What Do We Do with the Posts?

The most intelligent philosophical critique of post-structuralism and post-modernism comes from Habermas (1990), and most of what we say here is a gloss on his arguments. In Chapter 1 we suggested that both of the main schools of philosophical thought implied a radical democratic reorganization of society - what Habermas would call the emancipatory project of the Enlightenment.

The problem with trying to abandon vast and complex bodies of thought is that it cannot be done. One cannot think new thoughts out of nowhere, and critiques of the Enlightenment can only come from within the Enlightenment and be based upon Enlightenment principles. All the thinkers discussed in this chapter, for example, argue for their positions; in other words they employ reason, the very reason they are criticizing, and they are thus placed very firmly within the tradition they are criticizing, while the radical politics that some of them uphold - notions of democracy, tolerance, multiculturalism, the equality of the sexes - all of these things can be argued for from within the traditions they criticize and in many cases these ideas were generated from these traditions.

The process of dialectical thought suggests that we cannot think about absence without also thinking about presence, that we cannot dispute the existence of a meta­narrative except by positing a meta-narrative that absurdly denies its own possibility. The very process of thinking moves towards a linking of objects, exploring their relationships to each other, and in the end moves towards grasping a totality of objects.

The point of take-off is the methodological act by which Saussure established language as an object for scientific investigation: the dropping of the idea that language has a referent. Now it is quite possible to accept that signs gain their meaning from their relationships to each other and that they also refer to something outside themselves. To deny this is to deny everyday experiences that make life itself possible. That the word ‘food’ is a conventional label that we attach to things we eat, and that its meaning is defined by the conventional system of signs to which it belongs, is beyond doubt. Also beyond doubt is the fact that it refers to the very real bread and cheese (and other things) in my kitchen without which I would die. These are not mutually exclusive possibilities.

We seem to be talking here about two (probably two of many) ways of using language: the instrumental and the poetic. The manual that comes with the boiler in my central heating system is written in an instrumental language. It could be re-read as a poem, but I suspect it would not be one of lasting value, and to read it that way would be of no use when the boiler goes wrong. On the other hand, one might read Romeo and Juliet as a set of instructions about how to behave when in love, but that is most likely to leave one dead or looking foolish. But the two uses of language are a necessary part of human existence. Some uses of language, and in particular that of some philosophers, combine both in a more equal way.

It is arguable that the post-structuralists and post-modernists do get hold of a particular dimension of contemporary experience in the Western world in their denials of truth, beauty, knowledge and so on. The descriptions of social changes by Lyotard and Baudrillard are not exhaustive, but they produce a sense of falling apart, a sense of vertigo at the speed of change, a sense of falling out of control and a sense of disconnection which is theoretically formulated in their work. What they do not and cannot do is grasp the deeper structural changes in society that produce these experiences. In the sense that they grasp part only of contemporary reality we can regard them as philosophical ideologies.