EDU5704 Reading 1.1

EDU5704 Popular Culture as Curriculum and Pedagogy

Reading 1.1 Drolet, M. (2004). The postmodernist reader: foundational texts, Routledge, London: UK

Part One - Pages 1 to 7

Within the Australian identity is a widely recognised idiomatic paradox. One who self-identifies as being “Australian”, whether by birth, social adoption (with a nod to our ‘Southern’ Australian cousins, eh bro) or other association, may openly and loving refer to a fellow Australian as being “a total bastard”, with the collective understanding that this is an endearment, a statement of acceptance, a cloaked compliment. However, for an Australian to refer to another – commonly someone not accepted as typically “Australian” – as being “a bit of a bastard” is culturally a supreme criticism.

Where then does this seemingly marginal difference between being “a bit of” as opposed to “a total” bastard originate and take meaning? Only an Aussie could tell you – and I defy any non-Australian observer to adequately explain this phenomenon.

It appears that so, too, are many of the distinctions claimed by post-modernists. Apparently, you need to be one to “get it”, to understand the nuances and subtleties of the condition, and unless you are one, you will be gently patronised for your inability to “get it”.

However, at least for this sceptical scientist, Michael Drolet manages to illuminate this shadowy and mystical world with his Postmodernism Reader (2004). He claims a dispassionate stance, and in the main he maintains this. His stated intent is to:

1. give meaning to postmodern, –ity, and –ism, by exploring their origins in the arts and architecture, humanities and theology (p. 1); and to 
2. identify postmodern, –ity, and –ism more broadly though their existence within the conflict between romanticism and classicism (p. 2).

Drolet identifies that when used prescriptively in the late 1950s postmodernism “sought to challenge received wisdom and established norms” (p. 2) and that it had become popularly adopted as – by my reinterpretation – a catchcry or buzzword in the 1960s and ‘70s of the ‘artistic set’ who were keenly latching onto their own new Enlightenment. He attempts to mitigate the “deep suspicion [and] outright hostility” (p. 1) towards postmodernism as “fuzzy thinking or a fashionable but muddled recourse to the use of [the term] to describe just about any phenomenon, which is odd and new” (p. 1) by explaining away the confusion caused by early dual applications of the term as both a movement and a “new sensibility” (p. 3).

My reading to date, and subsequent naïve understanding, suggests that postmodernism, then, it a doctrine of anti-establishmentarianism, with ‘the modern’ being ‘the establishment’.

I am drawn to Drolet’s citation of Bell’s The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973) in which Bell defines postmodernism as “a ‘new sensibility’ which ‘breaks down all genres and denies that there is any distinction between art and life’” (p. 3) and Levi-Strauss’s much earlier (b. 1908) reference to the human subject as having become “the spoiled brat of philosophy” (p. 3). Although aware that such ageist comments are non de rigueur, my attraction to these references lies in my observations, through the lens of a middle-aged Caucasian observer, of Generations X through Z and their insistence that there is no distinction between their individual point of view, and reality.

I suspect that this may be another small glimmer of light in my learnings.

Drolet explores (pp. 3,4) the distance between the precepts of the failure of the Grand Narratives of Western thought to emancipate the downtrodden, and that Western thought enabled the transformative change in individuals and societies that initiated that very emancipation. In the second reading McRobbie expands on this tension using feminism as a platform, questioning whether modernist feminism caused greater equality for women in a postmodernist society, or if in fact modernist feminism is challenged by ‘feminine’ postmodern women.

While exploring the historical political origins of postmodernism from the 1920s, Drolet highlights Bell’s arrival at a conclusion of a “modern faith in the power of reason to free the human spirit from bondage arising out of ignorance and prejudice” (p. 4) as an antidote to capitalism of the modern era. It’s a cynical view, but I have a greater belief that the power of individual and corporate greed will win – easily – over any such noble design; every time.

As the light of learning flickers more insistently, and I accept that the emergence of “me” – of self above all else, of my view as my incontestable reality – is a defining feature of postmodernism, I question where Western though is heading next; not in an alarmist, moral panicking way, but rather ruminating on the “new series of circumstances and social conventions [that require] a total rethinking of political practices and [the] nature of politics itself [as a] part of a new form of individual and human liberation” (p. 4).

I’m not confident in the postmodernist assumption that humanity’s natural and ultimate evolution is towards the ‘collective empowerment of the individual’. I endorse the emancipation struggles of the earlier modern era and acknowledge that true emancipation wars are being literally and figuratively fought globally – but I cannot but reflect on how akin postmodernism is to metaphorical wankery in the privileged Western world.

In the same sense that the human body needs a healthy level of stress to maintain optimum performance, is there a point at which individual and human liberation reaches equilibrium, and how far past that point do we start cranking the clarions of social decay? Drolet cites Toynbee’s negative view of postmodernism in A Study of History as “the prelude to the decline of civilisation itself” (p. 6). As feminism is questioning its place in a postmodern world after raising the placards in the modern world, is the empowerment and emancipation of “me” heading towards obscurity in a more empowered and emancipated world? (Ooh, lint ball.)

If, as Drolet states, Toynbee contended that “… an unprecedently prosperous and comfortable Western middle class [were] imagining that, for their benefit, a sane, satisfactory Modern Life had miraculously come to stay as a timeless present” (p. 7) what then is the expectation of the children of The Internet, given the prosperity and comfort of their lives in comparison to those observed by Toynbee of their grandparents.

As the light of learning flickers and wanes, I need to move to exploring pop culture against this angsty and political backdrop.