Postmodernism: the cultural logic of capitalist crisis?
Socialist Outlook newspaper1990sPaul ClarkeTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
In SO6 Paul Clarke wrote an article attacking 'postmodernism', arguing that it was 'modernism gone rotten'. In reply Terry Murphy insisted that the key to understanding postmodernism is to be found in Frederic Jameson's 'The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism', and that this is based on a periodisation of capitalism which marxists should agree with. Here PAUL CLARKE replies to Terry Murphy. In our next issue we publish a substantial article by Murphy explaining his views.
TERRY Murphy's reply poses the question of whether there are definite periods of capitalist development and whether there are cultural trends which, in however a refracted way, 'correspond' with these phases.
My answer is yes, indeed my article was based on this very notion. The question is not whether there postmodernism exists as a philosophical and cultural trend, but what our assessment of it should be.
Terry's fundamental points seem to that a) postmodernism is a useful analytical category, corresponding to the 'cultural logic' of a definite phase of capitalism b) that I have misassessed this trend, conflating it with post-structuralism and drawing too sharp a distinction between 'optimistic' modernism and 'pessimistic', irrationalist postmodernism.
I accept the argument that there has been a transformation in capitalism, but I differ with Terry's (and Jameson's) periodisation.
Surely the vogue for postmodernism corresponds not with the postwar boom and the 'third technological revolution' but with the end of the boom, the period starting at the beginning of the 1970s. It is the end of the boom which has set in train the substantial restructuring of capitalist production, often called 'post-fordism'.
Therefore I would want to argue that postmodernism is not simply 'the cultural logic of late capitalism', but rather the cultural logic of late capitalism in crisis. Of course the post-structuralist thinkers who prefigured postmodernism started their work before the full onset of the crisis; the question is why postmodernism took the 1980s by storm – and not the 1970s?
My contention is that the irrationalism of postmodernism, and its hostility to the 'grand narratives' of human liberation and to any rational discourse on society corresponds with this new period of capitalist crisis, restructuring and reaction.
It surely not true that the 'bourgeois ideology' which the 1968 students rebelled against had much echo of post-structuralist or postmodernist thought.
For example, the American sociologist Talcott Parsons, a key target of the insurgent academe, was the doyen of structural functionalism. Politically he was light years away from a structural-marxist like Althusser; but were there no theoretical parallels?
Did I falsely attribute the views of people like Lyotard and Foucault, with their rejection of the 'grand narratives' of the Enlightenment (like liberalism, socialism, the struggle for human freedom) to the postmodernists proper?
These thinkers were certainly post-structuralists; but it is surely usually accepted that they were forerunners of postmodernism? In any case, exactly which postmodernist thinker resumers a confident, optimistic discourse about the possibilities of the rational transformation of society?
Murphy's strictures against my contrast between 'pre-postmodernist' bourgeois thought (confident, rational etc) and 'rotten' postmodernism has perhaps more weight.
Of course throughout 20th century bourgeois culture there are irrationalist and pessimistic trends. I accept Terry's correction on this point. But then it is surely a legitimate marxist concern to identify what are the dominant trends in bourgeois culture, and to try to relate these to the political trends in society.
I find quite puzzling Terry's assertion that the heart of the debate about postmodernism is whether capitalism has distinct phases. I don't know any marxist who doubts this proposition. But in all the debates with the postmodernists, post-marxists and ideologues of post-fordism there are common traits.
At the heart of these is the interpretation of the latest phase of capitalism; and that is not 'late capitalism' in general, but the crisis and restructuring of capitalism in the 1980s in particular.
My contention is that the restructuring of capitalist, the worldwide offensive of capital, and the dominance of reactionary trends in philosophy and culture are linked. They all tell us something about the reactionary times in which we live.