Postmodernism is a theoretical approach (intellectual movement) that arose in the 1980s to explain an historical period, post-modernity, which is generally accepted to have begun in the late 1960s and early 1970s. However , the postmodernism theoretical approach is difficult to define and describe precisely. Main contributors of this thought , In social sciences, Friedrich Nietzche and Martin Heidegger, German philosophers, were the first who inspired postmodern philosophy. However it was the French philosophers like Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault etc. who actually developed the theory. Anthropologists who were encouraged to forward this thought are Clifford Geertz, James Clifford, Goerge Marcus, Nancy Hughes etc.
The postmodern approach challenges the “dominating and bullying nature of science and reason” and focuses on “…splitting the truth, the standards, and the ideal into what has been deconstructed and into what is about to be deconstructed, and denying in advance the right of any new doctrine, theory, or revelation to take the place of the discarded rules of the past” (Cooke 2006: 2014)
Postmodernism in regards to anthropology is based on the belief that no one can truly be objective and neutral knowledge because everyone has a cultural bias, then it is impossible to use the scientific method truly (Salberg, 2009). This view comes from the notion that we all interpret the world around us in our own way according to our language, cultural background, and personal experiences. In other words, everybody has their own views based on his or her social and personal contexts. Because of this aspect of human nature, anthropologists can never be unbiased observers of other cultures.
Further , the critique that postmodernism has about science and the scientific method is twofold, epistemological and ideological (Spiro, 1996). Firstly, according to epistemology, anthropology cannot be a science because of how subjective humans are (Spiro, 1996). Secondly, that because anthropology cannot be completely objective it would serve only those dominant social groups such as males, whites, and Westerners, instead of oppressed groups (Spiro, 1996). This then brought some anthropologists to doubt the scientific validity of fieldwork by the late 1970s and in the mid 1980s this idea created a crisis in the community on whether or not anthropologists can write “true social knowledge” (Salberg, 2009). This is because, postmodernists argue, that the anthropologist not only observes the natives, but the native observe the anthropologist therefore their fieldwork is not a one-way objective observation, but a two-way interaction (Spiro, 1996). So, the anthropologist must not only deal with the subjectivity of their subjects, but also the subjectivity of themselves (Spiro, 1996).
That is the reason when postmodern anthropologists analyze different societies, they are sensitive to this limitations. They do not assume that their way of conceptualizing culture is the only way. The postmodernists believe that anthropological texts are influenced by the political and social contexts within which they are written. Therefore, it is unreasonable when authors try to justify their interpretations and underlying biases by using the concept of objectivity. The postmodernists claim that the acceptance of an interpretation is ultimately an issue of power and wealth. In other words, we tend to legitimize particular statements represented by those with political and economic advantage. In order to heighten sensitivity towards those who are not part of mainstream culture, the postmodernists often promote underrepresented viewpoints, such as those of ethnic minorities, women, and others. Postmodernists also re-introduced a focus on individual behavior, which has become known as agency theory. Agency approaches examine how individual agents shape culture.
Postmodern anthropologists gave other anthropologists an opportunity to reconsider their approaches of cultural analysis by ushering in an era of reflexive anthropology. The anthropologist tries to become sensitive to his or her unconscious assumptions. For example, anthropologists now consider whether they should include in ethnographies different interpretations of culture other than their own. Furthermore, anthropologists need to determine their own standards for choosing what kind of information can be counted as knowledge. This reflection leads anthropologists to enrich their work.
Thus , Principal Tenets of Postmodernism has summed into
- One of the very important features of Postmodernism is its disenchantment with Modernism. It developed in reaction to the Modernist perspective on social life.
- The philosophy of post-modernism supports globalization. Like globalization , post modernism feels that any form of borders be it social , political , economic are hindrance in development of human society and its communication within it. Post Modernists believe in breaking down all sorts of walls that restrict humans in any way . They promote a free world.
- Post-Modernist feel that ethics is a subject matter of the individual and it is not something that is collective. Every individual has his or her set of moral rules which can be different from one another. Therefore morality is a private affair.
- Post modernism is considered a very liberal philosophical movement, where all religions are considered effective and important. It does not lays stress importance on any one religion and is quite liberal and secular in approach. No one religion is important. It believes in plurality of religions.
- Postmodernism says No one way of life is correct. Everyone has equal rights to live the way one wants to, without any restriction This movement also supports the cause of homosexuals and the feminists. For them, every person has different social, intellectual and biological preferences..
