Modernity, Postmodernity, and the Presidential Race

From February 2008 - A new reflection on this matter will follow shortly.

Throughout the recent months of the presidential primary race the pundits have claimed this is a race for 'change'. Perhaps so, but isn't every election always about 'change'? No. Make no mistake, this race is more fundamental and even a bit disconcerting for Americans - a question of identity: are we going live in the past of Modernity or move into the present of Postmodernity? This is a not a question of preference or philosophical validity (one can still be a stoic in a decidedly anti-stoical age), but one of condition and zeitgeist.

The transition from Modernity and Postmodernity (and its corresponding tension) is a recurring theme in my musings, but I think it is a key question of our age. We live in a time of increasing uncertainty and society longs to return to the optimism and linear universality that Modernity promised us. The very socio-technologico forces of Modernity produced the postmodern condition we live in today: the recycling, and loss, of meaning via a complex system of media - television, the compuer. The more society discovered, the more questions were raised. It is this tenstion that defines our age.

By the 1980s our world was unquestionably Postmodern. Yet the discourse of politics and much of the media remained faithful to Modernity, even if the socio-politico structure had become unquestionably Postmodern. Pularalism, identities, social constructions, globalism crept unsuspectingly into out lives. If globalisation is a defining feature of Postmodernity - and despite much of its ballyhoo, I believe it is - then where are our institutions to cope with this rapid change? They sit strapped to the ideas of a progress that is no longer attainable.

The change that is needed is abstract, much like Mr. Obama's magniloquent speeches. Matters of wonky policy are futile here. This isn't to say policy is useless, but rather the only policy that will make any difference is one that recognises America's changing role in a changing world - the Postmodern world of globalisation. Absolutes have withered away in this world, subtleties and constructions are everything. Learning how to cope with and take advantage of these constructions - many of them our own fabrication - is the key question here. Mr. McCain's remarks to supporters yesterday embodies misunderstanding of so many politicians: "The most important obligation of the next President is to protect Americans from the threat posed by violent extremists who despise us, our values and Modernity itself." Modernity has long since died, at our own unknowing hand, yet we still cling to its false promises of universality. The very order of society has gone through another lightening-quick change in the past 10 years.

Mrs. Clinton's words are substantively no better, though they are certainly less loquacious. Her adherance to policy as a root for everything the Presidency depends upon is not enough. Her soundbytes are very much the condition of the Postmodern - empty, void of meaning, endlessly reflected and recycled through the vacuum of the cathode ray tube - or plasma screen in our age - and internet. It is a policy, but a policy of the void, an inability to appeciate the reconstruction of rhetoric. Where the supremacy of rhetoric and discourse was previously in flux, rhetoric has become subservient to discourse. It is this subtlety that Mr. Obama understands.

While Mr. Obama has irked me with his increased populism of late, I remain commited to his candidacy for the belief that he recognises how fundamentally the global structural discourse has changed. Climate change threatens an ecocide that produces 'Blade Runner' visions. The world has become an economic-politico game that amalgamates attributes of both zero-sum and positive-sum rules. Negotiations and diplomacy will only work if you understand the discourse of this game, which I believe Mr. Obama does. Policy must exist within this framework and Mr. Obama is the only candidate who appreciates this, albeit framed in the convenient commodity of 'change'. He is most certainly rhetorical, but his rhetoric is firmly in the Postmodern discourse of globalisation. The very fate of our nation, and indeed the world, hangs on an insitutional recognition of this shift from Modernity to Postmodernity. Subconsciously we recognise it, but then the subconscious is trapped in Modernism. Let us break free of our subconscious and acknowledge that we create our meaning - a meaning that we can have hope in.