The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

34 The passage from modernity to postmodernitymounted against a socialist city). But the configurations wer unstable.No sooner had doctrines of socialist realism been enuncIated as arejoinder to 'decadent' bourgeois modernism and fascist naionalis,than popular front politics on the part of many commUnIst partesled to a swing back to nationalist art and culture .as a meas to UnIteproletarian with wavering middle-class forces m the unIted frontagainst fascism.. ' .Many artists of the avant-garde tried to resIst such dIrect socIalreferencing and cast their net far and wide for more universal mythologicalstatements. T. S. Eliot created a virtual melting l?ot ofimagery and languages drawn from every corner of the earth m TheWaste Land, and Picasso (amongst others) plundered the world . ofprimitive (particularly African) art during some of his ore creativephases. During the inter-war years there was somethmg desperateabout the search for a mythology that could somehow straightensociety out in such troubled times. Raphael . (198 .1 : xii) capt1res tedilemmas in his trenchant but sympathetic cntIque of PICasso sGuernica:The reason for which Picasso was compelled to resort to signsand allegones should now be clear enough: his utter politicalhelplessness in the face of a historical situation which he set outto record; his titanic effort to confront a particular historicalevent with an allegedly eternal truth; his desire to give hopeand comfort and to provide a happy ending, to compensate forthe terror, the destruction, and inhumanity of the event. Picassodid not see what Goya had already seen, namely, that the courseof history can be changed only by historical means and only ifmen shape their own history instead of acting as the automatonof an earthly power or an allegedly eternal idea.Unfortunately, as Georges Sorel (1974) suggested in his brilliantReflections on violence, first published in 1908, it was possible toinvenṭ m'yths that might have a consuming power over class politics.SyndIcalIsm of the sort that Sorel promoted originated as a parti­CIpatory movement of the left, deeply antagonistic to all forms ofstate power, but evolved into a corporatist movement (attractive tosomeone like Le Corbusier in the 1930s) that became a powerfulorganizing tool of the fascist right. In so doing it was able to appealt certain myths of a hierarchically ordered but nevertheless parti­Clpatory and exclusive community, with clear identity and closesocal .bondin?, replete with its own myths of origin and omnipotence.It IS mstructIve to note how heavily fascism drew upon classicalModernity and modernism 35references (architecturally, politic lly, historically) and built my tho­ogical .conceptions accordingly. Raphael (1981, 95) suggests anmterestmg reason: the Greeks 'were always conscious of the nationalcharacter of their mythology, whereas the Christians always ascribedto theirs a value independent of space and time.' The German philosopherHeidegger likewise in part based his allegiance to theprinciples (if not the practices) of Nazism on his rejection of auniversalzing machine ratinality as an appropriate mythology formodern hfe. He proposed, mstead, a counter-myth of rootedness inplae and environmentally-bound traditions as the only secure foundationfor political and social action in a manifestly troubled world(see Part III).t!he aestheticization of politics through the productionof such all-consuming myths (of which Nazism was but one) was thetragic side of the modernist project that became more and moresalient as the 'he:oic' era caI?e crashing to an end in World War IUIf the modernIsm of the Inter-war years was 'heroic' but fraugntwith . disaster, the 'unvrsal' or 'h...El:!::!!ir.I.·ubal.l:>ecame hegemonICafter 1945 exhIbited a much more comfortable relation to theao mmant power centres in society. The contested search for anpproprate myth appeared to abate in part, I suspect, because themternatIonal power system - organized, as we shall see in Part II,along Fordist-Keynesian lines under the watchful eye of US hegemony- itself became relatively stable. High modernist art, architectur,literature, etc. became establishment arts and practices in asOCl .ety where a corporate capitalist version of the Enlightenmentproject of development for progress and human emancipation heldsway as a political-economic dominant.he belief .'in linear progress, absolute truths, and rational planningof Ideal socI . al orders' u?der standardized conditions of knowledgeand productIOn was particularly strong. The modernism that resultedwas, as a result, 'positivistic, technocentric, and rationalistic' at thesame time as it was imposed as the work of an elite avant-garde ofplanners, artists, architects, critics, and other guardians of high taste.The 'modernization' of European economies proceeded apace, whileth ",:"hole thrust of international politics and trade was justified asbnngmg a benevolent and progressive 'modernization process' to abackward Third World.In architecture, for example, the ideas of the ClAM, of LeCo:buier, and of Mies van der Rohe, held sway in the struggle torevitalIze war-torn or ageing cities (reconstruction and urban renewal),to reorganize transport systems, build factories, hospitals,schools, state works of all kinds, and last, but not least, to buildadequate housing for a potentially restless working class. It is easy in