postmodern view of the self essay

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30 The Postmodern Self: An Essay on Anachronism and Powerlessness

Leonard Lawlor received his PhD in philosophy from Stony Brook University, NY, in 1988. He taught at the University of Memphis from 1989 to 2008 where he became Faudree-Hardin Professor of Philosophy. In 2008, he became Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy at Penn State University, where he continues to teach and serve as director of graduate studies in philosophy. He is the author of eight books, among which are: This Is Not Sufficient: An Essay on Animality in Derrida and Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology. His most recent book is From Violence to Speaking Out: Apocalypse and Expression in Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze (2016).

• Published: 02 May 2011
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This article examines the non-totalitarian postmodern conception of the self. It explains that the postmodern self is heterogeneous which means that it is multiple and there is ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ or ‘me’. It discusses Jean-François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge and the relevant works of Immanuel Kant.

Jean‐François Lyotard's 1979 The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge introduced the term ‘postmodern’ into philosophical discourse (see Bennington 1988 ; Cahoone 1996 ; Williams 1998 ). Although Lyotard ‘reports’ that what makes the present historical period ‘postmodern’ is the transformation of knowledge into information, strictly the term does not refer to a particular historical epoch (Lyotard 1991   b : 5). What defines postmodern thinking—regardless of the epoch in which it may appear—is anti‐Platonism . Lyotard argues that the belief in a transcendent world of forms or any transcendent domain (however this may be conceived) that exists separately from the world of appearance or of experience is no longer tenable (Lyotard 1992 : 9). 1 The general characterization of postmodernism as the demise of the belief in a transcendent domain has allowed the term's scope to be expanded beyond Lyotard's work to the work of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, to an entire generation of French philosophers who came of age in the Nineteen‐Sixties (Descombes 1980 : 180–6).

In order to indicate the demise of the belief in the transcendent, these philosophers sometimes point to Gödel's discovery that logical systems cannot be totalized (Lyotard 1984 : 42–3; also Deleuze and Guattari 1994 : 158; Derrida 1978 : 53–4). Non‐totalization means that no ‘meta’ or transcendent position outside the system can be established. For instance, thanks to Gödel, we know that the discourse on the rules which validate knowledge claims cannot be separate from the discourse within which those knowledge claims appear (Lyotard 1984 : 54–5; also Lyotard 1988 : 138). Anti‐Platonistic thought is immanentist thought . Lacking a transcendent measure to hierarchize and systematize the discourses (or genres, as Lyotard would say 2 )—a transcendent measure not only like a realm of forms but also like an origin or an end (a prelapsarian principle or a final purpose)—immanence results in differences among discourses, differences which cannot be ultimately unified. In other words, there is no one genus or genre of being (there is no unifying meaning of being); there are only multiplicities of things that exist (multiplicities of beings). The primary consequence of immanence therefore is heterogeneity .

Heterogeneity determines how the ‘postmodernist’ philosophers conceive the self. The postmodernist philosophers conceive the self as heterogeneous because they recognize that self‐experience is conditioned by time. Because the self is conditioned by time, these philosophers argue that the self is always differentiated into past and future. In other words, the experience of time shows that self‐experience does not originate with an identical self and it does not end with an identical self. The postmodernist self therefore is defined in this way: just as there is no transcendent measure for discourses, there is no identity constitutive of the self (or of the subject). Instead of identity, I find, inside of myself, difference: ‘I is an other’ (Deleuze 1994 : 86). 3 The other in me turns the ‘I’, the self, into a ‘we’. 4 But this ‘we’ is heterogeneous, and therefore not strictly a ‘we’ at all.

The fact that the self is a ‘we’ and yet that the ‘we’ is absent (that is, the ‘we’ is a collectivity but one that lacks unity) leads to what is really at issue in the postmodern self. 5 Since Hume, after all, had already criticized the personal identity conception of a continuous self (see Deleuze 1991   a ; Lyotard 1988 : 61–3), what is at issue is not the individual self, but what Lyotard calls ‘the social bond’ (Lyotard 1984 : 11). 6 To put this as clearly as possible, what is at issue in the postmodern self is the political subject . 7

How is the political subject—called ‘the people’—possible when immanence makes discourses, ‘selves’, and, most generally, beings, heterogeneous? The recognition that beings are heterogeneous (a heterogeneity which, as we shall see, is fundamental and irreducible) is really the reason why postmodernism consists in the loss of belief in any transcendent form of identity. But in particular, the recognition of heterogeneity has made the modern (or cosmopolitical) social bond at least questionable if not impossible. No longer, it seems, are we able to constitute the identity of a universal humanity by means of a large narrative about history having an end or purpose in absolute knowledge or universal freedom. As well, it does not seem possible to return (except perhaps under the guise of nationalism) to the wild social bond, in which a primitive tribe's identity is constituted by means of a small narrative about the origin of that tribe. Instead, in the postmodern epoch of the demise of the narrative constitution of the social bond, we find that something like a bond among peoples can be constituted by means of the criteria of optimal performance and efficiency, the building up of power and time; it is what Lyotard in his 1983 The Differend calls ‘the hegemony of the economic genre’ (Lyotard 1988 : 178). 8 Here the economic seems to be the sole genre or genus of being; the economic seems to be the sole genre or genus of thinking. The dominance of the economic genre is ‘the victory of capitalist technoscience’ (Lyotard 1992 : 18). The domination of global capitalism over every other genre of thinking and being, for Lyotard, amounts to a kind of totalitarianism (Lyotard 1992 : 58 and 66–7; also Deleuze and Guattari 1987 : 473). And therefore what is most at issue in the postmodern self is the attempt to conceive a ‘we’ which is not totalitarian (Lyotard 1988 : p. xiii). 9

The purpose of this chapter consists in determining the non‐totalitarian postmodern conception of the ‘we’. Although Lyotard's work (in particular his work from the late 1970s to the early 1980s) will play a central role, the ideas presented here derive from the work of all of the philosophers usually associated with postmodernism. The project of determining this ‘we’ divides into two problems. Thanks to Kant, we are able to formulate the first problem with the question: what ought we to be? (Lyotard 1988 : 178). More precisely, if the victory of capitalist techno‐science is a kind of totalitarianism, then the first problem consists in determining a ‘we’ that does not totalize or homogenize all the differences into a unity and identity. In other words, can there be a people that does not do violence to singularities? Is it possible for us to imagine such a people—a people somehow bound together and yet singular?

The second problem concerns the question of imagination. We can express it in this way: if the non‐totalitarian people is absent, then how are we to call it forth? More precisely, if, as Lyotard shows, the social bond is constituted by narratives, by stories, then are we able to imagine a kind of narrative, a kind of literature, that would call forth a non‐totalitarian people?

At the end, I suggest solutions to these two problems. Here are the two problems again: first, the determination of the non‐totalitarian people, and second, the imagination of a literature that would constitute the non‐totalitarian people. The solutions will be respectively the friends of passage and a literature of the secret. In this chapter, however, I shall be concerned not so much with the solutions, which are not sufficient, as with establishing the ‘conditions’ of the problems. 10 The true problem does not come into view if we think that the determination of a non‐totalitarian people amounts to overcoming all obstacles to consensus among heterogeneous individuals, as if the goal were a universal people. The true problem comes into view only when we recognize that totalization (a universal people) is impossible and yet the dispersion into groups is also impossible. Posed in the terms of impossibilities, we see finally that the goal and the solution have changed, but also that the problem no longer looks to be an obstacle. Now the problem is a spur for more thinking, for more writing.

What stimulates more writing can be indicated with two words: anachronism and powerlessness. As we shall see, the conditions of impossibility called anachronism and powerlessness link in an inseparable and disunified way both heterogeneity and unity, both event and repeatability. We shall be able to discover these conditions however only if we start with individual not collective experience, with the self and not the people. It is incontestable that my self‐experience is, as we have already indicated, temporally conditioned. Therefore we shall begin by reconstructing the descriptions of time presented by the two philosophical movements that have most influenced the postmodernist philosophers: phenomenology and Bergsonism. 11

1. Phenomenology and Bergsonism: The Beginnings of Postmodernism

Throughout their works, Husserl and Bergson had placed time at a foundational level: time is the absolute. 12 Both moreover had shown that the present never appears alone, never first. The present is always, necessarily, surrounded by the past and future. While the descriptions which Husserl and Bergson give of time—temporalization and duration—overlap conceptually (time not as discrete instants but as prolongation and thickness) and historically (both descriptions appear in the early years of the twentieth century), each contributes a novel aspect which must be stressed.

First Husserl ( 1964 , 1983): Husserl describes temporalization in terms of the present perception, the living present, in a word, in terms of presence; the ‘now‐phase’ is, so to speak, the ‘center’ of the living present, its ‘eye’. Yet describing the thickness of time, Husserl insists that, always conjoined with the now, there is a ‘retentional phase’, that is, a repetition of what is no longer present. The non‐presence of the repetitive retention, so to speak, gouges out the eye, leaving behind a hole, a kind of blindness. As we shall see, this blindness will play a crucial role in our attempt to determine a non‐totalitarian people.

Now Bergson ( 1959   c : 321; 1959   b : 1402, 1959a ): Bergson describes the duration—the inner flow of experience—as ‘a multiplicity like no other’ and as ‘a unity like no other’. Negatively, the duration, according to Bergson, is not a ‘spatial multiplicity’, in which the members of the multiplicity are homogeneous, juxtaposed, and separate from one another, and therefore countable. Positively, the duration is a ‘temporal multiplicity’ in which the parts interpenetrate one another (producing the unity) and yet are different from one another (making them multiple). 13 Again we shall see that this multiplicity will play a crucial role in what follows.

These abbreviated descriptions of both Bergson and Husserl's important descriptions of time are based on their respective analyses by Deleuze in his Bergsonism and Derrida in his Speech and Phenomena . 14 Both analyses attempt to show that at an upper, perhaps constructed, level the experience of time looks to be either continuity or discontinuity. But deeper, more fundamentally, there is, below the holding of the past in retention (Husserl) and below the interpenetration of moments in the duration (Bergson), an irreducible link between what we can call a repeatability and an event. Derrida of course interprets the image of above and below in terms of the idea of a dismantling, a deconstruction (‘deconstruction’ being a term closely associated with ‘postmodernism’). But if the upper level of the experience gives way to an irreducible link between two contradictory terms (a repetition necessarily includes no event and an event necessarily includes nothing repeatable), then we can speak of the irreducible link as ‘the undeconstructable itself’ (Derrida 1992 : 15). We are not able to dismantle the structure of the experience any further. We can speak of the undeconstructable as the secret.

The secret of the phenomenological‐Bergsonian descriptions lies in the fact that time is a medium that heterogenizes, that is, a continuity that discontinues. Lyotard (to whom we shall turn in a moment) perhaps expresses the secret best, when, in The Differend , he says that time is a conjunction, which ‘allows the constitutive discontinuity (or oblivion) of time to threaten, while defying it through its equally constitutive continuity (or retention)’ (Lyotard 1988 : 66). Time consists in a link that disjoins as it joins. This heterogenizing link—or bond, as in the ‘social bond’——affects all experience since all experience is conditioned by time. Every experience, necessarily, takes place in the present. In the present experience, there is the kernel or point of the now, the ‘eye’ of present perception (Husserl). What is happening right now, insofar as it is a kind of point, must be described as an event, different from every other now ever experienced; there is alteration. Yet, also in the present, the recent past is retained and what is about to happen is anticipated. The retention and the anticipation are based in a kind of repeatability (as the ‘re’ of retention indicates). This fundamental ‘repetition’ results in continuity. In other words, because the present being experienced right now can be immediately recalled, it is repeatable and that repeatability therefore motivates the anticipation that the same thing will happen again. Opening up a horizon in which what is coming must appear, what is happening right now necessarily bears certain similarities to the retained past, which make the singular status of what is coming as an event questionable. The event is, in effect, also not different from every other now ever experienced; they interpenetrate (Bergson).

At the same time , the present experience is an event because it is a singular now and it is not an event because the experience necessarily includes a repetition; at the same time , the present experience is alteration and it is not alteration because there is continuity. This ‘at the same time’, this simultaneity, is the crux of the matter. Because of temporalization, we can have no experience that does not essentially contain these two forces of event and repeatability in a relation of disunity and inseparability. In other words, because of temporalization, we are confronted with two necessities (the need to repeat and the need to singularize) related in an irreducibly necessary relation. As I already indicated, Derrida would call this irreducible necessary relation the undeconstructable itself; he would also call it anachronism , against time, never on time, always coming at the wrong time (Derrida 1993 : 65). Time is out of joint, and we are powerless to put it in joint: anachronism and powerlessness (Deleuze 1994 : 88; also Derrida 1994 : 21).

The undeconstructable conjunction of disunity and inseparability implies that experience contains a difference which cannot be made coincident or be closed. If we follow the absolutism of Bergsonism and phenomenology, then we must say that whatever the self is, it is based on this experience, the experience of powerlessness. In temporalization we do not find juxtaposable and countable instants and therefore we do not find calculable possibilities. Instead, we find the impossibility of stopping repetition and singularization. It is impossible to foresee all the events that will come about within repetition; it is impossible to remember all the events which are being repeated. We cannot stop the contingency, the accidents, and the supplements from clouding our vision of what is being repeated, and we cannot stop the repetitions, the reproductions, and the essences from clouding our vision of the events. We cannot see ahead into what will happen in the future and we cannot see back into what has happened in the past. We cannot see the origin or the end. If the origin is conceived—as it always has been in philosophy—as self‐identical, then we must say now, in light of our descriptions, that the origin had always been already, immediately divided. If we shift our focus to the future and think about the end, then we must say that the end will always be still, immediately divided. A prelapsarian and a postlapsarian principle, both of these principles are not possible. 15

2. Transition from the Dissolved Self to the Social Bond: Hearing oneself Speak

The two impossibilities of origin and end anticipate the two ways in which narrative attempts to constitute the social bond. We have seen the two impossibilities are necessitated because phenomenology and Bergsonism make time absolute. This absolutism is truly anti‐Platonistic if we recognize that Platonism conceives the transcendent world of forms as atemporal. But we must also recognize that the reversal of Platonism is the reversal from the priority of objects to the priority of the subject, the reversal from the priority of form to the priority of experience. The absolutism of phenomenology and Bergsonism is also anti‐Cartesian , but only in the sense that it denies a substantial distinction between the subject and the object, between thought and extension. It remains Cartesian insofar as it pursues the sphere which Descartes opened up (even though Descartes does not himself investigate this sphere): the sphere of the subject, the soul, the cogito. 16 Therefore as a transition to our discussion of the social bond in postmodernism, we must more thoroughly investigate the sphere of the cogito. Unlike Plato, who in the Republic investigates the soul on the basis of an investigation of the polis (ii. 368c–369b), we (anti‐Platonists) investigate the polis on the basis of an investigation of the soul.

In Plato's Theaetetus , we find thinking defined by means of an interior monologue (189e–190a), that is, by means of a kind of auto‐affection. Until he proves in the Third Meditation that God exists, Descartes is also engaged in a kind of auto‐affection, a meditation on himself. Indeed, the Cartesian formula of ‘I think therefore I am’ is an expression of auto‐affection, since we find the same ego on both sides of the ‘therefore’. If we progress in large steps across the history of philosophy, we see then that Descartes's cogito forms the basis for the Kantian idea of autonomy. The Kantian idea of autonomy of course means that I am self‐ruling; I give the moral law to myself—unlike animal life, for instance, on which nature imposes its laws. But, in order to give the law to myself, I must tell it to myself. Kantian autonomy therefore rests on the specific form of auto‐affection called ‘hearing oneself speak’. Hearing oneself speak seems to include two aspects. On the one hand, I seem to hear myself speak at the very moment that I speak, and, on the other, I seem to hear my own self speak and not someone or something other. Let us now examine the particular experience of hearing oneself speak.

When I engage in interior monologue—when, in short, I think—it seems as though I hear myself speak at the very moment I speak. It seems as though my interior voice is not required to pass outside of myself, as though it is not required to traverse any space, not even the space of my body. So, my interior monologue seems to be immediate, immediately present, and not to involve anyone else. Interior monologue seems therefore to be different from the experience of me speaking to another and different from the experience of me looking at myself in the mirror, where my vision has to pass through, at the least, the portals of my eyes.

As in the discussion of time earlier, here too we are engaged in a kind of deconstruction, exposing the essential structure below what is apparent or believed. So, the problem with the belief that interior monologue (in a word, thought) is different from other experiences of auto‐affection is twofold. On the one hand, the experience of hearing oneself speak is temporal (like all experience). The temporalization of interior monologue means, as we have just seen, that the present moment involves a past moment, which has elapsed and which has been retained. It is an irreducible or essential necessity that the present moment comes second; it is always involved in a process of mediation. The problem therefore with the belief that interior monologue happens immediately (as if there were no mediation involved) is that the hearing of myself is never immediately present in the moment when I speak ; the hearing of myself in the present comes a moment later; there is a delay between the hearing and the speaking. This conclusion means that my interior monologue in fact resembles my experience of the mirror image in which my vision must traverse a distance that differentiates me into seer and seen. 17 I cannot, it is impossible for me to, hear myself immediately. But there is a further implication. The distance or delay in time turns my speaking in the present moment into something coming second. The descriptions of time have shown us that the present is not an origin all alone; it is compounded with a past so that my speaking in the present moment is no longer sui generis . Therefore it must be seen as a kind of response to the past.

