Postmodernism And Social Inquiry

David R. Dickens, Andrea Fontana

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781136990434
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

This introduction to postmodernism offers a comprehensive examination of postmodern theory and its application to the study of society. It surveys the work of theorists and explores the potential and limits of postmodern analysis across key areas of development, including deconstruction, semiotics, the new ethnography and feminist theory. This guide should be suitable as an undergraduate text for social and cultural theory courses and should appeal to students of social research methods.

Chapter 1
Postmodernism in the Social Sciences

David R. Dickens
Andrea Fontana

Discourse on postmodernism today occupies a prominent place in a variety of intellectual disciplines within the contemporary arts, humanities, and social sciences. Obtaining a clear-cut, common definition of the term has proven to be extremely difficult, however, not only because of its interdisciplinary applications but also due to its diverse origins. The first instances of the postmodern concept are found in art and literature. In the earliest usage unearthed thus far, around 1870 an English painter, John Watkins Chapman, described as “postmodern” painting that was supposedly more modern than French impressionism (Best and Kellner 1991). The concept was similarly employed in literature in 1934 and again in 1942 to describe a related tendency in Hispanic poetry (Hassan 1987).

In a somewhat different context, postmodernism was used as a sociohistorical concept in a number of books and essays published from 1917 to the 1960s to describe a new era of Western civilization (see Huyssen 1984; Best and Kellner 1991). Although the authors differed in terms of their evaluations of the new postmodern epoch, they all agreed that its emergence would have profound consequences for contemporary social life. C. Wright Mills, for example, claimed that “our basic definitions of society and of self are being overtaken by new realities” and that “too many of our explanations are derived from the great historical transition from the Medieval to the Modern Age” (1959, p. 166).

The third, and most recent, source of origin for current usages of postmodernism is located in a series of exchanges among American literary and cultural critics in the early 1960s concerning the nature of new artistic and literary styles. Some of these critics, most notably Irving Howe and Harry Levin, lamented the passing of modernist art and literature while others, such as Susan Sontag, Leslie Fiedler, and Ihab Hassan, celebrated the new postmodern literature and art as liberation from the stuffy, elitist canons of aesthetic modernism (Huyssen 1984; Hassan 1987).

Ironically, American discussions of postmodernism in the social sciences reappear only later, in the 1980s, and then primarily under the influence of French poststructuralist theory. Anthropologists George Marcus and Michael Fischer (1986) provide what is perhaps the best definition of the term as it is used in contemporary social inquiry. They define postmodernism as a “crisis of representation” where traditional standards no longer apply, implying both an epistemological and existential problematic in which present conditions of knowledge and experience are defined not so much in themselves as by what they come after, such as postindustrial, post narrative, or poststructuralist (also see Dallmayr 1989).

The purpose of the present volume is to examine a broad range of theoretical and methodological issues in postmodernist thought as they relate to sociology. Frank (1987) suggests that sociologists have been slow to enter the debates on postmodernism because sociology is itself a product of modernity. Others frame the issue in starker terms. For the French theorist Jean Baudrillard “sociology can only depict the expansion of the social and its vicissitudes. It survives only on the positive and definitive hypothesis of the social. The reabsorption, the implosion of the social, escapes it. The hypothesis of the death of the social is also that of its own death” (Baudrillard 1983a, p. 4). This apocalyptic tone in Baudrillard is echoed in recent sociological commentaries on his work. Denzin claims that “sociology no longer serves society” (1986, p. 203) and cautions that “by shutting the door on post-modern theory sociology effectively seals itself off from the postmodern world” (1987a, p. 211). Bogard similarly maintains that “bringing post-modernism into the mainstream of sociological theory will produce the uncomfortable, and in all likelihood unacceptable, imperative that we as sociologists confront the possibility of an end, and not simply a transformation, of social theory” (1987, p. 208).

Increasingly, however, a growing number of sociologists are attempting to incorporate various postmodern themes into their work. As might be expected, much of the sociological literature on postmodernism to date consists of theoretical and methodological critiques of more conventional approaches, and of extended commentaries on the work of the French postmodernists. This trend will no doubt continue as more of the writings of Lyotard, Baudrillard, Foucault, and others are made available in English translation, but it is also being supplemented by efforts to apply postmodern perspectives to a wide range of substantive sociological issues (see Rosenau 1992).

