Thursday, October 11, 2018

In Defence of Postmodernism and a Warning Against Neo-Tribalism or Fractured Ideological Fanaticism aka Identity Politics


By Sanko Lewis

In this short essay, I give a quick outline of the emergence of Modernism, Postmodernism, and Post-postmodernism, and I specifically point out how Post-postmodern attributes such as identity politics is not postmodern, which is a common mistaken in contemporary discourse. 

The Modern Age started with the Renaissance and experienced a high point in the Enlightenment (late 17th century). It was a time of revolution: industrial, political, social, scientific, technological, cultural, artistic. From these revolutions Modernism—as a zeitgeist—arose in the first half of the 20th century. Humankind believed that through science absolute truth could be obtained, and so began a time of “...legislating, defining, structuring, segregation, classifying, recording and universalizing...” (Bauman, 1995:xiv). It was believed that through human reason and the scientific endeavor humanity would enter a utopian age free of poverty and hunger, ignorance and intolerance. However, ideologies, using human reason, led to the greatest wars yet. And science—reason’s handmaiden—created terrifying machines of war and horrific weapons the likes the world had never seen; technology, a bringer of miracles, also brought curses. The political ideologies of the modern world came in conflict and aided with the resourcefulness of human reason nearly destroyed humankind—science accomplished the means for the Holocaust and Hiroshima. After the World Wars, the hope of Modernism was replaced by a skepticism. A post-modern era arose that questioned the grand narratives of the preceding eras. 


“Postmodernism is not post modern, whatever that might mean, but post modernism;” says McHale, “it does not come after the present (a solecism), but after the modernist movement” (1989:5). It is a reaction—cultural and intellectual—against Modernism:

“Postmodernity is a style of thought which is suspicious of classical notions of truth, reason, identity, objectivity, or the idea of universal progress or emancipation, of single frameworks, grand narratives or ultimate grounds of explanation. Against these Enlightenment norms, it sees the world as contingent, ungrounded, diverse, unstable, indeterminate, a set of disunified cultures or interpretations which breed a degree of skepticism about the objectivity of truth, history, and norms, the givenness of natures and the coherence of identities [...] Postmodernism is a style of culture which reflects something of this epochal change, in a depthless, decentred, ungrounded, self-reflexive, playful, derivative, eclectic, pluralistic art which blurs the boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture, as well as between art and everyday experience.” (Eagleton, 1997:vii).

Postmodernism is a zeitgeist that stands critical of absolutist truth claims and supposedly fixed structures of meaning. The lived life is not black-and-white, but shades of grey. Reality cannot be boxed into perfect structures; instead things bleed into each other at the liminal borderlands. It is not that the Postmodernism is against the search of truth, but it is not so brazen—as Modernist ideologies were—to claim a monopoly on truth. Instead, the Postmodernist asks, ‘Whose truth?’, and ‘from which perspective?’ Postmodernist theorists applies the toolkit of post-structuralism to deconstruct modernists restrictive interpretations, to point out that ‘truth’, while not fully knowable, is approached through successive approximation by means of multi-faceted interpretations. 

The modernist identity was considered generally fixed, stable, and autonomous. Without the security that modernist grand narratives offered, postmodern people find themselves in states of flux: pluralistic, fragmented, and fluid. The postmodern person has a plurality of identities that are acquired and discarded as the roll requires. Hence, their true identity is a wardrobe pulled from diverse sources—mostly from the ever-changing mass media, for, as Bart explained to his father Homer: “It’s just hard not to listen to TV. It’s spent so much more time raising us than you have” (The Simpsons). Of course, for contemporary children, TV is replaced with tablets and smartphones.

Constantly having to adapt to a world that is changing at an accelerating speed, the postmodern person needs to be fluid with their identification. Such identification-agility is a necessary skill when one has to “keep alert and vigilant so that another choice can be made in case the previously chosen identity is withdrawn from the market or stripped of its seductive powers” (Bauman, 2001:147). Globalization causes immense change. “There are more ethnic diasporas than ever before, dispersed kinship groups, multinational business corporations and transnational occupational communities, as well as movements, youth cultures, and other expressive lifestyles with a self-consciously border-crossing orientation’ not to speak of media, from the International Herald Tribune to CNN and whatever is on the Internet.” (Hannerz, 2001:62). Hence, this donning of identities—this process of altering identification—to survive in a globalized word that is ever in flux, is a “never-ending, always incomplete, unfinished and open-ended activity in which we all, by necessity or by choice, are engaged” (Bauman, 2001:152). A world that is inherently uncertain causes angst; thankfully there is comfort in community. Subcultures cater for our diverse identities. There are communities for hippies and hipsters, for goths and geeks; many postmodern people belong to several subcultures that are reflective of their multi-dimensional identities. And the Internet and social media makes it possible for like-minded people to connect across the globe, so that even national borders are blurry concepts within the minds of increasingly open-minded people. For postmodernists, being part of a subculture is often a temporary thing, like the fashions of one season that may be discarded when a new, more interesting fad appears. Hippies may turn into hipsters, goths into geeks. As a continual individualist ever moving from one community to the next, the postmodernist is inherently lonely. 

