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Critical Theory and Poststructuralism by the SAME AUTHOR Critical Theory and Poststructuralism BY THE SAME AUTHOR Foucault, Marxism, and History Sartre's Marxism Critical Theory of the Family Existential Marxism in Postwar France The Utopian Thought of Restif de la Bretonne Baudrillard: Selected Writings The Mirror of Production, trans. Harmonian Man: Selected Writings of Fourier, ed. Critical Theory and Poststructuralism IN SEARCH OF A CONTEXT Mark Poster Cornell University Press ITHACA AND LONDON Copyright© 1989 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, 124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1989 by Cornell University Press. International Standard Book Number 0-8014-2336-8 (cloth) International Standard Book Number 0-8014-9588-1 (paper) Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 89-7262 Librarians: Libraryof Congress cataloging information appears on the last page of the book. The paper in this book is acid-free and meets the guidelines fo r permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Theory and the Problem of Context 1 1 The Modern versus the Postmodern 12 2 Sartre's Concept of the Intellectual 34 3 Foucault and the Problem of Self-Constitution 53 4 Foucault, the Present, and History 70 5 Foucault and the Tyranny of Greece 87 6 Foucault, Poststructuralism, and the Mode of Information 104 7 The Mode of Information 124 8 The Family and the Mode of Information 143 Index 171 Acknowledgments The Introduction and Chapters 3, 7, and 8 appear here for the first time. The other essays in this book have appeared elsewhere, al­ though they have been revised, in some cases substantially, for this publication. Chapter 1 was published in Jack Trumpbour, ed., Interna­ tional Perspectives on Europe, vol. 1, Politics and Society in Contemporary France and Germany (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 1989); Chapter 2 was published in Notebooks in CulturalAnalysis, no. 1 (1984), 39-52; Chapter 4 appeared in Cultural Critique, 8 (Winter 1987-88), 105-22; Chapter 5 appeared in David Hoy, ed., Foucault: A Critical Reader (London: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 205-20. Chapter 6 appeared in Murray Krieger, ed., The Aims of Representation: Subject/Text/History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), pp. 107-30, copyright © 1987 by Columbia University, New York; used by permission. During the years of writing these pieces my work was deeply influ­ enced by discussions with my colleagues in the Critical Theory In­ stitute at the University of California, Irvine. I am especially indebted to David Carroll, with whom I have enjoyed a continuing debate about theoretical concerns since the early 1970s. Chapter 6 was presented to the Critical Theory Institute and was enhanced by the institute' s diver­ sity of viewpoints and its lively, disputatious atmosphere of criticism and exchange of ideas. I have greatly benefited from discussions with Leslie Rabine, particularly concerning deconstruction and its relation to feminist theory. Allan Megill gave me detailed and thoughtful comments for improvement of the entire manuscript. His thorough, [viii] Acknowledgments sympathetic criticism greatly assisted me in transforming what once were discrete essays into a coherent volume; his help is a model intellectual collegiality. Martin Jay carefully read the entire manu­ script. His enormous erudition enhanced my writing in many places and his insightful knowledge of the Frankfurt School alerted me to many limitations of my discussion of that subject. My good friend Jonathan Wiener read parts of the manuscript and made helpful sug­ gestions. John Rowe, also of the Critical Theory Institute, read Chap­ ter 4 and Michael Clark read Chapter 6; both provided me with the benefit of their comments. The Critical Theory Institute and the Re­ search and Travel fund of the School of Humanities at the University of California at Irvine generously supported my work on this book. MARK POSTER Irvine, California Critical Theory and Poststructuralism Introduction: Theory and the Problem of Context This book attempts a rapprochement between the tradition of critical social theory as developed by the Frankfurt School and other conti­ nental theorists, including Jean-Paul Sartre, and French poststruc­ turalism, especially as practiced by Michel Foucault. The urgency of this confrontation, in my mind, is due to the inability of critical theory to sustain a convincing critique of the present social formation in face of the need for such a critique. Critical theory, as definedlong ago by Max Horkheimer, 1 attempts to promote the project of emancipation by furthering what it understands as the theoretical effort of the critique of domination begun by the Enlightenment and continued by Karl Marx. I am in agreement with that restricted definition. Often, how­ ever, the term critical theory also implies the use of specific Marxist concepts, such as the dialectic, or includes an insistence on framing critical discourse in relation to some stage of capitalism.2 I find this meaning of critical theory less useful because I think that in the present conjuncture the critique of capitalism serves to obscure the under­ standing of new forms of domination which have emerged during this century. In the first half of the twentieth century Marxist theory suffered three setbacks: (1) the establishment of bureaucratic socialism in East- 1Max Horkheimer, "Traditional and Critical Theory," Critical Theory: Selected Essays, trans. Matthew O'Connell et al. