I think it can be argued that postmodernists, specifically poststructuralists, can be faulted for the kind of auratic separation from society that they criticize modernists for. I say this because, the poststructuralist plan to change society gives no applicable, tangible means for people to begin. It would certainly be of no use to the community struggles cited in Ken Gould's book Local Environmental Struggles. Habermas has in fact accused the poststructuralists of being elitests, in that their "transcendental aesthetic realm is not at all sufficiently interwoven with the social" (as quoted in Lash, 112). But I think it's important to point out that the fact that poststructuralists have failed to interweave their aesthetic transcendentalism with a social program, is not a consequence of practice but of principle. This is where their auratism lies, because in their Nietzchean belief in the almighty "will to power," they don't even believe in the concept of society. Again, they are liberitarians and anarchists by heart, and any impulse to serve or better society is looked at with distrust. It is helpful here to quote Marshall Berman's rather scathing critique of Foucault to get an idea of what "deep pessimism" and distrust poststructuralists have towards people who wish to better society:
"Foucault reserves his most savage contempt for people who imagine that it is possible for modern mankind to be free...Do we act politically, overthrow tyrannies, make revolutions, create constitutions to establish and protect human rights? Mere 'juridicial regression' from the feudal ages, because constitutions and bills of rights are merely 'the forms that [make] an essentially normalizing power acceptable.' Do we use our minds to unmask oppression--as Foucault appears to be trying to do? Forget it, because all forms of inquiry into the human condition 'merely refer individuals from one disciplinary authority to another,' and hence only add to the triumphant discourse of power'" (Berman, 34).
The question of whether to be or to become in the debate between poststructuralists and critical theorists becomes a matter of individualism versus collectivism and by slight extension, localism versus globalism. Poststructuralists, like Foucault and Lyotard are saying that all organizing is intrinsically repressive, as it restricts the freedom of the individual, regardless of the cause; whereas critical theorists, as with Ken Gould, believe in organization as the only means by which people, given the present state of affairs, can emancipate themselves. A critical theorist would tend to agree with the simplified statement of William Greider, who wrote, "there are two poles of power--money and people," arguing in his book Who Will Tell the People: The betrayal of American Democracy, that the only way for people to expect the corporate owned system to change is to mobilize. To mobilize, as Foucault and Lyotard would claim however, will only bring about the same reign of rationality and codification and colonization of the psyche. In Freudian terms, they would see this process as the ego seeking to take control of the uncontrollable id. Let it go, they insist, let it be. But the question to ask is this--can we just let it be in todays global economy? Can we forego the rational ego altogether, and like weeds sprouting through a crack in the sidewalk evolve into anarchy?
I think the most reliable response to questions like these is not either/or answers but rather a search for balance. Yi-Fu Tuan would say it is a need to balance freedom with constraint, a taoist would say it is a need to balance the yin with the yang, a psychoanalysist would say it is a need to balance the ego with the id, and a pragmatist would say it is a need to balance being with becoming. In this light, I think the case can again be made that postmodernist's valid critiques of modernism are lost by their lack of balance--instead of modifying modernism's excessive rationalism which served to colonize the aesthetic sensualities of the unconscious (the other), it rejects rationality altogether; instead of pointing out the limitations and arrogance of modernist objectivity which dismissed subjectivity as illusionary and deceptive, it reverses the polarity by dismissing objectivity as the illusion. Like arguing that spring is better than fall, its arguments that sensation is better than meaning, desire is better than rationality, body better than mind, image better than the text, aesthetics better than ethics, surface better than depth, individual better than the collective, and the id better than the ego, are as unbalanced as modernism's binary system, and will probably in the end, be as impermanent.
In this light, I think the better approach to dealing with the ever-real global economy, is one which recognizes the importance of the other, of the subjective, of the small scale, of the micro, of the bottoms-up, which postmodern thought is acceptant and conducive to, while not dismissing the structural role of the global as mere meta-narrative, mere rationality trying to impose order and control on things. The issues of local/global can in this light be seen to have as much to do with the polarities within the human psyche, as with the destructive history of modernization.
But if the reader remembers where this discussion of postmodern social theory started, namely with the discussion of postmodern aesthetics, then they will discern a paradox of postmodernism. For I started this particular discussion saying that postmodernists sought to de-differentiate the boundaries of modernism, that it sought to merge binary opposites like high art with low art, the sacred with the mundane aesthetics and ethics. But as I've argued they haven't done any better then modernists in avoiding the polarities, in fact, they've simply switched sides, like trough to crest, crest to trough.
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Conclusion
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The Revolution of Desire: The Politics of Aesthetics
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