218 / JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND AESTHETICS HABERMAS AND POSTMODERNISM / 219

Whether or not his more recent works signification of detour, temporalizing delay; will dispel this caricature remains to be seen. ‘deferring.”4 Differentiation, in other words, FROM THE ARCHIVES From all reports of the mixed reception he implies for Derrida either nostalgia for a lost received in Paris when he gave the lectures unity or conversely a utopian hope for a that became Die philosophische Diskurs der future one. Additionally, the concept is Moderne, the odds are not very high that a suspect for deconstruction because it implies more nuanced comprehension of his work the crystallization of hard and fast will prevail, at least among certain critics. distinctions between spheres, and thus fails Habermas and Postmodernism At a time when virtually any defence of to register the supplementary rationalism is turned into a brief for the interpenetrability of all subsystems, the automatic suppression of otherness, effaced trace of alterity in their apparent heterogeneity and non-identity, it is hard to homogeneity, and the subversive absence predict a widely sympathetic hearing for his undermining their alleged fullness or complicated argument. Still, if such an presence. outcome is to be made at all possible, the Now, although deconstruction ought not Martin Jay task of unpacking his critique of to be uncritically equated with postmodernism and nuanced defence of postmodernism, a term Derrida himself has modernity must be forcefully pursued. One never embraced, one can easily observe that n the burgeoning debate over the out-dated liberal, enlightenment way to start this process is to focus on a the postmodernist temper finds différance apparent arrival of the postmodern rationalism. Although the relation of particularly central theme in his work, which more attractive than differentiation as an Iera (or over the implications of a Habermas’ critique to the specific context has hitherto been relatively ignored. Because historical or, better put, post-historical it concerns an issue closely related to his discourse that claims such an era has out of which it emerged, that of the conceptual tool. The meta-narrative of a similar critique of post-structuralism, it will arrived), no contributor has been as cynically anti-political Tendezwende in the process of original unity progressively also illuminate Habermas’ no less virulent forthright and unflinching a defender of the West Germany of the late 1970’s was on articulating itself into a series of increasingly still uncompleted project of modernity as occasion acknowledged,3 by and large, he hostility to the other leading “post” autonomous subsystems is far less Jürgen Habermas. In several recent works, was chided with having superficially phenomenon of our no longer modern compelling to it than an anti-narrative of Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne, Die reversed the profound analysis of the world. heterogeneous; but interpenetrating Neue Unübersichtlichkeit and his response Enlightenment’s failure offered by the older The theme in question is what might be movements that flow in no discernible to the essays collected by Richard Bernstein generation of the Frankfurt School. Indeed, called the opposition between differentiation historical or evolutionary direction. Even in Habermas and Modernity, 1 he has because he has been understood as a and différance. The latter term, a neologism though the prefix “post” implies temporal expanded his critique far beyond the first, staunch defender of universalist, totalizing coined by Jacques Derrida in a seminal essay irreversibility, it has become a favourite tentative essays he published in the early reason, his work has been accused of being now twenty years old, doubtless needs little pastime to find the postmodernal ready 1980’s.2 These initial efforts, in part because only the most recent and subtle version of introduction to contemporary readers of evident in such earlier figures as Flaubett.5 of their imperfect command of the French an intellectual tradition which inadvertently cultural criticism. I would only like to intellectual scene in part because of their fostered the authoritarian political emphasize that Derrida specifically Postmodernists like Jean-Francois Lyotard controversial attribution of a conservative uniformity it claimed to resist. Habermas, emphasizes its distance from differentiation. explicitly eschew any yearning for the political implication to postmodernism, the passionate defender of democratically “Among other confusions,” he notes, “such restoration of a pre-differentiated unity or proved a lightning rod for criticism. In achieved consensus and generalized interests, a word would suggest some organic unity, the construction of a dedifferentiated totality many quarters, Habermas was pilloried as was thus turned into the terrorist of coercive some primordial and homogeneous unity, in a reconciled future. Instead, they valorise a naively one-dimensional celebrant of an Reason malgré lui. that would eventually come to be divided a fluid network of proliferating and up and take on difference as an event. Above incommensurable différances, which escape Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics Vol. 42, No. 2 (218-229) all, formed on the verb ‘to differentiate this reduction to a finite number of common © 2019 by VISHVANATHA KAVIRAJA INSTITUTE word would annual the economic denominators. ln the neo-Wittgenstenian 220 / JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND AESTHETICS HABERMAS AND POSTMODERNISM / 221

