"To be concerned with others outwardly and purposefully, is to betray, in the world, the complex responsibility to self, which is paramount to the construction of an independent and individuated moral system. To teach selflessness is a tactic to ensure a world in which no soul can stand alone, and in which this very effort is called evil."
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Jim Sala is the Prof of Postmodern Philosophy at SWTSU in San Marcos, Texas. Some short-sighted individuals also classify him as Program Faculty.
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This following essay is a complete version of the article "PM2" by Jim Sala. It is published by the Alkek Library, 1999. It is also part of a Thesis Project, published in 2000. It is a cutting edge analysis of the philosophical 'school' known in contemporary academia as "Postmodernism". It ties itself to psychoanalytic thought and modern films, such as "Fight Club".
�When information cannot be uncovered through reason, or empirical process, it has, for a long time, been approached through mysticism, faith and deification. It has never been considered that, in order to �uncover�, one must not unmask, one must put on the same mask with different spirit; the spirit of deconstruction. Postmodernism offers an alternative approach without similar expectations. One of the definitions of this thought is the acceptance (and enjoyment) of its own contingency, without the expectation of evidence and historical corroboration. Evidence is an external feature of science, and a strangely internal feature of religion.�
Postmodernism 1 is a bridge between modernism and PM2. It is a halfway point where seriousness is not yet replaced by irony.
In short, Postmodernism 1 is that thought that rose in response to the optimism of both enlightenment philosophy and high-modernism (early twentieth century). A great example of high modernist literature is Joyce�s experiment with free association. PM1 puts itself as antagonist to claims about �new� truth. To the claims, by the modernist, that the evils of the world are susceptible to correction by some �new� method, and, as a result, give way to utopia, the PM1 thinker responds with Romantic fervor against this. The PM1 thinker believes the world to be chaotic, in contradiction to all of man�s enlightenment efforts at order, and he devises ways to free people from modernist optimism. The PM1 thinker takes his role seriously. He involves himself in the plot to overthrow the enlightenment in the same way the atheist involves himself in the plot to overthrow Christianity.
In all of his seriousness, the PM1 thinker ties himself to the same language system that he criticizes. D.G. Griffin, in an essay, criticizes this early postmodernism:
�From the point of view of deconstructive postmodernism, this constructive postmodernism is still hopelessly wedded to outdated concepts, because it wished to salvage a positive meaning not only for the notions of the human self, historical meaning, and truth as correspondence, which were central to modernity ,but also for premodern notions of a divine reality, cosmic meaning, and an enchanted nature.�
The PM1 thinker still attaches himself to truth. He is consistently serious about the goal. This thinker cannot help but watch as the symbolic order rises around him like a prison cell. It is recognition of the order not as an external and malicious creation, but as an inevitable internal one, that drives PM1 thinkers to PM2. PM1 is a bridge between modernism and PM2. It is a halfway point where seriousness is not yet replaced by irony.
Notes of an Iconoclast
All Philosophy is a search for God. For an atheist in philosophy, the submersion into a dichotomy between existence and non-existence has already tainted his argument. All Philosophy is a search for God. When an atheist claims that God does not exist, he speaks the language of the theist. By claiming the non-existence of God, an atheist is affirming the existence of God. This irritating contradiction weighs heavily on the mind of an untrained iconoclastic student of anti-theism.
The physical sciences, intentionally distancing themselves from theology, are still involved with the search in another form. The existence of the Gods of science must be constantly proven, time and time again, reinvented, and clarified. The world of science is self-contained, therefore the proofs often hold temporal, but useful, meaning for society.
In the world of Philosophy, the search for God is pointless. A theist�s stand is as meaningless as an atheist�s. There is nothing as contemptible as the business of mystification and ego-gratification as it applies to the world of metaphysics. The pragmatist does not concern himself with theology for this reason. It may be said that the pragmatist is not a philosopher either (like the physical scientist), he is a wielder of common sense as it applies to a certain societies and time periods. The effort, by the pragmatist, to reinsert himself into Philosophy, dulls his otherwise fruitful (and context specific) intentions.
