Signifying the Signs - Simulating Cultural Political Subjectivity in Postmodernity

Abstract

Representing a marginal sociological viewpoint, the subject of this article aims to problematize postmodernity polemically as a challenge to modern cultural subjectivity Postmodernity is important simply because it allows new features in culture and society to be characterized In its seductivity, seriality and penetrability. with continuous transfiguranons postmodernity will become discontinuous with the representations and referential logic of the 'authenticity' of aesthetic modernism Considering its ideals side by side, modern culture has become aestheticized as oppositional to 'nature' as well as to 'technology' However, without a meaningfully experienced relation ship with nature the modern individual becomes estranged Without tech nological advance the development of modern society is considered to be stagnant Culture is now increasingly mediated-coded, copied and simulated by technological means The advancement of modern society, and also postmodernity as a reaction to it. is now increasingly and acceleratingly measured by means of the circulation and consumption of technologically mediated cultural products That is why the interpretative plunge into a postmodern scene may bring the subject floating back to the surface of a control screen lacking depth This kind of postmodern culture' will produce obscenity just when it is presented to solve the problems of alienation Its subject can emerge only as a fractal 'sign-subject', subjected constantly to the 'videoscreen of statistics' in the form of ever present opinion polls, quiz shows, personality tests, as well as of 'deep interviews' By these means the ideal styles of the consumer's behaviour are measured and the 'terror' included within these signifying processes is covered by the pleasure principle, which will represent the simulative 'alibi' of the essence of cultural democracy An increasing tendency towards 'positive' administrating of all the spheres of lite, including culture, will accelerate this process as the taming of expressions of anarchy-like gratfiti But publicizing the immanent elements of postmodernity may also mean new possibilities for the now devalued concept of 'meaning' Therefore it seems essential that intellectuals absorbed by postmodernity need to orientate anew towards surviving as critical subjects, not innocently believing any more in the utopia of modernity but traversing it as transmodern subjects.