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2018 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

6. The Foundations of Postmodernism

Author : Bradley Bowden

Published in: Work, Wealth, and Postmodernism

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Despite shared opposition to the processes of modernity, there are substantive differences within postmodernist understandings. Some, such as Lyotard and Jameson, believe that postmodernism is an actual social condition. Others see it as a critique of modernity. Even here, there are differences. Foucault regarded with disdain claims by Derrida and others that they could detect “traces”, hidden meanings of past existence, within texts. Derrida in turn condemned some of Foucault’s key findings as methodological impossibilities. This chapter will therefore explore both the commonalities and the differences that have defined postmodernism, paying particular attention to the work of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Hayden White.

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Footnotes
1
Gabrielle Durepos, “ANTI-History: Toward amodern histories”, in Patricia Genoe McLaren, Albert J. Mills, and Terrance Weatherbee (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Management and Organizational History, (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 161.
 
2
Michel Foucault (trans. Robert Hurley), The History of Sexuality – An Introduction, (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1977), 94.
 
3
Michel Foucault, “Preface to the 1961 edition”, in Michael Foucault (trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa), History of Madness, second edition (London, UK: Routledge, 2006), xxviii, xxxi. The book started life as Foucault’s PhD thesis, Folie et Déraison: Historie de La Folie à l’âge Classique. An abridged version was published in English as: Michel Foucault (trans. Richard Howard), Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1965). Following Derrida’s critique, an expanded version was published as History of Madness.
 
4
Jacques Derrida (trans. Alan Bass), Writing and Difference, (London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2001), 40–41.
 
5
Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe, (Baltimore, ML: John Hopkins University Press, 1973), x.
 
6
Jacques Derrida (trans. Peggy Kamuf), Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, (New York and London: Routledge Classics, 2006), 16.
 
7
Ibid., 15, 67.
 
8
Ibid., 106.
 
9
Foucault, History of Sexuality, 141.
 
10
Jean-Francois Lyotard (tans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi), The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1986), 47.
 
11
Jean-Francois Lyotard (trans. Régis Durand), “Answering the question: What is Postmodernism?”, Appendix in Jean-Francois Lyotard (trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi), The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1986), 76; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “A discourse on the arts and sciences”, in Jean-Jacques Rousseau (trans. C.D.H. Cole), The Social Contract and Discourses, (London, UK: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1950), 163.
 
12
George Berkeley, “The principles of human knowledge”, in George Berkeley (Ed. Howard Robinson), Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues, (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996), 38.
 
13
Durepos, “ANTI-History”, 161–62.
 
14
Greg Dening, “Writing: Praxis and performance”, in Ann Curthoys and Ann McGrath (Eds.), Writing Histories: Imagination and Narration, (Melbourne, AUS: Monash University ePress, 2009), 06.1.
 
15
Giambattista Vico (trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch), The New Science, third edition of 1744 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), 118.
 
16
Ibid., 120.
 
17
Ibid., 129–31; White, Metahistory, x.
 
18
Derrida, Writing and Difference, 41.
 
19
Jacques Derrida, in Michael Ben-Naftali, An Interview with Professor Jacques Derrida, (Jerusalem, Israel: Shoah Resource Centre, 8 January 1998), 2.
 
20
Hans Kellner, “‘Never again’ is now”, History and Theory, Vol. 33, No. 2 (May 1994), 140.
 
21
Ibid., 132.
 
22
Berel Lang, “Is it possible to misrepresent the Holocaust”, History and Theory, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Feb. 1995), 84–89; Hayden White, “Historical emplotment and the problem of truth”, in Saul Friedlander (Ed.), Probing the Limits of Representation, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 37–53. [White’s chapter on the Holocaust preceded Kellner’s article, which was written in part as a refutation of White’s epistemological shift.]
 
23
Kellner, “Never again”, 139.
 
24
Derrida, in Ben-Naftali, An Interview, 2.
 
25
Michele Lamont, “How to become a dominant French philosopher: The case of Jacques Derrida”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Nov. 1987), 595.
 
26
Jacques Derrida (trans. Gayatri Spivak), Of Grammatology, (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1976), 10.
 
27
Ibid.
 
28
Ibid., 3.
 
29
Among the other prominent figures in this movement were Jean-Pierre Richard, Jean-Paul Weber, and Charles Mauron. See: Katrine Pilcher Keuneman, “Preface to the English-language edition”, in Roland Barthes (trans. Katrine Pilcher Keuneman), Criticism and Truth, (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 15–25.
 
30
Roland Barthes (trans. Katrine Pilcher Keuneman), Criticism and Truth, (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 33.
 