If we view the physical sciences as benign and condemn Philosophy for its self-sustaining egotism, what do we have left? When a man asks questions improvable by science, to whom can he turn for rational and useful advice? For centuries man has thrown himself on the passionate fires of metaphysical specialists; these �experts� range from faith healing madmen to academic philosophers. The curious man, in times of anguish, took the route of philosophical theism, in its many forms, as a way to construct truth. It is as if philosophical truths were created as mere wish fulfillments, as Freud comments about religion. It is nothing more than illusion. A philosopher wants something to be true, therefore he makes it so. The creative effort is a justification of itself. But can truth be constructed? There have been many iconoclasts through history that have pondered, for their own sanity, the opposite of this. It has been the natural tendency of genius to attempt alternate methods, contrary to convention, almost from an intuited sense of the �wrongness of rational iconization�; that is to say, they felt the need for deconstruction.
In honor of the conception of PM2, it made much more intuitive and logical sense to construct this paper in straightforward, linear, and homogeneous fashion.
When I was very young, maybe nine, my dad told me, as dads do, that there are two kinds of people in the world. One group is the collective. They are the followers, the masses, the blind patriots, the overly serious and boring sheep. The others, which consist of only five percent of the population, are the Iconoclasts. These are the misunderstood intellectual rebel geniuses. I remember thinking about this and being glad that I was what he called an �Iconoclast�. It was good to be in the minority.
I enjoyed it for about an hour until I launched into a critical attack on his theory. At nine, the complex logic in my argument was missing. The attack was blind. The essential part of my argument was that he lumped us, he and I, into the second category together. There could be no justification for this comparison in my limited experience. My criticism actually lacked almost any kind of evidence and it was only �youthful� recalcitrance that sustained me. A quarter century later, he called me to commiserate about the election of George W. Bush and the Religious �Right� into power. If there�s one thing we had always agreed upon, my dad and I, it was the illogical depravity in conventional Christian systems.
Instead of agreeing, I met him with resistance. I told him to become a Christian. He asked for evidence. I proceeded to point out, to his dismay and confusion, the faults inherent in the foundation of his rebellion. He was aghast not at my evidence, which to him was substance-less, but at my stance. My whole life was a consistent attack on Christianity. Why then was I telling him to become a Christian? Why wasn�t I insulted by the idea of the �right� in politics? It was only in the reasonable and enlightened part of my postmodern career that I had the vision to assert that he would benefit his own political agenda by joining Christianity. I was truly Postmodern 2.
Rules and Film
It may be that all new philosophical and critical movements in the West are born with academic disapproval. The hallowed halls of pedantry are not the first to accept �new� thought. It is in this tradition that Postmodernism has evolved independently of academia. It has grown up in the world of art. It expresses itself in the most recent art forms. It seemed to begin in architecture and then infect poetry, literature, and finally film. An entire world of thought related to PM2 is now the basis for the best of modern films. For further discussion of this topic, my essays about �American Psycho�, �Fight Club�, and �The Matrix� go into depth about PM2 structure in film. The most clear and illuminating example of true PM2 structure exists in the film �Man on the Moon�, a story that involves a strange contradiction between alienation and acceptance; it is a story that ultimately ends without any decision regarding truth. Andy Kaufman himself was accessible to millions, even more so after this film, yet his character remains, in many ways, completely amorphous and indecipherable. His practical jokes themselves represent an indifferent and unintentional continual deferment of truth. The jokes are indifferent to consequence. They lose the audience as easily as they recover it.
Deep and modern iconoclastic films are the easiest ways to access the logic in PM2 systems. The PM2 structure, and the structure of psychoanalytic thought that precedes and inspires it, is directly and overtly dealt with in the American film, �Fight Club� and in the Spanish film, �Obre Los Ojos�.
