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Crossing the Postmodern Divide. - book reviews

Commonweal, Nov 20, 1992 by Christopher Lasch

Do we really need another book about postmodernism? Readers already surfeited with the subject will pick up Albert Borgmann's book with a distinct feeling of weariness; nor will they be won over by a dashing style, a dazzling show of wit, or a wealth of incisive social observation. If they persist, however, they will discover that Borgmann has important things to say. His voice, deceptively quiet and restrained, needs to be heard in a debate conducted, for the most part, by those who know only how to shout.

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Borgmann makes no concessions to the casual reader - the typical reader today, unfortunately. His method of presentation is schematic (as he himself acknowledges), his language rather abstract, his erudition unobtrusive. Parts of the book need to be read more than once. In other words, an appreciation of its merits demands reading habits the loss of which is itself one of the characteristic features of the postmodern condition.

Borgmann's previous writings deal mostly with technology, from a broadly philosophical point of view, and he is more interested in technological and economic changes than in the changes of literary sensibility that have dominated so much speculation about postmodernism. He is quite aware of the work produced by literary theorists and philosophers, but he sees postmodernism as the product of forces over which professors have little control. He thinks that its influence, moreover, is reflected not just in new styles of academic discourse but in new work habits, new forms of economic organization, and new states of feeling that can be observed everywhere, not just in the ivory tower.

The collapse of the modern order can no longer be denied, according to Borgmann. The question now is whether postmodernism will prove to be merely a heightened version of the preceding epoch or a more promising departure, a completion and at the same time a revision of the modern project.

The essence of modernism, as Borgmann understands it, was the subjugation of nature, the search for universal laws of nature and for a universal morality (including social justice for all), and a respect for individuals - an insistence that people should be judged by their abilities and achievements and not by social origin or some other arbitrary measure of status. All three of these premises have now come under attack. Environmentalists argue that the violent campaign against nature, because it threatens to make the earth uninhabitable, is deeply self-defeating. Feminists link the domination of nature to the domination of women and seek to replace aggressive masculine enterprise with a feminine sensibility that values "relationships above rules, care above justice, and intimacy above the quest for individual identity," in Borgmann's words. Feminists condemn not only aggressive individualism but universalism as well, and they are joined by a host of others, ranging from sophisticated philosophers like Richard Rorty to ideologues of multiculturalism, in their claim that allegedly universal rules and canons of taste turn out to be highly particularistic on closer examination. Universalistic individualism comes under attack from communitarians as well, who argue that it has undermined the sense of mutual obligation and generated a war of all against all.

The effect of all this criticism, which shakes the foundations of inherited beliefs and habits, is to leave us alternately "sullen" and "hyperactive," in Borgmann's formulation. The originality of Crossing the Postmodern Divide lies chiefly in its elaboration of these terms, first introduced simply as descriptions of the current mood but invested, as the argument unfolds, with a good deal of interpretive significance. Sullenness reveals itself in truculent claims of entitlement, demands for compensation for past injuries, refusal to take responsibility for anything, and a rejection of both personal and political obligations - an unwillingness even to vote. The slackening of self-discipline and national resolve invites an equally unfortunate response: frenetic bustle designed to mobilize the economy and restore a sense of purpose. Hyperactivity, according to Borgmann, produces not only the familiar symptoms of stress and overwork but, at a deeper level, a kind of militarization of society - "the suspension of civility, the rule of the vanguard, and the subordination of civilians." Neither friends, neighbors, nor families are allowed to interfere with devotion to careers. For people in high-powered,, jobs, work becomes a form of warfare carried on by other means. Success belongs to the "vanguard" willing to sacrifice everything to its pursuit. "Civilians" - those unwilling to make such sacrifices - defer to the power elite, whose "hyperactive work habits" in themselves, without the additional qualifications of wisdom, courage, and vision, are held to certify their claim to leadership.

This way of life, so destructive of all the things that make life worth living, offers a foretaste of one of the two futures toward which we may be heading -"hypermodernism," as Borgmann calls it, in which the most unattractive features of modern society find exaggerated expression. The domination of nature is giving way to the simulation of nature, the creation of artificial reality - "hyperreality" - in which human control no longer encounters the intractable resistance of physical materials. Knowledge is giving way to "information," instantaneously available (indeed unavoidable) thanks to radio, television, computers, cellular phones, answering machines, fax machines, and all the other appurtenances of high-speed communication. "While the real world holds misery and grace, the hyperreal universe contains only news, challenges that demand one's reaction." It is above all the unrelenting need to assimilate and generate new information that makes hyperactivity the condition of personal survival in the global economy. Human intelligence is giving way to "hyperintelligence" - a new mode of understanding that takes understanding itself as its object, the real world having been replaced by the world simulated by computers. Human skills - memory, for instance, or the capacity for close reading - decay as their function is taken over by machines. In their attempt to eliminate everything not subject to their wishes and control, human beings unwittingly make themselves expendable: the simulation of nature leads logically to the redesign of human nature itself Adding one more category to Borgmann's list, we can say that "man" (whose capacities were undeniably improved, in many ways, in the contest with nature) gives way at last to "hyperman" - a pitifully shrunken, driven creature wholly subservient to the machines that demand his frantic attention.

Crossing the Postmodern Divide. - book reviews

Commonweal, Nov 20, 1992 by Christopher Lasch

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