To discuss "postmodernism" is a bit like entering a swamp: if you don't know the terrain, maybe you should not venture into it in the first place. There are many academics who would be quick to criticize what they perceive as straw man-critiques of "postmodernism", and I believe they are sometimes right to do so. At the same time, ordinary mortals can hardly be expected to shut up about everything that they do not fully comprehend at the academic level of sophistication.
Things get even more complicated when throw the term "post-structuralism" into the mix. These are related terms for a broader movement, but apparently they are not the same. So what is the distinction? Having at least taken a brief course in Discourse Analysis at my local university, I volunteer to enter the above-mentioned swamp and try to sort out the one from the other.
It seems fair to say the following: postmodernism is the name for a broader social (societal) movement strongly connected to art and literature, and also the name of our current era as a whole, as in "the era after the modernist era". It rejected all the prevalent assumptions of the modernist era, such as the naive belief in never-ending progress and in quantified, objective truth. Post-structuralism is linked to postmodernism, but more associated with theory and philosophy. There is no "postmodernist" school of philosophy, but there is a post-structuralist one. I would suggest, then, that post-structuralism be understood as a kind of sub-category of postmodernism - its philosophical "superstructure", if you will.
What do the post-structuralists say? In brief, the following: there are no self-sufficient structures that uphold order and predictability in language or society. Everything is in a state of flux, and words cannot be taken to really refer to anything. Words are articulated in a discourse, but none of the words relate to anything but to other words. For instance, if I say: "Democracy is better than dictatorship", I have articulated the word "democracy" as something other than "dictatorship", and thus both words attain meaning. If I were to say, instead: "Democracy is better than socialism", another articulation takes place. By referring words to other words, we create a web of articulations which create meaning. But such meaning will never be stable, because words are never articulated in exactly the same way.
Perhaps a more pedagogical example is the priest who says: "I hereby declare you to be husband and wife." Such an articulation creates the reality it describes, and therefore it is performative. If I am not mistaken, this is also the position of post-structuralists regarding language as a whole. All truth claims are articulated within a discourse; no knowledge can be gained from outside of a discourse. Everything is situated, relative, contextual; but this also means that we have the power to create our own reality.
This last point, it seems to me, has been seized upon by post-structuralist philosophers, in both a negative and a positive way. The practice of deconstructing a discourse deemed to be biased or oppressive is the negative way, while the question of how to create a more liberating, subversive discourse that can also appeal to the masses is the positive way. Basically, the question is being asked: How can we use language to make it easier for people to think the way we are thinking (and perhaps more difficult to think according to other ways)? How can we, through language, articulate a kind of world which is more similar to how we would want it to be? This, I believe, is a form of magic.
The magician is someone who creates his own reality. The ancient spell Abracadabra has been taken to mean "I create as I speak." That is what the magician does. That is what the priest does, when he pronounces a man and woman as husband and wife. If the psychohistory model is correct, then, we may be in for a surge in word magic in the future, and this will be at least one of the ways for the rise of the magic paradigm to manifest.
Given that we do not see a return to older modes of thinking, according to which words have actual, fixed meanings, of course - but that seems, to me, unlikely.
Things get even more complicated when throw the term "post-structuralism" into the mix. These are related terms for a broader movement, but apparently they are not the same. So what is the distinction? Having at least taken a brief course in Discourse Analysis at my local university, I volunteer to enter the above-mentioned swamp and try to sort out the one from the other.
It seems fair to say the following: postmodernism is the name for a broader social (societal) movement strongly connected to art and literature, and also the name of our current era as a whole, as in "the era after the modernist era". It rejected all the prevalent assumptions of the modernist era, such as the naive belief in never-ending progress and in quantified, objective truth. Post-structuralism is linked to postmodernism, but more associated with theory and philosophy. There is no "postmodernist" school of philosophy, but there is a post-structuralist one. I would suggest, then, that post-structuralism be understood as a kind of sub-category of postmodernism - its philosophical "superstructure", if you will.
What do the post-structuralists say? In brief, the following: there are no self-sufficient structures that uphold order and predictability in language or society. Everything is in a state of flux, and words cannot be taken to really refer to anything. Words are articulated in a discourse, but none of the words relate to anything but to other words. For instance, if I say: "Democracy is better than dictatorship", I have articulated the word "democracy" as something other than "dictatorship", and thus both words attain meaning. If I were to say, instead: "Democracy is better than socialism", another articulation takes place. By referring words to other words, we create a web of articulations which create meaning. But such meaning will never be stable, because words are never articulated in exactly the same way.
Perhaps a more pedagogical example is the priest who says: "I hereby declare you to be husband and wife." Such an articulation creates the reality it describes, and therefore it is performative. If I am not mistaken, this is also the position of post-structuralists regarding language as a whole. All truth claims are articulated within a discourse; no knowledge can be gained from outside of a discourse. Everything is situated, relative, contextual; but this also means that we have the power to create our own reality.
This last point, it seems to me, has been seized upon by post-structuralist philosophers, in both a negative and a positive way. The practice of deconstructing a discourse deemed to be biased or oppressive is the negative way, while the question of how to create a more liberating, subversive discourse that can also appeal to the masses is the positive way. Basically, the question is being asked: How can we use language to make it easier for people to think the way we are thinking (and perhaps more difficult to think according to other ways)? How can we, through language, articulate a kind of world which is more similar to how we would want it to be? This, I believe, is a form of magic.
The magician is someone who creates his own reality. The ancient spell Abracadabra has been taken to mean "I create as I speak." That is what the magician does. That is what the priest does, when he pronounces a man and woman as husband and wife. If the psychohistory model is correct, then, we may be in for a surge in word magic in the future, and this will be at least one of the ways for the rise of the magic paradigm to manifest.
Given that we do not see a return to older modes of thinking, according to which words have actual, fixed meanings, of course - but that seems, to me, unlikely.
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