Prior films have begun this exploration in the same way that Descarte, as a philosopher, preceding Freudian and Nietzschian Romanticism, was skeptical about consistent and static reality. Hitchcock�s �Rope� explored the debate regarding �words and deeds�. The Chaplin ending of �City Lights� already suggested unresolved truth. The campy Schwarzzeneger film, �Total Recall� was one of the most effective (if not fully realized) modern approaches to the growing fascination, of cinema, with ambiguous reality.
At the outset of a discussion about PM2 it is necessary to attempt structure. It is an ironic fact in the mind of a PM writer that this structure, a foundational element of such a paper, is itself a contradiction to the process of Postmodernism. A compromise must nonetheless be reached between that part of the writer wishing to express complicated ideas, and that part of a writer indulging in Postmodern rebellion. The structure begins with the idea that, in expressing ideas, the easiest route is taken. Common language is used as much as possible. If an idea can be set in motion by a story about my childhood, I will use that. Another part of the structure is the idea that these ideas expressed herein are ultimately open to change. I am not na�ve to the idea that these assertions, though hopefully powerful, are conclusions rather than exploration. It must also be that history, and historical figures, is used for clarification rather than justification. Finally, the information expressed often requires graphically rich presentation. If, in the scope of this paper, I must resort to diagrams, I will. The legacy of PM1 has, among other things, left the shadow of the �failure of language� across any structural representation of PM2. To clarify these aforementioned efforts, I will remind the reader of Lacan�s concern, in Seminar VII, about mystification. He suggested that the audience approach their dialectic, one closely related to our own, without pretension. Those participants need not express how much they know. It was already a fact of their genius. For earnest exploration, their minds need to be open to discovery; they must be willing to discuss what they didn�t know. His lectures, he thought, were not a competition; they were not a mystifying battleground for �deep thinkers�. It was a chance for �great� minds to participate in humbling postmodern exploration. If the fact that Lacan himself didn�t embrace humility is overlooked, we might discover that these were, historically, great and fruitful dialectical conferences.
What is Postmodernism 2?
If the reader is, as I was, tired of reading unsatisfying definitions of Postmodernism, he will greatly enjoy the beginning of this section. It is of utmost importance that I precede directly to a clarification of the term PM2. What is this and, in light of the aforementioned definition of PM1, how is it distinctive? Without such clarification, further exposition of ideas will only confuse an already confusing situation. Regardless of the claim made, by Lacan, regarding Freud�s susceptibility to misinterpretation, a Postmodernist must believe that clear, common-sense explanations are still superior to academic mystification. Freud�s greatest asset was perhaps his accessibility. He was complex, but readable at the same time. It was this asset, thought Lacan, which left him open to misinterpretation. The popular notion that Freud was �all about sex� comes - following this logic - from the clear, concise, and accessible nature of his claims about human sexuality.
The critique, of Lacan, that he was ultimately too complex and intentionally unreadable, seems to miss the meaning in his message. The further critique, that Lacan tied himself up in the same mystification that he wanted to dismantle, by intentional complications, is much more persuasive. I would rather distance myself from this discussion by distancing myself from responsibility regarding the use of my writing. I cannot be any the more responsible for the later perversion of my thought than Nietzsche himself. It is my belief that any exploration of Postmodernism, used by persons genuinely interested in clarifications of PM themes, will result in a greater popular critical attitude. I don�t care what happens after that. I will likely be dead.
Ahh, but I hear your own criticism. Would millions of people be alive today if Nietzsche had not left behind such a clear and updated version of the superiority of �master morality�? You argue that any �dangerous� and possibly political and fascist ideology must be returned to the sender in the courts of pragmatism. You say that, indeed, we are responsible, as geniuses, for the society we create. Many conservative structures have managed to quell the instincts of man and have reached a seeming equilibrium in modern culture. Religion has reached a compromise between passion and utilitarian communion. The world has, at its disposal, the means for long-term peace. The horrible wars are behind us. They are products of the beginnings of Postmodernism.