language Lyotard adopted in The Postmodern boundaries is the breakdown of the modernization process still worth salvaging. critiques would, l want to suggest, allow us Condition (but later abandoned as too differences between high and low art, culture The first charge is exemplified by Lyotard’s to appreciate the virtues of defending a anthropocentric in Le Différend), he and kitsch, and the sacred space of the complaint that “what Habermas requires certain notion of differentiation against contends that”there is no possibility that museum and the profane world without. In from the arts and the experiences they post-modernist différance. First it is clear that language games can be unified or totalized architecture in particular, which has been provide is, in short, to bridge the gap although the very early Habermas may have in any metadiscourse.”6 But if unity or widely recognized as the cutting edge of the between cognitive, ethical and political espoused the position attributed to him by totality is denied, so too is the apparent postmodernist offensive, what Charles discourses, thus opening the way to a unity Lyotard, that of believing in a meta- necessity of those binary oppositions that Jencks called “radical eclecticism”11 has of experience.”15 Habermas, he believes, still subjective species being capable of achieving characterize traditional thought. Thus, the meant the disruption of the time-honoured remains hostage to the fantasy of “humanity a universal consensus, at least as early as recent postmodernist “non-exhibition” distinctions between different styles in as a collective (universal) subject”16 seeking 1972, and possibly even during the positivist staged at the Centre Pompidou in Paris by favour of an historical pastiche, as well as a perfect consensus in a metalanguage game dispute of the 1960’s, he had explicitly Lyotard was called “Less lmmatériaux” to the breakdown of the hierarchical transcending all others. abandoned this position.19 Repudiating the stress the overturning of the rigid separation superiority of “serious” architecture over a The second and in some ways contrary idea of a Hegelian-Marxist universal subject more popular and vulgar vernacular, such between mind and matter, subject and criticism is typified by the Derridean as a residue of a discredited consciousness as that celebrated by Robert Venturi in his object, consciousness and body, even life argument of Dominick LaCapra, who philosophy, he began to call instead for the and death. 7 Furthermore, as Jacques defence of Las Vegas.12 concedes Habermas, strong distaste for nurturing of a plurality of intersubjectively Bouveresse, one of Lyotard‘s most persistent What is, however, important to recognize Hegelian or other meta-subjects, but still grounded speech communities. In fact, his critics, notes in his recent diatribe Rationalité in all of these transgressions of various questions his alternative: main complaint against post-structuralism et Cynisme, “the deliberate effacement of frontiers is the abandonment of any hope The problem, however, is whether, in is that it merely inverts consciousness- for a new totalization in the sense of a conventional frontiers that exist for the rejecting reduction is mand dialectical philosophy by denying the subject, and thus, moment among sciences, philosophy, dialectical Aufhebung or sublation. Instead, synthesis, Habermas goes to the ironically, is as holistic as the logocentric literature and art is the shibbeth (mot an untotalized network of supplementary extreme of analytic dissociation which traditions it opposes. Rather than calling for d’ordre) par excellence, it seems to me, of différances is posited as the superior is itself constitutive of a logic of a unity of experience, as Lyotard contends, postmodernity.”8 alternative to the seemingly rigid and domination. Habermas does not Habermas has scrupulously defended the If we also look more closely at the unyielding dichotomies of modernist directly see how his own analytic aesthetic dimension of the postmodern differentiation. Thus, the postmodernist distinctions, which are useful within value of distinctive forms of interaction, not condition, we will see the same anti- sensibility has borrowed a great deal from limits, may be rendered problematic, merely among human beings, but also differentiating impulse at work, Thus, the that dimension of feminist thought which especially when they are taken as between man and nature. ln fact, his art critic Suzi Gablik notes in