Round #2: Post Modern Theory and the Paradoxes of ModernismAuthor(s): O. C. McSwiteSource: Administrative Theory & Praxis, Vol. 18, No. 1 (1996), pp. 69-72Published by: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25611151 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 22:27

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

M.E. Sharpe, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Administrative Theory&Praxis.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.78 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:27:01 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

tt * McSwite George Washington University

and

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

_

ROUNDn

POST MODERN THEORY AND THE

PARADOXES OF MODERNISM

Administrative Theory & Praxis, 18(1): 69-72, 1996.

As the opening to my essay indicates, I focussed my attention on the specific question of the Real and how

apprehension of it comes into play in the possibility of

building a common space and discourse. The other authors in this symposium seem to have centered their

arguments on issues entailed by post modern theory more generally. Although I think their comfort levels with the post modern worldview vary considerably, I find myself to be among those most fully situated within

(and happy with) post modernist thought. As a result, I am taking a broader tack in my response, considering several aspects of the critiques being levied by my

colleagues against post modern theory and the approach to the Real that these critiques imply. I realize the rather wide array of perspectives represented by the authors in this symposium; however, in discussing the overall

critiques they make of post modernism, I will refer to them as "modernists."

I want to make five comments ? two "technical

quibbles" and three more substantive remarks ~ in

response to various aspects of the essays.

(1) A number of the essays critical of post modern

theory attack it as self contradictory because it seeks to

argue meaningfully against the possibility of meaning, seeks to author denials of the possibility of authorship, etc. This is probably the most commonly seen charge leveled at post modern thinkers. Such critics argue that

within the post modern frame of reference, meaningful dialogue is impossible.

What immediately occurs to me about this charge is

that, ironically, it applies with more force to the critics of post modernism than it does to post modernism itself. In fact, this is precisely one of the points that I invoked

against the advocates of positive social science in my

own essay in this symposium. (How can objective social science knowledge be developed and used when the

processes of developing knowledge and using knowledge must themselves be considered as socially produced?) As I said there, I have never seen a fully satisfying account of how social science, construed as modernists wish to construe it, can escape from this contradiction.

This is a problem, it seems, of the paradox of self

referentiality, as illustrated in the famous cases of the Barber of Seville, lying Cretins, and others. One

possibility for seeking to escape this paradox is to invoke Bertram Russell's solution: the Law of Logical Types. This law, to put it simply, holds that such

seemingly contradictory statements as "Never say never"

are, in fact, logically consistent because the second "never" is of a different and higher order than the first "never." Thus, a Cretin's statement about all statements of Cretins cannot be a part of what he is asserting. Similarly, Herbert Simon, in making causal

generalizations about how managers can "rationally" manage others, can write as if his work (and the actions of managers, also) are not affected by causal vectors in the social setting in which they work. In the same way, an author writing against the possibility of authorship cannot be referring to his or her own statement and, hence, is not being logically inconsistent.

Russell's solution, though, is not fully satisfying, and some have objected that it is not a solution at all. I

think, myself, that the resistance to Russell's answer derives from the fact that what it tends to do is imply that intellectual discourse really can only amount to reflexive talk, talk that yields only a context for action rather than positively indicating what action should be taken. That is, Russell based his argument for the law of

logical types on the intrinsic plausibility of the idea that

69

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.78 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:27:01 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

meaningful discourse is possible. What seems clear to

me, though, is that a belief in meaningful discourse as reflexive talk is much more plausible than a belief in

meaningful discourse as positive generalization. Hence, perhaps ironically, Russell's escape route leads more

directly to the position taken by post modern theory than it does to the one taken by modernist critics.

In sum, if the modernist charge of self contradiction is valid against the post modernists, it is also valid

against the position taken by modernist critics. Further, if we wish to escape from the paradox by invoking

Russell, we end up closer to the position of the post modernists than to the position of their critics. At

bottom, though, all this amounts to a technical quibble, and I wish that the critics of post modernism would stop (falsely) charging post modernism with this kind of contradiction. The real issue lies elsewhere, in the resistance on the part of modernists to regarding intellectual discourse as, in their terms, "merely" reflexive rather than positive, "merely" process rather than substance.

It is ironic that modernists see post modernism as

denying the possibility for having meaningful discourse

when, in fact, just the reverse is true. Post modernism has arisen, and has the appeal that it does, precisely because the attempt to create meaningful discourse in the modernist way

~ through implicit reference to big T

moral and empirical truths -- has failed. It is actually the

attempt to find meaning in the bankrupt (and, as we

have seen, logically contradictory) project of modernism that blocks the possibility for having meaningful discourse.

