A Plus for Postmodernism - part III of series

My foray, these past few days, into “the literature” of postmodernism has provoked two thoughts –

the first the (flippant) question of why on earth these guys can’t agree their terminology. What are we actually talking about - is it critical theory? literary theory? structural theory? Constructivism? Deconstructionism? Postmodernism? postmodernity?

Why so many different words? I know they’re trying to tell us that words are meaningless…but hey, I’m getting confused!

Confused people, of course, tend to lash out. And there’s a lot of anger in the air – so maybe that’s why we’re angry!!

The second thought is a discovery - that the trawling through the most significant commentaries on the field (Perry Anderson, Peter Berger, Marshall Berman, Chris Butler (“A Short Intro to PM”), Terry Eagleton, David Harvey) unearthed one gem – The Saturated Self- dilemmas of identity in contemporary life (1991) by a well-read and good writer who happened to be a social psychologist, Kenneth Gergen who dramatically introduces his book thus - 

Many nonacademic readers are aware of the debates over the canons of Western literature now engulfing the academic community, and the increasing currency of such terms as de construction, poststructuralism, and postmodern. Yet these are meagre indications of the radical reconsideration of longstanding traditions of truth and knowledge which are underway.

As beliefs in objective knowledge fall into disrepute, the entire face of education, science, and "knowledge-making in general stands to be altered. The issues are far too important, and too much fun, to be contained within the walls of academia.

One aspect of this ferment is of special concern to me. For many years one of my central interests has been the concept of self, our ways of understanding who we are and what we are about. Beliefs about the self seem pivotal to all our undertakings. We believe that as normal human beings we possess reasoning powers, emotions, conscience, intentions; these beliefs are critical to the way we relate to others…… 

Remember this was written 20 years ago!! 

It is not simply that the present turn of events has altered the emphasis placed on rationality, the emotions, and the like, or that it adds new concepts to the traditional vernacular. Rather, like the concepts of truth, objectivity, and knowledge, the very idea of individual selves—in possession of mental qualities—is now threatened with eradication.

I have just started reading the book – although this excellent review has given me a good sense of the argument It starts with the observation that a combination of modern transport systems and the internet have transformed how each of us relate to others and then moves to consider how this has affected the way we understand (or fail to!) the world.

The last post made the point that one of the aspects of Postmodernism with which I don’t have a problem is its celebration of seeing the world from multiple perspectives – indeed I joked about my 57 varieties of capitalism. Even in 1991 Gergen accepted that our pursuit of progress was putting the very existence of the planet in danger - and argued that awareness of the multiplicity of perspectives could – if put into an appropriate decision structure - help give voice to marginalised groups.

In fact, a few years later, this is exactly what happened when a social anthropologist presented a fascinating case study of the process by which Arsenal Football Club found the site for its new stadium 

which started off quite elegantly - just the market actor (Arsenal) and the hierarchical actor (Islington Council) - but was soon clumsified by the entry of an egalitarian actor (the Highbury Community Association). Association). The result was a solution, totally overlooked in the early stages, that gave each of these contending actors more of what it wanted (and less of what it did not want) than it would have got if it had somehow established hegemony and "gone it alone." 

This "clumsy solution" came about more or less by accident, and it stands in marked contrast to the sort of outcomes that we usually get, especially in relation to policy issues that have a high scientific input: environment and development in the Himalayan region, for instance. All of which raises the question: "How can we get clumsy solutions by design." One important part of the answer is: "By doing pretty well the exact opposite of what policy orthodoxy says we should do." Rather than a single, agreed definition of the problem, we need to move towards noisy and argumentative institutional arrangements in which all three voices (each with its distinctive definition of the problem - a definition, moreover, that cannot be reconciled with the other two) are (a) able to make themselves heard and (b) are then responsive to one another.  

Michael Thompson uses the “grid-group” or “cultural analysis” approach which I’ve discussed before on this blog – but sets it out very clearly in The Case for clumsiness (2004)

The ideas were considered important enough to be presented by Professor Keith Grint in “Wicked problems and clumsy solutions – the role of leadership” (2008) Michael Thompson was interviewed by the RSA here. This tribute gives a good sense of his work

Update; I’ve been a bit remiss in not mentioning one book which is a model of clarity - From post-industrial society to post-modern society – new theories of the contemporary world; Krishan Kumar (2nd edition 2004) which follows an earlier 1978 book of his which looked at the post-industrial writers such as Daniel Bell and Alain Touraine who explored the move to a service economy and a ‘knowledge society’, and  the social and political changes that could be expected to follow from this. Those theories have been joined by others with a more ambitious scope about the information and communication revolution, the transformation of work and organization in the global economy; and of political ideologies and cultural beliefs