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
