Post-Structuralism and Post-Postmodernism (1999)

Book Review from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Post-Postmodernism by Madan Sarup. Manchester, Wheatsheaf.

The postmodernist view is that grand “narratives” like Marxism have failed and are no longer an adequate way of looking at or making sense of the world. That what is more relevant is to break down the big picture (the grand narrative) into a series of smaller, discrete pictures (little narratives); to deconstruct and de-layer the “whole structure” and thereby find out how meaning is put together. One can liken this to a puzzle which is purposely made up of a number of individual pieces that assembled together make a whole picture. It is from the whole picture that we usually make sense of the individual isolated parts. When put together (connected) a meaningful picture is formed.

Amongst some postmodernists the view is that in the deconstructed puzzle each individual piece, or each random construction of smaller pieces of the puzzle occupy a philosophical terrain of their own, have meanings that can be construed without recourse to the bigger picture. If this is so we arrive at a place where the grand narrative is at an end and all that is left is “playing with the pieces” (Jean Baudrillard). This appears unduly pessimistic and without hope of a way forward. Fortunately there are people like Madan Sarup on the scene to counter this view.

Madan Sarup makes some interesting comments in his introduction. He says that “the controversy over postmodernism is one example of class struggle at the cultural and political level. On the political level postmodernism is an attack on Marxism . . . about the validity of Marxism and its belief in progress” as many postmodernists declare that progress is a myth. He goes on to state that the “project of modernity (which postmodernists attack) is one with that of the Enlightenment and that Marxism is a child of the Enlightenment”.

In a passage that comments on the Marxist position, he states that, “a characteristic of human beings is that they make a distinction between the ‘real’ and the ‘ideal'”. By the real he means an awareness of the present situation, and by the ideal, some notion of what life, the world, could be like. Human beings, he continues, “have a sense of what is possible in the future and they have the hope that tomorrow will be better than today. Marxists not only have this hope, this orientation towards the future, but they try to understand the world, to develop a critical consciousness of it, and try to develop strategies for changing it. Of course, they realise that progress is uneven, not unilinear; because of the nature of contradiction there are inevitably negative aspects, sad reversals and painful losses. Marxists struggle for a better future for all, but they know that this does not mean that progress is guaranteed or that the process of the dialectic will lead to the Perfect”. He believes that it is important for people to support the Enlightenment project because education is closely connected with the notion of a change of consciousness and that gaining a wider, deeper understanding of the world represents a change for the better. And this, in turn, implies some belief in a worthwhile future—something the postmodernists seem sceptical about.

Kevin Parkin