Has rejects the abstract universalism underlying categorical definitions of realms of scepticism towards the project of reconciling Modernism Failed? that a great deal of any homogenizing humanist discourse, thought or action.17 humanity and the natural world has brought performance art in particular makes us while also remaining suspicious of the As an antidote, LaCapra urges Habermas him under fire from such advocates of a anxious because “it violates our sense of essentializing opposition between the sexes to pay more attention to the supplementary more Marcusean or Blochian strain in boundaries; no distinction is made between so much a part of patriarchal culture.13 and carnivalesque play of language, which Western Marxism, such as Thomas public and private events, between real and Now, because Habermas has been out would undermine the apparently rigid McCarthy, Joel Whitebook, and Henning aesthetic emotions, between art and self.”9 spoken in his distrust of both post- differentiations posited in various ways Ottman.20 Instead of holding out hope for As such, postmodernism can be seen in part structuralist and post-modernist theories, during the development of his work. More autopian reenchantment of our disenchanted as the non-utopian anti-climax to what Peter and has here to fore not really absorbed the recent deconstructionist critics of Habermas world, Habermas has resolutely Burger has defined as the avant-garde, as feminist critique of the Western tradition,14 like Michael Ryan and Jonathan Culler have acknowledged man’s disembeddedness, that opposed to the modernist, project: the he has variously been accused of hoping for echoed this advice, in each case defending is, differentiation from the natural world. abolition of the separate institution of art a utopian totalization based on the universal différance as superior to categorical But second, while valorising and its reabsorption into the life-world out power of rationality and rigidly holding on, distinctions.18 differentiation, Habermas has fully of which it originally came.10 Typical of this like a typically German anal-compulsive, to A more patient reading of Habermas’ recognized that the process has been plagued postmodernist penchant for violating the existent differentiations of a demanding corpus than is evident in these by severe difficulties. Even as he has called 222 / JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND AESTHETICS HABERMAS AND POSTMODERNISM / 223

modernity an uncompleted project worth of totality.23 And we would have to conclude only in the modern period beginning in the of the partiality of the subject-centred, carrying forward, he has been very sensitive with a consideration of Habermas recent 18th century, so Habermas contends, that instrumental rationality it misidentifies with to the deep discontents it has spawned. exchanges with Gadamer and other the distance between system and social reason tout court. Unlike the more sanguine defenders of defenders of radical hermeneutics, who try integration becomes especially evident with Following Weber and before him Kant, modernization who peopled the American to provide a new foundation-less foundation the differentiation of subsystems of Habermas stipulates a differentiation among and West German academies in the post-war for a holistic approach to understanding. economics and administration, the three basic types of reason in the sphere of era, he has always been enough of a student Rather than attempt so ambitious and decentering of world views (what Weber calls values: cognitive (or scientific), moral and of Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of foolhardy a reconstruction of the roots of the “disenchantment for the world” and the aesthetic. The Enlightenment had hoped that Enlightenment to recognize that the mere Habermas’ attitude towards differentiation, uncoupling of law from morality. the emancipatory potential of each of these refinement of analytic categories and the let me simply point to the major implications Unlike more complacent functionalist spheres could ultimately be harnessed for increased complexity of modern society are he has drawn from his contact with these theorists of evolutionary differentiation, practical purposes. “The 20th century,” by no means emancipatory in themselves. disparate sources. Habermas’ rational Habermas recognizes the potential for Habermas admits, “has shattered this Habermas’ attitude towards reconstruction of the evolution of Western radical distress in this process. In particular, optimism. The differentiation of science, differentiation is, thus, a highly complicated societies posits a relatively undifferentiated he is sensitive to the disproportionately morality and art has come to mean the one. To do justice to it would require tracing society of hominids who became what can advanced development of system as opposed autonomy of the segments treated by the its origins in at least two traditions, be called human through both the division to social integration in modern capitalist and specialist and at the same time their splitting sociological and philosophical. To make of labour and the development of kinship bureaucratic socialist societies. Both types off from the of everyday communication. sense of the former would mean beginning structures.24 At the very beginning of the of integration can be understood as emerging This splitting off is the problem that has with Herbert Spencer and Emile Durkheim evolutionary process, as he conceptualizes against the background of a life-world in given rise to those efforts to ‘negate’ the in the 19th century and passing on to 20th- it, there is thus already a form of which rationalization takes place when culture of expertise.” 