Hegel?

A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.

Jean François Lyotard

More notes during lit review

I just read an article that uses Foucault’s framework of governmentality to argue how the legalization of midwifery has co-opted the practice and turned into little more than a body of puppet experts who are actually minions of the medical establishment. I found it so annoying that I began to feel that I’ve either ceased to be a hippie or that I, too, have been co-opted by the Man. Then I started thinking about how this whole talk of the Man reifies a bullshit concept that allows for countercultural thinking and conspiracy theories to continue to exist. Then I began to wonder if thinking that is actually me becoming blind to the presence of forces that do affect our world.

I feel a little schizophrenic.

At any rate, I have been instructed to avoid inflammatory language in writing a lit review so I have to reason with the article on even, rational terms. When I did so I realized that, in fact,  the author (Stephanie Paterson) was doing the work of critiquing midwifery legislation as it stands today and raising (somewhat) legitimate concerns about the negative aspects it has introduced to this kind of maternity care. I was reminded of my post a little while ago about postmodern thought and its ability to be used constructively though it be deconstructive in nature. In the case of this article, the critiques need to be used to develop ideas and projects for a better midwifery, but should not serve to merely throw a wrench in the machine and have us conclude that we should bring all of this to a grinding halt; instead, it should be a tool with which we identify problematic areas and seek ways to work them out.

This is me bridging the two sides of the argument: taking the hippie (read: me five years ago) by the hand, reading her poetry and diatribes on the evils of patriarchy and institutions while also taking the work and structure of the Man (i.e., the societal superego, or something) with his medicine and power, and explaining to the latter the points of the former, then working to forge between their dialogue a better version of a given phenomenon.

My head hurts.

—

Update: I googled the woman. She teaches feminist critiques of public policy in the Political Science Department of Concordia.

I need a drink.

Further evidence for pomo as project

In reading about the history of Canadian midwifery, the point is made that feminist theory has failed to do justice to women and their reality. Whereas in the 70s the women’s movement promoted the feminist critique of the medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth, it recent decades it’s become clear that this mobilization came from the perspective of and catered to white, middle-class, heterosexual women, and artificially homogenized the experience of mothers and midwives. Now, in 2011, the literature reflects a more nuanced and subsequently more accurate representation of midwifery that accounts for race, gender, power, and class.

This adds to the argument that the efforts of modernity are not yet completely dead, not rendered obsolete after the advent of postmodernity. The movement toward a refining of theory and thought reflects this. The term late modernity, instead of postmodernity, helps to illustrate the point: it is a problematization and maturation of the project of modernity, not a complete denial of it. We don’t become nihilistic when confronted with an obstacle, but grapple with it and get to work. Because what pomo teaches us is that we still have lots to learn, lots to understand, and lots to do in order to get there. Justice is still important and decisions still need to be made; it’s the way to choose that needs to be helped.

ideas for paper: pomo in images

I got an A or A- on my paper on the panoptic cultural logic of post-Fordism, where I connect panopticism as model for societal organization with control and the post-Fordist re-organization of the economy, showing how they mirror and/or produced each other.

At any rate, here were some ideas for an alternate paper that never happened. Images that illustrated postmodernism were to be presented and explained in relation to the material and concepts we covered in class.

• image of panoptic structure to illustrate Foucault
• postmodern architecture to illustrate Jameson
• picture of hologram to illustrate Eco/hypperreality
• the partial eye or the god trick to illustrate Haraway/Lyotard
• wOOt cafe in the middle of rural Quebec to illustrate pastiche
• student record/Facebook to illustrate simulacra/Baudrillard, or Baudrillard’s version of hyperreality
• hipster style as Celebration, FL to illustrate Baudrillard’s hyperreality
• Die Antword as an example of hyperreality. they’re fake (not really white trash or lower class, “zef” in their slang) but it doesn’t matter because people still like their music. it’s better than the real.
• e-mail fraud — hyperreal according to Baudrillard
• poseur as simulacrum

Notes on theory

I’m pressed for time so really can’t get into this now, but briefly want to that say:

Mirchandani blew my mind. I want more of this empirical postmodernism, and the theoretical framework that allows for us to return to the Enlightenment project of modernity with new tools. It’s like Habermas but without sticking your head in the sand.

Althusser is taking forever to say something, but fortunately he’s clear and not difficult to follow. I think that his elaborations on Marx are warranted, but part of me thinks he should have had the nerve to admit that it was an extension and not just what Marx had in his head but said obliquely. Althusser is the Kabbala of Marxism.

Postmodernity and food

I just finished an incredibly interesting sociological article on anorexia and class. Now my thoughts are wandering around, and if I don’t jot them down I won’t be able to get on to my next reading.

• postmodernism is no longer giving credence to the metanarrative of class structures, for instance. we see the results of this in the emergence of high-end restaurants that serve gourmet poutine, or diners that serve squash-filled ravioli alongside macaroni and cheese.
• the position of the educated, intellectual types is no longer to be fiercely scientific and classically oriented by a good, solid career (that’s too modern, too square), but instead to embrace yoga and breastfeeding and organic food, to be part of the creative class, to be eclectic.
• the hipster is to our time what the flâneur and the dandy where in nascent modern times. his appropriation of working class symbols and habits like drinking PBR beer and sporting a carefully selected Salvation Army wardrobe while going to McGill and living in an expensive Mile End apartment (both paid in full by affluent parents) is a clear indication that he breathes and exhibits postmodernism much in same the way the dandy did in transforming and imagining the tumultuous modern period he faced.

I wonder if I can make this my second paper for theory class, using myself as the hipster. I’m a great figure for this, as in my case you can point to many of the aspects that make our world postmodern: I am female (the modern dandy was male), I come from a mish-mash of class backgrounds, I am at home in a foreign place, and I am as likely to eat at a greasy spoon as I am to eat a homemade organic salad with sprouts I grew myself.

Actually, I’m sort of apprehensive that this might just mean I’m late modern. And that would be so much less cool.