The Politics of Postmodernity

244 Pages·1998·14.17 MB·English

by  James M. M. Good, Irving Velody

The Politics of Postmodernity
In his famous study Modernity and the Holocaust Zygmunt Bauman
contrasted the hopes and expectations of the modernising world of the
nineteenth century with the real outcomes of the twentieth century,
where the very conditions of modernity have led to the mass destruc-
tion of humanity and of early hopes for the betterment of humankind.
In The Politics of Postmodernity a distinguished international team of
contributors explores the possibilities left to once modernising socie-
ties, not only in terms of the worlds they have constructed but also in
discerning the novel conditions which the closure of modernity entails.
That closure, in part the completion of industrialisation and the social
order that went with it, and in part the dislocation of the kinds of social
knowledge used to understand it, has raised profound and disturbing
questions about the character of this brave new world, this postmodern
society, and the new ways in which its governance and the goal of the
good society can be understood. These issues are the focus of The
Politics of Postmodernity, which seeks to explore some of the current
vicissitudes of modernity, especially in relation to the crises of the
political and the political consequences of new technologies.
In keeping with the breadth of its subject the contributors to The
Politics of Postmodernity are drawn from contrasting disciplinary back-
grounds, including sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history and
political theory, and the whole represents one of the most significant
collaborative interventions yet in the most important intellectual
debate of our times.
JAMES GOOD teaches social psychology at the University of Durham
where he is also Director of the Centre for the History of the Human
Sciences. He is co-editor (with Richard Roberts) of The Recovery of
Rhetoric.
IRVING VELODY is Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of
Sociology at the University of Bristol and in the Faculty of Economics
and Social Science at the University of the West of England. He is co-
editor of Rewriting the History of Madness: Studies in Foucault's 'Histoire
de la folie' (with Arthur Still) and of Politics and Modernity (with Robin
Williams).

The Politics of Postmodernity
Edited by
James Good
and
Irving Velody
I CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
cambridge university press
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,
São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo, Mexico City
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521467278
© Cambridge University Press 1998
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1998
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
The politics of postmodernity / edited by James Good and Irving Velody.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 0 521 46162 6 (hc). - ISBN 0 521 46727 6 (pbk.)
1. Postmodernism - Political aspects. I. Good, James, 1941-
II Velody, Irving.
JA71.P643 1998
303.4-dc21 97-42128 CIP
isbn 978-0-521-46162-7 Hardback
isbn 978-0-521-46727-8 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or
accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in
this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is,
or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Information regarding prices, travel
timetables, and other factual information given in this work is correct at
the time of first printing but Cambridge University Press does not guarantee
the accuracy of such information thereafter.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on contributors viii
1 Introduction: postmodernity and the political 1
JAMES GOOD AND IRVING VELODY
Part I Modernity and its vicissitudes 19
2 Parvenu and pariah: heroes and victims of modernity 23
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
3 Private and public in 'late-modern' democracy 36
GEOFFREY HAWTHORN AND CAMILLA LUND
4 Modernity and disenchantment: some reflections on
Charles Taylor's diagnosis 49
QUENTIN SKINNER
5 Postmodernism and 'the end of philosophy' 61
DAVID E. COOPER
Part II The critique of modernist political thought 73
6 Antinomies of modernist political thought: reasoning,
context and community 76
RAYMOND PLANT
7 Master narratives and feminist subversions 107
DIANA COOLE
8 In different voices: deliberative democracy and aestheticist
politics 126
JUDITH SQUIRES
V
vi Contents
Part III Technology and the politics of culture 147
9 Technology, modernity, politics 150
HERMINIO MARTINS
10 Surrogates and substitutes: new practices for old? 182
MARILYN STRATHERN
11 Postmodernism, the sublime and ethics 210
ROY BOYNE
Index 227
Acknowledgements
We wish to acknowledge the valuable help and support of our colleagues
in the Centre for the History of the Human Sciences in Durham during
the preparation of this volume.
We are grateful for the financial support of the General Lectures
Committee of the University of Durham without which the 1991-2
public lecture series from which many of these chapters derive would
not have taken place.
In Durham we are much indebted to the late Joan Trowbridge who
not only word processed successive drafts of some of the chapters but
was invaluable in liaising with contributors. The index was prepared in
Bristol by Maggie Studholme. We are especially appreciative of the
scholarly way in which she dealt with this task.
We are grateful to the following for their permission to republish some
of the material in this collection: the editor of the Irish Journal of
Philosophy for David Cooper's chapter; to Blackwell for Raymond
Plant's chapter; and, for Quentin Skinner's chapter, to Cambridge
University Press.
A special debt is owed to our editor at Cambridge University Press,
Richard Fisher, for his patience and readiness to be helpful at all stages
in the preparation of the manuscript.
Above all we express our warm thanks to Halina and Harriet for their
love and support; and to Jane and Katharine for believing that these
longstanding editorial duties could come to an end and for constant
reminders which helped to ensure that they did.
James Good
Irving Velody
Notes on contributors
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN is Emeritus Professor at Leeds University.
Amongst his many publications are Modernity and the Holocaust
(1989) and Postmodernity and its Discontents (1996).
ROY BOYNE is Professor of Sociology at the University of Durham. His
study Foucault and Derrida: The Other Side of Reason was published in
1990. He is currently completing a book entitled Postmodern Sub-
jectivity.
DIANA COOLE is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at Queen Mary
and Westfield College, University of London. She is author of Women
in Political Theory (1988, 1993) and has written extensively on
feminism, postmodernism and postwar French thought. She is cur-
rently completing a book entitled Politics and Negativity.
DAVID E. COOPER is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Durham. He has held Visiting Professorships in the USA, Europe and
South Africa. His most recent books are World Philosophies: An
Historical Introduction and Heidegger. He is currently editing the series
Philosophy: The Classic Readings.
JAMES GOOD teaches social psychology at the University of Durham
where he is Director of the Centre for the History of the Human
Sciences. He is co-editor with Richard Roberts of The Recovery of
Rhetoric (1993). He is currently completing a book entitled Disci-
plining Social Psychology: A Case Study of Boundary Relations in the
Human Sciences.
GEOFFREY HAWTHORN teaches politics and sociology at Cambridge
University. Among his publications is Plausible Worlds: Possibility and
Understanding in History and the Social Sciences (1991).
CAMILLA LUND received her PhD from Cambridge University in 1995.
She held the Carlsberg Visiting Fellowship at Clare Hall, Cambridge
vi