26 Although century theorists like Max Weber, Talcott differentiation between subsystem of the communicative argumentation supplants understanding the motivation behind these Parsons, Niklas Luhmann and Wolfgang whole. Similarly, the distinction between more authoritarian and coercive forms of attempts to dedifferentiate and thus end the Schlucter, all of whom are critically labour and language means that any universal social coordination. System rationalization, alienation of the separate spheres from each appropriated in Habermas’ massive Theory explanation of human development, say, a however entails means-ends rationalism, other and from the everyday life-world, of Communicative Action and elsewhere.21 vulgar Marxist productivism or a vulgar where as social or communicative Habermas is nonetheless very reluctant to We would then have to reconsider the heated deconstructionist pantextualism, must be rationalization involves other forms of abandon the Enlightenment project entirely. sociological controversies over evolutionism rejected as reductionist. For the process of reciprocal intersubjective integration. I n the For with it came the refinement of itself, and functionalism and make distinctions evolution takes place on several levels, which modern world, the former has revealed itself which resists the reduction of modern life among segmental, and functionalist forms roughly can be grouped under two rubrics. as more powerful than the latter, leading to to any one common denominator, rational of differentiation. And finally, we would The first, which Habermas calls system what Habermas calls the “colonization” of or otherwise. have to consider the responses of such integration, derives from an instrumental the life-world by system or instrumental Habermas’ argument in this regard is contemporary sociologists as Anthony relationship between man and his natural rationality. Hostility to this trend has worth following in some detail, because it Giddens to Habermas reading of the environment. Initially generated by the expressed itself in many ways, including the has so often been misconstrued by those tradition.22 dialectic of labour, system integration derogation of all forms of reason as who see him as the advocate of a To probe the second, philosophical spawns steering mechanisms, like money and dominating and coercive. It is, however, terroristically universal form of reason. First tradition, we would have to go back at least bureaucratic power, which achieve a certain Habermas’ contention that unless we of all, although Habermas sees each sphere as far as Kant and examine his three critiques autonomy of their own. The second level, carefully distinguish among types of as having undergone a variant of what can with their separation among forms of which Habermas calls social integration, rationalization, we risk regressing beyond be called rationalization, he nonetheless judgment. We would then have to trace refers to norms and values, which are the genuine achievements of modernization. explicitly rejects the idea that reason means efforts to undo Kant’s differentiations, derived from a communicative rather than Thus, he writes, the deconstructionist the same thing in each case. In an earlier beginning perhaps with Hegel and instrumental relationship among actors, who critique of logocentrism become legitimate essay on his attitude towards modernism, I continuing up through the Western Marxist have the capacity to be active agents rather when it understands its target, “not as an challenged him in particular to clarify what struggle to articulate a defensible concept than mere bearers of structural forces. It is excess, but as a deficit of reason”25 because he meant by rationality in the aesthetic 224 / JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND AESTHETICS HABERMAS AND POSTMODERNISM / 225

