New Media, Cultural Studies, and Critical Theory after Postmodernism
Education, Psychoanalysis, and Social Transformation Series Editors: jan jagodzinski, University of Alberta Mark Bracher, Kent State University The purpose of this series is to develop and disseminate psychoanalytic knowledge that can help educators in their pursuit of three core functions of education: 1. facilitating student learning 2. fostering students personal development, and 3. promoting prosocial attitudes, habits, and behaviors in students (i.e. those opposed to violence, substance abuse, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.). Psychoanalysis can help educators realize these aims of education by providing them with important insights into: 1. the emotional and cognitive capacities that are necessary for students to be able to learn, develop, and engage in prosocial behavior 2. the motivations that drive such learning, development, and behaviors, and 3. the motivations that produce antisocial behaviors as well as resistance to learning and development. Such understanding can enable educators to develop pedagogical strategies and techniques to help students overcome psychological impediments to learning and development, either by identifying and removing the impediments or by helping students develop the ability to overcome them. Moreover, by offering an understanding of the motivations that cause some of our most severe social problems including crime, violence, substance abuse, prejudice, and inequality together with knowledge of how such motivations can be altered, books in this series will contribute to the reduction and prevention of such problems, a task that education is increasingly being called upon to assume. Radical Pedagogy: Identity, Generativity, and Social Transformation By Mark Bracher Teaching the Rhetoric of Resistance: The Popular Holocaust and Social Change in a Post 9/11 World By Robert Samuels Television and Youth Culture: Televised Paranoia By jan jagodzinksi Psychopedagogy: Freud, Lacan, and the Psychoanalytic Theory of Education By K. Daniel Cho New Media, Cultural Studies, and Critical Theory after Postmodernism: Automodernity from Zizek to Laclau By Robert Samuels
New Media, Cultural Studies, and Critical Theory after Postmodernism Automodernity from Zizek to Laclau By Robert Samuels palgrave macmillan
NEW MEDIA, CULTURAL STUDIES, AND CRITICAL THEORY AFTER POSTMODERNISM Copyright Robert Samuels, 2009. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-61981-4 All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-38235-4 ISBN 978-0-230-10418-1 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230104181 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Macmillan Publishing Solutions First edition: January 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Sophia, Madeleine, and Jacqueline
This page intentionally left blank
Preface Contents Part I: A Radical Critique of Academic Theory 1 1. Automodernity: Autonomy and Automation after Postmodernity 3 2. Henry Jenkins: Cultural Studies, New Media, and the Ends of the Modern University 27 3. After Frederic Jameson: A Practical Critique of Pure Theory and Postmodernity 51 4. The Political without Politics: Slavoj Zizek and the Psychoanalysis of Automodernity 69 Part II: The Psychopathology of Automodernity 85 5. On the Psychopathology of the New Right: From Jurassic Park to the Gendered Culture Wars 87 6. The Automodern University: The Universal Individual and the Backlash against Social Discourse 105 7. Grand Theft Automodernity: Globalizing Individualism and Cultural Nihilism from Eminem to The Matrix 123 Part III: Postmodern Education, Social Movements, and Politics 145 8. Postmodern Education and Social Ethics after Automodernity 147 9. Taking Back the Automodern University: Postmodern Progressive Social Movements and the Academic Class System 167 10. Beyond the Zizek-Laclau Debate: Coalition Politics and Academic Theory after Obama 187 Notes 207 Works Cited 241 Index 249 ix
This page intentionally left blank
Preface T his book argues that we have moved into a new cultural period, automodernity, which represents a social, psychological, and technological reaction to postmodernity. In fact, by showing how individual autonomy is now being generated through technological and cultural automation, I posit that we must rethink modernity and postmodernity. Part of this rethinking entails stressing how the progressive political aspects of postmodernism need to be separated from the aesthetic consumption of differences in automoderntiy. Ultimately, I posit that what defines postmodernity is the stress on social constructionism, secular humanism, and progressive social movements that challenge the universality and neutrality of modern reason. In order to distinguish automodernity from postmodernity, I begin this book by analyzing the role of new media in catering to an antisocial model of libertarian politics and subjectivity. Thus, Chapter 1 concentrates on the use of new media technologies in the current backlash against the postmodern welfare state and progressive social movements. This chapter also introduces my critical rereading of postmodernity and postmodern academic theory. In Chapter 2, I switch my attention to the recent history of cultural studies and the analysis of new media in critical theory. In examining the work Henry Jenkins, I reveal how the field of cultural studies has