Mumby - Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies - A Rereading of An Ongoing Debate

Communication Theory Seven:
One
Dennis K. Mumby
February 1997 Pages: 1-28
Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies: A Rereading of an Ongoing Debate
Recent writings in communication studies have tended to represent the relationship between modernist and postmodernist thought as bifurcated and oppositional in character. Such representations, I argue, result from inadequate characterizations of both the modernist and postmodernist projects and of the various conceptions of communication therein. I therefore suggest a move beyond a simple modern-postmodern dichotomy and articulate in its place four discursive positions that embody different assumptions about the relationships among communication, identity, and knowledge formation. These discourses are: (a) a discourse of representation (positivistmodernism), (b)a discourse of understanding (interpretivemodernism), (c)a discourse of suspicion (critical modernism), and (d) a discourse of vulnerability (postmodernism).Finally, I adumbrate a set of postmoderncommunication conditionsasa way of illustrating the connections between postmodern thought and communication studies.
Several recent issues of mainstream communication journals have focused on the disciplinary status of our field, raising important concerns about the assumptions that undergird the study of communication (Andersen, 1993; Bantz, 1993; Levy, 1993a, 1993b; Petronio, 1994). These special issues represent an attempt to address the many epistemological, ontological, and political questions that pervade our field. Although it is hard to establish a consensus about whether communication has, will, or should achieve disciplinary status, it is clear that communication scholars are engaged in important debates over the character and trajectory of communication scholarship. In this essay I address a particular set of issues regarding the situating of communication studies in the context of recent and ongoing polemics over the relationship between modernism and postmodernism. The specific problem I engage is the characterization of the relationships among modernism, postmodernism, and communication studies. Such characterizations range from the complete dismissal of critical, postmodernist, and poststructuralist approaches to communication (e.g., Bostrom & Donohew, 1992; Burgoon, 1995; Burgoon & Bailey, 1992; Ellis, 1991) to the relatively uncritical appropriation of postmodernism as an alterna1
Communication Theory
tive to the modernist tradition in communication studies (e.g., Stewart, 1991, 1992). Ironically, each position leaves both modernism and postmodernism undertheorized and hence contributes to a lack of understanding of the continuities and discontinuities between them. For example, Ellis (1991) argued that little could be more contrary to a theory of communication than principles that emerge from poststructuralism and the critical theory that it spawns (p. 221). Although I might disagree with Elliss critique of poststructuralism as an inadequate basis for a theory of communication, I am more disturbed by his easy conflation of poststructuralism and critical theory and by the implication that they come out of the same tradition (which, as I argue below, they dont). The equation of poststructuralism and critical theory seriously misrepresents two important intellectual traditions upon which contemporary social thought is based and hence contributes to the ongoing reproduction of misunderstanding in our field. Poststructuralism and critical theory, I argue, have very different implications for the development of theories of communication. Also problematic is Stewarts (1991) reduction of postmodernism to a rather generic social constructionist orientation to communication studies and his conflation of modernism (presented as a single, representational paradigm) with positivism. This essay suggests how we might more productively view the relationships among communication, modernism, and postmodernism. At one level, any such effort is a (modernist) attempt to impose order on what one anonymous reviewer of this essay described rightly as a complex and unfixable theoretical space. However, the intent here is not to articulate a definitive account of these relationships but rather to suggest some useful and productive ways to contextualize communication issues at a time when what counts as knowledge is in a state of flux and transformation. Indeed, it is the so-called crisis of representation (Jameson, 1984, p. viii) that provides the touchstone for this essay. In brief, I argue that the various perspectives (both modernist and postmodernist) discussed here pose increasingly radical challenges to the representational paradigm and its correspondence theory of truth that is most often associated with mainstream social science research. I suggest that the relationship between modernism and postmodernism can be usefully characterized as revolving around four discourses, each of which differently situates and constructs communication as a human phenomenon. These four discourses are: (a) a discourse of representation (positivism), (b) a discourse of understanding (interpretivism), (c) a discourse of suspicion (critical theory and neo-Marxism), and (d) a discourse of vulnerability (postmodernism). The term discourse is used here in Foucaults (1980b) sense of a system of possibilities for the creation of knowledge. Foucault (1988) is concerned not with truth per se but rather with explicating games of truth (p. 1)-implicit rules that shape what counts as knowledge, who can speak such knowledge, and how individuals are constituted as sub2
Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies
jects through this knowledge. The four discourses discussed in this essay thus embody different games of truth, articulating different disciplinary practices and ways of constituting relationships among communication, identity, and forms of knowledge. In addition, each discourse tells us something about the political and ethical dimensions of knowledge formation; that is, each articulates a way of knowing that has different consequences for the way in which we frame issues of community and responsibility. The remainder of this essay thus unpacks the games of truth associated with each of the four discourses that, I would argue, are the most influential and pervasive in our field. Certainly a case could be made for alternative formulations that identify three, five, or even six discourses. However, I believe a coherent case can be made for four given the importance of positivism, interpretivism, critical theory, and postmodernism for our discipline. I recognize the blurred character of these genres (Geertz, 1983) but argue that much can be gained from understanding the relationships amongst them. Finally, allow me to position myself within this essay. Although I was trained as a critical theorist, much of my more recent work has involved attempts to draw connections among critical theory, feminism, and postmodernism as a way of advancing social critique and examining configurations of power in society (particularly in organizational contexts). I acknowledge therefore a sympathy toward postmodern thought but am wary of some of its more extreme tendencies and sometimes commitment to relativism, nihilism, and self-indulgence. In addition, its occasional conservative tenor and capitulation to the excesses of capitalism (see Eagleton, 1995, for an excellent critique of such tendencies) does not lend itself readily to critiques of systems of power and domination. My own proclivities thus tend toward a politics informed by critical theory, in which a communication ethic oriented toward democracy is central (e.g., Deetz, 1992), while simultaneously I recognize the importance of the postmodern critique of the totalizing tendencies of critical theory, along with the formers important analyses of the relationships among discourse, subjectivity, and power (e.g., Foucault, 1979; Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). Thus, I believe that communication studies has to speak to social and political inequities and the situation of the disenfranchised while at the same time developing sophisticated and nuanced communication conceptions of the relations among meaning, identity, and power. This essay is thus not about the debate between modernism and postmodernism so much as it is about how four different discourses each engage with the Enlightenment project, the basic goal of which is to enable human beings to develop systems of reason that enable them to transcend oppression in its various forms - religious, political, economic, and so forth. Ultimately, the goal of this paper is to provide a coherent way to make sense out of a set of issues that are central to our disciplinary identity.
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The Modernist Project and Communication Studies Modernism and the Positivist Legacy: A Discourse of Representation
