Limits of Postmodernism in Addressing Problems of Development in the South
Robin Collins

Alleviation of poverty and progress towards democratization are assumed by many development activists to be central to the development project in the South. The school of postmodernism eschews metanarratives, utopian projects, modernism's universals and the "disastrous notion of development". What, then, is useful about postmodernist criticism in the area of development theory and what does it offer as a guide for resolution of the problems of the South?

This paper will briefly look at the postmodernist critique of failed utopian projects because this element of the discipline challenges the modernist assumption that there are inevitable stages and progressive direction in the development path. It will assess the liberation pedagogy of Pablo Freire because his "resistance postmodernism" is said to qualify as a modernist project strenghthened by postmodernist criticism. Finally, the orientation towards new social movements (distinct from political parties and political systems) will be assessed because this phenomenon considers both the failings of modernist theory hinted at in postmodernist criticism, and the necessity for a continued activist response in favour of transformations. The analysis concludes that while postmodernist theory contributes a useful critical dimension to understanding the problems of development, it fails as a comprehensive guide to action.

The Postmodernist Critique

The existence of social-economic and political problems in the South are acknowledged in the assumptions of both modernist metanarratives and postmodern critiques of utopian visions1 . Significantly, modernization, dependency and marxist schools, three major streams within modernism, are in agreement that there is a development problem, (be it the existence of poverty, the lack of democracy, under-development or colonial/neo-colonial domination of the South). They also agree that the problem does warrant the attention of a modernist framework and consequent practical systemic or structural measures as progress towards a solution (Frank, 117; Rostow, 157; Warren, 45).

However, postmodernism's own project is as a critique of metanarrative projects, that is, of putting into question broadly-defined schemes for rectification when they are based upon required or inevitable stages of development, shared development paths, and the applicability of Western or Northern models to populations of the South. As Bayart points out, there is even a diminished "usefulness [to] the over-arching binary distinctions betwen East and West, and North and South". Diversity of history and (particularly from the postmodernist perspective) diversity of cultures preclude the automatic penetration or appropriateness of certain models, be they guided by modernist visionaries or not. Therefore it seems reasonable to conclude, as does Bayart, that a "generative understanding of specific political configurations from one Third World society to another" should avoid generalizations and "erroneous universalist interpretations". Those "undeniable ruptures" that appear in different countries in the South may be compared but it must be assumed that each unique historical experience is pertinent, and possibly of "critical significance", if there is to be a precise analysis of the separate discourses involved (Bayart, 53-60).

It is not practical either to reject the contributions of analyses informed by the "post-Hegelian and post-Marxist point of view", nor of comparative methodologies. Neither is it possible to deny the harmful effects of colonialism upon the peoples of Africa, Asia or Latin America. Many postmodernists recognize this. Bayart points out, for instance, that those "serious ruptures caused by Western colonisation of Africa and Asian should not be underestimated under the pretext" of a rejection of the weaknesses of dependency theory (Bayart, 54 ).

Quite apart from the existence of differing "discourses" of the colonized peoples themselves, the strategies of the colonial powers in different locales, at different historical junctures, also varied dramatically. As Bayart suggests, authority in the Ottoman Empire was a government "less by coercion than by patronage, enabled by the resources of the guilds and the brotherhoods" and only after Western colonial penetration and the appearance of a market economy (according to Bayart at least) did the newly secular state become antagonistic to society. This was a quite different pattern than the one entered into by Iran (Bayart, 62), and that of the British colonial experience in India (Hourani in Corbridge, 175), or with the colonial powers' "arbitrary division" of Africa (Corbridge, 176), let alone perceptions of the state in "Western" eyes (Bayart, 62).

There is evident merit in recognizing the uniqueness of each case (or discourse) in time and place -- the effort of deconstructing discourses (relatively stable "spheres of language use" and cultural assumptions) has led to a profitable rejection of "univocal" interpretations (Bayart, 55). This is the discipline, according to some postmodern theorists (Bakhtin, cited in Bayart, p 64), of seeing power as "multiple cultural logics" that can be interpreted through the filter of particularist "discursive genres". While those genres are not necessarily mutually incompatible, the discourse is primary and understanding (or acceptance) is context-driven. The wearing of the hejab may thus be perceived as an imposition by a dominating clergy or as a contribution by Muslim women to the "production of revolutionary modernity" (Bayart, 67), to name just two possible "logics".