The fact that my speaking is a response to the past leads to the other problem with the belief that interior monologue is my own . Beside the irreducible delay involved in the experience of auto‐affection, there is the problem of the voice. In order to hear myself speak at this very moment, I must make use of the same phonemes as I use in communication (even if this monologue is not vocalized externally through my mouth). It is an irreducible or essential necessity that the silent words I form contain repeatable traits. This irreducible necessity means that, when I speak to myself, I speak with the sounds of others. In other words, it means that I find in myself other voices, which come from the past: the many voices are in me. Earlier in temporalization we discovered a kind of blindness; now in the auto‐affection of hearing oneself speak, we discover a kind of deafness. 18 I cannot hear myself speak, it is impossible, but the inability to hear myself speak allows me to hear other voices, to hear a multi‐vocality. Others' voices contaminate the hearing of myself speaking. Just as my present moment is never immediate, my interior monologue is never simply my own. 19 Quoting Deleuze again (who quotes Rimbaud), we can say, ‘I is an other.’ Because the ‘I’ is always necessarily a heterogeneous and differentiated multiplicity, a kind of ‘we’, the social bond or link is already anticipated in it. So let us now turn to the ways in which Lyotard thinks the social bond may be constituted and the consequence of these constitutions, which is totalitarianism .

3. The Social Bond and Totalitarianism

According to Lyotard, there are two complementary ways to use narratives in order to constitute the social bond, that is, in order to constitute the criteria of evaluating what is performed or what can be performed within a given collectivity (Lyotard 1984 : 19; also Lyotard 1988 : 155). 20 The narratives, in short, ‘legitimate’, as Lyotard says, but especially they constitute the identity of a people (Lyotard 1992 : 39–43). The two uses of narrative are the wild or primitive ( le récit sauvage ) and the cosmopolitical or modern (Lyotard 1988 : 155; also Lyotard 1984 : 38). 21

On the one hand, the primitive narrative—Lyotard always refers to the Brazilian tribe called the Cashinahua (see D'Ans 1978 )—such as myths, tales, and legends, always concerns the origin of the tribe. In particular, the myths provide the origin of names, proper names, through which one who has this name now understands his position in the society (Lyotard 1988 : 153). The narratives in other words set up a world of names, the Cashinahua world. In order to hear the narrative, you have to have a Cashinahua name, and in order to recite the narrative, you have to have a Cashinahua name. According to Lyotard, the sense of the story, which recounts the origin of the names, constitutes the social bond, but so does the present act of recitation. The narratives are repetitive; each narrative begins and ends with a fixed formula: ‘On this date, in that place, it happened that, etc.’ (Lyotard 1984 : 21–2). Through the fixed formulas, the differences between each recitation are consigned to oblivion, and therefore it seems as though the stories were told ‘forever’ (ibid. 20). The stories seem to be at once evanescent and immemorial, as if the origin was always present and will always be present (ibid. 22). There seems to be no hiatus between the current narrator and the ancients, there seems to be no hiatus between the narrator and the hero of the story. In this way the ‘we’ of the Cashinahua, the identity of this one tribe, is what it has always been. Because these myths legitimate only the one particular tribe, they are, according to Lyotard, ‘small narratives’ ( récits petits ) or ‘little stories’ ( petites histoires ) (Lyotard 1988 : 155).

In contrast to the wild narratives, cosmopolitical narratives tell a ‘large story’ ( grande histoire ) (ibid.). Like the wild narratives, the cosmopolitical ones are also concerned with legitimation and with establishing identity. According to Lyotard, the modern or cosmopolitical narratives ask this question: ‘since this x, this date, and this place are proper names [like the Cashinahua], and since proper names belong by definition to worlds of names and to specific “wild” narratives, how can these narratives give rise to a single world of names and to a universal narrative?’ (ibid.). The Cashinahua little stories allow the Cashinahua to distinguish themselves or even to make themselves an exception in relation to other humans. The universal history of humanity however consists in the extension of particular narratives to the entire set of human communities (ibid. 157). The extension is possible because here, unlike the primitive narratives which ground legitimacy in an original founding act, legitimacy in the modern narratives is grounded ‘in a future to be brought about, that is, in an Idea to realize’ (Lyotard 1992 : 50). In contrast to the primitive narratives, the modern narratives do not tell a story of proper names, a story of particulars. They tell the story only of a general or universal name. Following German Idealism, Lyotard says that either we have a meta‐narrative of spirit—an abstract and theoretical subject above humanity—which comes to know itself by overcoming ignorance, or we have an epic in which the people—a concrete and practical subject—emancipates itself from what prevents it from governing itself. Finally, unlike the primitive narratives which are evanescent and immemorial, the modern narratives consist in memory and projection, as if the end was intended in the past and will be fulfilled in the future (Lyotard 1984 : 26; also 1992 : 50).

We see the distinction Lyotard is trying to make in these kinds of narratives. Primitive narratives are little, while modern are large: particular versus universal; primitive narratives concern origins while modern concern ends: myth versus history (Lyotard 1992 : 41); primitive narratives concern the proper name of a tribe, while modern concern the general name of humanity; and finally, primitive narratives are evanescent and immemorial, while modern narratives are projection and memorial: panchrony (which means constantly through time) versus diachrony (which means going through time toward an end). Overall, the distinction between primitive and modern narratives is the difference between an original social identity and a final social identity.

As I noted at the beginning, when Lyotard was making his report on knowledge, near the end of the twentieth century, the belief in the modern, cosmopolitical large narratives was in decline: postmodernism is arising. Since the 1980s ( The Differend was originally published in 1983), perhaps we have seen as well the return of primitive narratives under the heading of a revitalized nationalism (for example, in the Balkan states). But more clearly, as Lyotard himself notes, and here he coincides with Deleuze and Guattari and with Derrida, we have seen the rise, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, of global capitalism (Lyotard 1988 : 179; also Deleuze and Guattari 1987 : 492; Derrida 1998 : 42–3). Becoming global, capitalism makes the economic genre hegemonic over all other genres or kinds of discourse, over all other modes of thought, over all other genera of beings. By means of globalization, the economic genre seems to be universal; it seems to form a kind of unity among peoples since now there seems to be a universal way of speaking, of thinking, of being (Lyotard 1988 : 177). What becomes universal with the economic genre is the criterion of optimal efficiency or optimal performativity (Lyotard 1984 : 41–7 and 64). This criterion allows ‘the tribunal of capitalism’ to resolve all disputes and to resolve them as efficiently and as quickly as possible.

The criterion of efficiency indicates that the economic genre has a specific relation to time (ibid. 61). For Lyotard, the work that goes into production does not expend energy; it expends time. Work ‘stocks up time’ in the product (Lyotard 1988 : 174). It is then the amount of stocked‐up time which determines the value of the product. As well, money amounts to stocked‐up time since it is or ought to be the more or less faithful equivalent of the product's values (i.e. the faithful equivalent of the time incorporated in the product). But having more capital means having more time and having more time means having the ability (or power) to gain more time. Time is here not the experience of temporalization and duration which I analyzed above, temporalization and duration always including the heterogeneity and contingency of the event, its incalculability and unforeseeability. Here time must be countable, a quantity about which we can calculate. What follows from Lyotard's definition of value in terms of countable time is that exchange of products consists in the attempt to recover or, better, ‘to cancel’ the time lost in work (Lyotard 1988 : 175). However, the more delays there are in the process of exchange, the more time is lost. So, as Lyotard says, ‘we see what the ideal is: to make up time immediately ’ (ibid. 176; my emphasis). The ideal is to have the smallest hiatus or distance in between the exchange. The goal of economic genre is to get time back as quickly as possible. If the small primitive narratives are panchronic and the large modern narratives are diachronic, then the economic genre is ortho‐chronic , that is, it aims at traversing time as quickly as possible so that the payment is paid back never at the wrong time, always at the correct time, on time . The economic genre demands that there must be no anachronism .

And yet the economic genre is hyper‐chronic insofar as it wants to gain as much time as possible: not just equal to the quantity of lost time, but more time . Because of this ‘more’, always more, the economic genre seems to resemble universal history: everyone is making progress toward having more time for doing things, more time for adventures (Lyotard 1988 : 178). But in fact, the aim of gaining time is nothing but a quasi‐aim since the economic genre never asks the question of what we ought to be. Global capitalism therefore shifts the emphasis from ends (from finality) to means (Lyotard 1984 : 37; also 1988 : 179). The question constantly being asked in the economic genre is: what are the most efficient means to gain more time (that is, to gain more capital)? In order to find answers to this question, the economic genre engages in stories, simulations (which are really calculations) of possibilities, probabilities, and improbabilities (Lyotard 1988 : 148). The economic stories however are only exercises in hypothetical thinking. The only concern of the economic genre lies in the possibility of gaining more time: power and hyper‐chronism . We can see already that with its quasi‐end of gaining time, the economic genre is totalitarian (or global): ‘the complete hegemony of the economic discourse’ (Lyotard 1992 : 58).

For Lyotard, however, the two narrative modes of constituting the social bond are also totalitarian. 22 We have seen that the tradition of the Cashinahua myths about the origin legitimate obligations and prescriptions through the authority of the Cashinahua name. The legitimation is total since it is based in the totality of life instituted by the narratives. But more importantly, for Lyotard, any event, human or natural, for which there is no Cashinahua name has no authority to exist since it is not part of the whole of life set up by the Cashinahua myth of the origin of names. The myths therefore allow the Cashinahua to see themselves as the exception among peoples: again, they are the ‘the true men’ (Lyotard 1992 : 46). There is no question of the final identity of the ‘we’, an identity to be accomplished in the future, since the Cashinahua narrative always says that we ought to be what we are—Cashinahua (ibid. 49). Importantly, Lyotard shows how the primitive narrative function has a modern significance. He extends the myth of origin legitimation to the Nazis who developed the fabulous stories of the ‘Aryan ancestors’. In the Nazi myths, the Aryans are the ‘true men’, the exception among peoples, and just as in the Cashinahua myths there is no question of a future ‘we’ to be accomplished: ‘We ought to be what we are—Aryan.’ In the myth of Aryan origin, other peoples then do not participate in the vital principle of the Aryans; therefore all that remains to be done is finish them off, exterminate them (ibid. 51–2).

Now let us turn to the large modern narrative function. So, in contrast to the primitive myths of origin, the modern large myths are myths of a future to be brought about, an idea to be realized: the idea of universal freedom or enlightenment. For this idea to come into realization, it must be the case that a singular people's identity passes through an identity crisis, that is, its identity must decompose or fissure (ibid. 52). In other words, the proper name of this people must be questioned, turning the people into a mass or a crowd (Lyotard 1992 : 56; also Deleuze and Guattari 1987 : 33). 23 Then the mass asks itself what they ought to be. But this self‐questioning opens up an equivocation in the concept of the people. This equivocation is perhaps Lyotard's greatest contribution to political philosophy. With the concept of the people, one does not know whether what is being invoked is based on the tradition of a narrative of origin or on a tendency toward the idea of freedom. In other words, the name of a people—the French people, for example, in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man—encompasses at once the singularity of a contingent community and the incarnation of a universal sovereignty (Lyotard 1992 : 53; also 1988: 97–9). 24 The equivocation implies that the ideal community already seems to be real; the people already seem to know how to name themselves. For Lyotard, the equivocation in the concept of the people leads once more to the Nazis. In the 1930s, the Nazi cure for the German community's identity crisis consisted in presenting (in their ‘festivals’) the Aryan myths as the exceptional people ( das Volk ) who imparts its name to the end pursued by human history. The Nazis do not simply say, ‘Let us become what we are—Aryans’; they say, ‘Let the whole of humanity be Aryan’ (Lyotard 1992 : 56). For the Nazis, the imparting of this name to everyone led to the violence of a world war. Therefore, as Lyotard shows, because of the equivocation in the concept of the people, the modern myths are different from the primitive myths only in terms of the size of their domination. Both are totalitarian insofar as they produce an identity that dominates an entire collectivity such as a tribe (‘the Cashinahua’) or an identity that dominates all humans (‘the Aryans’): ‘the true men’. These myths however are totalitarian in a more dangerous sense: they exterminate anything heterogeneous or contingent, the non‐exceptional singularities, that might disturb the identity.

4. Conclusion: There will Never be Enough Written

In Lyotard's writings, the term ‘postmodern’ has four registers. First, the term refers to an epoch, the twentieth century, and now, Lyotard would say, the twenty‐first century. Second, the term ‘postmodern’ refers, within current times, to the decline of belief in the large narratives of humanity making progress toward the purpose of universal freedom and absolute knowledge. The third and fourth registers derive from the decline of the belief that history has a purpose or end. So, third, the term ‘postmodern’ refers to what replaces the belief or what is victorious over the belief: capitalist techno‐science. Here knowledge must be transformed into information and processed as rapidly as possible in order to gain time. In this third register, postmodernism refers to the aim of the stocking up of time (countable units of time) and therefore of calculable possibilities: hyper‐chronism and power. In this case, what defines postmodernism is the hegemony of the economic genre, its kind of totalitarianism. But then fourth, what contests the hegemony of the economic genre is immanentist thinking, 25 a genre of thinking that revolves around two problems. In fact, these two problems define the most positive sense of postmodernism. If the social bond is what the postmodern self truly concerns, then two problems define the postmodern self. The two problems concern the constitution of a non‐totalitarian ‘we’. We shall conclude by suggesting solutions to them.

At the beginning we were able to formulate the first problem with Kant's help, his question of what we ought to be. But now we are able to formulate the problem more precisely with this question: is a social bond possible which does not bind in a totalitarian way—as we have seen both the small primitive narratives and the large modern narratives are totalitarian—and more precisely does not bind by means of the aim of gaining more time and having more calculable possibilities, which does not succumb to the economic goal of power? The condition for this problem lies in time. By means of panchronism, diachronism, and hyper‐chronism, these modes of constituting the social bond aim to shelter the social identity from contingency and heterogeneity. Yet, as we have seen, the absolute of temporalization or duration necessarily includes contingency and heterogeneity. Therefore, anachronism always persists despite and below these other chronisms (Lyotard 1988 : 144).

We are able therefore to formulate a solution to this problem by reflecting more on anachronism. Time is fundamentally ana‐chronic because time temporalizes or endures by means of two forces, the force of repetition and the force of singularization, the force of universality and the force of event. The necessity of these two forces is so strong that we are powerless not to obey their command. But if we are unable not to obey, then we are able . We are subjected to the two forces, but they also enable us. If we are unable to stop repetition and if we are unable to stop singularization, we are able to be unable. In other words, our powerlessness gives us a kind of power. Unable to stop repetition, we are able to let it happen; unable to stop singularization, we are able to let it happen. Instead of calculable possibilities, our ability to be unable opens up an incalculable and uncontrollable potentiality. Therefore, unlike the economic genre which calculates in order to make the hiatus pass as quickly as possible, we devote ourselves to the passing of time, letting the hiatus take the time it needs, stretching the link out as long as possible. We devote ourselves, which takes time, to being blind and deaf, a blindness to what cannot be seen: totality, homogeneity, and identity—in order to see better, in order to see heterogeneity, to see difference, and contingency; a deafness to what cannot be heard: my own or own voice—in order to listen better, to hear the multi‐vocality of all living things. This ability to be unable amounts to a new sensitivity, a sensitivity that turns away from the molar and majoritarian forms toward the micro and minor informalities. Taking up the equivocation in the concept of the people which Lyotard has pointed to, we contest the singularity of a people in order to make it pass into universality, in order to pass over the limit and become otherwise; we contest the universality of a people in order to make it pass into singularity, in order to pass over the limit and become otherwise. There would be no consensus here just as there would be no dispersion. This would be a people who does the least violence to singularities because it is unified around powerlessness. So far, I have only used a negative name for this ‘we’ who are bound together by the power of powerlessness: non‐totalitarian. Now, I am able to give it a positive name: the friends of passage . Friends however require names, proper names, and the question of the name brings us to the second problem.

How are we able to call forth these friends of passage? Lyotard has shown that the social bond of a people is based in narratives, in stories or histories, in literature in a broad sense. But he has also shown that both the primitive myths of origin and the modern myths of end constitute a people who are totalitarian. He has pointed out as well that even the economic genre, which is totalitarian in its own way, makes use of stories insofar as it simulates hypothetical possibilities, foreseeable future outcomes of possible means. We must therefore try to imagine a literature that differs from all of these kinds of stories. As we have seen, the anachronism of time implies that there is no experience that does not include a repetition. The primacy of repetition means that there is no original identity or original presence being repeated. In other words, if repetition is necessarily first, then we are never able to know what is being repeated. Likewise, anachronism shows that there is no experience that does not include an event; if an event is necessarily last, then we are never able to know what is going to happen. Due to this inability to know, we can suddenly imagine a kind of story. It would concern a secret . Throughout the story two questions would remain unanswered because they are unanswerable: what happened and what is going to happen? 26 No calculation of means and ends would be possible here. This literature would recount the unrememorable and the unforeseeable. In the story, perhaps there would be a central character with a proper name; or perhaps the story would be recounted in a letter addressed to someone with a proper name. The proper name would not indicate a self in the traditional sense, a singular identity. No, it would indicate a singular potentiality. Unable to find the answers to the questions of what happened and what is going to happen, being deaf and blind, this person or persons would hear and see better. They would hear and see better the others within themselves, allowing them to become otherwise. And then their proper names would no longer be appropriate. They would no longer know what name is proper to them. Other names would be needed and therefore other letters addressed to other addressees. In the end we would have neither the small narrative of one proper name (the Cashinahua) nor the large narrative of one proper name (the Aryans), but an ever‐changing cloud of stories calling forth these friends whose proper names are never able to be appropriate because they are letting others pass. 27 However, as I said a moment ago, friendship is not possible without knowing the other person's proper name. Therefore this friendship will never be present, this people will never be complete. The people will always be in the future and still coming, which means that whatever we write, it will not be sufficient . 28 We must continue to write more: never will there be enough written in the name of passage. 29 Writing more, we recognize that the self (either individual or collective) is always absent (there is no original identity) and always to come (there is no final purpose). Writing more, we recognize (we postmodernists) that the problem of the self is more than an obstacle. It is a spur to thinking. 30

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—— and —— ( 1994 ). What is Philosophy , tr. H. Tomlinson and G. Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press).

