The poverty of postmodern human services

128 Australian Social Work/June 2002, Vol. 55, No. 2

Keywordsdeconstruction, human services, Marxism,

Postmodernism

The lure of postmodernismWhat is it about postmodernism that couldattract the interest and support of erstwhilehuman service educators and practitioners,especially those on the political left?Judging from the literature on the subjectthere appear to be several main attractions.One of these is that there is no longer anyneed to be overly concerned aboutobjective, material reality, or struggle with

Realpolitik since neither exist in a definitivesense (Wood, 1997). Jean Baudrillard(1988) is cited as an ‘authority?’ on thisexorbitant thesis.

It is Baudrillard’s (1991) contention thatwe have arrived at an epoch of purelyfictive or illusory appearances; that ‘reality’is nowadays largely predefined by media-hype; and that henceforth we hadbetter adjust to a life of virtual reality, ratherthan cling to the illusion that anything hasveridical force. There are simply noontological or epistemological grounds fordistinguishing the difference between‘simulacra’ or image and substance. Thus,Baudrillard (1991) was able to assurereaders of The Guardian that the Gulf Warwould never happen because ‘talk’ of warhad now become a substitute for the realevent, and even if war broke out spectators

The poverty of postmodern humanservicesJohn Solas

Postmodernism cannot or will not tell the difference between truth and falsehood,reality and simulacra, principle and dogma, or right and wrong. As a corollary, it isunable or unwilling to make any ‘veritable’ difference to the nature or order ofthings. Indeed, there is no escape from, nor anything outside of, the ‘panopticon oflanguage’. Accordingly, there is no significant probative difference between thepractice and experience of genocide, and talking or writing about it. All one can dois be sceptical about discourses, even those concerned with ethnic cleansing andthe like. As ludicrous as this sounds, it has not prevented postmodernism frommonopolising discourses about significant aesthetic, cultural, economic,intellectual, political and social practices and sensibilities. Postmodernismmanifests itself in a host of disciplines, and its presence is being increasingly felt inhuman services education and practice. If, as I shall argue, postmodernism is such athoroughly baseless, reductive and inert doctrine, then why persist with it? Thepoverty of postmodernism prompts a timely return to the rich legacy of Marxism.

John Solas, Faculty of Arts, School of Humanities,Communications and Social Sciences, Monash University,Gippsland Campus.Email: [email protected]

would be unable to wrest fact from fictionsince they would never have unmediatedaccess to events. Thanks to Baudrillard,human services educators and practitionerswill never again mistake the ‘hyperreality’ ofimmiseration for the real thing.

Equally attractive is the notion of a‘decentred subject.’ The thinking, feeling,willing, speaking and acting ‘liberalhumanist’ self or ‘subject’ is now non-essential. This particular subject wasthe cause of so much depravity andviolence that its departure is both expedientand a welcomed relief. Without it, humanservice workers need not contend with allthe hard questions over which they hadonce agonised such as freedom, justice,equality, solidarity and the like. It is enoughto theorise about how the subject is aneffect of language or product of discourse,devoid of free will, agency and reflectivegrasp and fragmented by power, desire,convention or the dictates of variousinterpretative communities, than actually doanything about it.

Another of the main attractions ispostmodernism’s hostility towards thetyranny of ‘totality’ (Wood, 1997). Alltotalities, that is attempts to fashion and/orshare something in common, be it a cause,culture, gender, language, race, ethnicity,humanity or whatever are, or have thepotential to be, totalitarian. Thus, thedisciples of postmodernism have acquiredthe virtues of being (absolutely?) scepticaltowards universals and respectful ofdifferences, except, that is, of differenttotalities. These are virtues which JeanFrançois Lyotard (1988) has done much toestablish and exemplify. When askedwhether he condoned terrorism and war,Lyotard’s and Thébaud (1986) unqualified

allegiance to these particular virtuesobliged him to remain completelyindiscriminate about the differences betweenthe two. He was even unable to offer areason for considering either of them just orunjust. As Lyotard (1985) blithely admitted:

if you ask me why I am on that side, I thinkthat I would answer that I do not have ananswer to the question ‘why’? and that is inthe order of transcendence. When I say‘transcendence,’ it means: I do not knowwho is sending me the prescription inquestion. (p. 69).

Lyotard claims that he is not in a position toknow for sure the exact source of thediscourse, he cannot judge its authority,intent or institutional warrant. True to hisown postmodernist lights, Lyotard is contentto remain in doubt rather than find out. Thetask for human services, then, is not to seekchange, or even to articulate the politicalaspirations of a particular oppressed group,but to suspect all meta-narratives andpreserve without judgement any difference,or differend in Lyotard’s (1988) terms.

