Monday, February 11, 2008

Monday Thoughts 2: The Faces of Postmodernism

17.3 The Faces of Postmodernism
In this section, we have chosen several figures from postmodernism to give you some sense of this recent trend in philosophy.

We start with Michel Foucault (pronounced foo-KOH). You will remember that Francis Bacon in the 1500's had the famous slogan that "Knowledge is power." The more truth you know, the more you are able to do in the world. Foucault turned this expression on its head, "Power is knowledge." For Foucault, the truth is whatever you have the power to convince others is true.

Foucault's writings apply this principle to subjects like the punishment of crime, insanity, and sexuality. In his historical studies, Foucault shows how society's paradigms have changed in the last few centuries.

For example, the punishment of crime was very public up until recent times. People were beheaded or hanged in public for all to see. Particularly heinous crimes were met with such grusome punishments as being drawn and quartered. The goal was to deter others from doing the same.

Foucault argues that changes in contemporary culture do not indicate that we are more civilized than previous generations. Rather, he argues, we have made punishment into a matter of revenge. The goal is no longer to show others what not to do. Now the goal is to make the criminal suffer for what they have done. In both cases, lines of power have created what is true.

With regard to sexuality, Foucault argues that the very category of sexuality as an aspect of a person is a recent invention. In previous days, people did not divide human sexuality into the categories of hetero- and homosexual with distinct "orientations." Homosexual activity was exactly that--sexual activity that some people engaged in.

However, such individuals would likely have been married and have children as well. To use our language, earlier generations would have assumed that everyone was a heterosexual but that some people engaged in homosexual behavior as well. But they did not have a category "heterosexual" in their mind.

A good deal of what Foucault had to say about such things seems to work when we apply them to history. For example, we saw in chapter 12 that the Bible only seems to address homosexual activity, not a homosexual orientation. All our knowing of the world involves the use of paradigms, ways we categorize the data of the world. Unlike God, we cannot hold in our minds all the data in its relationship to all the other data of the world. We have to "group" the data, to simplify it. Then once we have reduced the data of the world into smaller groups, we propose relationships between those bigger categories.

But these "structures" our minds and cultures give to reality almost always involve skew.<1> We almost always have to oversimplify reality in order for us to process it. Have you ever heard the saying, "The Devil is in the details"? This saying basically reflects the truth that our nice categories often break down when we get down to the nitty gritty of applying them.

Foucault himself recognized that he himself was imposing his own power on the data of history. Indeed, we should be on guard as we read him, for he would have been inconsistent if he actually claimed to be relating something true about history. Nevertheless, we can learn a good deal from his studies. We can believe that there are better and worse interpretations of history and yet recognize that power plays an enormous role in what people believe is true.

We often do not realize how differently groups outside our own understand history differently than we do. When we think of the recent war in Iraq, for example, we find competing versions of history in play. In the days following the events of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush had the power to impose a particular paradigm on a good part of the Western world. Using the power of words, he used language of traditional warfare like "attack," "war on terror," and so forth in order to urge the launch of conventional troops against a nation he included within that war.

President Bush had the power to maintain that paradigm through the 2004 election. But we can see several points of potential skew in the paradigm. For example, to simplify the data, Bush included a number of different "terrorist" groups together as a singular opponent. Foucault would note that even the imposition of the label "terrorist" immediately results in a skew of the actual data. How similar were these individual groups? How accurate was it to include the regime of Saddam Hussein within the same group as Al Qaeda? It may very well be that the historical paradigms of the future in relation to these events will be much different from that used by the Bush administration in its time of crisis.

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<1> Foucault is sometimes called a "post-structuralist."

7 comments:

Angie Van De Merwe said...

I think postmodernity is the best thing that has happened to academia, because it undermines all absolute assertions of "truth" and allows everything to be critically evaluated AGAIN, therefore undermining what was "traditional" and "acceptable" and challenging the whole mind-set in commitments ...and hopefully reassessing the commitments of the Church with greater relavance to the problems facing mankind and individuals within cultural groups. The challenge is to ascertain what makes the Church the Church? ethnicity? values? commitments? rituals? theology? text? history? humanity????

Angie Van De Merwe said...

In reassessing academic commitments, maybe academia needs to understand the paradigms with which they approach their subjects of interests...and what "outcomes" they are wanting to "prove"...

