TALK ONE: of the need to change conditions
It is a late afternoon on the Avenue.
Clouds hang low in the sky. There was a sun but it has disappeared; its light
is dimming as evening inches in. The naked branches of trees make black
streaks against the gray of sky. It is not a time for banter as the members of
the PROGRAMME gather at the table. But CHARLIE, as usual, has a bounce as he
scrapes his chair on the wooden floor and impatiently hears out the others.
ABLE: Nothing is going to improve if we don't do something. Everything is
getting worse. We shouldn't allow things to keep going in this direction.
Something can be done. We do not know what it is at this point, to be sure.
That is why we are digging so deeply into the postmodern condition. Adorno had
it right when he and Horkheimer were arguing. Adorno wanted to crack open the
crisis through the most intense analysis. Something would break within the old
problem and reveal a new arrangement. We need alliances to take the
post-postmodern arrangement--when we begin to see it--to the forum. It needs
to affect the social instruments; we know they are in crisis now.
BAKER: It is not our business to change things. We cannot take our work to the
streets. Let us study. Let that be enough. The beauty lies in seeing the
entire social process in motion--or as much as we can within our lights. Even
if we wanted to initiate changes, our effort would be futile. We are birds,
and we should stick to flying. There may be beavers down there with a different
capability. Let them gather and build and change the way the water is flowing.
We just fly, even if all hell is breaking loose in the woods.
CHARLIE: These are good times! Birds we are! We should sing! We would
not change a
thing. Has there ever been a time when horizons were so distant and so
inviting? We can >
compare the way it was in the fifties with the way it is today. The technology
now enables us to go and do more than we imagined then. The only problem today
is that what is happening is not happening fast enough. On with it!
PROGRAMME NOTE: Fredric Jameson gives a
useful gloss on the question addressed in this inaugural Table Talk. Can or
should we push an activist agenda to change the
conditions presented to us by postmodernity? In short, he asks WHAT IS THE
TASK OF POSTMODERNISM? [10 February 1996]
18 November 1995; updated 9 December 1996
THE TABLE TALK
THE ARGUMENT (EVOLVING)
Return to THE PROGRAMME contents page.