Chapter 4: Knowledge production and autonomy: the challenge from
2. The loss of faith in the Enlightenment project
While there are a variety of postmodern perspectives and no unified postmodern theory, or even a coherent set of positions,334 among the fundamental premises shared by postmodern thinkers is a relativist distrust of „truth‟ and a critique of the doctrines of the so-called Enlightenment project. The western academic tradition is regarded as being founded on classical notions of the quest for knowledge and the necessity to subject knowledge claims to the most rigorous standards of rationality, evidence and truth.335 Science, in particular, is regarded as having universalising pretentions to guarantee truth. In the postmodern view, this is understood as a metanarrative, both justifying the existence and role of the modern university, and, at the same time, serving to delegitimate other forms of knowledge and ways of knowing. Lyotard understands the defining characteristic of the „modern‟ to be the legitimation of science by explicit appeal to grand narratives, among which he lists German idealism, classical liberalism and Marxism.336
Habermas, who is decidedly not a postmodernist, but a thinker who is concerned to reform modernity, outlines the Enlightenment project thus:
The project of modernity, formulated in the eighteenth century by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, consisted in their efforts to develop objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art according to their inner logic. At the same time, this project intended to release the cognitive potential of each of these domains from their esoteric forms. The Enlightenment philosophy wanted to utilize this accumulation of specialized culture for the enrichment of everyday life – that is to say, for the rational organization of everyday social life.337
334 Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations, London, Macmillan, 1991, p.2.
335 John Davies, “Postmodernism and the sociological study of the university”, The Review of Higher Education, Spring 1999, 22 (3) p.317.
336 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1987, p.xxix.
337 Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action Vol.1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, Oxford, Polity, 1981, p.9 in Best, S. and Kellner, D., Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations, London, Macmillan, 1991, p.233.
Modernity, as the above quote indicates, ranges from the philosophy of Descartes, through the Enlightenment, to the social theory of Comte, Marx and Weber.
There are three main aspects to the postmodern critiques of modernity. In the first instance, there is a distrust in the universalising pretensions of modernist beliefs.
Modernity is criticised for “its search for a foundation of knowledge, for its universalising and totalising claims, for its hubris to supply apodictic truth, and for its allegedly fallacious rationalism”.338 There is a rejection of the view that the Western scientific view of the world claims to speak for all humanity and a belief that in doing so it denies the legitimacy of other ways of knowing. Modernity is viewed as hegemonic, exclusive, upholding only the validity of knowledge gained through positivist scientific method and denying the validity of narrative knowledge of the kind practised in non-Western societies where strong oral narrative traditions exist. The postmodern concern is with theories in which there is a need to seek consensus to agree on values, as in Habermas‟
view, as in seeking consensus the potential for dissensus and difference is eradicated.
Lyotard, in particular, writing in the wake of French post-Marxism, is concerned to avoid totalizing narratives and „terrorist‟ ideals of consensus, which he discerns in the various Marxist and Communist traditions in France.339 The danger, for Lyotard, of theories of society which rely on an understanding of society as a coherent whole, and explanatory theories of history as following a teleological path, is that such theories are too easily subverted into totalizing and destructive ideologies such as Stalinism.”340
In writing a report on the state of knowledge in The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard argues that in order to know what the state of knowledge is, it is important first to ”know something of the society in which it is situated.”341 He identifies two main traditions of
338 Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations, London, Macmillan, 1991, p.4.
339 Fredric Jameson, “Foreword” to Lyotard, J.F., The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1987, p.x.
340 Ibid. p.x.
341 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1987, p.13.
thought, or discourses on society, which have been handed down from the nineteenth century. One is that society forms an organic whole, a unified totality, evident in the work of the “founders of the French school”, of Parsons and of contemporary German philosophers of systems theories. This view of society “is always in danger of being incorporated into the programming of the social whole as a simple tool for the optimization of its performance; this is because its desire for a unitary and totalizing truth lends itself to the unitary and totalizing practice of the system‟s managers”.342 The second basic representational model of society identified by Lyotard is one that sees it divided into two, evident in the Marxist current of thinking which accepts both the principle of class struggle and dialectics as a duality operating within society.343 Both of these Lyotard finds unacceptable.
On a philosophical level, The Postmodern Condition is a thinly veiled attack on Habermas‟ ideas of a communication society, with its injunction to seek consensus in an ideal speech situation. This Lyotard views as Habermas‟ attempt to move beyond dualistic views of society to reassert a theory of society as an organic whole, and this he regards as a blurring of the principle of societal division to the point of losing all its radicality.344 Habermas‟ vision of an evolutionary social leap into a new type of rational society is “explicitly rejected by Lyotard as the unacceptable remnant of a „totalizing‟
philosophical tradition and as the valorization of conformist when not „terrorist‟ ideals of consensus”. Similarly, Foucault attempts to detotalize history and society as unified wholes governed by a centre, essence or telos and to decentre the subject as a constituted rather than a constituting consciousness.345
A second aspect to the critiques is closely related to the first. Apart from a concern to avoid totalizing narratives, postmodernists attack the main “hero” (or villain) of modernity – that is, reason. As Best and Kellner write:
342 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1987, p.12.
343 Ibid. pp.10–12.
344 Ibid. p.13.
345 Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations, London, Macmillan, 1991, p.39.
