http://www.philosophynow.org/issues/58/The_Death_of_Postmodernism_And_Beyond
The
Death
of
Postmodernism
And
Beyond
(Alan Kirby 2006)
Alan
Kirby
says
postmodernism
is
dead
and
buried.
In
its
place
comes
a
new
paradigm
of
authority
and
knowledge
formed
under
the
pressure
of
new
technologies
and
contemporary
social
forces.
I
have in front of me a module description downloaded from a British
university English department’s website. It assumes that
postmodernism is alive, thriving and kicking: it says it will
introduce “the general topics of ‘postmodernism’ and
‘postmodernity’ by examining their relationship to the
contemporary writing of fiction”. This might suggest that
postmodernism is contemporary, but the comparison actually shows that
it is dead and buried.
Postmodern
philosophy
emphasises
the
[unclearness]
of
meaning
and
knowledge.
This
is
often
expressed
in
postmodern
art
as
a
concern
with
representation
and
an
ironic
self-awareness.
And
the
argument
that
postmodernism
is
over...can
be
made...by
looking
outside
the
academy
at
current
cultural
production
[films, art, music, tv, games].
Most
of
the
undergraduates
who
will
take
‘Postmodern[ism]’
this
year
will
have
been
born
in
1985
or
after,
and
all
but
one
of
the
module’s
primary
texts
were
[produced] before
their
lifetime.
Far
from
being
‘contemporary’,
these
texts
were
published
in
another
world,
before
the
students
were
born.
Blade
Runner
[for example]
is
Mum
and
Dad’s
culture...It’s
all
about
as
contemporary
as
The
Smiths,
as
hip
as
shoulder
pads,
as
happening
as
Betamax
video
recorders.
These
are
texts
which
are
just
coming
to
grips
with
the
existence
of
rock
music
and
television;
they
mostly
do
not
dream
even
of
the
possibility
of
the
technology
and
communications
media
– mobile
phones,
email,
the
internet,
computers
in
every
house
powerful
enough
to
put
a
man
on
the
moon
– which
today’s
undergraduates
take
for
granted.
The
only
place
where
the
postmodern
is
extant
is
in
children’s
cartoons
like
Shrek
and
The
Incredibles,
as
a
sop
to
parents
obliged
to
sit
through
them
with
their
toddlers.
This
is
the
level
to
which
postmodernism
has
sunk;
a
source
of
marginal
gags
in
pop
culture
aimed
at
the
under-eights.
What’s
Post Postmodernism?
I
believe
there
is
more
to
this
shift
than
a
simple
change
in
cultural
fashion.
The
terms
by
which
authority,
knowledge,
selfhood,
reality
and
time
are
conceived
have
been
altered,
suddenly
and
forever.
There
is
now
a
gulf
between
most
lecturers
and
their
students
akin
to
the
one
which
appeared
in
the
late
1960s,
but
not
for
the
same
kind
of
reason.
The
shift
from
modernism
to
postmodernism
did
not
stem
from
any
profound
reformulation
in
the
conditions
of
cultural
production
and
reception.
But
somewhere
in
the
late
1990s
or
early
2000s,
the
emergence
of
new
technologies
re-structured,
violently
and
forever,
the
nature
of
the
author,
the
reader
and
the
text,
and
the
relationships
between
them.
Postmodernism,
like
modernism
and
romanticism
before
it,
fetishised
[ie
placed
supreme
importance
on]
the
author,
even
when
the
author
chose
to
indict
or
pretended
to
abolish
him
or
herself.
But
the
culture
we
have
now
fetishises
the
recipient
of
the
text
to
the
degree
that
they
become
a
partial
or
whole
author
of
it.
Optimists
may
see
this
as
the
democratisation
of
culture;
pessimists
will
point
to
the
excruciating
banality
and
vacuity
of
the
cultural
products
thereby
generated
(at
least
so
far).
Let
me
explain.
Postmodernism
conceived
of
contemporary
culture
as
a
spectacle
before
which
the
individual
sat
powerless,
and
within
which
questions
of
the
real
were
problematised.
