Today I want to do a few things.
First, I will ask you to write in Canvas for a few minutes. I want to get a sense of what you do/not know regarding Postmodernism.
Second, I want to take a brief look at Obama’s recent speech on Selma in order to point out how epideictic rhetoric works. Consider this a review of our last unit on Burke and rhetorical analysis.
Third, I want to transition into our last unit by introducing postmodernism, looking at a few of the “major players.” These names will pop-up frequently in our readings over the next few weeks, and the authors we work with will expect you to have some understanding of the Critical [Postmodern] tradition.
Derrida: Language operates inexactly. We repress or dismiss ambiguity. But the Truth of existence lies in ambiguity–the space between the signifier and the signified (how do we come to understand difference as differance?). To repress or deny it can lead to a dangerous idealism.
So, a Derridean critique identifies the moment in which an argument/idea/institution has decided an undecideable?
Foucault: Follows up on Nietzsche’s interrogation of the relationship between truth and power (hint: there is no such thing as truth outside of power). Truth/power is instituted and sustained through institutions. Truth/Power gets normalized.
So, a Foucaultian analysis often involves tracing the history of a particular discourse, highlighting the introduction or redefinition of key terms.
Lyotard: Working through the implications of Foucault, Derrida, and others, Lyotard argues that Modernism referred to a particular progress narrative, and to Western Civilization’s investment in narratives. We always live in a (progressive/Idealist) story, one that looks to the future. This is called a reliance on meta-narrative. According to Lyotard, the (Left) investment in meta-narratives is irrevocably shaken.
Cixous: Working through Derrida, Cixous interrogated language, noting that the West had developed a phallo-logo-centric bias toward [masculine] rationality, one that dismissed [feminine] affect. She, along with theorists such as Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva sought to develop an ecriture feminine, literally translated as “woman’s writing,” that challenge the masculine tradition. This writing emphasized personal experience, emotional engagement, and bodily awareness. [See also: Roland Barthes]
Cixous was less critical than most of the other theorists on this list. Rather, she emphasized a particular kind of production–a writing of the impossible.
Lacan: Lacan’s work begins as an engagement with Freud and his notions of the unconscious, and grows to become a critique of it. It is extremely difficult to summarize any of these theorists succinctly, but Lacan presents one of the biggest challenges. I would simply say that Lacan’s work stresses two important, interrelated points. The first concerns subjectivity, or our sense of self and agency. The latter is an extremely loaded and important term for 20th century thought. I would unpack it as a series of questions: what is a person? how does a person come to be? what sustains a person’s sense of identity? what enables a person to do things? what shapes what a person thinks is possible? Lacan stressed that a person is ultimately NOT the stable, unique, coherent identity we want them to be. Rather, we are a conflict of desires–or, thinking back to Lyotard–narratives. Slavoj Zizek maps Lacan’s theories onto materialist thinking to argue that we are often a conflict of the various ideological desires projected onto us by Others (who we articulate to ourselves). Thus, to tease out the second point: for Lacan there is no Truth to guide us, we are guided–and often extremely out of touch–with our own Desire (and our principle Desire is for a Truth that guides us, for a Father (in the Freudian sense) or a Master).
So, a Lacanian or Zizekian analysis can do a couple of things. First, it can identify the Desire for mastery or production of a “Father” (often referred to as a Big Other). Second, it can trace the ways in which daily existence unconsciously reinforce the Law of the Father (or “the sense of normal” provided by the dominant social narrative).
Spivak: Spivak splices Derrida’s critique of language and signification with Foucault’s commentary on institutional power to argue that it *technically* impossible for a subaltern (someone on the margins of a particular culture/society/network) to speak. Why? Because speaking requires authority, and authority requires mastery. By the time one has mastered the master language, one has been mastered by it–they have lost the status of subaltern.
Homework:
Read Berlin’s essay “Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Writing Classroom.”
If you want a follow up, here is his companion essay, published 4 years later, “Poststructuralism, Cultural Studies, and the Composition Classroom.”