My critic misses the most important fact of PM2. That fact is that this process is not concerned with a goal. It does not make claims, as conventional philosophy is apt to do, to a final truth. PM2 does not presuppose, as mystified modern thought does, that the identifiable world is willing to give up one inch, forfeit any distance between what is real and what is wished to be. A goal is a lie. An intense, passionate life cannot be lived in lies.
The only alternative is to leave options open indefinitely without purpose. The stance of the philosopher is wrongly assumed. He is not to be an illustrator of the �one�. The philosopher has wasted his time. The academic philosopher becomes the same failure, caught in an illusory and distracting world, as the scientist or the Christian or the capitalist individual. The foundation of his push toward unification of thoughts is empty. It is comprised of the repetition of similar movements, themselves caught in the perpetual cycle of history. This has support in the fact that no man, regardless of his intellect, is able to join the ranks of philosophy without specific training. The isolation of the �high mind� is only a comfort. It is not a claim to foundational authority, it is a reliance, for comfort, on the continual participation by like minds in the pursuit of the �one�. Each thinker justifies his own creation by participation in the previous systems, of which he was, in the beginning, against. A defiant movement, with a goal, is eternally bound to the frail laws of construction.
The world of construction and deconstruction is not a dichotomy. Construction and passivity are opposing forces in the same world. Deconstructive PM is not of that world. It is in defiance of not only the structure, but every structure before it and every structure to come. It is a new and inevitable animal.
Without going further, I must live up to my promise of revealing the clear, concise, and useful definition of PM2. This definition, like any claim, though contrary to the continually antagonistic cycle of the admittedly iconoclastic stance, must serve future generations of intellectuals as a means, if symbolically, to defend PM2 against misinterpretation. A pure definition is of course a compromise in this sense. This compromise is necessary as a reference in combination with the rest of the tools of PM2 that are still located in the �structure�.
One of these other �tools� is the form of existential �intuition� required to maintain the Postmodernist within the structure. It is adherence to this �intuition� that gives the true iconoclast his characteristics. It is necessary here only that the reader realizes I have decided on the definition of �true� and �false� iconoclast in the same sense, and in many of the same ways, that I have decided on the definition of PM1 and PM2. Inauthentic rebellion lacks the intuition of the rebellion and fails. It lacks the inexplicable and contingent (for the philosophy agents) life-sustaining reality of the inevitability of the void. It is �life-sustaining� because it is the primal choice, over all other choices, that chose the only �real� over the myriad, and more comforting, falsities that exist in every human movement. It is reward for the long painful step across the canyon of endless and perfect copies, images that each contain the invisible message of the �one�. It is not, as reward, the achievement of peace or knowledge. That is a goal. It is the confrontation with the existential notion of anguish. It is the life-blood of this movement, existentialism, that drips out discreetly when squeezed forcefully and inevitably by the hands of lifelong rebellion. This postmodernist is covered with shreds of reality, making visible what had once been historically internal tissues, sinuous blood-red tendons stretched across deep muscularity. These shreds are indeed identifiable characteristics.
It would be prudent to precede to a definition of PM2 prior to an explanation of these visible and identifiable characteristics. Without such definition the essay itself loses force. This force, once built, easily loses its hold on any claim to universality. It must be noted again that even though PM2 is inherently against the �one-ness� of universality, any essay of this construction, even in the spirit of postmodernism, must compromise in order to facilitate accessibility. It is also an important question regarding the postmodernist�s visible wish for understanding that will be addressed later. If the postmodernist�s job is to undermine continually, place himself as the ultimate antagonist, precede only - using language of the target system that he is attacking - with the sole purpose of sabotage, isn�t he either another extension of this failure or at least doomed to failure because of his own rules? Can the postmodernist be concerned with the extension of his thought, the inevitability of his own discoveries, as they become weapons to be used in return. If the language of the target system is his weapon won�t it always become a weapon against him? That is the debate to be considered later as critique.
