In what sense might we be living through 'posthistorical' times?


Essay, 2003

13 Pages, Grade: 80


Excerpt


ADVANCED CULTURAL ANALYSIS (CCS 3210)

Tutor: Dr. Stefan Herbrechter

In what sense might we be living through ‘posthistorical’ times?

At the beginning of the new century the perception that we are living at a time of deep change, in practise as well as in thought, is widespread. In recent years the social and human sciences proclaimed that we are entering a time of ‘endism’, a period of post-capitalism, post-industrialism, post-socialism and above all of post-modernism and post-modernity. The number of different ‘post’ labels suggests a deep uncertainty about the present as well as the future and agreement between the different theories exist only in the view that ‘things are not what they used to be’ (Kumar, 2000: 57) Although the term postmodern is still ‘a very difficult term to pin down’ (Malpas, 2001: 3) and ‘remains resolutely contradictory’, it provides us with ‘a kind of catch-all term for the whole condition of late capitalist society itself’ (Easthope et al., 1992: 181). Jameson (1993: 62) defines postmodernism as the ‘senses of the end of this or that (the end of ideology, art, or social class; the ‘crisis’ of Leninism, social democracy, or the welfare state, etc., etc)’. In his attempt to define postmodernism, Lyotard calls it an attitude of ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’ (Lyotard, 1984: xxiv) which were a crucial part of modernist ideologies. While the idea that metanarratives develop as history progresses is the central tenet of what many postmodernists refer to as modernity, postmodernist writing uses ‘forms of pastiche, self-referential and explicitly intertextual ‘style’ […] to break with the referent of the real (history, time, art and the artist) which modernism maintained’ (Easthope et. al, 1992: 182). Postmodernism, in that sense, seeks to expose the links between all forms of culture and knowledge on one side and the established systems of meaning production and discourses which operate within culture on the other side.

Among others, postmodernism challenges conventional views of history and criticises monolithic, unified, and singular history as inadequate.

The idea that there is a real, knowable past, a record of evolutionary progress of human ideas, institutions or actions; the view that historians should be objective and that reason enables them to explain the past; and the role of history as interpreter and transmitter of human cultural and intellectual heritage from generation to generation (Rosenau, 1992: 63), have all been questioned and criticised by postmodernist thinkers. In the following, this essay addresses theories from postmodernism to end-of-history philosophy which are important in examining the opposition to conventional history and the issue of post-history.

The idea that history will end is one of the oldest in Western thought. Christian history was conceived of as linear and finite, a one-off narrative with a definite beginning and end. The Christian apocalyptic view was then replaced by a new Enlightenment view of the end of history as the self-perfection of humanity. Right up to our own times ‘apocalyptic and millenarian currents have continued to inspire theories and movements’ (Kumar, 2000: 59). The transformation of the modern age into ‘riddles and inconsistencies’ is what Vattimo (1988: 6) calls the condition of posthistory. Posthistory arises in the late twentieth century, he argues, because we have lost our modern Enlightenment certainty in the unity and direction of culture. Vattimo takes the term posthistory from Gehlen (1978) who argues that although we still believe in progress, we no longer know where progress is going. Progress has become routine, and we now expect almost daily announcements of new advances in technology, but the point of this progress has been lost. For Vattimo (1988: 8) this is a sign of the end of the modern epoch, the ‘dissolution of history’ and the opening of posthistory. Jenkins (1997: 5) observes, that ‘we have witnessed the attendant collapse of histories in the upper case (versions of the past/history as History with a capital H)’ that is ‘a way of looking at the past in terms which assigned to contingent events and situations an objective significance by identifying their place and function within a general schema of historical development usually construed as appropriately progressive’.

The first threat to the subject matter of history ‘comes from linguistics, building up from Saussure to Derrida, and climaxing in deconstruction, according to which there is nothing besides the text, each one wide open to personal interpretations irrespective of the intentions of the author’ (Stone, 1997: 242). The deconstructionists view histories like identities and meaning which are in general constructed through discourses and through difference and are therefore not fixed. In their opinion, texts thus become ‘a mere hall of mirrors reflecting nothing but each other, and throwing no light upon the “truth”, which does not exist’ (ibid. 242, quotation marks his). Notions of whose history counts and how to negotiate between the different versions of the past are also bound up in the issues arising from the postmodern critique of the concept of history. Postmodern historiographers such as White argue – with notions derived from poststructuralist literary theory in mind – that ‘historical discourse is best viewed as a narrative or rhetorical construct’ (Norris, 2000: 37).

In support of this argument, Kellner (1997: 127) states that ‘all history, even the most long-term, quantified, synchronic description, is understood by competent readers as part of a story, an explicit or implicit narrative’. Derrida’s notion of differance, which he employs to demonstrate that ‘meaning is always deferred, never quite fixed or complete [which] means that there is always some slippage’ (Woodward, 1997: 21) is helpful in illustrating the critique of the deconstructionists. Derrida criticises that the reality of actuality ‘only reaches us through fictional devices’:

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Details

Title
In what sense might we be living through 'posthistorical' times?
College
University of Leeds  (Trinity & All Saints College)
Course
Cultural Analysis
Grade
80
Author
Year
2003
Pages
13
Catalog Number
V13596
ISBN (eBook)
9783638192101
ISBN (Book)
9783638815857
File size
416 KB
Language
English
Keywords
Cultural, Analysis
Quote paper
Florian Mayer (Author), 2003, In what sense might we be living through 'posthistorical' times?, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/13596

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