At the end of
this century the big questions about reality and being human rise with
unexpected power. We ask ever more agonizingly: What does it mean to
be human? How do human beings fit into this vast cosmos? Where to
from here? We live in a time of great uncertainty–caught in the
transition from a bold and passionate optimism about the future to a
deep skepticism and spirit of nihilism about finding any universal ways
for mankind. We live in a postmodern time.
The term “postmodernism” pops up in newspapers, magazines, and other
media. What does it mean? And what does it mean for a Christian? My
goal in this essay is to describe some primary features underlying
postmodernism and to give examples of postmodernism’s effects. In
the first section, I will focus on postmodernism’s philosophical
underpinnings. In the second, I will present some examples of how
postmodernism manifests itself today.
The Underpinnings
To characterize postmodernism, we must look briefly at what came before: modernism.
“Modern” was once used liberally as an adjective to describe many
things–from the latest kitchen gadget to a style of art. But
“modern” also refers to a specific period of time (roughly 1870
through the mid-1960s) and to the range of cultural ideas, beliefs,
and artifacts that people generated during that period.
Modernism was grounded in the beliefs of the Enlightenment–a time in
western civilization (roughly 1730-1800) in which the “great minds”
of the West began to disbelieve in the authority of the
Judeo-Christian God as the basis for the truth and the law that
undergird society and culture. Replacing traditional beliefs in God,
church, and king, they established a new authority centered in man
and his rational abilities to create a new, “liberated” social and
intellectual framework for human endeavor.
The modernist believed that science had shaken the foundations of
traditional authorities and truths. (Consider, for example, how
three developments–the steam engine, the harnessing of electricity,
and Darwin’s evolutionary theory–had radically altered the social
consciousness of western man.) Modern man could find a new, rational
foundation for universal truth; science, particularly, would reveal
new truth, which, when applied to modern society and institutions,
would literally remake the world. Modernism “… held the extravagant
expectation that the arts and sciences would further not only the
control of the forces of nature but also the understanding of self and
world, moral progress, justice in social institutions, and even
human happiness.” (Jurgen Habermas, Modernity: An Unfinished Project, pp 162-63.)
Modernism presupposed an understanding of human identity and self that was unified, coherent, and autonomous:
man was a thinking being capable of rationally perceiving, knowing,
and conquering the world–and he would. To be “modern,” then, was to
embrace the power of scientific rationality, the spirit of progress, a
vision of unlimited potential for human society, and an optimism for
the future in which man could obtain his two greatest needs:
meaning and material security.
Looking to man and not God, the optimism of modernism has proven
itself ill-founded. The response has been postmodernism. The best
Christian book on postmodernism that I have found is A Primer on Postmodernism
by Stanley J. Grenz. In this article, however, I will have to
describe postmodernism more briefly, which I will do by looking at five
presuppositions inherent in the postmodern worldview:
(1) The quest for truth is a lost cause. It is a search for a
“holy grail” that doesn’t exist and never did. Postmodernists argue
that objective, universal, knowable truth is mythical; all we have
ever found in our agonized search for Truth are “truths” that were
compelling only in their own time and culture, but true Truth has
never been ours. Furthermore, if we make the mistake of claiming to know
the Truth, we are deluded at best and dangerous at worst.
(2) A person’s sense of identity is a composite constructed by the forces of the surrounding culture.
Individual consciousness–a vague, “decentered” collection of
unconscious and conscious beliefs, knowledge, and intuitions about
oneself and the world–is malleable and arrived at through
interaction with the surrounding culture. Postmodernism then, in
stark contrast to modernism, is about the dissolving of the self.
From the postmodernist perspective, we should not think of ourselves as
unique, unified, self-conscious, autonomous persons.
(3) The languages of our culture (the verbal and visual signs we
use to represent the world to ourselves) literally “construct” what
we think of as “real” in our everyday existence. In this sense,
reality is a “text” or “composite” of texts, and these texts
(rather than the God-created reality) are the only reality we can
know. Our sense of self–who we are, how we think of ourselves, as
well as how we see and interpret the world and give ourselves
meaning in it–is subjectively constructed through language.
(4) “Reality” is created by those who have power. One of
postmodernism’s preeminent theorists, Michel Foucault, combines the
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas about how those in power
shape the world with a theory of how language is the primary tool
for making culture. Foucault argues that whoever dominates or controls
the “official” use of language in a society holds the key to social
and political power. (Think, for example, of how official political
“spin” control of specific words and phrases can alter the public
perception of political decisions, policies, and events.) Put
simply, Nietzsche said all reality is someone’s willful, powerful
construction; Foucault says language is the primary tool in that
construction.
(5) We should neutralize the political power inherent in language by “deconstructing” it.
Another leading postmodernist, Jacques Derrida, theorizes that the
language we use when we make statements always creates a set of
opposite beliefs, a “binary,” one of which is “privileged” and the
other of which is “marginalized,” and the privileged belief is always
favored. For example, if one says “Honey is better for you than
white sugar,” this statement of opinion has “privileged” honey over
white sugar. In the arena of morals one might say “Sex should only
happen in marriage,” in which case the experience of sex in marriage
is “privileged” and sex out of wedlock is “marginalized.” Derrida
argues that all language is made up of these binaries, and they are
always socially and politically loaded. “Deconstruction” is the
practice of identifying these power-loaded binaries and restructuring
them so that the marginalized or “unprivileged” end of the binary
can be consciously focused upon and favored.
Some Examples
The central characteristics of postmodernism present us with a
radically different way of looking at life. At this point, however,
we need to remember the proverb that says “If you want to know about
water, don’t ask a fish!” The postmodernist elements of our culture
are to us like water to the fish: we live and breathe in them everyday,
but we take them so much for granted that it is very difficult for
us to see them.
Perhaps the most general characteristics of postmodernism are
fragmentation and pluralism. Our culture is rapidly reaching the
point where we no longer think of ourselves in a universe but rather a multi-verse.
In the postmodern worldview, transience, flux, and fragmentation
describe our growing sense of how things really are. Where do we see
this played out around us?
Personal identity. At the level of the individual,
there abides a sense of uncertainty about how to understand oneself;
most people consciously search for a sense of identity–for who and
what they are and for what significance and worth they have. Our
media-generated, consumer culture daily offers us a thousand choices for
who we should be like, what we should value, and how we can attain
worth and significance. And we take these images for what is real.
So, for example, tennis pro Andre Agassi can say “Image is
everything!” in an advertisement, and we believe him.
Education and academics. From the modernist
perspective, truth was largely relative, but the possibility of
universals in knowledge remained conceivable. In the postmodern
model, we don’t really “know” anything; rather, we “interpret.”
Postmodernist education says “Pick a worldview,” as if only a choice
of clothing style were at issue, “and create your interpretations
accordingly,” since truths are only language constructions put
in place by those who have influence and power. The emphasis on
multi-cultural education is grounded philosophically in this
perspective. After all, says the postmodernist educator, the
emphasis in Western education on rationality and the quest for what is
ultimately true is only another manifestation of Western “cultural
imperialism” motivated by consumer capitalist power.
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