Mamta Kalia

According to Jameson and
Baudrillard, the commodification of late
capitalism has blurred the distinction
between the economic and the cultural.
Industrial production has been replaced
by ‘semiurgy’ (Baudrillard)- the
production of signs. Second, the
epistemological orientation of
modernism-‘ knowing’ –gives way to the
antological orientation of postmodernism-
‘modes of being’. Further,
modernist self-reflexiveness, its urge to
question itself and its own foundations
in its search for essential timeless meaning
is replaced by a post- modernist view
of meaning as inevitably local, contingent
and self-sufficient. Third, as Fiedler points
out, the anthropocentrism, Eurocentrism,
repressive and reductive rationalism and
elitism of modernism gives way to the
liberating, democratic, open, respectful
to both humans and non-humans and
sensitive to desire aspects of postmodernism.
Further, existential post-modernists
like William Spanos viewed that the
criticism can make ‘a difference in the
world’ and for this an existential subject
is very much required. But he does not
recognise the priority of language. In
other words, he does not incline towards
the rhetoric, towards the surrender to
language and towards the ‘end of man’
(Derrida’s terms).
In his book, ’The Post-modern
Condition’: A report on knowledge, (1984)
J.F. Lyotard defines post-modernism as
a distrust or ‘incredulity towards meta-
narratives’. To him, modernity sees
history in context of two major myths;
history as a story of the freedom (as
originated in the French revolution); myth
of history as turning of the ideal into
real through logic. But Lyotard considers
that talk about humanity for modernity
is to get entangled in the universalism
of enlightenment and this gives birth
to integrated metanarrative, whose
tendency is autocratic. So he wants the
replacement of manufacturing of material
goods by the information as a central
concern in post-industrial societies (of
the west). Now, he says, knowledge has
become ‘an informational commodity’
and science has abandoned its original
integrity and has become just an
instrument in the hands of power. Meta
or grand narratives justify the objective
of western civilisation as ‘whiteman’s
burden’ is popularly spoken by the so–
called rational western elites. But, now
these meta narratives have been replaced
by the numerous ‘language games’ (to
use Wittgenstein’s terms), ranging from
Wittgenstein’s modes of discourseseveral
forms of utterance (denotative,
performative, prescriptive, etc) to the
discourses used by social institutions
and progressions to full scale narrative.
These language games may have only
limited social and historical validity due
to their very nature. In French postmodernism
there have been two camps:
Saussurean Camp - (the early Barthes,
Lacan and Derrida) focusing on language
& structure and Nietzsehe’s Camp-
(Foucault, Deleuge, Guattari) focusing on
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