The disciplinary cross-fertilization exhibited in the postmodernist writings of philosophers, literary critics, anthropologists, social theorists, and others is undoubtedly a good thing, but it presents a bewildering variety of strategies and positions to the interested sociologist. For discussion purposes these approaches will be grouped under three general headings: historical and theoretical strategies for situating postmodernism; methodological techniques for postmodern analysis; and evaluative positions regarding the social and political implications of postmodernist thought (see Arac 1986; Jameson 1984a).

Situating Postmodernism

By most accounts “modernity” emerged in Europe over the course of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Its fullest intellectual expression, however, was embodied in the project of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophers “to develop objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art, according to their inner logic,” with the expectation that “the arts and sciences could promote not only the control of natural forces but also understanding of the world and of the self, moral progress, the justice of institutions and even the happiness of human beings” (Habermas 1981, p. 9). The unifying thread of modernity was a belief in the idea of progress, attained by a radical break with history and tradition, to bring about the liberation of human beings from the bonds of ignorance and superstition (Harvey 1989). Yet as Habermas and others point out, twentieth-century experiences of world wars, death camps, and the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shattered this optimism (Harvey 1989, p. 13).

The advent of postmodern society is thus located by most observers sometime after World War II in the advanced capitalist countries, though they disagree whether this constitutes a decisive break or some sort of continuity with the modernist era. Most dramatically, Jean Baudrillard describes postmodernism as a “second revolution” (1984a) signaling the destruction of meaning and thereby rendering all previous social theories obsolete (1983a). Daniel Bell (1976), on the other hand, sees postmodernism as the continuation of debilitating cultural trends originating in modernism. Fredric Jameson (1984b) takes a more ambivalent stance. He describes postmodernism as a trend beginning in the early 1960s but situates it as the cultural superstructure of a purer, more abstract phase of capitalism. Michel Foucault resists any characterization of his intellectual project as postmodernist, but in his early archaeological studies he describes the modern era as extending from 1800 to 1950 and suggests that, today, “something new is about to begin” (1973, p. 384). Finally, Jean-Frangois Lyotard (1984) rejects the modern-postmodern conceptualization altogether, seeing postmodernism as a potentiality that is realized in modernism, implying that any attempt at periodization is itself a modernist error.

The diverse positions represented in attempts to locate postmodernism in time are reproduced in theoretical descriptions of postmodern society and culture. Baudrillard does not use the discourse of the “post-modern” until the 1980s but his previous work dating back to the late 1960s developed the postmodern view of advanced capitalist countries as mass-mediated consumer societies characterized by a proliferation of signs (Kellner 1988). He describes modernity as an era dominated by production and industrial capitalism based on mechanization, com-modification, and universal exchange. In contrast, postmodern society is postindustrial, defined by new technologies that feature the unlimited reproducibility of objects and images. The result is a “hyper-real” society where the distinction between the real and the unreal is obliterated, drowned in a seemingly endless flood of signs and simulations (Baudrillard 1983b).

In outlining his theory of postmodern society Lyotard (1984) also borrows liberally from previous theories of postindustrial society, emphasizing the revolutionary role of computers and other forms of information technology in transforming the social order. Yet, unlike Baudrillard, who blends elements of semiotics and French radical theory from the late 1960s (see Debord 1970; Lefebvre 1971), Lyotard focuses on the way in which the new information technology has undermined traditional conceptions of knowledge and legitimacy. All modern forms of knowledge, he claims, whether in positivist, hermeneutic, or Marxist guise, legitimate themselves by making explicit appeals to some type of universal standard. Recent developments, especially in the natural sciences, but also in the social sciences and politics, have undermined these claims, producing what Lyotard calls an “incredulity toward grand narratives.” Postmodern society is thus definded in terms of a radical heterogeneity characterized by a proliferation of creative discoveries in the arts and sciences and a corresponding decline of ideological hegemony in politics and social life.