sphere.27 Was he claiming in the manner of, moral mastery of the demand and challenges break between art and life also threatens to emblem of corporate capitalism and the say, Suzi Gablik in her book on Progress in of everyday situations; it effects an openness cause the well-springs of aesthetic excuse for alienating and impersonal mass Art that Piaget’s developmental cognitive to the expurgated elements of the expression themselves to run dry, he housing. But here the problem was not so categories could be applied to aesthetics, as unconscious, the fantastic, and the mad the hesitates to affirm an immediate much the Enlightenment ambition at the root he argued they could to cognitive and moral material and the bodily.”30 Thus, “art reintegration, however, because he contends of the modernist quest as its distorted development? His reply was that art becomes a laboratory, the critic an expert, that the utopian dedifferentiation of art by application in terms more of instrumental, criticism, which arose with the the development of art the medium of a itself is insufficient to undo the pathologies system rationality than communicative, differentiation of autonomous art from its learning process-here, naturally, not in the of modernization. A new constellation of social rationality. religious ceremonial context, sense of an accumulation of epistemic the separate value spheres with their expert The postmodernists go too far, has developed forms of argumentation contents, of an aesthetic ‘progress’—which rationalized discourses and the Habermas suggests, in reaction to this failure that specific differentiate it from the is possible only in individual dimensions— communicative life-world of everyday by seeking to separate formalist and forms of theoretical and moral-practical but nonetheless in the sense of concentrically experience is needed in order to maximize functional imperatives entirely and retreat discourse. As distinct from merely expanding, advancing exploration of a realm the emancipatory potential in the project of into an eclectic celebration of historical subjective preference, the fact that we of possibilities opened up with the modernity. This neither necessitates the styles, which conservatively affirm all of link judgements of taste to a criticisable autonomisation of art.”31 In short, instead collapse of all of these now distinct realms them merely because they once existed. Any claim presupposes non-arbitrary of providing a straightjacket for into one universal language game, as Lyotard attempt, moreover, to generate a vitalist standards for judgement of art. As the transgressive, heterogeneous experiences, as accuses him of advocating, nor the rigid architecture, which would immediately philosophical discussion of “artistic truth” reveals, works of art raise claims those who formulate a simple opposition maintenance of the boundaries of the restore all severed ties with the life-world- with regard to their unity (harmony: between art and reason assume, aesthetic differentiated spheres, as his here perhaps Habermas is thinking of the Stimmigkeit), their authenticity, and the rationalization, in the dual sense of critical deconstructionist critics aver, he upholds. Heideggerian-inspired call for a Critical success of their expressions by which and productive learning processes, allows, Instead, a more nuanced mediation of Regionalism by Kenneth Frampton and they can be measured and in terms of indeed encourages, a proliferation of artistic relatively, but not absolutely commensurable others34—risks turning into an antimodernist which they may fail.28 stimuli to a widened consciousness. Only realms is a preferable alternative.32 nostalgia for a pre-differentiated form of life. Thus, in the discourse about art, there is the modernist autonomization of art, its In a recent essay on “Modern and Post- An immanent critique of the limitations of an argumentative rationality that resists differentiation as an institution of its own modern Architecture,”33 Habermas spells modernist architecture acknowledging its reduction to moral or scientific reason. makes such a rationalization possible. out the implications of this argument in the achievements as well as its failures, is thus Nor only does aesthetic discourse reveal The extreme autonomization of both aesthetic field that is now at the cutting edge preferable to a wholesale turning of the page, such a rationalization, Habermas continues; esoteric art and hermetic aesthetic criticism of the debate. Modernist architecture, he which offers only pseudo-solutions to the so too does art immanently considered. In does, to be sure, create pressures for their points out, was at once functional and pathologies of modem life. art itself, there is a type of learning process,” reintegration with the life-world out of formalist, following both the socially Premature de-differentiation is, in fact, which is cumulative: “what accumulates are which they originally emerged. Here progressive imperatives of, say, early one of the most troubling of those false not epistemic contents,” Habermas Habermas admits to a certain ambivalence. Bauhaus radicalism and the anti-ornamental answers, which Habermas sees as legitimated contends, “but rather the effects of the inner On the one hand, he rejects what he sees, purism of constructivist abstraction. In both by the postmodernist discourse of difference. logical differentiation of a special sort of following Adorno, as the premature, forced ways, it sought to break with a sterile In his latest book, Die philosophische Diskurs experience: precisely those aesthetic and