Derrida, J. ( 1974 ). Speech and Phenomena , tr. David B. Allison (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press).

—— ( 1978 ). Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction , tr. John P. Leavey, Jr. (Stony Brook, NY: Nicolas Hays Ltd.).

—— ( 1981 ). Dissemination , tr. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

—— ( 1982 ). Margins of Philosophy , tr. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

—— ( 1992 ). ‘Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority’, tr. Mary Quaintance, in Drucilla Cornell , Michael Rosenfeld , and David Gray Carlson (eds), Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (New York: Routledge).

—— ( 1993 ). Aporias , tr. T. Dutoit (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press).

—— ( 1994 ). Specters of Marx , tr. P. Kamuf (London: Routledge).

—— ( 1995 ). On the Name , ed. T. Dutoit (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press).

—— ( 1997 ). Politics of Friendship , tr. G. Collins (London: Verso).

—— ( 1998 ). ‘Faith and Knowledge’, tr. Samuel Weber, in Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo (eds), Religion (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press).

—— ( 2008 ). The Animal that Therefore I am , tr. David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press).

Descombes, V. ( 1980 ). Modern French Philosophy , tr. L. Scott‐Fox and J. M. Harding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 180–6.

Diamond, C. ( 1991 ). The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press).

Evans, F. ( 2008 ). The Multivoiced Body: Society and Communication in the Age of Diversity (New York: Columbia University Press).

Foucault, M. ( 1994 ). The Order of Things (New York: Vintage).

—— ( 1998 ). ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, tr. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, in Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984 , ii. Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology (New York: New Press), 369–91.

—— ( 2008 ). Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres (Paris: Gallimard Seuil).

Gallagher, S. ( 1998 ). The Inordinance of Time (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press).

Gasché, R. ( 2007 ). The Honor of Thinking (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press).

Heidegger, M. ( 1968 ). What is Called Thinking , tr. J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper Colophon).

—— ( 1996 ). Being and Time , tr. J. Stambaugh (Albany, NY: SUNY Press).

Husserl, E. ( 1964 ). The Phenomenology of Internal Time‐Consciousness , tr. James Churchill (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers). French tr. H. Dussort, Leçons pour une phenomenology de la conscience intime du temps (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964).

—— ( 1970 ). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology , tr. D. Carr (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press).

—— ( 1983 ). Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book , tr. Fred Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers). French tr. P. Ricoeur, Idées directrices pour une phenomenologie (Paris: Gallimard, 1950).

Lawlor, L. ( 2003 ). Thinking through French Philosophy: The Being of the Question (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press).

—— ( 2007 ). This is Not Sufficient: An Essay on Animality and Human Nature in Derrida (New York: Columbia University Press).

Lévi‐Strauss, C. ( 1966 ). The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

Lyotard, J.‐F. ( 1984 ). The Postmodern Condition , tr. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

—— ( 1988 ). The Differend , tr. Georges Van Den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

—— ( 1989 ). ‘Discussions, or Phrasing “After Auschwitz”’, in The Lyotard Reader , ed. Andrew Benjamin (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers), 360–92.

—— ( 1991 a ). Phenomenology , tr. B. Beakley (Albany, NY: SUNY Press).

—— ( 1991 b ). The Inhuman , tr. Geoff Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press).

—— ( 1992 ). The Postmodern Explained , tr. Don Barry, Bernadette Maher, Julian Pefanis, Virginia Spate, and Morgan Thomas (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

Merleau‐Ponty, M. ( 1968 ). The Visible and the Invisible , tr. A. Lingis (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press).

Rancière, J. ( 1999 ). Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy , tr. J. Rose (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

—— ( 2009 ). ‘Should Democracy Come? Ethics and Politics in Derrida’, in P. Cheah and S. Guerlac (eds), Derrida and the Time of the Political (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).

Williams, J. ( 1998 ). Lyotard: Toward a Postmodern Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity Press).

See also Deleuze ( 1990 : 253–65); Derrida ( 1981 : 61–172); Foucault ( 1998 : 369–91).

The French word ‘genre’ should be heard in two ways, as referring to literary genres and to genera or kinds. So, the term in Lyotard is supposed to invoke not only language games as in Wittgenstein but also Aristotle's multiple meanings of being.

Deleuze is quoting one of Rimbaud's ‘Letters of a Visionary’ (letter of 15 May 1871 to Paul Demeny): ‘Je est un autre.’

See Derrida ( 1982 : 136). The final line of this essay is ‘Mais qui, nous?’, ‘But who, we?’ See also Deleuze and Guattari ( 1987 : 159); here they ask, ‘But who is this we that is not me…?’ Also Merleau‐Ponty ( 1968 : 3); here Merleau‐Ponty asks, ‘what is this we?’ The question of who we are also drives Foucault's work in The Order of Things ( 1994 ), esp. in the famous ninth chapter, ‘Man and his Doubles’. Also Foucault ( 2008 : 14).

For the concept of absent community, see Blanchot ( 1988 : 15). See also Deleuze and Guattari ( 1987 : 346).

The French is ‘le lien social’, which could also be rendered in English as ‘the social link’.

See Rancière ( 2009 : 274–88). Rancière ( 1999 ) has also attempted to extend Lyotard's idea of a differend (see esp. pp. xi–xii).

In his 1983 The Differend , however, he makes a much stronger claim than the claim that heterogeneity is irreducible, saying that the event of the Holocaust (the name ‘Auschwitz’) permanently disrupts the teleological constitution of a ‘we’. See Lyotard ( 1988 : 97–9; also 1989: 360–92). Lyotard's reflections on Auschwitz are inspired by Adorno. But Lyotard is not alone in making a claim such as this. Deleuze and Guattari ( 1994 : 106–7) also speak of the ‘shame at being human’ in light of the Holocaust. And Derrida ( 2008 : 26) has compared the killing of animals to the Holocaust and genocide.

See also Gasché ( 2007 : ch. 11), which concerns Lyotard and the honor of thinking.

Here, I am appropriating what Deleuze has written about the problem. Deleuze ( 1994 : 159) and Deleuze and Guattari (1996: 16–17) speak of the conditions of a problem as the terms and relations which allow the problem to be posed and which allow possible solutions to be considered. They also stress that the values of true and false apply to problems. Derrida ( 1993 : 11–12) has stressed that a problem is a kind of shield which protects an experience or an idea from attempts to master it. It is also possible that this problem is more like a riddle, and the idea of conditions for it could be explained in terms of an extraordinary language game. On the ‘great riddle’ and solutions, see Diamond 1991 : 267–89.

It is important to keep in mind that Lyotard wrote his first book on phenomenology in 1956 (Lyotard 1991 a ).

This chapter continues an earlier text on postmodernism (Lawlor 2003 , ‘The Beginnings of Postmodernism: Phenomenology and Bergsonism, Derrida and Deleuze’, pp. 109–22). I argue that postmodernism flows out of the philosophy of life.

Deleuze and Guattari have drawn out the important consequences of Bergsonian multiplicity. See Deleuze and Guattari ( 1987 : 8, 249, and 470).

Derrida ( 1974 ); Deleuze ( 1991 ). With these descriptions, we are not far away from what Gallagher ( 1998 : 178) has called ‘prenoetic temporality’. When we speak of time being out of joint this disjointure is at least related to what Gallagher calls ‘inordinance’.

Descombes ( 1980 : 182) calls this impossibility ‘the supposition of the eternal recurrence’.

See Husserl ( 1970 : sections 17–18). See also Heidegger ( 1996 : section 21).

Although time (temporalization and duration) has been the principal idea so far, space (the porous limit, the hiatus, and now distance) plays an equally important role. Fundamentally the hiatus is neither time nor space.

Once again, I am trying to show that what is apparent is not the case or is founded on a different process. Indeed, with these descriptions and arguments, I am trying to bring this process to light. In both the case of blindness and deafness, I am trying to show that, when the domination of my self‐reflection and my self‐hearing breaks up, one experiences powerlessness: I cannot see myself clearly; I cannot hear myself speak immediately. But, and this is a crucial idea for the discussions of power, when I realize that I cannot see and hear clearly, I have the power to see and hear more. That is, instead of the restricted direction towards myself, I am now unrestricted and open to the voices and views of others.

Fred Evans ( 2008 ) has developed an important conception of the voice. See esp. pp. 144–68 and 280–2.

Here Lyotard speaks of ‘the bond’ ( le lien ) among the Cashinahua.

In The Postmodern Condition , Lyotard of course cites Claude Lévi‐Strauss ( 1966 ).

Here I am relying on Lyotard's 1984 essay called ‘Memorandum on Legitimation’ which is found in Lyotard ( 1992 ).

Deleuze and Guattari cite Elias Canetti ( 1966 ).

Balibar ( 2009 ) discusses Lyotard's discovery of this equivocation.

In The Postmodern Condition , Lyotard calls this genre of thinking ‘paralogy’. See Lyotard ( 1988 : 61).

This discussion is based on Plateau 8 (Deleuze and Guattari 1987 ); also see Deleuze and Guattari ( 1986 ). Also Derrida's work on friendship and the name ( 1997 ; 1995 : 89–127).

Lyotard makes use of the image of a cloud. See Lyotard ( 1988 : pp. xxiv and 64).

This entire chapter extends ideas I formulated in Lawlor ( 2007 ).

This sentence alludes to something that Deleuze and Guattari say: ‘In short, we think that one cannot write sufficiently in the name of an outside’ ( 1987 : 23).

This sentence indicates the great debt that postmodernism has to Heidegger (see Heidegger 1968 ). It is Deleuze ( 1988 : 116) who most stresses this question.

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The Postmodern Self: An Essay on Anachronism and Powerlessness

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This article examines the non-totalitarian postmodern conception of the self. It explains that the postmodern self is heterogeneous which means that it is multiple and there is 'we' rather than 'I' or 'me'. It discusses Jean-François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge and the relevant works of Immanuel Kant.

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• Powerlessness Arts & Humanities 100%
• Anachronism Arts & Humanities 96%
• Immanuel Kant Arts & Humanities 56%
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T1 - The Postmodern Self

T2 - An Essay on Anachronism and Powerlessness

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N2 - This article examines the non-totalitarian postmodern conception of the self. It explains that the postmodern self is heterogeneous which means that it is multiple and there is 'we' rather than 'I' or 'me'. It discusses Jean-François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge and the relevant works of Immanuel Kant.

AB - This article examines the non-totalitarian postmodern conception of the self. It explains that the postmodern self is heterogeneous which means that it is multiple and there is 'we' rather than 'I' or 'me'. It discusses Jean-François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge and the relevant works of Immanuel Kant.

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Studies in Symbolic Interaction

ISBN : 978-1-84663-930-2 , eISBN : 978-1-84663-931-9

Publication date: 25 July 2008

In this essay I examine a variety of approaches to the contemporary postmodern self. I argue that this diverse literature may be analytically distinguished along two general lines. The first concerns institutional or structural claims regarding what a self “is” or “is not.” The second focuses instead on what a self “does” or “does not do.” I conclude by recommending a more comprehensive approach that takes into account the salience of both of these analytical dimensions in the contemporary debates over the postmodern self.

Dickens, D.R. (2008), "Dimensions of the postmodern self", Denzin, N.K. (Ed.) Studies in Symbolic Interaction ( Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 30 ), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 183-196. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-2396(08)30011-8

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Postmodernism

That postmodernism is indefinable is a truism. However, it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning.

The term “postmodernism” first entered the philosophical lexicon in 1979, with the publication of The Postmodern Condition by Jean-François Lyotard. I therefore give Lyotard pride of place in the sections that follow. An economy of selection dictated the choice of other figures for this entry. I have selected only those most commonly cited in discussions of philosophical postmodernism, five French and two Italian, although individually they may resist common affiliation. Ordering them by nationality might duplicate a modernist schema they would question, but there are strong differences among them, and these tend to divide along linguistic and cultural lines. The French, for example, work with concepts developed during the structuralist revolution in Paris in the 1950s and early 1960s, including structuralist readings of Marx and Freud. For this reason they are often called “poststructuralists.” They also cite the events of May 1968 as a watershed moment for modern thought and its institutions, especially the universities. The Italians, by contrast, draw upon a tradition of aesthetics and rhetoric including figures such as Giambattista Vico and Benedetto Croce. Their emphasis is strongly historical, and they exhibit no fascination with a revolutionary moment. Instead, they emphasize continuity, narrative, and difference within continuity, rather than counter-strategies and discursive gaps. Neither side, however, suggests that postmodernism is an attack upon modernity or a complete departure from it. Rather, its differences lie within modernity itself, and postmodernism is a continuation of modern thinking in another mode.

Finally, I have included a summary of Habermas's critique of postmodernism, representing the main lines of discussion on both sides of the Atlantic. Habermas argues that postmodernism contradicts itself through self-reference, and notes that postmodernists presuppose concepts they otherwise seek to undermine, e.g., freedom, subjectivity, or creativity. He sees in this a rhetorical application of strategies employed by the artistic avant-garde of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, an avant-garde that is possible only because modernity separates artistic values from science and politics in the first place. On his view, postmodernism is an illicit aestheticization of knowledge and public discourse. Against this, Habermas seeks to rehabilitate modern reason as a system of procedural rules for achieving consensus and agreement among communicating subjects. Insofar as postmodernism introduces aesthetic playfulness and subversion into science and politics, he resists it in the name of a modernity moving toward completion rather than self-transformation.

1. Precursors

2. the postmodern condition, 3. genealogy and subjectivity, 4. productive difference, 5. deconstruction, 6. hyperreality, 7. postmodern hermeneutics, 8. postmodern rhetoric and aesthetics, 9. habermas's critique, other internet resources, related entries.

The philosophical modernism at issue in postmodernism begins with Kant's “Copernican revolution,” that is, his assumption that we cannot know things in themselves and that objects of knowledge must conform to our faculties of representation (Kant 1787). Ideas such as God, freedom, immortality, the world, first beginning, and final end have only a regulative function for knowledge, since they cannot find fulfilling instances among objects of experience. With Hegel, the immediacy of the subject-object relation itself is shown to be illusory. As he states in The Phenomenology of Spirit , “we find that neither the one nor the other is only immediately present in sense-certainty, but each is at the same time mediated ” (Hegel 1807, 59), because subject and object are both instances of a “this” and a “now,” neither of which are immediately sensed. So-called immediate perception therefore lacks the certainty of immediacy itself, a certainty that must be deferred to the working out of a complete system of experience. However, later thinkers point out that Hegel's logic pre-supposes concepts, such as identity and negation (see Hegel 1812), which cannot themselves be accepted as immediately given, and which therefore must be accounted for in some other, non-dialectical way.

The later nineteenth century is the age of modernity as an achieved reality, where science and technology, including networks of mass communication and transportation, reshape human perceptions. There is no clear distinction, then, between the natural and the artificial in experience. Indeed, many proponents of postmodernism challenge the viability of such a distinction tout court , seeing in achieved modernism the emergence of a problem the philosophical tradition has repressed. A consequence of achieved modernism is what postmodernists might refer to as de-realization. De-realization affects both the subject and the objects of experience, such that their sense of identity, constancy, and substance is upset or dissolved. Important precursors to this notion are found in Kierkegaard, Marx and Nietzsche. Kierkegaard, for example, describes modern society as a network of relations in which individuals are leveled into an abstract phantom known as “the public” (Kierkegaard 1846, 59). The modern public, in contrast to ancient and medieval communities, is a creation of the press, which is the only instrument capable of holding together the mass of unreal individuals “who never are and never can be united in an actual situation or organization” (Kierkegaard 1846, 60). In this sense, society has become a realization of abstract thought, held together by an artificial and all-pervasive medium speaking for everyone and for no one. In Marx, on the other hand, we have an analysis of the fetishism of commodities (Marx 1867, 444–461) where objects lose the solidity of their use value and become spectral figures under the aspect of exchange value. Their ghostly nature results from their absorption into a network of social relations, where their values fluctuate independently of their corporeal being. Human subjects themselves experience this de-realization because commodities are products of their labor. Workers paradoxically lose their being in realizing themselves, and this becomes emblematic for those professing a postmodern sensibility.