This perspective of multiple logics also informs Bayart's recommendation for sub-Saharan, post-colonial Africa, where he pleads the case for a continuation of its system(s) and civilization(s) based on the "oral tradition, [and the] limited development of productive forces", in an agrarian economy where "contemporary political institutions gain their resources externally while under-exploiting the interior" (Bayart, 56). This apparently reasonable approach is in stark contrast to the industrializing and productivist, modernist models in evidence with Rostow's "take-off" and Warren's orthodox marxian proposals (Rostow, 164-176 ; Warren, 31). Interestingly, Bayart's advocacy of leaving Africa to its own devices assumes that a certain shared (agrarian and limited development) future is wholly palatable to an entire continental sub-region.

It assumes too that the total failure of development models is self-evident. It can also be concluded, as Corbridge suggests (202), that what failed with socialism and "development" was not the project of alleviating poverty, nor the improvement in the quality of life for millions of people, but more likely the state-centered model of development (and within it, the failure of democratization) upon which those utopian projects were built. Nonetheless, this postmodernist disenchantment with "Western" models is useful, as is its critique of "modernization" as a (potentially) colonial, external or ahistorical imposition, an approach taken by some neo-marxists, dependency theorists as well as postmodernists, (Valenzuela and Valenzuela, 538-544). Postmodernists such as Bayart were thus seized by the failings of modernisms, but not equally by their utopian visions. The question becomes whether, in the absence of a noble project (the metanarrative), postmodernists inevitably become a vehicle for the slide into particularist culturalisms, themselves often, if not usually, a consequence of "invented traditions", as Eric Hobsbawn has suggested2 and as Bayart acknowledges (Bayart, 63).

The Absence of a Postmodern Project

Modernism's strength and weakness was in its optimism and prescriptive modeling for action through assumptions about progress or developmental concepts that either proposed or emphatically rejected a capitalist market orientation. The enlightenment ideals of equality, fraternity, liberty, truth through reason and the universality of moral concepts were worthy guideposts and wrapped up in the projects of socialism, Keynesianism and "free market" capitalism.

Postmodernism rejects all modernisms, including those universals as proposed through utopian projects, partly because of the failure of political systems consistently to raise the standard of living as promised, including in the South,3 but also because of a disenchantment with the philosophical assumptions of universality. However, It is argued here that while inevitability and certainty are put into question by the historical record, the consequent uncertainty does not command a "recipe for inaction" (Corbridge, 202).

Uncertainty aside, there is still some agreement outside of the most narrowly-focussed postmodernist schools that economic growth and development has some meaning, at least in its indigenous formations, and is a worthwhile goal -- and that political empowerment of the poor is critical to any sustained achievement towards that end. When democratization is highlighted and separated from the related project of building specific utopian systems, there is an even broader consensus of opinion (McLaren, 205-207; Shuurman, 198-203).

Therefore, if "political empowerment of the poor is [still] the name of the game" as Shuurman suggests (204), and postmodernist inaction is ineffective as a substitute for modernism's failed projects, will new utopian projects related to the reduction of poverty and the strengthening of democracy continue to request our attention? It seems self-evident, for instance, that political empowerment, and thus an empowerment project, would be a significant contribution to the objective of alleviating poverty and misery in the South.

Some within the activist tradition, have looked at the creative aspects of discourse analysis (one key element of the postmodernist discipline) and attempted to use it to inform what they call critical postmodernism or resistance postmodernism -- and in opposition to "ludic" postmodernism which is seen to discourage participation (Ebert, in McLaren, 205), and is arguably a "Western" intellectual imposition. McLaren's nod to Paulo Freire is in recognition of the latter's materialist acceptance of humans as social agents who do not "lose their capability for suffering or their resoluteness for effecting social transformation" (McLaren, 200).

Social Movements

One significant attempt at marrying the postmodernist critique to an empowerment project was Freire's seizure of social context "both in and between language and the social order", but as a cauldron for transformation of the social order. Reflection (a process of critical thinking and contextualization and which arguably is a critical postmodernist approach) does not reject the act of participation in the liberation process. Personal conviction in a necessity for struggle is what is required of those subjected to oppression. And in this view, conviction is not just the role of a revolutionary leadership that is intent upon "bestowing the gifts" of political consciousness to its disciples (Freire, 556-7). This is Freire's "utopian praxis". The literacy and learning process that underlies the new utopian project in Freire's liberation pedagogy and consciousness-raising was:

