From: lbn@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
Subject: re: hey and agency: how to be a po-mo mo-fo
Date: 16 Apr 92 19:30:02 EDT
Distribution: world
Organization: Cornell University

In article <1992Apr16.002829.1@eagle.wesleyan.edu>,
mgreer@eagle.wesleyan.edu writes: 
>>>In article <1992Apr9.103456.11602@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> 
>>>lbn@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes:
>>>>  are theorists going to change the world by theorizing?  is
>>>> anyone else?  is anyone who may have time to acutally DO something the
>>>> least bit afffected by the effervescent dynamics of critical theory?
>> 
>>>Well the essence of postmodern academic work (well atleast this is the 
>>>best way I have heard it put) is that theory,  I mean really big theory 
>>>which lets you go out and think that you can change the world like 
>>>following the directions of a repair kit, is dead.  Dead are Marxism, 
>>>Freudianism, all theories which try to explain the entire world
> 
....
>   ...	But we also must expand the notion of theory beyond the academic.  If
> theory extrapolates within an already pre-ordered world, than we as actor
> cannot escape that world either in formulating our actions.  So, in a sense, we
> are acting theory (re-enacting 'order') with every act we make.  And the
> 'order' which we act also pre-detirmines our possibilities of volition by
> making only the catagories within the discourse available and intelligable to
> us.  Take gender: the notion of 'male'/'female' genders is ridiculous, and
> becomes naturalized by our performance of them.  But we have no language of
> description beyond those roles and beyond that dichotomy.  To claim that we can
> just ignore it once it is exposed assumes that there is some pre-discursive
> self with'in' us, which is also a product of enlightenment illusory theorizing.
> 	So theory and action cannot change the discourse (and thus the
> naturalization of power relations which formed the discourse) because is forms
> them, so they are forced to repeat it.

i don't see how the idea of trespassing beyond normative discourse necessarily
presumes a 'prediscursive' identity.  what seems to be lost here is the idea
that the mechanics of our discourse -- its structure, if i may be so bold --
are constituitve of its "meaning".  in that sense *every* representation of a
discourse distorts the domain of that discourse; and, as you say,

> 	.... the bonds BETWEEN catagories can be broken by subversive
> repitition, and this is where agency is possible.

the sort of in/subversion that you mention, ie. drag, is essentially a process
of exposing, or rather of imposing, disjunction.  and yes, this doesn't just
dissolve our catagories.  it instantiates tension; literary discourse works to
produce similar conceptual fractures.  i don't deny the existence of a finite
discursive space, but the configuration within this space is by no means
static... it seems that the ultimate prescription of this extreme form of
postmodernism is really "do nothing at all", and perhaps that is one answer to
my question?  i don't believe it is a... consistent evaluation, at any rate.

my original question did not intend to represent postmodernism as a wholistic
metanarrative; in fact, the question of WHAT (or who, or when, or whatever) the
theory is involved in was intended to be vaguely irrelevant.  i was looking
more for observations about the disseminative processes at play here. 

dave liebman -- lbn@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
etc.

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