We also find suggestions of de-realization in Nietzsche, who speaks of being as “the last breath of a vaporizing reality” and remarks upon the dissolution of the distinction between the “real” and the “apparent” world. In Twilight of the Idols , he traces the history of this distinction from Plato to his own time, where the “true world” becomes a useless and superfluous idea (1889, 485–86). However, with the notion of the true world, he says, we have also done away with the apparent one. What is left is neither real nor apparent, but something in between, and therefore something akin to the virtual reality of more recent vintage.

The notion of a collapse between the real and the apparent is suggested in Nietzsche's first book, The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche 1872), where he presents Greek tragedy as a synthesis of natural art impulses represented by the gods Apollo and Dionysus. Where Apollo is the god of beautiful forms and images, Dionysus is the god of frenzy and intoxication, under whose sway the spell of individuated existence is broken in a moment of undifferentiated oneness with nature. While tragic art is life-affirming in joining these two impulses, logic and science are built upon Apollonian representations that have become frozen and lifeless. Hence, Nietzsche believes only a return of the Dionysian art impulse can save modern society from sterility and nihilism. This interpretation presages postmodern concepts of art and representation, and also anticipates postmodernists' fascination with the prospect of a revolutionary moment auguring a new, anarchic sense of community.

Nietzsche is also a precursor for postmodernism in his genealogical analyses of fundamental concepts, especially what he takes to be the core concept of Western metaphysics, the “I”. On Nietzsche's account, the concept of the “I” arises out of a moral imperative to be responsible for our actions. In order to be responsible we must assume that we are the cause of our actions, and this cause must hold over time, retaining its identity, so that rewards and punishments are accepted as consequences for actions deemed beneficial or detrimental to others (Nietzsche 1889, 482-83; 1887, 24-26, 58-60). In this way, the concept of the “I” comes about as a social construction and moral illusion. According to Nietzsche, the moral sense of the “I” as an identical cause is projected onto events in the world, where the identity of things, causes, effects, etc., takes shape in easily communicable representations. Thus logic is born from the demand to adhere to common social norms which shape the human herd into a society of knowing and acting subjects.

For postmodernists, Nietzsche's genealogy of concepts in “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (Nietzsche 1873, 77–97) is also an important reference. In this text, Nietzsche puts forward the hypothesis that scientific concepts are chains of metaphors hardened into accepted truths. On this account, metaphor begins when a nerve stimulus is copied as an image, which is then imitated in sound, giving rise, when repeated, to the word, which becomes a concept when the word is used to designate multiple instances of singular events. Conceptual metaphors are thus lies because they equate unequal things, just as the chain of metaphors moves from one level to another. Hegel's problem with the repetition of the “this” and the “now” is thus expanded to include the repetition of instances across discontinuous gaps between kinds and levels of things.

In close connection with this genealogy, Nietzsche criticizes the historicism of the nineteenth century in the 1874 essay, “On the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life” (Nietzsche 1874, 57–123). On Nietzsche's view, the life of an individual and a culture depend upon their ability to repeat an unhistorical moment, a kind of forgetfulness, along with their continuous development through time, and the study of history ought therefore to emphasize how each person or culture attains and repeats this moment. There is no question, then, of reaching a standpoint outside of history or of conceiving past times as stages on the way to the present. Historical repetition is not linear, but each age worthy of its designation repeats the unhistorical moment that is its own present as “new.” In this respect, Nietzsche would agree with Charles Baudelaire, who describes modernity as “the transient, the fleeting, the contingent” that is repeated in all ages (Cahoone 2003, 100), and postmodernists read Nietzsche's remarks on the eternal return accordingly.

Nietzsche presents this concept in The Gay Science (Nietzsche 1974 [1882], 273), and in a more developed form in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche 1883–1891, 269–272). Many have taken the concept to imply an endless, identical repetition of everything in the universe, such that nothing occurs that has not already occurred an infinite number of times before. However, others, including postmodernists, read these passages in conjunction with the notion that history is the repetition of an unhistorical moment, a moment that is always new in each case. In their view, Nietzsche can only mean that the new eternally repeats as new, and therefore recurrence is a matter of difference rather than identity. Furthermore, postmodernists join the concept of eternal return with the loss of the distinction between the real and the apparent world. The distinction itself does not reappear, and what repeats is neither real nor apparent in the traditional sense, but is a phantasm or simulacrum.

Nietzsche is a common interest between postmodern philosophers and Martin Heidegger, whose meditations on art, technology, and the withdrawal of being they regularly cite and comment upon. Heidegger's contribution to the sense of de-realization of the world stems from oft repeated remarks such as: “Everywhere we are underway amid beings, and yet we no longer know how it stands with being” (Heidegger 2000 [1953], 217), and “ precisely nowhere does man today any longer encounter himself, i.e., his essence ” (Heidegger 1993, 332). Heidegger sees modern technology as the fulfillment of Western metaphysics, which he characterizes as the metaphysics of presence. From the time of the earliest philosophers, but definitively with Plato, says Heidegger, Western thought has conceived of being as the presence of beings, which in the modern world has come to mean the availability of beings for use. In fact, as he writes in Being and Time , the presence of beings tends to disappear into the transparency of their usefulness as things ready-to-hand (Heidegger 1962 [1927], 95-107). The essence of technology, which he names “the enframing,” reduces the being of entities to a calculative order (Heidegger 1993, 311-341). Hence, the mountain is not a mountain but a standing supply of coal, the Rhine is not the Rhine but an engine for hydro-electric energy, and humans are not humans but reserves of manpower. The experience of the modern world, then, is the experience of being's withdrawal in face of the enframing and its sway over beings. However, humans are affected by this withdrawal in moments of anxiety or boredom, and therein lies the way to a possible return of being, which would be tantamount to a repetition of the experience of being opened up by Parmenides and Heraclitus.

Heidegger sees this as the realization of the will to power, another Nietzschean conception, which, conjoined with the eternal return, represents the exhaustion of the metaphysical tradition (Heidegger 1991a, 199-203). For Heidegger, the will to power is the eternal recurrence as becoming, and the permanence of becoming is the terminal moment of the metaphysics of presence. On this reading, becoming is the emerging and passing away of beings within and among other beings instead of an emergence from being. Thus, for Heidegger, Nietzsche marks the end of metaphysical thinking but not a passage beyond it, and therefore Heidegger sees him as the last metaphysician in whom the oblivion of being is complete (Heidegger 1991a, 204-206; 1991b, 199-203). Hope for a passage into non-metaphysical thinking lies rather with Hölderlin, whose verses give voice to signs granted by being in its withdrawal (Heidegger 1994 [1937–1938], 115-118). While postmodernists owe much to Heidegger's reflections on the non-presence of being and the de-realization of beings through the technological enframing, they sharply diverge from his reading of Nietzsche.

Many postmodern philosophers find in Heidegger a nostalgia for being they do not share. They prefer, instead, the sense of cheerful forgetting and playful creativity in Nietzsche's eternal return as a repetition of the different and the new. Some have gone so far as to turn the tables on Heidegger, and to read his ruminations on metaphysics as the repetition of an original metaphysical gesture, the gathering of thought to its “proper” essence and vocation (see Derrida 1989 [1987]). In this gathering, which follows the lineaments of an exclusively Greco-Christian-German tradition, something more original than being is forgotten, and that is the difference and alterity against which, and with which, the tradition composes itself. Prominent authors associated with postmodernism have noted that the forgotten and excluded “other” of the West, including Heidegger, is figured by the Jew (see Lyotard 1990 [1988], and Lacoue-Labarthe 1990 [1988]). In this way, they are able to distinguish their projects from Heidegger's thinking and to critically account for his involvement with National Socialism and his silence about the Holocaust, albeit in terms that do not address these as personal failings. Those looking for personal condemnations of Heidegger for his actions and his “refusal to accept responsibility” will not find them in postmodernist commentaries. They will, however, find many departures from Heidegger on Nietzsche's philosophical significance (see Derrida 1979 [1978]), and many instances where Nietzsche's ideas are critically activated against Heidegger and his self-presentation.

Nevertheless, Heidegger and Nietzsche are both important sources for postmodernism's critical de-structuring or displacement of the signature concept of modern philosophy, the “subject,” which is generally understood as consciousness, or its identity, ground, or unity, and designated as the “I.” Where Nietzsche finds in this concept the original metaphysical error produced by morality and the communicative needs of the herd, Heidegger sees in it the end and exhaustion of the metaphysical tradition, inaugurated by the Greeks, in which being is interpreted as presence. Here, being is the underlying ground of the being of beings, the subiectum that is enacted in modern philosophy as the subject of consciousness. But in Being and Time Heidegger conceives the human being as Dasein , which is not simply a present consciousness, but an event of ecstatic temporality that is open to a past ( Gewesensein ) that was never present (its already being-there) and a future ( Zu-kunft ) that is always yet to come (the possibility of death). The finitude of Dasein therefore cannot be contained within the limits of consciousness, nor within the limits of the subject, whether it is conceived substantively or formally.

In addition to the critiques of the subject offered by Nietzsche and Heidegger, many postmodernists also borrow heavily from the psycho-analytic theories of Jacques Lacan. Lacan's distinctive gesture is his insistence that the Freudian unconscious is a function, or set of functions, belonging to language and particularly to the verbal exchanges between the analyst and analysand during the analytic session (see Lacan 1953–55). For Lacan, the subject is always the subject of speech, and that means speech directed toward an other in relation to whom the subject differentiates and identifies itself. On this view, language is a feature of the “symbolic order” of society, which is constituted as an economy of signifiers, through which animal need becomes human desire, whose first object is to be recognized by the other. However, desire ultimately aims for something impossible: to possess, to “be,” or to occupy the place of the signifier of signifiers, i.e. the phallus. Insofar as the phallus is nothing but the signifying function as such , it does not exist. It is not an object to be possessed, but is that through which the subject and the other are brought into relation to begin with, and it thus imposes itself upon the subject as a fundamental absence or lack that is at once necessary and irremediable (Lacan 1977, 289). Hence the subject is forever divided from itself and unable to achieve final unity or identity. As the subject of desire, it remains perpetually incomplete, just as Dasein in Heidegger exists “beyond itself” in temporal ecstasis.

The term “postmodern” came into the philosophical lexicon with the publication of Jean-François Lyotard's La Condition Postmoderne in 1979 (in English: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge , 1984), where he employs Wittgenstein's model of language games (see Wittgenstein 1953) and concepts taken from speech act theory to account for what he calls a transformation of the game rules for science, art, and literature since the end of the nineteenth century. He describes his text as a combination of two very different language games, that of the philosopher and that of the expert. Where the expert knows what he knows and what he doesn't know, the philosopher knows neither, but poses questions. In light of this ambiguity, Lyotard states that his portrayal of the state of knowledge “makes no claims to being original or even true,” and that his hypotheses “should not be accorded predictive value in relation to reality, but strategic value in relation to the questions raised” (Lyotard 1984 [1979], 7). The book, then, is as much an experiment in the combination of language games as it is an objective “report.”

On Lyotard's account, the computer age has transformed knowledge into information, that is, coded messages within a system of transmission and communication. Analysis of this knowledge calls for a pragmatics of communication insofar as the phrasing of messages, their transmission and reception, must follow rules in order to be accepted by those who judge them. However, as Lyotard points out, the position of judge or legislator is also a position within a language game, and this raises the question of legitimation. As he insists, “there is a strict interlinkage between the kind of language called science and the kind called ethics and politics” (Lyotard 1984 [1979], 8), and this interlinkage constitutes the cultural perspective of the West. Science is therefore tightly interwoven with government and administration, especially in the information age, where enormous amounts of capital and large installations are needed for research.

Lyotard points out that while science has sought to distinguish itself from narrative knowledge in the form of tribal wisdom communicated through myths and legends, modern philosophy has sought to provide legitimating narratives for science in the form of “the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth,” (Lyotard 1984 [1979], xxiii). Science, however, plays the language game of denotation to the exclusion of all others, and in this respect it displaces narrative knowledge, including the meta-narratives of philosophy. This is due, in part, to what Lyotard characterizes as the rapid growth of technologies and techniques in the second half of the twentieth century, where the emphasis of knowledge has shifted from the ends of human action to its means (Lyotard 1984 [1979], 37). This has eroded the speculative game of philosophy and set each science free to develop independently of philosophical grounding or systematic organization. “I define postmodern as incredulity toward meta-narratives,” says Lyotard (Lyotard 1984 [1979], xxiv). As a result, new, hybrid disciplines develop without connection to old epistemic traditions, especially philosophy, and this means science only plays its own game and cannot legitimate others, such as moral prescription.

The compartmentalization of knowledge and the dissolution of epistemic coherence is a concern for researchers and philosophers alike. As Lyotard notes, “Lamenting the ‘loss of meaning’ in postmodernity boils down to mourning the fact that knowledge is no longer principally narrative” (Lyotard 1984 [1979], 26). Indeed, for Lyotard, the de-realization of the world means the disintegration of narrative elements into “clouds” of linguistic combinations and collisions among innumerable, heterogeneous language games. Furthermore, within each game the subject moves from position to position, now as sender, now as addressee, now as referent, and so on. The loss of a continuous meta-narrative therefore breaks the subject into heterogeneous moments of subjectivity that do not cohere into an identity. But as Lyotard points out, while the combinations we experience are not necessarily stable or communicable, we learn to move with a certain nimbleness among them.

Postmodern sensibility does not lament the loss of narrative coherence any more than the loss of being. However, the dissolution of narrative leaves the field of legitimation to a new unifying criterion: the performativity of the knowledge-producing system whose form of capital is information. Performative legitimation means maximizing the flow of information and minimizing static (non-functional moves) in the system, so whatever cannot be communicated as information must be eliminated. The performativity criterion threatens anything not meeting its requirements, such as speculative narratives, with de-legitimation and exclusion. Nevertheless, capital also demands the continual re-invention of the “new” in the form of new language games and new denotative statements, and so, paradoxically, a certain paralogy is required by the system itself. In this regard, the modern paradigm of progress as new moves under established rules gives way to the postmodern paradigm of inventing new rules and changing the game.

Inventing new codes and reshaping information is a large part of the production of knowledge, and in its inventive moment science does not adhere to performative efficiency. By the same token, the meta-prescriptives of science, its rules, are themselves objects of invention and experimentation for the sake of producing new statements. In this respect, says Lyotard, the model of knowledge as the progressive development of consensus is outmoded. In fact, attempts to retrieve the model of consensus can only repeat the standard of coherence demanded for functional efficiency, and they will thus lend themselves to the domination of capital. On the other hand, the paralogical inventiveness of science raises the possibility of a new sense of justice, as well as knowledge, as we move among the language games now entangling us.

Lyotard takes up the question of justice in Just Gaming (see Lyotard 1985 [1979]) and The Differend: Phrases in Dispute (see Lyotard 1988 [1983]), where he combines the model of language games with Kant's division of the faculties (understanding, imagination, reason) and types of judgment (theoretical, practical, aesthetic) in order to explore the problem of justice set out in The Postmodern Condition . Without the formal unity of the subject, the faculties are set free to operate on their own. Where Kant insists that reason must assign domains and limits to the other faculties, its dependence upon the unity of the subject for the identity of concepts as laws or rules de-legitimizes its juridical authority in the postmodern age. Instead, because we are faced with an irreducible plurality of judgments and “phrase regimes,” the faculty of judgment itself is brought to the fore. Kant's third Critique therefore provides the conceptual materials for Lyotard's analysis, especially the analytic of aesthetic judgment (see Kant 1790).

As Lyotard argues, aesthetic judgment is the appropriate model for the problem of justice in postmodern experience because we are confronted with a plurality of games and rules without a concept under which to unify them. Judgment must therefore be reflective rather than determining. Furthermore, judgment must be aesthetic insofar as it does not produce denotative knowledge about a determinable state of affairs, but refers to the way our faculties interact with each other as we move from one mode of phrasing to another, i.e. the denotative, the prescriptive, the performative, the political, the cognitive, the artistic, etc. In Kantian terms, this interaction registers as an aesthetic feeling. Where Kant emphasizes the feeling of the beautiful as a harmonious interaction between imagination and understanding, Lyotard stresses the mode in which faculties (imagination and reason,) are in disharmony, i.e. the feeling of the sublime. For Kant, the sublime occurs when our faculties of sensible presentation are overwhelmed by impressions of absolute power and magnitude, and reason is thrown back upon its own power to conceive Ideas (such as the moral law) which surpass the sensible world. For Lyotard, however, the postmodern sublime occurs when we are affected by a multitude of unpresentables without reference to reason as their unifying origin. Justice, then, would not be a definable rule, but an ability to move and judge among rules in their heterogeneity and multiplicity. In this respect, it would be more akin to the production of art than a moral judgment in Kant's sense.

In “What is Postmodernism?,” which appears as an appendix to the English edition of The Postmodern Condition , Lyotard addresses the importance of avant-garde art in terms of the aesthetic of the sublime. Modern art, he says, is emblematic of a sublime sensibility, that is, a sensibility that there is something non-presentable demanding to be put into sensible form and yet overwhelms all attempts to do so. But where modern art presents the unpresentable as a missing content within a beautiful form, as in Marcel Proust, postmodern art, exemplified by James Joyce, puts forward the unpresentable by forgoing beautiful form itself, thus denying what Kant would call the consensus of taste. Furthermore, says Lyotard, a work can become modern only if it is first postmodern, for postmodernism is not modernism at its end but in its nascent state, that is, at the moment it attempts to present the unpresentable, “and this state is constant” (Lyotard 1984 [1979], 79). The postmodern, then, is a repetition of the modern as the “new,” and this means the ever-new demand for another repetition.