The first stream of modernist thought - at least as it has been put into practice in the twentieth century - can be roughly characterized in terms of the positivist appropriation of Cartesian dualism. Beginning with Comtes articulation of a positive sociology, over the last 100 years an orthodoxy has emerged in the social sciences in which knowledge and truth have become equated with the scientific method. The foundation of this method is the radical (Cartesian) separation of subject (researcher) and object (of knowledge) and the development of research tools that allow this bifurcation to remain as inviolable as possible. In this context, language becomes a neutral mode of representing the observed relationships in the external world. Thus, when Stewart (1991) spoke of the modernist proclivity for the three cs: closure, certainty, and control (p. 356), it is this iteration of modernity to which he refers. Much of the research that has taken place in the social sciences, as well as in communication studies, fits comfortably within this framework. What are the implications of this version of modernism for communication studies? Shepherd (1993) argued that the Cartesian legacy, embodied in positivist modernism, leaves little room for a conception of communication that has any ontological substance at all. The radical bifurcation of subject and object, mind and world constructs a view that at best conceives of communication as a conduit or vehicle for already formed ideas or, at worst, as a hindrance to our ability to perceive the world and our relationship to it clearly. In this model, communication is at best ancillary to, and at wqrst obstructive of, the production of truth claims. In organizational communication studies, Axley (1984) has shown how this conduit model pervades the way organization members think about communication processes, leading to an unreflexive approach to communication difficulties. Similarly, Deetzs (1992)critique of the politics of expression suggests how historically our field has operated with models that leave unproblematized relations among communication, identity, and democratic processes. Where communication is conceived as simple expression, democracy is reduced to voices competing in the marketplace of ideas and, as a field, we become focused on questions of persuasion and communication effects. Such a conception leaves little room for an adequately developed communication ethic. Because communication is framed within a representational discourse, it is conceived as either value neutral or as a means of maintaining or augmenting already established political relations. In such a context, communication is evaluated in terms of its effectiveness (with the three cs as the principal criteria) rather than as a constitutive element in the production of mutual understanding and democratic participation in decision-making processes.
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This effectiveness model of communication, grounded in representational discourse, is clearly espoused by Pfeffer ( 198 1 ) in his discussion of the relationship between communication and organizational power: The view developed here . . . is that language and symbolism are important in the exercise of power. It is helpful for social actors with power to use appropriate political language and symbols to legitimate and develop support for the decisions that are reached on the basis of power. However, in this formulation, language and the ability to use political symbols contribute only marginally to the development of the power of various organizational participants; rather, power derives from the conditions of resource control and resource interdependence. (p. 184) Here, a clear bifurcation is made between the ability of actors to marshal organizational resources and their ability to communicate about their possession and use of these resources. Such a representational model is unable to conceive of the possibility that communication is anything other than an empty conduit for effectively communicating an already existing set of conditions. The idea that communication can actually shape and constitute what counts as power and resources in the first place is difficult to conceive from within this model. The act of communication and the world about which one is communicating remain firmly separated. Shepherd (1993, p. 8 8 ) suggested that one (and arguably the most dominant) response to this modernist bifurcation of (communicating) subject and object/world and the resultant conception of communication is to simply accept the split as given, and hence position the field as the handmaiden of other disciplines. In this sense, communication has no ontological grounding of its own but rather is parasitic on other disciplines. Hence, we borrow concepts such as attitude change, cognitive dissonance, persuasion, and so on, developed in fields such as psychology and sociology, and give them a communication twist. What is perhaps most interesting about much of the communication research conducted in many of these areas is that it very rarely studies actual communication behavior. Mostly, researchers study the results of penand-paper tests, survey questionnaires, and written responses to hypothetical situations-perhaps more evidence for Shepherds claim that modernity said of communication what Gertrude Stein said of Oakland: There is no there there (p. 87).
Modernism and interpretlvlsm: A Discourse of Understanding
An important alternative to positivist modernism is articulated from within the tradition of modernism itself. Positivist modernism seeks to maintain the radical bifurcation of subject and object as a means to knowledge whereas interpretive modernism seeks, if not their reconciliation, then their placing in a productive, dialectical tension. This tradition
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finds its origins in German Idealism with the Kantian notion that the knowing mind is an active contributor to the constitution of knowledge (i.e., the mind is not simply a mirror of nature). It can further be traced through Hegels (1 977) dialectic, Schleiermachers and Diltheys groundbreaking work in hermeneutics and the Verstehen approach to understanding (Palmer, 1969), and twentieth-century work in pragmatism, symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, and contemporary hermeneutics (represented in various capacities by writers such as Gadamer, 1989; Heidegger, 1977; Husserl, 1962; James, 1942; Mead, 1934; Merleau-Ponty, 1962; Peirce [see Apel, 19811; and the later Wittgenstein, 1962). But what is it that makes such work modernist rather than premodernist or postmodernist? Given that social constructionism has, in some respects, become a moniker for postmodernism (e.g., Stewart, 1991) why does it make sense to treat such work as coming out of a modernist tradition? Certainly many of the above writers have been read as the progenitors of postmodern thought (e.g., Hekman, 1990; Rorty, 1979) because of their various deconstructions of Enlightenment rationality and its narrow reading of Truth rooted in transcendental, foundational principles. Legitimate though these readings are, I would suggest that what these authors have in common is not a rejection of Enlightenment thought tout court but instead is an attempt to reclaim reason, truth, and rationality from the hegemony of scientism and technical, instrumental reasoning. By shifting attention from mind to language (embodied, for example, in Gadamers, 1989, notion of linguisticality), these authors demonstrate that reason and truth reside not in the representational mirroring of an already existing world but rather in our ontological status as linguistic beings who engage dialogically with an other (person, text, community, etc.). Consistent with this position, Apel (1981) clearly placed C. S. Peirces pragmatist philosophy within the modernist project with his claim that Peirce designates . . . the starting point for a new foundation of the human sciences (Geisteswissenschuften) and their method of understanding ( Verstehen), by conceiving them as the science of communicative understanding (p. 194). Thus, my reading of modernism is that its concerns lie not simply with scientific forms of reason that privilege a foundational epistemology but also with forms of reason grounded in our linguistically mediated sense of being-in-the-world. In short, although positivist modernism articulates a correspondence theory of truth, interpretive modernism is founded on a consensus theory of truth that posits the existence of a communication community as its a priori condition. Certainly Gadamers (1989)work is consistent with this conception, with the recognition that truth emerges not out of the application of a methodological tool but rather out of ones enmeshment and grounding in a particular horizon of experience and sense of community. For Gadamer, then, truth eludes methodical man (Palmer, 1969) because the privileging of epistemology
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and methodology over ontology ignores the extent to which knowledge is a linguistic, dialogic production. Truth is never an act of reproduction but always one of production by virtue of engagement with the horizons of a communitys texts and discourses. Bernsteins (1992) reading of Gadamer spoke to this issue when he argued that Gadamers entire corpus can be read as an invitation to join him in the rediscovery and redemption of the richness and concreteness of our dialogical being-inthe-world (p. 49). As communication scholars, we are clearly well positioned to take up such an invitation, and, indeed, many scholars in our field have done so. The work that I describe below as falling within the discourse of interpretive modernism, is largely consistent with such an orientation, enhancing our sense of who we are as members of various communities of discourse and knowledge. Such work does not seek universal knowledge claims but rather attempts to deepen our sense of what it means to understand (or misunderstand) other humans qua members of communication communities. In this sense the modernist, Enlightenment vision is enhanced through the development and enriching of the Lifeworld (Habermas, 1987). Indeed, Shepherd (1993) argued that this is the only position out of which we can build a set of defining features for a discipline of communication:
Scholars of this response will act as disciples of, advocates for, a communicationbased view of Being. These disciples will argue that communication is essentially symbolic, but that there is nothing mereabout that. . . . Rather, words would be viewed as the ontological force, where language constitutes existence, and communication makes Being be; . . . where communication rather than cellular structure, energy or mass, aesthetic quality or commodiousness, is the foundation of Being. (p. 90)
This particular form of modernism has proliferated in the field of communication over the last 15 years, although the initial scholarship in our field can be traced to the early 1970s with explorations of the relationships among hermeneutics, phenomenology, and communication studies (Deetz, 1973, 1978; Hawes, 1977). Such work represents an early attempt to develop an ontology of communication and considerably predates Shepherds call to discipline communication in such a manner. In my own field of organizational communication, the legacy of interpretivism is the emergence of organizational culture as a viable and widely adopted approach (if recent conference programs are representative of the field) to the study of organizing. From this perspective, communication is seen as constitutive of organizations. The study of stories, metaphors, rituals, and so forth, is a way to explore the ontology of organizing as a collective communicative act (Pacanowsky & ODonnell7
Trujillo, 1982; Putnam & Pacanowsky, 1983; Smith & Eisenberg, 1987). Interestingly, not long after its emergence Smircich and Calhs (1987) declared the organizational culture approach dominant but dead (p. 229), citing its assimilation into functionalist views of organizations as evidence of its demise. From their perspective, culture had become one more way for managers to address issues of effectiveness and productivity (or, in Stewarts, 1991, terms, closure, certainty, and control [p. 3561). Although I do not strictly agree with Smircich and Callss assessment, their analysis provides a good sense of how pervasive and powerful positivist modernism still is. The tendency to appropriate new views of communication into extant paradigmatic frameworks illustrates how difficult it is to escape the pull of the ocular metaphor and representational conceptions of communication. Despite this, interpretive modernism has achieved a certain paradigmatic status in our field. Perhaps most visible is research that comes out of the ethnography of speaking tradition with its focus on the relations among communication, identity, and community. Here, the study of various speech communities focuses on the act of communication as both medium and expression of systems of meaning and identity. This work has flourished across subdisciplinary boundaries in communication studies and includes, for example, Philipsens (1975, 1976) study of white male working-class identity in Teamsterville, Carbaughs (1988) reading of the Donahue show as an electronic community, Rawlinss (1990) analysis of discourse and the dialectical construction of friendship, and Trujillos (1 992) ethnography of the complex webs of meaning that constitute the subcultures of a baseball park. Common to all these studies is the enactment of a conception of communication as a foundational ontology for human existence. Each study is predicated on the fundamental assumption that what creates community and identity is not structure or physical location but rather the linguistic construction of shared assumptive grounds about what is real and meaningful. Thus, talking like a man in Teamsterville is not simply the expression of an already fully formed, a priori identity but involves rather the communicative construction of that identity in an ongoing and dialectical manner. In sum, the work that I have described as interpretive modernist is premised on a dialogic, social constructionist approach to the world. I argue that such a discourse is modernist in its reclaiming of the reasoning individual as rooted in and constructed through communication (situated as a central, constitutive feature of social life). Ethically speaking, the discourse of understanding critiques the poverty of an ethic rooted in technical, instrumental rationality and measures of effectiveness. In its place, the dialogic model presupposes an ethical stance rooted in goodwill and the willingness to give up ones prejudices to the play of the conversation (Gadamer , 1989). Such a perspective views open discourse as essential to the construction of genuine understanding and community.
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At the same time, however, the discourse of interpretivism has been criticized for its lack of adequate theorizing regarding the political context in which such genuine conversation occurs. Deetz (1992), for example, suggested that Gadamer recovers dialectics and understanding from modem epistemological domination, but he has no politics (p. 168). Although in the larger sense this is an overstatement (it could be argued that Gadamer articulates a version of western democratic liberalism), Deetz is correct in arguing that Gadamers model fails to address adequately the ways in which dialogue can become systematically distorted (Habermas, 1970) through its enmeshment in structures of power and domination. The development of such an analysis is provided by an examination of the critical turn within the modernist project.
The Critical Modernist Project: A Dlscourse of Susplclon
Although interpretivism and the discourse of understanding is principally interested in examining the ways in which human actors co-construct a meaningful world through various communicative practices, the critical modernist project is characterized by a discourse of suspicion (a term I adapt from Ricoeurs, 1970, characterization of Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche as articulating a hermeneutics of suspicion, pp. 32-36). This position also argues for a social constructionist view of the world but questions the interpretivists failure to explore issues of power and ideology and the processes through which certain realities are privileged over others. Discourses of suspicion thus make the assumption that surface level meanings and behaviors obscure deep structure conflicts, contradictions, and neuroses that systematically limit the possibilities for the realization of a genuinely democratic society. Historically, this focus has manifested itself in two streams of thought. The first is rooted in neoMarxism and represents a far-reaching critique of the undialectical, determinist nature of so-called scientific Marxism. Originating with the writings of Western Marxists such as Gramsci (1971), Luklcs (1971), and Volosinov (1973), this work challenges economistic explanations of capitalist relations of domination, and argues instead for a focus on the superstructural, cultural, and ideological dimensions of power. The second stream of thought is also neo-Marxist in orientation and similarly focuses on the cultural manifestations of capitalism. However, this perspective, coming out of the Frankfurt school, is particularly concerned with examining systems of reason and rationality and understanding the connections among epistemology, politics, and capitalism. Although the modernism of the positivist legacy largely accepts as given one could argue celebrates- the hegemony of the scientific method and the inexorable progress toward the Enlightenment vision of a free and rational society, the critical modernist position is a much more ambivalent one. As such, Frankfurt school theorists are much more skeptical about the Enlightenment as a force of emancipation and freedom. The apogee of this skepticism is probably reached in Horkheimer and