Finally, subscribers to postmodernismare not bound nor animated by a belief in‘progress’ (Wood, 1997). This enables themto avoid the ‘naturalistic fallacy,’ whichholds that it is possible to get from bad tobetter times. There is, therefore, absolutelynothing about the past, present or futurethat could be regarded as an advance –including, for instance, a capitalist-freeJurassic period, a 20th century devoid ofdinosaurs, or more particularly, any notionof progressive human services.

The age of enlightenment, according topostmodernists, has been a particularlyegregious period. Belief in enlightenmenthas been the ultimate cause of peoples’

Australian Social Work/June 2002, Vol. 55, No. 2 129

inhumanity to each other. Death camps,death squads, civil, cold and world wars,ethnic cleansing, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, theCuban missile crisis and the persistentthreat of nuclear annihilation, to mentiononly a few of the major events included in alarge and growing inventory, attest to thebrutal and oppressive logic of so-called‘enlightened’ thought (Harvey, 1990).Postmodernists are adamant that seriousdoubt must be cast upon any appeal madeto so-called enlightened ideals (reason,truth, knowledge, freedom and so on) inorder to avoid more unmitigated disaster.The human services owe a large debt toMichel Foucault (1963, 1967, 1977) inparticular for revealing the depth of theircomplicity in making things which theypurport to remedy worse. Their knowledgehas given them the power to helpincriminate and incarcerate, pathologiseand hospitalise, discipline and renderdocile individuals. Foucault annuls thedifference between historical fact andideological fiction, and hence, sparesworkers the arduous and risky task ofexposing and challenging institutionalisedlies and hypocrisies. A crucial question iswhat will become of the critical andprogressive ethos of human serviceseducation and practice in the wake ofpostmodernism?

Against postmodernismThe retreat from frontline activism to thebarricades of abstraction is, as PerryAnderson (1977) argued, a typicalresponse to disillusionment. However, whatis surprising is the failure of deserters torealise or acknowledge the extent to which

they contribute to their own confinement inthe backwaters of mainstream political life.The immodest and largely uncriticalembrace of postmodernism must surelyrank as one of the most self defeating anduntimely gestures that could be made inresponse to the exigencies human serviceprofessions now face. It promotes a deepsuspicion of anything that attempts tooppose fiction with facts, falsehood withtruth and simulacrum with reality. Accordingto postmodern luminaries, it is no longerpossible – ‘realistically’ possible – to believein the value of reason, truth, freedom,progress and the emancipating power ofenlightened critique. It would seem to be farbetter to abandon these values than betaken for a downright teleologicallyessentialistic universalist humanist fool fortrusting in them.

Of course, it is important to keep thesevalues under close scrutiny. However, thereis nothing to be gained by subscribing tototal(ising) disbelief, unless of course one iswilling to agree with Michel Foucault (1980)that ignorance is bliss. Nor is there anypoint engaging in iconoclasm of thepostmodern variety if its denouement is tojustify the claim to have reached the limitsof what is ‘realistically’ possible, and closesoff opportunities for direct, far-reachingpolitical action.

Times have, as the postmodernistsargue, changed – mounting unemployment,increasing decadence, sweeping anti-unionlegislation, massive social welfare cutbacksand more now confront a vast majority ofpeople. Conservative rule and neoliberalideology have cut so deep into the bodypolitic of both the East and West that it hassevered all sinews of care and concern foranyone or anything outside the threshold of


power and privilege. Hardly a day passeswithout fresh news of some seriousgovernment and/or business scandal, rortor cover up – insider-trading, fraud andembezzlement by remorseless executivesof transnational companies, secret armsdeals struck with brutal, anti-democraticregimes, ex-cabinet ministers drawingsubstantial profits from share options onpublic assets which they helped toprivatise, and genocide supervised byUnited Nations’ ‘peace-keeping’ forces. Notonly do these events attest to a full-scalelegitimation crisis, a terminal breakdown inthe structures and values of democraticaccountability, but they are nowadaysneither very shocking nor memorable.Indeed, they have become an integral partof the ‘cultural logic of late capitalism’(Jameson, 1991), or more specifically, the ‘postmodern condition’ (Lyotard, 1984).

