The postmodern founders’ patricidal work was great,
but patricide produces orphans
(David Foster Wallace)
Broadly speaking, postmodern society is the result of a neoliberal capitalist mode of production. The combination of the market economy, digital technologies and globalization largely explain the emergence of this new society.
The fall of the Soviet Union and the transition from the communist bloc to free market economies have increased the expansion of post-modern societies.
The individuals that make up these new societies are obviously not all the same nor do they exactly fit a single definition. However, it is possible to give some general traits that would characterize post-modern individuals, even at the risk of caricaturing them. Furthermore, Western societies are not themselves fully post-modern. They are in a transition period that has not ended and that can be reversed at any time (wars, economic crises, pandemics, coups d'état, new scientific discoveries, technological advances, etc.)
However, if we had to describe a fully post-modern society, the greatest chances of victory belong to those who are not held down by strong roots. The post-modern individuals feel comfortable almost everywhere, but they don't belong anywhere. They have made instability and change their way of being and do not feel a strong attachment to any particular place. They are globalised individuals, unconcerned about the past or the future, always immersed in a changing present. This type of citizen always fly with the wind in their favour and swim with the current. They do not really care where it might take them, not least because they will not stay true to their destination for long. And this is not only applicable to the physical or geographical space they inhabit but also to their ethical, aesthetic and political thinking.
'Liquid individuals’, or ‘fragmented' or ‘post-modern’ (depending on the version that is preferred), do not necessarily have such strict and firm values, they can change them according to each situation. The same person can defend one thing and the opposite in a short period of time (when not simultaneously). What is right for them is what is most convenient. What is good is what works best in any given situation. As Groucho famously said: “These are mi principles and if you do not like them, I have others”.
Political ideology is no longer a second skin, but rather an outfit that they change and alter according to the dress code of the event. The post-modernists’ vote, their partners or even their style will change frequently, there are no loyalties that limit them. If necessary, they have no problem following the trends of the moment and then discarding them without any nostalgia. Tastes and long-term values disappear. It is a game of constant false starts and endings (which are also ‘false’ because nothing really ends, everything returns in some kind of revival as it is obvious in the fashion industry). It is a permanent flight forward.
In popular culture, the fragmentation we are referring to is quite obvious. In contemporary music, pigeonholing in a musical genre is seen as a limitation. There is no fusion or crossover of styles (as it might have been in the past), but a juxtaposition of genres. A post-modern song fragments, breaks, stops abruptly and starts again. Sounds dissolve and transform. The lyrics are not necessarily clear or coherent or use the same language. What at first seemed to be a jazz ballad in English becomes Spanish hip-hop and finishes with a church choir and electronic music.
Everything is dissolved and nothing is what it seems. Certainties disappear or are deconstructed. Relationships between people weaken or have a shorter duration in time (and intensity). Public institutions lose their authority and attractiveness (although not necessarily their power).
Every aspect of the post-modern society is taking on the characteristics of consumer goods in a market economy. Everything is bought and sold. Everything has an expiration date. Everything and everyone is susceptible of being improved and updated. To settle for what we already have is to lose. Even our body and our abilities are seen through this prism of constant updating and renovation (teeth, breast, nose, etc.). They are the equivalent of a human i-phone.
In this permanent flow, in this going from here to there without a fixed course or direction, necessarily the supreme good is 'freedom'. However, it is a freedom interpreted in a quite particular sense. Freedom is understood as being able to quickly change opinion, taste or position without being asked to account for it. The political, sexual or any other orientation can be changed without giving any explanations, it is enough to appeal to ‘our freedom’ to do so. It is just not anyone else’s business.
The post-modern individual does not demand freedom to be something specific, instead they demand freedom to be nothing. Or rather, to constantly be something new, to be one thing today and another different tomorrow. There is an insistence in the idea of ‘evolving’, but without an ultimate purpose that guides and directs that evolution.