31
Ibid. Barthes’ influence on Derrida is acknowledged in: Derrida, Of Grammatology, 51–52.
 
32
Ibid., 67; Roland Barthes (trans. Richard Howard), The Rustle of Language, (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 49.
 
33
Barthes, Rustle of Language, 49.
 
34
Derrida, Writing and Difference, 31–33.
 
35
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 106.
 
36
Derrida, in Ben-Naftali, An Interview, 2; Derrida, Specters of Marx, 15–17.
 
37
Franz Fanon (trans. Constance Farrington), The Wretched of the Earth, (New York, NY: Grove Press, 1963), 31–94.
 
38
Derrida, in Ben-Naftali, An Interview, 8.
 
39
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 85–87.
 
40
Derrida, Writing and Difference, 276–77.
 
41
Ibid., 100–01; 246–47.
 
42
Ibid., 13.
 
43
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 158–59; Chris Lorenz, “Historical knowledge and historical reality: a pleas for ‘internal realism’”, History and Theory, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Oct. 1994), 314.
 
44
Martin Heidegger (trans. John Macquarie and Edward Robinson), Being and Time, (London, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 1962), 9, 35, 45.
 
45
Ibid., 38. Derrida writes on the history of the concept of “trace” in: “Violence and metaphysics: an essay on the thought of Emmanuel Levinas”, in Derrida, Writing and Difference, 97–192.
 
46
Emmanuel Levinas, “Meaning and sense”, in Emmanuel Levinas (trans. Alphonso Lingis), Collected Philosophical Papers, (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987), 102.
 
47
Ibid., 103.
 
48
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 66; Barthes, Criticism and Truth, 33.
 
49
Mario Bunge, “In praise of intolerance to charlatanism in academia”, in Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt and Martin W. Lewis (Eds.), The Flight from Science and Reason, (New York, NY: New York Academy of Sciences, 1996), 97.
 
50
Cited in Barthes, Criticism and Truth, 29.
 
51
Brian Fay, “The linguistic turn and beyond in contemporary theory of history”, in Brian Fay, Philip Pomper and Richard T. Van (Eds.), History and Theory: Contemporary Readings, (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 1–12; Peter Clark and Michael Rowlinson, “The treatment in organisation studies: Towards an ‘historic turn’?” Business History, Vol. 46, No. 3, (Jul. 2004), 331.
 
52
F.R. Ankersmit, “Historiography and postmodernism”, History and Theory, Vol. 28, No. 2 (May 1989), 145–46.
 
53
F.R. Ankersmit, “Reply to Professor Zagorin”, History and Theory, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Oct. 1990), 281.
 
54
Derrida, Writing and Difference, 284–85.
 
55
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 106.
 
56
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, 1993 (New York, NY: United Nations, 1993), 27, 3.
 
57
Antonio Guterres, Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, 2017 (New York, NY: United Nations, 2017), 23.
 
58
Ibid., 10–11.
 
59
Foucault, “Preface to the 1961 edition”, xxxii–xxxiii, xxxi; Derrida, Writing and Difference, 36–76.
 
60
Foucault, History of Sexuality, 13; Michel Foucault, “Appendix III – Reply to Derrida”, in Michael Foucault (trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa), History of Madness, second edition (London, UK: Routledge, 2006), 576–77; Hayden White, “Foucault decoded: Notes from the underground”, History and Theory, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1973), 38; Michael Rowlinson and Chris Carter, “Foucault and history in organization studies”, Organization, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2002), 534.
 
61
Michel Foucault, “The discourse on language”, Appended to, Michel Foucault (trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith), The Archaeology of Knowledge, (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1972), 21. [The “discourse” was originally presented as a lecture in Paris in December 1970.]
 
62
Foucault, Order of Things, xiii.
 
63
White, “Foucault decoded”, 31.
 
64
Foucault, Order of Things, xiv; Gibson Foucault, “Modernism, postmodernism and organizational analysis: The contribution of Michael Foucault”, in Alan Mckinlay and Ken Starkey (Eds.), Foucault and Organizational Theory, (London, UK: Sage, 1998), 17.
 
65
Foucault, Order of Things, xx.
 
66
Derrida, Writing and Difference, 70.
 
67
Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 65.
 
68
Rowlinson and Carter, “Foucault and history”, 534.
 
69
Foucault, History of Madness; Michel Foucault (trans. Robert Hurley), The Use of Pleasure: Volume 2 of the History of Sexuality, (New York, NY: Random House, 1985); Michel Foucault (trans. Robert Hurley), The Care of the Self: Volume 3 of the History of Sexuality, (New York, NY: Random House, 1986). Foucault was working on a fourth volume at the time of his death.
 