It
therefore
emphasised
the
television
or
the
cinema
screen.
Its
successor,
which
I
will
call
pseudo-modernism,
makes
the
individual’s
action
the
necessary
condition
of
the
cultural
product.
Pseudo-modernism
includes
all
‘texts’,
whose
content
and
dynamics
are
invented
or
directed
by
the
participating
audience (although
these
latter
terms,
with
their
passivity
and
emphasis
on
reception,
are
obsolete:
whatever
a
telephoning
Big
Brother
voter
is doing,
they
are
not
simply
viewing).
By
definition,
pseudo-modern
cultural
products
cannot
and
do
not
exist
unless
the
individual
intervenes
physically
in
them.
Great
Expectations
will
exist
materially
whether
anyone
reads
it
or
not.
Once
Dickens
had
finished
writing
it
and
the
publisher
released
it
into
the
world,
its
‘material
textuality’
– its
selection
of
words
– was
made
and
finished,
even
though
its
meanings,
how
people
interpret
it,
would
remain
largely
up
for
grabs.
Its
material
production
and
its
constitution
were
decided
by
its
suppliers,
that
is,
its
author,
publisher,
serialiser
etc
alone
– only
the
meaning
was
the
domain
of
the
reader.
Big
Brother
on
the
other
hand,
to
take
a
typical
pseudo-modern
cultural
text,
would
not
exist
materially
if
nobody
phoned
up
to
vote
its
contestants
off.
Voting
is
thus
part
of
the
material
textuality
of
the
programme
– the
telephoning
viewers
write
the
programme
themselves.
If
it
were
not
possible
for
viewers
to
write
sections
of
Big
Brother,
it
would
then
uncannily
resemble
an
Andy
Warhol
film:
neurotic,
youthful
exhibitionists
inertly
bitching
and
talking
aimlessly
in
rooms
for
hour
after
hour.
This
is
to
say,
what
makes
Big
Brother
what
it
is,
is
the
viewer’s
act
of
phoning
in.
Pseudo-modernism
also
encompasses
contemporary
news
programmes,
whose
content
increasingly
consists
of
emails
or
text
messages
sent
in
commenting
on
the
news
items.
The
terminology
of
‘interactivity’
is
equally
inappropriate
here,
since
there
is
no
exchange:
instead,
the
viewer
or
listener
enters
– writes
a
segment
of
the
programme
– then
departs,
returning
to
a
passive
role.
Pseudo-modernism
also
includes
computer
games,
which
similarly
place
the
individual
in
a
context
where
they
invent
the
cultural
content,
within
pre-delineated
limits.
The
content
of
each
individual
act
of
playing
the
game
varies
according
to
the
particular
player.
The
pseudo-modern
cultural
phenomenon
par
excellence
is
the
internet.
Its
central
act
is
that
of
the
individual
clicking
on
his/her
mouse
to
move
through
pages
in
a
way
which
cannot
be
duplicated,
inventing
a
pathway
through
cultural
products
which
has
never
existed
before
and
never
will
again.
[Narrative?
Rich]
This
is
a
far
more
intense
engagement
with
the
cultural
process
than
anything
literature
can
offer,
and
gives
the
undeniable
sense
(or
illusion)
of
the
individual
controlling,
managing,
running,
making
up
his/her
involvement
with
the
cultural
product.
Internet
pages
are
not
‘authored’
in
the
sense
that
anyone
knows
who
wrote
them,
or
cares.
The
majority
either
require
the
individual
to
make
them
work,
or
permit
him/her
to
add
to
them,
like
Wikipedia,
or
through
feedback
on,
for
instance,
[youtube].
In
all
cases,
it
is
intrinsic
to
the
internet
that
you
can
easily
make
up
pages
yourself
(eg
blogs).
If
the
internet
and
its
use
define
and
dominate
pseudo-modernism,
the
new
era
has
also
seen
the
revamping
of
older
forms
along
its
lines.