In his early work Foucault also describes contemporary society in terms of new configurations of knowledge, contrasting the rise of philosophy, biology, and political economy as dominant modes of discourse in the modern era with their recent challenge by what he calls the “countersciences” of psychoanalysis, ethnology, and linguistics. Foucault’s discourse-based archeaology of the human sciences is expressed in his controversial thesis of the impending “disappearance of man.” For him, “man” is a relatively recent invention of the modern era whose humanist culture made him, for the first time, both the primary subject and the primary object of intellectual inquiry. The subsequent inability of the modern empirical sciences, including the human sciences of psychology, sociology, and the analysis of literature and myth, to satisfactorily represent the vast range of human experiences reveals for Foucault the profound historical limitations of the modernist project and its pivotal subject, man (Foucault 1973). In his later work the archaeological focus on discourse is supplemented by a genealogical concern with how concrete social practices (political, economic, pedagogical, and interpersonal) ensure what he calls “bio-power,” the form of power/knowledge specific to contemporary societies that produces healthy, secure, and productive individuals (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1986).

For Jameson (1984b), postmodernism is the cultural logic of late capitalism. He agrees with Lyotard that advanced capitalist societies are today marked by anomic heterogeneity in both culture and society but he rejects the postindustrial label as misleading. In its place he proposes the term “multinational capitalism” to connote the historically novel expansion of capitalism by means of new technologies and media into previously uncommodified areas. Jameson describes this new trend as the colonization of Nature and the Unconscious, involving the more complete penetration of capitalism into the precapitalist third world and the rise of qualitatively new forms of media manipulation. Thus, in contrast to the French theorists, Jameson wants to defend the viability of the Marxian project, albeit in a modified form.

Like jameson, Bell (1976) restricts his usage of the term “postmodernism” to the cultural realm, but he is one of the foremost advocates of the theory of postindustrial society (Bell 1973). For Bell, postmodernism represents an intensification of the adversarial trends in modernist art characterized by a rejection of the norms and standards of the bourgeoisie. It also represents an extension of these trends from a small circle of artists to a much larger number of aesthetic elites who dominate the contemporary cultural scene. Since their views now influence the broader population through the mass media, according to Bell, they threaten to undermine the entire social fabric of advanced societies.

Analyzing Postmodernism

Assuming that postmodernism, however theorized, is defined as a crisis of representation or standards in the arts, sciences, and society, the question of method arises. What types of approaches are best suited for analyzing this new situation? Although they too contain a variety of stances, postmodern methods of social inquiry generally may be traced to two common sources. First is the pioneering analysis of signs, symbols, and sign systems by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and, to a lesser extent, that of the American philosopher Charles Peirce (1839-1914). Whether referred to as semiology, following Saussure’s usage, or semiotics, as with Peirce, this approach was originally conceived as a “science of signs” for examining the multiple ways in which meaningful language is produced.

For Saussure, the linguistic sign consists of two parts: a sound or acoustic component he called the signifier, and a mental or conceptual component he called the signified, itself representing something in the world. Saussure also distinguished between language (langage), the structure of language consisting of a set of linguistic rules that speakers must obey to communicate, and speech (parole), the everyday use made of the structural system by individual speakers. For him the proper focus of linguistics was on language rather than on speech, for knowledge of the former would reveal the principles by which language functions in everyday practice. In the social sciences, primarily through the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Saussure’s structural approach was seen as providing a model for analyzing various forms of social relations and institutions since any object whatsoever can become a sign, provided it is used to communicate a message, that is, to signify (Sturrock 1979).

Postmodern methods of analysis, however, are more properly designated as poststructuralist, as they focus on the process of signification suggested by Saussure and applied to culture by Lévi-Strauss, but reject the assumption of stable referents upon which the notion of an underlying structure is based. The crisis of representation in postmodernism is reflected here in what might be called a crisis of signification in poststructuralist thought.

In this new conceptualization the second important source of post-modernist approaches, the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, occupies a central role (Dallmayr 1987). As Habermas points out, “with Nietzsche’s entrance into the discourse of modernity, the argument shifts, from the ground up” (1987, p. 85). Because of his radical, anti-Enlightenment critique of reason and knowledge, Nietzsche’s thought has been ignored for the most part in American sociology but his influence on the French postmodernists in particular is enormous (see Merquior 1986; Dews 1987). Of particular relevance to poststructuralist methodological approaches is Nietzsche’s radical perspectivism, which informs both his diagnosis of the crisis of modernity as the metaphorical “death of God” and his subsequ...