Modern Times: Modernity and Postmodernity - Literature review Example

Modern Times: Modernity and Postmodernity In the recent decades, there has been an active debate around the dangers of postmodern condition. The writings of various years analyzed in this paper all show the same tendencies, namely, high reflexivity and the anxiety of the resulting reflection. These characteristics might be caused by the postmodern condition itself, since the postmodern intellectuals cannot free themselves from the contemporary patterns of thinking (Connor, 1997, 5-6). Anyway, the visions of (post)modernity in social and cultural studies are rather pessimistic with regard to the problem of freedom: the comments about the level of freedom in the postmodern times range from the remarks that it exists, but is not necessarily beneficial (Sennett, 2008, 85) to the catastrophic pictures of the postmodern slavery: for instance, in the view of Hardt and Negri (2000), the supranational Empire transcends all time / space limits and “seeks directly the rule over human nature” (xv). The analysts portray a contemporary individual as a neurotic who either chooses slavery to avoid uncertainty or acknowledges his or her imprisoned condition precisely because the freedom of understanding has increased. They argue, persuasively indeed, that the institutional nature of human contingency has changed, but the “iron prison” (Weber, 2003, 181) has by no means disappeared. In this paper, these claims are critically summarized with regards to (a) the social dimension of liberty, (b) the condition of individual, (c) the differences between modernity and postmodernity, and (d) possible alternatives to the contemporary oppressive politics. The Social Aspects of Liberty Postmodernity is commonly distinguished from postmodernism as a condition of society and culture rather than the set of cultural phenomena (Connor, 1997, 11). That is, postmodernity is related to the new social institutions and practices, while postmodernism is a term connected basically with culture. However, the social and cultural analyses have become so intertwined in postmodern theory that even Connor does not separate them: rather, he concentrates on the cultural phenomena that are aimed to reflect the social ones (1997, 8). The three philosophers of postmodernity, Lyotard, Jameson, and Baudrillard constantly make parallels between the principles of functioning of society in a new economic system and those of culture: Baudrillard, for example, believes that ‘the code’ of media does not presuppose any feedback from its consumers, thereby acting as means of oppression (Connor, 1997, 53). In a sense, this is the continuation of Jameson’s argument: in the economic field, there is alienation between the consumers and the producers; as messages, according to Jameson, are commodities, the same alienation takes place in the media sphere. To Lyotard, “language games” are unavoidably “the social bond” (1984, 15). Hardt and Negri develop the connection between social and cultural changes so far as to claim that the only effective struggles with the global Empire have to blur the distinction between political, economic, cultural and biopolitical types of resistance (to counteract the Empire’s mass production of material and cultural values) (2000, 56). Politics are understood in the broadest sense: even the choice of the patterns of relationship may be called politics. In other words, ‘postmodernity’ operates through the increasingly globalized culture that changes the society; at the same time, postmodern state is the product of socioeconomic changes. The processes in society and economy are generally believed to begin in early modern period. Foucault and Weber connect them with the shifts of paradigms that took place in Enlightenment, with its individualism and rationalization of production. Relying on Bentham, Foucault argues that modern society, unlike ancient or mediaeval ones, is “the society of surveillance” (1977, 69) where “an individual is carefully fabricated” in the social order for better production, and any deviations are observed by the means of an intricate system called “panopticism”, the diagram of “power closed in itself” (67). Weber states that the Protestant notion of the importance of enterprise (in Luther’s words, ‘the calling’), having been deprived of its spiritual grounds, put his contemporaries into the endless pursuit of wealth without any reasonable justification (2003, 182). According to Giddens, the dynamic changes of time and space perception with such events and processes as the invention of mechanical locks and the European colonization account for the new type of social relations, which Giddens calls ‘disembedding’ (1990, 18-20). ‘Disembedding’ might be related to the Marxist concept of alienation, this time applied to the control of time and space: it is “the "lifting out" of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of time-space” (Giddens, 1990, 21). In the times of Giddens, this was a valuable insight into the background of globalization. The author distinguishes such agents of ‘disembedding’ as ‘symbolic tokens’ (e.g., money) and ‘expert systems’ (e. g., social sciences) (1990, 22). Both of these agents have the potential of limiting freedom: the exchange of symbolic tokens in the society takes place regardless from the characteristics of individuals or groups in charge of them, giving everyone the opportunity together with the obligation to use the chance with maximal efficiency; the expert systems aim to direct this chance, challenging an individual to make some choices related to the basic life necessities (Giddens, 1990, 22-28). In merely economic terms, Gramsci defines this as a condition that comes after the planned economy of Fordism, the condition in which “freedom” is “necessity” (1999, 317). Lyotard, perhaps the most famous of the earliest postmodernity