivity as part of a wider discourse of educational and 1 11l1ural struggle.

The postmodern emphasis on language and textuality is marked by a 11umber of problems that need to be addressed. In the United States, the postmodern/deconstructive emphasis on treating social and cul­ tural forms as texts has become increasingly reductionist in its overly ,•xclusive reliance on literature as its object of analysis. Confined lc1rgely to literary and film studies, textual criticism has failed to move beyond the boundaries of the book or screen. Consequently, such ,111alyses have become highly academicized, and have retreated into a formalism that fails to link their own semiological productions to wider Institutional and social practices. By fail ing to incorporate the complex­ ity of determinations that constitute the cultural, polit ical, and eco­ nomic aspects of the society, postmodern criticism often fails to con­ front those aspects of hegemonic power that cannot be captured in merely linguistic models. This l imited focus on textual analysis runs the risk of dissolving into a kind of self-congratulatory form of academic hyperbole, one that, as many feminist theorists have noted, produces a form of sterile academic politics (Kaplan, 1988). Commenting on Jean­ Franc;ois Lyotard's (1984) revision of the theory of language games, Meaghan Morris ('1988) offers an illuminating criticism of the postmod­ ern emphasis on the endless deconstructive rereading and rewriting of texts:

One of the problems now emerging as a result is that as the

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terms o r Slldl ,111,1lyw-. 111•1111111 111111111111111h 111(1 lhc p11I11I 111 becoming da·lcd ... llwy 11111•1 lllllc• 11 hc l 1111, 111 1111• w,•,IIIIIK effects of overuse. Whc•n .111y ,111d l'V1•Iy 11•~1, ,111 111 • 11 1,111 indifferently as another instann• ol 11 , 1,,,lt•HII II 1wI IIIIIK," another illustration of an established gt1 1111r111 I II Int lplt<, something more (and something more spcdfk) ii, nmiclod In argue how and why a particular event of rewriting might matter. (5)

Corne! West extends this cri ticism by argu ing that the multlll•WI "I' erat ions of power within social practices cannot be understood t•>.I 111 sively with reference to language and discourse (Stephanson, 1111111,1 271 ). There is more at stake here than simply the play of difference•, I111 reading of a text, or an interrogation of the social construclio11 nf meaning. The limits of the linguistic model, and of discourse in gt•II eral, become apparent in understanding how the operations of powc-1 work as part of a deeper, nondiscursive sense of reality. Languagt• I~ not the so le source of meaning; it cannot capture, through a totalizl 11K belief in textuality, the constellation of habits, p ractices, and social r·c• lations that constitute what can be called the "thick" side of hum,111 life. Those aspects of social practice in which power operates to main, and torture-and forges collective struggles whose strengths aic • rooted in lived experiences, felt empathy, and concrete solidarity ­ exceed the insights offered by linguistic models (G iroux and Mclaren, 1989). Postmodernism performs a theoretical service by arguing that,, new political front can be opened up in the sphere of language, but it must extend the implications of this analysis from the domain of the text to the real world, and in doing so, must recognize the limits of i'ts own forms of analysis.

Postmodern ism is deeply indebted to various poststructural ist theo­ ries of the subject. In many of these discourses, the subject is consti­ tuted through language in a number of different subject positions pre­ scribed by va rious cultural texts . Unfortunately, in too many of these accounts, the subject is not only decentered-it ceases to exist. In other accounts, the construction of the subject appears to be entirely attributable to textual and linguist ic operations. The subject is con­ structed, but bears no responsibility for agency, since he or she is merely a heap of fragments bereft of any self-consciousness regarding the contradictory nature of his or her own experience. There is little sense in many of these accounts of the ways in which different histor­ ical, social, and gendered representations of meaning and desire are actually mediated and taken up subjectively by real, concrete individ-

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11 11t,111 11111•,1 11,· '"H"'"' , ,11,vlt11 l 11gly 1h,1t it is imperative that a~y h, 111 y , 11 1111• 1111hJ111 t ,It ld11•.,r. why t t't tal n subject positions offered in """" Ii1,,11I0111i,., 111.,1 d~(·1il,,tl' In everyday life are rejected by ~ome

I111 1,vli h,,,I11 ,111cl how It Is possible to theorize beyond the "subJuga- 11,,11 111 11i:, •,uhjl•ct In o rder to leave room in which "to envis~ge_the

, 1 n l ,1 ro,,I and e ffective resistance" (Smith, 1988, 39). In this view, 11 11 11 11 1 .,11 111, o( how people become agents is seen as part of _a_ br?ader

tit ,npt to reconstruct a theory of cultural politics, and poht1_cs 1s not u1.idt1 ,,111>ordinatc to an overly structura list theory of the su?Ject.

