Abstract
Is postmodernity simply a ‘post’ appended to modernity or does postmodernism have distinctive features that delineate it from modernism? While critics like Habermas and Bauman would believe that postmodernism is nothing but an extended project of modernism, others like Lyotard believe that it is a complete rupture from modernism. This ambiguity is the characteristic of the origins of the term postmodernism, the chronological placement of the age, the features associated with it and more importantly, its theorization. This paper questions the subsumption of postmodernism under the sign of modernity. The paper will analyse the 2016 American sci-fi film, Arrival directed by Denis Villeneuve to attempt a disambiguation of the Modernist-Postmodernist dichotomy and examine Lyotard’s paralogy to read the signposts ahead.
Keywords: Legitimation, determinism, metanarrative, performativity, paralogy, Sapir-Whorf Theory, Zero-sum game.
Definitions and characteristics seem to be very important in an organizational world. After all, they allow delineation between any two ideas, doctrines or movements. So, while the world celebrates hundred years of high modernism, it is natural to wonder where does postmodernism figure? Though there might be disagreements on the characteristics of modernism, even when we are situated at the cusp of 100 years of high modernism, there is no disputing its existence. But this does not seem to extend fully to postmodernism. There is a tendency to assimilate postmodernism under the sign of modernism. While Jameson critiques postmodernism in terms of lack and bemoans the reification of postmodern “things” (314), attacks on postmodernism have been mounted from various perspectives, be it Marxist (Callinicos 1989, 1990), cultural (Wheen 2004), historical (Evans 2001) or even religious (Wells 1999), apart from the damning Sokal affair.[1] A common issue raised by almost all detractors of postmodernism (and even its supporters) is its lack of a conceptual definition; while some admit to using a tacit definition, others are annoyed by its obvious contradictions. Then, there are the attempts at appropriating postmodernism as an organic extension of modernism (Habermas, 1997 and Bauman, 2000).[2]
All these seem to indicate that postmodernism must have distinctive characteristics that must function in opposition to modernism for it to deserve a separate location; else, it will be subsumed under the sign of modernism. The problem is how to harness a movement that is amorphously situated and principally against definitions to gain a location? This Modernist-Postmodernist disjunction characterizes the title of the paper, “Have You Arrived Yet? Attempting a Disambiguation of the Modernist-Postmodernist Dichotomy”.
Is postmodernism simply a ‘post’ appended to modernity, an extension to modernity, or does postmodernism have distinctive features that delineate it from modernism? While critics like Habermas and Bauman would believe that postmodernism is nothing but an extended project of modernism, others like Lyotard believe that it is a complete rupture from modernism. This ambiguity is characteristic of the origins of the term postmodernism, the chronological placement of the age, the features associated with it and more importantly, its theorization.
A manner of distinguishing between modernism and postmodernism is by examining how both the movements perceive knowledge, knowledge formation (Lyotard’s “legitimation”) and power. Both modernism and postmodernism have made unique contributions to society. Modernism brought an end to medieval practices with its appeal to reason. It also put the individual in the centre, making human life more important. Modernity, the child of Enlightenment, is anchored in principles of rationality and reason. Knowledge formation in modernism is anthropocentric. The conviction accorded by Descartes’ famous axiom, Cogito, ergo sum – (I think, therefore, I am) further entitled a logical, rational man to be at the centre of the universe. As a result, the modernist perspective developed out of a combination of belief in a logical, Newtonian universe and the certainty of Cartesian philosophy based on the objective foundation of truth. Modernism perceived the world as having an objective reality which can be found with certainty through scientific observation and reason. Knowledge formation in modernism is anthropocentric and scientific. This thought was further encouraged by Kant in his seminal work, Critique of Pure Reason. He argued that knowledge depends on the structural elements of mind which generate perception that enable us to comprehend reality. Kant believed that these elements of mind would be universal in all individuals. Thus, we all perceive the world similarly. Knowledge formation in modernism is anthropocentric and scientific and subscribes to universal realism. Jurgen Habermas believes modernity to be an unfinished project. The central idea here, that we stand constantly at the brink of a worldwide transformation, is a key figure in the work of almost all of the thinkers who have come to be associated with the discourse of modernity. Habermas picks up on this sense of progress from Hegel’s work and claims him as ‘the first philosopher to develop a clear concept of modernity’, and one whom we have to understand if we wish to ‘be able to judge whether the claim of those who base their analyses on other premises [postmodernists, for example] is legitimate’ (qtd in Malpas 53). For Habermas, the key aspect of modernity that Hegel’s work develops is the idea that reality and rationality are historically determined, and that humankind is capable of transforming itself as it progresses towards freedom, truth and communal understanding. Knowledge formation in modernism then is anthropocentric and scientific and subscribes to universal realism and is progressive (towards emancipation).