impotent Aufhebung of art and life in traditionalism and use the methods and der Moderne, he criticizes Foucault, Derrida experiences of which only a decentered, such movements as Surrealism. Yet on the materials of the modern world. As such, it and also Adorno for their undifferentiated unbound subjectivity is capable.”29 The other hand, he recognizes that too rigid and was based on a mediated interaction between critique of modernity: “Enlightenment and increasingly decentered and unbounded inflexible a detachment of art from life courts non-aesthetic needs and the development of manipulation, conscious and unconscious, subjectivity of artistic experience has an the danger of forfeiting art’s ultimate immanent aesthetic reflexivity. The post- fortes of production and forces of ultimately emancipatory potential, for it capacity to reinvigorate the life-world by modernists are right, Habermas admits, in destruction, expressive self-realization and “indicates an increased sensitivity to what giving it a higher-level access to those recognizing that the utopian social repressive desublimation, freedom- remains unassimilated in the interpretive expurgated experiences it normally intentions of the early modernists went away guaranteeing and freedom-eliminating achievements of pragmatic, epistemic, and marginalizes or suppresses. Too radical a when the international style became the effects, truth and ideology—all of these 226 / JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND AESTHETICS HABERMAS AND POSTMODERNISM / 227

moments are confused with each other.”35 of indiscriminate difference that merely dedifferentiation of economy and state not universal solvent of all structures and The dedifferentiation of the value spheres turns on its head the logocentric holism of be meta-theoretically ruled out of court by systems. For the result would be a night of of modernity are, moreover, purchased at reductive sameness. Albrecht Wellmer puts systems-theoretic borrowing. Here again, endless difference in which all cows were the cost of the tacit elevation of one of them, Habermas’ alternative cogently when he the question arises of whether it should be piebald, which is as deceptive as the old aesthetics, understood in an essentially writes, superseded by some non-regressive form of idealist trick of turning them all black. irrationalist sense. For Habermas, the we have to distinguish between those dedifferentiation.”40 The same question Instead, we should be more sensitive to the current fascination with Nietzsche betrays irreversible differentiation process, arises for the other forms of articulation enlightening as well as obscuring this inclination, for the new Nietzscheanism which signify the end of traditional defended by Habermas in his eagerness to implications of a much-maligned modernity “represents the differentiation of science and society and the emergence of avoid abandoning the modern project before whose promise is still greater than is assumed morality as the developmental process of a specifically modern universalist its emancipatory potential is fully tapped. by those who counsel a leap into the reason that at the same time usurps and stifles conceptions of rationality, freedom, and It is perhaps not by chance that différance postmodernist dark. the poetic, world-disclosing power of art,”36 democracy on the one hand, and the has often come to be the rallying cry for specific form in which these which it seeks to resurrect. But in making many who feel excluded by the dominant differentiation processes have been forms of rationality in our culture. art somehow prior to differentiation, in articulated and institutionalized in assuming that rhetoric is somehow more capitalist societies. It is obviously to And yet, after having acknowledged all 37 fundamental than philosophy, it fails to see the latter only that the ideas of a of these questions, it still seems justifiable University of California Berkeley that the very sphere of art itself is the result sublation of formal law, politics, or art to conclude by stressing the value of of a process of differentiation. In other can meaningfully apply. What they can Habermas’ alternative to postmodernist words, it is mistaken to offer an aesthetic mean is that could be called a new difference. A recent critic of his position, colonization of the life-world as an antidote “permeability” of the relatively Peter Uwe Hohendahl, complains that to its instrumental rational counterpart autonomous subsystems or cultural it is not quite evident why Habermas Notes and References produced by the hypertrophy of science and spheres for each other.39 is not willing to use the critical force of deconstruction against the logic of system integration in modern capitalism. Such an answer may, to be sure, raise a 1. Jürgen Habermas, Der philosophische differentiated systems. It seems that Similarly, Foucault’s effort to collapse few questions of its own. How can we tell, Diskurs der Moderne (Frankfurt, 1985); Die Habermas overstates his case when he cognition and power is based on