- Post modernists believe that there is no absolute truth , everything is relative and in accordance to how one wants to interpret the reality . For instance , there can be hundred interpretations of a single painting and still all hundred interpretations would be right and valid. It values human subjectivity and thus for in Post Modernism everything relative and nothing is absolute. Truth is ever changing and has no one explanation. There are multiple truths and not one ultimate truth. (art field is starting field for postmodernism)
- Post modernism supports rationality and self-subjectivity. It considers individual’s opinion supreme and believes that everything is ever changing. For Post Modernists traditional knowledge is of no use in a postmodern world. It should be completely discarded. for them age old traditions bounds , imposes constraints on humans decelerating their development.
- The nature of this philosophy is atheist in nature. All its major exponents of post modernism are atheists like Guattari , Foucault , Bataille, and Derrida. For many, the future of religion was atheism.
- The Post Modernists believe that every individual constructs his or her reality according to it culture, environment and experience. Nothing appears real to the post modernists, for them there are billions and billions of subjective realities and there is no single objective reality. A Post Modern is not convinced with the objectivity of the science as promoted in the modernist era. Science studies facts and according to the post-modernist view, facts can be understood and interpreted in more than one way depending upon the nature and subjectivity of the scientist.
- Post modernism is against traditional historical approach. For them past is something that is blur and does not help in any understanding of the present. History is rendered as an undefined past which is more like a fiction. Thinker like Foucault challenged history and the norm where study of past is considered unavoidable and important but at the same time, he said that history should be written as part of some philosophy and not merely as historical account.
- Everything is considered as a social construction in term of post modernism. There is no unified and permanent self. There is no fixed human nature and all humans keep trying to receive acceptance and acknowledgment in society.
- Political values in post modernism comes from the Marxist ideology. For instance. Foucault was under the influence of Marxist understanding relations based on economic inequality. Foucault along with Porty used the leftist thought in their works.
- Post-modernist were supportive of the concept of ‘’free love’’. They considered Christian marriages to be root cause of evils in the society. They had utopian view of sexual relations that knew no burden of society or tradition.
- Post modernists do not get stuck in the categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, as they are against the notion of absolute truth in post modernism.
Post modernism and Deconstruction
One of the highlighting and very unique feature of post modernism is the style of writing the literature. Post modernists have a very specific kind of language. They believe in deconstruction. For instance , according to Jacques Derrida deconstruction is a literary method in which the latent meanings of the text are exposed. Deconstruction forms the very significant aspect of post modernism. This was found in the work of Jacquas Derrida. It is a kind of analysis based on philosophical and literary features.
Deconstruction doesn’t belive or support: “pure existence” or pure presence of anything. According to deconstruction, nothing in the world has one and a constant meaning. Every meaning changes in different contexts.
Deconstruction means to pursue a meaning of a particular text to a level that all its inherent contradictions and oppositions are exposed to show that every form of text has not just one meaning , but every text is a potential piece of understand multiple truths hidden within it , which can be revealed by the used of the deconstruction analysis. Language is considered a system of signs, which is decoded with help of deconstruction.
Deconstruction is used in different areas of humanities and social sciences like in anthropology, law, psychoanalysis, linguistics, feminism, histography, political theory, and homo sexual studies. It is interesting for one to know that, one can experience or use the analysis of deconstruction in art, architecture and music .deconstruction forms the crux of the textual approach of Derrida.
One of the most important concerns of Derrida’s deconstruction was to contribute, assert and reevaluate all the western values. Another important concern or rather apprehension of Derrida was not to mix deconstruction with the dialectics by Hegel, as finding contradictions can lead to a a stage where synthesis of contradictions take place in the later stage , so it’s important to differentiate between deconstruction and the dialectics.
The term deconstruction according to Derrida was first used in the context of structuralism. Derrida was against deconstruction being called as method, as method is more like a mechanical action . for Derrida , deconstruction is neither a critique nor an analysis Literary criticism of postmodern rejects that objective meanings and true interpretations of the texts. All the meanings have to be deconstructed, to understand them in a better way
Challenges/Criticism
- At the same time, the challenges by postmodernists often result in backlash from those who feel their understandings are threatened. Some anthropologists claim that the postmodernists rely on a particular moral model rather than empirical data or scientific methods. This moral model is structured by sympathy to those who do not possess the same privilege that the mainstream has in Western societies. Therefore, postmodernism will undermine the legitimacy of anthropology by introducing this political bias.
- Another typical criticism on postmodernism comes from the fear of extremely relativistic view. Such critics argue that postmodernism will lead to nihilism because it does not assume a common ground of understanding. Some opponents claim that postmodernism will undermine universal human rights and will even justify dictatorship. Postmodernism is an ongoing debate, especially regarding whether anthropology should rely on scientific or humanistic approaches.
