Your Voice in a World where Zionism, Steel, and Fire, have Turned Justice Mute

 

 

 
The *FREE ARAB VOICE*
February 13, 2000
In the last issue of the Free Arab Voice (FAV) we tackled globalization from
an economic perspective.  In this issue, we look at the ideology and culture
of globalization, i.e., Postmodernism.  Postmodernism as the ideology of
globalization and the imperialism of culture is analyzed here from two
angels, in two articles:
1) Deconstructing Postmodernism,  by Ziauddin Sardar: a concise
demystification of Postmodernism, and an analysis of its detrimental impact
on culture in general and the Third World in particular, excerpted with
permission from the bi-annual magazine Encounters.
2) Postmodernism: the Culture of Financial Capital, by Towfic Shomar, a Ph.D
in the Philosophy of Science from the London School of Economics.
#############################################
For a reference on the economic aspects of globalization, see the previous
issue of FAV at: http://www.fav.net/special_issue_on_globalization.htm
#############################################
[Note: The Free Arab Voice is not a news byte, and does not ever seek to
become one.  If you can’t read it now, leave in your in-box for later.]
#############################################
1) Deconstructing Postmodernism,  by Ziauddin Sardar
(Excerpted with permission from the bi-annual Encounters 5:1 (1999))
Postmodernism, the Prevalent Ideology of our Times
==================================================
Postmodernism is not just a buzz word but a key term of our times.  It
conditions our thought and politics, shapes our art and architecture, frames
much of the entertainment industry, and is actively shaping our future.  We
can watch it, hear it, read it, shop within its precincts, be awe-struck by
it – in short we live and breathe it.  It is a theory, a contemporary
practice and a condition of the contemporary era.  Slowly,  but surely,
postmodernism is taking over the world we inhabit, the thoughts we think,
the things we do, what we know and what we do not know, what we have known
and what we cannot know, what frames our nature and our being.  It is the
new, or perhaps not so new, all-embracing theory of salvation.
Postmodernism, An Amorphous Entity without a Formal Definition
==============================================================
Given its multifaceted temper and character, postmodernism is not an easy
beast to pin down.  The nature of postmodernism is further complicated by
the fact that it seems to be for everything and against (apparently)
nothing.  If postmodernism did have a motto it would be ‘anything goes’.
The eclectic nature of postmodernism has been used by its champions and
apologists to mystify it: to present it as a mythical and mystical
intellectual and pragmatic force that cannot be fathomed, let alone
resisted.  Yet, there is nothing mysterious about postmodernism; even if it
cannot be defined, it can be understood in terms of its defining principles.
The Seven Defining Principles of Postmodernism
==============================================
1) Rejecting Big Ideas that Give Sense and Direction to Life, like Truth,
Morality, God, and History, or Claims to Absolute Truth like Science,
Religion, or Marxism; Embracing Total Relativism.
So, what defines postmodernism? The principles that define postmodernism
also pit it against tradition and modernity.  Postmodernism, as the label
suggests, is post modernity : it transcends modernity which itself surpasses
tradition.  Thus the first principle of postmodernism is that all that is
valid in modernity is totally invalid and obsolete in postmodern times.
Modernity was framed by, what are called in technical jargon of cultural
studies, Grand Narratives: that is, Big Ideas that give sense and direction
to life.  Such notions as Truth, Reason, Morality, God, Tradition, and
History, argue postmodernists, do not live up to analytical scrutiny – they
are totally meaningless.
Postmodernism Rejects Science, Religion, and Marxism, and Embraces Total
Relativism: And all worldviews that claim absolute notions of Truth, for
example, Science, Religion, Marxism, are artificial constructions that are
totalitarian by their very nature.  Truth is relative, contingency is
everything: or as Richard Rorty, the American guru of postmodernism, puts
it, nothing has an intrinsic nature which may be expressed or represented
and everything is a product of time and chance.  Thus postmodernism rejects
all forms of truth claims; it accepts nothing as absolute; and rejoices in
total relativism.
When Truth and Reason are dead what becomes of knowledge?  Postmodernism
considers all types, as well as all sources, of knowledge with equal
skepticism.  There is hardly any difference between science and magic as
Feyerabend took so much pain to demonstrate.  For postmodernists, knowledge
is acquired not through inquiry but by imagination.  As such, postmodernism
contends, that fiction rather than philosophy, and narrative, rather than
theory, provides a better perspective on human behavior.  Wittgenstein
argued that all we have is language even though its representation of
reality is, at best, approximate and faulty.  Rorty asserts, that we should
even ‘drop the idea of language as representation’.  Irony, ridicule, and
parody are the basic tools through which this postmodernist goal is
achieved.
2) Denial of the Existence of Reality, Any Reality
The second postmodern principle is the denial of Reality.  Postmodernism
suggests that there is no ultimate Reality behind things: we see largely
what we want to see, what our position in time and place allows us to see,
what our historic perceptions focus on.  Thus even in science the easiest
thing to find is what we are looking for.
3) Blurring the Distinction between Image and Material Reality
