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Martin Jay – Habermas and Postmodernism 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
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