- Starting with the contribution of post modernism , it replaced modernism which was a very strong paradigm based on empirical investigation to look for absolute truths.post modernism helped in bridging the dichotomy between faith and ultimate rationality , which was helpful to the Christian beliefs. For many, Post Modern school of thought is vague and worthless. It adds nothing analytical to the present system of knowledge.
- According to Felix Guattari a post-modernist himself, the theory of post structuralism and post modernism were not flexible to explain the social, environmental and psychological aspects of life.
- For Danniel Dennett, (a philosopher) post modernism leads to multiple interpretations of a single phenomenon contributing to the confusion and absurdities, which disrespect the historical evidences.
Post modernists do not give any regard to historical developments of civilizations of the past. For many, post modernism promotes a philosophy that is unreliable and erratic in nature, depending upon such a free philosophy does not guarantee concrete knowledge of any phenomenon.
Art and literature of Modernism movement was considered ‘high art’, it was sophisticated and ceremonial whereas in post modernism, it was more like a popular art, which was neither sophisticated nor well-wrought. It was fragmented, confusing to many, giving value to the subjective aesthetics. - Keith Jenkins did epistemological critique of post modernism. He critiqued post modernism and asserted the role of history, along with the aesthetic. According to him, epistemological grounding is important to ground any philosophy .According to Jenkins, there was a problem in ‘deconstruction’ as, it lead to a radical ambiguity. If there are multiple truths or no absolute truth then there is just cynicism and disbeliefs in the ideology of post modernism.
- Post modernism rejected everything that was modern and instead gave new form and understanding of politics and culture which was unstable and informal in approach. For the post-modernist, the world outside him is an error, for them truth of anyone except themselves is an error. This leads to a situation of chaos, as no one has the authority to define standards of the right or wrong in a postmodern society.
- Post modernists do not support a unified, influential all-inclusive worldview. They believe in local and multiple stories and they are against classical, formal, big narrations. During modernity , importance was given to rational thought and reason , that helped in progress of society , technology , medicine etc whereas , post modernism has added more skepticism in understanding society by avoiding the use of human reason .
- For post modernism science is also based on prejudices and specific motives so, it was not ‘objective’ in pure sense of the term. Post modernism highlights the role of language and culture as powerful weapons. The power of language and culture was suppressed in modernity and importance was given to science and technology. Many scholars feel that post modernism was all about the fall of objectivity and conviction rather Post modernism only led to skepticism, never ending interpretations leading to chaos
- British Anthropologist, Ernest Geller attacked Post Modernism by saying the post modernism was selfabsorbed and was highly subjective in Nature. For Gellner, Post Modernism was nothing but form of relativism. Post modernism was considered as a form of romanticist, which believed in replacing the classical set up of enlightened Europe.
- Post modernism includes all the critiques that attempts that try to define the ‘modern’. For post modernists grand, abstract and universal theories are vague and not to be trusted, they misguide and there is nothing which can be called as an comprehensive ethnographic study.
- Post modernists believe in individual reflexivity and the notion of embodiment. Post modernism therefore is so much derived and influenced from relativism and interpretivism that post modernism looks like a logical development from the two, it is yet very difficult to demarcate post modernism from relativism and interpretivism by any means of timeline , style of writing or the literary jargons.
As the enlightenment promised a whole new world, post modernism too believes in the same. Post moderns are liberals in accepting all forms of interpretations, truths and forms culture equally. Every subjective understanding seems legitimate for post modernism.
Additional Information( for understanding)
Influencing Figures of Postmodernism
In social sciences, Friedrich Nietzche and Martin Heidegger, German philosophers, were the first who inspired postmodern philosophy. However it was the French philosophers like Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault etc. who actually developed the theory. Anthropologists who were encouraged to forward this thought are Clifford Geertz, James Clifford, Goerge Marcus, Nancy Hughes etc.
Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007): Baudrillard was a sociologist by training who used the post modern perspective to explain the world as a set of models. He does so by dividing modernity and postmodernity into two parts. For him every incident
in life has already taken place and the worl has nothing new to offer. This got him the name of a skeptical postmodernist, based on Rosenau’s (1992) division of postmodernists into skeptical postmodernists or affirmative postmodernists. For
Baudrillard the postmodern era started with the introduction of mass media, more specifically cinema and photography. He defined the world to be nothing but images and images are replications. For him truth and science do not hold their
real meaning. Truth according to Baudrillard in society is what is agreed upon and science is any mode of explanation.