This leads to the third principle of postmodernism.  Instead of reality,
what we have, contends postmodernism, is simulacrum: a world where all
distinction between image and material reality has been lost.  Postmodernism
posits the world as a video game: seduced by the allure of the spectacle, we
have all become characters in the global video game, zapping our way from
here to there, fighting wars in cyberspace, making love to digitized bits of
information.
4) Everything is Meaningless: ‘The World is an Onion’
In a world without Truth and Reason, where no knowledge is possible and
where language is the only tenuous link with existence, where reality has
been drowned into an ocean of images, there is no possibility of meaning.
Everything is meaningless: this is the fourth principle of postmodernism.
As Umberto Eco tries to show in Foucault’s Pendulum, the world is nothing
more than an onion: once we have ‘deconstructed’ the world layer by layer,
we are finally left with – nothing.  Deconstruction – the methodology of
discursive analysis – is the norm of postmodernism.  Everything has to be
deconstructed.  But once deconstruction has reached its natural conclusion,
we are left with a grand void: there is nothing, but nothing, that can
remotely provide us with meaning, with a sense of direction, with a scale to
distinguish good from evil.
5) Doubt Everything
This fourth principle of postmodernism takes us back to the first,
reconfirming the total arbitrary nature of truth and mortality, science and
religion, physics and metaphysics, while generating a fifth principle:
doubt.  Doubt, the perpetual and perennial condition of postmodernism, is
best described by the motto of the cult television series The X-files:
‘Trust no One’ – in postmodern theory, this is extended to include no
theory, no absolute, no experience: doubt everything.
There are two further defining characteristics of postmodernism.
6) Plurality
Postmodernism is concerned with all variety of multiplicities: it emphasizes
plurality of ethnicities, cultures, genders, truths, realities, sexualities,
even reasons and argues that no particular type should be privileged over
others.
7) Equal Representation of  Multiplicities
In its concern for demolishing all variety of privileges, postmodernism
deliberately seeks a more equal representation for class, gender, sexual
orientation, race, ethnicity and culture.
Recap: Postmodernism, therefore, can be understood in terms of its seven
defining principles: no Truth, no reality, only Images, no Meaning,
Multiplicities, Equal representation, and total Doubt.  It offers a rather
TRIMMED view of life, the universe and everything: neat, without dogma, but
ultimately totally nihilistic!
Postmodernism: the New Imperialism of Western Culture
=====================================================
As postmodernism seeks to give voice to all cultures, ‘de-centers’ the
‘Center’ and makes the ‘periphery’ the center of all cultural action, and
give ‘voice’ to the ‘voiceless’, it is projected as a new and great force of
liberation.  However, far from being a liberating force, postmodernism is a
totalistic project that seeks to subsume all non-western cultures into the
fires of liberalism and nihilistic consumption.  In trying to deny privilege
to everyone and everything, postmodernism only privileges itself.  It
becomes an arch ideology to beat all ideologies.  Far from being new, it is,
in fact, a natural extension and continuation of colonialism and modernity.
It is new in being the new imperialism of western culture.
Since colonialism have already drained much of the wealth of the ‘Third
World’, postmodernism appropriates the last resources of the non-west: its
traditions, spiritualities, cultural property, ideas and notions.  While
postmodernism celebrates difference it allows no space for difference to
actually exist – thanks to such postmodern notions as ‘globalization’ and
‘free markets’ (which are free only for the West).  The postmodern thesis
that everything is relative is incapable of suggesting that anything is in
some distinctive way itself, with its own history.  Under postmodernism,
distinctive cultures are hyberdized, ethnicities are appropriated, sacred
spiritual practices are turned into mass products, local cultures are
arrogated by the global entertainment machine.  The cultural subjects of
difference, the non-western cultures, are venerated solely for their
difference but denied the right to negotiate their own conditions of
discursive control and to practice their difference as a rebellion against
the hegemonic tendencies of postmodernism.  Thus American Indian sacred (and
secret) ceremonies suddenly become the property of every New Age reveler.
Traditional non-Western music is now owned by record companies! Music from
Zaire, the Solomon Islands, Burundi, the Sahel, Iran, Turkey, and elsewhere
is freely blended with New Age electronics and rock beats to make them
palatable to Western tastes.  African pygmies go postmodern on Deep Forest!
Quawwali, the devotional music of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, becomes
funky, so what was meant to be sung to the simple rhythm of traditional
drums and hand-clapping in praise of God and Prophet Muhammad, is sung to a
syncopated rock beat generated by synthesizers.  What was originally
designed to induce mystical ecstasy is now used to generate hysteria for
rock music.  Even indigenous flora and fauna, like the neem tree in India is
now being claimed as property of multinational corporations.  The Body Shop
regularly appropriates the traditional products of indigenous cultures,
repackages them and sells them back, through its international outlets, to
non-western societies, while claiming to be helping the indigenous people!
Just imagine what would happen if someone from Brazil or India took a
western recipe for skin care cream and tried to sell it in their own country
