The Real Politics of PostModernism

The other feature of the denunciation of the "meta-narrative" is that it effectively subverts the meaning of the personal is the political.

In postmodernism, the personal, rather than being the political, becomes only and exclusively the personal - any attempt to create bonds between oppressed individuals or to raise consciousness about how individual experiences are really reflective of larger social forces is reinterpreted as silencing other voices.

Any attempt to make generalisations is seen as silencing and rendering invisible those people for whom the generalisation does not apply.

This defies a basic understanding of the concept of a generalisation - of course it is not true for every single person in the group - it is, after all, a generalisation.

Exceptions alone do not, however, disprove the validity of generalisations.

If I make a generalisation that people stop at red lights while driving, certainly it is true that occasionally, some people do not; however it is an accurate and useful statement that people stop at red lights.

It describes, with reasonable accuracy, a social phenomenon. To say that the generalisation is not true simply because a few people do not fit it, is ludicrous and leaves us unable to describe or name even the most obvious social norms.

The overall effect of this turn away from "meta-narratives" is to stop people from being able to describe their social conditions, from being able to generalize about personal experiences in their lives, from being able to see the commonalities of experience that can mobilize them to see problems as political rather than personal.

The net effect is a lot of women's studies students saying, "You can't really say that," about even the most basic truths.

Denunciation of binarisms

Binary thinking involves thinking in dualistic mutually exclusive categories such as good or bad, gay or straight, woman or man, etc.

In postmodern thinking, binarisms are bad (that in itself is an unavoidable binarism).

Some theorists say that binarisms are the root of all oppression - that without them we could not oppress others.

Unfortunately, without binarisms, we also cannot make a definitive statement.

Making a statement, especially a political one, requires that we say one thing is better than (or worse than) in some way than another thing.

If we avoid binarisms (a feat which some postmodernist writers do manage to approach in their flailingly uncertain prose), we cannot say, for example, liberation is better than oppression, being fed is better than starving, being healthy is better than being sick.

By demonizing binarisms, the effect is to stifle clear articulate speech.

People become so mired in trying to avoid choosing one thing over another that they are rendered incapable of sustaining a passionate conviction on any topic.

Taking the social out of social constructionism

What is perhaps most fascinating about postmodern theory is that for all the talk of how things are socially constructed, they forgot the implications of "social" in social construction.

After their supposedly new insight that nearly everything is socially constructed, they do not advocate much for transformation at the social level, ie. for changes in institutions, social norms, social structures such as the family, etc.

Instead there is much attention to individual acts of transgression of conventional social norms as a way of highlighting that social norms are constructed and not natural or inevitable.

This kind of rebellion in postmodernism is a very isolated activity--it consists of individuals taking it upon themselves to fight battles all alone.

There is not an emphasis among postmodern theorists for building a critical mass of people united in a social movement which could begin to effect changes at the social level.

There is instead a very superficial understanding of the how social forces work--a naive and libertarian emphasis on individual actions and choices as though the cumulative effect of each isolated individual choice or action will effect largescale social transformation.

The net effect of such an atomisation of individual activities serves to prevent rather than foster social change.

The curious timing of postmodernism

What I find most interesting about postmodernism is not what postmodernists say about it, but how it functions in the real world (and I'm assuming there is one) in terms of social change.

The effects of the intimidating and obfuscating writing style, of inhibiting generalisations and so the formation of commonalities between people, of ruling out binary thinking and so eviscerating impassioned convictions, and of overemphasising individual rather than collective action is to create a multilayered system of disconnection, silencing, and disempowerment.

What is also interesting is the timing of the advent of postmodernist theory.

As Somer Brodribb and Barbara Christian point out in Radically Speaking, postmodernism came into vogue in academia just when the voices of women and people of color began to assert a significant presence there.

It seems that when groups other than those in power attempt to say things, suddenly truth dissolves into meaninglessness.

This is a little too coincidental for my taste.

The coincidence becomes even more striking when it becomes apparent that this is not the first time this has happened.

Right after the first wave of feminism, in the 1920s, when women had made some advances, had gotten the vote, and began to gain some access to academia, another nihilistic kind of theorising became the rage in academia--relativism and existentialism.

Again, just when women were trying to gain access, and to articulate our points of view, suddenly nothing was meaningful anymore, everything was relative, and meaninglessness was lauded as high theory.

I suggest that postmodernism is nothing more than the new relativism and that relativistic theories emerge as a new line of defense when power structures are becoming threatened.

It is a very insidious and crafty defense because it mouths the words of liberation while simultaneously transforming them into meaninglessness.

The real agenda is masked in clever obfuscation - to preserve the status quo by rendering dissent meaningless and ineffective, unable to gather any social or political power.

Notwithstanding postmodernism's purported intention to deconstruct social norms and by so doing, make way for changes, its actual effect is to atomise peoples' experiences, obliterate the potential for solidarity, silence articulate and forthright speech, and render passionate convictions meaningless.

It leaves us unable to condemn anything as wrong or oppressive with clarity, certainty, or conviction.

Furthermore, nearly all of the so-called insights of postmodernism are simply rehashed and depoliticised versions of radical feminist ideas. Postmodernism is a theory which denounces the act of theorising, it is speech that silences voices, it is writing that stultifies and obscures, it is a position which advocates no position at all, it is a politics which refuses to take a stand on anything.

And we must see the politics of that - it is a viper that women's studies and English departments have nursed to their collective bosoms.

It is a theory, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is a stealth theory that contains a virus which, once incorporated, explodes all possibility of impassioned righteous collective action for changing the conditions of our lives.