Lecture #18: Kenneth Gergen: From the Romantic to the Modern Vision of Self – and postmodernism

•          Enlightenment – after the ‘dark’ times of the Middle Ages, an age of ‘illumination’

            •          An 18^th Century philosophical movement

            •          Emphasizing ‘optimism’ and ‘progress’

It was built on the writings of

•          Bacon [1561- 1626],

•          Descartes [1596-1650],

•          Hobbes [1588-1679],

•          Spinoza [1632-1677],

•          and Newton [1642-1727],

by such thinkers such as:

•          Locke [1632-1704],

•          Hume [1711-1776],

•          Voltaire [1694-1778],

•          and Kant [1724-1804], among others

It challenged the authority of “divine revelation” and the doctrine of “original sin,” and emphasized the power of individual human reason and observation.

•          Kant wrote in 1784, in An Answer to the Question, What is Enlightening?

            •          “Enlightening is, Man’s quitting the nonage occasioned by himself. Nonage or minority is the inability of making use of one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. Sapere aude! [Dare to be wise] Have the courage to make use of thy own understanding! is therefore the dictum of enlightening.”

Two major movements:

            •          In opposition: Romanticism - originating in 18th and 19th centuries: depth, passion, soul, creativity, mystery, care, moral sensibility, biology, innate capacities (subjectivity)

            •          In support: Modernism - 19th and 20th century: ability to reason (logic, math): individual beliefs, opinions, conscious intentions, predictability, efficiency, calculability, mastery, control, honesty, openness, sincerity, environmental influences (objectivity)

Romanticism - originating in 18th and 19th centuries:

            •          depth

            •          passion

            •          soul

            •          creativity

            •          mystery

            •          care

            •          moral sensibility

            •          biology

            •          innate capacities

            •          individual subjectivity

Modernism - 19th and 20th century:

            •          ability to reason (logic, math)

            •          individual beliefs, opinions

            •          conscious intentions

            •          predictability

            •          efficiency

            •          calculability

            •          mastery

            •          control

            •          honesty

            •          openness, sincerity

            •          environmental influences

            •          abstract objectivity

James (M):      The bottom line is clear: we just don't have any choice but to close down the plant.

Fred (R):         I just don't feel we can do that; it's too heartless for all those workers and their families.

Marge (M):     Be realistic, Sam. If you don't take more care of the baby, my whole career is going to be ruined.

Sam (R):         What kind of mother are you anyway? You don't show one once of dedication or compassion to your own child - much less to me.

Susan (M):      You really are dumb if you buy that house, Carol. It's in such bad shape and you'll be in debt forever.

Carol (R):       But Susan, somehow that doesn't bother me. There's just something deep inside that comes alive when I think about living there.

These are both, however, individualistic or monological visions:

            •          But remember here Sampson’s “dialogic turn”

            •          First, some further detail

Romanticism:

            •          Challenges the worth of reason and observation

            •          the world of the deep interior

            •          the passions, feelings, the imagination, creativity, a moral sensibility,

            •          what is natural (or even biological) in people

            •          special individual effort: creativity

            •          the artist became the hero of social life

As Gergen (1991, p.27) remarks: "To summarize, much of our contemporary vocabulary of the person, along with associated ways of life, finds its origins in the romantic period. It is a vocabulary of passion, purpose, depth, and personal significance: a vocabulary that generates awe of heroes, of genius, and inspired work."

Romanticist “self:”

            •          deep,

            •          creative,

            •          unique,

            •          passionate,

            •          purposeful,

            •          moral,

            •          personal significance,

            •          love, commitment, etc.

Difficulties with Romanticism:

            •          It retains the ahistorical, anti-traditions stance of the Enlightenment

            •          Focuses on special individuals detached from any historical influences upon them

            •          Individuals are set within a larger natural order, with which they should be in harmony

            •          Tendency toward conservativism

Modernism:

            •          Somewhere toward the end of the 19th century, the natural sciences began to flourish.

            •          Romanticism offered no solutions to people's practical problems

            •          The sciences began to offer a more attractive vision of things

            •          The grand narrative of progress, a ruthless forgetting of history - "history is bunk" (Henry Ford).

The central metonymic emblem (i.e., the part representing whole) of the age,something that can be put together from scratch, and then switched on, started up, and set running upon a new course, is that of the machine.

•          Not only, as Le Corbusier (1931) put it, could one think of a house as "a machine for living in," but one could think of a whole new world order... it became quite 'natural' to speak of every functioning thing of importance as a mechanism of one kind or another.

Modernist self:

            •          It comes as no surprise to find that the modernist conception of the person as a machine of some kind.

            •          Knowable, in control, reliable, unemotional, rational, moldable, calculating, etc.

            •          The modernist self: "knowable, present in the here and now, just slightly below the surface of his actions. He is not likely to be transported by sudden inspiration, be smitten by great some great passion, or give way to a rush od suicidal urges. Rather, he is reliable and trustworthy. His work today is good tomorrow and the next. The modernist self is not likely to have his reason clouded by intense emotional dramas; his reasons guide his actions and his voice is clear and honest... With proper molding, and the help of science, we create the future of our dreams" (Gergen, 1991, p.47).

•          Postmodernism: A late 20th century development

            •          A facility with, and sensitivity to,language (rhetoric, poetry, narrative)

            •          Flexibility

            •          Versatility

            •          Plurality

            •          Dialogic (many voices)

            •          Multivoiced talk by individuals (both subject and objective)

•          A Dialogical, Social, or Relational Vision:

            •          Postmodernism is sometimes represented as the end of Enlightenment thought

            •          the giving up of the idea that a single order or system 'underlying' everything can ever be discovered

            •          no 'foundational principles'

            •          the end of "Grand Narratives."

Current runs through the body

and then it doesn't.

On again.

Off again.

Always two things

switching.

One thing instantly replaces

another.

It (is) the language

of the Future.

- Laurie Anderson, U.S.A.