11 I•, ,dso important to note that the postmodern ~~phasis on ??th 11111 dt•ct•ntering and death of t he subject has b~e_n cnt1c1zed 1n p_ol1t1cal

1" ., 0 11 the grounds that it makes it more difficult for of those wh?1111 l i.tvn been excluded from the centers of power to name and expen- 1 , 11 , 1 themselves as individual and collective agents. Nancy Hartsock 11'1117) is worth repeating at length on this issue:

"iomehow it seems highly suspicious that it is at th is moment in history, when so many groups are enga~ed_ in "nationalisms" which involve redefinitions of the marginalized O thers, that doubt arises in the academy about the nature ?f the "subje~t,"

·,,bout the possibilities for a general theory w_h1~h can describe the world, about historical "progress." Why ,s !t, exactly a~ the moment when so many of us who have been silen_ced begin to demand the right to name ourselves, to act as sub1ects r~ther Ihan objects of history, that just then the concept of s~b1ect­ hood becomes "problematic"? Just when we are forming our own theories about the world, uncertainty emerges about whether the world can be adequately t heorized? Just when we are talking about the changes"';; want,_ i?eas of progre~s and the possibility of "meaningfully organizing hun:i~n sooety become suspect? And why is it only now that critiques are made of the will to power inherent in the effort to create theory? (196)

According to theorists such as Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (1986), th_e death of the subject not only seems theoretically ~r_em~ture _but also 1s Ideologically suspect, especially since such a p~sItIon_ 1s b~1_ng toute_d principally by white male academics in mostly :lite un1v~rsrt1es. In this case, some versions of postmodernism are bein_g quest,o~ed _n?t only because they offer a radically depoliticized notI0~ of_s~bJ:ct,~•ty, ?ut also because they refuse to treat the issue of s~b1~ct1v~ty in h~stoncal and political terms. Terry Eagleton (1985/1986) 1s right ma~~u1n_g that understanding the production of certain forms of sub1ect1v1ty in any

11!1 11 I'< I'd M1 JI II l<Nl',M ANI1 11 II le ,\Ill IN I

society involves analyzing in historica l term:-, 1h11 v,1111111 ,,•• l11111l0Klc •11 of power that are used to instill "specific kinds ol v ,1h11 •, dh, fplh1t• , he• haviour, and response in human subjects." He add), th,1t "wh,ll tht•'t t• techniques at once map and produce, for the ends of soclul knowlcdHP and order, are certain forms of value and response" (97). While it is irn portant to understand subject ivity as constructed and decentered, tu extol the death of the subject and with it any notion of agency is to "j<•I tison the chance of challenging the ideology of the subject (as malt•, white, and middle-class) by developing alternative and different no tions of subjectivity" (Huyssen, 1986, 212).

For feminist theorists such as Teresa de Lauretis (1987), Linda Al cofl (1988), and Meaghan Morris, postmodern discourse is theoretically flawed on two related counts. First, it pays too little attention to the issue of how subjectivity can be linked to a notion of human agency in which self-reflective, capable political selves become possible. Sec­ ond, by ignoring both the issue of gender and the contribution of femi­ nists to what Morris calls the formative and enabling aspects of the postmodern debate, postmodern ism becomes complicitous with other discourses that leave "a woman no place from which to speak, or noth­ ing to say" (Morris, 1988, 15). Unwilling to explore the contributions of feminists or to articulate a concept of gendered subectivity, postmod­ ern discourse fails to link the emphasis on difference with an opposi­ tional politics in which the particularities of gender, race, class, and ethnicity are seen as fundamental dimensions in the construction of subjectivity and the politics of voice and agency (Kaplan, 1988; Nichol­ son, 1990).

Conclusion

In spite of some of its theoret ical failings, postmodernism offers edu­ cators a number of important insights that can be taken up as part of a broader theory of schooling and critical pedagogy. Moreover, rather than negating the modernist concern with public life and critical ratio­ nality, postmodernism provides grounds on which to deepen and ex­ tend such concerns. Postmodern engagements w ith foundationalism, culture, difference, and subjectivity provide the basis for questioning the modernist ideal of what constitutes a decent, humane, and good life. Rather then celebrating the narratives of the "masters," postmod­ ernism raises important questions about how narratives get con­ structed, what they mean, how they regulate particular forms of moral and social experience, and how they presuppose and embody particu-

I ll IMIIIIN IM 11111111 Atll1Nt\ltHlllll',fl.lil llt

1111 , pl11 lo11111l11>{lt ,11 ,111d p11III I• 111 vlnw" o l llw world. Postmodernism at­ le 111ph 111 d 11ll111111 1t1how l11,1clc-r "I ,11t• 11,uncd; ii all.empts to redraw the v, I y 111,11,., o l 111111111lr111, dc".l rt•, and difference; it inscribes the social ,11111 l111llvld11.1I hotly with n •w Intellectual and emotional investments; ,0111 II , ,11I:J Into questio n traditional forms of power and accompanying 1111,dn•, of h:gltlmation.

I oi mlucators postmodern ism offers new theoretical tools to rethink !,11th broad and specific contexts in which authority is defined; it offers wit.II Richard Bernstein calls a healthy "suspiciousness of all boundary­ llxl 11g and the hidden ways in which we subordinate, exclude, and mar­ Hl11,1IL1.e" (Bernstein, 1988, 267). Postmodernism also offers educators a v,ulc ty of discourses for interrogating modernism's reliance on totaliz- 111,: theories based on a desire for certainty and absolutes. In addition, pw,tmodernism provides educators with a discourse capable of engag- 1t1i.; the importance of the contingent, specific, and historical as central .,spccts of a liberating and empowering pedagogy. But in the end, post- 111odernism is too suspicious of the modernist not ion of public life, and of the struggle for equality and liberty that has been an essential aspect of l iberal democratic discourse. If postmodernism is going to make a valuable contribution to the notion of schooling as a form of cultural 1>olitics, educators must combine its most important theoretical in­ sights with those strategic modernist elements that contribute to a po li­ ti cs of radical democracy. In this way, the project of radical democracy can be deepened by expanding its sphere of applicablity to increas­ ingly wider social relations and practices; encompassing individuals t1nd groups who have been excluded by virtue of their class, gender, race, age, or ethnic origin. What is at stake here is the recognition that postmodernism provides educators with a more complex and insight­ ful view of the relationships of culture, power, and knowledge. But for all of its theoretical and political virtues, postmodernism is inadequate to the task of rewriting the emancipatory possibilities of the language and practice of a revitalized democratic public life. This is not to sug­ gest that postmodernism is useless in the task of creat ing a public ph i­ losophy that extends the possibilities of social justice and human free­ dom. But it does argue that postmodernism must extend and broaden the most democratic claims of modernism. When linked with the mod­ ernist language of public life, the notions of d ifference, power, and specificity can be understood as part of a public philosophy that broad­ ens and deepens individual liberties and rights through rather than against a radical not ion of democracy.

Talk about the public must be simultaneously about the discourse of an engaged plurality and critical citizenship. This must be a discourse

IIJ l't I'd Mt II ti HNl!.M ANI I I 11111 AIIII I II I

that breathes life into the notion of dc•111rn 1.11 y t,y 11111 N 11,,.. ,, 1111111111111 l ived community that is not at odds with 1h11 1•111111 111 111 I11~tlt 111 lllw1ty, and the good life. Such a discourse must be lnfo11111 1cl by ,, 1 ► 11.~ t111od11111 concern with establishing the material and ideological rnndillons tliut allow multiple, specific, and heterogeneous ways of life. I,or educatot, the modernist concern with enlightened subjects, when coupled with the postmodernist emphasis on diversity, contingency, and cultlJr,1I p luralism, points to educating students for a type of citizenship th,1t does not separate abstract rights from the realm of the everyday, a11d does not define community as the legitimating and unifying practice ol a one-dimensional historical and cultural narrative. The postmodern emphasis on refusing forms of knowledge and pedagogy wrapped in the legitimizing discourse of the sacred and the priestly, its rejecti on of universal reason as a foundation for human affairs, its claim that all nar­ ratives are partial, and its call to perform critical readings on all scien­ tific, cultural, and social texts as historical and political constructions provide the pedagogical grounds for radicalizing the emancipatory possibilities of teaching and learning as part of a wider struggle for democratic publ ic life and critical citizenship. In this view, pedagogy is not reduced to the lifeless methodological imperative of teaching con­ flicting interpretations of what counts as knowledge (Graff, 1987). In­ stead, pedagogy is informed by a political project that links the crea­ tion of citizens to the development of a critical democracy; that is, a political project that links education to the struggle for a public life in which dialogue, v ision, and compassion are attentive to the rights and conditions that organize public life as a democratic social form rather than as a regime of terror and oppression. Difference and pluralism in this view do not mean reducing democracy to the equivalency of di­ verse interests; on the contrary, what is being argued for is a language in which d ifferent voices and traditions exist and flourish to the degree that they listen to the voices of others, engage in an ongoing attempt to eliminate forms of subjective and objective suffering, and maintain those conditions in which the act of communicating and living extends rather than restricts the creation o f democratic public forms. This is as much a political as it is a pedagogical project, one that demands that educators combine a democratic public philosophy with a postmodern theory of resistance.

