# On Postmodernism

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Stephen R. Friberg, On Postmodernism, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> On Postmodernism
> 
> Stephen R. Friberg
> 
> 1998-11
> 
> Dear Friends:
> 
> I while back, I mentioned that there are new trends of thought in modern academia -- postmodernism -- very
> critical of the claims to objectivity of more traditional and entrenched disciplines. In this post, I briefly
> outline aspects of postmodern thought.
> 
> The Universal House of Justice, in recent comments entitled "Issues Related to the Study of the Bahá'í Faith:
> Extracts from Letters Written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice," wrote with regards to some of the
> claims to objectivity made in certain academic practices:
> 
> We do a grave disservice to both ourselves and the Faith when we simply submit to the
> authority of academic practices that appeal for their claim of objectivity to theories which
> themselves are being increasingly called into question by major thinkers.
> 
> The House does not make specific mention of whom those major thinkers are, but major postmodern thinkers
> are among the world's most influential at present.
> 
> A excellent overview of postmodernism is given by J. L Parpart and M. H. Marchand in the introduction of
> "Feminism, Postmodernism, and Development," M. H. Marchand and J. L Parpart, eds., [Routledge, London,
> 1995]. Quoting from pages 2-3:
> 
> Postmodernists ... question the assumptions of the modern age, particularly the belief
> that rational thought and technological innovation can guarantee progress and enlightenment to
> humanity.
> 
> In a passage reminiscent of Shoghi Effendi:
> 
> They doubt the ability of thinkers from the West either to understand the world or to
> prescribe solutions for it. The grand theories of the past, whether liberal or Marxist, have been
> dismissed as products of an age when Europeans and North Americans mistakenly believed in their
> own invincibility.
> 
> An important theme of postmodernism is resistance to 'metanarratives':
> 
> The metanarratives of such thought are no longer seen as 'truth,' but simply as
> privileged discourses that deny and silence competing dissident voices. ... Michel Foucault ... argues
> that discourse - a historically, socially and institutionally specific structure of statements, terms,
> categories, and beliefs - is the site where meanings are contested and power relations
> determined.
> 
> From this point of view, institutionalized scholarship can be a form of domination:
> 
> The ability to control knowledge and meaning, not only through writing but also through
> disciplinary and professional institutions, and in social relations, is the key to understanding and
> exercising power relatinships in society. According to Foucault, the false power of hegemonic
> knowledge can be challenged by counter- hegemonic discourses which offer alternative explanations
> of 'reality.'
> 
> About deconstructionism:
> 
> [Attention has been directed] to the power of language/discourse and its impact on the
> way people understand and assign meaning to their lives. It has lead to a call for the dismantling or
> deconstruction of language/discourse in order to discover the way meaning is constructed and
> used.
> 
> There is an interesting angle for those interested in Buddhism and Northern Asia thought:
> 
> Jacques Derrida in particular emphasizes the crucial role played by binary opposites.
> Indeed, he argues that Western philosophy largely rests on opposites, such as truth/falsity,
> unity/diversity or man/women, whereby the nature and primacy of the first term depends on the
> definition of its opposite (other) and whereby the first term is also superior to the
> second.
> 
> Very heady stuff, and now very widely studied. I'm surprised that so little attention has been paid to
> postmodernism in a Bahá'í Studies context.
> 
> (second posting on postmodernism...)
> 
> Dear Friends:
> 
> The reason I am interested in postmodernism has to do with recent concerns about 'start-up' problems in
> Bahá'í Studies: issues like the polarizations that have kept Bahá'í Studies from making significant
> contributions, or the 'middle eastern studies' controversies.
> 
> An important question to me is how do we support and encourage promising and important scholarship of the
> sort we see on this list: I see our scholars, amateur and professional alike, as being a priceless treasure (as
> the PR folks say, an "investment in the future.")
> 
> To a significant degree, trust and communication has been lacking between some scholars and the community
> they wish to represent. It is the reasons for this lack of trust that I find myself wishing to understand.
