Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 15:02:39 -0500 From: H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers Reply to: H-NET List on German History To: Multiple recipients of list H-GERMAN Subject: More po-mo Submitted by: Susan A. Crane Lurking on H-German this summer, I marvelled at the reproduction of the Enlightenment salon in a listserv: like-minded individuals conducting intelligent conversations on public opinion regarding postmodernism. But the Enlightenment era was also the era of the panopticon, as Michael Geyer reminded; and increasingly, I am struck by the surveillance aspect of lurking and listservs. That's probably why I finally decided to break silence -- not a monastic vow, but a silence born of a purportedly po-mo perception that communication among like-minded individuals is always potentially coercive and often downright one-sided. Apropos of the stimulating (because frustrating) discussion of postmodernism and German historians, I would like to suggest that criticism of postmodernism boils downn to two fears. Without insinuating that these fears are ridiculous or unjustified, I would identify them as 1) fear that any po-mo sensibility must be apolitical; and 2)that po-mo can't be "serious." To start again, from the second fear: postmodernism is never adequately defined. How can it be "serious" when no one knows quite what it is? (I happen to see this as one of its virtues.) Po-mo is also unserious because of what Schiller once called "the play impulse" (listservers have noted quite rightly the German Romantic influences on po-mo): now in a Derridean play on words, now in a Lyotardian "language game." As a creative process, play in all three senses is precisely impermanent, epiphenomenal, individually enacted and experienced, infinitely malleable. Does this make it less rigorous as a practice than, say, a particular historical methodology? No: it simply means that the rules constantly change, that their enactment is observed, in practice. If nothing else, what falls under the heading of po-mo necessarily eludes definition because it insists on self-referentiality and refuses all totalizations. (Does that sound like a critique? It's a criterium!) This amounts to an intolerable relativism, according to Rorty or Habermas, though for quite different reasons. To be eminently practical: in terms of historical practice, isn't po-mo a confession of the inveterate specialization within our profession, which figured so prominently in Geyer and Jarausch's article? May not postmodernism translate into a survival tactic for young historians who have already been forced into narrow views of professional sub- disciplinary specialities by their graduate school training and job-market prospects? It translates as a vehicle for infinite topic development through constantly changing boundaries and interpretations; rather than being field-specific or internally-bound by methodologies, it allows for the developmental play which will be essential for the future strength of any historical discipline. Not that I see it that way, myself; I offer it as a redemptive reading of what people seem not to like about po-mo reading and writing strategies. As for fear #1, I don't know the answer. The lack of po-mo political commitment or agendas continues to trouble critics of po-mo. I can only attest to the fear as it is encountered on various professional occasions such as conferences and job talks. However, I continue, in a fundamentally inexplicable way, to be optimistic that once I just get a chance to talk to people, they'll come to understand what I'm doing not as threatening, but as simply another alternative approach to history, one that satisfies me personally. Without the theory I've read, I wouldn't be able to write history the way I want to write it. When it comes down to it, what's called "po-mo" is for me simply the right way to write -- an option that I was fortunate to encounter within a highly respected graduate program, as a German historian, at the University of Chicago. Even po-mo relativists like polite conversation. I just don't assume that my salon is crowded with like-minded individuals; I don't expect everyone to understand me, I don't even assume it's necessary. This listserv is a forum which promotes contact, not consensus. Supposedly there are over 500 subscribers. But the contributions come from an enlightened few (the ones who publicly discuss public opinion). Where are the rest of you? .