The following sketches of contemporary Continental movements in philosophy will aid your understanding of many of our readings ... Phenomenology aids the grasp of the emphasis on the embodied spatial relations in Pepper and Bullough, empathetic emotional communication in Tolstoy, and emphasis on lived experience in Dewey, the psychological considerations in Vygotsky; Structuralism and Post-Structuralism offer insight to the ideas of communication and turn to symbolic meanings in Collingwood's empathetic communication of art that emphasizes meaning, the underlying system of meaning that enables the communication of Tolstoy, the turn to bare structures in Bell's formalism, the move that Hirsch critiques in our abandonment of the author, the genealogical method of investigation in Foucault; Postmodernism helps to illustrate the issues and approaches in Lyotard's revision of Kant's sublime, Foucault's analysis of Velaquez's painting, and Adorno and Marcuse's socio-political interpretations of art.
Phenomenology: Founded by Edmund Husserl, German, 1920’s
Basic Principle: The world gives itself to us as we give ourselves to the world.
Unsettles our egoistic supremacy as sole interpreter and judge of the meaning and value of world: meaning is created in the co-givenness.
Primarily methodological: to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in this very way in which it shows itself--this simply expresses Husserl’s oft-repeated maxim: “attend to the things themselves!”
Etymologically, phainomenon + logos ... i.e., these “things” (essential nature of the world and its contents), present a “seeming” that requires a “seeing” and “discourse.” In other words, the world seems, and the way it seems requires a subject to see it, listen to it, and participate in its elaboration.
Thus, phenomenology studies everything that shows itself and explicates itself to us when we turn our focused gaze upon it.
The focus of our gaze carefully suspends preconceived meanings—this is his method of abstraction: “the epoché,” a suspension or bracketing—we turn child-like eyes to view the presenting world with the aim to be able to analyze and describe our consciousness of these essences situated in our shared existence.
Phenomenology attempts to give a direct description of our lived experience as it is in itself without biases born from historical, psychological, or scientific modes of thinking. Instead, each of these perspectives is to be acknowledged as a single mode among many by which to experience and describe the world. This lived experience of the world is dynamic; both world and subject constitute meaning. Thus, it upsets the philosophical heritage of positing, on the one hand, the world’s meaning as essentially independent or, on the other, humanity as the determinant or measure of all meaning.
But, let us define “lived” … the description is not of the world lived in its everyday experienced way … that is what Husserl calls the Natural Attitude (the everyday, automatically directed along through pre-given frameworks of intentional relations by which one naturally accords independent existence to these correlates of consciousness or things intended—like when you wake up and turn off the alarm and roll out of bed without thinking about anything other than that, precisely).
The “lived” that the epoché lets us describe is the Phenomenological Attitude (wherein I become aware of the intentional relation in and through which the objects are posited as such, a shifting of my attention from doing the waking up to thinking about the relation in which the alarm and I stand, it is a mode of reflection without bias, I do not think of the clock as a mechanical object that tracks time, but how it calls to me and how I obey it, etc.). This shift helps us to realize the perspectival nature of experience.
Phenomenology to Structuralism to Post-Structuralism: Whereas this “Rigorous Science” of phenomenology wants us to turn child-like eyes, full of wonder, to the world, Post-Structuralism critiqued phenomenology for not paying attention precisely to all the structures that give us meaning—how so much of meaning is out of our control to define it because of the way we live in society and in language. As the name suggests, “post-structuralism” is a reactionary movement / development from “structuralism:”
Structuralism: Is a primarily French theory and school of contemporary Continental philosophy primarily founded by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913, Swiss, whom we may think of as a linguist and, with Charles Sanders Peirce, a founding figure in semiotics (the study of meaning-making in language and other forms of communication)) around the 1950’s, and importantly developed by Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009, French, whom we often name an anthropologist). Structuralism essentially argues that meaning is structured and given to us by our involvement in language / society (not just reality itself). In order to understand many facets of culture, one must understand them in regards to their relationships to and in an overarching system or structure of meaning. This meaning structure is also a structure of power. Hence, this study seeks to lay bare these structures and understand their effects on the deepest levels of human thought, feeling, and action.
Illustration via Ferdinand de Saussure:
De Saussure, annoyed with linguistics scholars who argued that language could either be studied as a historical product (‘diachronic,’ over time) or through etymology (‘philology,’ study of languages), proposed a tripartite understanding:
Language: human capacity to develop systems of signs;
(“sign:” X, wherein X represents Y; comprised of “signifier” (“cat” said) and “signified” (mental image to which “cat” refers: purring fluffy feline))
Langue: system of language in general or specific language system (e.g., English, German);
Parole: speech, a speaker’s particular use of the language.