70
Michel Foucault, “Appendix I – Madness, the absence of an oeuvre”, in Michael Foucault (trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa), History of Madness, second edition (London, UK: Routledge, 2006), 544.
 
71
Michel Foucault (trans. Alan Sheridan), Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1991), 304.
 
72
Ibid.
 
73
Ibid.
 
74
Foucault, Order of Things, 49.
 
75
Michel Foucault, “Appendix II – My body, this paper, this fire”, in Michael Foucault (trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa), History of Madness, second edition (London, UK: Routledge, 2006), 573.
 
76
Ibid., 4.
 
77
Foucault, Order of Things, 168.
 
78
Ibid., 200.
 
79
Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 5.
 
80
Ibid., 183.
 
81
Ibid., 126.
 
82
Ibid., 80, 85.
 
83
Ibid., 183.
 
84
Ibid., 76.
 
85
Foucault, History of Sexuality – an Introduction, 145, 100.
 
86
Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 308; Foucault, History of Sexuality – an Introduction, 145.
 
87
Foucault, History of Sexuality – an Introduction, 92–94.
 
88
Ibid., 85.
 
89
Ibid., 95–96.
 
90
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Twilight of the idols”, in Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. R.J. Hollingdale), Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ, (London, UK: Penguin Classics, 1990), 103, 59.
 
91
White, “Foucault decoded”, 25, 30.
 
92
Foucault, Order of Things, xviii.
 
93
Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 5.
 
94
Ibid., 14.
 
95
Foucault, “Discourse on language”, 222.
 
96
Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 73.
 
97
Ibid., 126.
 
98
Foucault, “Discourse on language”, 219.
 
99
Perez Zagorin, “Historiography and postmodernism: Reconsiderations”, History and Theory, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Oct. 1990), 263–74.
 
100
Sande Cohen, Passive Nihilism: Cultural Historiography and the Rhetorics of Scholarship, (New York, NY: St Martin’s Press, 1999), 2.
 
101
Ankersmit, “Historiography and postmodernism”, 143.
 
102
Fay, “Linguistic turn”, 1.
 
103
Ann Curthoys and Ann McGrath, “Introduction”, in Ann Curthoys and Ann McGrath (Eds.), Writing Histories: Imagination and Narration, (Melbourne, AUS: Monash University ePress, 2009), ix.
 
104
Gabrielle A.T. Durepos and Albert J. Mills, ANTi-History: Theorizing the Past, History, and Historiography in Management and Organization Studies, (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2012), 84.
 
105
White, Metahistory, 37.
 
106
Hayden White, “The value of narrativity in the representation of reality”, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Aut. 1980), 10.
 
107
Ibid., 8.
 
108
Hayden White, “The public relevance of historical studies: A reply to Dirk Moses’”, History and Theory, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Oct. 2005), 333.
 
109
White, Metahistory, 26, xii.
 
110
Ibid., x-xii.
 
111
White, “Foucault decoded”, 31.
 
112
Ibid., 50.
 
113
Ibid.; Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 47–48.
 
114
Hayden White, “The burden of history”, History and Theory, Vol. 5, No. 2 (May 1966), 123.
 
115
Alun Munslow, Deconstructing History, second edition (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1997), 17.
 
116
Vico, The New Science, 118.
 
117
Ibid., 120.
 
118
Ibid., 128.
 
119
Ibid., 131.
 
120
Ibid.
 
121
White, Metahistory, x.
 
122
Ibid., 283.
 
123
Hayden White, “The historical text as literary artefact”, in Brian Fay, Philip Pomper and Richard T. Van (Eds.), History and Theory: Contemporary Readings, (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 15–33.
 
124
White, Metahistory, 371.
 
125
Ibid.
 
126
Hayden White, “The politics of historical interpretation: Discipline and de-sublimation”, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 89, No. 1 (Sep. 1982), 113–37.
 
127
Michael Rowlinson, John Hassard and Stephanie Decker, “Research strategies for organizational history: a dialogue between historical theory and organization theory”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 39, No. 3 (2014), 151, 257.
 
128
Mats Alvesson and Dan Kärreman, “Taking the linguistic turn in organizational research”, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Jun. 2000), 144–45.
 
129
Roy Suddaby and Royston Greenwood, “Rhetorical strategies of legitimacy”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 50 (2005), 36. [The actual terminology associated with the “Rhetorical Attitude” can be traced back to: Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1950).]
 