– let alone the West.
By collapsing all kind of cultures and traditions in a single space,
postmodernism creates a façade, a simulacra, of multiculturalism.
(simulacra, plural for simulacrum, or a world where all distinction between
image and material reality has been lost).   Just because we can sample
Chinese, Turkish, Indian, Cuban, and other varieties of food in a single
city does not mean that we have a multicultural society.  True
multiculturalism is based on equal share of power and opportunity – not in
colorful display of trinkets and cheap ethnic goods in the shopping mall.
Postmodernism creates an allure of pluralism while ensuring that the
oppressive and unjust structures of power remain intact.
Power itself takes on a particular form in postmodernism.  Since there is no
basis for morality, there is nothing to tell Truth apart from Falsehood,
Good from Evil, postmodern power at best is cynical power.  At worse, it is
simply the embrace of evil.  Consider the popularity of serial killers in
postmodern times.  In America, Britain, and Russia, professional serial
killers, and aspiring candidates, are capturing headlines like never before.
  In the film Silence of the Lambs (1992), a cannibal psychopath is
presented as a witty, cultured, charismatic genius who alone is able to
direct the hunt for another serial killer.  Silence of the Lambs is one in
only three films in the history of the Oscars to take all five top awards
(best picture, best director, best actor, best actress, best screenplay) in
the same year.  Serial killers may always have been with us but never before
have they had such a dominant hold over the popular imagination.  Today’s
serial killers, and all associated with them, are the top dollar earners of
checkbook journalism, television serialization, and film rights.  They
represent value for money by giving free reign to the allure of evil, the
attractiveness of perversion and ugliness, and the spectacle of bloodlust –
the complete postmodern lexicon.  Aspiring serial killers can vent their
bloodlust in a whole range of special sites and newsgroups where allegedly
ordinary citizens (mostly American) describe in graphic detail how they
would like to cut, suffocate, torture, maim, and otherwise mutilate the
objects of their sexual desires – which are often little kids!  That is
fantasy.   But in postmodernism there is hardly any distinction between fact
and fantasy, between a video game of shoot- ‘em-up and a real war like the
Gulf War (notice how much the news footage of the Gulf War resembles a video
game): fantasy often turns out to be a dry run for the real thing!
As an extension of colonialism and modernity, postmodernism uses all the
images of colonialism, which described the ‘natives’ as barbaric,
licentious, depraved, fanatical, and stupid, to describe and represent the
non-West.  Films like True Lies, Executive Decision, and Indiana Jones and
the Temple of Temple of Doom portray the non-Europeans as barbaric and
bloodthirsty bigots.  The advertisement for Peugot 106, where two Thelma and
Louise types encounter a ‘Shiekh’ plays to all the stereotypes of
Orientalist lore.  The Benetton campaign, which at any given moment covers
billboards in over 100,000 streets around the world, provides us with
classic images of black man’s inferiority: the breasts of a black woman
suckling a white baby, a child’s black hand resting on a white male hand, an
African mercenary holding a human thigh bone – accompanied with the company
logo: ‘United Colors of Bennetton’.   The African mercenary is an iconic
image: deprived of history and context, it nonetheless excavates all that
represents the Africans as barbaric flesh-eaters incapable of embracing
civilization.  The image refers to a moment of barbarism, having no
reference to the chain of events which lead to it, while depriving the
African of a voice.  The Benetton campaign encapsulates the past, present,
and future in a single time frame offering images which conjure historic,
futuristic, and apocalyptic elements within a grammar of race.  In most of
these images the diversity of national culture is reduced to a stylized,
hackneyed individual.  Difference is commodified and a portrait of plurality
is produced which designates the colorful individuals within the image to be
a race apart.  This is postmodern advertising as social conscience: as
artificially constructed reality that creates the image of harmony while
selling oppressive brand names, while projecting every single stereotype in
western culture.
Resisting Postmodernism
=======================
How can postmodernism be resisted? The non-western cultures need to do more
than simply offer cultural resistance – they have to become cultures of
resistance.  However, passive traditionalism and militant formalist
traditionalism are both easy prey to postmodernism.  Postmodernism induces
panic in all forms of passive and militant outlooks and thus not only
renders them ineffective against its all-pervasive nihilism but makes them
self-destructive.  In other words, postmodernism co-opts passivity and
fundamentalism to promote its own goals.  Thus, the only cultural survival
kit for those who would choose to remain alive within living traditions,
retain their identity and distinctive moral and ethical vision of themselves
and the purpose of their existence, is to understand postmodernism, to see
through the limitations of passive minimalist tradition and the futile trap
of militant fundamentalism.  For the worldviews of the non-West the only
option is to transcend meaninglessness through living consciously,
creatively making and mending.  This is a difficult and complex agenda, yet
it is the worthwhile enterprise that can offer us any kind of sustainable
future.
At the heart of culture and its traditional forms is a distinctive moral and