The ambiguities with these theories are apparent. Modernism, in its attempt to define humanity in terms of the thinking Self, “I”, not only creates binaries but also ignores the non-rational aspects of human nature, including the spiritual. Neither does it grasp the limitations of objectivity and reason. With all its stress on humanity, modernism reduced man to a cog in a machine as part of its idea of the grand narrative. It hampered the development of a holistic individuality with its insistence on the logical and analytical. Postmodernism seeks to correct the imbalances of modernism by acknowledging the relational nature of existence. Man is not vested with unlimited potential to change the world. Knowledge formation in postmodernism is not anthropocentric. The universal nature of Newton’s theory made it easy for the modernists to believe in absolutes and rationality. But Einstein’s relativity and quantum theories, in the twentieth century, dethroned Newton’s cosmology, changing the way the world was perceived. The time-space simultaneity evoked by the earlier theory of relativity prevented us from realising that “the future is in reality open, unpredictable, and indeterminate” (Canales). While general relativity sees events as continuous and deterministic, where every cause matches with an effect, in quantum mechanics, events are produced by the interaction of subatomic particles that happen in quantum leaps, with probabilistic rather than definite outcomes. While the theory of relativity views space as an infinite continuum, Quantum understanding of space is that of a qualitative multiplicity. Knowledge formation in postmodernism is neither anthropocentric nor steeped in absolute scientific rationalisms. The postmodern questioning of universal grand narratives is influenced by this qualitative multiplicity of time-space continuum accorded by quantum mechanics that allows the cosmos to be built on uncertainty rather than it being deterministic. Further, while Descartes made the thinking self to be an objective observer of the universe, and Kant reinforced that idea, Nietzsche effectively dethrones the self from the center of objective reality. He rejected Kant’s transcendentals arguments in favour of the truth being illusory in nature. Like the Nietzschean critique of modern subjectivity, Foucault’s application of genealogy to the formative moments in modernity’s history and experimentations with subjectivity was distinctly postmodernist. Knowledge formation in postmodernism is neither anthropocentric nor scientific rationalisms and does not subscribe to universal realism or a progressive narrative.
Habermas, (paradoxically) in his Adorno-prize speech compares the struggle between modernity and postmodernity to that of avant-gardism and conservatism. He sees modernity as an incomplete project and wants to further its aim by overcoming the disintegration of contemporary society. He feels that this disintegration can be overcome through negotiation and consensus between different language games. Zygmunt Bauman holds a similar view and characterises modernity as ‘liquid’, fluid in its assimilation.
So, while Habermas believes postmodernism to be a continuation of modernism, modernity as an incomplete project and wants to overcome the disintegration of contemporary society, and, Bauman holds a similar view and characterises modernity as ‘liquid’, fluid in its assimilation, Lyotard holds the opposite view and sees grand narratives themselves as having always been politically problematic. For instance, the universal ideas of reason and freedom from superstition provided a moral basis for colonial domination through capitalist expansion and “missionary terrorism” in Africa and the Middle East. He argues that the best means to resist the globalisation of capitalism is by increasing the fragmentation of language games. For Lyotard, the main threat facing the postmodern society is the reduction of knowledge to a single system whose only criterion is efficiency. He identifies the two most important metanarratives of the past: (1) history as progressing towards social enlightenment and emancipation, and (2) knowledge as progressing towards totalisation.
