Category: 2004

The socialization of the worker to the condition of capitalist production entails the social control of physical and mental power on a very broad basis. Education, training, persuasion, the mobilization of certain social sentiments… and psychological propensities… all play a role and one plainly mixed with the formation of dominant ideologies cultivated by the mass media, religious and educational institutions, and the various arms of the state…

It’s long been a criticism of our public education system that its function is primarily to create highly socialized factory drones. Following a Fordist model, children are raised to be comfortable in warehouse-like settings that accustom the child to working in factory life. Taking direction from the teacher easily translates into taking direction from a foreman, and the indoctrination of school pride (often played out via support for sports teams) can be seen as conditioning to support the company and instill habits of loyalty.

The probelm is, the structure of our public education system was set up during a very modernist period largely dominated by Fordism and scientific management. It was expected, as recently as 30 yeras ago, that you would work for a single corporation your entire life. You socialized with those you worked with, worked together, commuted together, attended church and backyard BBQs together. There was a very specific and distinctly modernist taste to life; your work and life were compartmentalized for maximum functionality. But today, the average person will change careers – not just jobs, but careers – something like seven to twelve times. Being a jack of all trades and master of none is becoming not merely a marketable job skill but the marketable job skill. Company loyalty is out the window – you look after your interests and the company looks after their own. Even IBM lays people off now*.

Our work environment and by extension our social environment has changed, but our educational system has not changed to keep up. There are certainly small attempts here and there – magnet schools, cooperative learning environments – but for the most part children are being educated in an environment that no longer prepares tehm for or even matches the postmodern working world that awaits them.

It was certainly possible to distribute and de-centralize the working world. Will it be possible to do the same to classroom environments so that children are actually being prepared for the world they’ll be lived in, and perhaps more importantantly, what will entail a postmodernist educational system?

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Or, largely to humour Phillip – are we beyond consideration of a postmodernist classroom and towards a hyperreal or post-postmodern?

*I actually remember this massive lay-off; several of my parents friends were laid off, and I remember their loyalty extending well beyond working there. They had serious conviction that they would be hired back quickly, as soon as things turned around for the company. Some of them refused to look for work, they were so convinced the lay-off was temporary.

No one exactly agrees as to what is meant by the term, except, perhaps, that ‘postmodernism’ represents some kind of reaction to, or departure from, ‘modernism’.
– David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity

If modernity/modernism can be defined as a result of the Enlightenment and characterized by a seriousness of scientificism and rationality (empiricism), then literary critic Terry Eagleton’s definition of a playful and self-ironizing postmodernsim would play very nicely into the idea of postmodernism as a secular reaction to modernity, the flip side to the 1910s-1920s development of fundamentalism as the religious response to modernization. The editors of the PRECIS 6 architectural journal certainly plays into this idea of postmodernism “as a legitimate reaction to the ‘monotony’ of universal modernism’s vision of the world’ (Harvey 9). If modernism is an embodiment of the scientific revolution, “with the belief in linear progress, absolute truths, the rational planning of ideal social orders, and the standardization of knowledge and production” and postmodernism rejects this meta-narrative, could we place the fundamentalism movement (restricted primarily to Christianity for this thought-process, as it’s the one that primarily developed within the sphere of modernity) as a sister-movement to postmodernism? This “neither likes modernity” is also seen in the significant mistrust both ways of thinking have for scientific rationalism. (One actually has to wonder if the rise in postmodern thought in the 1970s and 1980s, combined with a huge upswing in fundamental Christianity is what has caused the growing lack of faith in our society, and the concurrent rise in strong belief in the Weekly World News and other such tabloid fair and bad science.)

Modernity seems to have done away with any real conception of religion/spirituality; Harvey notes on page 34 that during “the inter-war years there was something desperate about the search for a mythology that could somehow straighten society out in such troubled times.” Harvey goes on to talk about Sorel’s conception of inventing myth (first pointed out in 1908, which is interesting, as 1912ish is when you first hear about the ‘return to fundamentals’ movement); this also seems to be a corollary to what the fundamentalists did. They were searching for and inventing myths out of their literal reading of mythos; Karen Armstrong goes into beautiful detail of the concept of mythos and logos and the fracturing of the two that modernity caused in her book The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism.

I’m really interested in this idea of postmodernity being the secular sister of fundamentalism; it would have interesting implications, at least academically if not socially. It would also almost remove postmodernity from being postmodernity (or modernity from itself); while you can argue that Fundamentalism with a capital “F” originated at the turn of the 20th century as a reaction to modernity, there are older fundamentalist movements that are also reactionary movements that arise out of some need to protest, separate, or distinguish from the dominant culture of the day. If we can link fundamentalism and postmodernity together, could we go back to earlier eras of noted fundamentalism and find corresponding secular reactionary movements against the dominant paradigm? And if we can do that, does it play into Latour’s assertion that we have never been modern?

This is all very interesting, and bears further musings while I read the remainder of Harvey.