ethical understanding, worldview.  Traditional culture in all its forms is
about expression and communication of this moral vision, about working out
its contemporary significance and relevance for a people with a strong
historical identity.  IT CAN ONLY REMAIN ALIVE WHEN IT BECOMES A LIVING
LANGUAGE THROUGH WHICH CONTEMPORARY QUESTIONS, PROBLEMS, CHOICES, AND
DECISIONS ARE ARTICULATED.   For the non-West, history will really end and
postmodernism will rule unassailed unless its worldviews become the medium
through which economy, politics, social, industrial, and ecological
conventions are negotiated.  Culture is not an optional extra that can be
indulged in after working hours in the privacy of the home, or on certain
high days and holidays.  If that is what culture becomes, then it is the
rotting corpse of a dead system of thought and understanding, the dried husk
of a worldview that no longer interacts with the real world we inhabit.  It
is not just one worldview, but every worldview that makes up the rich mosaic
of the non-West that must be brought back to life if the non-European
cultures are to defy and resist postmodernism and the seductive path into
total dependency and the ever expanding decay it offers.
Moral and ethical considerations are never easy: they are the greatest
challenge to our humanity and our intellect.  Becoming centered in the moral
and ethical concepts of non-western worldviews cannot mean renouncing old
interpretations or abandoning all that is of the West.  It does, however,
require recognizing and transcending the limitations of both as part of the
process of taking responsibility for the present and creating a future that
answers to and is a function of what non-western cultures really believe is
of enduring value and meaning.
#############################################
Note: For a postmodernist illustration of the points made above, watch
critically the Hollywood release The Matrix starring Kenu Reeves.
#############################################
2) Postmodernism: the Culture of Financial Capital, by Towfic Shomar, a Ph.D
in the Philosophy of Science from the London School of Economics.
In spite of the fact that THE DEFINITION of Postmodernism presented above is
critically precise, a few reservations can still be made on the
over-exaggerated status accorded to Postmodernism and its influence on
modern Western and non-Western societies:
First, the mode of thought and philosophy that predominates the media in any
culture cannot be viewed in isolation from the social strata that
predominate in the current mode of production.  For example, it is common
knowledge that the capitalist mode of production corresponded until recently
to liberal thought which reveres science and the scientific method derived
from the Industrial Revolution.  That mode of production was predominated by
industrial entrepreneurs.  But with the transformation of the capitalist
mode of production, and the omnipotent predominance of financial capital in
the socio-economic structure, the financial support given to the mainstream
media changed in meaning.  This financial support was no longer for the
purpose of spreading liberal thought, but for spreading the culture best
understood by financial capital, i.e., Postmodernism.
Here it should be emphasized that Postmodernism rejects all sorts of
totalities, not just rational scientific thought which revolves around the
Correspondence Theory of Truth (which holds that there is a rational way to
know the truth).  Thus Postmodernism condemns this rational way, and denies
the existence of any truth outside the subjective realm of perceptions.
Postmodernism wages war on the mind as well.  Only thus can we comprehend
the accurate statement that Postmodernism rejects the possibility of
knowledge.  It is evident that without the power of the mind, without
recognizing that there exists non-subjective reality outside perceptions,
and without accepting some sort of totalities, knowledge becomes impossible
or it degenerates into a mere stroke of ‘luck’.  Hence some postmodernist
writers claim that your success in the global economy depends on your
ability to use your knowledge of it, BUT ONLY WHEN ‘LUCK’ IS ON YOUR SIDE.
However, the starting point for the postmodernist rejection of all sorts of
totalities DID NOT BEGIN WITH FIGHTING MODERNISM, BUT AS A TOOL TO FIGHT
SOCIALISM.  In the beginning the socialist bloc was compared to totalitarian
regimes like Nazism and Fascism.  Then these regimes, which deemed
themselves the genuine expression of the collective consciousness of their
societies, became the biggest excuse to reject knowledge, the mind, and
totalities in general.  Thus this inhuman mode of thought called
Postmodernism was partly generated by the Cold War and the strategy of
containment [of communism].
Second, postmodernist thought is ultra-Pragmatic thought.  It displays a
different type of interaction with given circumstances in the imperialist
centers than it does with the same set of circumstances where they exist in
the peripheries.   We can nevertheless delineate a few basic aspects in its
operation:
a) The Use of Information Technology: Here the first contradiction arises.
Postmodernism views such technology as the optimal means of communication,
and does not fail to use it to propagandize itself.  Yet it must
continuously tackle the challenge that Information Technology is related to
knowledge (and its possibility) and the corollary that it is becoming
increasingly difficult to prevent one from obtaining this knowledge and
using the same technology to disseminate alternative points of view.
Therefore, this contradiction is overcome by making sure that the Internet
for example, initially created by the U.S. Department of Defense in the Cold
War, contains a disproportional amount of postmodernist themes and voices to
lord over other views.

