CONSTRUCTIVE POSTMODERNISM (by Kim Thoday)

What is the notion of ‘postmodern’ and its derivatives, ‘postmodernity’ and ‘postmodernism’? Although much of the contemporary literature often uses the terms modernity/modernism and postmodernity/postmodernism interchangeably, some clarification is I think helpful. Thus, I utilise the terms ‘modernity’ and ‘postmodernity’ to refer to the somewhat modernist notion of temporal eras, while ‘modernism’ and ‘postmodernism’ refer to theoretical discourses. I trust that this is a useful differentiation.

Among the multifarious aspects and applications of the 1990s project of postmodernism is the realisation that comprehension of postmodernism is necessarily cumulative and shifting, since theories of the contemporary are an intrinsic part of the formulation of this project. Definitions of ‘postmodernity’ and ‘postmodernism’ proliferate and are often contradictory, and their use is at times arbitrary. The ambiguity of meanings is due to both the historically varied contexts and applications to which the terms have been applied, and the paradoxical nature of postmodern thought.

The beginnings of the term ‘post-modern’ have been traced to its use by Arnold Toynbee in 1939 as a label for a new chronological era. Toynbee argued that the ‘post-modern’ era was preceded by the ‘modern’ era; the assumption being that the ‘modern’ era ended during World War I.1 Here, the ‘post’ in postmodern indicates addition to or building on to the base of the ‘modern’ and ‘modernity’.2 Toynbee’s use of the term consolidated the association of the ‘post-modern’ as a historical period, marking a break with the past. Thus, one use of the term ‘postmodern’ came to be understood to indicate an end to the age known as ‘modern’. World War I is widely acknowledged as a significant point in time that signalled a shift away from the prevailing Western worldview that paralleled the era known as ‘modern’. There is widespread agreement in the literature that the era known as the ‘modern’ is broadly characterised by the rational, scientific project of ‘modernity’ which had attached faith to the “quasi-religious certainty about progress” emergent through earlier centuries.3

There is a plethora of debate as to the question of whether or not postmodernity represents a break or a continuity with modernity, either in a temporal context, or in terms of theory. I would argue that postmodernism enables ‘we’ of the contemporary era to critique and move away from the modern notion of breaking completely with the past, so that we can no longer think in terms of separate eras or discourses. On the other hand, Frederic Jameson seems to argue that since ‘postmodernity’ parallels “late capitalism” (and by implication, modernity parallels earlier stages of capitalism) ‘postmodernity’ is an appropriate label for the chronological time sequence following modernity.4 Jameson states that the cultural preparation for postmodernity began in the 1960s (in the North American context from which he writes) while the economic preconditions of postmodernity have their beginnings in the post-World War II climate of the 1950s.5 I would agree with Thomas Docherty who points to the problematic nature of Jameson’s conception of postmodernity as the latest in “a succession of epochs”, and then qualifies his argument by adding that “…postmodernity … remains a notion which needs to be defined against modernity.”6

Steven Connor notes that theories of the postmodern generally surmise the pre-existence or at least the recognition of an era of the modern or modernity, and that the emergence of postmodernism in relation to literary studies at least requires a ‘homogenising’ or “back-formation” of modernism.7 Likewise, Frederic Jameson states that all theories of postmodernism are mimetic. Jameson elaborates that, although such theories claim to refute foundationalism, none are totally antifoundational. Instead, “…they are parasitory on another system (most often on modernism itself)…”8

The notion of the era of postmodernity, as mentioned, is often associated with a significant break between the ‘past’ modern era and the ‘present’ commencement of a new, postmodern era. This notion is at least partly based on modernism’s tenets of scientific, industrial, temporal progress that has its residues in the contemporary psyche. However, it is argued that aspects of postmodernism is not a completely new phenomenon; rather like traces of a precious mineral extending through several layers of geological time, so postmodernity, as indeed all legitimate epistemologies have their ancient antecedents. With this in mind, discerning theorists such as theologian Hans K ¼ng do not view postmodernism as an opposition or flight from modernism; rather, in K ¼ng’s view, the project of postmodernity facilitates “…an immanent critique of modernity…an enlightenment on the Enlightenment…”9

Postmodernism has been applied across a multiplicity of contemporary disciplines of thought. The terms ‘postmodern’, ‘postmodernism’ and ‘postmodernity’, as noted, have no single usage and indeed, definitions of these terms are often contradictory. Postmodernism is popularly recognised, even vilified, as nihilistic, scathing of ‘grand’ narratives, fragmentary, and alienating, “antifoundational, antitotalizing, and demystifying”.10 My understanding and experience repudiates this definition for, or type of, postmodernism, often referred to as “deconstructive or eliminative”11 postmodernism. Rather, my understanding of postmodernism resonates with a “constructive or revisionary”12 postmodernism, which combines elements of the premodern and modern whilst simultaneously transcending premodernity’s supernaturalistic notions and modernity’s “…individualism, anthropocentrism, patriarchy, mechanization, economism, consumerism, nationalism, and militarism.”13 This type of postmodernism is not simply antimodern, since it is not calling for a return to the premodern, nor is it rejecting rational, enlightened thought; it arises as a response to the threats is posed for humanity – and, indeed for the survival of our world – in the face of modernism’s materialistic epsitemology and its negation of the spiritual and ecological impulses of human being. Indeed, modernism can be described as synonymous with elimination of the “realm of the transcendent” which had “lost its hold on how we live and how we die”.14