Then, focused upon langue as a synchronic (existing in a moment in time, not over time), ahistorical phenomenon. Most importantly, he argued that there is a basic “arbitrariness of the sign,” which means that there is an essential difference between the word and thing, the signifier and signified (“cat” is arbitrarily related to the purring thing).
This demolishes a theory of language that insists upon a one to one correspondence between sign and signified; it thereby liberated language from being chained both to reality (hence in diachronic development) and to being entirely static (hence in universal essentialism).
This means that there IS a SYSTEM of meaning, but the system hasn’t an ultimate rule or set of structures for a relation between words and things. Any argument for meaning, then, that relies upon a genealogical, etymological, philological, historical/historicist, etc. thesis is faulty. Instead, la langue is a system full of complex relations that arches over (equally, lies always beneath) the multiplicity of parole, the individuated expressions, with a relation inherent with difference, a gap, between the two— “language is a system of differences”—there is always a system below your expressions, but there is absolutely no necessary, essential link between the relations:
§ There are rules connected to the use of the word and idea of “cat;”
§ “Cat” can be a sign for the furry purring feline, a hip jazz singer in the 50’s, a woman’s name, a sexual slur, something on a ship that pulls up the anchor, a stock symbol for Caterpillar, Inc., a symbol for good or bad luck, an Egyptian deity, etc.;
§ There is no necessary, essential reason for “cat” to be the sign for any of these examples, nor is there a necessary, essential reason between these examples (e.g., why a feline and a ship device?)
Illustration via Claude Lévi-Strauss:
Moving structuralism more explicitly within studies of human cultural meaning, Lévi-Strauss argues linguistics and anthropology to both be essential social sciences and beneficially, mutually aid one another; he explains how “Structural Linguistics” (i.e., structuralism) essentially helps anthropology through describing the four basic operations of structural linguistics (s.l.):
(1) s.l. shifts study from conscious linguistic phenomena to the study of their unconscious infrastructure;
(2) s.l. rejects terms being independent entities, instead beginning from the analysis of the relations between terms;
(3) s.l. introduces the concept of the system (showing how phonemics (perceptually distinct units of sound that differentiate one word from another, e.g.: bad, bat) are part of a system and elucidates this system);
(4) s.l. aims at discovering general laws by induction (inference of a general law from particular cases) or logical deduction (the inference of particulars from a general law), thus showing them to be absolute. (c.f., Lévi-Strauss, “Structural Analysis in Linguistics and in Anthropology,” Structural Anthropology).
This means that structuralism aids anthropology because:
(a) kinship terms (e.g., father, in-laws, etc.), like phonemes, are elements of meaning;
(b) both only acquire meaning if integrated into a system;
(c) these systems are built by the mind on the level of unconscious thought; and
(d) such elements recur in these patterns across time and culture,
(e) showing that they are general laws.
(Further, there are many thinkers we can associate here according to theories more so than their direct participation in the school, e.g., Freud (seeking the structures of meaning behind symbols born in our psyches, dreams, and actions), Jung (archetypes create entire cauldron of meaning as collective unconscious), Lacan (whose psychoanalysis further probes the distinctions between the symbolic, real, and imaginary orders), Marx (whose materialist idealism codifies theoretical structure into tangible flows of economic power), etc..)
Post-Structuralism: Some argue this to be a continuation of Structuralism, some say it is its critique; it is a primarily French theory and school from the 1960’s and 70’s. Its main difference from the former is that it does not divorce these structures from us and posit them as self-sufficient (as if they pre- and post-exist us, structuring us, whereas being little effected by us). Instead, post-structuralism argues that their rigidity is only dependent upon our re-enforcement of them, thus they change with us as they change us. This means that the focus is shifted from being primarily on the structures as objects to being more so on the subjects within and affecting the structures.
Another main difference is that many post-structuralist writings are the practice of applying the insights that come from recognizing these structures and serve the goal of trying to reveal and/or undo the structures. That is, it more explicitly moves from theory (identifying structures) to practice (critiquing and thereby destabilizing them). For example, in critical race theory, we seek to reveal the transcendental norm of whiteness (all that is ‘white’ is deemed the baseline, the norm, and against which we judge all things, e.g., a book store has a section of “poetry,” this is the norm, and then “black poetry,” which is the deviant form of poetry) in order to rework its physical and psychical affect (e.g., not just change laws, terms, but also unconscious biases and habituated body-mind responses, like the accelerated heart rate and clutching one’s purse when a black man steps in an elevator with you).