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Adornos (1 988) treatise, Dialectic of Enlightenment, the opening of which states, In the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men [sic] from fear and establishing their authority. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant (p. 3). However, the work of the Frankfurt school can be seen as an extension of the Enlightenment project, and not its negation. Their skepticism is grounded not in the complete rejection of modernism and the Enlightenment but rather in a questioning and critique of the particular mode of rationality that has come to dominate the modernist project. A crucial move, then, involves reflection on the conditions under which so-called social progress has led to the fallen nature of modern man (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1988, p. xiv). As such the Enlightenment must consider itself, if men are not to be wholly betrayed. The task to be accomplished is not the conservation of the past, but the redemption of the hopes of the past (p. xv). In this sense, the theorists of the Frankfurt school preserve the links among reason, emancipation, and modernity but attempt to show how these relationships have been twisted and distorted by identity logic (Adorno, 1973, p. 5) and its will to mastery and control. This will, conceived by the positivists as the key to freedom from human suffering becomes for Adorno and his colleagues the very reason for the Enlightenments self-destruction. The equation of technical rationality and reason undermines the possibility of critical self-refleaion in modern thought. His pessimism notwithstanding, Adorno can be viewed as one of the twentieth-century heirs to Enlightenment aspirations. Hence, although in some ways his work prefigures the postmodern project (one could argue, for example, that his oeuvre is deconstructive in character - see Bernstein, 1992, pp. 33-45), he frequently affirms the wildest Utopian dreams of the Enlightenment project (Bernstein, 1992, p. 43). Thus, much of his work is devoted not to a rejection of modernism but rather to an effort of showing how modernism (embodied in the myth of scientism) uncritically undermines itself and how the modernist project can be reclaimed through critical reflection on the nature of reason (embodied in Adornos (1973) negative dialectics-a mode of thought that he counterposes against identity logic). As such, the goal of social freedom is still viewed as inseparable from Enlightenment thought. However, it is only in the work of Jurgen Habermas that the modernist project is once again unequivocally linked with an emancipatory logic. Habermass (1981, 1984, 1987) central claim is that modernity as a project is incomplete rather than dead. His intent is to fully articulate the emancipatory potential of modernity that Adorno and his colleagues found so elusive. Habermass critique of the Cartesian legacy developed through a reconstruction of social theory based on a linguistic model of communicative understanding. This model achieved its fullest articulation in the two volumes of The Theory of Communicative Action (1984,
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1987). Without going into great detail, it is sufficient to point out that this theory of communicative action is both a theory of rationality and a theory of society. In other words, Habermas articulated rationality as a communicative, dialogical phenomenon that has ethical and political consequences. Rationality is conceived not as the product of a transcendental subject, but rather it is constituted through the ability of dialogic partners to engage in communication (and thus make claims to validity) that is free from coercion and constraint. In Habermass own words, the problem of language has replaced the problem of consciousness (quoted in McCarthy, 1981, p. 273). Ethically and politically, Habermas shows how our sense of culture and community (the Lifeworld) has been overwhelmed and colonized by the System (constituted by the steering media of money and power). The technical rationality (Zweckrational)that characterizes the system is counterposed by Habermas with the practical rationality (oriented toward reaching understanding) and emancipatory rationality (oriented toward self-reflection and emancipation from forms of system oppression) of the Lifeworld. Through the articulation of these three forms of rationality, Habermas is able to show how communication functions both as the principal constitutive element in the move toward understanding and truth and as a means for the exercise of power and domination in society. Habermass move beyond Adorno and his attempt to reclaim the modernist project as a rational project is therefore manifest both ethically and politically in his appeal for the recolonization of the Lifeworld by practical and emancipatory forms of rationality. Practically speaking, this recolonization process can occur through the emergence of new social movements such as the feminist and ecology movements. In sum, Habermass project is avowedly modernist in his articulation of a theory of truth and reason that preserves the spirit of the Enlightenment; however, he provides a more differentiated analysis than his predecessors of the conflicts and contradictions of modernity. For Habermas, The promise of modernity is still an unfinished project- a project whose realization is dependent on our present praxis (Bernstein, 1992, p. 208). Clearly this conception of modernism is at odds with that presented by Stewart (1991) as a foil to his discussion of postmodernism, and it certainly has little in common with Elliss (1991) conception of critical theory as poststructuralist in origin. Thus, Habermas is a modernist who (a) replaces the sovereign subject with an intersubjective model of rationality, (b) presents a dialectical consensus- rather than a correspondence or representational-theory of truth rooted in a model of communicative rationality and intersubjective understanding, (c) views communication as constitutive of (not merely representative of) human (Lifeworld) experience and social reality, and (d) articulates a theory of communication that is also a theory of society. Communication studies have taken up the critical modernist project in a number of ways over the last fifteen years. Given Habermass articu11
Communication
Theory
lation of a communication theory of society, scholars have begun focusing heavily on the complex relationships among communication, power, identity, and society. In organizational communication, scholars have examined organizations not simply as sites of community and meaning formation but also as systems of domination and meaning deformation (Deetz, 1992; Deetz & Kersten, 1983; Mumby, 1987, 1988; Riley, 1983). Organizations are viewed as discursive sites where meaning and identity are the products of underlying relations of power. Scholars focus on communicative practices that function ideologically to produce, maintain, and reproduce systems of domination. This work articulates a discourse of suspicion in that surface structure communication practices and ostensibly consensual systems of meaning are seen as obscuring deep structure inequities. The utopian and distinctly Enlightenmentoriented subtext of such work is that more democratic and participatory organizational structures are realizable if social actors become more selfreflective and recognize the possibilities for alternative, collective forms of agency (Cheney, 1995). For example, Deetzs (1992) analysis of corporate colonization processes focused on the connections among the linguistic construction of self and world, the ideology of managerialism, and institutionalized practices of discursive closure. Here, possibilities for democracy and decorporatization of the Lifeworld are linked directly to the communicative construction of alternative definitions of self, other, and work. While I am most familiar with the critical modernism of organizational communication studies, this approach flourishes across subdisciplines. The ideological turn in rhetorical criticism and the articulation of a third persona (Wander, 1983, 1984) recognizes that rhetoric not only persuades and constructs reality but also structures power relations and situates some people and groups as marginal. In interpersonal communication, Lannamans (1992) analysis of the ideology of individualism in interpersonal research showed how alternative, social conceptions of identity have been marginalized. Finally, mass communication is replete with studies that examine the relations among mass media, ideology, and the social construction of systems of meaning and identity. Traditionally, Marxist cultural studies have been central to this work, strongly influenced by the work of Althusser (1971)and Gramsci (1971). Writers such as Grossberg (1985)and Hall (1985)have articulated powerful critiques of the mass media as dominant forms of identity formation. Although much of this work has taken a distinctly poststructuralist turn of late (therefore complicating the threads of the argument I am building), there is still a strong focus on the media as instruments of ideological subjugation that produce and reproduce capitalist relations of domination. There is no hypodermic model of media influence operating here but rather a nuanced attempt to understand and critique the complex and contradictory ways in which systems of meaning and identity interact with mass communication practices.
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In sum, work discussed in this section under the rubric of critical modernism is still deserving of the modernist moniker precisely because of its concern with issues of emancipation and freedom. At the same time, it is a more radical departure from the representational paradigm than interpretive modernism because it more effectively problematizes the processes through which social reality is constructed. Thus, although critical modernism (like interpretive modernism) embraces the linguistic turn in philosophy, it more thoroughly comes to grips with the complex relations among discourse, ideology, and power that potentially undermine the possibilities for a more ethical and democratic Lifeworld. However, while its relationship to the Enlightenment project is in some ways an ambivalent one, such ambivalence does not lead to the rejection of fundamental Enlightenment goals. Rather, critical modernism attempts to reconstruct the Enlightenment project, with communication at its center (Habermas, 1984, 1987). Instead of seeing the Enlightenment as the gradual and ineluctable progression toward freedom and responsibility, critical modernists recognize the complex relations among communication, power, and identity as mediating this progress. Freedom is not won by the creation of new scientific techniques but rather by careful examination of the socially constructed character of the systems of oppression that limit humans ability to critically reflect on their conditions of existence. In the next section I turn to postmodernism and examine its relationship to communication studies. In particular, I am concerned with the question of whether our field is intrinsically modernist in its concern with the speaking subject. Is such a notion incompatible with the postmodern articulation of a decentered subject, or is there a way to conceptualize a postmodern communication studies that in some sense preserves our identity as a discipline?