The Nietzschean method of genealogy, in its application to modern subjectivity, is another facet of philosophical postmodernism. Michel Foucault's application of genealogy to formative moments in modernity's history and his exhortations to experiment with subjectivity place him within the scope of postmodern discourse. In the 1971 essay “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” Foucault spells out his adaptation of the genealogical method in his historical studies. First and foremost, he says, genealogy “opposes itself to the search for ‘origins’” (Foucault 1977, 141). That is, genealogy studies the accidents and contingencies that converge at crucial moments, giving rise to new epochs, concepts, and institutions. As Foucault remarks: “What is found at the historical beginning of things is not the inviolable identity of their origin; it is the dissension of other things. It is disparity” (Foucault 1977, 142). In Nietzschean fashion, Foucault exposes history conceived as the origin and development of an identical subject, e.g., “modernity,” as a fiction modern discourses invent after the fact. Underlying the fiction of modernity is a sense of temporality that excludes the elements of chance and contingency in play at every moment. In short, linear, progressive history covers up the discontinuities and interruptions that mark points of succession in historical time.

Foucault deploys genealogy to create what he calls a “counter-memory” or “a transformation of history into a totally different form of time” (Foucault 1977, 160). This entails dissolving identity for the subject in history by using the materials and techniques of modern historical research. Just as Nietzsche postulates that the religious will to truth in Christianity results in the destruction of Christianity by science (see Nietzsche 1974 [1882], 280–83), Foucault postulates that genealogical research will result in the disintegration of the epistemic subject, as the continuity of the subject is broken up by the gaps and accidents that historical research uncovers. The first example of this research is Histoire de la folie à l'age classique , published in 1961, the full version of which was published in English as History of Madness in 2006. Here, Foucault gives an account of the historical beginnings of modern reason as it comes to define itself against madness in the seventeenth century. His thesis is that the practice of confining the mad is a transformation of the medieval practice of confining lepers in lazar houses. These institutions managed to survive long after the lepers disappeared, and thus an institutional structure of confinement was already in place when the modern concept of madness as a disease took shape. However, while institutions of confinement are held over from a previous time, the practice of confining the mad constitutes a break with the past.

Foucault focuses upon the moment of transition, as modern reason begins to take shape in a confluence of concepts, institutions, and practices, or, as he would say, of knowledge and power. In its nascency, reason is a power that defines itself against an other, an other whose truth and identity is also assigned by reason, thus giving reason the sense of originating from itself. For Foucault, the issue is that madness is not allowed to speak for itself and is at the disposal of a power that dictates the terms of their relationship. As he remarks: “ What is originative is the caesura that establishes the distance between reason and non-reason; reason's subjugation of non-reason, wresting from it its truth as madness, crime, or disease, derives explicitly from this point ” (Foucault 1965, x). The truth of reason is found when madness comes to stand in the place of non-reason, when the difference between them is inscribed in their opposition, but is not identical to its dominant side. In other words, the reason that stands in opposition to madness is not identical to the reason that inscribes their difference. The latter would be reason without an opposite, a free-floating power without definite shape. As Foucault suggests, this free-floating mystery might be represented in the ship of fools motif, which, in medieval times, represented madness. Such is the paradoxical structure of historical transformation.

In his later writings, most notably in The Use of Pleasure (Foucault 1985 [1984]), Foucault employs historical research to open possibilities for experimenting with subjectivity, by showing that subjectivation is a formative power of the self, surpassing the structures of knowledge and power from out of which it emerges. This is a power of thought, which Foucault says is the ability of human beings to problematize the conditions under which they live. For philosophy, this means “the endeavor to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known” (Foucault 1985 [1984], 9). He thus joins Lyotard in promoting creative experimentation as a leading power of thought, a power that surpasses reason, narrowly defined, and without which thought would be inert. In this regard, Foucault stands in league with others who profess a postmodern sensibility in regard to contemporary science, art, and society. We should note, as well, that Foucault's writings are a hybrid of philosophy and historical research, just as Lyotard combines the language games of the expert and the philosopher in The Postmodern Condition . This mixing of philosophy with concepts and methods from other disciplines is characteristic of postmodernism in its broadest sense.

The concept of difference as a productive mechanism, rather than a negation of identity, is also a hallmark of postmodernism in philosophy. Gilles Deleuze deploys this concept throughout his work, beginning with Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962, in English 1983), where he sets Nietzsche against the models of thinking at work in Kant and Hegel. Here, he proposes to think against reason in resistance to Kant's assertion of the self-justifying authority of reason alone (Deleuze 1983 [1962], 93). In a phrase echoed by Foucault, he states that the purpose of his critique of reason “is not justification but a different way of feeling: another sensibility” (Deleuze 1983 [1962], 94). Philosophical critique, he declares, is an encounter between thought and what forces it into action: it is a matter of sensibility rather than a tribunal where reason judges itself by its own laws (see Kant 1787, 9). Furthermore, the critique of reason is not a method, but is achieved by “culture” in the Nietzschean sense: training, discipline, inventiveness, and a certain cruelty (see Nietzsche 1887). Since thought cannot activate itself as thinking , Deleuze says it must suffer violence if it is to awaken and move. Art, science, and philosophy deploy such violence insofar as they are transformative and experimental.

Against Hegel, Deleuze asserts that while dialectic is structured by negation and opposition within a posited identity, “difference is the only principle of genesis or production” (Deleuze 1983 [1962], 157). Opposition occurs on the same logical plane, but difference moves across planes and levels, and not only in one direction. Furthermore, where Hegel takes the work of the negative to be dialectic's driving power, Deleuze declares that difference is thinkable only as repetition repeating itself (as in Nietzsche's eternal return), where difference affirms itself in eternally differing from itself. Its movement is productive, but without logical opposition, negation, or necessity. Instead, chance and multiplicity are repeated, just as a dice-throw repeats the randomness of the throw along with every number. On the other hand, dialectic cancels out chance and affirms the movement of the negative as a working out of identity, as in the Science of Logic where being in its immediacy is posited as equal only to itself (Hegel 1812, 82). For Deleuze, however, sensibility introduces an aleatory moment into thought's development, making accidentality and contingency conditions for thinking. These conditions upset logical identity and opposition, and place the limit of thinking beyond any dialectical system.

In Difference and Repetition (1968, in English 1994), Deleuze develops his project in multiple directions. His work, he says, stems from the convergence of two lines of research: the concept of difference without negation, and the concept of repetition, in which physical and mechanical repetitions are masks for a hidden differential that is disguised and displaced. His major focus is a thoroughgoing critique of representational thinking, including identity, opposition, analogy, and resemblance (Deleuze 1994 [1968], 132). For Deleuze, “appearances of” are not representations, but sensory intensities free of subjective or objective identities (Deleuze 1994 [1968], 144). Without these identities, appearances are simulacra of an non-apparent differential he calls the “dark precursor” or “the in-itself of difference” (Deleuze 1994 [1968], 119). This differential is the non-sensible being of the sensible, a being not identical to the sensible, or to itself, but irreducibly problematic insofar as it forces us to encounter the sensible as “given.”

Furthermore, any move against representational thinking impinges upon the identity of the subject. Where Kant founds the representational unity of space and time upon the formal unity of consciousness (Kant 1787, 135-137), difference re-distributes intuitions of past, present, and future, fracturing consciousness into multiple states not predicable of a single subject. Intensive qualities are individuating by themselves, says Deleuze, and individuality is not characteristic of a self or an ego, but of a differential forever dividing itself and changing its configuration (Deleuze 1994 [1968], 246, 254, 257). In Nietzschean fashion, the “I” refers not to the unity of consciousness, but to a multitude of simulacra without an identical subject for whom this multitude appears. Instead, subjects arise and multiply as “effects” of the intensive qualities saturating space and time. This leads Deleuze to postulate multiple faculties for subjectivity, which are correlates of the sensible insofar as it gives rise to feeling, thought, and action. “Each faculty, including thought, has only involuntary adventures,” he says, and “involuntary operation remains embedded in the empirical” (Deleuze 1994 [1968], 145). Subjectively, the paradox of the differential breaks up the faculties' common function and places them before their own limits: thought before the unthinkable, memory before the immemorial, sensibility before the imperceptible, etc. (Deleuze 1994, 227). This fracturing and multiplying of the subject, he notes, leads to the realization that “schizophrenia is not only a human fact but also a possibility for thought” (Deleuze 1994 [1968], 148), thus expanding the term into a philosophical concept, beyond its clinical application.

The dissolution of the subject and its implications for society is the theme of Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia , which Deleuze published with Félix Guattari in 1972 (in English 1983). The book, in large part, is written against an established intellectual orthodoxy of the political Left in France during the 1950s and 1960s, an orthodoxy consisting of Marx, Freud, and structuralist concepts applied to them by Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan. Deleuze and Guattari argue that this mixture is still limited by representational thinking, including concepts of production based upon lack, and concepts of alienation based upon identity and negation. Furthermore, the Oedipus concept in psychoanalysis, they say, institutes a theater of desire in which the psyche is embedded in a family drama closed off from the extra-familial and extra-psychic forces at work in society. They characterize these forces as “desiring machines” whose function is to connect, disconnect, and reconnect with one another without meaning or intention.

The authors portray society as a series of “territorializations” or inscriptions upon the “body without organs,”or the free-flowing matter of intensive qualities filling space in their varying degrees. The first inscriptions are relations of kinship and filiation structuring primitive societies, often involving the marking and scarring of human bodies. As an interruption and encoding of “flows,” the primitive inscriptions constitute a nexus of desiring machines, both technical and social, whose elements are humans and their organs. The full body of society is the sacred earth, which appropriates to itself all social products as their natural or divine precondition, and to whom all members of society are bound by direct filiation (Deleuze 1983 [1962], 141-42). These first inscriptions are then de-territorialized and re-coded by the “despotic machine,” establishing new relations of alliance and filiation through the body of the ruler or emperor, who alone stands in direct filiation to the deity (Deleuze 1983 [1962], 192) and who institutes the mechanism of the state upon pre-existing social arrangements. Finally, capitalism de-territorializes the inscriptions of the despotic machine and re-codes all relations of alliance and filiation into flows of money (Deleuze 1983 [1962], 224-27). The organs of society and the state are appropriated into the functioning of capital, and humans become secondary to the filiation of money with itself.

Deleuze and Guattari see in the capitalist money system “an axiomatic of abstract quantities that keeps moving further and further in the direction of the deterritorialization of the socius” (Deleuze and Guattari 1983 [1972], 33), which is to say that capital is inherently schizophrenic. However, because capital also re-territorializes all flows into money, schizophrenia remains capitalism's external limit. Nevertheless, it is precisely that limit against which thinking can subject capitalism to philosophical critique. Psychoanalysis, they say, is part of the reign of capital because it re-territorializes the subject as “private” and “individual,” instituting psychic identity through images of the Oedipal family. However, the Oedipal triangle is merely a representational simulacrum of kinship and filiation, re-coded within a system of debt and payment. In this system, they insist, flows of desire have become mere representations of desire, cut off from the body without organs and the extra-familial mechanisms of society. A radical critique of capital cannot therefore be accomplished by psychoanalysis, but requires a schizoanalysis “to overturn the theater of representation into the order of desiring-production” (Deleuze 1983 [1962], 271). Here, the authors see a revolutionary potential in modern art and science, where, in bringing about the “new,” they circulate de-coded and de-territorialized flows within society without automatically re-coding them into money (Deleuze and Guattari 1983 [1972], 379). In this revolutionary aspect, Anti-Oedipus reads as a statement of the desire that took to the streets of Paris in May of 1968, and which continues, even now, to make itself felt in intellectual life.

The term “deconstruction,” like “postmodernism,” has taken on many meanings in the popular imagination. However, in philosophy, it signifies certain strategies for reading and writing texts. The term was introduced into philosophical literature in 1967, with the publication of three texts by Jacques Derrida: Of Grammatology (in English 1974), Writing and Difference (in English 1978), and Speech and Phenomena (in English 1973). This so-called “publication blitz” immediately established Derrida as a major figure in the new movement in philosophy and the human sciences centered in Paris, and brought the idiom “deconstruction” into its vocabulary. Derrida and deconstruction are routinely associated with postmodernism, although like Deleuze and Foucault, he does not use the term and would resist affiliation with “-isms” of any sort. Of the three books from 1967, Of Grammatology is the more comprehensive in laying out the background for deconstruction as a way of reading modern theories of language, especially structuralism, and Heidegger's meditations on the non-presence of being. It also sets out Derrida's difference with Heidegger over Nietzsche. Where Heidegger places Nietzsche within the metaphysics of presence, Derrida insists that “reading, and therefore writing, the text were for Nietzsche ‘originary’ operations,” (Derrida 1974 [1967], 19), and this puts him at the closure of metaphysics (not the end), a closure that liberates writing from the traditional logos, which takes writing to be a sign (a visible mark) for another sign (speech), whose “signified” is a fully present meaning.

This closure has emerged, says Derrida, with the latest developments in linguistics, the human sciences, mathematics, and cybernetics, where the written mark or signifier is purely technical, that is, a matter of function rather than meaning. Precisely the liberation of function over meaning indicates that the epoch of what Heidegger calls the metaphysics of presence has come to closure, although this closure does not mean its termination. Just as in the essay “On the Question of Being” (Heidegger 1998, 291-322) Heidegger sees fit to cross out the word “being,” leaving it visible, nevertheless, under the mark, Derrida takes the closure of metaphysics to be its “erasure,” where it does not entirely disappear, but remains inscribed as one side of a difference, and where the mark of deletion is itself a trace of the difference that joins and separates this mark and what it crosses out. Derrida calls this joining and separating of signs différance (Derrida 1974 [1967], 23), a device that can only be read and not heard when différance and différence are pronounced in French. The “a” is a written mark that differentiates independently of the voice, the privileged medium of metaphysics. In this sense, différance as the spacing of difference, as archi-writing, would be the gram of grammatology. However, as Derrida remarks: “There cannot be a science of difference itself in its operation, as it is impossible to have a science of the origin of presence itself, that is to say of a certain non-origin” (Derrida 1974 [1967], 63). Instead, there is only the marking of the trace of difference, that is, deconstruction.

Because at its functional level all language is a system of differences, says Derrida, all language, even when spoken, is writing, and this truth is suppressed when meaning is taken as an origin, present and complete unto itself. Texts that take meaning or being as their theme are therefore particularly susceptible to deconstruction, as are all other texts insofar as they are conjoined with these. For Derrida, written marks or signifiers do not arrange themselves within natural limits, but form chains of signification that radiate in all directions. As Derrida famously remarks, “there is no outside-text” (Derrida 1974 [1967], 158), that is, the text includes the difference between any “inside” or “outside.” As he explains in a letter to Gerald Graff, attached as an appendix to Limited Inc (see Derrida 1988, 148), this means that “every referent, all reality has the structure of a differential trace.” A text, then, is not a book, and does not, strictly speaking, have an author. On the contrary, the name of the author is a signifier linked with others, and there is no master signifier (such as the phallus in Lacan) present or even absent in a text. This goes for the term “différance ” as well, which can only serve as a supplement for the productive spacing between signs. Therefore, Derrida insists that “ différance is literally neither a word nor a concept” (Derrida 1982 [1972], 3). Instead, it can only be marked as a wandering play of differences that is both a spacing of signifiers in relation to one another and a deferral of meaning or presence when they are read.

How, then, can différance be characterized? Derrida refuses to answer questions as to “who” or “what” differs, because to do so would suggest there is a proper name for difference instead of endless supplements, of which “ différance ” is but one. Structurally, this supplemental displacement functions just as, for Heidegger, all names for being reduce being to the presence of beings, thus ignoring the “ontological difference” between them. However, Derrida takes the ontological difference as one difference among others, as a product of what the idiom “ différance ” supplements. As he remarks: “ différance , in a certain and very strange way, (is) ‘older’ than the ontological difference or than the truth of Being” (Derrida 1982 [1972], 22). Deconstruction, then, traces the repetitions of the supplement. It is not so much a theory about texts as a practice of reading and transforming texts, where tracing the movements of différance produces other texts interwoven with the first. While there is a certain arbitrariness in the play of differences that result, it is not the arbitrariness of a reader getting the text to mean whatever he or she wants. It is a question of function rather than meaning, if meaning is understood as a terminal presence, and the signifying connections traced in deconstruction are first offered by the text itself. A deconstructive reading, then, does not assert or impose meaning, but marks out places where the function of the text works against its apparent meaning, or against the history of its interpretation.

Hyperreality is closely related to the concept of the simulacrum: a copy or image without reference to an original. In postmodernism, hyperreality is the result of the technological mediation of experience, where what passes for reality is a network of images and signs without an external referent, such that what is represented is representation itself. In Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976), Jean Baudrillard uses Lacan's concepts of the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real to develop this concept while attacking orthodoxies of the political Left, beginning with the assumed reality of power, production, desire, society, and political legitimacy. Baudrillard argues that all of these realities have become simulations, that is, signs without any referent, because the real and the imaginary have been absorbed into the symbolic.