Human service educators andpractitioners are simply deludingthemselves if they think that this squalidpanorama of waste and futility can beaddressed by adhering to a position that isthe very antithesis of their vocation, that is,one that completely rejects the capacity todiscern the disparity between things-as-they-are and things-as-they-might-be byappeal to enlightened critical reason. And,it will take something firmer than blindscepticism to subvert the manifold grandnarratives that breed total indifferencetowards ordinary people. As Terry Eagleton(1996) contends, postmodernism is ‘nothingmore than a substitute for more classicalforms of radical politics, which dealt inclass, state, ideology, revolution, materialmodes of production’ (p. 22); in short,Marxism.

In defence of vulgarMarxism

Marxism is something very different fromthe reductive and oppressive regimes thathave been derived from Marx’s theories. Irefer here to vulgar Marxism, that is, whatMarx wrote, not what has been writ large inhis name. In his seminal eleventh thesis onFeuerbach, Marx (1969) declared that ‘thephilosophers have only interpreted theworld, in various ways; the point, however,is to change it’ (p. 286). Regrettably, Marx’spoint has been lost or abandoned amid theleft’s unconditional surrender to theoverweening claims of postmodernism.Little wonder Marx was so brusquelyscornful of philosophy (Balibar, 1995).

It now seems well nigh impossible toreassert the legitimacy, relevance and valueof orthodox Marxism (without being judgedan apologist, a reactionary, a zealot or justplain crazy!), with so many prominentmembers of the post-Marxist shibbolethboth in (Carter, 1998; Ife, 1997; Leonard,1997; Pease & Fook, 1999)1 and outsidehuman services (such as Laclau andMouffe 1985) proclaiming the obsolescenceof traditional class-based socialist politicsand the ‘production paradigm’. Even JürgenHabermas (1987) has abandoned thewhole conceptual baggage of dialecticalmaterialism for a stake in the politics ofpostmoderism. Various attempts haveinstead been made to articulatepostmodernism with Marxism.

One of the most recent, and perhapsrepresentative, of such attempts amongwelfare academics is that by Bob Peaseand Jan Fook (1999). These authors‘believe that a “weak” form ofpostmodernism informed by critical theory


can contribute effectively to theconstruction of an emancipatory politicsconcerned with political action and socialjustice’ (p. 12). This form of postmodernismaccepts ‘normative criticism and theusefulness of any forms of commonalityunderlying diversity’ (italics added) (p. 12).However, it simply ignores essentialdifferences between postmodernism andMarxism. Unlike Marxism, this kind ofpostmodernism is indiscriminate about thekind of ‘commonality underlying diversity’.For example, Marxism does not considerthe common basis of ultranationalistassociations (racial hatred) and that ofindigenous groups (self-determination) ashaving equal virtue or utility. For Marxists,the commonalties that matter most arethose against exploitation and oppression.The greatest difference, however, is that,irrespective of the form it takes,postmodernism is libertarian, and hencequite incompatible with Marxism (Eagleton,1996). That is to say, postmodernism treatsdifference as sovereign, incommensurateand as an end in itself. A politics basedupon difference alone, according to TerryEagleton (1996):

will be unable to advance very far beyondtraditional liberalism – and indeed quite abit of postmodernism, with its zest forplurality, multiplicity, provisionality, anti-totality, open-endedness and the rest, hasthe look of a sheepish liberalism in wolf’sclothing (p. 120).

Marxism is keenly aware of the dire effectsof indifference and division. However, theproliferation of difference for its own sake isnot taken as the endpoint of politicalstruggle. Rather, Marxism seeks the politicalrecognition and elaboration of mutualdifferences.

Attempts to reconcile this fundamentaldifference has generally resulted in athoroughly enervated form of Marxism,devoid of its critical, practical or mobilisingforce, and revolutionary vision. Thewholesale renunciation of classical Marxism – conducted under the aegis ofpostmodernism – has helped to deflatewhat remains of the left – both ‘new’ and‘old’. Indeed, the turn towards ‘postism’ has,as Timothy Bewes (1997) rightly argues,done more to promote than to counter theleft’s rapid descent into an ethos of politicalcynicism and acquiescence.