130
Fay, “Linguistic turn”, 3–4.
 
131
Ibid., 4.
 
132
See, for example, Shilo Hills, Maxim Voronoz, and C.R. Bon Hinings, “Putting new win in old bottles: Utilizing rhetorical history to overcome stigma with a previously dominant logic”, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 39 (2013), 99–137; Ronald Kroeze and Sjoerd Keulen, “Leading a multinational is history in practice: The use of invented traditions and narratives at AkzoNobel, Shell, Philips and ABN AMRO”, Business History, Vol. 55, No. 8 (2013), 965–95; William Milton Foster, Roy Suddaby and Diego M. Coraiola, “Useful rhetorical history: An ideographic analysis of Fortune 500 corporations”, Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings, (Briarcliff Manor, NY: Academy of Management, August 2016). The last cited conference paper received the John F. Mee Award at the August 2016 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. This award is for the paper judged to be the best management submission at the annual Academy of Management meeting.
 
133
White, Metahistory, 283.
 
134
Niall Ferguson, “The Decline and Fall of History”, in Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Niall Ferguson, Preserving the Values of the West / The Decline and Fall of History, (Washington, DC: American Council of Trustees and Alumni, 2016), 13–15.
 
135
University of Queensland, Course List for the History Extended Major for 2018, http://​www.​uq.​edu.​au/​study/​plan_​display.​html?​acad_​plan=​HISTOY2000 [Accessed 26 October 2017].
 
136
Institute for Public Affairs, The Rise of Identity Politics: An Audit of History Teaching at Australian Universities in 2017, (Melbourne, AUS: Institute for Public Affairs, 2017), 3–4.
 
137
White, “Politics of historical interpretation”, 133.
 
138
Jean-Francois Lyotard (trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachael Bowlby), The Inhuman, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), 5; Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, 47, 50.
 
139
Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, 63, 51.
 
140
Lyotard, Inhuman, 67.
 
141
Jean-Francois Lyotard (trans. Iain Hamilton Grant), Libidinal Economy, (Bloomington and Indiana, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), 114–15; Lyotard, Inhuman, 6.
 
142
Lyotard, Inhuman, 6; Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, 47.
 
143
Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, 40–41.
 
144
Ibid., 67.
 
145
Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, 12.
 
146
Ibid., 10.
 
147
Ibid., 66.
 
148
Ibid., 67.
 
149
Frederick Jameson, Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, (London and New York: Verso, 1991), 297–98, 318–19.
 
150
David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 117, 232.
 
151
Jameson, Postmodernism, 357, 341.
 
152
Harvey, Condition of Postmodernity, 240; Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, 21.
 
153
Jameson, Postmodernism, 319.
 
154
Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, 63.
 
155
Harvey, Condition of Postmodernity, 296; Jameson, Postmodernism, 5.
 
156
Harvey, Condition of Postmodernity, 302–03. Among the most notable works in the literature on “place” are the following: Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender, (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1994); Jamie Peck, Work-Place: The Social Regulation of Labor Markets, (New York and London: Guildford Press, 1996); Neil Smith, Uneven Development: Nature and the Production of Space, (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1984); A.J. Scott, New Industrial Spaces: Flexible Production, Organization and Regional Development in North America and Western Europe, (London, UK: Pion Limited, 1988); Andrew Herod (Ed.), Organizing the Landscape: Geographical Perspectives on Labor Unionism, (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
 
157
Lyotard, “What Is Postmodernism?”, 76, 79.
 
158
Jameson, Postmodernism, 304.
 
159
Michael J. Dear, The Postmodern Urban Condition, (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), 317.
 
160
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno (trans. Edmund Jephcott), Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002).
 
161
Dear, Postmodern Urban Condition, 3.
 
162
Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, Second edition (London and New York: Verso, 2006), 254.
 
163
Ludge Basten, “Perceptions of Urban Space in the periphery: Potsdam’s Kirchsteigfeld”, Tidschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geographie, Vol. 95, No. 1 (Feb. 2004), 89.
 
164
Fulong Wu, “Transplanting cityscapes: the use of imagined globalization in housing commodification in Beijing”, Area, Vol. 36, No. 3 (2004), 227.
 
165
Statista, GDP of the Los Angeles Metro Area from 2010 to 2016, https://​www.​statista.​com/​statistics/​183822/​gdp-of-the-los-angeles-metro-area.
 
166
Kellner, “Never again”, 136.
 
167
Paul C. Godfrey, John Hassard, Ellen S. O’Connor, Michael Rowlinson and Martin Ruef, “What is organizational history? Toward a creative synthesis of history and organization studies”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 41, No. 3 (2016), 599.
 
168
Immanuel Kant (trans. Marcus Weigelt), Critique of Pure Reason, (London, UK: Penguin Classics, 2007), 348.
 
169
John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, (London, UK: Macmillan and Co., 1920), 9.
 
Metadata
Title
The Foundations of Postmodernism
Author
Bradley Bowden
Copyright Year
2018
Book
Work, Wealth, and Postmodernism

Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76179-4

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-76180-0

Copyright Year: 2018

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76180-0_6

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