Baudrillard presents hyperreality as the terminal stage of simulation, where a sign or image has no relation to any reality whatsoever, but is “its own pure simulacrum” (Baudrillard 1981, 6). The real, he says, has become an operational effect of symbolic processes, just as images are technologically generated and coded before we actually perceive them. This means technological mediation has usurped the productive role of the Kantian subject, the locus of an original synthesis of concepts and intuitions, as well as the Marxian worker, the producer of capital though labor, and the Freudian unconscious, the mechanism of repression and desire. “From now on,” says Baudrillard, “signs are exchanged against each other rather than against the real” (Baudrillard 1976, 7), so production now means signs producing other signs. The system of symbolic exchange is therefore no longer real but “hyperreal.” Where the real is “ that of which it is possible to provide an equivalent reproduction ,” the hyperreal, says Baudrillard, is “ that which is always already reproduced ” (Baudrillard 1976, 73). The hyperreal is a system of simulation simulating itself.

The lesson Baudrillard draws from the events of May 1968 is that the student movement was provoked by the realization that “ we were no longer productive ” (Baudrillard 1976, 29), and that direct opposition within the system of communication and exchange only reproduces the mechanisms of the system itself. Strategically, he says, capital can only be defeated by introducing something inexchangeable into the symbolic order, that is, something having the irreversible function of natural death, which the symbolic order excludes and renders invisible. The system, he points out, simulates natural death with fascinating images of violent death and catastrophe, where death is the result of artificial processes and “accidents.” But, as Baudrillard remarks: “Only the death-function cannot be programmed and localized” (Baudrillard 1976, 126), and by this he means death as the simple and irreversible finality of life. Therefore he calls for the development of “fatal strategies” to make the system suffer reversal and collapse.

Because these strategies must be carried out within the symbolic order, they are matters of rhetoric and art, or a hybrid of both. They also function as gifts or sacrifices, for which the system has no counter-move or equivalence. Baudrillard finds a prime example of this strategy with graffiti artists who experiment with symbolic markings and codes in order to suggest communication while blocking it, and who sign their inscriptions with pseudonyms instead of recognizable names. “They are seeking not to escape the combinatory in order to regain an identity,” says Baudrillard, “but to turn indeterminacy against the system, to turn indeterminacy into extermination ” (Baudrillard 1976, 78). Some of his own remarks, such as “I have nothing to do with postmodernism,” have, no doubt, the same strategic intent. To the extent that “postmodernism” has become a sign exchangeable for other signs, he would indeed want nothing to do with it. Nevertheless, his concepts of simulation and hyperreality, and his call for strategic experimentation with signs and codes, bring him into close proximity with figures such as Lyotard, Foucault, and Derrida.

Hermeneutics, the science of textual interpretation, also plays a role in postmodern philosophy. Unlike deconstruction, which focuses upon the functional structures of a text, hermeneutics seeks to arrive at an agreement or consensus as to what the text means, or is about. Gianni Vattimo formulates a postmodern hermeneutics in The End of Modernity (1985, in English 1988 [1985]), where he distinguishes himself from his Parisian counterparts by posing the question of post-modernity as a matter for ontological hermeneutics. Instead of calling for experimentation with counter-strategies and functional structures, he sees the heterogeneity and diversity in our experience of the world as a hermeneutical problem to be solved by developing a sense continuity between the present and the past. This continuity is to be a unity of meaning rather than the repetition of a functional structure, and the meaning is ontological. In this respect, Vattimo's project is an extension of Heidegger's inquiries into the meaning of being. However, where Heidegger situates Nietzsche within the limits of metaphysics, Vattimo joins Heidegger's ontological hermeneutics with Nietzsche's attempt to think beyond nihilism and historicism with his concept of eternal return. The result, says Vattimo, is a certain distortion of Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche, allowing Heidegger and Nietzsche to be interpreted through one another (Vattimo 1988 [1985], 176). This is a significant point of difference between Vattimo and the French postmodernists, who read Nietzsche against Heidegger, and prefer Nietzsche's textual strategies over Heidegger's pursuit of the meaning of being.

On Vattimo's account, Nietzsche and Heidegger can be brought together under the common theme of overcoming. Where Nietzsche announces the overcoming of nihilism through the active nihilism of the eternal return, Heidegger proposes to overcome metaphysics through a non-metaphysical experience of being. In both cases, he argues, what is to be overcome is modernity, characterized by the image that philosophy and science are progressive developments in which thought and knowledge increasingly appropriate their own origins and foundations. Overcoming modernity, however, cannot mean progressing into a new historical phase. As Vattimo observes: “Both philosophers find themselves obliged, on the one hand, to take up a critical distance from Western thought insofar as it is foundational; on the other hand, however, they find themselves unable to criticize Western thought in the name of another, and truer, foundation” (Vattimo 1988 [1985], 2). Overcoming modernity must therefore mean a Verwindung , in the sense of twisting or distorting modernity itself, rather than an Überwindung or progression beyond it.

While Vattimo takes post-modernity as a new turn in modernity, it entails the dissolution of the category of the new in the historical sense, which means the end of universal history. “While the notion of historicity has become ever more problematic for theory,” he says, “at the same time for historiography and its own methodological self-awareness the idea of history as a unitary process is rapidly dissolving” (Vattimo 1988 [1985], 6). This does not mean historical change ceases to occur, but that its unitary development is no longer conceivable, so only local histories are possible. The de-historicization of experience has been accelerated by technology, especially television, says Vattimo, so that “everything tends to flatten out at the level of contemporaneity and simultaneity” (Vattimo 1988 [1985], 10). As a result, we no longer experience a strong sense of teleology in worldly events, but, instead, we are confronted with a manifold of differences and partial teleologies that can only be judged aesthetically. The truth of postmodern experience is therefore best realized in art and rhetoric.

The Nietzschean sense of overcoming modernity is “to dissolve modernity through a radicalization of its own innate tendencies,” says Vattimo (Vattimo 1988 [1985], 166). These include the production of “the new” as a value and the drive for critical overcoming in the sense of appropriating foundations and origins. In this respect, however, Nietzsche shows that modernity results in nihilism: all values, including “truth” and “the new,” collapse under critical appropriation. The way out of this collapse is the moment of eternal recurrence, when we affirm the necessity of error in the absence of foundations. Vattimo also finds this new attitude toward modernity in Heidegger's sense of overcoming metaphysics, insofar as he suggests that overcoming the enframing lies with the possibility of a turn within the enframing itself. Such a turn would mean deepening and distorting the technological essence, not destroying it or leaving it behind. Furthermore, this would be the meaning of being, understood as the history of interpretation (as “weak” being) instead of a grounding truth, and the hermeneutics of being would be a distorted historicism. Unlike traditional hermeneutics, Vattimo argues that reconstructing the continuity of contemporary experience cannot be accomplished without unifying art and rhetoric with information from the sciences, and this requires philosophy “to propose a ‘rhetorically persuasive’, unified view of the world, which includes in itself traces, residues, or isolated elements of scientific knowledge” (Vattimo 1988 [1985], 179). Vattimo's philosophy is therefore the project of a postmodern hermeneutics, in contrast to the Parisian thinkers who do not concern themselves with meaning or history as continuous unities.

Rhetoric and aesthetics pertain to the sharing of experience through activities of participation and imitation. In the postmodern sense, such activities involve sharing or participating in differences that have opened between the old and the new, the natural and the artificial, or even between life and death. The leading exponent of this line of postmodern thought is Mario Perniola. Like Vattimo, Perniola insists that postmodern philosophy must not break with the legacies of modernity in science and politics. As he says in Enigmas , “the relationship between thought and reality that the Enlightenment, idealism, and Marxism have embodied must not be broken” (Perniola 1995, 43). However, he does not base this continuity upon an internal essence, spirit, or meaning, but upon the continuing effects of modernity in the world. One such effect, visible in art and in the relation between art and society, is the collapse of the past and future into the present, which he characterizes as “Egyptian” or “baroque” in nature. This temporal effect is accomplished through the collapse of the difference between humans and things, where “humans are becoming more similar to things, and equally, the inorganic world, thanks to electronic technology, seems to be taking over the human role in the perception of events” (Perniola 1995, viii ). This amounts to a kind of “Egyptianism,” as described by Hegel in his Aesthetics (see Hegel 1823–9, 347-361), where the spiritual and the natural are mixed to such a degree that they cannot be separated, as, for example, in the figure of the Sphinx. However, in the postmodern world the inorganic is not natural, but already artificial, insofar as our perceptions are mediated by technological operations.

Likewise, says Perniola, art collections in modern museums produce a “baroque effect,” where “The field that is opened up by a collection is not that of cultivated public opinion, nor of social participation, but a space that attracts precisely because it cannot be controlled or possessed” (Perniola 1995, 87). That is, in the collection, art is removed from its natural or historical context and creates a new sense of space and time, not reducible to linear history or any sense of origin. The collection, then, is emblematic of postmodern society, a moment of its “truth.” Furthermore, Perniola insists that baroque sensibility is characteristic of Italian society and culture in general. “The very idea of truth as something essentially naked,” he says, “is at loggerheads with the Baroque idea, so firmly rooted in Italy, that truth is something essentially clothed” (Perniola 1995, 145). This corresponds to a sensibility that is intermediate between internal feelings and external things. “The Italian enigma,” he says, “lies in the fact that the human component is equipped with an external emotionality that does not belong to him or her intimately, but in which they nonetheless participate” (Perniola 1995, 145). To account for this enigmatic experience, the philosopher must become “the intermediary, the passage, the transit to something different and foreign” (Perniola 1995, 40). Hence, philosophical reading and writing are not activities of an identical subject, but processes of mediation and indeterminacy between self and other, and philosophical narrative is an overcoming of their differences.

These differences cannot be overcome, in Hegelian fashion, by canceling them under a higher-order synthesis, but must be eroded or defaced in the course of traversing them. In Ritual Thinking , Perniola illustrates this process through the concepts of transit, the simulacrum, and ritual without myth. Transit derives from a sense of the simultaneity of the present, where we are suspended in a state of temporariness and indeterminacy, and move “from the same to the same”; the simulacrum is the result of an endless mimesis in which there are only copies of copies without reference to an original; and ritual without myth is the repetition of patterns of action having no connection to the inner life of a subject or of society. Thus Perniola sees social and political interaction as repetitive patterns of action having no inherent meaning but constituting, nonetheless, an intermediary realm where oppositions, particularly life and death, are overcome in a to-and-fro movement within their space of difference.

To illustrate these concepts Perniola refers to practices associated with Romanism, particularly Roman religion. “Ritual without myth,” he says, “is the very essence of Romanism” (Perniola 2001, 81). It is a passage between life and death via their mutual simulation, for example, in the labyrinthine movements of the ritual known as the troiae lusus . These movements, he says, mediate between life and death by reversing their pattern of natural succession, and mediate their difference through actions having no intrinsic meaning. Unlike Vattimo's project of constructing meaning to overcome historical differences, Perniola's concept of transit into the space of difference is one of “art” in the sense of artifice or technique, and is not aimed at a synthesis or unification of opposing elements. In this respect, Perniola has an affinity with the French postmodernists, who emphasize functional repetition over the creation of meaning. However, as Perniola's notion of ritual without myth illustrates, the functional repetitions of social interaction and technology do not disseminate differences, but efface them. This is clear in his account of the ritualized passage between life and death, as compared with Baudrillard, who calls for strategies introducing the irreversibility of death into the system of symbolic exchange. In this respect, Perniola's postmodernism is strongly aesthetic, and remains, with Vattimo, in the aesthetic and historical dimensions of experience.

The most prominent and comprehensive critic of philosophical postmodernism is Jürgen Habermas. In The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Habermas 1987 [1985]), he confronts postmodernism at the level of society and “communicative action.” He does not defend the concept of the subject, conceived as consciousness or an autonomous self, against postmodernists' attacks, but defends argumentative reason in inter-subjective communication against their experimental, avant-garde strategies. For example, he claims that Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida and Foucault commit a performative contradiction in their critiques of modernism by employing concepts and methods that only modern reason can provide. He criticizes Nietzsche's Dionysianism as a compensatory gesture toward the loss of unity in Western culture that, in pre-modern times, was provided by religion. Nietzsche's sense of a new Dionysus in modern art, moreover, is based upon an aesthetic modernism in which art acquires its experimental power by separating itself from the values of science and morality, a separation accomplished by the modern Enlightenment, resulting in the loss of organic unity Nietzsche seeks to restore via art itself (see Habermas 1987 [1985], 81-105). Habermas sees Heidegger and Derrida as heirs to this “Dionysian messianism.” Heidegger, for example, anticipates a new experience of being, which has withdrawn. However, says Habermas, the withdrawal of being is the result of an inverted philosophy of the subject, where Heidegger's destruction of the subject leads to hope for a unity to come, a unity of nothing other than the subject that is now missing (Habermas 1987 [1985], 160). Derrida, he says, develops the notion of différance or “archi-writing” in similar fashion: here, we see the god Dionysus revealing himself once again in his absence, as meaning infinitely deferred (Habermas 1987 [1985], 180-81).

Habermas also criticizes Derrida for leveling the distinction between philosophy and literature in a textualism that brings logic and argumentative reason into the domain of rhetoric. In this way, he says, Derrida hopes to avoid the logical problem of self-reference in his critique of reason. However, as Habermas remarks: “Whoever transposes the radical critique of reason into the domain of rhetoric in order to blunt the paradox of self-referentiality, also dulls the sword of the critique of reason itself” (Habermas 1987 [1985], 210). In similar fashion, he criticizes Foucault for not subjecting his own genealogical method to genealogical unmasking, which would reveal Foucault's re-installation of a modern subject able to critically gaze at its own history. Thus, he says, “Foucault cannot adequately deal with the persistent problems that come up in connection with an interpretive approach to the object domain, a self-referential denial of universal validity claims, and a normative justification of critique” (Habermas 1987 [1985], 286).

Habermas's critique of postmodernism on the basis of performative contradiction and the paradox of self-reference sets the tone and the terms for much of the critical debate now under way. While postmodernists have rejected these criticisms, or responded to them with rhetorical counter-strategies. Lyotard, for example, rejects the notion that intersubjective communication implies a set of rules already agreed upon, and that universal consensus is the ultimate goal of discourse (see Lyotard 1984 [1979], 65-66). That postmodernists openly respond to Habermas is due to the fact that he takes postmodernism seriously and does not, like other critics, reject it as mere nonsense. Indeed, that he is able to read postmodernist texts closely and discursively testifies to their intelligibility. He also agrees with the postmodernists that the focus of debate should be upon modernity as it is realized in social practices and institutions, rather than upon theories of cognition or formal linguistics as autonomous domains. In this respect, Habermas's concern with inter-subjective communication helps clarify the basis upon which the modernist-postmodernist debates continue to play out.