theorists, says that in the postmodern condition, the fabric of social relations (and hence, possible choices) is more intricate than ever before (1984, 13-15). The necessity of choices puts modern people in a rather risky condition. The researchers assess this risk differently. Ulrich Beck takes rather pessimistic position about it, claiming that the necessity to live consciously, to literally make art out of life (2002, 2) turns such previously stable categories as “God, nature, truth, science, technology, morality, love, marriage” into so-called “precarious freedoms” that make life stressful (2) and force an individual to seek “freedom without freedom”, just like being put in prison for social guarantees it promises (4). This claim is not new. But Beck provides a deeper analysis, saying that social bonds (family, relationships) as well as social actions are impossible without routines (2002, 6), and where these routines are not on the surface, they might become the subject to manipulation, such as in the case of proliferation of cheap how-to literature about health and psychology (7). Even the most promising social actions (such as productive dealing with unemployment and environmental problems) are, in Beck’s opinion, connected with risk (2002, 18). Giddens’s perspective is not so grim, because he adds to the analysis a new concept, namely, the trust. Trust is “bound up, not with risk, but with contingency” (Giddens, 1990, 33); it may be, metaphorically speaking, a straw to catch for those who are aware of risks, but many risks take place without the subjects being aware of them, while the trust is, above all, conscious (34-35). To Giddens, this is rather trust than risk that defines modernity: when people encounter ‘empty’ time and space (1990, 18), they have to rely on something. Of course, Giddens is also suspicious about the ‘expert systems’ and aware of the limitations they impose on seeming freedom of choice, but his main point is that the unavoidable characteristic of modernity is rather trust than risk. One more common theme of the postmodern debate is the decline of nation-states. Nation-states as a new type of society are characteristic for modernity, but the concept not enough in the analysis of (post)modern state even for Giddens (1990, 13). Bauman offers an insightful explanation: according to his study, nation states were supposed to direct the diverse interests of the members of culturally and economically heterogenous society, but they failed to do so (1997, 190). Rather, the mechanism of democracy has been putting more and more responsibility upon an individual through the course of history (Rose, 1999, 222-224). But this formal freedom given through responsibility does not mean that there is real plethora of choices: notions of security provided through the private purchase of insurance schemes, health care purchased by individuals and provided by the health industry, housing offered through the private sector and occupied through private ownership, efficiency secured not through selfless dedication and commitment of professionals but through the discipline of competition for customers (Rose, 1999, 230). Thus, Bauman is skeptical about the liberal society: “What liberal society offers with one hand, it tends to take back with the other; the duty of freedom without the resources that permit a truly free choice” (1997, 196). Communitarianism and nationalism are just alternative ways of conformity: according to Bauman, they are another version of pre-destined choices, the community preceding “all choice, in the sense of a priori predisposing the individuals to stay loyal to its values and behavioural precepts (through indoctrination, drill, control)” (1997, 195). Hardt and Negri claim that the entity that appeared on the ruins of nation-states, the Empire, gives even less freedom than its predecessor, because its ways of manipulation are mostly immaterial and out of direct centralized control: “sovereignty has taken a new form, composed of a series of national and supernational organisms united under a single logic of rule” (2000, xii). The most recent analyses also testifies for the crisis of representational democracy, as the latter fails to fulfill even the will of the majority (not concerning minority) because of the difference in power at the moments of historical decisions (Gilbert, 2009). Overall, the main socioeconomic reasons of postmodern state are connected with the economic risks resulting from mass production, the changes in labor market, and the decline of nation-states. Prospects Hardt and Negri’s vision often seems over-generalized, exaggerated. The persistence of the theme of disconnection (the authors believe that only local rebellions are effective in new millennium) is very likely to provoke the thoughts that there are some hidden motives behind this reluctance to co-operate: as Connor points out, most of the postmodernity researchers fail to find the conditions under which social interaction is still possible, mainly stopping upon the laments over the impossibility of collective decisions (1997, 65). The perspectives of freedom they offer are often vague, as “‘the renewal of democracy… is not something that I believe can be laid down in a blueprint… the primary issue is not what a twenty-first century democracy would look like, but what such powerful constituencies could bring it into being, and how we might assemble this from the disparate fragments of contemporary discontent” (Gilbert, 2009). Indeed, the assembling of working models may be a difficult task: for example, Beck believes the future of social movements to be in uniting around the current global issues (2002, 18), while Hardt and Negri assert that local movements are the main factor of resistance to the Empire’s influence (2000, 53-54). Gilbert’s approach seems to be the most practical, though far from serious theoretical reflection: he lists