Postmodernlsm and Cornmunicatlon Studies
As indicated above, my goal here is not to provide a comprehensive overview of postmodern thought; such reviews are many and wide ranging (Best & Kellner, 1991; Rosenau, 1992). Rather, I present a reading that makes what I see as important connections between communication studies and postmodernism, suggesting how we might develop a more thoughtful understanding of the connections among modernism, postmodernism, and communication studies. In this sense my goal is not to present postmodernism as a terrain of inquiry that is balkanized and separate from modernism but instead to suggest both connections and differences. Thus, although I present postmodern thought as an alternative to modernism, I do not present it as a vehicle for rejecting the latter but instead as a means for broadening our understanding of communication as a defining human activity.
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Postmodernism and Communication: A Discourse of Vulnerabillty
I adopt the phrase discourse of vulnerability as a way to describe postmodern thought insofar as it is here that the crisis of representation which characterizes contemporary social theory reaches its apogee. Although Jameson (1984) described this crisis as one in which the notion of a Truth is radically questioned and undermined, its implications are more far-reaching than this. Indeed, the phrase discourse of vulnerability is intended to evoke the ways in which the postmodern intellectual has given up the authority game as a uniquely positioned arbiter of knowledge claims, exchanging a priori and elitist assumptions for a more emergent and context-bound notion of what counts as knowledge (Deetz, 1996). As Said (1994)put it, such an intellectual is unusually responsive to the traveler rather than the potentate, to the provisional and risky rather than to the habitual, to innovation and experiment rather than the authoritatively given status quo (pp. 63-64). In recent years, much of the impetus for this perspective has come out of developments in postmodern anthropology, where the poetics and politics of fieldwork have come under close scrutiny (Clifford, 1988; Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Jackson, 1989). Postmodern anthropology problematizes not only the notion of a Truth but also the idea that there are any standard, universal practices by which to articulate truth. Deconstructing the poetics of ethnography addresses the intimate connections between representational practices and the kinds of knowledge claims that anthropologists make (Van Maanen, 1988). At the same time, a focus on the politics of ethnography suggests how representational practices have consequences for the ways in which those studied are positioned. When researchers articulate a seamless, invulnerable, Gods-eye view of another culture, the people of the culture are characterized frequently as cultural dopes (Giddens, 1979, p. 71) whose only interest to western eyes lies in their exotic nature (and, of course, in their ability to enable us- through the anthropologist- to see truths about ourselves). Thus, the traditional foundations on which such representational possibilities rest are radically undermined by postmodern thought. But there are other consequences of this crisis, other postmodern challenges to the various iterations of modernity discussed above. First, the traditional understanding of the sovereign, knowing subject as the wellspring of knowledge is decentered and displaced. Where even Habermass critical modernist project still places the reasoning, rational subject at the center of his theory (albeit in a transformed way through a linguistic model of rationality), postmodern thought deconstructs the idea of a coherent subject. The modernist subject retains a certain autonomy and coherence whereas the postmodern subject is portrayed frequently as constructed and disciplined through various discursive practices and knowledge structures. Thus, Foucaults (1975, 1979, 1980a) work shows how the individual is the product of various discursive appara14
tuses that function to normalize and institutionalize our sense of subjectivity. Second, and related, postmodern thought questions the modernist separation of truth and power. Although Habermas, for example, argues for a consensus model in which truth can emerge only in coercion-free discursive contexts (his ideal speech situation), postmodern thought argues that consensus is an intrinsically modernist notion that leads to totalitarian and totalizing ways of thinking (Lyotard, 1984). Furthermore, Foucault (1979,1980a)argued that his goal was not to distinguish truth from falsehood and thus to create a space for thought free from power but rather to show the ways in which truth and power implicate one another. His genealogies of power-knowledge regimes show how what is considered true or false is dependent on the games of truth (1988, p. 1) that govern the very possibility for making knowledge claims at all. Third, postmodern thought destabilizes and arguably obliterates the modernist separation of signifier and signified. Although both interpretive and critical modernism problematize the notion of a simple correspondence between the two, arguing for language as a system of conventions that constructs reality, postmodern thinkers demonstrate the problems associated with this bifurcation. Derridas (1976) notion that there is nothing outside of the text (p. 157)highlights the idea that the reference point for discourse is not some reality to which it corresponds, but other discourses. Furthermore, his conception of d$fhrunce deconstructs the principal of textual fixity, arguing that meaning is never fully present in a text but rather is the product of a system of difference that is constantly deferred. Meaning, in this sense, is constantly subject to slippage. Baudrillard (1983,1988) took this notion a step further by arguing that the signifier is more real than the signified. His principle of hyperreality argues that, in the postmodern epoch, the simulacrum has replaced that which it simulates as the means by which social actors gain a sense of identity (Deetz, 1994). Although this is by no means an exhaustive account of the postmodern project, it provides a context for discussing the relationship between communication studies and postmodernism. However, one of the problems with the above gloss is that it treats postmodern thought as a monolithic enterprise, which it is not. Various commentators have attempted to tease out its streams of thought, referring variously to affirmative versus skeptical (Rosenau, 1992) and resistance versus ludic postmodernism (Hennessy, 1993). The principal difference here is that the first term of each pair refers to a position in which the possibilities for a coherent and viable political and epistemological agenda are retained; the second term denotes a more nihilistic, pessimistic orientation in which resistance to dominant relations of power is at best engaged at the level of guerrilla tactics, and collective action is perceived as naive and subject to co-optation by the status quo. My concern in this essay is with the more affirmative version of post15
modernism insofar as it is more susceptible to a reading from the perspective of communication studies and also suggests some continuities with critical modernism. The question remaining is, are the premises of postmodem thought compatible with or antithetical to the discipline of communication studies? If there is no longer a coherent, speaking subject; if communication consists of unstable signifiers; if discourse is not the way to truth but the product of institutionalized power-knowledge regimes, then is it a contradiction in terms to speak of a postmodern communication studies? Or, as an anonymous reviewer of an earlier version of this paper asked, what cash value does postmodernism have for communication? In the next section I attempt to answer this question by articulating what I call (with apologies to Lyotard) postmodern communication conditions.
Postmodern Communication Conditlons Communication is (im)possibie. I adapt this condition from Ladau and