The Characteristics of the Postmodernist
It is true in our modern world that the uniqueness of the masses is the same as the conformism of the masses. To be different is to be the same. Conformism has changed shaped, but still retains its original function. Everyone wants to be unique. Slavoy Zizek describes it as a �cynical distance from every ideology.� It is then our modern condition to feel different. What then differentiates the feeling of unique-ness inherent in the postmodernist from this conformism in the herd-man?
The answer is: freedom. The postmodernist is comfortable in this anguish. For an individual to say that he is aware of nihilism, that he has accepted the world as meaningless, and that he is compelled to act in accordance with the inevitability of the contradiction, is only words. The �failure of language� is never more apparent as it is in this statement of being. PM1 is characterized by a grandiose plan, through the acceptance of the void, for the creation of another, less intrusive �one�. This utopia will supply the human soul with all of the promises once promised by the naivety of modernism in all its forms. This is a rebel without the intuition or the magic of the promise of chaotic indifference. Many men feel compelled to accomplish things in life. They see the conclusion of their efforts as real. This is not to say that all men, as some artists do, aspire to immortality through the legacy of the communal acceptance of their work. Most men see themselves as they wish to be and are never fully imagined. Dreams are ghosts that sustains them in a meaningless world. In their most basic form, these men maintain the �one� only because they cannot get it. There is no real or passionate commitment to the very thing that they define as �universal� or worthy of this endeavor to �universality�. This statement is proved by the individual�s obvious failure. Even in a fully evolved Christian Western World, not a single man is unaware of the blatant failure of the human creature at almost every level. The capitalist critique that man is not only never �happy�, but unhappy with happiness, has become clich�.
This is why man reveres and participates in procreation. Our society is in full depression. No life is presently complete. The �one� is so far from the �one� that only in this irony can fake truth survive and sustain. More lives must come, as more money must come, and there is a continual cycle, of disguised words, that represent the �self�. Man�s love for anguish continues unseen into oblivion. Children are just attempts. The weak learn that they must touch children in a way that they cannot touch themselves. Men are trained to despise human failure and fall into the passivity of the mystified world of repetitive ideas. We are all lost children. Our home lies so close as to seem unobtainable. We cry at metaphors and have mastered nothing. The Father is waiting in the wings to fall apart, to break into a million irrevocable pieces, by the accident of the magic of freedom. This idol of all idols comprehends his own fragile structure and is always inviting the possibility of discovering his ethereal and useless and life-denying nature. He is the entirety of human passion. What we now call passion is hesitancy. This blood bank of passion is waiting, at a moment�s notice, to spill itself across the world in unstructured and accidental redemption.
As a reprieve from the illogical and transcendental tactics of art, I will attempt finally to describe the characteristics of this PM2 existence. This man is comfortable without answers. If everything is called into question, there is no blind reliance on structure. His psyche is wrought with indecision. He is capable of distancing himself from almost all guilt. One can imagine the implications of this conclusion. He is a man who will sell himself and his own ideas for the chance at pure antagonism. The Freudian ego or the Lacanian imaginary is only a code. The ordinary man sees himself as a product of his world. This weak view, attached to the symbolic nature of his structure, is the fake passion that he maintains for a vision of self. The ordinary man is constantly broken by the frail signifying process. Only with constant vigilance is the entirety of this process visible. If it is, to the iconoclast, the failure of the entire series of systems, and the notion of system itself, that defines his movement, then every conclusion is absurd. The moment becomes possible. The term �seize the day� is advice given within the order and does not rise to the honor of postmodern life. It could be restated: seize things in the order divert yourself from the present. Nothing can be �seized�. Only by grabbing blindly at nothing does a creature, already without definition, ultimately grab something real. It is that simple. To chose between two or more �unreal� things is not to chose at all. It is mere diversion. Diversion is the result of symbolic participation.