> Learning what these reasons are is an important step towards establishing a strong, healthy, and respected
> Bahá'í Scholarship, in my opinion.
> 
> Traditionally, many Bahá'ís with scholarly interests have blamed the problem on anti-intellectualism. While
> I don't discount the extent to which anti-intellectualism prevails in the Anglo-Saxon world, I find that as an
> explanation of the problems of Bahá'í Scholarship, it lacks both substance and the ability to point to solutions.
> Rather, and here is where my postmodern assumptions come in, I see it as an attempt -- a time-honored one
> to be sure -- to assign blame, to escape intellectual responsibility, and yes, to try to obtain authority. It is,
> of course, derogatory to label someone or a group of people as anti-intellectual.
> 
> More broadly, I have come to see our scholarship problems as structural in nature: they stem from
> widespread assumptions in our society - assumptions derived from our pasts and still tremendously
> influential in our thinking -- and the accompanying "instabilities" that these assumptions create. In
> particular, I am interested in the assumptions that come into play in the relationship between the"learned"
> and the rest of the community. And while I indeed think there is some truth to the view that non-scholars are
> responsible for the problems, I consider that the main responsibility for improvement lies with would-be
> Bahá'í scholars, as presumably they are the ones with the better education and the necessary broader
> perspectives.
> 
> While I certainly do not swallow the postmodern story hook, line, and sinker, I think that it offers a powerful
> analysis of the kinds of conflicts that beset our infant Bahá'í Studies.
> 
> Let me give an example of a postmodern analysis. It concerns discussion with a person named [....].
> 
> A number of people are misunderstanding the points that [....] is making, thereby seeming (they may not be
> doing this at all, I'm only talking about appearances) to suggest that his points are not logical or meaningful.
> Doing this -- in postmodern parlance -- is 'marginalization': the assignment of certain points of view or
> perspectives to the category of the 'other'. [See Edward Said and his book "Orientalism" for a thorough
> discussion of this. There are, however, libraries of books on this.]
> 
> [....] has made a move to counter the consequence of such 'marginalization moves' by saying that the
> arguments that are being made are not of universal validity, but of importance only in the limited domain of
> intellectual studies of religion, a nifty argument, in my opinion, and a standard postmodern move.
> 
> I take [....] arguments very seriously, as they are in conformity with much of what 'Abdu'l Bahá, Shoghi
> Effendi, and the Universal House of Justice are saying. In effect, they point directly to where entrenched
> secular intellectual methodologies view their authority as unquestionable, even though this leads to clashes
> with other forms of thought, undesirable conflict, and perhaps a worsening of the world's problems.
> 
> The House has said numerous times that there are aspects of the old world order culture which are harmful.
> Perhaps the sometimes extreme claims to authority of an intellectual 'essentializing' methodology is among
> those aspects. I think it wouldn't hurt to consider the possibility that it were so.
> 
> (third posting on postmodernism...)
> 
> Dear xxx:
> 
> I'm glad you are interested in these topics! You wrote:
> 
> "...What is the consensus on postmodernism in general? At times
> I have called my thought postmodern, but then that meant
> different things to different people. "Postmodern" is a
> difficult signifier. Foucault and Derrida don't have much
> use for it..."
> 
> Postmodernism as a word is a pastiche of different meanings,
> to give it a postmodern definition. The term is originally
> American, and came up from an influential book in the 60s
> discussing the mind-numbing effects of modern architecture,
> with its sterile black boxes and crime-ridden housing projects,
> in American cities. Mies van der Rohe and le Corbusier are the
> influential early promoters of these respective architectures,
> and their work is considered to be the epitome of "modern"
> architecture. (Much as Frank Gehry is now the epitome of
> the postmodern.) By the 70s, art critics were similarly
> criticizing the monumental modern styles of painting developed
> for museums and major corporate sponsors in the 50s and the 60s.