a for example, when a healthy balance has Neue Unübersichtlichkeit (Frankfurt, 1985); describes deconstruction as a purely problematic dedifferentiation of the will to been struck between permeability and “Questions and Counter-questions.” in literary approach without concern for knowledge and the will to power, which boundary maintenance? If, on the one hand, Bernstein, ed. Habermas and Modernity problem-solving in the realm of the life- reduces all the human sciences to little more the boundaries become too fluid, aren’t we (Cambridge, Mass., 1985). world. Thus my suggestion would be: 2. Jürgen Habermas, “Modernity versus than subtle instruments of discipline and forced into a postmodernist différance in if we want to free the life-world from Postmodernity.” New German Critique, 22 normalizing control. Likewise, Derrida’s which supplementarity reigns supreme? If, the constraints of the overarching (Winter 1981); ”The Entwinement of Myth and critique of Austin fails to register the on the other, they have become too rigid, system and its institutions, there is Enlightenment: Re-reading Dialectic of linguistic differentiations of the might it no longer be possible to assume room for the project of deconstructive Enlightenment,” New German Critique, 26 communicative life-world in which fictional even the partial commensurability that is at criticism, precisely because it questions (Spring-Summer, 1982). discourse has been usefully distinguished the root of Habermas’ guarded optimism the logic of systems.41 3. Andreas Huyssen, “Mapping the from other language games.38 In short, much about the modernist project? How can we, The answer to this complaint is that for Postmodern” New German Critique, 33. (Fall. postmodernist analysis has been vitiated by moreover, be certain that it is the only the Habermas, the differentiation of systemic 1984), p. 30. a confusingly a historical failure to recognize specific differentiations of the Western institutions cannot be construed solely as a 4. Jacques Derrida, “Différance”, in Speech that certain patterns of differentiation have modernization process that possess enough constraint on an oppressed life-world, but and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s emerged in ways that defy the attempt to rationality to be worth defending? rather as the source of certain Theory of Signs, trans. David Allison say that they are always already undermined. AsThomas McCarthy points out in rationalizations that are worthy of (Evanston,1973), P. 143. And moreover, it is precisely the separate questioning Habermas’ debt to Luhmann’s continued preservation. it would therefore 5. See, for example, Naomi Schor and Henry rationalization of the distinct spheres that systems theory, it is important to insure that be dangerous to turn deconstruction from F. Majewski, ed. Flaubert and Postmodernism must be defended as a way to avoid a holism “the possibility of democratization as an essentially literary approach into as more (Lincoln, 1984). 228 / JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND AESTHETICS HABERMAS AND POSTMODERNISM / 229

6. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern see Nancy Fraser, “What‘s Critical about 25. Jürgen Habermas, Die Philosophische interacting. Then all we have is an Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Diskurs der Moderne, p. 361. undifferentiated soup of homogeneous Bennington 10. and Brian Massumi Gender,” New German Critique, 35 (Spring- 26. Jürgen Habermas, “Modernity versus heterogeneity, a kind of absolute concreteness (Minneapolis, 1984). p. 36. Summer, 1985), Postmodernity, ”New German Critique, 22 that paradoxically turns itself into pure 7. Les Immatériaux was presented at the 15. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, p. 72, (translation amended) Winter, 1981), p. 9. abstraction. Centre Pompidou from March 28 to July 15, This characterization of Habermas is also taken 27. Martin Jay, “Habermas and Modernism,” 33. Jürgen Habermas, “Moderne und 1985. For a selection of texts reflecting on it, for granted by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe in his in Bernstein, ed., Habermas and Modernity. Postmoderne Architektur.” in Die Neue see the simultaneously published Modernes et 1982 discussion with Lyotard at Cerisy-la-Selle. 28. Jürgen Habermas, “Questions and Unübersichtlichkeit. Aprés; Les Immatériaux, ed. Elie Théofilakis See the transcript, “Talks”, in Diacritics, 14. 3 Counterquestions,” p. 200. 34. See Frampton’s “Toward a Critical (Paris, 1985). It should be acknowledged that (Fall 1984), p. 26. 29. Ibid. Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of in certain of his writings, Lyotard himself 16. Ibid., p. 66. 