Mouffes (1985; Laclau, 1991) poststructuralist, post-Marxist concept of the impossibility of society; from Halls (1985) notion of no necessary (non)correspondence between systems of signification and structures of reality, and from Changs (1988)discussion of the (im)possibility of communication. For Laclau and Mouffe (1985), society as a sutured and self-defined totality . . is not a valid object of discourse (p. 111). Instead, the social consists of a complexly articulated set of discourses that attempt to f x i meaning in particular ways for social actors-but this meaning is always, by definition, partial, incomplete, and subject to slippage and transformation. Thus, although discourse is constituted as an attempt to dominate the field of discursivity, to arrest the flow of differences, to construct a centre (p. 112), such centers are precarious and contain the conditions for the undermining of their hegemonic status. As Hall (1985) stated, ideologiesset l m t to the degree to which a iis society-in-dominance can easily, smoothly and functionally reproduce itself (p. 113). In a more Derridean mode, Chang (1988) showed how meaning disseminates endlessly, rendering impossible any sense of closure -hence the (im)possibilityof communication. In the context of a postmodern discourse of vulnerability, communication research focuses on the processes through which various discursive struggles occur. Dominant systems of discourse are always vulnerable to alternative articulations; centered communication practices are subject to resistance from the margins. Communication is thus (im)possible in that it simultaneously is stable (creating shared, relatively fixed, discourses) and unstable (continually articulating the possibilities for its own transformation). In this sense, shared discourses always embody (and are defined by) otherness. Postmodern communication research has begun to explore these issues, examining various ways in which the apparent seamlessness and unity of communication practices are resisted and transformed. For example, Jenkinss (1988)study of Star Trek fans as a discourse community
16
illustrated how Trekkies engage in textual poaching (De Certeau, 1984), appropriating dominant themes and character portrayals as a way of creating transgressive and subversive story lines. Similarly, Bell and Forbes (1994) examined the gendered character of resistant practices, demonstrating the ways in which female secretaries co-opt official bureaucratic structures as a means to articulate a space for resistance to that bureaucracy. The deployment of office graffiti using bureaucratic resources is an interesting example of how even relatively oppressive systems implicitly embody possibilities for the undermining of a sutured totality . One of the most extensive studies of resistant practices is provided by Scotts (1990) historical analysis of oppressed groups. Distinguishing between public and hidden transcripts, Scott argued that studies of systems of domination too often have focused exclusively on the public dimensions of the exercise of power. Such studies tend to show marginalized groups as acquiescing to their oppression or as victims of false consciousness, unable to even recognize their oppression. In contrast, Scott suggested that a focus on hidden transcripts (i.e., those discourses and practices produced by subordinate groups that occur offstage, outside the gaze of the dominant groups) reveals widespread and creative acts of resistance. Scott paid attention to the infrapolitics of subordinate groups (p. 19), demonstrating how low-profile forms of resistance can lead to the systematic undermining of the dominant hegemony (his examples range from slaves in antebellum America to the Solidarity movement in Poland). In some ways, Scotts work is consistent with Frasers (1989, 1990-1 991) notion of subaltern counter-publics and Conquergoods (1991) postmodern ethnographies of marginalized groups, both of whom show how the counterdiscourses of such groups can establish coherent spheres of resistance to dominant publics. Although it is not written from an explicitly postmodern (or indeed communication) perspective, Scotts (1990) study is important insofar as it points out some of the differences and continuities between critical modernism and postmodernism. Both perspectives share a concern with issues of domination and resistance, but critical modernism has tended to focus on public transcripts, examining the various ways in which capitalist relations of domination get reproduced at the level of everyday practice. In keeping with its modernist origins, this critical perspective invokes a larger, totalizing logic (capitalism) to explain oppression, and thus any acts of resistance are framed within this larger logic (e.g., Braverman, 1974; Burawoy, 1979; Willis, 1977). Such studies, consistent with their discourse of suspicion, tend to interpret apparent resistance as actually reproducing larger, overarching systems of domination. Postmodem studies, on the other hand, eschew a larger, totalizing structure or logic, starting from the premise of the inherent instability and hence vulnerability of systems of domination. For this work, it is communicatively (im)possible to create a sutured totality because of the openness
17
Communication
Theory
of the social, a result, in its turn, of the constant overflowing of every discourse by the infinitude of the field of discursivity (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, p. 113). Conceiving of communication as (im)possible allows theorists and researchers to focus on the process by which social actors and institutional forms attempt to arrest, fix, and transform the constant overflowing of every discourse. Communication is political. Although it is true that communication is never a fixed, sutured, and fully articulated process, it is also evident that, placed in its larger social context, much communication is devoted to attempts to fix discursive systems that serve the interests of some groups over others. In this sense, communication is political. Much of social life therefore consists of discursive struggles in which different interest groups attempt to establish nodal points of discourse that privilege certain worldviews over others. This struggle is very much a politics of everyday life that shapes social actors identities as they engage the world in a quotidian fashion. In this sense, communication is political in its construction of forms of subjectivity that situate social actors in (power)differentiated ways in society. This politicization of communication is a move beyond those social constructionist positions that recognize the constitutive role of communication in creating meaning and identity but that fail to address the power dimensions of this process (e.g., Berger & Luckmann, 1971; Martin, Feldman, Hatch, & Sitkin, 1983; Pacanowsky & ODonnell-Trujillo, 1982). Of particular importance in this context is the development of a disciplinary approach to power (Foucault, 1979, 1980a, 1980b). Here, power is conceived not as an overarching structure that frames all social relations (what Foucault critiques as a sovereign, top-down conception of power) but rather as a series of capillary mechanisms that pervade the entire social body, constructing identity and defining what counts as knowledge. The notion of the power-knowledge regime thus describes the ways in which power and knowledge are intimately linked rather than separable, as the critical modernist position would argue. A condition of postmodern communication research therefore suggests the development of genealogical analyses of the politics of truth that show the links among communication, identity, power, and knowledge. As a discourse of vulnerability, such research is interested not in exchanging one power-knowledge regime for another but rather in demonstrating the possibilities and consequences of various articulations, disciplinary practices, and communication choices. An excellent example of such work is Blair, Brown, and Baxters (1994) deconstruction of the masculinist conception of knowledge that pervades the academic community. Taking reviews of one of their articles- a critique of Hickson, Stacks and Amsbarys (1992) analysis of research productivity among women scholars-as text, they showed how these reviews invoke a particular definition of what counts as knowledge, simultaneously positioning them outside that definition, and hence disqualifying their knowledge claims. They argued that the reviews are
18
overt displays of ideological mechanisms that not only approve the themes of the masculinist paradigm, but which seek to ensure that the masculinist paradigm represents the exclusive thematic directive for professional work in the discipline. The two reviews do more than reproduce the themes of the masculinist paradigm; they buttress its privilege by advancing what can count as approved (and disapproved) identities, readings, and politics within the discipline. (1994, p. 397)