> 
> Finally, literary critics used the term to characterize the
> shift from modern styles in poetry and literature, developed
> in the first part of the century, to the styles then coming
> into favor. Thomas Pynchon, author of Gravity's Rainbow and
> The Crying of Lot 49, epitomizes postmodern literary style.
> 
> So, the origins are American. And when American humanities
> became enamored of French structuralist and poststructuralist
> thought, Levi-Straus, Foucault, Derrida and others, and incorporated their thought into American thinking, the term was
> retained, although the subject matter was altered somewhat.
> 
> Now, postmodernism has peaked and is fading. Or perhaps,
> the multiplicity of the different strands always present in it
> have become powerful enough in their own right so that they
> characterize themselves, and are characterized, differently.
> In France, structuralism and poststructuralism are passé.
> 
> "...Its center seems to be America, but those who use it
> often associate it with (some) French thought. I suppose
> it was inevitable given the modernist drive to define
> itself. It seems to me that more than anything, which
> invites the signifier 'postmodern'. In that sense 'postmodern'
> is a permanent possibility of modernism. I like to use
> 'postmodern' because it implies that the world has changed
> and our thought and speech ought to keep up with the change..."
> 
> I like your definition. Might I try to outline my thinking
> on the topic. I'll do it using what I have called Bahá'í
> critical thinking: i.e., the Bahá'í critique of present
> day society.
> 
> In Bahá'í critical thought, the world is seen as going through
> a period of transition from its childhood to its adolescence to
> its maturity. The emergence of the modern nation-state and its
> associated social organizations has been nearly completed and the
> transition to a world civilization is beginning. This transition,
> according to Bahá'í critical thought, is the change from the sturm
> and drang of adolescence to adulthood: a paradigm shift of immense
> consequences.
> 
> I view this critical perspective as applying to modernism, the
> enlightenment, and postmodernism in the following way. Enlightenment thought (which I was bred and fed on) is the transition
> in the intellectual sphere most strongly coupled with the
> emergence of the modern state. (I don't think this point
> controversial, as it appears to have long been widely accepted).
> 
> Characteristic of this thought, perhaps even necessary to it,
> is a certain single-mindedness - what Isiah Berlin and Karl Popper
> have characterized as "monism". In America it was labeled
> "Manifest Destiny," in France the "Citizen," in Germany, it
> was German unity, etc. In practice, it was a whole complex
> of institutions, education programs, modes of thought, art, and
> literature, science, technology, political institutions,
> favored principals, and such. These social complexes created
> the powerful nation states, and indeed, the modern world as we
> know it today.
> 
> It also created, or exacerbated, whole sets of problems. Modern
> nations are *not* the simple, "one-size-fits-all" entities of
> classical thinking. And nations, once established, brought
> themselves (and still do) into ruinous conflicts with each other.
> 
> It is this "one-size-fits-all" approach, the uniform grand idea
> of nation building and even enlightenment thinking about global
> civilization, that is usually considered to make up the "modern"
> in "postmodernism." It is this influence, or at least the baneful
> aspects of it, that postmodernists have often wished to exorcise
> from our psyche.
> 
> So, I conclude that postmodernism, a name which may have outstayed
> its welcome, is not simply a continuing effort to keep modernism
> advancing, but rather the first rays of the transition in the
> certain intellectual and artistic spheres to a consciousness of
> the emerging world civilization. Central to postmodernism,
> and central to Bahá'í critical thinking, is an emphasis on the
> importance of diversity for the emerging world civilization.
> (Because we are moderns, I think it very easy for us to under-estimate how important this diversity is.)
> 
> Maybe, I should let Bahá'í critical thinking have the last word.
> Mankind's maturity requires both unity and diversity. It is the
> lack of postmodernism's appreciation of unity that dates it and makes
> it inadequate to the needs of the times.
> 
> Yours sincerely,
> 
> Stephen R. Friberg
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views13771 views since posted 1998-01-12; last edit 2022-03-20 02:04 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../friberg_on_postmodernism;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> — *On Postmodernism (Used by permission of the curator)*