(2) It seems to me that the charge that post modernists

"reify language" and, thereby, deny consciousness has a

similar difficulty. Is not just the opposite the case? That

is, the modernists seem, if I understand them, to be

holding to a theory of language that depicts words as

somehow directly tied to objects in the world, or ~ if

this is too extreme a characterization ~ at least tied to

concepts that reflect some kind of direct experience of

the real world that persons are able to acquire outside of

language.

I have always thought that this is, in fact, what the

idea of reification means: a confusion or over

identification of words with things. It seems to me that

it is the postmodernists who do not reify language, i.e., who see it as simply a system of signifiers which creates effects within the mind by virtue of their interactions

with each other - and, most important, that has no

direct tie to the realm of the Real. Where there is

representation (as through words), there is absence, and what is absent is the Real. It is modernism that reifies

language by seeing it as somehow "containing" the Real.

Of course I may be completely incorrect. If so, it is

probably by reason of ignorance, as I am not an expert on phenomenology. I have as yet, though, been unable to see how there can be anything like consciousness outside of the realm of the symbolic or language

? or at least how we could know about such a thing if it were

possible. This is the Helen Keller problem: did she have a mind (consciousness) before she acquired language? If I recall correctly, she said she did, but what can we know of it except as mediated through language?

(3) This leads to my first substantive point. Critics of

postmodernism attack it severely for undercutting the idea of the human subject as agent. One version of this

critique presented in these essays holds that ideology is not dead, that policy debates are meaningful and real because the problems that such debates are about are

real, and that people can do things like turn technology to human purposes by engaging in dialogue that reveals, for example, how technology is socially constructed and, hence, subject to human discretion.

It seems to me there is a serious gap in this critique, viz., that the consciously talking and behaving subject presumed by the critique is never adequately theorized. There is definitely no such subject inside the

interpretivist paradigm. The interpretivists make no such

claim, and that is why their perspective on social life leads to conservative conclusions. There is certainly no

such subject in Marx. This, it would seem, goes without

saying to the same extent that it does about traditional functionalist sociology, where one does not even find

people, much less conscious subjects. Also, the paradigm of structuralism clearly denies the possibility of a "self conscious" subject.

So, where does one find the kind of subject implied

by the critics of post modernism ? in radical humanism, critical theory, etc.? I, for one, have sought but not been

able to find the human subject in this line of thought. I

gave up on Marcuse first in this respect, partly because I could not square Freud's theoretical sense of life with

the liberation program that Marcuse somehow drew from

him and partly because of what the 1960's taught about

the possibilities for liberation. Habermas, for me, came

to a similar stop and appeared, in the end, as little more

than a democratic pluralist, a view of him that I believe

is rather widely held.

70

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.78 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:27:01 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

I cannot find, in modernism, a full theory of the modern human subject. Of course, one possibility is that modernists feel that no such theory is required. They do not theorize the human subject because they do not feel

they need to do so. This seems to be, in fact, the case.

Modernists ground themselves in the so-called "paradigm of common sense." That is to say, they validate their

assumption of human agentry in the everyday belief that human beings freely discuss things and consciously choose one thing or another by virtue of consciously calculated and articulated preferences.

The closest thing to a theoretical grounding for this view is probably Freudian ego psychology

- Anna

Freud, American adaptation variety ?, and this is

definitely a respectable foundation. People do have egos, a "reality principle," that more or less rationally comes to terms with the "real world." The trouble with this

formulation, though, is that the ego tends to the view that it is the whole person. Similarly, the ego feels that it is in control, that it apprehends external reality, and that it is in touch with the body and its drives and needs

when, in fact, it is not.

Again, I find a paradox in the modernist position, if I have apprehended it correctly. The paradox is that it is the ego's certainty that foments uncertainty, hence

undercutting its usefulness as a model of the conscious

subject. If we equate, for the sake of discussion, modernism with the ego viewpoint, we can see how this is true. By being certain that some reliable knowledge of the external world can be gained, egoistic science and

morality have created the relativism characteristic of the modern era. This relativism is the result of the ego arguments about what is empirically true and morally correct that abound in modernism. By being confident that it could create "progress," ego based technology has created serious uncertainty about the long term viability of the human species on the planet. By holding to a sure sense that the body is "real" and it is in touch with it, the ego has alienated the subject from the body and

made the human being into mind, causing the body to be

regarded as a machine for which replacement parts can be made. The ultimate tragedy of the modern subject may be that it has mistaken its ego for its body.

