POSTMODERN "BELIEF:" In a charmingly candid introduction, Haber tells us where she is coming from politically and philosophically. She positions herself against bourgeois liberalism, which includes "possessive individualism." Possessive individualism "is used to justify the dominance of white, patriarchal, classist, and racist regimes." (p.1)
By contrast, she holds the following:
(a) "...the notion of the individual is correlative with the notion of the subject, and...since subjects are inscribed in lanaguage they are always cultural, historical, and social entities."
(b) she gives "a place of privilege to community, for our interests are always the interests of some community or another."
(c) "...there is no universal community of rational beings." (p.1)
A POST-POSTMODERN POINT OF VIEW: Haber represents a "post-postmodern" point of view. She finds that her three postmodern authors--Lyotard, Rorty, and Foucault--fail to deliver a stable foundation for a "politics of difference." Haber seeks such a politics--aka "oppositional politics"--because of her principle of the "subject-in-community." She asks: "Can there be a postmodern politics?" She answers: "In fact, I shall argue that there cannot." (p.3)
"The disappearance of the self, the repudiation of the traditional notion of the subject as the bearer of meaning, is a result of a linguistic notion of the self, of seeing the self as something which is structured like a language. Lyotard believes that selves are 'always already' presented as part of the social bond; they are always already a function of language where language is not one monolithic discourse, but a multitude of different discourses without any grand narrative to connect the various language games; all there is is a heterogeneity of elements. This being the case, there is no reason to believe that stable language combinations can be established, nor is there reason to believe we can establish stable self-identities. This decentering of the self has/ important consequences for social relations. For Lyotard the relation of self to others can only be an uneasy relation of unlike to unlike. Thus for Lyotard the principle of postmodern knowledge is 'not the expert's homology, but the inventor's paralogy,' and agonistics becomes the founding principle of social relations." (pp. 9-10)
KEY POSTMODERN THEMES: Haber conveniently summarizes many of the key postmodern themes in her introductory paragraphs on Lyotard (p.10):
2 December 1995
She rejected Lyotard because "he universalizes difference with the consequence that he is unable to conceive of consensus and community as anything other than totalizing and hence terroristic." (p.44)
She will reject Rorty "because his pluralism rejects relativism at the expense of a kind of cavalier elitism, and his politics makes room for solidarity only by imposing a form of terror; his public/private distinction forces the notion that only one form of political discourse, the liberal democratic one, is valid." (p.44)
Haber places Rorty firmly within the postmodern as follows: "Rorty argues (in line with Wittgenstein and Davidson) that truth is a property of sentences, and since sentences are dependent for their existence upon vocabularies, and since vocabularies are made by human beings, then so are truths. Truth is thus a causal or contextual question, rather than one about the adequacy of representation or expression."
She presents Rorty's argument that a democratic society will be maintained by "strong poets" or "ironists" who pursue their private self-creation through language games. The society at large, by supporting the strong poets, will benefit because the strong poets, by their private activities, preserve the values of liberal western democratic society, which is the best answer for all, in Rorty's view.
Haber attacks Rorty's argument mainly by showing that the purely private sphere of the ironist poet cannot be separated from the public sphere. She shows Rorty being trapped in inconsistency in the private-public polarity and rejects him as a discoverer of a viable politics of difference. She strenously objects when she finds Rorty reverting to a "revitalization of a common human essence." (p.50) In doing so he denies the postmodern tenet that the public and the private cannot be separated; the "self" cannot stand outside the process of making meaning.(p.50) Rorty comes off looking like a self-serving liberal elitist who expects the hoi-poloi to support his kind for their own good.
Haber is worth quoting on the private-public dichotomy as seen through postmodern eyes: "Rorty's blindness to this [the fact that 'both the private and the public are political contructs'] is evidence of his (ironism nothwithstanding) entrenchment in the Anglo-American tradition, which is staunchly individualist....This notion [of the autonomous citizen]...is a holdover from the modernist tradition, which should have been repudiated by the postructuralist/ironist theorist." (p.61)
SUBHEADS IN THE RORTY CHAPTER: Non-relativist pluralisms; poeticized culture (p.45). Poetry or Politics? (p.47) The public utility of the ironists (p.50) Elitism and the dark side of liberal ironism (p.52) Ironist as antichrist (p.56) The public [citizen] -private [poet] split: bifurcating the beast (p.59) Universalizing totality: cultural imperialism and the hegemony of the Rortian liberal (p.64) Rorty reconsidered (p.70)
She summarizes Rorty's three failures as a foundation for a politics of difference:
THE PROGRAMME comment: We like the way Haber digs through Rorty's postmodern veneer to a residual American liberal figure underneath. It reminds us of the power of the Emersonian idea that still rattles through our rhetoric without philosophical justification from the day at hand.
SKETCHING FOUCAULT: (pp. 78-82). In an overview of Foucault's fundamental approach, Haber identifies his use of "genealogical analysis" of familiar objects (or truths or self-evident things) in our experience. His project is basically to reexamine evidence and assumptions about linguistic/social givens, the things we take for granted. This is an historical approach in that he tries to return and analyze that moment when connections originally were made that resulted in what after that would become accepted as "self-evident, universal and necessary." (Foucault's words, p. 80) He calls this process of universalizing "eventalization." (p.80) Genealogical analysis seeks to get inside the process of eventalization. The fundamental fact about that process is POWER. Our presumed universal truths, which Foucault analyzes genealogically, turn out to be the products of the mechanisms of power. Haber's summation of this is insightful and worth quoting:
"[Foucauldian analysis] takes us behind the facade of universality and objectivity to reveal the operations of modern techniques of domination of which the modern self-examining, self-policing, self-disciplining--in short, 'normal'--individual is a product." (p.80)
This approach is possible because Foucault espouses the poststructuralist view of the making of reality through text.
FOUCAULDIAN "POWER": Haber explains that Foucault's idea of power was not that of an external force. Instead, he saw power emanating from within the subject (person) itself: it becomes "inscribed" in the docile body of the person and thus controls the person; external constraints are unnecessary. This inscription of power (control) on (or in) the person is accomplished through the familiar categories of what are taken to be universal truth about the human condition. (p. 81)
[COMMENT: We can see, then, how Foucault calls into question the fundamental truths of liberal western culture. Most of the conclusions of the academic disciplines, which purport to be true, and which thus influence our understanding of the way things are, and which thus influence our behavior, become in F.'s view the "eventalizations" of historical experience. They are fair targets for genealogical analysis. They are not universally TRUE; rather, they are the effects of the power relations at work in the society.]
[COMMENT: CULTURE WARS: From this description of Foucauldian POWER, we can readily see why the culture wars of the 80s arose and became so virulent in the academy. The established custodians of traditional knowledge were right to see the postmodernists (symbolized as deconstructionists) as a threat to their understanding of what is true. They were wrong to believe that this postmodernist insight could simply be resisted and rejected from the discourse. We accept Fredric Jameson's view (and others, such as David Harvey and Hans Bertens) that postmodernity is historical; it emerged at a traceable moment in our calendar. In such a situation, the mere assertion of traditional truths is a hopeless effort to find comfort, for the postmodern conditions of late capitalism cannot be wished away. The popularity of William Bennett's recent books and the spread of a fundamentalist religious sentiment both appear, in this view, to be misdirected, if the goal is ultimately to find individual and social comfort in the last years of the millennium. It is necessary to understand the genealogical analysis of Foucault. If it is unsatisfactory, then it is necessary to explicate our dissatisfaction in a dialectical discourse. Such a discourse ideally will lead to the discovery of a viable poetics or politics. To her great credit, that is the very project that Haber mounts.]
POWER A "NETWORK:" Completing her sketch of F.'s definition of power, Haber observes that Foucauldian "power" is a "'network' of relations." This network PRODUCES the individual; F. thus does not use the term in the conventional sense of an external force being exercised on a preexisting person: the person IS in fact a result of the working of the power relations. They are "capillary" in that they work without a center or a top-downness. They circulate "through the cells and extremities of the entire social body [at] every level of social practice, social relations, and social institutions." (p. 82)
RORTY VS. FOUCAULT: In Haber's view, F. is favored because his notion of power does not permit of a private self separated from public politics. (p. 82)
The debate between Rorty and Foucault: enlightenment vs. oppostional struggle (pp. 82-84) and "We" liberals (Rorty) vs. "we" deviants (Foucault) (pp. 84-89).
In these sections, Haber draws the main distinctions between the two philosophers from the standpoint of their potential to create a politics in the postmodern. Foucault is superior for her because he destroys the "private/public" distinction that Rorty allows to stand. See p. 85 for a valuable quote from Foucault on the "sovereignties" invented by humanism which subjugate.
