Is postmodernism doomed to impotent interpretations of the world around us, never able to change things for the better? Or does the deconstruction of binaries and challenging of grand narratives offer us a fruitful way to think about the age we live in, and where it might take us? Simon Glendinning responds to Mike Cole's article.
Mike Cole begins and ends his essay on the ongoing significance of Marxism with the evocation of Marx’s own pronouncement on what is needed in our time: not merely an effort to interpret the world, something Marx regarded as the results of philosophy hitherto, but to change it. Postmodernism is regarded by Cole as the contemporary epitome of that old pre-Marxist philosophical failing: not only does it only interpret the world, it is limited to such an ambition “by definition”.
Cole does not elaborate on this claim by providing a definition of postmodernism, but he presents an example in that name in relation to an author who wrote a book about it. Cole refers to “the postmodernism of Jean-François Lyotard who was incredulous of all grand narratives”. For his part Lyotard does attempt to provide a definition of what he calls the distinctively “postmodern” outlook: he interprets it as a condition marked by “incredulity towards metanarratives”. There is nothing in Lyotard that aims or calls to overcome that incredulity by reviving our formerly modern condition.
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