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Postmodernism
claims it "privileges" no "meta-narrative." Yet it really "privileges"
that philosophical meta-narrative called pluralism (many) over
the meta-narratives of monism (one) or dualism (two).
The
symbols for pluralism in our late capitalistic economy are those
contemporary mini-symbols called products and brands. And what are
products and brands but the content of words and information searching
for the contextual monism of the original symbolic image?
Consumer
culture "votes" certain products (content, words, and information)
into "leadership" roles by the act of buying some products (content)
more than others. Therefore, the leading products and brands in
culture at particular times represents a "democratic" type of "privilege"
rather than a "philosophic" argument for the existence of no privilege.
In effect, the particular "information" surrounding these leading
products is "privileged" over the information surrounding other
products for these moments in time.
There
exist symbolic correspondences (relationships) between the leading
content (products) of culture. These correspondences are not contentual
(similarities in outward features, benefits and appearances) but
rather contextual (similarities relating to subjective ideas like
space, place and time). Dominance of a film like Titanic in the
mid-90s (night-time love story and tragedy that takes place in the
context of the ocean) finds contextual relationship to feminine
symbolism of water, ocean, night-time and the romance genre. This
contextual symbolism "voted" into a privileged leadership position
in the mid-90s has correspondences with product content from other
areas: cars, music, books, celebrities and events.
This
overall relationship between content of culture at particular times
has been termed various things. Hegel called it the "zeitgeist"
or the "spirit of the times." Jung termed it "archetype" or "collective
unconscious."
In terms
of postmodern culture, one can say that the content of culture "voted"
into dominance at a particular time represents the "meta-narrative"
of culture. One needs to keep in mind that it is a "meta-narrative"
for a moment in time and not the grand narrative (or ideology) for
an age or an era.
It is
a different type of "meta-narrative" than postmodern philosophers
have in mind. For this grand narrative "privileges" the vertical
alignment of similarities found at the particular moment in time
rather than the horizontal juxtapositions of differentiation found
in the linear world of causal time where information breeds more
information and repeatedly knocks into itself like bumper cars at
an amusement park. It "privileges" selection of content by popular
culture rather than imposition of rule by elitist culture. A "democracy
of consumption" where "leaders" are "voted" on each day at the supermarkets
and movies rather than each four years in the voting booths. As
McLuhan once said, the living room is the new voting booth.
And
it expresses the correspondence and synchronicity between the "given"
contextual world of nature and the "produced" world of cultural
content. This is what Jung was moving towards in his ideas about
synchronicity. He certainly meant it to mean more that the strange
knockings of beetles (Gold Scarabs) against windows in consultations
with neurotic patients.
These
meta-narratives are based on the moment and they change based on
a dualistic system which moves between opposites. It is a cyclical
system and, as it is with all cyclical systems, there is a standard
progression of sequences in movement between the opposites. These
cyclic sequences correspond to stages of human psychic and biologic
growth. They also have correspondence with stages in the cycles
of cultures. As Erich Neumann points out in The Origins and History
of Consciousness, individual consciousness passes through the same
archetypal stages of development that mark the history of human
consciousness as a whole.
Each
stage in the sequence has a dominant image or symbol which gathers
all of the confused pluralism of product content around it like
a planet draws moons into its orbit, like a Galaxy draws solar systems
into a swirling dervish-like dance of embracement.
In this
process of imploding (rather than exploding) sequential symbols
of context serve to reduce the pluralistic diversity of content
at particular times rather than produce more content. The way out
of the stalemate of postmodern culture (a state similar to a backed-up
plumbing system) is not forward into the production of more product
content of information and words but rather backward through the
reduction of content and towards a return to the context of original
image. Through reduction not production.
Ironically,
the same electronic technology that allows an overproduction of
contentual symbols also brings with it a massive new power of monitoring
and tracking content. This new monitoring technology possesses within
it the technology of reduction. Technology has produced the content
of postmodern pluralism in a never-ending hypertext link of words.
It can also reduce words and move towards the original symbols of
image. The niche cultures of postmodernism might be aligned into
a powerful new American mass culture. And the silliness of postmodernism
might fade into the history books with the suddenness of disco,
flared pants and Tiny Tim.
Copyright
© 2000 John Fraim. All Rights Reserved
John
Fraim is a writer living in Santa Rosa, California.
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