This masculinist paradigm, they suggested, defines professional scholarship as politically neutral, respectful toward science, mainstream, and politely deferential (pp. 398-400). Blair et al. (1994) showed how the reviewers implicitly adopt a correspondence theory of truth, arguing that there can only be one correct reading of Hickson et al.s (1992) article and positioning their own reading as extremist (and hence in violation of the above four principles). Blair et al.s reading reveals the intimate connections among power, knowledge, and disciplinary practices (in the dual sense) and demonstrates the political character of scholarship, even as it attempts to assert its neutrality and objectivity. Perhaps the most interesting dimension of this study, however, is its transgressive style. Not only does the article violate normal conventions of academic writing through its self-reflexive structure, but it also invokes a stark reversal of the normalized power relations characteristic of academia. In this article, those who normally evaluate, make judgments, and are the keepers of academic standards become the object of study. That which is hidden in the blind review is exposed to the glare of analysis and deconstruction. The contradictions and fissures of an apparently sutured totality are revealed, exposing both the political and socially constructed character of the knowledge construction process, and the possibilities for alternative definitions of what counts as knowledge. In defining communication as political, then, postmodem scholars focus on the political economy of a will to knowledge (Foucault, 1980a, p. 73), examining the constitutive role of communication in the daily micropraaices of power. As such, postmodern researchers are not content with simply examining communication as a dialogic process constitutive of understanding but must also focus on the ways in which power and communication interact to regulate who gets to participate meaningfully in this dialogue in the first place. This deconstructive orientation hopefully opens up possibilities for alternative articulations of the social world that empower traditionally marginalized groups. Communlcatlon is for self-de(con)structlon. Deetz (1 992) argued that, contrary to the commonsense view of our field, communication is not for self-expression but for self-destruction (p. 341). In the context of a discourse of vulnerability, this rather counterintuitive notion is an attempt to articulate a nonessentialist relationship between subjectivity (the self) and communication. From a postmodem perspective, we are the product of various and contradictory discourses. As Hall (1985) stated, There is no essential, unitary I-only the fragmentary, contra19
Communication
Theory
dictory subject I become (p. 109). Traditional models of communication tend to reify the subject as a fixed entity that engages in cognition and then encodes these cognitions through the communication process. In opposition to this reproductive, representational view, the notion of communication as self-de(con)structive focuses on the productive character of the relationship between self and other. As Deetz (1992) stated, The point of communication as a social act is to overcome ones fixed subjectivity, ones conceptions, ones strategies, to be opened to the indeterminacy of people and the external environment (p. 341). The discourse of vulnerability sees our sense of identity as subject (i.e., vulnerable) to the pull of other discursive possibilities that challenge who we are. From a postmodern perspective, this does not mean that we are always constituted anew in every act of communication. We are all, to a greater or lesser degree, subjects who are products of sedimented, institutionalized systems of discourse that provide a frame for our ongoing, everyday experience. However, it is this very sedimentation of experience that predisposes us to adopt an unreflective stance toward self, world, and other. It is because we are at least partially sutured to a particular dominant, institutionalized sense of ourselves and others that it becomes easy to conceive of communication as simply the expression of what is already fully formed in our heads. It therefore takes a fundamental shift in perspective to see the communicative process as a self-de(con)structive phenomenon which, in its ideal form, challenges comfortable, preconceived conceptions of the self as the Archimedean point of origin of meaning and experience. If we conceive of communication as self-de(con)struaive rather than self-expressive, then we are better positioned to examine the various discursive processes through which competing and conflicting forms of subjectivity are constructed. Postmodern feminism in particular has made important contributions to the development of this perspective (e.g., Bordo, 1992; Butler, 1990; Flax, 1990; Morris, 1988). For example, Butler (1990)stated:
The being of gender is an effect, an object of genealogical investigation that maps out the political parameters of its construction in the mode of ontology. To claim that gender is constructed is not to assert its illusoriness or artificiality . . . [but] to understand [its] discursive production . . . and to suggest that certain cultural configurationsof gender take the place of the real and consolidate and augment their hegemony through that felicitous self-naturalization. (pp. 32-33)
By exploring the relations among gender, discourse, power, and identity, postmodern feminist scholars provide new ways to situate communication as central to our understanding of the politics of subjectivity. This leads us to the final postmodern communication postulate. Communlcatlon I subjectless. This postulate is double-sided in that it s allows us to focus o n both the positive and negative dynamics that result from the relationships among self, world, and other. Interpreted posi20
Modernism, Postmodemism, and Communication Studies
tively , the move away from a subjedspeaker-centered conception of communication (in which subjectivity is not taken as a problematic to be explored) permits us to reconceptualize subjectivity as discursively constructed and hence open to change. In this sense, communication is subjectless insofar as communication is not conceived simply as the effect of the speaking subject. Indeed, from a postmodern perspective, it is more appropriate to argue that subjectivity is an effect of communication. In Althussers (1971) terms, we can say that individuals recognize themselves as subjects through the ongoing process of hailing, or interpellation. That is, subjectivity is constructed through the various systems of discourse (legal, familial, organizational, mass-mediated, gendered, etc.) within which individuals are always already situated and which provide interpretive frames through which to make sense of self, other, and world. Many communication scholars find such a position untenable because it seems to deny the role of intentionality in the process of communication. For example, Ellis (1991)argued that intentionality and communication are inseparable and that an acceptable theory of communication cannot include the post-structuralists tolerance for multiple meanings and interpretations (p. 221). But this critique misses the point. No one would deny that, for the most part, social actors have particular intentions in mind when communicating. But if we focus on intent as the defining characteristic of communication, then we fail to recognize that communicative acts always occur within the context of larger social relations that exist independently of any intent that specific communicators might have. Communicators-as-subjects have intent precisely because they are always already situated within, and the effect of, institutionalized discursive practices. Intent does not arise from nowhere-it is a product of our condition as interpellated subjects. Thus, the postmodernist and poststructuralist tolerance for multiple meanings is not an attempt to assert a completely relativist theory of meaning that allows us to cling to the idea that reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else (Ellis, 1991, p. 219). To the contrary, a subjectlessview of communication asserts that meaning or reality does not reside in peoples heads but rather in the complexly articulated systems of discourse within which people are always situated. Intention is an element of the communication process, but it is an element that is always mitigated and contextualized by the way discursive practices shape us as subjects:
The fixing of meaning in society and the realization of the implications of particular versions of meaning in forms of social organization and the distribution of social power rely on the discursive constitution of subject positions from which individuals actively interpret the world and by which they are themselves governed. It is the structures of discourses which determine the discursive constitution of individuals as subjects. . . . Individuals are both the site and subjects of
21
discursive struggle for their identity. Yet the interpellation of individuals as subjects within particular discourses is never final. It is always open to challenge. The individual is constantly subjected to discourse. (Weedon, 1987, p. 97) Weedon (1987) brings into sharp focus the constant tensions between the positive and negative consequences of communication as subjectless. On the one hand, the constant struggle to fix discourse suggests that social actors can actively participate in this struggle to shape discursive constructions of the social world. Thus, for example, the feminist movement has done much to change the meanings of specific behaviors such as unwanted sexual advances, spouse abuse, and job discrimination. Although such practices were once perceived as the natural consequence of sex differences, they are now more easily recognized as the consequence of specific, gendered power relations that both discursively and nondiscursively situate women as other and marginalized. By focusing on the discourse and interpretive schemes that are applied to these relations, women have effected social change. On the other hand, the conception of the subject as the effect of communication permits us to focus on the extent to which the social actor is a product of the practices of power and domination. This position is probably best exemplified by Foucaults work on various institutions of discipline (the prison system, medicine, psychiatry, etc.), and his observation that within our contemporary, disciplinary society the social actor is the object of information, never a subject in communication (1979, p. 200). Within such a framework we can recognize the extent to which social actors are the site of discourses that attempt to create and fix subjectivities in a particular fashion. Postulating communication as subjectless is thus not an attempt to deny that real social actors communicate intentionally with one another. Rather, it helps us to recognize the extent to which intent is possible only because we are always situated within systems of discourse that precede and exceed us as communicators. As Hall (1985) stated, It is in and through the systems of representation of culture that we experience the world: experience is the product of our codes of intelligibility, our schemes of interpretation. Consequently, there is no experiencing outside of the categories of representation or ideology (p. 105). For me, the project of postmodern communication studies entails the deconstruction of the communicative and political processes through which people come to experience the world in a particular fashion. In other words, how are our identities (subjectivities) constructed, and whose interests are served (and not served) by the privileging of some constructions over others?
