Page 147 - Contemporary Cultural Theory

POSTMODERNISM

argument against it. There is even less point, then, in Callinicos’s
argument against the very idea of postmodernism than in that of
Lukács against the substance of modernism. As Fehér asks, echoing
Andreas Huyssen, “who wants to become the Lukács of post-
modernism?” 15
Yet a complication does indeed enter as we acknowledge not only
that some cultural theory affects to be itself “postmodernist”, but
also that postmodernist art is often very much aware of such
postmodernist theory and often seeks to position itself in relation to
the latter. It becomes possible, then, to disagree with “postmodernist”
theories of culture or of society, while nonetheless accepting that
important instances in our cultural life are indeed postmodern, while
nonetheless recognising that the latter may indeed by informed by the
former. Callinicos actually distinguishes very nicely between
postmodernist art, post-structuralist theory and post-industrialist
16
sociology, but proceeds thence to the judgement that of the three,
post-structuralist theory alone can “offer partial insights of great
value”. This seems to me peculiarly perverse for a self-declared
17
Marxist, since it is post-structuralist theory itself, rather than post-
industrialist sociology, still less postmodernist art, that most directly
challenges the most fundamental of Marxist and other pretensions to
the theoretical authority of “science”. My own position is much closer
to Scott Lash: like him I am no postmodernist, like him my own
modes of procedure are I hope rationalist, like him I admit that
postmodernist culture has proved on balance unfavourable to the
left. But, like Lash, I acknowledge too “that the cultural terrain on
which we now all live, work, love, and struggle is pervaded by
postmodernism…it would be unwise for the left to ignore it”. 18

Transgression, marginality and post-imperialism

Celebratory postmodernism as a major academic event dates from
the 1970s, from the first publication of Jean-François Lyotard’s The
Postmodern Condition, a specifically Canadian text originally
prepared for the Conseil des Universities of the government of
Quebec. For Lyotard, modernism and modernity had been
characterized above all by the co-presence of science and of a series of
universalizing and legitimating meta-narratives, which ultimately

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