• Baudrillard, Jean, 1976, Symbolic Exchange and Death , Ian Hamilton Grant (trans.), London: Sage Publications, 1993. (Page reference is to the 1993 translation.)
• –––, 1981, Simulacra and Simulation , Sheila Faria Glaser (trans.), Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. (Page reference is to the 1994 translation.)
• Cahoone, Lawrence (ed.), 2003, From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology, 2nd Edition , London: Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.
• Deleuze, Gilles, 1983 [1962], Nietzsche and Philosophy , Hugh Tomlinson (trans.), New York: Columbia University Press.
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• Derrida, Jacques, 1973 [1967], Speech and Phenomena and other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs , David B. Allison (trans.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
• –––, 1974 [1967], Of Grammatology , Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (trans.), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• –––, 1978 [1967], Writing and Difference , Alan Bass (trans.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• –––, 1982 [1972], Margins of Philosophy , Alan Bass (trans.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• –––, 1979 [1978], Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles , Barbara Harlow (trans.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• –––, 1987 [1989], Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question , Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (trans.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• –––, 1988, Limited Inc , Gerald Graff (ed.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
• Foucault, Michel, 2006 [1961], History of Madness , Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa (trans.), London and New York: Routledge.
• –––, 1965, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason , Richard Howard (trans.), New York: Random House.
• –––, 1977, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews , Donald F. Bouchard (ed.), Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 1985 [1984], The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, Volume Two , Robert Hurley (trans.), New York: Random House.
• Habermas, Jürgen, 1987 [1985], The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity , Frederick Lawrence (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hegel, G.W.F., 1812, Science of Logic , A.V. Miller (trans.), London: Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1969. (Page reference is to the 1969 translation.)
• –––, 1807, Phenomenology of Spirit , A.V. Miller (trans.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. (Page reference is to the translation.)
• –––, 1823–9, Lectures on Fine Art , (Volume 1), T.M. Knox (trans.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. (Page reference is to the translation.)
• Heidegger, Martin, 1962 [1927], Being and Time , John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (trans.), San Francisco: Harper & Row.
• –––, 1991a, Nietzsche, Volume I: The Will to Power as Art, and Volume II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same , David Farrell Krell (trans.), San Francisco: Harper Collins.
• –––, 1991b, Nietzsche, Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics, and Volume IV: Nihilism , David Farrell Krell (ed.), San Francisco: Harper Collins.
• –––, 1993, Basic Writings, 2nd Edition , David Farrell Krell (ed.), San Francisco: Harper & Row.
• –––, 1994 [1937–1938], Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected “Problems” of “Logic,” Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer (trans.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• –––, 1998, Pathmarks , William McNeill (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2000 [1953], Introduction to Metaphysics , Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (trans.), New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Kant, Immanuel, 1787, Critique of Pure Reason , 2nd edition, Norman Kemp Smith (trans.), London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1929; reprinted 1964. (Page reference is to the reprinted translation of 1964.
• –––, 1790, Critique of Judgment , Werner S. Pluhar (trans.), Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987.
• Kaufmann, Walter (ed.), 1954, The Portable Nietzsche , New York: Viking Press.
• Kierkegaard, Soren, 1846, The Present Age , Alexander Dru (trans.), New York: Harper & Row, 1962. (Page reference is to the translation.)
• Lacan, J., 1977, Écrits: A Selection , Alan Sheridan (trans.), New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
• Lacan, J., 1953–1955, The Seminar , Books I ( Freud's Papers on Technique ) and II ( The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis ), edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, transl. by J. Forrester (Book I) and Sylvana Tomaselli (Book II), New York: W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1988.
• Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, 1990 [1988], Heidegger, Art and Politics , Chris Turner (trans.), London: Blackwell.
• Lyotard, J.-F., 1984 [1979], The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge , Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (trans.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• –––, 1985 [1979], Just Gaming , Wlad Godzich (trans.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• –––, 1988 [1983], The Differend: Phrases in Dispute , Georges Van Den Abbeele (trans.) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• –––, 1990 [1988], Heidegger and “the jews” , Andreas Michel and Mark Roberts (trans.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Marx, Karl, 1867, Das Kapital , Volume 1. The section quoted is from chapter 1, “The Commodity”, Page numbers from the reprint, The Portable Karl Marx , Eugene Kamenka (ed.), New York: Penguin USA, 1983.
• Nietzsche, Friedrich, 1872, “The Birth of Tragedy”, reprinted in The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner , Walter Kaufmann (trans.), New York: Random House, 1967.
• –––, 1873, “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense”, reprinted in Philosophy and Truth: Selections From Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870s , Daniel Breazeale (ed.), New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1979.
• –––, 1874, “On the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life”, in Untimely Meditations , R.J. Hollingdale (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
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• –––, 1967 [1887], On the Genealogy of Morals , Walter Kaufmann (trans.), New York: Random House.
• –––, 1889, “Twilight of the Idols”, translation and pages numbers from Kaufman 1954: 463–564.
• Perniola, Mario, 1995 [1990], Enigmas: The Egyptian Moment in Society and Art , Christopher Woodall (trans.), London: Verso.
• –––, 2001, Ritual Thinking: Sexuality, Death, World , Massimo Verdicchio (trans.), Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books.
• Taylor, Victor E., and Winquist, Charles E., 2001, Encyclopedia of Postmodernism , London: Routledge.
• Vattimo, Gianni, 1988 [1985], The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture , Jon R. Snyder (trans.), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1953, Philosophical Investigations , G.E.M. Anscombe (trans.), New York: Macmillan.

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Althusser, Louis | Baudrillard, Jean | Croce, Benedetto: aesthetics | -->deconstruction --> | Deleuze, Gilles | Derrida, Jacques | Enlightenment | Foucault, Michel | -->Freud, Sigmund --> | Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich | Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: dialectics | Heidegger, Martin | Heraclitus | hermeneutics | Kant, Immanuel | Kierkegaard, Søren | Lyotard, Jean François | Marx, Karl | Nietzsche, Friedrich | Parmenides | Plato | -->rhetoric --> | speech acts | Vico, Giambattista | Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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The Postmodern Self: A Theoretical Consideration

Abstract: The postmodern self consists solely of fragmented, situational images that result in an emotional flatness or depthlessness. Goffman’s work has been presented as a precursor of postmodernism and recent literature has used Goffman to argue for the postmodern, non-essential, transient self. This essay presents a critique of the postmodern assumption that symbols have become divorced from everyday interaction and argues that Goffman did not disallow an essential self; throughout his writings he recognized its place outside the interaction order. It is further argued that the phenomena of the postmodern self can be understood in terms of generalized, abstracted principles. Self is presented as a function of an individual's interaction - ritual density and linguistic code. Based on Mead's notion of the self as a cognitive, internalized conversation of gestures, the self is conceptualized as varying along two dimensions: the interaction ritual continuum taken from Durkheim, Goffman, and Collins, and the linguistic code continuum taken from Bernstein, Douglas, and Bourdieu. The argument is summarized in a series of propositional statements.

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Be thinking

Postmodernism and the question of identity.

Do you really know who you are? Can anyone? One of the most fascinating stories in contemporary cultural history is how the social conditions of the modern (and postmodern) world and postmodern philosophy have conspired to destabilize our sense of self. Do we as Christians have a solution? Do we have a perspective that answers the legitimate concerns of these postmodern thinkers, while at the same time challenging their unbelief?

I believe that Christians are uniquely positioned to provide the kinds of answers that rootless postmoderns are seeking ... if we can articulate these answers in a language they can understand. In this workshop, we’ll do three things:

• I’ll review a brief history of the self from the modern, stable self to the postmodern, fragmented, shifting self. Along the way, we’ll pay special attention to how certain postmodern thinkers (such as Lacan, Foucault and Ricoeur) view the self as a linguistic construction.
• I’ll present an apologetical response to those postmodern thinkers, noting the insights and problems inherent in their perspectives.
• Finally, I’ll present a brief understanding of identity from a biblical perspective, how Christianity sees the self as both a stable given and as an on-going project.

The New You Review: Postmodernism and the Question of Identity

In today’s world, identity is no longer a given, but an open question. This sense of rootlessness and instability is due to a number of factors: postmodern philosophies, and the conditions of late modernity and postmodernity. We need to be able to give a persuasive answer to the question of identity from a Christian perspective.

I. A Short, Short History of the Self in the (Post)Modern West

A note on terms:.

-ism = ideology/philosophy (e.g. modernism, Marxism)

-ity = social conditions (e.g. postmodernity)

-ization = social transitions (e.g. secularization)

The stable self of modernism

“Cogito Ergo Sum”

Modernity’s corrosion of identity

Especially associated with the Industrial Revolution

1. Urbanization undermined traditional community in which identity was formed. Community was replaced by fluid sets of relationships.

2. Changes in work patterns resulted in a change in family structure, a split between the private (home) world and the public, (work) world.

3. Shift in public values: at the workplace, traditional ethics (a source of the self) was replaced by the value of efficiency and technique.

4. The result of these changes (secularization) was a draining of meaning from public life (privatization). Meaning and identity (including religion) now became a private, leisure time activity.

5. Formerly 'secular' activities took on a sacred, identity-forming character.

Enter the 'Masters of Suspicion'

1. Marx : Identity (sense of self) = social/economic location (class)

“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness.” (From Preface and Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy).

2. Freud: Identity is not stable or rational, but a ever-conflicted tension between id and ego, conscious and subconscious mind.

3. Nietzsche: There is no Truth, only interpretations of the truth. The ethical self must be shown through “genealogy” to be a historical construction. The self is a Dionysian “will to power.”

4. The Masters of Suspicion 'decentered' identity and provided a critical foundation upon which postmodern thinkers built and refined.

Modernity progresses into postmodernity

As modernity has progressed into postmodernity, identity has become even more unstable, even more a question without a definite answer. According to David Lyon, the postmodern social condition is dominated by two realities:

1. The rise of new media technologies . These new media messages have two effects:

a. They question and problematize traditional authorities (how can any one perspective claim absolute Truth?). b. The messages provide “frames” for organizing experiencing, giving a sense of reality (while also blurring the line between the real and the image). These messages shape identity, which is now not seen as fixed, but as fragmentary and fluid.

2. The dominance of consumerism in society. We tend to define ourselves as consumer rather than producers (e.g. the emphasis on image). The new consumer-oriented identity has two aspects:

a.The 'plastic self', make identity as flexible as possible to experience as much as possible, and b.The 'expressive self' that seeks authenticity and completion of the inner-narrative.

3. The combination of these two dynamics cause identity to come to the foreground as a question that has no final answer. This is both a source of exhilaration (we are free to construct ourselves) and anxiety (we really don’t know who we are at the deepest level).

The Postmodern 'Linguistic Turn'

The self comes to be seen as a construction of language.

1. Structuralism (Saussure): The language structure ( langue ) precedes the speaker and mediates reality as a closed, oppositional system. Our identity is given by language.

2. Poststructuralism questions even the stability of the language system, further destabilizing the sense of self.

a. Foucault: Identity is a creature of power-knowledge (the way the circulations of power created discursive fields which construct identity).

“[P]ower produces knowledge ... power and knowledge directly imply one another ... there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.” Discipline and Punish, p.27. “[T]ruth isn’t outside of power, or lacking power: contrary to a myth whose history and functions would repay further study, truth isn’t the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its régime of truth, its “general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.” Power/Knowledge, p.131.

b. Lacan: The self, born vulnerable, forms identity through identifying with “images” on a doomed quest for a unified, stable sense of self.

c. Ricoeur: The self is essentially a fiction through which we understand our lives as coherent stories (“narrative identity”). We are the stories we inhabit and tell about ourselves.

II. An Apologetic Response

A. It is insufficient simply to condemn – we must engage their position, noting insights and errors:

1. Insight: Identity is not static. They fear a false (modernist) autonomy. 2. Error:    a. From where do we choose or resist what culture gives us?    b. Identity is a monological creativity, and replaces modernist autonomy with one far more radical.

III. A Biblical Understanding of the Self as Given and an Ongoing Project

A. Creatural identity: Being created in God’s image is a relational dynamic. As uniquely “other responsive” creatures, our identity is both given in the image and an on-going relational project.

B. Fallen identity: Under sin, those relations fragment and distort our project.

C. Redeemed / Redemptive Identity: But God substantially heals that fragmentation and gives us a new identity that is both:

1. Stable / given, in light of the unchangeable facts of the cross and resurrection, and God’s adoption of me. 2. An on-going project as I try to bring the healing presence of the Kingdom to bear on those around me.

In this way, the Christian understanding of identity is uniquely equipped to offer a challenging response to those caught in postmodernism and addicted to the flux. The identity it presents is neither naïve nor sovereign, but a realistic and healing contribution to the rootlessness and isolation of postmodernity.

Dreyfus, Herbert L. and Paul Rabinow. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd ed. With an Afterword and an Interview with Michel Foucault. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-77. Ed. Colin Gordon. Trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, Kate Soper. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

_________. The History of Sexuality, vol. 1. New York: Vintage, 1980.

Freud, Sigmund. The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. Ed. and trans. A. A. Brill. New York: Modern Library, 1966.

Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock, 1977.

Lyon, David. The Steeple’s Shadow: On the Myths and Realities of Secularization. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987.

________. Jesus in Disneyland: Religion in Postmodern Times. Cambridge, Polity Press, 2000.

Marx, Karl. Early Writings. Trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton. New York: Vintage, 1975.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Philosophy of Nietzsche. New York: Modern Library, n.d.

Ricoeur, Paul. A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination. Ed. Mario J. Valdés. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.

_________. Oneself as Another. Trans. Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Rosenau, Pauline Marie. Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Storey, John. An Introduction to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, 2d ed. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1998. Some good discussions of Lacan, Foucault and poststructuralism.

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Theories of Contextual Behavior in Erving Goffman’s the Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

This essay about Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life examines the social roles and behaviors people adopt in different settings. Utilizing the theater as a metaphor, Goffman explains how individuals perform “front stage” and “back stage” behaviors based on societal expectations and personal comfort zones. “Front stage” involves public, socially acceptable actions tailored to audience expectations, while “back stage” allows for more authentic, private expressions. The essay also discusses “impression management” and “face-work,” which describe the efforts people make to control how others perceive them and to maintain their self-image during interactions. By applying these concepts, especially in the context of modern digital interactions, Goffman’s work provides valuable insights into the complexities of social life and identity management. This analysis highlights the relevance of Goffman’s theories in understanding everyday social interactions and the performances that shape them.

How it works

Erving Goffman’s seminal work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , provides a fascinating lens through which to view our daily interactions. In his book, Goffman uses the metaphor of the theater to describe how individuals perform different roles in various social contexts. His insights into contextual behavior reveal much about the complexities of social life and the subtle, yet powerful, forces that shape our actions and interactions.

Goffman’s concept of the “front stage” and “back stage” behavior is central to understanding how we present ourselves in society.

In the front stage, individuals perform and engage in behaviors that are socially acceptable and expected by their audience. This is where the social roles are adhered to, and the individual’s behavior is meticulously crafted to fit the norms of the society or the situation. For example, a teacher in the classroom behaves in ways that are professional and authoritative, which differs significantly from how they might act in a more relaxed, personal setting with friends, which Goffman refers to as the “back stage.” Here, the individual can drop their societal role and express behaviors that might be suppressed in the front stage.

Another crucial aspect of Goffman’s theory is the concept of “impression management,” which is the effort to control or manipulate the impressions others form of us. The notion suggests that in every interaction, individuals are not merely communicating but are also managing how they are perceived by others. This is done through both verbal communication and non-verbal cues such as gestures, attire, and tone of voice. The goal is often to increase likability and credibility, thereby influencing others in a manner that meets one’s personal or professional needs.

Goffman also discusses the idea of “face-work,” which refers to the strategies employed to maintain one’s self-image in social interactions. “Face” is the image of ourselves that we wish to project, and maintaining it requires continuous adjustments and repairs in our interactions. Face-work becomes particularly important in unexpected situations where there’s a risk of embarrassment or disapproval. For example, if someone makes a mistake during a public speech, they might make a joke to regain their composure and keep the audience’s favorable view intact.

The implications of Goffman’s theories are profound, particularly in the digital age where social media platforms have become ubiquitous front stages. Here, the line between front and back stage behaviors often blurs, as the performances are meticulously curated but presented in what appears to be a back stage setting. This new dynamic challenges our traditional understandings of public and private personas and prompts a reevaluation of how we manage impressions online versus in-person.

Goffman’s work remains incredibly relevant as it encourages us to think critically about the nature of our everyday interactions and the roles we play. It sheds light on the performative aspects of life and helps us understand the strategies people use to navigate the complexities of social life. Understanding these theories can enhance our awareness of our own and others’ behaviors, leading to more empathetic and effective interactions in both personal and professional contexts.

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European Identity and Citizenship pp 19–63 Cite as

Modernist and Postmodernist Accounts of Identity

• Sanja Ivic 2  
• First Online: 09 June 2016

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In the following lines, various traditions and models of identity and citizenship will be presented: classical, modern, postnational, and postmodern. These various traditions will be examined and presented as dynamic and still alive within both European identity and European citizenship, which are multilayered concepts. It will be argued that concepts of both European identity and citizenship cannot completely be understood without reference to these various identity and citizenship traditions.

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‘Like most seventeenth-century thinkers, however, Descartes does not elaborate on the notion of consciousness, and in his case it seems difficult to determine precisely, on the basis of his writings, what kind of self-relation consciousness is. After Descartes, consciousness continued to be understood as a form of relating to one’s own thoughts, but for the most part the concept itself was left unexplained’ (Thiel 2011 , pp. 48–49).

‘Grand narrative’ is a totalizing explanation of historical, social, scientific, political, and other concepts and events.

See Chapter 3 .

‘“Cartesian moment” takes on its position and meaning at this point, without in any way my wanting to say that it is the question of Descartes, that he was its inventor or that he was the first to do this. I think the modern age of the history of truth begins when knowledge itself and knowledge alone gives access to the truth. That is to say, it is when the philosopher (or the scientist, or simply someone who seeks the truth) can recognize the truth and have access to it in himself and solely through this activity of knowing, without anything else being demanded of him and without him having to change or alter his being or subject.’ (Foucault 2001 , p. 17)

These two hermeneutic approaches ( gnōthi seauton and epimeleia heautou ) represent the origin of two ethics—ethics of justice and ethics of care. The ethics of justice is the origin of policies that characterize the citizen as an independent, disembodied subject (Kittay et al. 2005 ). The ethics of justice based on modern hermeneutics of the subject presumes a self-sufficient, independent, atomistic individual (Sevenhuijsen 1998 ).

This argument starts with a premise that if someone really knows that Y, then he can rule out the possibility that there is a powerful evil genius deceiving him about Y.

‘For example, many very different people are slotted into the category of woman and their differences across the other identity categories—race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, wellness, and so on, are subsumed under the essence of a single identity category, gender, in an attempt to produce order and regularity’ (St. Pierre 2000 , p. 481).

Descartes concludes: Cogito ergo sum !

‘By the term conscious experience ( cogitationis ) Descartes understands “everything that takes place within ourselves so that we are aware of it” (Ricoeur 1974a , p. 101).

However, Descartes expresses the belief that body and soul are linked: ‘I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am very closely joined, and, as it were, intermingled with it, so that I and the body form a unit’ ( The Philosophical 1984 , p. 56).

This point of view was common throughout the seventeenth century, and it is derived from the Scholastic tradition.

‘For we never finding, nor conceiving it possible, that two things of the same kind should exist in the same place at the same time, we rightly conclude, that, whatever exists anywhere at any time, excludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone. (…) That, therefore, that had one beginning, is the same thing; and that which had a different beginning in time and place from that, is not the same, but diverse’ (Locke 1836 , p. 220).