Conclusion
My primary concern in this essay has been to provide a suggestive reading of the relationship between modernism and postmodernism. The
22
sometime tendency in our field to equate positivism with modernism and social constructionism with postmodernism is a serious oversimplification of the complex relationship between the modernist and postmodernist projects. Modernism cannot be reduced to positivism because there is much in the former that both speaks to the Enlightenment project and critiques the pervasiveness of Cartesian dualist thought. Writers such as Habermas (1984, 1987) embrace the emancipatory logic of the Enlightenment while at the same time explicating a theory of society that posits a constitutive relationship among social actors, communication processes, and systems of meaning. Such work is strongly antipositivist and nonreductivist while at the same time avowedly modernist (and sometimes antipostmodernist). Similarly, the apparent reduction of postmodernism to a generic social constructionist position does little to suggest how postmodernism is different from, or similar to, what I have referred to as the critical modernist orientation. The conflation of these two positions leaves us unable to address, for example, their differing perspectives on the relationship between power and truth, diverse views on the role of the researcher in examining social issues, and different understandings of what even counts as knowledge. However, the goal of this essay is not to present perspectives that are sealed off from one another. Indeed, the various discourses articulated in this essay can be represented on a continuum rather than as mutually exclusive positions. In this context they articulate increasingly transgressive orientations toward the notions of representation and correspondence as criteria1 attributes of knowledge. While at one extreme positivist modernism is the discourse most consistent with the notion of the mind as the mirror of nature, at the other extreme postmodernism does the most to foment the crisis of representation, denying attempts to privilege any correspondence theory of knowledge. Finally, I have tried to address the question of whether postmodernism has any cash value for communication scholars. Given its undermining of some of the erstwhile basic tenets of modernist communication studies, how can postmodernism contribute to our disciplinary status? Through the articulation of postmodern communication conditions I have suggested that, far from marginalizing communication as a human activity, postmodernism contributes to a more insightful understanding of the processes through which communication, identity, and power intersect. Its value is that it problematizes precisely that relationship that, traditionally, communication researchers have left untheorized -that between communication and the construction of subjectivity. In sum, if the implications of the debate between modernism and postmodernism for the study of communication are to be properly understood, it is important that as a discipline we develop an adequately nuanced reading of their continuities and differences. I hope this essay has contributed to this ongoing task.
23
Author
Dennis K. Mumby is associate professor in the Department of Communication at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907. The author expresses appreciation to ]ohn Stewart for his willingness to engage in dialogue over the issues in this essay and thanks three anonymous reviewers for their careful and constructive readings of earlier drafts. This manuscript was accepted for publication in September, 1996. 'Although it is difficult to position feminism comfortably within the parameters of the modernism-postmodemism debate, 1 would argue that much of feminist scholarship is consistent with the critical modernist project while simultaneously providing an immanent critique of it. In broad terms, feminism provides a gendered reading of the Enlightenment, demonstrating how women's voices have been marginalized and excluded from the emancipatory trajectory that the Enlightenment articulated for itself. Feminists have been particularly critical of Marxism (e.g., Barrett, 1988;Coward, 1978)and the degree to which the latter ignores gender as a constitutive feature of systems of domination. The goal of such feminist work is to broaden the goals of the Enlightenment project, arguing that its principle of reflexivity demands that it transform itself to encompass the goals and aspirations of women. Complicating this picture, however, much recent feminist work has disavowed the modernist project as irredeemably masculinist and claimed a consistency with the tenets of postmodern thought (Butler, 1990;Hekman, 1990;Weedon, 1987).I address briefly the relation between feminism and postmodernism in the final section of this essay. Certainly communication studies has come late to its appreciation of feminism as both an epistemological and political framework for making sense of the world, but recent developments have considerably broadened its influence within communication studies. Campbell's (1989,1995) work has acutely demonstrated the gender-blind character of much of rhetorical studies, and Spitzack and Carter (1987) have provided an early example of the need not simply to incorporate gender issues into our work but also to radically reframe our thinking about communication as a gender-constitutive act. My own field of organizational communication has almost completely ignored feminism, although recent G Marshall (1993), Mumby (1996) and has work by Buzzanell (1994,1995), r e g (1993), attenuated this situation. Negative dialectics (E. B. Ashton, Trans.). New York: Continuum. Adomo, T. (1973). Althusser, L. (1971).Lenin and philosophy (B. Brewster, Trans.). New York: Monthly Review Press. Andersen, P. A. (Ed.). (1993). Ideology and communication [Special issue]. WesternJournal of Communication, 57(2). Apel, K - 0 . (1981).Charles S. Peirce: From pragmatism to pragmaticism (J. M. Krois, Trans.). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. kuley, S. (1984).Managerial and organizational communication in terms of the conduit metaphor. Academy of Management Review, 9,428-437. Bantz, C. (Ed.). (1993). Into the 21st century [Special issue] Communication Monographs, 60(1). Barrett, M. (1988). Women's oppression today: The marxist/feminist encounter (2nd ed.). London: Verso. Baudrillard, J. (1983). Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e). Baudrillard, J. (1988).The ecstasy of communication. New York: Semiotext(e). Bell, E. L., & Forbes, L. C. (1994).Office folklore in the academic paperwork empire: The interstitial space of gendered (con)texts. Text and Performance Quarterly, 14, 181-1 96. Berger, P., & Luckmann, T.(1971). social construction of reality. London: Penguin. The 992). The new constellation: The ethical-political horizons of modernity/ Bernstein, R. (1 postmodernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Best, S . , & Kellner, D. (1991).Postmodern theory: Critical interrogations. New York: Guilford. Blair, C., Brown, J. R., & Baxter, L. A. (1994).Disciplining the feminine. Quarterly Iournal of Speech, 80,383-409. Bordo, S . (1992).Postmodern subjects, postmodem bodies. Feminist Studies, 18, 159175.
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Mumby - Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies - A Rereading of An Ongoing Debate

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Communication Theory Seven:

February 1997 Pages: 1-28

Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies: A Rereading of an Ongoing Debate

Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies

Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies

Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies

Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies

Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies

Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies

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Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies

Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies

Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies

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Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies

Modernism, Postmodernism, and Communication Studies

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