If there is any hope of a rapprochementbetween Marxism and postmodernism, it isto be found in the deeply penetrating andprovocative work of the distinguishedcultural critic Fredric Jameson (beginningwith his pioneering article on‘Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of latecapitalism’, published in New Left Review in1984). Unlike many of his contemporaries,Jameson does not quibble about the factthat he is, first and foremost, a Marxist(Roberts, 2000). As he has argued, even ina fully postmodernised world there isnothing which ‘disproves’ the cogency ofclassical Marxism. On the contrary, it‘remains the only current mode of thoughtintent on directing our attention to theeconomic consequences of the new ‘GreatTransformations’ (Jameson 1990, p. 251)now in view. Jameson never loses sight ofthe fact that life for most people most of thetime has been unduly hard. Indeed, henotes that ‘the underside of culture is blood,torture, death and terror’ (p. 5). As AdamRoberts (2000) makes clear, Jameson’scritique employs three key Marxist tools:

the centrality of history as the ‘Real’ thattexts (even anti-historical postmodernist


texts) actually articulates; a complexlyreasoned Hegelian–Althussarian belief inthe intimate relationship between cultureand socio-economics; and above all acommitment to a genuinely dialecticalcriticism (p. 133).

Regrettably, even those welfare academicswho are more Marxist than postmodernisthave tended to miss or minimise thesignificance of Jameson’s work. The moredismissive among them claim that it offerslittle hope of liberation from the culturallogic of late capitalism. According to PeterLeonard (1997) for example, Jameson‘appears to take a more gloomy view of thepossibility of a relatively autonomoussubject because the contemporary stage ofcapitalism – the global market – subjugatesthe individual to a mass culture in whichdesire is commodified’ (p. 46). Although,Leonard (1997) is optimistic about theprospect of freedom from subjugation aidedby an alignment between Marxism andpostmodernism, he admits that he himselfhas nothing new to add in response to thevexed issues which the politics andpractice of a emancipatory project, or whathe terms a ‘reconstructed discourse onwelfare’, manifests (p. 179).

In contradistinction, Jameson (1990) hasargued with typical eloquence and acumenthat while Marxism continues to exist,‘society will not lack young people whosetemperament and values are genuinely leftones and embrace visions of radical socialchange repressed by the norms of . . .business . . .’ (Jameson 1990, p. 251). Thedynamics of such commitment are not onlyderived from the reading of the ‘Marxistclassics’, but also, as Jameson (1990) quiterightly observes:

From the objective experience of socialreality and the way in which one isolatedcause or issue, one specific form ofinjustice, cannot be fulfilled or correctedwithout eventually drawing the entire web ofinterrelated social levels together into atotality, which demands the invention of apolitics of transformation (p. 251).

The kind of radical transformation whichJameson (1990) envisages is unlikely tomaterialise from those jaded or trendy leftideologues who have traded praxis for thevacuity and passivity of postmodernism. Forall its vaunted claims, it was notpostmodernism that first refused to dignifyall that has happened with the term‘history’, or began campaigning for therecognition of differences arising from eachaccording to his or her ability, to eachaccording to her or his need, or provided acatalyst for the creation of unions to protectworking conditions, or initiated aninternational class struggle againstcapitalist exploitation, or inspired thedownfall of oppressive imperialistgovernment.

Even Jacques Derrida, one of the mostrevered ‘posties’ (see, for example, Gibson-Graham, 1995; Macherey, 1995), ina rare moment of intelligibility declared:

I must confess that I have never succeededin directly relating deconstruction to existingpolitical codes and programmes . . . I trywhere I can to act politically whilerecognizing that such action remainsincommensurate with my intellectual projectof deconstruction (quoted in Kearney 1984,pp. 119–120).

Derrida (1994) finally admitted that ‘uponrereading the Communist Manifesto and afew other great works of Marx’s, I said to


myself that I know of few other texts in thephilosophical tradition, perhaps none,whose lesson seemed more urgent today’(p. 13).

Contra postmodernists, traditionalMarxism still represents the only consistentand principled praxis capable of enablinggroups to grasp the way their specificsituation interlocks with a larger context,whose logic helps to undermine theirdestiny. Marx’s approach was without doubt(or shame) a totalising one, insofar as itattempted to make some overall sense ofoppressive conditions in order to set aboutchanging them. Again, as Jameson (1998)explains:

(T)he positing of global characterizationsand hypotheses, the abstraction of the‘blooming, buzzing confusion’ ofimmediacy, was always a radicalintervention in the here-and-now and thepromise of resistance to blind fatalities(p. 35).

Enabling people to determine the course oftheir collective fate remains the implacableand irreplaceable legacy of classicalMarxism. Postmodernism lacks any specificrallying point. There is nothing to believe inor strive for. It is sheer folly, therefore, forthe human services community to set aboutsquandering this unique inheritancebecause of a fetish for postmodernism.

Note

1 A noteable exception is Philip Mendes’ paper‘The Left, social workers and the welfare state: anold debate revisted’ presented at the 25th annualNational Conference of the AASW.

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Article accepted for publication December 2001.


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The poverty of postmodern human services