the effective non-liberal social movements such as anarchists, ClimateCamp, or the New Left (2009). The Challenge of Individualism The paradox of social pressure upon an individual outlined by Beck (2002) has been elaborated in Sennett’s article about authority and freedom in modern times. As, besides the contemporary psyche, Sennett’s subject there is Hegel, he represents the interconnection between authority and freedom as a dialectic one: “only when we have learned to remove ourselves from the sphere of authority can we re-enter it” (Sennett, 2008, 87). This removal consists of at least 2 steps: the “disengagement” that takes forms of a mask (seeming obedience that gives the ability to spy upon the authority) or a procedure of purge (Sennett gives an example of Gid’s wife that burned her husband’s letters) (Sennett, 2008, 88-92). The second stage is the realization of the humility to which the authority had previously subjected an individual (Sennett, 2008, 94). By the way, this might be the case with the theory of postmodernity as a whole (if only such approach is possible): it recognizes the imprisoned condition of an individual only due to the fact that it has become free from many preconceptions. Coming back to Sennett, with the second stage there appears the recognition of “the oppressor inside” that creates a kind of “crisis mentality” of the victims of the society relying upon different managers (2008, 101). The latter process may also be limiting freedom, as there are numerous oppressive mechanisms of exclusion and dissimilation of individual peculiarities in the society. Some of them are structural, such as the mechanism of observation described by Foucault, an “invisible power” that “acts on individual level” (1997, 65). Others are prescriptive practices, numerous manuals that help an individual to conform to the positive idea of a productive member of society: while the visible behavior is controlled by weakening state, the invisible intimate sphere is left for the experts and ‘common sense’ (Rose, 1999, 229). Modernity and Postmodernity There is a group of researchers (such as Giddens, Hardt and Negri) that argue for the uniqueness of modernity and/or postmodernity for the reasons of temporal and spatial transcendence of goods and opportunities. Giddens sees modernity as a unique state and postmodernity as its radicalized version (1990, 150). Beck treats his very similar ‘individualization’ (the state of constant necessity to choose) as a certan transhistoric process: Earlier historical phases of individualization occurred in the Renaissance, in the courtly culture of the Middle Ages, in the inward asceticism of Protestantism, in the emancipation of the peasants from feudal bondage and in the loosening of intergenerational family ties in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Beck, 2002, 202). Hardt and Negri argue that postmodernity is so different in scale and nature from modernity that it is already a unique political phenomenon. The decline of nation-states’ sovereignty and the changes in labor force (the “communicative, cooperative, and affective” labor instead of industrial) distinguish this society from the modern one (xiii). Opposing their view somehow, Bauman sees the ‘liquid state’ of social relations as a logical consequence and continuation of modernity rather than rupture with it (1997, 195). Conclusion The question whether postmodernity has brought more freedom sounds suspicious for the postmodern reflexive mind (Connor, 1997, 8). An analyst like Foucault may wonder what specific construction of freedom is in question, while such thinkers as Lyotard could dismiss the terms like “freedom” altogether. Indeed, the question is suspicious itself: there is the choice behind it, the possibility of being free and not free at the same time. The theoretical reflection of postmodernity tends to be focused on this ambivalent nature of freedom: on the surface, there are many choices, but global capitalism and psychological pressures of the ‘risk society’ limit these choices. The unprecedented level of critical thinking exposes this “choice without choice” to the concerned individuals, making it even more painful. References Bauman, Z., 1997. Postmodernity and Its Discontents, Cambridge: Polity. Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E., 2002. Individualization: Instituitionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences, London: Sage. Connor, S., 1997. Postmodernist Culture, London: Blackwell Publishing. Foucault, M. Panopticism. In: M. Foucault, 1977. Discipline and Punish, London: Penguin. Chapter 5. 61-71. Giddens, A., 1990. The Consequences of Modernity, Stanford: Polity Press. Gilbert, J., 2009. Postmodernity and the Crisis of Democracy. OurKingdom, [online]. Available through: http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/opendemocracy-theme/postmodernity-and-the-crisis-of-democracy [Accessed Dec 22, 2012]. Gramsci, A. Americanism and Fordism. In: A. Gramsci; Q. Hoare and G. N. Smith, eds., 1999. Selection from the Prison Notebooks, London: ElecBook. Chapter 3. 277-318. Hardt, M. and Negri, A., 2000. Empire, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Available through: www.angelfire.com/FHAREMI_unprintable.pdf [Accessed Dec 22, 2012]. Lyotard, J. F.; Bennington, G. and Massumi, B., transl., 1984. The Postmodern Condition, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rose, N., 1999. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self, New York and London: Free Association Books. Sennett, R., 2008. Authority & Freedom. The Kenyon Review, 2 (2), 81-110. Available through: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4335107?uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21101585491447 [Accessed Dec 22, 2012]. Weber, M.; Parsons, T., transl., 2003. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Courier Dover Publications. Read More