Telling Stories (Part Two)

THE TRUTH ABOUT

MY STORY-TELLING:

PART TWO OF MY LIFE (2009 -- )


On Postmodernism, Relativism,

Nonsense and Frivolities



To postmodernists, truths exist only in relation to specific discourses. There are no absolute or universal facts--only stories that "work" at particular times for their particular "speakers". Pragmatism in philosophy puts forward a similar argument. Structuralists, poststructuralists and new historicists argue that it is impossible to access reality except through texts.

Discourse theorists suggests that it is NOT truth that counts, but who defines it, and what uses they put it to; KNOWLEDGE IS USED IN THE EXERCISE OF POWER:

1. Observers are never neutral or disinterested. Truth-claims serve specific interests;
2. You can only look at an object of enquiry from a particular viewpoint, and through a specific set of expectations and requirements;
3. No account of historical reality is free of narrative--because you can't reconstruct the past as it "really" happened, you can only tell stories about it.

This can be seen as a relativist outlook. It can lead to a critical engagement with history. It enables new histories to be written that reveal the significance of previously neglected groups, or which challenge dominant but biased accounts; feminist histories or Marxist histories would be two examples of this. [But is there any guarantee such re-writing of history will not be subjected to biased outlook and misleading interpretations of their own -- reflecting considerable vested interests invested into such "histories"-- rendering such "histories" totally unacceptable to traditional historians (and to someone like me?)].

Since all histories are stories, historians needn't worry about evidence, accuracy or validation--as they can be all simulated or manufactured! Does all this not open the door to irresponsible, even dangerous, revisions of history? And give itself no grounds on which to dispute them? Are there not clear boundaries between history and fiction? Do we not need to believe that there are such things as undeniable, objective facts? If we don't tell it like it is, we'll all be mad!

Postmodernists can defend their position by claiming that it is not about choosing between pure facts and fantasy. (You can tell that one account is truer than another--without assuming that your knowledge is perfect or that new facts won't come to light.)

Postmodernist relativism makes us aware of the rules and conventions under which claims are made--i.e., we must "play" by the agreed rules--applying, in other words, the standards of the historical community. We must be "in" the history language game; we must be historians! (Yes, but what kind of historians?)

The Challenging Practices of Everyday Life

THOSE "LITTLE" ACTS OF

ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT DISOBEDIENCE --

AS PRACTISED BY INDIVIDUALISTS

IN THEIR EVERYDAY LIFE


In order to understand the present way of life, you should attend less to a total picture of society as a whole and more to the seemingly insignificant details of how people go about living their lives.

By doing so, you'll find in contemporary life not some falsely unified spirit of the age, but a complex mass of interweaving and contradictory desires, concerns and stories.


Everyday life is creative. Everyday life is full of such acts of "poaching, tricking, speaking, strolling, desiring". We are not passive victims of consumer society. We make our material conditions bearable and make sense of the world we live in. Every day, we engage in the creative production of our own power struggles, pleasures, and acts of disobedience -- AS INDIVIDUALISTS (YES, AND CERTAINLY, SORRY, NOT AS SUBJECTS, WHO ARE ALL ALREADY DEFEATED, COMPROMISED AND SUBMISSIVE AGENTS OF THE SYSTEM, NO LESS!).

In doing so, we CREATE IMPORTANT CRACKS IN THE MONOLITH OF THE DOMINANT ECONOMIC ORDER!

We may not be able to change the world, but at least, we can migrate across the cultural environment, taking bits we need from whatever products and experiences are available. (Hey, hey, hey!) In short, day-to-day life is about making do against the system!

Postmodern Politics

Postmodernists maintain that society is incoherent and that no single perspective can grasp the complexity and fluidity of current conditions.

Society, to them, has fragmented into so many conflicting knowledges, identities, needs, and views--it is not possible or desirable to see the human race as "one big fmily"!

This situation arises out of the fact that socieites arebecoming multi-cultural and our lifestyles are becoming cosmopolitan. It also means that there is no agreement about what is worth believing (or knowing) any more! That social conditions are in a frightening state of disrepair! Postmodernists--some of them--see it as far more constructive to push the fragmentation as far as it will go--and use it to your advantage!

diversity and disagreement are part of political discourse. To generate new ideas and experiences, postmodernists--many of them, yes!--propose that we should activitate the differences between people and between the cultural spaces they inhabit.

Possibilities for creativity are contained in this activation. (It also contains the potential for violent conflict; some postmodern thinkers would rather see violence than flabby tolerance. But it is our responsibility to ensure that the activation will only encourage possibilities for creativity--and nothing violent, conflicting, flabby or tolerant!)

Individual Identity and Society in the Postmodern Capitalist System

Subjects, Totalitarianism, Mass Culture,

Capitalism and Modern Societies

The postmodern position on individual identity and society (as an early statement): the world is fragmented and in a flux--in which individuals are liberated from any "repressive" notions about the rationality, unity, or stability of the self.

The modernity's capitalist system, in which repression and dominance are lived by the people, shows up the power relationship between modern society and individual desire!

Subjects and their pleasures are defined and controlled by the institutions of the modern state (unless or except if you're still individualists!). Capitalism has infiltrated all of existence. It has taken away from people -- except and excluding all those who are still individualists -- the possibility of experiencing genuine freedom, expression and satisfasction. All desires under capitalism are "fake", "mediated" desires. (For those who are still NOT yet SUBJECTS in the system, this is not necessarily true!)

Modernity has expanded communication technologies and consumerism into our lives--which are central to an insidious kind of totalitarianism. Thus totalitarianism produces "false needs" and seeks to penetrate consciousness itself--neutralizing all voices of dissent, and turning us all into interchangeable components of the capitalist machine -- except yours truly, whose voice of conscience and dissent remains clear, strong, vibrant, loud and still uncompromised -- after all these years -- by the Capitalist system!

Even in democratic societies, mass culture acts as an authoritarian force which reduces people to passive social conformity. It injects the capitalist status quo into people's unconscious--making its victims lose their individuality, and persuades them (its victims) to willingly accept mass culture's values!

Five Facts On Modernism

There and Then

1. Modernism adopted adversarial stance toeards the postmodern world by making powerful critical statements about postmodern society;
2. Modernism achieved genuine quality--as in avant-garde literature--by aiming for the highest order (of purity and autonomy) in writing and self=expression;
3. Modernist literature opposed capitalism;
4. The so-called "death of the author" in literature was regarded by modernism as excessively anti-historical and asocial;
5. The proper understanding of a text is impossible without knowing something about the "who, where, and when" of it.

Six Facts On Postmodernism

Here and Everywhere -- 40 Years On!

1. There is no clean, objective distinction between the modern and the postmodern. (There is no chasm or a point of transition between the two periods);
2. Postmodernism involves "both/and" thinking;
3. Postmodernism is sucked into the orbit of commerce, mass culture, assembly-line mentality, kitsch art, mass media, advertising, fetishization of commodities, capitalism;
4. Postmodernist art is drained of meaning and emotional force by commercialisation;
5. Postmodernism is a social and economic event brought about mainly by the spread of mass industry;
6. Postmodernism is a cultural matter of changes in the arts.