Knowledge itself is either “narrative” or “scientific”. While “narrative” knowledge has no recourse to legitimation, “scientific” knowledge requires legitimation. Under the sign of modernity, the narrative of science was often legitimated by either the Hegelian metanarrative or the Marxist metanarrative. The Hegelian metanarrative speculates on the eventual totality and unity of all knowledge; scientific progress becomes the cornerstone for legitimizing this eventual goal (number two above). The Marxist metanarrative gives science a role in the emancipation of humanity (number one above).
Postmodernity dethrones the grand narrative. Humanism and the traditional anthropocentric, philosophical notion of the human being as the central subject of knowledge is rejected. Postmodernism champions heterogeneity and difference, and suggests that the understanding of society in terms of “progress” has been made obsolete by the scientific, technological, political and cultural changes of the late twentieth century. So, while the modernist sublime is tied up with the feeling of loss and a wish to return to the stability of the earlier state, the postmodern sublime works through a sense of excitement at the failure of language games and wants to discover new rules. While for Habermas art is a medium of generating reconciliation, for Lyotard, art’s disruptive potential is key. Postmodern art, he says, must wage a ‘war on totality’ (The Postmodern Condition 82) by testifying to the unpresentable. Thus, while a preference for coherence is seen in modernists, postmodernists recoil in horror from any unifying and hence normalising tendencies. Difference as a productive mechanism than a negative, disruptive one is a mark of postmodernism. Critics from Barthes, Derrida, Baudrillard, Kristeva, Deleuze and Guattari look at the concept of difference as an enabling category though in differential terms. Difference allows movement in all directions while opposition is limited by functioning only on one level of negativity.
Postmodern theory and practice highlights not as much the illusory nature of “truth” but that truth is instituted through social, political and discursive concerns (Hutcheon 1988, Eagleton 2003). So, where modernity is defined as the age of metanarrative legitimation, postmodernity is the age in which metanarratives have become bankrupt.
The question then is, what legitimates the narrative of science now (in the postmodern age)? The answer is not a pleasant one. In this age of cyber technology where political power is defined by who has admission to knowledge- who has the digital database, who has access and who allots access - Lyotard’s answer is: performativity. Knowledge is reduced to its direct economic value where usability is synonymous to desirability. It is not surprising then that the language used in scientific knowledge is almost always denotative. Legitimation of knowledge through performativity leads to commercialisation (Lyotard’s mercantilization).
In order to prevent knowledge from turning into a monolithic truth whose only criterion is efficiency, Lyotard suggests the opposite; the fragmentation of language games through paralogy, a proliferation of individual ‘little narratives’, which cannot be reduced to the criterion of efficiency. Paralogy implies movement against an established way of reasoning. In relation to research, this means the production of new ideas by going against or outside of established norms, of making new moves in language games, changing the rules of language games and inventing new games so that knowledge is not reduced to a grand narrative.
The threat of reducing knowledge to a monolithic, the central force of production, access to which is politically determined, is examined in the movie, Arrival. The movie positions unilinear perception of time, knowledge and language against a postmodern pluralism and acts as a cinematic, paralogical trope that breaks the rules of the language games. It critiques modernism’s prevailing theory of truth i.e., the correspondence theory of truth. With the application of the correspondence theory of truth, scientific truth becomes synonymous to absolute truth. Something was felt to be true in so much as it corresponds to objective reality found in the world. Postmodernism, on the other hand, subscribes to the coherence theory of truth. With the application of the coherence theory of truth, science becomes just a collection of independent research traditions, each having its own perspectives and language games. Something is felt to be true in so much as it coheres with individual perception about the world. All scientific conclusions are now understood to be tentative as it is difficult to make an infinite number of observations to factor in exceptions. It also acknowledges the multiplicity of truths. So, postmodernism corrects modernism by underscoring the limits of knowledge, reasoning ability and unilateral view.