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), pp. 188-243. 2Douglas Kellner, Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming). [ 2] Critical Theory and Poststructuralism ern Europe; (2) the rise of fascism in Central Europe; and (3) the birth of the "culture industry" in Western Europe and the United States. These massive phenomena reshuffled the dialectical deck of cards. No longer could it be said that the working class is the standard-bearer of freedom, the living negation of domination, the progressive side in contemporary class struggles that would surely end in a utopian com­ munity. The Frankfurt School reconstructed Marxism so as better to account for the new situation, especially for the ideological hegemony of capitalism and the cultural supremacy of mass society. But the Frankfurt School never adequately clarified its relation to Marxism. The critique of the "culture industry" by Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse waffled over the years between two positions. On the one hand, the critique of culture was theorized as a supplement to a Marxist understanding of capitalism. In Frankfurt School texts, workers, now considered "the masses," were viewed as manipulated, depoliticized, and reconciled to capitalist values by all aspects of popular culture. Jazz, astrology columns, sports, television, consumer goods generally-the entire panorama of leisure and daily life since World War II-narcotized and numbed the working class. The Frankfurt School presented a monochromatic picture of mass culture in which a dubious functionalist analysis operated. A unified and mystifying intention to disrupt the class struggle stood behind every manifestation of the culture industry. The discourse of the Frankfurt School staged contemporary life as a parody of crude capital­ ist greed and stupid working-class gullibility. On the other hand, Adorno and Horkheimer, though perhaps not Marcuse, gave up on the working class. They began to despair over its negative, liberatory powers and therefore eased their resort to the capitalist mode of production as the foundation of their discourse. In their writings both the working-class subject and the bourgeois subject began to disappear from history. Adorno especially moved toward a "negative dialectic," a postulate of nonidentity and a remote appeal to critique as the last resort of a world without discernible hope for redemption. In both its theoretical modes-mass culture based on functionalist Marxism and Olympian critique based on negative dia­ lectic-the critical power of Frankfurt School writings began to dissi­ pate. Today in the late twentieth century the situation has grown worse. This time critical theory has suffered three additional setbacks: (1) the decolonization movement has raised voices that question the ability of Theory and the Problem of Context [3] Western thought to encompass the critique of Western forms of domi­ nation; (2) the feminist movement has uncovered patriarchal elements within Western theory, not excepting critical theory; (3) the social formation has been altered by electronic systems of communication, cybernetic devices, and a massive institutional growth of science, changes I lump together under the designation "mode of informa­ tion." Albeit in very different ways, each of these developments calls into question not only the familiar social landscape that had been the target of critical theory but the subject of that theory-the position of the knower, the assumptions of the theorist that authorized him/her to write, that governed the shape of his/her discourse, that provided certain unexamined suppositions about the world, about writing, and about the relation of writing to the world. Yet critical theory contains the best of what remains in the shambles of the Marxist and neo-Marxist theoretical positions, the best of what is left of the Left. It presents an attitude of antagonism and critique in the face of the deeply problematic contemporary social formation. It sustains an effort to theorize the present as a moment between the past and the future, thus holding up a historicizing mirror to society, one that compels a recognition of the transitory and fallible nature of society, one that insists that what is can be disassembled and im­ proved considerably. Critical theory goes against the grain of a legit­ imating process endemic to power formations, a discursive mecha­ nism through which the finitude of institutions is naturalized and universalized.
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