The iconoclast has a loose hold on intuition and can use this as a direction finder. The direction always posits him as the antagonist. He is as constantly misinterpreted as the movement of postmodernism itself. Bitter emotions from others are the responses to his uncontrollable and wild claims. He wants to hate himself but cannot. That is the comfort of freedom. The measuring stick of the fearful no longer applies. He is defined by the void. The response of the �other� is often not even a response, it is a cry for help. I have been undermined! My own language is used against me! More likely, the postmodernist responds: the utter failure of your language is revealed at a basic level. The forgery and the mimicry of the postmodernist makes the inauthentic become real. It raises the frail language of the herd to the level of the �real�, for them to see and lament in bitterness.
The iconoclast is the bad guy. Nothing is serious. The absurdity of humor and wordplay are the only indulgences that suffice as entertainment. Everything is a joke. This antagonist, to the herd, is the villain. He is a villain � and this is of the utmost importance � that the herd wants to hate with all of their bitter and decisive piety, but whom they cannot. Continual and unsuccessful energy is spent on this effort to despise the �obviously� negative and cynical countenance of the postmodern iconoclast. Eventually, these people become misunderstood mascots. In the symbolic world of lies the genius iconoclast is the court jester. He is a mere clown. The reality of his assertions are fended off with moral conviction, but his charisma of the real is inescapable. Despite every effort by the ordinary man, this clown is admired in truth and loved above all others.
The postmodern skepticism of language is involved in every sentence. No definition is sufficient. An essay dissolves into a repetitive reinvention of terms. The sheer magnitude of his productivity is hidden beneath the misconstrued blanket of inactivity. Only by the pressure of the intuitive force is he finally driven to invent, with magical and incalculable accuracy and speed, the message of the �real�. Novels are written overnight. Energy is often turned in destructive and morally corrupt directions as ethical relativity invades an otherwise cogent and youthful mind. This particular idea, aside from its obvious precarious nature, is, incidentally, the break-down of the postmodern ideal, brought on by rightful disillusionment with the symbolic order. It is still a breakdown of the postmodern ideal and is ultimately a failure of the symbolic system, by the symbolic system, but the responsibility of the individual. It turns a postmodernist into a sheep.
There is no sympathy for the herd. The failure of the symbolic system, in painfully obvious and visible structures (like traffic), are representative of a larger failure. There is no sympathy for the participants of the system even though a postmodernist often becomes one himself. The postmodernist becomes a kind of �Objectivist�, as Ayn Rand would devise in simpler language. What is seen in the postmodernist as selfishness, is purely, and knowingly (by the self) the inevitability of the existence of a human creature in the symbolic order. Almost every act becomes selfish. Altruism is blasphemy.
The disillusionment, by the iconoclastic artist, with language does not result in revision or concision, but in lengthy rambling. It is the same �pouring forth� that is visible in Dostoevsky�s short iconoclastic novel or Henry Miller�s obtrusive narrator. It is the same commendable fire that attracts Allen Ginsburg to his peers in �Howl�. In complete contradiction, the void pours forth without apology. It cannot be stopped. Once the intuited floodgates are open the ironic uselessness of words tumbles out, carrying with it all the magic substances of retroactive reality. The postmodern genius immediately sees himself at the height of his rambling. There is an uncontrollable awareness. The unspoken brotherhood of life-affimring iconoclasts is embraced. Their words are my own. I am not learning anything that I have not already known. I am liberated to myself!
I am comfortable enough to be the antagonist in ever conversation. This antagonism, it must be said, is the ultimate value. It supersedes the former and historical human need for community. My friends are now pawns in my evil game, who are expendable to the force of primary rebellion. The iconoclast is a secretly loved, externally hated loner, cloaked in the language and blood of his ungrateful victims. He is the final voice in man�s contradictory and goal-less battle with the irrationality of the world.
Where philosophy ultimately fails, PM2 obviously fails. If the philosopher confronts his failure, he falls apart. It is the recognition of failure that keeps the postmodernist inspired. The failure of PM2 is never more evident than in this essay. I have completely failed. I have contradicted every rule I made for the creation of my argument. I did not set out to fail. I merely failed. In my failure I have said nothing about the essence of Postmodernism. Therefore, I have succeeded.
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