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Sustaining Community in the Postmodernist Age
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18338 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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10 / 1990 |
4,218 Words |
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Stjepan Mestrovic
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It seems natural enough to discuss community in the context of that vast, ambiguous social movement called postmodernism. After all, postmodernism is frequently referred to as rebellion against the enlightenment narratives of modernity, and many of these modern narratives involve the dissolution of communities in the name of urban progress. Postmodernism also draws on nostalgia and pulls at the heartstrings of sentimentality and emotion across many aspects of contemporary social life. Thus, in what they purport to represent and what they rebel against, the concepts of community and postmodernism seem to overlap in some significant ways: Both champion the “heart” in its battle with the “mind” and the “vicious abstractionism” of modernity.
Alas, this apparent congruence between revivals of interest in community and postmodernism is actually deceptive; the matter is far more complicated than one would expect. Champions of postmodernism frequently denigrate the community and other aspects of the “heart” as cheap sentimentality, as kitsch. Currently, the postmodernist debate is unable to move beyond the following points: Does modernity signal the victory of mind over the heart (as argued by Jurgen Habermas) or the victory of the heart over the mind (as argued by Daniel Bell)? Is postmodernism an extension it (Habermas)? Depending upon one's answer to the first question the answer to the second becomes ideologically biased.
Suppose that modernity is, indeed, the triumph of enlightenment over the irrational aspect of being human, the heart. In that case, postmodernism (as rebellion against the enlightenment narratives) is perceived by some theorists as inherently irrational and dangerous to the social order and the status quo - this is Habermas' position. But those who are opposed to the status quo (in the guise of many diverse ideologies, from feminism to soft Marxism) would welcome postmodernism's anti-enlightenment rhetoric as a kind of liberation theology. On the other hand, suppose that modernity entails the orgy of feelings, passions, and sentimentality at the expenses of the mind. In that case, postmodernism is merely an extension of the anomic tendencies of modernity, best symbolized for Daniel Bell by the counterculture movement of the 1960s. Again, many find this characterization welcome (surely today's baby-boomers look back on the 1960s with considerable nostalgia), while others perceive “the triumph of the will” as inherently threatening to the idealized world of the Puritan work ethic.
In other words, we postmoderns have not resolved our ambivalent, ambiguous stance on the issue of human nature as heart and mind. Is the heart stronger and more important than the mind, as argued by the Romantics and Schopenhauer? Or is the mind the essence of being human, as argued by scores of Enlightenment philosophers and positivists? Discussions on sustaining and reviving community in the postmodernist age follow the ideological logic depicted above, albeit unwittingly and not always self-consciously.
For example, the postmodernist revival of strong ethnic identification in the United States and abroad is variously depicted as ethnocentric, nostalgic, exploitative, or “natural.” Disney World is often used as a symbol of our age by postmodernists. But some see it as a pejorative symbol - America is mocked as the Disney World culture - because the world of Disney is perceived as the embodiment of kitsch. On the other extreme, genuine, “natural” feelings, among children especially, flow toward
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