"a process that invites learners to engage the world and others critically in an act of dialogical transformation; this project implies a fundamental 'recognition of the world, not as a "given" world, but as a world dynamically "in the making" (McLaren, 200)."
The act of "engaging the world" is itself a contribution to the "sociohistorical transformation" of society. While the degree of engagement may be a function of the outwardness of one's discourse, discourses are by nature dynamic (an observation that should be evident to both postmodernists and marxist modernists alike). If the postmodernist framework is logically consistent, it should not deny the ability of different peoples to choose their own (indigenous or "foreign") discourses differently. Nor should it resist efforts to seek purposeful communities of interest, particularly if the common denominator is "the feeling of being exploited, excluded or discriminated against" (Shuurman, 202). As Shuurman suggests, the incorporation into a new modernity project is not in itself excluded from a thoughtful critique of the failings of old modernisms:
"It would be counterproductive for social movements to take seriously the advice of certain social movement scientists above all to keep an autonomous discourse all the way, or your innner life-world will be incorporated within the hegemonic ideology, be it democracy or otherwise (Shuurman, 202)."
It is not in the interests of a liberation agenda to reject utopias wholesale, which is what Freire also has suggested. His metanarrative, an embrace of "liberation and human freedom", did not, according to McLaren (210-211), embrace universality in the modernist sense. It was a "provisional pedagogy" that sought to encourage oppressed groups to seize the initiative themselves (a procedure that was provocative and at least partially successful.) Freire defended universal goals, including human rights and self-determination, but in the provisional or tentative sense. These are described by Butler (in McLaren, 211) as "contingent universalities", and are realized (according to Terdiman) by way of a "counter discourse" through which "something more like authentic democracy might prevail" (in McLaren, 209). Yet they do not differ substantially from the universals as they have traditionally been proposed within the allegedly failed Enlightenment framework.4

If one agrees with postmodernists' own definition of their discipline as an "incredulity toward metanarratives", with a belief in the "powerlessness of the faculty of presentation...on the obscure and futile will which inhabits [the human subject] in spite of everything" (Lyotard in Mackey, 1), then it is difficult to place Freire, the advocate of participation in one's own liberation, in the role of a disciple of the postmodernist school. McLaren's attempt to rescue Freire as a postmodernist, even a "resistance" variation of one, is therefore unconvincing.

The failure of postmodernism as a practical philosophical package is because of this aversion to coherent programs of action for improving the conditions of life in the South. But not all postmodernist theorists reject wholesale the legitimacy of struggle, and neither do all modernists reject all postmodernist criticism. That explains why Bayart does not deny the existence of colonialism and authoritarianism nor does he "underestimat[e] the role of social change and political innovations during the last century" (Bayart, 54). It also explains why Shuurman, for instance, agrees with postmodern criticism that there is "no homogenous discourse in the wide field of Latin American social movements" (Shuurman, 201).

However, what is effective about Shuurman's analysis (and where this paper is in particular agreement) is his acceptance that even recognizing the plurality of discourses, discrimination and impoverishment can still constitute a mobilizing force. It therefore becomes the role of social movements, particularly in the absence of other viable metanarratives (or because of the inappropriateness of failed metanarrative systems), to "construct a common discourse in spite of the different individual interpretations of how society functions and along what lines one feels discriminated against", and then "to move from discourse to action" (Shuurman, 201).

Without that common activist discourse, there is a danger of nihilistic withdrawal, what McLaren calls the retreat to "fashionable forms of relativism" (McLaren,196), where postmodernist thinking immobilizes (or at least confuses) the legitimation of a project message. This is what Shuurman calls "discourse imperialism", and is the imposition of self-serving critiques by "tireless discourse producers" living within northern developmental nongovernmental organizations, or breeding within northern academic institutions5. As McLaren raises, the debilitating production of divisions, particularly through microanalysis of "texts", confounds the effort towards a collective discourse and collective practice. There is great risk here, he notes convincingly, that "social theorists will be reduced to mere curators of various discourses, having abandoned a political commitment to making these discourses work in the interest of empowering subordinated groups" (McLaren, 196).

Conclusion

Postmodernist theory has brought a useful tool to the development project. Its creative contribution is a critical skepticism towards inevitableprogress in the modernization and "Western" industrialization sense, and the identification of unique historical and cultural experiences with discourses. The most inward-looking and relativistic forms of postmodernism, on the other hand, offer few avenues for activists in the development field because of the lack of any coherent vision, let alone a viable metanarrative project. Yet, there are overlapping and complementary postmodernist and modernist traditions where the discourse approach is incorporated into a resistance framework. On balance, however, it would appear that the modernist project is the dominant perspective where the two disciplines combine. This is the case where Paulo Freire's consciousness-raising pedagogy encourages empowerment and struggle through building shared discourses and for the purpose of social liberation. His efforts may have been naive, but a resurgence of new social movements has been inspired in part by his pioneering work. These movements are different from and more flexible than the older and failed utopian projects, but remain modernist and universalist in orientation because they are in the tradition of the "struggle for humanization", as Freire describes it (Freire, 557). This suggests, optimistically perhaps, that there will continue to be new paths for developmental activism, if not in the production of new social systems, at least in those "utopian" projects where the alleviation of poverty, political empowerment and the democratization of affairs finds favour in the South. Or the North, for that matter.


