Ethics and Method

“...new methods (of looking at history) are essential for restoring traction to the public in a public-based political order.”

This is a theme I’ve been exploring for a while now, due to the courses I’ve been taking along similar lines. The basic point the author makes then, is that the main reason for resorting to the postmodern “method” is to subvert the centres of power that have been created on the basis of these institutionalized modes of thought. Governments, religious bodies, scientific and philosophical establishments in the last few centuries have all been built up from these “worldviews” that are being propagated, or have furthered the propagation themselves....thus creating for themselves strongholds of power and inducing intellectual strangleholds. Predictably, as these worldviews transform into unquestionable truths, so it becomes easier to construct an equally unshakable structure of power around it.

I’ve often thought about this notion of postmodernism being merely a phase, a transition into a new system of worldviews and accepted notions. Personally, I feel there to be little chance of that happening. While no one can really make adequate predictions on the nature of the “post-post modernity”, to me such questions are anyway irrelevant. Postmodernism is a change not merely in the shallow form that the previous historical transitions since the renaissance were, but a change at a far more fundamental level, a revolution in method as much as thought, “...a paradigmatic shift, nothing less.” So fundamental a change is this, that attempting to make accurate predictions about the future seems a bit daft. The postmodern mindset may survive, or it may morph into something new...both seem equally likely possibilities for now, but I somehow feel it’s one that could be self-sustaining. In the seemingly “anything-goes” world of postmodernity, it seems difficult to imagine any single view gaining a comparatively greater following (though this also might be an incorrect view, as it’s viewing postmodernism from a modernists eyes), and hence producing a large-scale change.

Oh well, I think my rambling there just convinced me on the uselessness of attempting to make any accurate forecasts regarding this issue.

Anyway, returning to my previous point, postmodernism seems to be forming as a reaction to these institutions. I think (and again, this may be my modernist-conditioned mind talking, but it’s still valid) there’s a danger somewhere of even this “postmodern” mode of thought being institutionalized in some way (on reading this, I’m wondering if the term “institution” will still be valid). Getting rid of absolutes also means not allowing for the same view to be held as an absolute, and I feel if this is not adhered to, and this mode of thought becomes rigid, there would be a risk of a very reactionary mode of thought forming, perhaps opposite in conception, even restrictive. This could be one such “code”.

But then again, why am i so afraid of this outcome? I guess some part of me can understand its existence, but it would still be a shame if we allowed ourselves as a race to stifle the diversity that could exist and demarcate boundaries in our minds.