What is this web page about? Good question. I wrote this web page with the intent of exploring the connections between globalization, an issue I've been interested in for a while, and postmodernism, which I've only just begun learning about this semester. I did so because I wanted to learn better how postmodernism, both its theory and culture, poses to challenge and change our modern global economic system.
Not understanding the concept postmodernism, I kind of anticipated it to be "the truth" and I became rather obsessed with learning about it, getting a piece of the action. But what I found was that postmodernism, aside from being probably a cultural creation of globalization, offers not a challenge to the global economy but either an acceptance of it, an escape from it, or a ticket to ride it and see where it goes. The more I learned about it, the less I revered it as something all worthy and omniscient. For the one thing which stays the same between modernism and postmodernism is that both are equally unbalanced. If modernism is too rational, postmodernism is too irrational; if modernism is too driven, postmodernism is too complacent; if modernism is too much about explaining things, postmodernism is too much about forgetting things, and if modernism is too much about order, postmodernism is too much about disorder.
At times I can view the whole modernism/postmodernism debate as a psychoanalytical one, one which emphasizes the different qualities within ourselves, whether our rational side or our impulsive side, our ethical side or our aesthetic side, our self-less side or selfish side, or our ego or our id. The problem comes however, when either of the 'ism's begins emphasizing one to the exclusion of the other. Modernism in its total faith in objectivity, dismissed out of hand subjectivity, creating in turn an often dehumanizing scheme to things. Whereas, postmodernism reverses this polarity to completely dismiss all objectivity as an illusion because all truth is relative or what you like it to be and thus all objective statements become mere "moves" in the language game.
Due to their polarities, both 'isms lose their efficacy and value in dealing with something like the globalization of the economy. Modernization theorists in the World Bank and universities tell us our economies need to keep on growing forever and that the more we grow and "progress" the more we will protect the environment and spread the wealth. This modern belief in economic and technological progress to bring us closer to "world peace" ignores all the embedded neo-colonial elements within its system (i.e. IMF) which perpetuate marginalization. Postmodernism, on the other hand, by claiming there's no truth, refute all attempts to show a common structure which connects us all, namely the global economic system. They say that either the world is too fragmented and different for any such totalizing metanarrative like the belief in a global political economic structure, or that if there is one, there's nothing we can or should do, because any attempt to organize people results in the same oppression of one's freedom.
The point I wish to make is that there needs to be a better balance struck between the two isms. For in postmodernism, its freedom from hierarchy, has led it all the way to freedom from truth, freedom from values, and in its more extropian visions, freedom from gravity, all of which compliment and support the freedom of the global economy; freedom that is, of multinational capital from social loyalities, from regulations, from the nation, and from anything else which gets in the way of its profit. In order to better shape the global economy into something which isn't so destructive however, postmodernists will have to find a better balance indeed, to be able to empower itself with the language and rationality it denys itself, to be able to draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough, so as to stop the global economies liquidation of values, of visions, of identities, of distinctions. Otherwise wrong becomes right, right becomes wrong, fact becomes fantasy, fantasy becomes fact, and the postmodern self loses itself in placeless globalized space.
In what follows I address these issues via a discussion which centers itself largely around the dilemmas found between place and space, between constraint and freedom, rootedness and rootlessness, boundary and boundarylessness, between ethics and aesthetics. All of these issues seem to revolve around the idea of being and becoming, between the idea of going with the flow and living life as it is, or taking a stand, going against the flow with the aim to change. Modernism was about becoming, about working to change the world, which of course brought about the whole global mess we're in. And hence postmodernism is about being, about letting things just be as they are, without trying to change anything, because one's view cannot be better or worse then the next. Thus throughout this text, whether implicitly or explicitly the idea of "to be or to become" looms under the surface, for it not only works itself out in the place/space dilemma, but in most other modernist/postmodernist polarities as well. To better define what I mean by being and becoming I start with a discussion of Heidegger's idea of "Being" and Dewey's idea of "pragmatism". From there I provide an overview of the emergence and structure of the global economy with an analysis of the place/space dilemmas it has created based on Ken Gould's (co-authored with Allan Schnaiberg & Adam Weinberg) recent book Local Environmental Struggles: Citizen Activism in the Treadmill of Production. From there I move on to the phenemona of time-space compression and how it is, one, a significant cause of the postmodern condition, and two, how it effects the place/space conflict. Following this, I bring the discussion back to address better the postmodern attitudes towards politics, to give a better understanding how postmodernists go about handling the political problems involved in the place/space conflicts brought on by globalization. If this wordy description hasn't turned you off from reading my page, then please read on and enjoy.
I end here with a disclaimer, a postmodern disclaimer. This web page is a product of the books that I came across this semester along with a few I've read before. As might become apparent, there are times where I've either left out ideas crucial to the topic at hand or have repeated what others have said in probably more simple straightforward language then mine. This is a postmodern disclaimer because what I've written is a recycled mixture of all the texts that I've just read. If I had read different material, my material here would be different as well. I view therefore what's in these pages more as a beginning, as an attempt to synthesize some ideas which seemed to me to be recurrent and important within the postmodern debates.
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