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(David Jary and Julia Jary. eds. The Harper Collins Dictionary of
Sociology. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 375-6)
No boundaries
“Another feature of postmodernism seen by some
theorists is that the boundaries between `high' and
`low' culture tend to be broken down, for example,
motion pictures, jazz, and rock music According to
many theorists, postmodernist cultural movements,
which often overlap with new political tendencies
and social movements in contemporary society, are
particularly associated with the increasing
importance of new class fractions, for example,
‘expressive professions’ within the service class
(see Lash and Urry, 1987)."
(David Jary and Julia Jary. eds. The Harper Collins Dictionary of
Sociology. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 375-6)
Rejection of essentialism
Among the characteristic
gestures of
postmodernist thinking is
a refusal of the ‘totalizing’
or ‘essentialist’
tendencies of earlier
theoretical systems,
especially classic
Marxism, with their
claims to referential truth,
scientificity, and belief in
progress.
The PoMo way
• Postmodernism, on the
contrary, is committed
to modes of thinking
and representation
which emphasize
fragmentations,
discontinuities and
incommensurable
aspects of a given
object, from intellectual
systems to architecture
PoMo writing
Postmodernist analysis is often
marked by forms of writing
that are more literary,
certainly more self-reflexive,
than is common in critical
writing - the critic as self-
conscious creator of new
meanings upon the ground of
the object of study, showing
that object no special respect.
It prefers montage to
perspective, intertextuality to
referentiality. It delights in
excess, play, carnival,
asymmetry…
Postmodern treatments of
medicine & incarceration
Sigurdur Gylfi Magnússon, "The Singularization of History: Social
History and Microhistory within the Postmodern State of
Knowledge”, Journal of Social History, Volume 36, (Spring 2003)
Issue 3
• Postmodern
– Knowledge production is normative and political
– Sovereignty is constitutive of man and state
– Modern statecraft is modern mancraft (ala
Foucault’s Discipline and Punish)
Genealogy
• Style of historical thought which exposes and
registers significance of power-knowledge
relations
• Concerned with writing counter-histories w/c
expose cases of exclusion w/c make possible
teleological stories
• From a genealogical perspective, there is not one
single grand history but many interwoven
histories varied in power-knowledge effects
• There is no truth, only competing perspectives
and every perspective embodies a set of values
Masters of genealogy
Zehfuss’ genealogical analysis of 9/11
• What is 9/11?
– Attack on West?
– Is Western identity unambiguous?
– Didn’t some Western countries harbor the
‘terrorists’?
– Are all Westerners behind war on terror?
• Cause and effect?
– Is 9/11 an uncaused ‘cause’ of the war on terror?
Postmodern textual strategies
• James Der Derian
contends that post
modernism is
concerned with
exposing the ‘textual
interplay behind
power politics’.
What is text?
• Jacques Derrida did not
limit text to the realm
of ideas. The world is or
is constituted like a text
and one cannot refer to
it except in an
interpretive experience.
“We need to interpret
interpretations more
than to interpret
things.”
Deconstruction
• Radical unsettling of supposed stable concepts
and conceptual oppositions
• Conceptual oppositions are always
hierarchical with one privileged (e.g.
sovereignty over anarchy)
• Opposition between two is not clear and
neither is pure and complete in itself
Double reading
• First reading is commentary or repetition of
dominant interpretation (produces stability
effect). Demonstrates how text appears
coherent
• Second reading unsettles first by applying
pressure on those points of instability within a
text and exposes internal tensions showing
that it is less than stable
Ashley’s double reading of
anarchy problematique
• Why should power politics follow from lack of
central rule?
• Boundary inscription
• Deconstruction of identity
• Its concerns:
– Genealogy of state-centric approach
– Costs of such an approach
Rethinking the political
• Paradigm of sovereignty: impoverished our
political imagination; reduced understanding
of dynamics of world politics
• The PoMo alternative
– Conceptualize world politics in terms of political
prosaics
• Multitude of flows/interactions
• Deterritorialized modern political life
• Activities that stabilize paradigm of sovereignty
Influence of Deleuze & Guattari
• Reterritorialization: associated with paradigm
of sovereignty; identity, order, & unity
• Deterritorialization: associated with mobile
logic of nomadism and its ability to transgress
boundaries; difference, flows, lines of flight;
can help make sense of the impact of various
non-state actors on state sovereignty
Rethinking political
community & identity
• Modern political life need not be caught between
the inside (the state) and outside dichotomy
• Identity must not be exclusionary
• Difference not antithetical to identity
• Men-citizen opposition must not privilege
citizens’ claims above claims of humanity
• Need to move beyond paradigm of sovereignty;
incompatible with deterritorialized democracy
Critique of PoMo
• Trash talk: epistemological hypochondria and
anarchy
• ‘Banging on open door’: orthodox IR had been
criticized for problems of positivism
• Just muddying the waters: pure polemics
• Complete nihilistic relativism
Nihilistic relativism
• By declaring any theory a fabrication without
legitimate grounding, we are left with no
mechanism to assert one theory over another