Mmmammon and such
In For Such a Time as This: The Relevance of the Neo-Calvinist Tradition today Craig Bartholomew quotes the Puritan William Perkins:
Now if we compare worke to worke, there is a difference betwixt washing of the dishes, and preaching of the word of God: but as touching to please God none at all.
Reading the article, I get the feeling Postmodernism could be seen as Mammon’s dutiful servant. When all grand stories to structure lives are suspect, ‘buy more shite’ slips under the radar. This is how Susan White says it, quoted by Bartholomew:
If there is any overarching metanarrative that purports to explain reality in the late 20th century, it is surely the narrative of the free-market economy. In the beginning of this narrative is the self-made, self-sufficient human being. At the end of this narrative is the big house, the big car, and the expensive clothes. In the middle is the struggle for success, the greed, the getting-and-spending in a world in which there is no such thing as a free lunch. Most of us have made this so thoroughly ‘our story’ that we are hardly aware of its influence.
Upon some discussion with Aaron: postmodernist and modernist selves are similar, boldly striding into the future with nary a backwards glance. The difference is the pomo’s direction of travel is a bit more private. Both choosing, choosing, choosing to discover/define the self. But the thing that isn’t obvious on the surface is that it’s always money that enables choice.
A philosopher acquaintence of mine thinks God-talk is always a veiled reference to what he calls the ‘concerting instinct’ — those connections that pull us together. He thinks money is a troublesome shortcut to, or counterfeit of, the concerting instinct. It lets selves choose independently of family, land, tradition, the past. But it’s a trick of course. H H Farmer is quoted in that article as saying, “If you go against the grain of the universe you get splinters”. The world revolts in various kinds of chaos — lonely & angry people, spoiled land, ugly buildings etc. Which is possibly another way of saying that Mammon demands sacrifices.
7 responses to “Mmmammon and such”
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I like this way of explaining it All.
fredric jameson (a neo-marxist theorist) called postmodernism “the cultural logic of late capitalism”. i suspect it’s a double-edged sword, though.
actually, i think it becomes dangerous when people see it as just another metanarrative to hold on to. postmodernism should be a basis for action. and theoretically speaking, it’s not “post”-modernism – it’s another stage of modernism. but people tend to ignore the philosophical dimensions after a certain point – susan white is right, it’s all about economics now.
Hi Yvonne – can you elaborate a bit please? Why is postmodernism “another stage of modernism”? And when you say that it should be the basis of action, do you mean that you approve of it being the basis of action? If so, how?
More generally, I’m interested in how stripping the self of any (other) metanarrative inevitably leads to capture by economics. I think I can see how/why that would happen (especially when the self is then subject to marketers telling it to consume in order to actualise/express/assign self-worth or whatever), but what’s your own reasoning?
Hello Aaron – yes, i’ll try. if postmodernism is understood in the conventional sense of a “theory” (which implies general/abstract “principles”) it can only be understood in the context of modernism, it is parasitic upon it. theorizing postmodernism without imagining concurrent developments – new ways of representing the world and ourselves to ourselves –
would be a deconstruction of postmodernism, if you like. if the gap between theory and practice is not bridged, the theories themselves run the risk of ossifying and effecting their own “closure” (that’s what i meant when i said postmodernism becomes another metanarrative), thus falling back into the essentialism of the modernist tradition. in the context of pure theory, postmodernism hasn’t somehow gotten “past” modernism, it’s a place at the end of modernism which still relies on terminology and concepts derived from modernism.
“truth is relative” does not mean that truth does not exist, it means universal truth does not exist. i am all for a society where radical differences – between genders and cultures, for example – are recognized, so i would advocate a general approach to things more in terms of concrete situatedness, locality, particularity; a conception of human beings as
embodied and implicated in the world and in relationships with others rather than as abstract free rational “selves”, for example. i also think that the unconscious elements in culture need to be acknowledged, e.g. the role of desire in knowledge.
my reasoning is just that. i think people’s bodies are inscribed by discourses that influence (construct?) our ways of thinking and acting in the world. following psychoanalysis, i also think we are motivated by lack, and that in this particular social
formation the means we see as being able to “fulfil” that lack is filtered through the lens of capitalist economics (because capitalist economics orders so many aspects of our spatiotemporal being-in-the-world?)
just my opinion, so apologies if it all sounds like gobbledegook or is inconsistent in some parts.
Hi Yvonne –
Thanks for that. It makes sense.
I like your description of an approach according to “concrete situatedness”. That’s the way I like to think of things too.
What you’re describing is one reason why it’s so hard to critique a situation from within. Often, the self is so constructed (or, ‘inscribed’) by that situation that alternatives are – literally – unthinkable.
Cheers!
I am outdepthed