The past of the post-modern individual is not continuous and, like contemporary music, it is a juxtaposition of the past, a fragmentation of vital chapters, short episodes that do not point in any particular direction. The past is no longer an indicator of the future. In fact, in a post-modern society we should not talk about 'past' or 'future'. We should accept that there is a multiplicity of pasts and an infinity of simultaneous futures. There is no single present either, there are innumerable presents developing at the same time. This makes for a reality that is much more complex and difficult to analyse than in previous times. Of course, there were other presents developing simultaneously throughout History, however the dominant mentality in the past (the ‘meta-narrative of power’, in post-modern parlance) denied the existence or, at least, the validity of those alternatives. In more simple terms, the fiction created by those who are in power is called ‘truth’ and this truth represses any alternative that would question their authority. When the European arrived in America, their truth (Christianity) was the dominant one and could not admit the religion of the natives. However, post-modern individuals do not recognise any authority, they are the authority, and therefore individualism and free-market economies are so important for them.
Living in a post-modern society means that individuals are not one-dimensional, they are polyhedral instead, full of edges and contradictions. This is perceived as acceptable in the name of individual freedom.
Post-modern individuals generally don't mind sharing their intimacy. They are free from the fear of what others might think because nothing really defines or fully represents them. Today they can share some photos where they are looking after sick animals, tomorrow it is a black-tie party and a week later they share videos of an anti-capitalist demonstration they attended the day before they took a plane for an expensive vacation in Cuba. It is impossible to draw conclusions because any judgment would be false and contradictory. The post-modern individual is (and is not) many things at the same time. They are never trapped by their past because their past is so varied and incongruous that it unravels into chapters (or photos, audios or videos) of a present in constant flux.
However, it is very difficult to find individuals who are 100% post-modern. In fact, most of us are individuals in transition, not fully post-modern ones. In consequence we feel stressed, overwhelmed by the speed of events around us and the amount of information we have to handle.
The post-modern individual, is comfortable in the constant flow of the present. Perhaps it is the contemporary version of Nietzsche's ‘super-man’. They are not distressed when they see the expiration date on things, relationships or institutions. It is unlikely that fully post-modern individuals exist, yet their ghosts are constantly haunting us.
Real or not, these fragmented individuals do not live attached to anything in particular and accept changes in their environment, in their work, in their family situation, etc. They are not merely stoic individuals who accept resignedly what fate brings them, post-modern individuals are also hedonists who enjoy the present, whatever it may be. They are both active and reactive, and move swiftly when they stop finding pleasure. In this sense, they lack a permanent place to rest.
For them, everything is debatable and open to interpretation. The limits are diffused and the borders are eliminated. Teachers, parents, doctors, scientists and any other figure of authority have a hard time understanding them. A fully post-modern individual might be a fiction, however, in Western capitalist societies we all have a varying percentage of post-modern sensibility in us.
The certainties of the past are not guarantees of anything in the present. Post-modernity questions any attempt at describing or defining people and things. What we used to believe to be indubitable is suddenly revealed to be unstable. And it is not simply about questioning some metaphysical issues such as the existence of God or the immortality of the soul. That has already been fully questioned and even ridiculed in modern philosophy. The great change of post-modernity manifests in the certainties of the individual. For example, it is questionable (or debatable) that I am ‘a man’. It is true that I have male reproductive organs, but post-modernism asks what is 'a man' anyway? What does that mean? Is it just not being a woman? Why not allow more variability in the number of options? Why not completely remove the reference to gender?
Even certainties like ‘nationality’ are scrutinised under post-modern philosophy. Let’s say that an individual is born in Germany and lives in Berlin for a large part of their life. Is this person German? What does it mean to be German? Are all Germans the same? Is there such a thing as ‘the essence of Germany’? Everything that modern philosophy considered objective, in post-modern philosophy becomes subjective. Everything that supposedly defines us: gender, nationality, profession, social class, marital status, studies, etc. are called into question. In short, if you want to make a post-modern philosopher laugh, give them a definition of who you think you are.
Fragment extracted from the book "The End of Everything: A society in transition" (Available on Amazon)
Comments