Cinema
in
the
pseudo-modern
age
looks
more
and
more
like
a
computer
game.
Its
images,
which
once
came
from
the
‘real’
world
– framed,
lit,
soundtracked
and
edited
together
by
ingenious
directors
to
guide
the
viewer’s
thoughts
or
emotions
– are
now
increasingly
created
through
a
computer.
And
they
look
it.
Where
once
special
effects
were
supposed
to
make
the
impossible
appear
credible,
CGI
frequently
[inadvertently]
works
to
make
the
possible
look
artificial
[Baudrillard?
Rich],
as
in
much
of
Lord
of
the
Rings
or
Gladiator.
Battles
involving
thousands
of
individuals
have
really
happened;
pseudo-modern
cinema
makes
them
look
as
if
they
have
only
ever
happened
in
cyberspace.
And
so
cinema
has
given
cultural
ground
not
merely
to
the
computer
as
a
generator
of
its
images,
but
to
the
computer
game
as
the
model
of
its
relationship
with
the
viewer
[adapting
to the preferences/experiences of you, the Post 2000's audience?
Rich]
Similarly,
television
in
the
pseudo-modern
age
favours
not
only
'Reality
TV'
(yet
another
unapt
term),
but
also
shopping
channels,
and
quizzes
in
which
the
viewer
calls
to
guess
the
answer
to
riddles
in
the
hope
of
winning
money.
But
rather
than
bemoan
the
new
situation,
it
is
more
useful
to
find
ways
of
making
these
new
conditions
conduits
for
cultural
achievements
instead
of
the
vacuity
currently
evident.
It
is
important
here
to
see
that
whereas
the
form
may
change
(Big
Brother
may
wither
on
the
vine
[Has
it? - Rich],
the
terms
by
which
individuals
relate
to
their
television
screen
and
consequently
what
broadcasters
show
have
incontrovertibly
changed.
The
purely
‘spectacular’
function
of
television,
has
become
a
marginal
one:
what
is
central
now
is
the
busy,
active,
[shaping] work
of
the
individual
who
would
once
have
been
called
its
recipient.
In
all
of
this,
the
‘viewer’
feels
powerful
and
is
indeed
necessary;
the
‘author’
[producer] as
traditionally
understood
is
either
relegated
to
the
status
of
the
one
who
sets
the
parameters
within
which
others
operate,
or
becomes
simply
irrelevant,
unknown,
sidelined;
and
the
‘text’
is
characterised
both
by
its
hyper-ephemerality
and
by
its
instability.
It
is
made
up
by
the
‘viewer’,
if
not
in
its
content
then
in
its
sequence
[Narrative? Rich].
A
pseudo-modern
text
lasts
an
exceptionally
brief
time.
Unlike,
say,
Fawlty
Towers,
reality
TV
programmes
cannot
be
repeated
in
their
original
form,
since
the
phone-ins
cannot
be
reproduced,
and
without
the
possibility
of
phoning-in
they
become
a
different
and
far
less
attractive
entity...computer
games
– their
shelf-life
is
short,
they
are
very
soon
obsolete.
A
culture
based
on
these
things
can
have
no
memory
– certainly
not
the
burdensome
sense
of
a
preceding
cultural
inheritance
which
informed
modernism
and
postmodernism.
Non-reproducible
and
[temporary],
pseudo-modernism
is
thus
also
amnesiac
[mindless/forgetful]:
these
are
cultural
actions
in
the
present
moment
with
no
sense
of
either
past
or
future.
The
cultural products of
pseudo-modernism are also
exceptionally banal [overplayed], as I’ve hinted.
The content of pseudo-modern films tends to be solely the acts
which beget and which
end life. This puerile
primitivism of the script
stands in stark contrast
to the sophistication of
contemporary cinema’s
technical effects. Much text messaging and
emailing is vapid in comparison with what people of all educational
levels used to put into letters. A triteness, a shallowness
dominates all. The
pseudo-modern era, at least
so far, is a
cultural desert. Although we may grow so
used to the new terms that we can adapt them for meaningful artistic
expression, for now we are confronted by a storm of
human activity producing
almost nothing of any
lasting or even
reproducible cultural value –
anything which human beings might look at again and appreciate in
fifty or two hundred years time.
