By Evelyn Healy
Lisa Macdonald (GLW, #139 and #146) has warned, with reason, of aspects of postmodernism which make it a weapon for right-wing ideologues. She also shows that social theories must be challenged on how they work out in practice for real freedom and democracy.
Postmodernism appeared to me, at first, as a mixed bag of aims unencumbered by any special philosophy.
As an artist concerned with the interaction of art and politics over a 60-year period, I welcomed in the mid 1980s the positive aspect of postmodernist art — the trend which reaffirmed meaning and content, even slightly, as part of communication, often with the addition of explanatory texts.
This trend seemed to put to rest the false rightist dictum that "representational content (especially so-called "realism") corrupts the purity of art". Long before, the "hard line" left had also dropped its dogmas; they no longer saw modern non-representational artists of integrity as necessarily "bourgeois" or lacking in social concern.
At last the long decades during which representational and non-representational artists were being pitted against each other through false dogmas seemed over (which was about time, seeing that representational and non-representational art forms and their admixtures have existed in society since time immemorial!).
Although the demand for novelty, imposed by the highly competitive and unregulated art market, was by now extracting self-promotional gimmickry, pretentiousness and pseudo-science from some Australian artists, the democratisation of art was happening.
This was helped by the newly funded community arts movement, with its great unleashing of talent, the result of the coming together of professionals in arts and crafts, modern and traditional, "fine" and "popular".
Democratically controlled and close to the community, the movement's philosophy of humanism and creativity still tends to set it against the double standards of economic rationalism and radical liberalism.
As well, politically motivated left artists find appropriate ways, collectively and individually, to link art and politics.
With regard to the philosophies which have been woven around postmodernism, I have found them too contradictory and tedious to study in depth, especially after my experience of decades of false dictums imposed on art.
However, at the comprehensive International Green Left Conference in April, I was glad to participate in dialogue with some young people influenced by one of the "structuralist" theories of, presumably, postmodernism.
Among the seemingly real attractions in this for them were: self-empowerment (in a period of loss of identity); "a wonderful imagined future" of health, environmental sustainability, social justice, love and pleasure; attentiveness to listening and dialogue and no hierarchies. They see their method as "assisting to reunite the international left".
Yet here are some of their dictums: "nothing outside my structure determines what I do"; "I decide what is objective and subjective"; "the nervous system is a closed system" and "culture is a vast network of conversations".
On questioning, they agree their method is intellectual only — not affective, not physically active. "We are observers only ... " Their literature states: "It is time to lead, follow, or get out of the way. We do not suffer fools gladly".
These young people, theoretically against dictatorships of the right or left, believe they have found an intriguing science in "structural determinism", which appears to present itself as bypassing any real struggle against exploitation. As they test it (with encouragement) against their aspirations and rationality, some will undoubtedly shed their intellectual elitism and will draw from and contribute to the socialist movement.
The demystification of present-day philosophy, economics and politics, is vital for the empowerment of progressive movements and individuals, and for reclaiming humanist values. It is as well that there is a continuation of this difficult and time-consuming work, to which Green Left Weekly has given publicity. Hopefully constructive dialogue on all sides will remain open.
[Evelyn Healy is the author of The Left — a Personal Experience, 1935-1990.]