Postmodernism and the Left
Barbara Epstein
[from New Politics, vol. 6, no. 2 (new series), whole no. 22, Winter 1997]

****WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS OF THIS FOR THE LEFT? As restraints on
capitalism have loosened and the logic of the market has crept into
virtually every area of life, the more human values of the left have come to
seem archaic and irrelevant. We certainly need a critique of this culture.
But postmodernism is not that critique. There are too many respects in which
postmodernism accepts or revels in the values of the marketplace for it to
serve as a critique. On a deeper level the problem is that postmodernism is
a stance of pure criticism, that it avoids making any claims, asserting any
values (or acknowledging its own implicit system of values, in particular
its orientation toward sophistication and aesthetics). Left politics
requires a conception of a better society and an assertion of a better set
of values than those that now prevail. This does not mean that any
particular vision of society or any particular definition of those values is
the last word; a left perspective requires ongoing discussion and debate.
But it is not possible for a purely critical stance to serve as the basis
for left politics.****

***No doubt, one reason that postmodernism has taken hold so widely is that
it is much easier to be critical than to present a positive vision. Being on
the left means having a conception of the future and confidence that there
is a connection between the present and the future, that collective action
in the present can lead to a better society. It is difficult these days to
articulate any clear vision of the future, even more difficult to figure out
how we might get from where we are to a more humane, egalitarian, and
ecologically balanced society. A friend of mine recently told me that her
image is that we are on a log that is slowly drifting down the Niagara
River, and we can begin to hear the roar of the Falls. But because we do not
know what to do, we are not roused from our lethargy. It seems to me that
postmodernism has become an obstacle to addressing urgent issues, including
impending environmental and social disasters, and how to build a movement
that might begin to address them. Clearing away the fog won't automatically
provide us with any answers, but might make it easier to hold a productive
discussion.***
------------------------------------------------------
NOTES

Alan Sokal, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative
Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," Social Text 46-47, Spring/Summer 1996:
217-252. return

For critiques of postmodernism, or poststructuralist theory, see Brian
Palmer, Descent into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing
of Social History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990); Peter Dews,
Logics of Disintegration: Post-Structuralist Thought and the Claims of
Critical Theory (London: Verso, 1987), Alex Callinocos, Against
Post-Modernism (London: Methuen, 1982); Christopher Norris, Deconstruction:
Theory and Practice (London: Methuen, 1982), and Deconstruction and the
Interests of Theory (London: Pinter, 1988), Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of
Postmodernism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), Perry Anderson, In the Tracks of
Historical Materialism (London: Verso, 1984), and Somer Broberibb, Nothing
Mat(t)ers: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism (North Melbourne: Spiniflex
Press, 1992). return

See, for instance, Judith Butler, "Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the
Question of Postmodernism'", 3-21, in Feminists Theorize the Political, ed.
Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott (New York: Routledge, 1992). return

Paul Gross and Normal Levitt, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its
Quarrels with Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1994). return

Alan Sokal, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative
Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," Social Text 46-47 (Spring/Summer 1996), p.
217. return

See Luc Ferry and Alain Renault, French Philosophy of the 60s: An Essay on
Antihumanism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985) on the ways
in which poststructuralism and the spirit of May '68 coincided, and
differed. Ferry and Renault point out that while a politics of authenticity,
of the self as agent of social change, was central to May '68,
poststructuralism emphasizes fragmentation and incoherence to the point of
denying the existence of the self and the possibility of authenticity.
return

James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography,
Literature, and Art ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), Donna
Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern
Science (New York: Routledge, 1989), Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe,
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics
(London: Verso, 1985), Jean Beaudrillard, For a Critique of the Political
Economy of the Sign (St. Louis, Telos Press, 1981), Jacques Lyotard, The
Postmodern Condition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).
return

David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: an Enquiry into the Origins of
Cultural Change (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), Frederic Jameson, The
Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1981), and "Postmodernism, or the Logic of Late
Capitalism," first published in New Left Review 146 (July-August 1984):
53-92, later included in Jameson's book of the same title (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 1991). return

Joan W. Scott, "Experience," in Feminists Theorize the Political, (New York:
Routledge, 1992), ed. Judith Butler and Joan W, Scott: 22-40. return

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London:
Verso, 1985), pp. 82-85. return

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New
York: Routledge, 1990). return

Stanley Fish, "Professor Sokal's Bad Joke," New York Times, Op Ed, May 21,
1996. return

"Mystery Science Theater," Bruce Robbins and Andrew Ross, Co-Editors, of
Social Text, Lingua Franca, July/August 1996: 54-57. return

Bruce Robbins, "Anatomy of a Hoax," Tikkun Vol. 11, No. 5, September-October
1996, pp. 58-59. return

Daniel Harris, "Jargon Basement," review of Male Matters: Masculinity,
Anxiety, and the Male Body on the Line, by Calvin Thomas (University of
Illinois Press). Bay Area Reporter, June 13, 1996, p. 40. return

Terry Eagleton, "Where Do Postmodernists Come From?" Monthly Review Vol. 47,
No. 3, July-August 1995, Special Issue: "In Defense of History: Marxism and
the Postmodern Agenda," pp. 59-70. return

For a discussion of the public view of academics and how postmodernism has
made a bad situation worse, see Loic J.D. Wacquant, "The Self-Inflicted
Irrelevance of American Academics," Academe, July-August 1996, 18-23.




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