" Although the omnipresence of the postmodern and its advocates would seem to suggest otherwise, not everybody subscribes to the view that language constitutes, rather than represents, reality; that the autonomous and stable subject of modernity has been replaced by a postmodern agent whose identity is largely other-determined and always in process; that meaning has become social and provisional; or that knowledge only counts as such within a given discursive formation, that is, a given power structure--to mention only some of the more familiar postmodern tenets.
" I emphasize this because at again another conceptual level one can indeed speak of the postmodern world, or at least argue that the world as such has become postmodern, that is, entered a new historical era, that of postmodernity. " (pp.9-10)
HISTORICAL (OR PERIODIZED) POSTMODERNISM: Bertens's introductory paragraph on the term "postmodernism" gives us a useful overview from an historian's point of view:
"Postmodernism is an expasperating term....In the avalanche of articles and books that have made use of the term since the late 1950s, postmodernism has been applied at different levels of conceptual abstraction to a wide range of objects and phenomeana in what we used to call reality. [It] is several things at once. It refers, first of all, to a complex of anti-modernist artistic strategies which emerged in the 1950s and developed momentum in the course of the 1960s. However, because it was used for diametrically opposed practices in different artistic disciplines, the term was deeply problematical almost right from the start." (p. 3)
Part II is on "postmodernities." Here Bertens deals with the 1980s, theorizing the postmodern condition; antithetical radicalisms of Richard Rorty and Jean Baudrillard; Fredric Jameson and fear and loathing in Los Angeles; postmodern politics; and the postmodern as a new social formation.
SUMMATION ON POLITICS: Bertens concludes his book with an attempt to sum up what has been happening in the postmodern period, with a focus on its political dimension (which includes other dimensions):
"What we have been witnessing for some time now is the constitution of a new political paradigm, just as its predecessor based upon the principles of the Enlightenment. The old paradigm, which universalized not only the political aspirations, but also the rationality and the self-image of the North Atlantic bourgeoisie...is giving way to a condition of political plurality in which the politics of difference and of identity are replacing theformer politics of repressive unity. However, in their emancipatory ideals and in their inevitably universal horizon the new politics constitute much less of a break with the old paradigm than is often assumed. The old paradigm is not so much completely discarded as it is rethought, refined, and much improved." (p.247)
[THE PROGRAMME observes here an optimistic assessment of change. It contrasts with a more troubled tone found in many postmodern descriptions--for example, in Baudrillard, whose "simulacra" seem to do a macabre dance around the embers of what had been real. Another example is the finding of an extreme disorientation in affectless space by Fredric Jameson. In a Table Talk we search for an assessment of the change that would have to come to postmodern conditions in order to effect a long-term improvement. Bertens's optimistic conclusion on the political front gives us a useful point of reference.]
JAMESON'S FAILED PROJECT: Bertens treats Postmodernism by Fredric Jameson at length. Chapter 8, pp. 160-184. Bertens takes the Marxist orientation of Jameson seriously. He finds Jameson attempting to rescue a Marxist view of history by pulling postmodernism (multinational capitalism) into its critical framework. (p. 174) Bertens sees that as a failed effort because Jameson does not understand the emergence of a politics in postmodernism that is not class-driven--that is, the emergence of the "others" such as women, minorities of all kinds not class-determined. (p. 173)
[PROGRAMME NOTE: We think that Bertens places more emphasis on the Marxist logic underlying Jameson's analysis than is useful. Jameson's insight on the sensibility in postmodernism seems to be valuable in itself, whether or not his reaching for a resolution in a veiled Marxist dialectic makes sense.]