Post-Modern Social Theory
Postmodern social theory has come to reality. It has begun to take roots. Some think that it is the declaration of the death of sociological theory. Others argue that it is an appropriate moment for sociological theory to transform itself by accepting some criticisms made by postmodern social theory.
Sociological theory and social theory are not and should not be at different poles. In fact, social theory is differentiated from sociological theory for its being interdisciplinary. By tuning to a more concrete discussion of postmodern social theory, we will focus on a few of the ideas associated with two of the most important postmodern social theorists: Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard.
Moderate Postmodern Social Theory: Fredric Jameson
The dominant position on the issue of postmodernity is clearly that there is a radical disjuncture between modernity and postmodernity. However, there are some postmodern theorists who argue that while postmodernity has important differences from modernity, there are also continuities between them. The best known of these arguments is made by Fredric Jameson in an essay entitled “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”.
Fredric Jameson offers a comparatively clear image of a postmodern society composed of four basic elements. First, postmodern society is characterized by superficiality and lack of depth. Its cultural products are satisfied with surface images and do not delve deeply into the underlying meanings. Second, postmodernism is characterized by a waning of emotion or affect. His example, Edvard Munch’s The Scream is a surreal painting of a person expressing the depth of despair, or in sociological terms, anomie or alienation. Third, there is a loss of historicity. There is no clear sense of historical development, of time passing. Past and present are inextricably intertwined. Fourth, there is a new technology associated with postmodern society. Instead of productive technologies such as the automobile assembly line, we have the dominance of re productive technologies, especially electronic media such as the television set and the computer.
Extreme Postmodern Social Theory: Jean Baudrillard
If Jameson is among the more moderate postmodern social theorists, Jean Baudrillard is one of the most radical and outrageous of this genre. Unlike Jameson, Baudrillard was trained as a sociologist, but his work has long since left the confines of that discipline. Indeed, it cannot be contained by any discipline, and Baudrillard would in any case reject the whole idea of disciplinary boundaries.
Baudrillard turned his attention to the analysis of contemporary society, which, as he sees it, is dominated no longer by production, but rather by the “media, cybernetic models and steering systems, computers, information processing, entertainment and knowledge industries, and so forth”.
Baudrillard, like Jameson, describes the postmodern world is that it is characterized by simulations; we live in “the age of simulation”. The process of simulation leads to the creation of simulacra, or “reproductions of objects or events”. With the distinction between signs and reality imploding, it is increasingly difficult to tell the real from those things that simulate the real. For example, Baudrillard talks of “the dissolution of TV into life, the dissolution of life into TV”. Eventually, it is the representations of the real, the simulations that come to be predominant. We are in the thrall of these simulations, which “form a spiraling, circular system with no beginning or end”.
Baudrillard describes this world as hyperreality. For example, the media cease to be a mirror of reality but become that reality, or even more real than that reality. The tabloid news shows that are so popular on TV these days are good examples because the falsehoods and distortions they peddle to viewers are more than reality—they are hyperreality. The result is that what is real comes to be subordinated and ultimately dissolved altogether. It becomes impossible to distinguish the real from the spectacle. In fact, “real” events increasingly take on the character of the hyperreal.
Post Modern Social Theory and Sociological Theory
Sociological theory was defined as the ‘big ideas’ in sociology that have stood the test of time (or promise to), idea systems that deal with major social issues and are far-reaching in scope. Baudrillard certainly offers a number of “big ideas” (simulations, hyperreality, symbolic exchange, seduction). They are ideas that show every promise of standing the test of time.
Whatever the future may hold, at the moment postmodern social theorists are producing an unusually large number of important and exciting ideas. Those ideas cannot be ignored and may, as they are internalized in sociology, push sociological theory in some new and unforeseen directions.
Post a Comment