Notes

1. The now classic defense of modernity in the postmodern debate can be found in Jurgen Habermas (1983; 1987). For more extensive analyses of modernity, see Marshall Berman (1982), Eugene Lunn (1982), David Frisby (1986), David Kolb (1986), and Will iam

1 ,,,11,,,tl~t 1'11111) ~11 i11h ,, 111111, ,11111,,,1 1•1111 , ,11w,1 v1•1y tll l lN1•111 vlows 0 11 modernity can 111 lt01111tl 111111111111111 t1'111IU ,11111 ~Jully l(lt lu11d (l 'JIJ1/11/UO).

' I 11,.,~1111 m 11111 I 1'111111,_ w111 lh 11l,llw r,11ln1son this issue. For him, it is the ontologi­ ' 11 ~1,1111- u l thn 1111111 111 , 11111111)1" o l lho v,irious discourses of modernity that the post- 111111111111 ~1111Nli>l llly I i1lh1 h 110 quustlon :

II Nom,•thlng has characterized the discourses of modernity, it is their p ic1l1•11slon to intellectually dominate the foundation of the social, to give ,1 r.,tlonal context to t he notion of the totality of history, and to base in 1h<1 loller the project of a global human emancipation. As such, they h,1vc• been discourses about essences and fully present identities based In one way or another upon t he myth of a transparent society. Postmodernity, on the contrary, begins when th is fully present identity is threatened by an ungraspable exterior that introduces a dimension of p,wcity and pragmatism into the pretended immediacy and transparency o f its categories. This gives rise to an unbreachable abyss between the real and concepts, thus weakening the absolutist pretensions of the latter. It should be stressed that this "weakening" does not in any way negate the contents of the p roject of modernity; it shows only the rad ical vulnerability of those contents to a plurality of contexts that redefine them in an unpredictable way. Once this vulnerability is accepted in all its rad ica l ity, what does not necessarily follow is ei ther the abandonment of the emancipatory values or a generalized skepticism concerning them, but rather, on the contrary, the awareness of the complex strategic-discursive operations implied by their affirmation and defense. (71-72)

3. Dick Hebdige (1986) provides a sense of the range of meanings, contexts, and ob- lccts that can be associated with the postmodern:

... the decor of a room, the design of a build ing, the d iegesis of a fi lm, the construction of a record, or a "scratch" video, a TV commercial, or an arts documentary, or the " intertextual" relations between them, the layout of a page in a fashion magazine or critical journal, an anti­ teleologial tendency w ithin epistemology, the attack on the "metaphysics of presence," a general attenuation of fee ling, the collective chagrin and morbid projections of a post-War generation of Baby Boomers confronting disillusioned middle age, the "predicament" of reflexiv ity, a group of rhetorica l tropes, a proliferation of surfaces, a new phase in commodity fetishism, a fascination for "images," codes and styles, a process of cultural, polit ical o r existential fragmentation and/or crisis, the "de-centering" of the subject, an "incredulity towards metanarratives," the replacement of unitary power axes by a p lu ral ism of power/discourse formations, the "implosion," the collapse of cultural hierarchies, t he dread engendered by the threat of nuclear self-destruction, the decline of the University, the functioning and effects of the new miniaturised technologies, broad societal and economic shifts into a "media," "consumer," or "multinational" phase, a sense (depending on whom you read) of "placelessness" or the abandonment of placelessness ("critical regionalism") or (even) a generalised substitution of spatial for temporal co-ord inates. (78)

l~I 11 l'O',IMC>I >ll<Nl'iM ANI I II 1111 Allt 1111 I 111 I

4. A characteristic example o f th l~ wo , k l ,111 Im ~c,r , 11 111 I 11 11 1 11'11111 11, 10 ( 1111111)1 111 the wide-ranging essays on culture, art, and ~o<'lul t 11111 '""' 11, 1111 I• ,11111,11 :, 1111• ( 1/J 1988), Wallis (1988), and in Utopia Post Utopia (1 988), flllbll ~h ncl liy 1111 l11Nlll11h• 111 < 1111 temporary Art, Boston.

5. See, for example, Aronowitz and Giroux in chapter 2 of IhlN hook nnd Sp,\IHtM (1987).

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