Foucault and his critics (pp.89-93)
Critics of Foucault, such as Nancy Fraser, Richard Rorty, Jurgen Habermas, miss his point, says Haber. They mistakenly expect him to be a concerned social critic within the discourse of western liberal truth and values. But Foucault, she says, does not aim to speak from within that discourse: "he does not, as does Rorty, argue that his values are universal or that they should shape or limit the course of the future." (p. 92) His commitment to a politics of difference is sufficient to move him to be willing to overthrow the present power regime, which includes "the regime of truth and values." (p. 93). He thus is more attractive to the "Others" who are the victims of the reigning power. (p. 93)
On the question "What is to be done?" (pp.93-98)
However, his critique of existing power does not offer an alternative, which will speak for those out of power. (p. 93) That is, he does not offer a program for the "Others" to seize power; he seeks to SAP existing power. (p. 94) "His analysis of power...is meant to be a tool for resistance." (p.94) Resistance to universalizing power is possible for F., but he refuses to take a prophetic stance. (p. 95)
Resistance and the subjects of opposition (pp.98-109)
Haber lucidly explains (pp. 98-105) that F. gives us no theoretically defensible strategy for recovering a self empowered to oppose the power regime from which the self is made (inscribed). Lacking room for resistance within the regime, the self has no theoretical basis for transforming/transferring power elsewhere, to other hands/bodies.
F. sees the self/subject always being destabilized by omnipresent power. As a result, this destabilized subject affords "no locus of resistance and without subjects coherent enough to form coalitions there can be no force to resistance." (p. 105) Haber finds F. contradicting his own theoretical stance, however. Where he does allow for a stable self/subject that can resist, it turns out to be, to her, the old familiar bourgeois male." (p.107) Because that is an instrument of totalization, it is unaceptable as a vehicle for resistance.
F. failed to see the importance of creating alternative communities through the process of discourse among the "other" disempowered subjects. (p. 108-9).
Foucault reconsidered (a summary of ch. 3) (pp.109-112)
UNIVERSALIZATION OF "DIFFERENCE:" Haber argues against the tendency in poststructuralism to UNIVERSALIZE THE LAW OF DIFFERENCE. To do so is to make poststructuralism and all of postmodern critique "inimical to political action." (p. 116)
REFUSING POSTSTRUCTURAL POLITICS
Here Haber nails the coffin of postmodernism as a basis for an oppostional politics that will allow marginalized "others" to be revitalized. Her political goal is to provide a theoretical foundation for the Other. The problem with poststructural (synonymous here with postmodern) politics is that its "law of difference" delegitimizes and deconstructs "always and everywhere"--ie., universally. (p.117) It thus does not permit a stable, legitimate voice to come from the marginalized other any more than it permits one to come from the hegemonic center.
Her statement of the "law of difference" deserves to be quoted: "When the law of difference is read as the destructuring of all structures and as demanding the delegitimizing of any and all claims to legitimation, the postructuralist view of language as a differential system of signs overlaps with the political space of postmodernism." (p. 117)
[COMMENT: Haber puts her finger in this quote on the reason for the sense of urgency in the practical/political opposition to deconstructionism in and outside the academy. We have heard an academician observe that deconstruction is at most a fresh and useful means for plying the traditional analytical trade of the professional literary critic. He naively missed the point Haber is making: postmodernism gives language such a central place in the human exchange and excludes so much else that language--most notably, the instability of it--must take on a political significance. Because of this, it is a mistake to dismiss political criticism of deconstructionism in places such as the Wall Street Journal op-ed page as misguided right-wing hysteria. To her credit, Haber acknowledges the political difficulties in postmodernism/postructuralism. In the remainder of her book she attempts to salvage viable concepts from postmodernism for a form of politics that will permit the voice of the other to come forth.]
MAKING USE OF POSTRUCTURAL AND POSTMODERN ANALYSIS (pp.118-126)
Haber attempts to salvage elements of postmodernism in order to lay out a new kind of viable politics. This politics must deny BOTH the hegemonic universalization inherent in liberal modernist politics AND the universalization of difference which she finds lurking in her three authors. Her constant goal is to provide empowerment for the other in a viable political theory and praxis.
She does this IN TERM She does this by using concepts of postmodernism:
(A) THE INSTABILITY OF THE SUBJECT, WHICH (WHO) IS INSCRIBED BY LANGUAGE. The subject (person) is thus always open to redescription; this offers an infinite possibility for expessing the difference of the other. She denies that poststructural critique of langague destroys the subject altogether. (p. 120) It does destroy an "autonomous, wholly self-creating, or coherent in the sense of single-minded or one-track self." (p. 120) But it allows the self to be "many subjects" because of the inscripting power and infinite redescriptive potential of language.
(B) THE COMMUNAL/SOCIAL BASIS OF THE SUBJECT. A subject can only be redescribed in terms of culture/community, not of an autonomous individualoutside of experience. (p. 119) "RESISTANCE IS NEVER THE PROPERTY OF AN AUTONOMOUS SUBJECT." (p.119) It is a function of the community in the linguistic subject being redescribed.
SO, THE HABER PRINCIPLE OF POLITICS IS: "Community identification is necessary to self-identification, and both are necessary to any politics of difference."
MORE NOTES TO COME