Ideals of the Writer in Postmodern Society
Writing is interpreted from an ever-expanding selection of schools of critical theory, and this trend itself makes the task of understanding the writer’s unfolding place in society more difficult and more necessary. Whether the writer agrees with the postmodern diagnosis of language (a helpless separation between the word and any concrete object of reality it claims to represent), she finds the forces of the literary world increasingly influenced by thought stemming from this premise. Despite this new groundlessness ascribed to the craft of writing and language itself, I believe the following ideals help the modern writer find her meaningful place in a progressively postmodern literary landscape:
Independence from Systems
The writer finds himself situated within a landscape composed of systems; systems of thought and literature defined by their fundamental assumptions and conceptions of the world. Such systems grow with recombination and deduction, ultimately generating complex statements, or grand narratives, about society and the world.
Postmodern thought distrusts such grand narratives. With the assumption that language is helplessly separate from reality, these narratives cannot be trusted to rest on truthful assumptions or conceptions of the world. Skepticism toward the bases of these systems, paired with the consequential effects of the complex statements formulated at the top, leads to the rejection of all particular systems.
Thus, the modern writer should situate himself between systems and keep a healthy distance from any particular one. Systematic reasoning has its place in the literary and philosophical process of discovery, but the rigid writer, too closely aligned with one school of thought, has not embraced what it is to be a writer, and is distrusted by an increasingly postmodern audience. At the heart of writing is not recombination and deduction within systems, but re-conception, which can only be found between.
Explanation and Translation of Systems
Significant linguistic and formal variations result from the divergence of systems; variations in form and style that seem to grow exponentially as systems builds upon themselves. To understand any literary or philosophical system fully, one must understand the meaning, or context, underlying its nuances of language. This becomes an increasingly difficult feat with the growing complexity and depth of systems of knowledge today.
Postmodern skepticism of ideological systems has additionally accelerated the process of divergence, fractalizing the ideological landscape into a myriad of novel systems. Body studies, whiteness studies, ethnic studies, women’s studies, queer studies, and trauma studies are illustrative examples of recently-expanding schools of thought that emerge from a re-conception of identity.
In the postmodern plurality of literary and philosophical systems, each generating its own variation of language, the writer should be teacher and translator, carrying ideas and values across systems. Empathy and understanding do not necessarily fall with truth, and thus remain important values for the postmodernist. The modern writer should bridge distant literary, philosophical, and political communities through the dissemination of ideas with keen awareness of language, so differences can be understood and not rejected solely on the basis of difference of language.
Identification of Tyrannical Systems
A system becomes tyrannical when it becomes oppressive, destroying possibility for deviation from its own customs or properties. Tyranny is most often insinuated with political and governmental systems, but the term is general, and similarly can be conceived of in the domains of literature and philosophy. Perhaps all systems of language are tyrannical in a certain sense, in that any statement that does not follow from the the system’s basic assumptions, or is not well-formulated according to the system’s syntax, is altogether rejected, or outcast. In other words, all statements generated by a particular system are necessarily of its own properties. However, in the postmodern world, ideas do not exist in themselves; they are thought by thinkers. So, certain systems can be characterized as more tyrannical than others, namely those that are more destructive to the thinker and her ability to conceive of the world in novel ways.
How a particular ideological system disrupts the thinker’s ability to re-conceive the world, or imagine that certain basic tenants are not true, is a question for psychology; but, the identification of tyrannical systems is the responsibility of the writer. By remaining independent and in-between, the writer positions herself outside of the influence of tyrannical systems. Through understanding and explication, she may help her postmodern society do the same.
Experimentation and Creation of the New
The previous ideals are significant only in that they preserve the writer’s ability to create the new. The writer in postmodern society should be an experimenter with ideas and language, conceiving and re-conceiving, formulating and re-formulating, all the while frequently deviating from established customs of thought and expression to determine what else is possible. The constant creation of the new sustains hope for the postmodernist that knowledge and value exist somewhere out there, beyond systematic reach. Experimentation with the human faculties for thought and expression preserves life in the postmodern society, where the systematization of ideas and language is death.
The paradox of the postmodern condition of the writer is that he has been rendered a function of symbols torn from objective meaning, yet he is progressively obligated to take a non-functional approach to preserve the life of thought and expression. Perhaps, by the principles of independence, understanding, and creativity, the modern writer may find his meaningful, paradoxical place within the postmodernist’s post-truth society.
