Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 01:23:41 -0500 (EST)
From: "Jonathan P. Beasley-Murray" <jpb8-AT-acpub.duke.edu>
Subject: Re: Deleuze and Postmodernity


Well, I've always taken for granted the idea that D(&G) were postmodern.

I guess my general take is informed in part by Jameson on the postmodern, 
but at least as much by Huyssen's fine _After the Great Divide_.  Thus 
I'm both happy using the term to describe a cultural condition, and to 
delineate an intellectual tendency (even if the term is displaced from 
it's referents, as I say below).

Huyssen's book i) differentiates postmodernism and poststructuralism (the
latter being the theory of modernism) and ii) points out how (*pace*
Lyotard and Baudrillard, these two being suitably
Americanized--_Postmodern Condition_ was written for a bunch of Canadians,
after all) postmodernism isn't a French problematic at all. 

Following ii I think it's clear how and why Guattari reacts against 
postmodernism--as indeed does Negri in his _Politics of Subversion_.  
Both of them, I think, are confusing postmodernism with 
poststructuralism, and trying to deal with an Anglo-American debate on 
continental terms.  (The book with Hardt takes Negri's continental theory 
onto American terrain, and thus has far less of a problem with the 
postmodern.)

Jon's rule of thumb (when he isn't talking about late capitalism a la 
Jameson): postmodern theorists return to the body ("figure" for Lyotard) 
while poststructuralists are still hung up on the old signifying chains 
("discours" for ditto).

Does this work for anyone else?

Take care

Jon

Jon Beasley-Murray
Literature Program
Duke University
jpb8-AT-acpub.duke.edu



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