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004): Derrida too is a skeptical postmodernist. He was known as a poststructuralist. He popularised the concept of deconstruction in post-structuralism and postmodernism. Deconstruction suggests that whatever is documented is to be critiqued or analytically reviewed, to reveal the relationship of meaning between texts. He also questions the western viewpoint on reason. He asserts that it is dominated by “metaphysics of presence”. He argued that anything that was viewed with reason should not be seen as a stable and immortal paradigm.
His basic interest was to challenge concepts of truth, knowledge and truth. He proposes that there should be reasoning on reasoning itself. In other words rationality can be contextual and there can be more than one way of reasoning or gaining knowledge.
Michel Foucault (1926-1984): Foucault was a French philosopher of repute and his tenets on postmodernism still hold much weight. For him the truths which are considered by society as permanent, in reality changes with time. Foucault study was basically about the politics of power and how it changes. This was in fact one of the basis of postmodernism. He questioned the facts which were placed in chronological order to describe historical events. He believed that there are hidden parts, parts which are not accounted for, in history which contain concealed knowledge. These however do play a role in giving societies identities. It is due to developing such ideas about truth and knowledge, Faucault is considered to be one of the prime postmodernists. His theory of discourse tells us that there is no absolute truth but truth is constructed out of people talking about it and in this talk there is the entire theory of power that plays itself out. Thus powerful voices are heard more than subordinated ones or many are not heard at at all. Thus a discourse is how people negotiate their points of view and how marginal voices make attempts to make themselves heard.
The main adherents of postmodernism in anthropology are discussed below.
Clifford Geertz (1926-2006): Clifford Geertz though prominently known for his work on postmodernism in Anthropology had himself conflicting views about the theory. However his thoughts on post-modernism in anthropology can be divided into two parts. The first half of post-modernism was controlled by literature mostly with concentration on text, genre, style of writing, narration, fiction, dialogue, allegory, representation, symbols etc while the second half of post-modernism dealt with the political aspect of societies. He delved into issues of authority, power and power structure. Issues studied in post-colonialism related to power equations was also deliberated by Geertz, for example, colonialism and power, racism, exoticism. He also questioned the use of narratives about colonies by the Western colonisers and their own understanding of them which differs with the post-modern arena. This connects his views with post-colonialism.
Do note: Clifford Geertz is also known for his work on religion and interpretive theory which is not discussed here.
James Clifford: Like all core post-modernists, James Clifford also advocated the idea that an objective viewpoint in studying and writing ethnography is not possible. For him ethnography makes the author describe it with persuasion where her/his preferences unconsciously come forward. Hence for Clifford, to deconstruct or critique the way ethnographies are written is the main essence of post-modernism. To do away with the rhetoric by which ethnographers assert power, ethnographies should be more descriptive than being completely interpretive. His views therefore
are in total contrast with Clifford Geertz who has been interpretive to a large extent in his ethnographic explanations. James Clifford, states that the balance between the ethnographers’ understanding of a group and the group themselves
can be maintain through a holistic perspective.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1944- –) Nancy Scheper-Hughes is a professor in Medical Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She believes that cultures and societies cannot be studied or valued without morally or ethically
understanding them. Only by taking ethics into consideration while studying a society can anthropologists reflect analytically. These views of hers are noticed in her works Primacy of the Ethical (2006) and Death without Weeping (1993). This postmodern perspective of hers thus suggests that Anthropologists should be made responsible for depicting or failing to depict the discipline as a crucial instrument while describing significant historical periods.
POST- COLONIALAND POST-MODERN CRITIQUE (Source Egyankosh BAG)
The modernist period for anthropology that began with theAge of Reason and to some extent continues at least for some people was marked byPositivism, a belief that there was a ‘truth’ that was an objective reality outside of the subjective self; and that it was possible to get to it. Once established it was immutable and fixed. The post-modern period began in the post-world war era, also marked by rapid decolonisation of the erstwhile colonies and a renegotiation of power across the globe. While the Euro-American supremacy continued for a long period and took the form of neo-liberalisation, and to some extent neo-colonialism, the erstwhile marginal peopleslowlybeganto taketheirplaceinthe sun.Philosophers like Derrida, Foucault, Wittgenstein, Homi Bhabha and Spivak, questioned the notion of fixed truths, leading to an era of deconstruction, a shifting of the center and a disbelief in ‘truth’ as the product of one class and kind of people.
The Post-colonial era saw the rise of non-western intellectuals and also those not male. Thus, the white, male, western European scholar or eminence, whose voice was law; was replaced by a multitude of voices raising themselves from many locations. Post-modernism applies to all disciplines, all forms of aesthetics and philosophy in general. For anthropology, postmodernism hadits uniquesignificance, like anthropology, by definition was the studyof the Other by White, male, colonial anthropologists. The critique of the production of knowledge about the ‘other’ the biases involved in such studies were foregrounded by non-European scholars such as Edward Said, TalalAsad, Gayatri Spivak, LilaAbu-Lughod and many others, from the erstwhile colonies. From withinthe white fraternity, many voices came out like that of EricWolf, JamesClifford, Stephen Tyleretc.; critiquing earlier established, ‘truths’. A major criticism such as that posed was regarding the claim to truth, “is there not a liberation, too, in recognising that no one can write about others any longer, as if they were discrete objects or texts”( Clifford1990:25).The methodology of assuming that the self of the anthropologist was neutralised in his/her pursuit of truth was exposed as afallacy.As more and more anthropologists came forward todo restudies, it was found that each person had his or her versions of what they put forward as the truth. It was realised beyond doubt that the self is never far away from the other, and a separation of the two is not possible. The publication of the Diaryof Malinowski showed that the anthropologist is human and has an emotional relationship to the field.There is no possibility of absolute objectivity and neutrality when weare dealing with other human beings. In the diary, Malinowski sheds the maskof the impersonal observer to write about his emotional outbreaks, his subjective response to the people with whom he was forced to share a few years of his life.
The restudybyAnnette Weiner of Malinowski’s field area, revealed another source of bias, what is now recognised in anthropological methodologyas the gender bias. Weiner found that Malinowski’s otherwise detailed and excellent ethnography had completely ignored the important ritual and economic significance of women’swork. The women of the Trobriand Islands playan important role in society, even though theydo not participate in the famous Kula exchange. Malinowski was a nineteenth century European male. He was accustomed to a society where women were confined to the domestic sphere only. Even when he observed the women weaving grass skirts, he would have dismissed it as ‘domestic’ activity, not worthy of anthropological attention. Weiner, a woman scholar born several decades after Malinowski, took the women’s work seriously. She was able to understand that there is a world of women apart from that of men. Many anthropologists have dwelt on the self of the anthropologist ininteraction with the fieldsince then. The anthropologist’s bodyand mind are both gendered and also subjectively constituted. Each one of us have our preconceived notions and our way of constructing the world, that is unconscious and buried so deep that we tend to take some things for granted, what Bourdieu has called doxa.
The colonial period was also marked bythe power hierarchy between the observer and the observed. The coining of terms such as ‘tribe’, ‘wild’, ‘modern’, ‘traditional’ were all done with the goal of administration, extraction and extending the agenda of the dominance of the First World ideologies. Wolf has made critical remarks on how the concept of development and modernityare being used with a bias towards the USA. So whenever modernisation theory is put into practice, “It used the term modern but that term meant the United States” or as he puts it, an idealised version of what USA stands for rather than what it really is. Similarly there is a tendency to simplify categories. Terms like modern, traditional were essentialised into dichotomous categories; with out taking into account the internal differences. There is not one kind of non-western society, nor is the USA a uniform society. Likewise, there is not one kind of community that can be called as ‘tribe’. Contemporary times are seeing a lot of critical gaze being turned onto these earlier created categories, seeing their top-down bias, the role of power hierarchies in creating them and the interests they served of particular categories of people. A large amount of this criticism is being done by those scholars who earlier belonged to the margins of society. In India, work by Dalit and tribal scholars are important indicators that the earlier scholarship was both created by, and meant for those in the mainstream. This scholarship was also more reflexive and oriented towards narrating experiential reality that in building formal structures (Channa and Mencher 2013). Rather than reify the experiential and lived data, such scholars focused on narrating their life experiences so that the genre of poetry and poetics was often used by them as a way of expression. Thus post-modernism moved beyond the formal and the structures towards the experiential and reflexive modes of writing. However there was a critique of post-modernism in that it sometimes became too hazy and the subject matter itself became endangered. The critics were of the opinion that there was enough solid data and factual empirical concerns that needed to be addressed and one could not always dwell in the realm of the abstract. Thus even from the margins, there were bottom-up approaches where the actual facts and figures too played important role. Dalit studies focused on real-life conditions, oppressions, poverty, lack of access to resources such as education and access to political power. Tribal studies are focusing on actual data of land and resources lost to the tribes, factual figures about atrocities along with more reflexive accounts of identityand self-reflection. Thus while scholars are critiquing the rigidityof earlier modes of analysis, this is not to replace all empiricism and reference to factual data. The role of history both documented and oral, also plays a significant role in anthropological ethnographies. There is also a focuson identities both of the self and as codified by society (Channa 2016).