Arrival is a 2016 science fiction film that has deeper implications for contemporary capitalist society, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic which has exposed the international fault lines of geo-political responses to global emergencies that require nations to band together. The film directed by Denis Villeneuve is based on Ted Chiang’s short story “Story of Your Life” (1998) and has received several awards apart from eight nominations at the 89th Academy Awards. The movie revolves around a linguistics professor, Louise Banks (Amy Adams) who along with a physicist, Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) is recruited by the US Army to establish communication with aliens that have landed in Montana, USA. The spaceship in Montana is part of 12 such ships that have landed in different locations of the world. While majority of the nations where the spaceships have landed feel that it is a hostile invasion by extra-terrestrial beings and plan a global war, Louise has very little time to find a way to communicate with the aliens to unearth their intentions.
Communication becomes key as Louise struggles to understand the alien language in her quest for answers on their presence on earth. Content and context both assume importance, where misinterpreting the words would mean pushing the world into a war which it might not survive. When Louise and Ian first establish contact with the extra-terrestrial beings aboard the pod-shaped spaceship, they are struck by the amorphous appearance of the seven-limbed aliens whom they call ‘heptapods’ and whom Ian nicknames, Abbott and Costello. The naming is not as random as Abbott and Costello is a reference to the comedy duo with the same name, whose most famous routine Who’s on First is based on language and miscommunication, much like the film’s linguistic theme.
While Louise uses a portable whiteboard, she is carrying with her, on which she writes HUMAN while pointing to herself, she realizes that the heptapods have a highly evolved form of language/communication. It does not follow the linear construction, left-to-right, right-to-left or top-to-bottom, of human languages. Instead, the heptapods communicate using logograms and palindromes. The logogram, a form of non-linear orthography, has no forward or backward direction. The heptapods’ logograms, a circular form of writing that resembles ink-blots, are free of time. This is commensurate with the structure of the heptapods’ bodies in the movie as well as their pod-shaped spaceship which do not seem to have forward or backward, no ends.
The US Army personnel, meanwhile, get increasingly agitated as the lengthy communication process prevents them from taking political decisions at the global level. All the twelve nations, including China, Russia, Pakistan, Sudan and Venezuela, have set up emergency response rooms where they exchange information on their progress with their respective space-pods. But each nation is wary of sharing information (knowledge), fearing that they might lose critical power in doing so. Lyotard’s postmodern prediction of the desire to control information seems to be coming true here as nations poised on the brink of an inter-terrestrial war interpret differently the presence of the aliens and their communication based on their own language games.
When Louise is instructed to proceed beyond establishing names and using basic vocabulary words like “WALK” and instead directed to ASK questions, she points out that the heptapods may not understand what a question is, as it is a denotative percept. The US intelligence is directly concerned with performativity and is unable to understand the nuances of a prescriptive language. Adding to their concern is China’s progress in establishing communication with the aliens that have landed in China. Through the competitive game of mah-jong, that prioritizes skill and strategy, the Chinese interpret what the aliens are trying to convey as “use weapons”. Louise, on her part, has made progress with Abbott and Costello and translates their communication as “offer weapon” (Arrival 1:06:12). The different language games have produced very different interpretations of the same communique. Though she is unable to make complete sense of the phrase, Louise argues that the symbol interpreted as “weapon” can alternately mean “tools” or abstractly refer to the concept of “means”. China's aggressive translation likely results from interacting with the aliens using mah-jong, a highly competitive, winner-take-all game. Louise points out the folly of such a strategy, “Are they using a game to converse with the heptapods? .... If I taught them chess instead of English, every conversation will be a game… every idea expressed through opposition; victory, defeat” (1:04:36).
This underlines the Sapir-Whorf theory: the principle that the structure of a language affects the speaker’s worldview or cognition and thus the linguistic categories and usage influence thought and decisions. Thus, it seems natural that the Chinese officials using mah-jong (a competitive zero-sum-game with a decisive victor and loser) would interpret the aliens’ statement as “use weapon”. The heptapods, on the other hand, do not use denotative communication at all. For them time is non-linear and so is language and existence. “Unlike all human languages, their writing is semasiographic. It conveys meaning, it doesn’t represent sound.” (54:57) Their existence is based on a non-zero-sum game, a win-win situation that involves sharing.