The sense of imminent global crisis impinges on the consciousness of a significant number of theorists – both secular and theological – as they critique the contemporary era.15 K ¼ng and Griffin are among theologians who point to the current climate of “crisis” within Western culture at the dawn of third millennium. Theologians Rebecca S Chopp and Mark Lewis Taylor name particular instances of “evil” and “sin” such as crimes against humanity, U.S. imperialism and hegemony, ecological crisis, issues of global poverty and so on. They identify these realities of evil and sin as having “…been reinforced and sustained, at least in part, by Christian practices and theological discourses.” These modern practices and discourses are, for Chopp and Taylor, root causes of the current Western cultural crisis.16 These theologians respond to what they see as the spectre of modern theology’s irresponsibility in sanctioning the Christian Church’s overwhelmingly destructive, imperial behaviour which has underpinned and perpetuated the contemporary crisis. This in my opinion is a useful critique, but is an over emphasis, for it negates the many strands within the Christian tradition that have severely critiqued and indeed resisted the dominant values of modern Western culture. Perhaps blame also needs to be laid at the foot of a theology or anti-theology symbolised by Friedrich Nietzsche’s madman who declared the “death of God,” fulfilling the humanist dream of a thoroughly secularised modality of being.

As noted, K ¼ng asserts that a characteristic of postmodernism is to act as a means by which to critique modernism through a creative synthesis of the premodern and the modern, thereby facilitating a crucial underpinning for the platform of constructive postmodernism. Ihab Hassan puts forward an alternative but useful way of looking at postmodernism with his indices for postmodernism set out in tabular form in opposition to those for modernism. While Hassan’s work eludes a definitive approach to postmodernism and its relationship to modernism, this table provides implicit and powerful pointers to the desirability of postmodernism as opposed to modernism:

Modernism Postmodernism Romanticism/Symbolism ‘Pataphysics/Dadaism Form (conjunctive/closed) Antiform (disjunctive, open)

Purpose Play Design Chance Hierarchy Anarchy Mastery/Logos Exhaustion/Silence Art Object/Finished Work Process/Performance/Happening Distance Participation Creation/Totalization Decreation/Deconstruction Synthesis Antithesis Presence Absence Centering Dispersal Genre/Boundary Text/Intertext Paradigm Syntagm Hypotaxis Parataxis Metaphor Metonymy Selection Combination Root/Depth Rhizome/Surface Interpretation/Reading Against Interpretation/Misreading Signified Signifier Lisible (Readerly) Scriptible (Writerly)

Narrative/ Grand Histoire Antinarrative/ Petit Histoire Master Code Idiolect Symptom Desire Genital/Phallic Polymorphous/Androgynous Paranoia Schizophrenia Origin/Cause Difference-Differance/Trace Metaphysics Irony Determinacy Indeterminacy Transcendence Immanence

Though my bias is for a postmodern epistemology, perhaps rather than a binary oppositional approach (which could be construed from the above table), meaning is to be found in the spaces space between: which requires the recognition of continuum. A constructive approach to postmodernism enables an openness to new juxtapositioning of relationships with emphases on diversity within holism. This space enables the sacred to be seen as an immanent constituent within these relationships, requiring a radical revisioning involving an intrinsic awareness of and care for the whole of creation as symbiotic relationship.

Blessings in Jesus’ name,

KIM THODAY

HEWETT COMMUNITY CHURCH OF CHRIST

http://www.hewett.com.au

1 Thomas Docherty (ed), Postmodernism : A Reader, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993, pp 1-2. 2 Jean-Francois Lyotard, “Defining the Postmodern”, The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During,, Routledge, 1993, p 171. 3 Hans K ¼ng, Theology for the Third Millennium : An Ecumenical View, translated by Peter Heinegg, Doubleday, 1988, p 3. 4 Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Verso, 1991, p xx. 5 Ibid, p xx. 6 Ibid. 7 Steven Connor, Postmodernist Culture : An Introduction to Theories of the Contemporary, Blackwell, 1989. 8 Jameson, op cit, p xii. 9 Kung,, op cit, p 6. 10 A K M Adam, What is Postmodern Biblical Criticism : Textures of Postmodernism, Fortress Press, 1995, p 22. 11 David Ray Griffin, Varieties of Postmodern Theology, State University of New York Press, 1989, pp 32-40. Griffin engages with Mark C Taylor’s book about deconstructive postmodernism, Erring : A Postmodern A/theology. Griffin notes that this type of postmodernism is “nihilistic” since it eliminates those ideas which had replaced God as well as acknowledging the death of God. Griffin sets out these ideas and analyses the problems he views as inherent in their elimination. 12 Ibid, pp xi-xiv. Griffin is a process theologian whose emphasis is on the unity and holism reflected in constructive, revisionary postmodern thought. He writes that “…deconstructive … postmodernism overcomes the modern worldview through an anti-worldview; it deconstructs or eliminates the ingredients necessary for a worldview, such as God, self, purpose, meaning, a real world, and truth as correspondence.” (p xii) On the other hand, “…constructive … postmodernism involves a new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious intuitions… [and] involves a creative synthesis of modern and pre-modern truths and values.” (pp xii-xiii)

Griffin is influential in the work of Ted Peters who writes that “Postmodernity in essence is the recovery of meaning, not its dissolution.” Ted Peters, God – The World’s Future : Systematic Theology for a Postmodern Era, Fortress Press, 1992, p 18. Cf. Kung, op cit, p 6. 13 Griffin, ibid, p xiii. 14 Kevin Hart (ed), The Oxford Book of Australian Religious Verse, Oxford University Press, 1994, p xix. 15 Peters, op cit, p xiii. Peters warns that the present debate about the authority of the modern era “…is based on the awareness that the continuation of modernity threatens the very survival of life on our planet.” 16 Rebecca S Chopp and Mark Lewis Taylor (eds), Reconstructing Christian Theology, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1994, p 5.