Page 182 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

POSTSTRUCTURALISM

one seriously argues that contemporary Western societies are ‘after-the-modern’ in
this clear-cut institutional way. Rather, the concept of postmodernity when used to
describe institutional questions refers to a social formation in which information
exchange has replaced industrial production, and in particular heavy industries, as 159
the primary economic driver. Needless to say, information technology is a vital
component of this process.
Postmodernity is also said to involve a general shift from production to
consumption as the central set of social and economic processes of a social
formation. In this sense, the concept of postmodernity is somewhat similar to that
of the ‘post-industrial society’, a concept suggesting that industrialized societies are
witnessing a shift of locus from industrial manufacturing to service industries with
an emphasis on information technology.
However, some commentators do use the concept of postmodernity to refer not
to an institutional configuration but to a condition of knowledge. Thus Bauman has
argued that the circumstances of postmodernity are those of the modern mind
reflecting upon itself from a distance and sensing the urge to change. The
uncertainty, ambivalence and ambiguity of the postmodern condition enable, or so
it is said, the possibility of grasping contingency as destiny in order to create our
own futures. However, there are neither guarantees nor universal foundations for
such a project, rather it appears only as a possibility inherent in the condition of
postmodernity. This is one in which the postmodern mentality demands that
modernity fulfil the promises of its, albeit distorted, reason. Similarly, for Lyotard,
‘the postmodern condition’ is to be understood as the condition of knowledge in
the most highly developed societies. Lyotard expresses his ‘incredulity toward
metanarratives’ and celebrates difference and understandings located within
particular local knowledge regimes.
The argument that we are living in a socio-historical formation of ‘post-
modernity’ has not gone unchallenged. Thus, Giddens argues that we are clearly not
witnessing a post-capitalist world or one without nation-states. Further, the doubt
and uncertainty that characterize contemporary knowledge are seen by him not as
the condition of postmodernity but of a ‘radicalized modernity’. In his view,
relativity, uncertainty, doubt and risk are core characteristics of late or high
modernity. Similarly, Habermas sees the Enlightenment project of modernity as
ongoing and unfinished with critical reason forming the basis of its continued
emancipatory possibilities.
Links Grand narrative, modernism, modernity, post-industrial society, postmodernism

Poststructuralism Poststructuralism is a stream of thought identified with a number
of different thinkers (amongst who are Derrida, Foucault and Kristeva), few of
whom have actually adopted the term. The prefix ‘post ‘ clearly suggests ‘after’, thus
poststructuralism is after structuralism in that the terms of this philosophical stream
are ones that involve both the absorption of key ideas from structuralism and a
critique and transformation of them.
Structuralism has been concerned with the ‘systems of relations’ of the