become a backlash discourse, and while this mode of academic criticism once concentrated on the roles of race, gender, and class in the social construction of media representations, it has now shifted its attention to how particular individuals find meaning in diverse media. By performing a genealogy of cultural studies, I will argue that academic criticism is itself mirroring the cultural move from the stress on the social to the emphasis on the individual, and this transition has important political and theoretical effects. In Chapter 3, I use the work of Frederic Jameson to posit that we need to rethink his notion of postmodernity in order to differentiate between the progressive aspects of social constructivism and the regressive appropriation of cultural differences for aesthetic and economic purposes. I also demonstrate that radical academic thinkers, like Jameson, tend to unknowingly participate in a conservative backlash against postmodern social movements. In fact, Jameson is openly hostile to these new modes of political protest and organization because they do not take on a classic Marxist stress on a total revolution against a totalizing system. Chapter 4 continues this critique of academic theory by looking at the work of Slavoj Zizek. My central contention is that Zizek also participates in a strong automodern backlash against postmodern progressive social movements, and by critiquing his work, we can see how academic theory often functions to replicate destructive aspects of the status quo, while it pretends to offer a space for
x PREFACE transgression and subversion. Central to this critique of Zizek s work is a demonstration of how he misreads Lacan through a reactionary discourse. In the next part of the book, I turn to the role of cultural studies and critical theory in contemporary politics, institutions of higher education, and cultural productions. Chapter 5 uses critical postmodern theories to examine the psychological foundations of the new Right. By offering a psychoanalytic reading of Jurassic Park alongside an analysis of a book on backlash politics, I articulate the central psychodynamics of the conservative reaction against feminist theory and the rise of women in diverse aspects of contemporary society. Chapter 6 uses the theory of automodernity to describe how American universities have become a central location for the backlash against social movements, secular humanism, postmodernity, and social constructivism. Thus, instead of seeing universities as one of the last bastions of progressive thought, I reveal the ways universities often function to contain a radical intellectual class through the promotion of the automodern stress on automation and autonomy. I also use this chapter to examine the ways the Left and the Right misrepresent multiculturalism, cultural relativism, and postmodernity. In Chapter 7, I flesh out the concept of automodernity by turning to three very different cultural productions: the video game Grant Theft Auto, the rapper Eminem, and the movie, The Matrix. What I find in these disparate products of contemporary mass culture is the same combination of globalized automation and individual autonomy coupled with a backlash against postmodern social movements and a veiled return to premodern social hierarchies. Moreover, all of these works show why race still matters in our supposedly postprejudice social order. In the final part of this book, I perform critical interventions into three different realms of contemporary society: education, social movements, and national politics. These chapters are intended to use postmodern critical theory and cultural studies to make concrete suggestions on how we can improve our contemporary social systems. For example, in Chapter 8, I posit that we need to reclaim the radical legacy of postmodernity by offering models of education that move the focus from the libertarian, automodern individual to the social construction of knowledge and progressive social movements. In discussing my disagreement with several new educational efforts to broaden multicultural tolerance, I posit the need for a psychoanalytically informed model of learning and ethics. Chapter 9 articulates the close relation between postmodernity, progressive social movements, secular humanism, and theories of social constructionism, and by examining my experience in the academic workplace justice movement, I show how universities are being transformed from below and how progressive changes are often being blocked by the automodern tendencies of highly individualized progressive faculty members. To help correct this problem, I offer examples of how nontenured faculty in the University of California have worked together to take back the institutions from antisocial, antipublic, and anti-educational forces. The final chapter in this book turns to new media in order to offer a new model of politics and democracy. In showing why we now have the ability to hold all of
PREFACE xi our campaigns online, and therefore reduce the cost of campaigns to virtually nothing, I posit the need for a radical conception of digital democracy. This turn to social networks to transform our political system entails an undermining of the growing automodern libertarian consensus. Furthermore, I show how a new model of digital democracy counters the types of political organization favored by Slavoj Zizek, Ernesto Laclau, and Barack Obama.