Newsgroups: alt.postmodern
Subject: Agency:how to be a po-mo mo-fo
From: mgreer@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Date: 16 Apr 92 00:28:29 EDT
Organization: Wesleyan University

>>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

	Postmodernism doesn't just say theories can't change the world.  They
can't describe reality in a one-to-one correspondence, that's all, so they can
have no claim on it.  The 'object' of their study comes ready made from other
epistemilogical fields, where it was created anyway.  So theories can't
describe the world simply because they always fall into the discourse of
'objects' to study, thus merely repeating and extrapolating always-already made
illusions.  Not just big theory, therefore.
	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.
	But, the bonds BETWEEN catagories can be broken by subversive
repitition, and this is where agency is possible.  For instance, 'men' in drag
perform 'female' gestures, clothes, acts on the surface of intellegably male
bodies.  The ensueing laughter is at the expense of the bond between 'sex' and
'gender' catagories. Thus, combinations allow sexuality to proliferate. 
Butch/femme lesbian roles do a similar thing by parodying the 'naturalness' of
heterosexual relations, exposing the comedy inherent in the vain efforts of men
and women to fit these ludicrous roles.
	So, change is possible, but not through some sort of return to the pure
intellectual Eden (as in Marx), but through the dismantling of the STRUCTURAL
RELATIONS between catagories which tighten the structure of power relations.

						MGREER@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU 
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