Bibliography

Bayart, Jean-François. "Finishing with the Idea of the Third World: The Concept of the Political Trajectory." Rethinking Third World Politics, ed. James Manor, London: Longman, 1991, 51-71.

Corbridge, Stuart. "Colonialism, Post-Colonialism and the Political Geography of the Third World." Political Geography of the Twentieth Century: A Global Analysis, ed. Peter J. Taylor, London: Belhaven Press, 1993, 173-205.

Chomsky, Noam. Debate with Michel Foucault, from Manufacturing Consent
(film transcript, internet version), http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/mc/mc-supp-032.html, 2.

Frank. André Gunder. "The Development of Underdevelopment." The Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment, 4th edition, 109-120.

Freire, Paulo. "Pedagogy of the Oppressed." The Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment,
4th edtiion, 541-559

Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, 1-14, 211-262.

Mackey, ?. Defining Postmodernism, http://www.dnai.com/~mackey/thesis/pmod.html, 1.

McLaren, Pet4r L. "Postmodernism and the Death of Politics - A Brazilian Reprieve." Politics of Liberation - Paths From Freiere, eds. Peter L. McLaren and Colin Lankshear, London: Routledge, 1994, chapter 11, 193-213.

Rostow, W.W. "The Take-Off Into Self-Sustained Growth." The Economics of Underdevelopment,
eds. A.N. Agarwala and S.P. Singh, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980, 154-186.

Shuurman, Frans J. "Modernity and the New Social Movements." Beyond the Impasse - New Directions in Development Theory, London: Zed Books, 1993, chpater 9, 187-206.

Valenzuela J. Samuel and Valenzuela, Arturo. "Modernization and Dependency - Alternative Perspectives in the Study of Latin American Underdevelopment." Comparative Politics, X, 4 (July 1978), 535-557.

Warren, Bill. "Imperialism and Capitalist Industrialization." New Left Review, 81 (September - October 1973), 3-44.


Notes:

1 ãUtopianä here is meant to imply the pursuit of a stable social system in the modernist tradition, and not an unreachable ãperfect societyä.
2 In the same volume as Hobsbawmâs essay, Terence Rangerâs ãThe Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africaä notes that the ãinvented traditions of nineteenth-century Europe had been introduced into Africa to allow Europeans and certain Africans to combine for Îmodernizingâ endsä, but that there are examples of anti-modernizing ãtraditionsä similarly invented (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 211-262).
3 As Corbridge suggests, there are "good reasons for believing" that development is of interest to much of the population of the South, even when bolstered by the support of an enlightened state, but particularly if connected with nongovernmental organizations which "function as a countervailing force". There is (even) support for official development aid (ODA) offered on condition of greater local democratization, but when it is in the absence of the confines of "structural adjustment" policy.(Corbridge, p 195-197).]
4 As Noam Chomsky suggested in a debate with postmodernist Michel Foucault about the universality of the concept of "justice", even in accepting the tentativeness of truths, that caution does not prevent the universal, "fundamental human characteristics" from coexisting in a dialectical sense. There is agreement with postmodernist analysis that culture, social and personal attributes or failings condition us differently. Yet the utopian project can persist:
".. it is of critical importance that we know what impossible goals we're trying to achieve, if we hope to achieve some of the possible goals. And that means that we have to be bold enough to speculate and create social theories on the basis of partial knowledge, while remaining very open to the strong possibility, and in fact overwhelming probability, that at least in some respects we're very far off the mark (Chomsky, 2)."
5 The effect of this philosophical stance is so pernicious in its capacity to disrupt any program for action that some have come to believe it to be an establishment politics "made to appear radical through the willful inaccessibility of language" (Adamson, in McLaren, 196). That conclusion may be too conspiracy-laden for some to swallow, but in terms of its institutionalization of an apathy of sorts, the viewpoint has some merit. It might also be argued that some of McLaren's own prose can be similarly judged.

November 3.1999

1