The theoretical discourses of modernity from Descartes through the Enlightenment and its progeny championed reason as the source of progress in knowledge and society, as well as the privileged locus of truth and the foundation of systematic knowledge. Reason was deemed competent to discover adequate theoretical and practical norms upon which systems of thought and action could be built and society could be restructured. This Enlightenment project is also operative in the American, French and other democratic revolutions which attempted to overturn the feudal world and to produce a just and egalitarian social order that would embody reason and social progress.346
Postmodern theory in general rejects the modern equation of reason and freedom and attempts to problematize modern forms of rationality as reductive and oppressive.
As an example:
Where modernist theories tend to see knowledge and truth to be neutral, objective, universal, or vehicles of progress and emancipation, Foucault analyses them as integral components of power and domination. Postmodern theory rejects unifying or totalizing modes of theory or rationalist myths of the Enlightenment that are reductionist and obscure the differential and plural nature of the social field, while
… entailing the suppression of plurality, diversity and individuality in favour of conformity and homogeneity.347
For Foucault, behind the quest for truth based on reason and the claim to speak for humanity is always the drive for power. Drawing on Nietzsche‟s will-to-power thesis, Foucault sees truth related to power.348
As Foucault writes:
Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by multiple forms of constraint.
And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its
„general politics‟ of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.349
346 Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations, London, Macmillan, 1991, p.2.
347 Ibid. p.38.
348 John Davies, “Postmodernism and the sociological study of the university”, The Review of Higher Education, Spring 1999, 22 (3) p.317.
349 Michel Foucault, “Truth and power”, in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972- 1977, Brighton, The Harvester Press, 1980, p.131.
He goes on to say that “in societies like ours, truth is centred on the form of scientific discourse and the institutions which produce it; it is subject to constant economic and political incitement … it is produced and transmitted under the control, dominant if not exclusive, of a few great political and economic apparatuses (university, army writing, media); lastly, it is the issue of a whole political debate and social confrontation (ideological struggles).”350 Reason, as the legitimating principle for modernity‟s “regime of truth”, thus becomes a vehicle for the suppression of „the other‟.
The third aspect of this critique is a questioning of the modernist confidence in human emancipation. Along with their problematisation of reason, postmodernists reject a view of social science as the application of rationality and scientific method to the solution of social problems, and doubt that the application of reason necessarily entails moral progress. According to McCarthy:
The Enlightenment‟s belief in progress rested on an idea of reason modeled after Newtonian physics, which, with its reliable method and secure growth, was thought to provide a paradigm for knowledge in general. The impact of the advance of science on society as a whole was not envisioned in the first instance as an expansion of productive forces and a refinement of administrative techniques but in terms of its effects on the cultural context of life. In particular, the belief – for us, today, rather implausible – that progress in science was necessarily accompanied by progress in morality, was based not only on an assimilation of the logics of theoretical and practical questions but in the historical experience of the powerful reverberations of early modern science in the spheres of religion, morals and politics.351
Postmodernists express a disillusionment with explanatory theories of history which posit the progress of humanity toward some emancipatory telos – a Marxist classless society, or the synthesis of the dialectic in which human emancipation is achieved. In general they are sceptical of the limitless advance of science and technology, which is central to the modernist understanding of the world. In the modernist understanding, reason applied in the political sphere would lead to an assertion of the general will and the common interest while securing civil liberties. In the economic sphere, reason would
350 Michel Foucault, “Truth and power”, in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972- 1977, Brighton, The Harvester Press, 1980, p.132.
351 Thomas McCarthy, “Introduction” in Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, London, Heinemann, 1984, p.xvi.
ensure the space for the free pursuit of individuals‟ own interests with a continuous increase in the general wealth of society, and in terms of modern culture, reason would bring about a progressive liberation from superstition and a new non-illusory centre of meaning. Postmodernists are not alone in their disillusion with these ideals. For instance, although the progress of societal rationalisation was a hallmark of the end of the nineteenth century, Weber considered this progress to be the “ascendancy of purposive rationality, of technique and calculation, of organization and administration.
The triumph of reason brings with it not a reign of freedom but the dominion of impersonal economic forces and bureaucratically organized administrations – a „vast and mighty cosmos that determines with irresistible force the lifestyles of individuals who are born into it‟”.352 Similarly, members of the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer and Adorno in particular, saw the apotheosis of reason in the rise of fascism in Europe and the result of instrumental reason as the subjugation of whole populaces (especially in America) to a thoroughly commodified and totally administered society.353
The postmodernist disillusionment with Enlightenment ideals stem similarly from a view that although modernity has succeeded in becoming dominant as cultural form, it has fallen far short of realising its humane aims.354 Postmodern thinkers reject the modern idea that the intellect can direct human civilisation toward a progressive realisation of ideal forms of human existence and understanding that are “universal, knowable and achievable through discoveries and applications in such areas of science, civil governance and aesthetic expression”.355 What distinguishes postmodern disillusionment with the project of modernity from other critiques is a distinctive epistemological position – the subject of the following section of this chapter.
352 Thomas McCarthy, “Introduction” in Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, London, Heinemann, 1984, p.xviii.
353 Ibid. p.xix.
354 Roger P. Mourad, “Postmodern interdisciplinarity”, The Review of Higher Education, Winter 1997, 20 (2) p.115.
355 Ibid. p.116.