Date: 	Tue, 17 Mar 1998 15:38:16 -0500
Subject: Rethinking Modernity and Postmodernity (was Thanks)


On Mon, 16 Mar 1998 17:34:28 -0500  randi lynn barnes wrote:

> Like I said, I'm not entirely sure that this puts me in the 
post-m camp....


     Before you slip completely into a postmodernist camp, you 
might want to consider the latent determinism that figures into 
social constructivist narratives.  When social constructions
are heaped upon social constructions the end result is an 
analysis of effects through a chain of causality.  Essentially 
everything is reduced to a structure of determinations. 
_Ideology_ by David Hawkes discusses this problematic 
dimension of postmodern thought - what he understands as 
materialist determinism.  The effect of doing so is a denial of 
autonomy and creativity.  In a similar observation (made in 
the 60's), Cornelius Castoriadis provides a critique of 
Marxism (in _The Imaginary Institution of Society_) - noting 
that the reduction of all social systems to the forces of 
production ends up with a kind of economic determinism.

     What is particularly disturbing about determinism is a 
distinct lack of sensitivity to context (despite the 
postmodernist attempt to focus on *radical* contextuality).  
Castoriadis argues that such analysis, aside from being 
ahistorical, places an ethnocentric blueprint from on culture 
onto another, with a total disregard for the original (in the 
deepest sense of that word) characteristics of such a society.  
Instead Castoriadis focuses upon the project of autonomy - the 
implementation of the psychic and social imaginary in society 
(on an individual and institutional level).  Likewise Hans Joas, 
in his book _The Creativity of Action_ examines how action 
itself is generative and resists deterministic or functionalistic 
accounts.

     What is really interesting in all of this is the revitalization 
of the idea of the imaginary; imaginary not in the sense of the 
'specular' or the reflection in the mirror - rather the reflection
AND the mirror itself.  The institution of the imaginary is the 
institution of all of that which could possibly be reflected upon 
(in contrast to the vulgar understanding of the imagination
which posits novelty, newness, and innovation - which, 
incidentally, appears more akin to a footnote for an 
advertising campaign).  Reason, morality, and autonomy are 
created categories, created ex nihilo.  In this sense the 
categories themselves retain a relativistic (culturally specific)
meaning in the most emphatic sense.  Although Castoriadis 
does not deal much with hermeneutics - I suspect that the 
work of Gadamer, Warnke, and Ricoeur would complement
such an account).

     This awareness, which stems from a particular awareness, 
challenges both modernist and postmodernist accounts.  It 
contradicts the universalist tendency of modernity by arguing 
that abstract rules and principles are historically generated (in 
opposition, say, to Habermas's quasi-transcendentalism built 
into his theory of communicative action) and it contradicts the
postmodern accounts by highlighting the emphatic character 
of thought itself - such that thought cannot be reduced to sheer 
materialist determinism or a naive metaphysics of presence. 
Coincidentally this coincides with the dialectical imagination 
of the Frankfurt School - Herbert Marcuse's critique of 
capitalism which places an emphasis upon creativity and 
utopia and Theodor Adorno's critique of mass culture, which 
attempts to find a utopian kernel in autonomous art.  Elements 
of this can also be seen in the work of Hannah Arendt, in her 
idea of an 'enlarged mentality,' Agnes Heller, in her work 
_Beyond Justice_, Joel Whitebook's _Perversion and Utopia_, 
and Jay Bernstein's Hegelian critique of Habermas's 
discourse ethics, and Jacques Derrida's politics of friendship. 
 It seems to me that the debate between the universal and the 
particular, the transcendental and the
empirical, and the subject and the object, are actually 
mediated by the kind of creativity that Joas and Castoriadis 
focus on.  I would be happy to hear from anyone who is 
interested in this or has come across material that might 
contribute to the development of these ideas.

ken