The
roots
of
pseudo-modernism
can
be
traced
back
through
the
years
dominated
by
postmodernism.
Dance
music
and
industrial
pornography,
for
instance,
products
of
the
late
70s
and
80s,
tend
to
[short-lived],
to
the
vacuous
on
the
level
of
signification,
and
to
the
unauthored
(dance
much
more
so
due to remix, sampling & emptiness of meaning).
They
also
foreground
the
activity
of
their
‘reception’:
dance
music
is
to
be
danced
to,
porn
is
not
to
be
read
or
watched
but
used,
in
a
way
which
generates
the
pseudo-modern
illusion
of
participation.
In
music,
the
pseudo-modern
superseding
of
the
artist-dominated
album
as
monolithic
text
by
the
downloading
and
mix-and-matching
of
individual
tracks
on
to
an
iPod,
selected
by
the
listener,
was
certainly
prefigured
by
the
music
fan’s
creation
of
compilation
tapes
a
generation
ago.
But
a
shift
has
occurred,
in
that
what
was
a
marginal
pastime
of
the
fan
has
become
the
dominant
and
definitive
way
of
consuming
music,
rendering
the
idea
of
the
album
as
a
coherent
work
of
art,
a
body
of
integrated
meaning,
obsolete.
To
a
degree,
pseudo-modernism
is
no
more
than
a
technologically
motivated
shift
to
the
cultural
centre
of
something
which
has
always
existed.
Television
has
always
used
audience
participation,
just
as
theatre
and
other
performing
arts
did
before
it;
but
as
an
option,
not
as
a
necessity:
pseudo-modern
TV
programmes
have
participation
built
into
them.
There
have
long
been
very
‘active’
cultural
forms,
too,
from
carnival
to
pantomime...but
there
is
a
physicality
to
the
actions
of
the
pseudo-modern
text-maker,
and
a
necessity
to
his
or
her
actions
as
regards
the
composition
of
the
text,
as
well
as
a
domination
which
has
changed
the
cultural
balance
of
power
(note
how
cinema
and
TV,
yesterday’s
giants,
have
bowed
before
it).
It
forms
the
twenty-first
century’s
social-historical-cultural
hegemony.
Clicking
In The Changes
In
postmodernism,
one
read,
watched,
listened,
as
before.
In
pseudo-modernism
one
phones,
clicks,
presses,
surfs,
chooses,
moves,
downloads.
There
is
a
generation
gap
here,
roughly
separating
people
born
before
and
after
1980.
Those
born
later
might
see
their
peers
as
free,
autonomous,
inventive,
expressive,
dynamic,
empowered,
independent,
their
voices
unique,
raised
and
heard:
postmodernism
and
everything
before
it
will
by
contrast
seem
elitist,
dull,
a
distant
and
droning
monologue
which
oppresses
and
occludes
them.
Those
born
before
1980
may
see,
not
the
people,
but
contemporary
texts
which
are
alternately
violent,
pornographic,
unreal,
trite,
vapid,
conformist,
consumerist,
meaningless
and
brainless
(see
the
drivel
found,
say,
on
some
Wikipedia
pages).
To
them
what
came
before
pseudo-modernism
will
increasingly
seem
a
golden
age
of
intelligence,
creativity,
rebellion
and
authenticity.
Hence
the
name
‘pseudo-modernism’
also
connotes
the
tension
between
the
sophistication
of
the
technological
means,
and
the
vapidity
or
ignorance
of
the
content
conveyed
by
it
– a
cultural
moment
summed
up
by
the
fatuity
of
the
mobile
phone
user’s
“I’m
on
the
bus”.
Whereas
postmodernism
called
‘reality’
into
question,
pseudo-modernism
defines
the
real
implicitly
as
myself,
now,
‘interacting’
with
its
texts.