b)  The Population Explosion: This generates the second paradox.  There is
an acute imperialist awareness of the gravity of the situation regarding
population trends in the world today.  This is because THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE
IN THE PERIPHERIES IS TEN TIMES THAT IN THE IMPERIALIST CENTERS.  The
majority of those are NOT even REACHED by the mainstream media of the New
World Order.  Henceforth, the power of Postmodernism must necessarily be
GREATER in the imperialist centers than it is in the peripheries.   The
problems resulting from such postmodernist influence in the centers will
also necessarily affect the ability of the ruling classes there to keep the
situation under control.

c) Globalization: This is the only socio-economic theme discussed in the
article above.  Postmodernism is indeed the ideology of globalization (see
the previous issue of the Free Arab Voice at:
http://www.fav.net/special_issue_on_globalization.htm)

d) Social Change and Imposing “Multiculturalism”: It is true that one of the
tenets of Postmodernism is its vehement (insincere) defense of
Multiculturalism.  However, in doing so, it does not necessarily seek to
extend modernization to the Third World, but to JUSTIFY BACKWARDNESS AND THE
PREVELANT MODES OF THOUGHT IN THE PERIPHERIES.  Note that accepting the
legitimacy of this backwardness under the disguise of defending
‘Multiculturalism’ justifies imperialist support for non-democratic
governments in the Third World under the pretext that the culture and
civilization of these vassal states does not allow for and is intrinsically
incongruent with democracy!!  This pseudo-argument may even be used to
support fundamentalist movements when it is politically expedient.    It is
true that the mouthpieces of imperialist states always claim that they are
establishing democracy, especially when they hand down ‘economic
restructuring’ plans through the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank.  Yet these are but the external shells of democracy that were tailored
to fit Third World rulers and classes tending to the best interest of
financial capital, as is the case in Jordan.