(Notable figures: Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, etc..)
Post-structuralism’s guiding premise, then, builds from structuralism’s, and is that the structure is mental, not in nature itself, but our minds impose this structure upon reality, forms reality in accordance with it—thus, reality (cultural, etc.) is a mental structure, as are the structures that explain reality.
Postmodernism Jean-François Lyotard’s Postmodernism strikes a peculiar balance between these two (seemingly) conflicting schools (phenomenology and post-structuralism) by taking some of each. He likes the method of phenomenology, yet, like post-structuralism, acknowledges the power of the “grand narratives” that we live under and how they define our thought and being. This blend is postmodernism.
We see this blend explicitly in his seminal The Differend when, in the second chapter, he asks: How is sense attached to the name when the name is not determined by the sense nor the sense by the name? Is it possible to understand the linkage of name and sense without resorting to the idea of an experience? An experience can be described only by means of a phenomenological dialectic … (§69)
The first question hearkens structuralism’s insight into the arbitrariness of the sign (the arbitrary relation between “cat” and the meaning (“sense”) of the furry purring feline object). The second question questions phenomenology’s answer: go back to “the things themselves,” turn to lived experience in order to understand the creation of meaning. Phenomenology, according to Lyotard, permits understanding the “possible in the constitution of reality” (§69). Its perspectival perceiving expresses reality not just as “x is,” but also as “x is not:” “To the assertion of reality, there corresponds a description inconsistent with regard to negation. This inconsistency characterizes the modality of the possible” (§69). So, Lyotard is promoting phenomenology (namely its perspectival viewing) as a way of explaining structuralism’s perplexity. However, he also levels serious critiques against phenomenology because it privileges “presence” … it is the study of phenomena, phenomena are what appears … and poststructuralism has revealed that these formative structures affecting and being affected by us are precisely most powerful because they do not appear. Lyotard’s postmodernism will incessantly borrow from, merge, blend, promote and critique both philosophical approaches to best grasp the meaning constitutive elements of reality that presence only as absence.
So, what is postmodernism? The name comes from Lyotard’s La Condition postmoderne (1979, translated into English as The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge in 1984), his most well known book in the United States that explores the impact of the rapid growth and influence of technology on humanity and is centrally concerned with defining the postmodern as that which, in the modern, shows the unpresentable in presentation itself.
“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, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 79).
“The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable; that which searches for new presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable” (Ibid., 81).
So, the postmodern is not the period following the modern, nor is it an overturning or out doing of the modern. A lot of contemporary sources talk about the postmodern as being the overturning of the modern by interrupting linearity through an eclecticism (Lyotard remarked such is characterized as wearing Parisian perfume in Tokyo while eating at a MacDonald’s—this is not postmodern, this is just bad taste!).
Lyotard prefers the name “re-writing modernity.”
It is primarily methodological, anti-historicism, and actively seeks to uncover biases of grand narratives. “Grand narratives” are the powerful stories that we call upon to create and structure meaning and, often, to rally people; they are the overarching organizational categories that may conjure national identity, portray capitalist political economy, invoke proletariat struggle or emancipation from marginalization, and are often captured like clichés or catch-phrases, e.g.: ‘power to the people,’ ‘as American as apple pie,’ ‘live free or die,’ ‘we are all God’s creatures,’ ‘class struggle,’ etc.. For postmodernism, all knowledge has become narrative; knowledge is a structuring force or power, not a mere label, but affective creation and direction of meaning/reality. Within this excess of narratives, narrativity itself, the rules and operation of this knowledge-cum-narrative system, and specific, especially strong grand narratives are what postmodernism targets to lay bare.
Postmodernism, then, is critique that constantly turns back to the canon (widely conceived) and takes it up and works through it to see many alternate narratives therein. It does not draw rigid boundaries between disciplines or schools of thought. It is therapeutic. It seeks to lay bare what remains unsaid.
In a letter written in the early 1980s, Lyotard describes the postmodern’s presentation of the unpresentable as one: “which refuses the consolation of correct forms … and inquires into new presentations-- not to take pleasure in them but to better produce the feeing that there is something unpresentable.” --Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence 1982-1985, trans. Julian Pefanis and Morgan Thomas (London: Turnaround, Power Institute of Fine Arts, 1992), 24.