Postmodernity, globalisation, communication and identity
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
- Articles
- Submited: October 18, 2022
-
Published: October 20, 2022
Abstract
This article sets out to explore what it is to live in the postmodern age as an 'individual', that is,
as someone with a distinct sense of self. Consideration is given both to the possibility that individuals
today, in the context of globalisation, may not have such a distinct sense of personal 'identity', and
also to what it is to have an identity. These questions are explored in relation to the so-called
postmodern subject – or the subject in the age of globalisation, the age of hypercommunication,
or of 'informatization' – which one may assume to be constituted very differently from the 'modern'
subject of the 19th-century, or even more radically differently from premodern subjects. One could
say that what Hardt and Negri regard as distinctive for postmodernity – informatisation, made
possible by advanced communications technology – is inseparable from the 'identity' of postmodern
individuals. Moreover, Derrida's insistence that the communications technology characteristic of
an era embodies a change in subjectivity (and hence, in identity), points to a significant clue
regarding the identity of postmodern subjects. The aim of the present article is therefore to explore
what all of these divergent considerations mean with regard to the issue of identity in the
contemporary world – whether one has reason to believe that identity has evaporated in the flux
of postmodern life, or if some of the theoretical perspectives invoked here enable one to affirm
the continued legitimacy of talking about identity today
Article Metrics Graph
References
- Anderson, W. (Ed.) (1996). The Fontana postmodernism reader. London: Fontana Press.
- Baudrillard, J. (1996). The map precedes the territory. In: Anderson, W.T. (Ed.) The Fontana postmodernism reader. London: Fontana Press, pp.75-77.
- Butler, C. (2002). Postmodernism. A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Copjec, J. (2002). Imagine there’s no woman. Ethics and sublimation. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
- Derrida, J. (1980). Of grammatology. Transcendental. (G.C. Spivak, Trans.). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
- —. (1982). Différance. In: Margins of philosophy. (A. Bass, Trans.). Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp. 1-27.
- —. (1996). Archive fever. A Freudian impression. (E. Prenowitz, Trans.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- Foster, H. (Ed.) (1985). The anti-aesthetic. Essays on postmodern culture. Port Townsend: Bay Press.
- Freud, S. (1958). Totem and taboo. In: The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XIII (1913-1914). (J. Strachey, Trans.). London: The Hogarth Press, pp. 1-161.
- Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2001). Empire. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
- —. (2005). Multitude. War and democracy in the age of Empire. New York: Penguin Books.
- Harvey, D. (1990). The condition of postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Hurst, A. (2004). Derrida’s quasi-transcendental thinking. South African Journal of Philosophy, 23 (3), pp. 244-266.
- —. (2006). Derrida or Lacan: The revolutionary’s choice. On the 'plural logic of the aporia' in deconstruction and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Doctoral Thesis in Philosophy, Villanova University, USA: ProQuest.
- Kovel, J. (2002). The enemy of nature. The end of capitalism or the end of the world? London & New York: Zed Books.
- Lacan, J. (1977). The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience. In: Écrits: A selection. (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: W.W. Norton, pp. 1-7.
- Lee, J.S. (1990). Jacques Lacan. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press.
- Lyon, D. (1994). Postmodernity. Buckingham: Open University Press.
- Lyotard, J-F. (1984). Answering the question: What is postmodernism? In The postmodern condition.
- A report on knowledge. (R. Durand, Trans.). Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 71-82.
- —. (1984a). The postmodern condition. A report on knowledge. (G. Bennington, & B. Massumi, Trans.). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- —. (1991). Rewriting modernity. In The inhuman. Reflections on time. (G. Bennington, & B. Massumi, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press, pp.24-35.
- —. (1995). Towards the postmodern. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press.
- Megill, A. (1985). Prophets of extremity. Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Norris, C. (1990). What’s wrong with postmodernism. Critical theory and the ends of philosophy. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
- Norris, C. (1993). The truth about postmodernism. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Olivier, B. (2002). Modernity, Modernism and Postmodernist Film: surfaces in Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct. In Projections: Philosophical themes on film. University of Port Elizabeth Publications, pp. 111-126.
- —. (2004). Lacan’s subject: the imaginary, language, the real and philosophy. South African Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 23 (1), pp. 1-19.
- —. (2004a). Urban Space in 21st-Century South Africa. Leading architecture and Design, May/June, pp.63-66.
- —. (2004b). The (im-)possibility of communication. Communicare, Vol. 23, (1), pp.79-91.
- —. (2005). Nature, capitalism, and the future of humankind. South African Journal of Philosophy,
- (2), pp.121-135.
- —. (2005a). Lacan and narrative identity: The Piano Teacher. In: Word, (wo)man, world: Essays on literature. Festschrift for Ina Gräbe. Oliphant, A.W. & Roos, H. (Eds). Pretoria: UNISA Press, pp.94-112
- —. (2005b). Lacan and the question of the psychotherapist's ethical orientation. SA Journal of Psychology, 35 (4), pp. 657-683.
- —. (2005c). The contemporary context of relativity and relativism. Acta Academica Supplementum, (2) (Special edition on Relativity and relativism), pp. 73-104.
- —. (2006). Popular art, the image, the subject and subverting hegemony. Communicatio, Vol. 32 (1), 2006, pp. 16-37.
- —. (2006a). Die kompleksiteit van identiteit in demokrasie: Lacan. Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe (Journal for the Humanities), Vol. 46 (4), pp. 482-497.
- —. (2006b). The question of an appropriate philosophical response to 'global' terrorism: Derrida and Habermas. Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie, 54 (1/2), pp. 146-167.
- —. (2007). 'Communication' in the era of 'Empire' and 'multitude'. Communicatio, Vol. 33 (1). In press.
- Steger, M.B. (2003). Globalization. A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Suarez-Orozco, M.M. & Baolian Qin-Hilliard, D. (Eds). (2004). Globalization. Culture and education in the New Millennium. Berkeley: The University of California Press.
- Turkle, S. (1997). Life on the screen: identity in the age of the internet. London: Phoenix.
- i ek, S. (2000). The fragile absolute, or, why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for? New York: Verso.