However, it should be emphasized that the unconscious aspect of the self was not discovered until the twentieth century and Freud’s theory.

The unconscious mind includes affects, memories, and other thoughtful process that are not controlled by reason. The unconscious phenomena include: subliminal perceptions, repressed feelings, complexes, hidden desires, and phobias. The unconscious processes are manifested in dreams, vision, imagination, jokes, slips of tongue, and so forth.

The quest for objectivity dominates Western thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well. Positivism was found by Auguste Comte in the first half of the nineteenth century. Its main characteristic is methodological monism. The proponents of positivism argue about the universality of the method employed in natural sciences. Consequently, they claim that this method should be applied to humanities as well. The philosophers and historians who accept this idea argue about the unity of scientific method. They ignore the subjective experience and argue that scientific explanation is a ‘causal’ explanation. Logical positivism of 1920s and 1930s advocates ideas different from positivism. Nevertheless, logical positivism has been in the spirit of positivism. The contributors of analytical philosophy argue that the whole human knowledge can be reduced to logical or scientific explanations. They argue about the elimination of metaphysics and subjective experience and advocate methodological monism.

This term is polyphonic. It does not have fixed meaning, but it includes a range of theoretical positions, presented in the work of Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, and so on. Although there are different forms of poststructuralism, they share certain assumptions about subjectivity, meaning, and language.

Although originating from classical philosophy, the concept of ‘essentialism’ is used in the multicultural and postmodern theories as a signifier of uniform, monocultural, and homogenous visions of identity.

The example of the oppositional riddle includes: ‘I am rough, I am smooth; I am wet, I am dry; my station is low, my title high; my king my lawful master is; I’m used by all, though only his. (Highway)’ (Dundes 1997 , p. 47).

For example, ‘You should have lockjaw and seasickness at the same time’ (Dundes 1997 , p. 47).

According to Derrida, logocentrism is the main characteristic of Western thought. It associates philosophical discourse with logos (reason, law). Logocentrism gives priority to identity over difference and speech over the written word. Thus, logocentrism expresses priority of the signified over the signifier, which means priority of presence/speech over absence/writing.

The hermeneutics of suspicion may be considered as hermeneutics of demystification.

According to Ricoeur, ‘We still pay too much attention to their differences, i.e., to the limitations which are the prejudices of their time imposed on these three thinkers: and we are, above all, still victims of the scholasticism in which their epigones have enclosed him. Marx is thus relegated to Marxist economism and to the absurd theory of consciousness as reflex, while Nietzsche is associated with biologism if not with an apology of violence, and Freud is confined with psychiatry and dressed up with simplistic pansexualism’ (Ricoeur 1974b , p. 148).

‘The equivocalness of identity concerns our title [ Oneself as Another ] through the partial synonymy, in French at least, between “same” ( même ) and “identical.” In its diverse uses, “same” ( même ) is used in the context of comparison; its contraries are “other”, “contrary”, “distinct”, “diverse”, “unequal”, “inverse”. The weight of this comparative use of the term “same” seems so great to me that I shall henceforth take sameness as synonymous with idem -identity and shall oppose to it selfhood ( ipseity ) understood as ipse- identity’ (Ricoeur 1992 , pp. 2–3).

Nietzsche gives the following example: ‘No leaf ever wholly equals another, and the concept “leaf” is formed through an arbitrary abstraction from these individual differences, through forgetting the distinctions; and now it gives rise to the idea that in nature there might be something besides the leaves which would be “leaf”—some kind of original form after which all leaves have been woven, marked, copied, colored, curled, and painted, but by unskilled hands, so that no copy turned out to be a correct, reliable, and faithful image of the original form’ (Nietzsche 1873 , p. 3).

This term was originally coined to label an architectural movement associated with the eclectic style of Le Corbusier. The term developed a number of usages and meanings within the context of philosophy, art, sociology, literature, film, theatre, and political and legal studies.

The idea of language games is introduced by Ludwig Wittgenstein ( 1953 ).

According to Butler, some characterizations ‘are variously imputed to postmodernism and poststructuralism, which are conflated with each other and sometimes conflated with deconstruction, and sometimes understood as an indiscriminate assemblage of French feminism, deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Foucauldian analysis, Rorty’s conversationalism and cultural studies. On this side of the Atlantic and in recent discourse, the terms ‘‘postmodernism’’ or ‘‘poststructuralism’’ settle the differences among those positions in a single stroke, providing a substantive, a noun, that includes those positions as so many of its modalities or permutations. It may come as a surprise to some purveyors of the Continental scene to learn that Lacanian psychoanalysis in France positions itself officially against post-structuralism, that Kristeva denounces postmodernism, that Foucauldians rarely relate to Derrideans, that Cixous and Irigaray are fundamentaly opposed, and that the only tenuous connection between French feminism and deconstruction exists between Cixous and Derrida, although a certain affinity in textual practices is to be found between Derrida and Irigaray’ (Butler 2001 , p. 630).

According to a number of authors, these two approaches are interchangeable, and authors such as Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault can be considered as both poststructuralist and postmodernist. This perspective was criticized by Judith Butler who argues that Lacanian psychoanalysis in France rejects poststructuralism, that Kristeva denounces postmodernist, that Foucault’s and Derrida’s theories are diverse, and so forth.

‘Norris is particularly clear on the differences between Derrida and Foucault. Foucault’s extreme epistemological skepticism leads him to equate knowledge with power, and hence to regard all forms of enlightened progress (in psychiatry, sexual attitudes or penal reform) as signs of increasing social control. Derrida, by contrast, insists that there is no opting-out of that post-Kantian enlightenment tradition. It is only by working persistently within that tradition, but against some of its ruling ideas, that thought can muster the resistance required for an effective critique of existing institutions’ (Sarup 1988 , p. 130).

Foucault’s core idea is that all social relations are power relations.

Mikhail Bakhtin ( 1984 ) describes his ideas regarding the polyphonic novel in his Problems of Dostoevsky ’ s Poetics .

‘The dialogical self can be seen as a multiplicity of “I” positions or as possible selves. The difference, however, is that possible selves (e.g., what one would like to be or may be afraid of becoming) are assumed to constitute part of multifaced self-concept with one centralized “I” position, whereas the dialogical self has the character of a decentralized, polyphonic narrative with a multiplicity of “I” positions. This scene of dialogical relations, moreover, is intended to oppose the sharp self-nonself boundaries drawn by Western rationalistic thinking about the self’ (Hermans et al. 1992 , p. 30).

Constative describes what already exists. In a performative speech act the language performs the action it describes. It embraces promises, getting married, giving a gift, making a bet, and so on.

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Ivic, S. (2016). Modernist and Postmodernist Accounts of Identity. In: European Identity and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57785-6_2

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The Paradox of Women’s Aging

Why it’s time for women to begin reshaping the narrative around aging..

Posted April 19, 2024 | Reviewed by Tyler Woods

• As women approach middle age, there are often conflicting feelings to navigate.
• Shifting the narrative about women’s aging may mean doing the deep inner work of healing our self-image.
• When we normalize what healthy aging looks like, we become better advocates for ourselves and other women.

As I approach my 40th birthday next year, I find myself bombarded with targeted ads everywhere I go online, all of them boasting about how they can make me look younger, healthier, and more beautiful.

I have reached the age when women are supposed to start hating our faces and bodies. We are meant to become preoccupied with looking trim and youthful, trading our time and money for the latest anti-aging products and procedures that will have us looking 20 again in no time.

I’ll be honest: I feel conflicted about the messages I receive about my age. After spending a lot of time talking to women my age and older, I realize that my feelings are quite common. Entering our 40s and beyond is a time of many contradictions, it seems. On one hand, many women report feeling like they have finally found their true selves as they exit their 20s and 30s, having discovered an authenticity that is free from the insecurities and expectations of our youth (Casado-Gual, Dominguez, & Worsfold, 2016; Greer, 1991; Stončikaitė, 2021). On the other hand, some women also feel discarded, marginalized, or invisible as they age (Calasanti & Slevin, 2001; Gullette, 2004). No longer the object of constant sexual desire like they were in their youth, they struggle to find a new identity that doesn’t live under the perpetual scrutiny of the male gaze.

Like many women, I sometimes feel torn between the radiant and ever-growing confidence I feel as I get older and the sometimes crushing weight of insecurity that comes with my changing body, face, and skin. I can’t seem to help pinching an unwanted roll or a newfound wrinkle. The urge to pluck the increasingly abundant grey hairs is strong. How is it possible to feel both more and less confident at the same time?

The Woman Behind the Mask

There is a decades-old term I only recently learned of that helps explain this strange paradox. It’s called the mask of aging (Featherstone & Hepworth, 1999). The mask of aging represents the phenomenological experience of some women as they age, in which they cannot reconcile their inner youthful selves with their aging external bodies. This contrast between how they feel and how they look can be disorienting and upsetting. On the inside, they feel young and vibrant. Having also gained the benefit of wisdom that life experience brings, they now feel both young and wise—a winning combination that is sure to raise self-esteem and self-image .

But when they gaze in the mirror and see a woman who looks quite wise but not very young, the mismatch is difficult to accept. Their reflection of this aging woman is a betrayal of the young woman to whom their inner identity is bound. This incongruence becomes a threat to their self-worth.

I believe this is why so many of us, myself included, struggle with our appearance as we age. We live in a culture that insists we stay perpetually youthful or lose our value (Gullett, 2004). Because we still feel youthful, the idea of being considered less valuable than we were in our 20s is unacceptable. So, we endure costly and painful cosmetic procedures, over-commit to time-consuming skincare routines, and try to squeeze our changing bodies into clothes that no longer suit us. Rather than embrace the freedom that comes with finding our authentic selves as we age, we regress into futile anti-aging efforts that can do little more than buy us time. They’ll never turn back the clock, nor will they actually bring us the positive self-image we seek.

Entering our 40s and beyond can be a time of immense liberation. Freed from the constant sexual objectification of our youth, we can turn all our outward focus inward. We can begin healing our hearts and minds, make time for interests we neglected in our youth, invest in connecting with our loved ones, and perhaps for the first time we can connect with our innermost parts, too. But that work will mean forsaking the patriarchal conditioning about our worth and value as we age.

Shifting the Narrative

It’s time for feminist women to begin reshaping the narrative around aging. And perhaps that work is an inside job. I sometimes wonder if many of us need to do some deep healing of our own self-image and self-worth before we begin trying to change our culture’s long-held stereotypes of women as they age. Like any kind of advocacy work, sometimes the first step is untethering ourselves from the indoctrination we've received since youth. To accomplish that, there are some truths we need to embrace:

• The male gaze is oppressive and says nothing about our actual worth.
• Freedom from sexual objectification is not a symbol of our diminishing worth, but rather a symbol of our culture’s toxic obsession with youth.
• There is nothing wrong with seeing a mismatch between our inner feelings and our outer appearance. Bodies and faces change as we age, but our inner psychological world can stay youthful as long as we desire.
• Aging is healthy and normal, despite what the billion-dollar anti-aging industry wants to tell women.
• Being vocal about our needs and experiences is how we normalize healthy attitudes toward women’s aging and put an end to our discrimination , marginalization, and erasure.

When we learn to untether our identity and self-worth from our culture’s sick obsession with youth, we will become better advocates for ourselves and for women more broadly.

We will not be invisible. We will be free.

Calasanti, T. M., & Slevin, K.F. (2001). Gender, Social Inequalities, and Aging. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Casado-Gual, N., E. Domínguez, B.; & Worsfold, J. (2016). Literary Creativity and the Older Woman Writer: A Collection of Critical Essays. Bern: Peter Lang.

Featherstone, M. & Hepworth, M. (1999). The Mask of Aging and the Postmodern Life Course. pp. 371–389. In Feathersone, M., M. Hepworth, B. Turner (eds.). The Body: Social and Cultural Theory. London: Sage.

Greer, G. (1991). The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause. London: Hamish Hamilton.

Gullette, M. M. (2004). Aged by Culture. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.

Stončikaitė, I. (2021). Age, gender and feminism: addressing the gap from literary and cultural perspectives. Gender a výzkum , 22 (1), 59-77.

Amber Wardell, Ph.D. , holds a doctoral degree in cognitive psychology from the University of Memphis. Her book entitled Self-Care Potato Chips: How to Choose Nourishing Self-Care in an Empty Calorie Culture will be released in the fall of 2024.

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Max Azzarello, man who set himself on fire outside Trump trial court, dies

Police had earlier said the Florida man was being viewed as ‘sort of a conspiracy theorist’.

A man who set himself on fire outside the New York court where former United States President Donald Trump is on trial has died after suffering serious injuries, police said.

On Saturday, the New York City police department said the man, identified as Max Azzarello of St Augustine, Florida, was declared dead at a local hospital where he was taken for treatment after the incident on Friday.

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Three key takeaways from donald trump’s iowa town hall, donald trump’s claim of absolute immunity rejected: what next, what is donald trump’s ‘hush money’ trial all about, how the world reacted to trump’s arraignment.

Police said the man, who was born in 1987, did not appear to be targeting Trump or others involved in the trial.

During the incident, which took place on Friday, the fourth day of Trump’s trial on criminal charges of falsifying business records, Azzarello threw pamphlets in the air before using an alcohol-based cleaning substance to douse himself and light the fire.

Police had said earlier that he was being viewed “as sort of a conspiracy theorist”.

Trump, the first former US president to face criminal charges, is on trial in connection with hush-money payments he allegedly made to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Many police officers were present at the scene on Friday as part of the extensive security precautions to ensure the safety of the trial.

Journalists from across the world were also waiting outside the court, and some were live on air when Azzarello self-immolated.

Police had said the man had not breached any security checkpoints to access the park across from the court, and that he had recently travelled from Florida to New York.

Authorities said following the incident that they are reviewing security protocols and considering shutting down access to the park where Azzarello set himself ablaze. The side street where Trump enters and leaves the building is off-limits to everyone.

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‘conspiracy theorist’ from florida sets himself on fire outside trump hush money trial in nyc.

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A Florida man armed with conspiracy theory “propaganda” flyers set himself on fire outside Manhattan Criminal Court Friday — as former President Donald  Trump’s hush money trial  was underway, police said.

Max Azzarello, 37, of St. Augustine, Florida, shuffled into the public park across the street from the 100 Centre Street courthouse just after 1:30 p.m. — just as  the jury was finalized  in the historic case, according to cops.

Once inside the park, which was surrounded by barricades for Trump’s trial, Azzarello took off his jacket, dumped what cops believe was an alcohol-based cleaning accelerant over himself — and then lit himself up.

“He’s on fire and the area in the park where some of the accelerant spilled is also on fire,” NYPD Chief of Department, Jeffrey Maddrey, said as he described the horror.

“Civilians, court officers, members of the police department, they run into the park, they make efforts to put him out. They use their coats, they use fire extinguishers.”

Disturbing footage from the scene showed Azzarello completely engulfed in flames for several minutes as his blackened body twitched on the ground while horrified witnesses screamed in the background.

Just seconds before lighting himself up, Azzarello had reached into a book bag and retrieved a stack of colorful pamphlets that he tossed into the air — including some that linked to a Substack page with the heading, “I have set myself on fire outside the Trump Trial.”

In a rambling, incoherent 2,648-word manifesto posted online prior to the ordeal, Azzarello — who identified himself as an investigative researcher — said he had self-immolated as an “extreme act of protest” over a “totalitarian con” and impending “apocalyptic fascist world coup.”

“The pamphlets appear to be propaganda-based, almost a conspiracy theory type of pamphlet,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said.

“Some information in regards to Ponzi scheme and the fact that some of our local educational institutes are fronts for the mob. So, a little bit of a conspiracy theory going on here.”

First responders loaded a severely burned Azzarello into an ambulance and rushed him to Cornell University Hospital’s burns unit where he remained in a critical condition as of Friday afternoon, police said.

Those who jumped in to help douse the flames — including three NYPD officers and one court officer — suffered minor injuries from their exposure to the fire, FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh said.

“It happened fast. He was up in flames and seemed determined,” a witness, only identified as Dave, told The Post.

“I heard this clattering and it was these papers that he had flung up and they clattered to the ground,” he continued. “Then he pulled out a can and he poured it over himself. At that point, I thought ‘oh this could be awful’.”

“And after pouring himself with obviously something flammable he took out, I think, a lighter then he lit himself on fire,” he added. 

Disturbing video posted on Instagram showed officers scrambling to put out the flames on metal barriers in the park and the ash-covered man twitching on the ground.

In the aftermath, cops could be seen scurrying around collecting the discarded flyers.

Azzarello, who hails from Florida, had arrived in the Big Apple at some point after last Saturday, police said.

His family weren’t even aware he’d left the Sunshine State, according to cops.

He was pictured outside the courthouse just on Thursday, holding up a sign that said “Trump is with Biden and they’re about to fascist coup us” and wearing red and black gloves and a backpack.

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NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said police were “very concerned” following Friday’s horrific incident and brought in a bomb squad and police dogs to sweep the area and nearby vehicles.

“This gentleman did not breach security protocols, the park was open,” Maddrey noted, adding that officials would now decide whether additional security was needed and the green space would have to be roped off.

“Of course we’re going to look at everything, and the magnitude of what’s going on around here. We’ll re-assess our security with our federal partners,” he told reporters.

“We’re going to consider whether we have to shut this area down.”

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