I wrote this article as an initial submission to Islamica Magazine upon the request of one of its Board members, Umar Farooq Abd-Allah.
9/11 and the Death of Postmodernism?
Scholars argue that September 11, 2001 was the day that marked the end of what is known as the postmodern condition. Frederick Jameson was the critic who made the term “postmodernism” synonymous, or at the very least, partly synonymous, with the idea of the cultural logic of late capitalism, a surprisingly useful lens through which to view this literary time period. He justifies his analogy by writing that “late capitalism” is “the vision of a world capitalist system fundamentally distinct from the older imperialism” (Jameson xix). In the same sense, postmodernism is radically different from older literary time periods like modernism, realism, Romanticism, and so on.
The charge that postmodernism collapsed along with the Twin Towers is a serious and intensely troubling one. The tradition itself is founded in a strange kind of inclusivity: it teaches of shifting, mutable interpretations informed by ideological biases – economic, political, cultural, etc, – that inform all ethnographic and commercial histories. Every attempt at meaning in the event of the extinction of the Real is as credible and ‘meaning’-ful as any other, and the ideological center that informs our belief and our dogma does not hold in the event of such an evacuation of the Real. Gone is certainty; left is interpretation. Postmodernism effectively broke down all the belief-support systems created by modernism – loyalty to state, belief in religion, and so on – and celebrated the uncertainty that came with deriving meaning elsewhere. This is in relation to what is known as the postmodern void: the nihilism, the break from and resentment of realism, the void of spirituality, the uncertainty of identity, the vague, tenuous, and terrifying relationship between the Self and the horrible Other.
The very concept of postmodernism becomes challenging when viewed through the lens of a 911 world. The Twin Towers as a site of attack function very differently from other loci of power like the White House or Capitol Hill where the key executive and legislative activities take place. In attacking the United States, the terrorists chose certain sites that represented the economic, political, racial, and cultural hegemony of the United States. The World Trade Center was significant among the chosen sites, first in that it was fully demolished. But it is important to realize here that the WTC functioned as a hegemonic symbol in a different way than the Pentagon or the White House, other believed targets of the attack. And in the events of 911, it was the symbolic site of the WTC that was attacked: the symbolic structure of the Twin Towers (in themselves perfect as a double articulation, a visible or ‘positive’ inherent negation) as a locus of international economic hegemony and the power of capitalism collapsed, and it was that symbolic collapse that brought about the all too physical collapse of the building.
It is possible, then, to make the argument that 911 was the perfect postmodern event. The very ‘center’ – World Trade ‘Center,’ of course, one might think facetiously – came under attack. The very ‘center’ of economic hegemony was targeted. The very ‘center’ in terms of capitalistic loci was erased. The center could not hold and the void consumed it. What could possibly be more postmodern? The nationalistic surge, the moralistic struggles of deciding to send troops, the trouble of finding something to hold on to and believe in during the aftermath, the fact that the aftermath still lingers to this day – what could possibly be more postmodern?
And if 911 was the perfect postmodern event, it should follow that postmodernism is alive and well as a viable tradition and mode of scholarship. But this argument doesn’t hold any more than the center, for the very reason that it is impossible to sustain a true postmodern moment without returning or regressing (or even just jumping forward) to something else entirely and creating a break with the very roots of postmodernism. After the events of 911, the events that destroyed all the belief-support systems and evacuated the center of meaning and illustrated the perfect void, a dramatic shift occurred. Belief-support systems were reinstituted or new ones were created – again, in terms of the country’s political, economic, and cultural directives. An American flag hung from every doorway: patriotism. The entertainment industry picked up as it was a week or two after the attacks: proliferation of cultural hegemony and ideology. It became instantly un-American to question the deployment of troops: conformity. A war began on shaky evidence: a new policy of pre-emption. In terms of a literary analogy, the country fell back and held fast to modernism after this truly postmodern event. In winning the day, the fact remains that postmodernism loses.
It makes far more sense to argue instead that 911 marked the drastic, explosive end of postmodernism. As a tradition, it focuses on the primacy of shifting, mutable interpretations of meaning that acknowledge the fact that the center, as a locus of meaning, has been evacuated and is left void. In the face of an ‘absolute’ event like September 11th, such a focus becomes intensely problematic. In a very practical and realistic sense, postmodernism became frivolous in the light of such an event; the uncertainty, the vacillations between interpretations and ideas, and the void became luxuries, and to some, most likely offensive, in a time when immediate action and response was needed. In this sense, postmodernism became a choice and not a necessity as it had been for those writers and artists that used it as a response to the Holocaust. And when something becomes a choice and not a necessity, it does in fact come closer to its death.
The postmodern ideological attempt of speaking the unspeakable also becomes troubling in a post-911 world. The WTC attacks were an exercise in negation, just as the towers were themselves an exercise of architectural negation in that they were a double-image that canceled itself, to say nothing of the fact that they resembled concrete coffins, which, sadly, was what they would become. Even the debate on the rebuilding of Ground Zero has become a discussion of image-deletion. In this light, even the multiple postmodern voices, each arguing for a different interpretation as a way to restore some semblance of meaning, must fall silent. How does one go about articulating negation? In the articulation, the negation is lost; in the lack of articulation, the negation is infinite and unwieldy.
This is, of course, to say nothing of the idea of the core or the center. This exercise of negation in fact negated the center. Whether viewed on a grander scale as the center of a hegemonic power or on a smaller scale as the core of an individual’s identity, any permanent negation of the core is an idea that is intensely troubling and to sustain such a claim can become traumatizing. The destruction of the center and the reality of the postmodern void is not an idea that most people or ideologies (political, cultural, economic, whatever the case may be) are willing to sustain. The confrontation with the ‘Real’ of September 11th being a confrontation with the void, with existential dread, with the loss of the self and the loss of the other and anything that can give meaning to anything else, is similar to Zizek’s thoughts on the confrontation with the Real in pornography. As long as the Real is held at bay, the results are pleasurable, titillating, erotic. But as soon as that camera (he wrote of a small camera being mounted on an object used during intercourse) gets too close to the raw, human sexuality being visibly represented there, the viewer is disgusted and backs away. The same applies here: the confrontation with the ‘Real’ of September 11th was traumatizing in the same way that genitalia is disgusting, and when the Real cannot be held back, the objects are the ones to create that distance and back away.
And that is what followed the events of 911: the Real that postmodernism in a sense denies came rushing back, front and center, and there was no choice left but to deny it and signal the end of the postmodern tradition. But the problem does not rest there. If postmodernism is truly dead, what comes next? What can be done with the lingering effects of something that went from a genuine movement of breaking with realism and modernism to a garden-variety curiosity? What space have we left for ourselves to venture to or retreat into?
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