Thus,
pseudo-modernism
suggests
that
whatever
it
does
or
makes
is
what
is
reality,
and
a
pseudo-modern
text
may
flourish
the
apparently
real
in
an
uncomplicated
form:
the
docu-soap
with
its
hand-held
cameras
(which,
by
displaying
individuals
aware
of
being
regarded,
give
the
viewer
the
illusion
of
participation);
The
Office
and
The
Blair
Witch
Project,
interactive
pornography
and
reality
TV;
the
essayistic
cinema
of
Michael
Moore
or
Morgan
Spurlock.
Along
with this new view of reality, it is clear that the dominant
intellectual framework has changed. While postmodernism’s cultural
products have been consigned to the same historicised status as
modernism - it is deeply implausible for academics to tell their
students they inhabit a
postmodern world where a
multiplicity of ideologies,
world-views and voices can
be heard. Their every step hounded by market
economics, academics cannot preach multiplicity when their lives are
dominated by what amounts in practice to consumer fanaticism. The
world has narrowed
intellectually, not broadened, in the last ten years.
Where Lyotard saw the
eclipse of Grand
Narratives, pseudo-modernism sees
the ideology of globalised
market economics raised to
the level of the
sole and over-powering
regulator of all social
activity – monopolistic, all-engulfing, all-explaining,
all-structuring [the reason you are here in school in the first place
- Rich]. Pseudo-modernism is of
course consumerist and
conformist, a matter of moving around the world as it is
given or sold.
Secondly,
whereas postmodernism favoured
the ironic, the knowing
and the playful, with their
allusions to knowledge, history and ambivalence, pseudo-modernism’s
typical intellectual states
are ignorance, fanaticism
and anxiety: Bush, Blair, Bin Laden and
their like on one side, and the more numerous but less powerful
masses on the other. Pseudo-modernism was
not born on 11
September 2001, but
postmodernism was interred
in its rubble. In this context
pseudo-modernism lashes fantastically sophisticated
technology to the pursuit
of medieval barbarism – as
in the uploading of videos of beheadings onto the internet, or the
use of mobile phones to film torture in prisons. Beyond
this, the destiny of
everyone else is to
suffer the anxiety of
getting hit in the
cross-fire. But this
fatalistic anxiety extends
into every aspect of
contemporary life; from a
general fear of social
breakdown and identity
loss, to a deep
unease about diet and
health; from anguish about
the destructiveness of
climate change, to the
effects of a new
personal ineptitude and
helplessness, which yield TV programmes about how
to clean your house, bring up your children. This
technologised cluelessness is
utterly contemporary: the
pseudo-modernist communicates constantly
with the other side
of the planet, yet
needs to be told
to eat vegetables to
be healthy, a fact
self-evident in the Bronze
Age. A fusion of the
childish and the advanced,
the powerful and the
helpless. For varying reasons, these are people incapable
of the “disbelief of Grand Narratives” which Lyotard argued
typified postmodernists.
This
pseudo-modern
world,
so
frightening
and
seemingly
uncontrollable,
inevitably
feeds
a
desire
to
return
to
the
infantile
playing
with
toys
which
also
characterises
the
pseudo-modern
cultural
world.
Here,
the
typical
emotional
state,
radically
superseding
the
hyper-consciousness
of
irony,
is
the
trance
– the
state
of
being
swallowed
up
by
your
activity.
In
place
of
the
neurosis
of
modernism
and
the
narcissism
of
postmodernism,
pseudo-modernism
takes
the
world
away,
by
creating
a
new
weightless
nowhere
of
silent
autism.
You
click,
you
punch
the
keys,
you
are
‘involved’,
engulfed,
deciding.
You
are
the
text,
there
is
no-one
else,
no
‘author’;
there
is
nowhere
else,
no
other
time
or
place.
You
are
free:
you
are
the
text:
the
text
is
superseded.
©
Dr Alan Kirby 2006
Alan Kirby holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Exeter. He currently lives in Oxford.