All the twelve countries in the film are seen involved in zero-sum games. For instance, the Russians kill their own scientist who shares messages with other sites, the Chinese communicate with the aliens using the zero-sum game mah-jong, where every idea is expressed in terms of victory or defeat and the American CIA agent, Halpern suggests that they do not share their information with their “enemies”. He cites the example of the divide-and-rule policy used by the Britishers to rule India and by Germans in Rwanda. Halpern declares, “We are a world with no single leader” (1:08:14) and it is paramount to him that knowledge be used as a cipher to win power. Unlike these zero-sum games that the nations indulge in, Louise and Ian point out that the purpose of the heptapods can only be interpreted in terms of non-zero-sum games. The complete information is stored not in one pod, but shared across the twelve spaceships.
China, interpreting the aliens’ message as “use weapons”, decides to go on the offensive, declaring war and shutting down communication with other information centres. It is only after Louise really learns the heptapods’ language, she figures out that the heptapods did not mean weapon, instead they talked about a gift. The weapon is actually a gift. Costello tells Louise that their purpose on earth is to help humanity, and they are offering her and the others a gift, since in three thousand years, they will need humanity’s help. The larger point that the film makes is that if the human race is to survive, we need to talk to each other, and cooperate with each other. Indulging in zero-sum games while withholding information would only lead to miscommunication and war. The gift of the heptapods carries a profound meaning. The different nations are also a part of the larger human race and to ensure the human race survives under threat from a more advanced race, a global pandemic/disaster or climate change it is crucial to focus on non-zero-sum games and share knowledge.
Legitimation through performativity is alien to the aliens. Abbott’s destruction is not seen as absolute death but as a process. It is a language that is not teleological and can be interpreted based on the intentions of the listener and not the intentions of the speaker. The signifier-signified relation breaks down, allowing plurality. This is the gift the future has for the humans in Arrival. Unfortunately, it is only Louise who understands the heptapods’ language and hence has the gift of premonitions. Just as the tyrannical rule of metanarratives is disrupted by the paralogy of petit narratives, none of the spaceships are complete in itself. Each pod has communication that can be read as itself or in cooperation as a non-zero-sum game. For Lyotard, paralogy involves a movement against an established way of reasoning. Similarly, in order to understand what the heptapods want to convey Louise has to give up linear form of thinking. Louise, with her new understanding, is able to perceive time as endless. The viewers realize that the flashback showing the death of Louise’s daughter from a disease is actually a premonition she begins to experience as the heptapods’ language allows her to see time as a non-linear loop. And though Louise is able to perceive her future, it is not deterministic but dependant on the choices she would make. The most prominent indicator of the movie’s palindromic subtext is the film’s ending, or as it seems fit, the beginning. The story of Louise as seen in the film does not follow a normal linear trajectory. In the initial moments of the film, Louise says, “I used to think this was the beginning of your story. Memory is a strange thing. It doesn’t work like I thought it did. We are so bound by time, its order. I remember moments in the middle. And this was the end. But I am not sure I believe in beginnings and endings.” (03:07) Likewise, the movie has no clear ending and beginning. If the order of its scenes was reversed, it would still make a perfectly fine story.
It is beyond doubt that knowledge in the postmodern era has not only entered into an economic equation but also has become a force of production. Lyotard indicates that knowledge has become such an important economic factor that in fact, one day wars will be waged over the control of information. But the film Arrival signals a way out. Non-zero-sum game is probably the solution to Lyotard’s postmodern quandary where the multiplication of language games and the use of paralogy will ensure that there is no one super power in the world while cooperation based on a win-win strategy would ensure that humanity survives.
Endnotes:
[1] Alan Sokal’s hoax has ironically raised questions on the legitimacy of postmodern poetics rather than the relative merits of scholarship in the physical sciences.
[2] A commemoration of the centenary of international modernism in itself is an indication of the modernist affect and its subsumation of postmodernism.
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