If theology used to be the "queen of the sciences", then what "different" or "unique" claims does the Church have in academia?

I find my mind is running on different "systems" and I am trying to intergrate them. Is that evean a possibility? Or do we have to choose where our commitments will be, recognizing the limitation of the "system"?

Jeffrey Crawford said...

IF postmodernity allowed for the reevaluation of truth and of previous assertions, then I would be apt to embrace it fully. I am quite uncertain of the movement - although I surely embrace aspects, as reevaluation seems to be less of a priority and reconstruction has replaced it.
By examining many postmodern writers and thinkers, it seems apparent that truth is by no means knowable or even of importance. In other words, the objective has been replaced by the subjective - by the individual. In this case, postmodernity is simply an outgrowth of modernity, in the way in which Oden describes "ultramodernity".
Although it is impossible and unwise to dismiss a movement or to generalize such a thing, it does provide a cautionary tale. One must be diligent in examining a movement and be able able to separate praxis from practice.
A reexamining of truth structures with an allowance that objectivity is present, even if unattainable seems to be a worthy endeavor. See the writings of Polanyi for such an examination. I believe his perspective to truly be "postmodern".
But, in a truly "postmodern" paradigm - to each their own - haha!

Angie Van De Merwe said...

Jeffrey,
It is not funny to destroy "meaning" for anyone. Meaning is the way in which an individual defines his life...his very identity. These "creations" are only understood within individual paradigms of brain, mind, family, culture, giftings, etc. A person is not reducible to one aspect of personhood. The complexity is astounding...and therefore, I believe, improbable to "find". Every aspect of an individual's life must be analyzed and compared with "some standard" of analysis. The problem then becomes "what is the standard" (or "norm", which is itself a cultural product and individuals have many cultural "definitions") whereby we can analyze man? Is it "brain function"? How then do we understand differences of evaluation in creating "meaning" in individuals?
Even within a cultural context such as "American Christianity", we will disagree as to what makes up the Church and what function the Chruch's role is in developing the individual.

Mike Cline said...

The problem is in what promotes itself as "postmodern Christianity" in many circles is hardly postmodern in philosophical terms whatsoever. What I appreciate about Radical Orthodoxy is its commitment to "bringing postmodernism into the church" (Smith), whether I agree with its conclusions or not. These are thinkers who have really engaged Derrida and Co. But the majority of people who promote a "Christian postmodernism" have little to do with "there is nothing outside the text" or an "incredulity to metanarratives." But they know postmodernism is a buzz word...that young people are not sticking with the church...and ancient practices are really neat again.

And just to make sure I don't come off like some elitist, I hardly have a clue what the primary texts of these authors is saying! If it weren't for Grenz, Rashcke, and Ken Schenck, I'd really be lost!

Mike Cline said...

Ken, I'm wondering how we've come to identify Greco-Roman thought, or some strands of early christianity/judaism as "pre-modern." This has to be out of absolute bias in scholarship or something. Greek philosophy was pretty advanced. The Biblical authors were hardly stupid and uncritical. I just don't get the label "pre-modern" as anything other than polemical.

Anonymous said...

The power of western modernity has always been about the matter of thinking critically about critical thinking. Postmodernism is not a concern with finding a new way to think "about" certain things: the postmodern project is not about finding a new methodology for critique. Rather, postmodernism itself is a disavowal of critique itself.
Postmodernism rests on the facets that 1. "Reality" is ultimately ambiguous 2. Human beings are not in a position of epistemic fortitude that allows them to make ANY claims about the truth or falsity of any matter 3. Truth and falsity themselves are categories that the human mind projects into concrete situations in order for human beings to function, which is the result of psychological past, contextual social institutions or through an individual's "framing of their own reality." Now, what is confusing is the fact that human beings are not "allowed" or "able" to make statements about reality, but the postmodernists are able to say very significant things about human essence and reality! The postmodern critique does not involve a mild skepticism towards our faculties, but an all out declaration that they are obsolete. How the postmodern train discovers this fuel I am not sure, but I find it disheartening that so many look to postmodernism as a way to construct anything by enabling human beings to "reavaluate and reassess," because the very faculties that we use to reavaluate and reassess are dismissed in the postmodern project. It's like cutting off both your legs in order to discover a new way to walk.