Postmodernism, like Modernism from which it evolved, has many flaws. Here I would like to propose a simple praise for Postmodernism, namely its inclusivity and tolerance. Although Postmodernism is suspicious of Modernism it did not revolt against it by excluding it. Rather, the postmodernist revolt is one of inclusion: a recycled pastiche of all that preceded it. The postmodern ontology is pluralistic, holding multiple views like a hologram. For it is in this superposed inclusiveness that a real sense of reality is approximated. 

There has always been a difficulty with capturing zeitgeists. The ‘spirit’ of a time is an ethereal thing. Who is to say exactly where one spawns and another expires? And even those believed to have ended still haunts us. The birth of Postmodernism did not herald in the end of Modernism. We still see the grand narratives that Postmodernism mistrusts moving in the nation-state governments, in hierarchical power structures, in confined economical systems, in attempts to restrict and regulate the flow of information. Postmodernist alternatives, such as trans-national communities based on rhizome-like networks embracing free flow of information (epitomized in the free and open Internet) and open economies (such as cryptocurrencies) are constantly at odds with modernist hegemonies. 

In the same way that the arrival of Postmodernism did not displace Modernism, so the arrival of the next zeitgeist occurs in the midst of a world still possessed by both Modernist and postmodern movements. There is as of yet not an agreed upon name for it, though there are several proposals: Alter-modernism, Digi-modernism, Post-millennialism, Pseudo-Modernism, Trans-postmodernism, Metamodernism, and Post-postmodernism. For convenience, I will henceforth refer to it as Post-postmodernism.

Post-postmodernism is a child of its predecessors; a potentially dangerous—as of yet still misunderstood—creature with characteristics of both Modernism and Postmodernism. It is like the latter in its fragmentation, but it seems to be brazen like the former. Modernist ideologies all believed itself the harbinger of utopian truths: from Scientific Materialism, to Communism, to Democracy. On the other hand, Postmodernism disavowed truth claims. Self-conscious of its brokenness, Postmodernism revealed a sense of humility while poking fun at itself and trying to celebrate the uniqueness of its fragmented parts. Post-postmodernism combines the fragmented nature of Postmodernism, with the narcissistic boldness of Modernist ideologies.  The fragmented parts are not viewed as temporary communities, but instead they function as “tribes” based on an ideological identity. The members—ideologues—are loyal and fiercely opposed to outside groups. Such tribal animosity may manifest in benign dichotomies, such as fans of PC vs Mac or Android vs iOS, or they may be activists fighting for causes such as animal rights or gender equality. Such “tribes” may become extreme in their antagonism, displaying hatred and violence; consider, for instance, the Alt-Right and Antifa. Finally, there is potential for radicalization—Islamic State being the ultimate example. 

In the current discourse, there seems to be a common mistaken idea that postmodernism equates identity politics. Postmodern theorists are actually at odds with the tribalism of identity politics, and people that are truly postmodern feel trapped by the limiting and confining nature of Identitarian constructs. Postmodernists adhere to an identity in flux—one that allows continual renewal and creative reinvention. As Postmodern theorist Michel Foucault puts it: “...the relationship we have to have with ourselves are not ones of identity, rather, they must be relationships of differentiation, of creation, of innovation.” In short, postmodernists do not play identity politics; a postmodern politic is one of individual differentiation, not group-identity. Identity politics is an attribute of Post-postmodernism.




References:

BAUMAN, Z. 1995, Intimations of Postmodernity. London: Routledge.
BAUMAN, Z. 2001. The Individualized Society. Cambridge: Polity Press
FOUCAULT, M. see Gallagher.
GALLAGHE, B. 1984. “Sex, Power, and the Politics of Identity”, interview conducted by B. Gallagher and A. Wilson in Toronto, in The Advocate, p. 166-.
HANNERZ, U. 2001. Thinking about Culture in a Global Ecumene. (In Lull, J., ed. Culture in the Communication Age. London : Routledge. pp. 54-71.)
McHALE, B. 1989. Postmodernist Fiction. London: Routledge

Sunday, August 28, 2011

"Find What You Love," Steve Jobs' at Stanford University


Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs, who stepped down as CEO of Apple Wednesday after having been on medical leave, reflected on his life, career and mortality in a well-known commencement address at Stanford University in 2005.


Here, read the text of of that address:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.