30. Ibid., p. 201. Resistance,” in Hal Foster, The Anti-Aesthetic. emphasizes the impermeability of boundaries 17. Dominick LaCapra, Rethinking 31. Ibid. For another recent consideration of Frampton, to be sure, is no friend of between radically commensurable spheres. See, Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language the issue of aesthetic rationality that draws in postmodernism and acknowledges a debt to the for example, his dialogue with Jean-Loup (Ithaca, 1983), pp. 178-179. part on Habermas, see Martin Seel, Die Kunst Frankfurt School, as well as to Heidegger and Thébaud, Just Gaming, trans, Wlad Godzich 18. Michael Ryan, Marxism and der Entzweiung: Zum Begriff der Aesthetischen Hannah Arendt. (Minneapolis, 1985), ln the Afterword to the Deconstruction: A Critical Articulation Rationalität (Frankfurt, 1985). Ironically, the 35. Jürgen Habermas, Der Philosophische volume by Samuel Weber, Lyotard is in fact (Baltimore, 1982) p. 112f; Jonathan Culler, inflationary expansion of different aesthetic Drskurs der Moderne, p. 392. criticized from a more rigorously Derridean “Communicative Competence and Normative experiences has itself been connected to post- 36. Ibid., p. 393. perspective for being too obsessed with the Force, New German Critique, 35 (Spring/ modernism by Charles Newman. See his The 37. Jonathan Culler, in the essay cited in note purity and specificity of discrete language Summer, 1985). Post-Modern Aura: The Act of Fiction in an Age 17, chides Habermas for marginalizing literature games. Instead, Weber asks him to be aware ‘of 19. For an account of Habermas’ break of Inflation (Evanston, 1985). Quantitative and rhetoric in the name of philosophy. One their ambiguous interpenetration, that is, of the with the idea of a meta-subject, see Martin Jay, increase may not in fact be a fully satisfactory might reply that the deconstructionist impulse very ubiquity of différance, which is privileged Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a criterion of rationalization. in postmodernism is open to the reverse charge. by the post-modern temper. Concept from Lukacs to Habermas (Berkeley, 32. Ironically, despite his opposition to 38. Jürgen Habermas, Der Philosophische 1984), chapter XV. 8. Jacques Bouveresse, Rationalité et Cynisme Habermas, Lyotard can perhaps be read against Diskurs der Moderne, p. 240. 20. Thomas McCarthy, “Rationality and (Paris, 1984), p. 163. the grain as expressing hope for something 39. Albrecht Wellmer, “Reason, Utopia and Relativism: Habermas’s ‘Overcoming’ of 9. Suzi Gablik. Has Modernism Failed? (New similar; thus Cecile Lindsay recently writes, “By the Dialectic of Enlightenment,” in Bernstein, Hermeneutics,” in John B. Thompson and York), 1984, p. 48. meticulously unmasking the operations of the Habermas and Modernity, p. 62-63. David Held, eds. Habermas: Critical Debates 10. Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-garde, various types of metanarratives, by turning the 40. Thomas McCarthy, “Complexity and (Cambridge, Mass., 1982); Joel Whitebook, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis, 1984). conditions of any narrative back upon itself. Democracy, or the Seducements of Systems,” “The Problem of Nature in Habermas,” Telos, 11. Charles Jencks, The Language of Post- Lyotard’s work points to a powerful potential New German Critique, 35 (Spring/Summer. 40(Summer, 1979); Henning Ottman, for dialogic situation among genres of discourse 1985), p. 50. modem Architecture (New York, 1984), p. 127f. “Cognitive Interests and Self-Reflection,” in that have been kept separate and hierarchized. 41. Peter Uwe Hohendahl, “The Dialectic of 12. Robert Venturi et al., Learning from Las Thompson and Held, Habermas: Critical Seeher “Experiments in Postmodern Dialogue,” Enlightenment Revisited: Habermas’ Critique Vegas (Cambridge, 1977). Debates. Diacritics, 14, 3 (Fall, 1984), p. 61. It is of of the Frankfurt School.” New German Critique, 13. Craig Owens, “The Discourse of 21. Jürgen Habermas, Theory of course in a similar direction—without the 35 (Spring/ Summer. 1985), p. 25. Others: Feminists and Postmodernism,” in Hal Communicative Action, trans. Thomas overly intersubjectivist notion of dialogue— Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic; Essays on McCarthy, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1985). that Weber wants to turn Lyotard in the Postmodern Culture (Port Townsend, 22. Anthony Giddens, “Reason Without Washington. 1983). Revolution? Habermas’s Theorie des Afterword to Just Gaming cited above. But 14. For a feminist-deconstructionist kommunikativen Handelns,” in Bernstein, because Lyotard, like Habermas, is interested critique of Habermas, see Gayatri Chakravorty Habermas and Modernity. in preserving boundary maintenance to a greater Spivak, “Three Feminist Readings: McCullers, 23. Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality. extent than the more rabid deconstructionists, Drabble, Habermas,” Union Seminary Quarterly 24. Jürgen Habermas, Communication and the he preserves the hope for some sort of actual —Published in the Review, 35, 1-2 (Fall, 1979-Winter, 1980). For Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy dialogue. For unless there is a sense of relatively Journal of Comparative Literature a feminist critique closer to his own position, (Boston, 1979) p. 130f. autonomous language games capable of and Aesthetics, Vol. XI, Nos. 1-2, 1988