To extend the paradox: it is the post modernist view of the subject, as decentered, as symbolic, and as

fundamentally alienated from the Real and from the

body organism, that restores some sense of self and embodiment to the subject. By locating the subject in

processes of language, the ego is evicted from its throne at the center of the human being. A great deal is gained

in the process. The fusion of fT" with "Me" is broken, and the possibility is evoked that the human subject is located in a realm outside the "causal forces" of the

ego's reality. By realizing the alienation from the body that existence in the symbolic entails, an understanding of desire and the central role that it plays in the affairs of the subject becomes possible. By realizing that it has no capacity for control, the subject can begin to act with assurance.

The closest thing that I have found to a theory of the human subject that gives it the capacities of agentry that modernists impute to it is in post modern thinking. This is an agentry that operates by something similar to the Zen law of reverse effect. It is by genuinely seeing ourselves as nothing that we become something, and it is by surrendering that we can begin to prevail. The

problem is not that this image of the subject is

implausible. Indeed, it has an ancient lineage and has been made quite plausible in modern terms, by the second order cyberneticists, among others. Rather, I think the problem is that this idea of the subject does not fit the kind of program that the critics of post

modernism are interested in pursuing ~ a program of

fighting for social change that results (or at least has resulted so far) in ephemeral and reversible social gains and currently worsening conditions. When the critics attack the idea of the post modern decentered self, what

they are being upset about is that the ego and its false sense of realism, embodiedness, and control are being deposed.

(4) This leads me to a related point: the modernists in this symposium seem to reflect an underlying interest, stake, or existential position in their critique. This

position can be expressed in the form of a complaint that I would put like this: "If there can be no meaning, no

truth, no moral rules; if all there is is text, text that can be continually deconstructed, then I will not be able to call attention to what I think are falsehoods, injustices, evils, nonsense, etc. There will be no reason for anyone to listen to me! I won't be able to be command respect as an intellectual, a professor, a social science expert, a moral philosopher. My statements will lose the force, the

legitimacy, the authority that they were given by the

metaphysic of realism that is at the heart of the modernist ethos. This is a horrifying prospect; indeed, it is an unacceptable prospect, and I must rail against it."

To be fair, the positive side of this critique is that it is a defense of the possibility for heroism, the

opportunity for the (intellectually) better off to help the less fortunate by waging a battle in their name against

71

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.78 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:27:01 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

evil, lies, and injustice. On the negative side, though, there is a condescension to this call. Indeed, such a condescension is at the very heart of the drive toward

imperialism, colonialism, and all forms of ideological domination. Defeating this sentiment, and the effects it can work, is precisely what Derrida has said is the ethical purpose of the deconstructive project: to end the

possibility for just this kind of domination.

(5) Last, I want to extend briefly something that I mentioned in my own essay. This is to the purpose of

addressing the charge of nihilism that is persistently levied against postmodernism.

I have remarked many times how curious it has been to have so often been labeled a "relativist" ? given that this is the last label I would think of applying to myself. To be called a nihilist is stranger still, even bizarre. I call myself a process theorist; I am one because process theory is the best venue I have found for creating a sense of meaning in my life and in my work. I see post

modern theory as a tremendous asset to process theory. Process theory at one level is all about how to achieve

dialogue that is full and genuine. At another, more

abstract, level it is about how to use such authentic talk to work through real problems people are having

? in

my case, in organizations, through such things as action research programs.

At least ideally, in authentic groups and in action

research, there are no authoritative experts, truths, etc. There are only people involved in a text that they create.

They concretely analyze their own situation and figure out themselves what they want to do in response to it. Then they set about doing it. It is very post modern in

the sense that anything anyone says is open to question, open to deconstruction. Nothing is taken for granted; everything can be looked behind and into. No one is taken to be an authority, an author, or to have a

privileged position from which to speak.

I have spent a good deal of my professional life in such settings. I have not written about them not only because they are confidential but also because they provide no basis for generalization. Indeed, they deny the idea of generalization. They are based on concrete,

specific perception and action. I would be happy if we could model the field of public administration along these lines. I think that if the original Bureaus of

Municipal Research had evolved into centers for

facilitating action research with citizens, the field of

public administration would have been the better for it and so would American society. We academics could have done our research and theorizing, but it would have had to be consistently aimed at the purpose of helping people work out, themselves, how they wanted their lives with each other to be. We would not have been able to be the experts we are now, though.

What post modernism debunks, finally, is the basis for the pretense of expertise. It undercuts the possibility for intellectual heroism. I think that this is probably why it has evoked such a strong reaction. What it does not do, though, is create nihilism. Rather, I think, it does just the reverse. It helps break down the barriers, founded in our egos, that block us from being real with each other.

My testimony is that the world that it helps open to us is wonderful with meaning.

72

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.78 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:27:01 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions