Post-modernism or post-structuralism, a powerful wave of anti-rational,
anti-commonsensical, anti-Renaissance, anti-Marxist thoughts stormed
into the academic, intellectual and political circles at the end of the
last century. Emanating from Europe, it burgeoned into a devastating
trend challenging the concept of truth, any scope of emancipation of
mankind from the existing order and also the struggles of the dominated
and the exploited towards a new order of things. The birth and growth of
such benumbing thoughts worshipping passivity or at best small-scale
protests coincided with the decay in the socialist states, frustration
of the new generation, the retreat of the radical Left, and the
theoretical puzzlement induced by brands of accommodative Marxism. The
world capitalist system despite waves of crisis could menacingly appear
internationally with the mantra of globalization. This objective
situation also helped do the spadework for the rise of the new breed of
intellectuals who preferred intellectual exercise in pessimism or
exclusively narrow-based thinking like identity, politics, etc. instead
of the consideration of a bouncing back with a global perspective for
dislodging the international chains of the capitalist system. Such
politics of this new trend against radical politics and philosophy
obviously provides some soothing balm to the war-weary imperialists.
Marxism is resurging on the international arena, protests roaring in the
heart of the imperialist states and the discontent of various sections
brewing for an explosion. This small book is an endeavour to critically
show the irrational and harmful philosophy and politics of
post-modernism/post-structuralism. This critique is also an espousal of
the cause of the dominated and the exploited fighting for a new order.
Post-modernism/post-structuralism in its insistence on difference and
the fragmented nature of reality and knowledge shows intense
insensitivity to history. Structures and causes are dismissed by
overstress on fragments and contingencies. Such romantic idealist trend
bids adieu to Enlightenment concepts of progress or making history. The
bankruptcy of the petty-bourgeois philosophers is eminently evident when
they reject any programme to cope with the system of capitalism. In the
name of ‘difference’ they concentrate on varied particular identities
like race, gender, ethnicity, various particular and separate
oppressions but reject the scope and possibility of collective action
based on common social identity like class and common interests.
Post-modernism/post-structuralism philosophers and writers are
deliberately complicated in their approach, self-consciously difficult
in style and refuse to follow any clarity in presentation of their
views. Burdened with numerous jargons, their writings prove to be
inaccessible to general readers.
The most influential post-modernist Foucault, an avowed disciple of
Nietzche, was concerned with power and knowledge. He saw
knowledge-generation-power constituting people as subjects, and then
governing these subjects with knowledge. Power and power in every aspect
of life is what he sawn negating its class content; and, in his view,
people have no escape route from the multiple sources of power. He also
dismisses the view of overhauling the system of domination.
The entire body of post-modernism/post-structuralism literature is
anti-rational, openly anti-emancipatory and chooses to raise so many
questions without presenting any rational and radical programme. Such
trends can at best befog the thinking process by its strange and bizarre
logic of confusion. It spreads a linguistic net to destroy the basis of
all rational understanding and all experiences attained over centuries
by mankind, and arrogantly declares that we and our thoughts are the
creations of language. This idealism is a dangerous trend requiring
critical study and a powerful attack at its roots.
The emergence of the post-modern/post-structural trend is, in one sense,
a rebuff against the prevalent western thought of imparting centrality
to the subject by the post-Cartesian philosophy culminating in
instrumental rationality, systematically reducing the world to the raw
material of subjective needs. It was also a critique of Husserlian
phenomenology and the Satrean effort at marrying Marxism and
phenomenology. Structuralism, emanating from Saussure’s structural
linguistics, conceiving language as a structure of differences, accorded
at best a secondary position to the subject in the production of
meaning. Derrida drew on Saussure’s theory of language, particularly the
conceptions of language as a system of differences involving an
anti-realist theory of meaning. Saussure emphasized more on the
distinction between the signifier (word) and the signified (concept)
than on the distinction between the word and the object. This also
involved the primacy of signifiers over signifieds so that meaning
became a matter of interrelations of words. Derrida and other post-structuralists
straightened this theory by denying any systemacity to language. Derrida
found the inherent contradictions in the Saussurian language theory,
which contains, in his words, ‘the metaphysics of presence’ according
direct reality to the subject. Derrida pointed that the endless play of
signifiers in Saussure’s theory of language must involve postulating a ‘transcendental
signified’, which is somehow accepted as prevailing in consciousness
without any mediation of language. This raises the question about the
language itself. Such consciousness, accepted as given, reduces the role
of signification to merely a convenient aid to memory or economy of
thought. Even Derrida found in this Saussurian view the proposition of
impurity in significations as befogging our vision. What is to be noted
here is the vulnerable points or weakness in Saussure’s concept of the
linguistic structure conceding words in relation to other words to give
meaning, not by primarily referring to objects. And it was Derrida who,
in an atmosphere of dismissal of the notion of Husserl’s acting subject,
went too far in quest of a ground of transcendental consciousness. Now
the subject is subordinated to an endless play of difference moving
beyond history. Derrida starts his journey with the avowed claim to
escape from the metaphysics of the presence taking recourse to ‘difference’.
It is a play of words involving both the disruption of presence as well
as substitution of the presence through deferment towards an endless
game where one never reaches the unknowable point. The practice of
deconstruction, contesting the metaphysics of presence on its own
terrain, in reality finds no escape route.
This takes us towards the Kantian unknowable thing-in-itself. It should
be stated here that if Derridean textualism does not deny the existence
of extra-discursive objects, it does deny our ability to know it.
Derrida’s endless play of signifiers provides us with the intimation of
difference, though no more than that, because of the necessarily
metaphysical nature of language, writes Alex Callinicos. The Kantian
unknowable thing-it-itself comes back to the scene through Derridean
‘deconstruction’. Marxism is a scientific theory that gasps the laws of
the development of society and bases itself on practice for making
history. Post-modernist/post-structuralists thoughts stand against
this, and any rational thinking. They created fleeting ripples in an
atmosphere of temporary retreat of radical Marxism. They got extra
fodder due to the setback in communism in Russia and China, resulting in
a growth of revisionism. Revisionism, seen (posing) as Marxism, is a
vulgarisation of the original, depriving it of its scientific essence,
and making it, therefore, unattractive to those who desire change. Quite
naturally postmodernism appeared relatively more attractive to the
intellectual. But, waves of powerful enriched Marxism and revolutionary
practice are now coming back like a whirlwind that will provide
befitting answers to petty-bourgeois idealist thoughts of the
post-modernist/post-structuralist thinkers.
Ours is a preliminary small effort with no claim to successfully
grappling with the whole range of Post-modernist/post-structuralist
thinking. And this note is basically meant for the activist and people
aspiring a radical change in the existing order. We promise to make a
deeper study of the post-modernist view on literature, physics etc., and
also go into greater depth on its impact on the protest movement in
India. We will update this note with such critical studies. We have
tried our best to offer a lucid presentation of complex things, yet we
admit to our weakness in doing so. Friendly criticism is invited from
our readers.
— Siraj