To begin the chapter, David Hardy starts discussing the changes in culture and political-economic practices since the early 1970’s. Hardy says:
“There is some kind of necessary relationship between the rise of postmodernist cultural forms, the emergence of more flexible modes of capital accumulation, and a new round of ‘time-space compression’ in the organization of capitalism. But these changes, when set against the basic rules of capitalistic accumulation, appear more as shifts in surface appearance rather than as signs of the emergence of some entirely new postcapitalist or even postindustrial society…”
With the word capital popping up so much, I couldn’t help but want to relate this to Marx and his economic viewpoint of traditional capital accumulation. Traditionally, investing in real goods, workers’ skills and living off less than you earn are all values to focus upon. The introduction is saying that though cultural forms, flexible capital accumulation modes and time space compression have a relationship, is more like the were shuffled to look like a new society rather than offering something new.
Post modernists focus on knowing the “multiple forms over otherness”, whether it be dealing with sex and/or gender, race/ethnicity, class, or location geographically.
Post modernism is also supposed to mimic societal practices in a sense. Hardy discusses the AT&T building and how it was made out of granite, despite being twice the price of glass, to be different. This goes back to class discussions we’ve had on class and power, and how perhaps AT&T were trying to show their worth.
At the top of page 237 Hardy discusses Postmodernism as a movement that tries to overcome modernism’s ills, though Hardy thinks bashing modernism is a bit overdone. By the middle of the page, Hardy is explaining how modernists had many great ideas and achievements from which many postmodernist ideas sprang. He goes on to say that perhaps capitalists are just as much if not wholly to blame for some of the downfall. It’s as if postmodernism has issues with modernism, so the postmodernism, in all its fractured, fragmented glory, takes the achievements of the modernists and owns them, and then changes the parts they don’t like to make it even more of their own.
From what I could gather from page 238, postmodernism really likes to take apart everything. Break down items piece by piece to find more depth and meaning. I did not understand the third full paragraph on this page when Hardy says that the authenticity of other voices occurs, but at the same time makes them shut off by universal sources of power. By the end of the page, Hardy loses me completely, discussing how postmodernists avoids “confronting the realities of political economy and the circumstances of global power….the postmodernist simply push it underground to function as a ‘now unconscious effectivity’”. Does this mean they are not open to discussing this or is it just not a concern to them? Or perhaps neither and there is an entirely different explanation.
Hardy uses the table on 240 to makes some points on Fordist modernity and flexible postmodernism. When Fordist modernity’s portion of the table is showing things such as fixed capital and stable and standardized ideas, it also has a focus of, as Hardy puts it “Becoming- of growth and transformation”. Likewise, flexible postmodernism looks at the fantasy intangible items, but also has a commitment to “Being and a place, a penchant for charismatic politics, concerns for ontology, and the stable institutions favored by neo-conservatism”.
The first full paragraph on 241 was hard for me to grasp, but what I think it is trying to say is that the table could be the full description of ideas and rationale within capitalism. It has both ends of the spectrum on many topics and there is a constant state of fluctuation between the modern and the postmodern ideas.
To finish up the chapter, Hardy asks where real change can come from. He mentions that our value systems and beliefs cannot be mechanically reproduced, and that critique can happen somewhere between “subjective and objective structures”.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
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2 comments:
The writer did a good job of breaking down the chapter. By hitting on many points throughout the chapter it helped me when reading to pay attention to what they were discussing on the blog.
Harvey starts of by talking about how postmodernism mimics. How its mimics not only social practice but economic as well as political practices throughout society. You can see this when talking about power.
Through discussion of the AT&T building it is clear to imagine how the rise of obtaining power influences the success in such an industry as this one. They took the risk of being unordinary in order to help visualize the strength of the company. As the writer said in their blog, the postmodernism of displaying power and a higher authority are mimicking the social practice in this society.
Harvey then talks about postmodernism being more of an extension in a way to modernism; that there isn’t a huge difference between these two movements. He states that postmodernists took over the achievements of modernists. Doing so in a way of altering certain aspects of them and simplifying itself. He frequently talks about postmodernism as being flexible. I think what he means is it accommodates to a situation rather then engraving it in stone, adjusting to each new event.
To understand this chapter and this blog, I chose to really analyze the term postmodernism. It's an aesthetic, literary, political or social philosophy, which was the basis of the attempt to describe a condition or a state of being, or something concerned with changes to institutions and conditions. I think the writer did a good job of really getting down to what postmodernism really is when she compares the Marxist economical view of traditional capital accumulation with the word capital being mentioned in the chapter so much, and Harvey's use of the AT&T building being a front for the ego and how that is an example of mimicking societal practices.
I think what Harvey was getting at on Page 238, where the writer got lost, is the we, as a society, need to submit to the fact that some things cannot be settled, and the "quieter" voices will be disempowered because they are outnumbered. We live in a world of lopsided power relations, and I think the condition of postmodernity is concerned with changes to institutions and we all have to adapt. Harvey mentions that the voices that are being shut off are "ghettoized" which I think is the main idea of the whole chapter. We are afraid of what we do not know, therefore we choose not to embrace the unknown and the outnumbered, and the more powerful you are, the less you have to adapt
The writers citation of the table on page 240 was a good way to bring together the idea of the blog for the chapter with Harvey's "Becoming- of growth and transformation." The conclusion of the blog is good where the writer mentions Harvey's notation of the inability of our value systems to be mechanically reproduced.
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