e) The Technological Revolution: In spite of the great technological
revolution we are witnessing nowadays, industrial production remains tied to
a mode of consumption which primarily meets the needs of financial capital.
Consequently many scientific discoveries with potentially significant
industrial and other applications are discarded because they don’t generate
acceptable rates of profit.  On the other hand, technological applications
are favored which expand demand for corporate products.  Thus it is the
extent to which a given discovery or invention generates cash flow, not its
inherent relevance to increasing human welfare, that counts the most.  No
wonder then,   in recent years, financial support for large scientific
projects that do not directly or indirectly benefit the flow of capital has
greatly diminished.  For there is no room for science for the sake of
science in the postmodernist age, or maybe there is no room for science at
all.
In short, a true understanding of Postmodernism is not feasible without an
examination of its socio-economic dimension, as well as the scientific and
intellectual dimension. The damage incurred by Postmodernism is not sinisterly
directed against the Islamic east or Third-worldist traditions as such, or
only. Postmodernism is the intellectual expression of the domination of
financial capital on the capitalist mode of production, and on the global
economy today. The negative consequences resulting from Postmodernism will
therefore be felt the most in fact in the imperialist centers rather than
the peripheries of the Third World.
######################################################################
The Free Arab Voice is an alternative newsletter that comes out
only in cyberspace.
For other FAV issues, please visit:
http://www.freearabvoice.org/favPrevIssues.htm
Sign a real right of return petition at:
http://www.freearabvoice.org/A-RealRightOfReturnPetition.htm
Check out a special slide show on Palestine at:
http://www.freearabvoice.org/RememberPalestine.htm
Read the In Response to Defeatist Thought series at:
http://www.freearabvoice.org/InResponseToDefeatistThought0.htm
To read on Arab contributions to civilization, click on:
http://www.freearabvoice.org/arabCivilMain.htm
For Palestinian Poems in English, go to:
http://www.freearabvoice.org/rhythmsOfTheStorm.htm
The Free Arab Voice welcomes your comments, suggestions, and
submissions.  If you do not wish to be on FAV's mailing list,
please indicate as much by writing to us.




  

    

    

    
FAV Editor: Ibrahim Alloush Editor@freearabvoice.org
Co-editors: Nabila Harb Harb@freearabvoice.org
  Muhammad Abu Nasr Nasr@freearabvoice.org
FAV Home Page - > Please click on the logo above, and we'll FAV you there :)