Signs of a Lost Eternity

The Millenium Dome, London

Next, Extension to Manchester Arndale

The Bullring, Birmingham

We do not desire permanence in our culture. The most iconic buildings we erect are there only to last one hundred years at most. Our architecture aims at looking stylish for a fleeting historical moment only to then fade away. Where in the past could we find such a will to impermanence? The Victorians constructed buildings as monuments to their industrious power. The pyramids, which exemplify many ancient structures, were constructed as transports to eternity.
We only build monuments to the “now”. We have lost a vision of eternity – either because we no longer believe in it, or it is something so distanced and detached that it has become valueless. The destruction that we plough into the earth, with a knowing possibility of environmental catastrophe, might explain why we no longer can conceive of a future. This would account of our lack of belief in eternity. And perhaps the immediacy of consumerism and its constant drive towards instant gratification accounts for our distance and detachment from any notion of eternity. Whatever reason we may choose, our architecture is a testament to our consignment of eternity to the realm of the valueless, meaningless and useless.

Notes on Melancholy

“In these return journeys along the same line from a place to which one will never return, when one recognises the names and the appearance of all the places through which one passed on the outward journey, it happens that, while one’s train is still halted at one of the stations, for an instant one has the illusion of setting off again, but in the direction of the place from which one has come, as on the first occasion. The illusion vanishes at once, but for an instant one had felt oneself being carried towards it once more: such is the cruelty of memory.”
-Marcel Proust, The Captive The Fugitive

The melancholic feeling sparks up in us every once in a while – a certain and specific feeling reminding you that the past is irretrievably lost; that these times and these spaces of the past can never be regained or repeated. Melancholy is the realisation that change is a fundamental part of our life and existence. This is certainly a feeling that we carry with us always, yet some days, some moments, it hit us harder than others.
Melancholy first hit me at a young age. And it hit me hard as if it were from a dull and blunt axe. Its attack was so sudden that it left me dazed, so much so, that I couldn’t recognise what had hit me. It was so unrefined that, looking back on it, it probably wasn’t melancholy in its purest form, but a sort of proto-melancholy which would develop later.
However, now, when it does return, it returns more gracefully and light-footed. It is a gentle and thoughtful pain which brings you closer to the world and your own existence. It is a pain which longs to retrieve the past. It announces the loss of feelings attached to specific moments and specific places and can be triggered by the senses - a sight, a sound, a smell. It is a pain that romanticizes the past. You can be in a fulfilling relationship with a friend or lover, but melancholy demands more – it demands a return to the rawness of the origins of these relationships. Melancholy can romanticize the past so much that it even looks fondly upon the pains of the past. It desires the retrieval of lost sorrow. It wants to return to this pain, to breath it fresh, to renew it in order to experience it with a new knowledge and learn from it once again. To retrieve even the most bitter of tastes, lost in time and space – this is the most pure form of melancholy because it not only seeks the lost pleasures of memory, but also the lost anguish.
Melancholy is the desire for repetition - that is its aim and that is its goal. It is an insatiable desire – and this is why it always returns. Literature, or to be more precise – writing itself, is a means of reproducing and repeating memory and the past. Through writing we can even turn something painful into something valuable, almost pleasurable. It is a repetition but a fictionalised one. It creates new spaces and times which model those of the past, but are never essentially the-past-itself. Even literature cannot fully retrieve the past, but it does recognise that memory itself is fictional. Writing constantly dips into the pool of memory and literature holds melancholy as its most useful resource. The pool of memory never runs dry and melancholy never ceases in its demands. Melancholy returns once again – itself a repetition. The returning desire for repetition.

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My picture (its here for similar reasons to Steve T and his blog at www.itsnotthethingyoufling.blogspot.com)

BEING, BECOMING AND POSTMODERNISM(S): Conclusion

This attempt to take the Ancient Greek ideas of Being and Becoming and apply them to different variations of Postmodernism may be nothing more then a series of very tenious links.
However, the point of the discussion is to highlight themes that occur throughout the history of philosophy and allow us to better understand our own time and, in Nietzsche's words, "look ahead at a time to come". In looking over this discussion, I find that Being does not literally transfer into modern grandnarratives, nor does it translate directly into postmodernism as a continuation of modernism. Instead it is the characteristics of the Greek notion of Being - a totality, an unchanging and rigorously exclusive Ideal, its lofty positioning over reality and its postion as a telos for all knowledge. It appeals to any static systems of understanding the world in which we live. It is these characteristics which we find in modernism and the postmodern variants of thinkers such as Fukuyama.
On the other hand the notion of Becoming - with its characteristics of dynamism, instability and the underlying movement it assigns to reality- links to the philosophies of Kierkegaard and Derrida. The either/or and différance are resistant to any appropriation by dogmatic and systematic philosophy. Through a reading of Kierkegaard and Derrida postmodernism is contingent and offers up a newness and creativity that eludes modern philosophy.
As long as it links itself with the characteristics of Greek Being and Becoming Postmodernism, which ever variant shape it takes, can never be regarded as something absolutely unique to our own time. Like much in life, we have to turn to the past in order to understand ourselves and what lies ahead.
This discussion is by no means complete, and will continu to be under construction and revision. So . . . [More to come]

BEING, BECOMING AND POSTMODERNISM(S) Part III: Kierkegaard-Derrida/Nietzsche-Deleuze

An alternative account of postmodernism, and one that is linked to the Greek “becoming”, begins by returning to the word ‘postmodern’ itself and with a much closer reading. The word ‘modern’ originates from the Latin modo, meaning “now”. To speak of postmodernism is therefore to speak of the ‘post-now’ or ‘after-now’. It is a constant looking- ahead-of-itself. It is to speak of the yet-to-come. Postmodernism is contingency. This reading provides a completely new dynamic to postmodernism as it is no longer viewed as a static framework, but a constant movement forward.
To provide a closer understanding of postmodernism as an always-new discourse, it is useful to introduce the nineteenth century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard to the discussion. His influence on this alternative reading of postmodernism can be further drawn out by linking him to the twentieth century philosophers Jacques Derrida.

KIERKEGAARD-DERRIDA

To begin with it is important to establish Kierkegaard as a thinker who privileges Becoming over Being. This privilege is immediately apparent in his views on Christianity.
In his work Point of View Kierkegaard writes:

My whole authorship pertains to Christianity, to the issue: becoming a Christian, with direct and indirect polemical aim at the enormous illusion, Christendom, or the illusion that in such a country all are Christians of sorts.

For Kierkegaard, Christendom is a static cultural framework which allows the public to recognise and call themselves Christians en masse. It essentially operates as a modern grandnarrative, or worldview, in which people could feel justified as Christians as long as they fit into the cultural norms and practices of nineteenth century Denmark. Kierkegaard regards Christendom as a grand illusion because it lacks the ‘essentially Christian’ which is the inwardness and earnestness attainable only through an individual relation with God. ‘Becoming Christian’ is therefore to ‘become single individuals before God’. This is a dynamic relationship involving movements between God and the individual. It is never at rest and therefore is always ‘becoming’.
Becoming Christian involves separating oneself from the common understanding and expression of Christianity which merely involves stepping into a publicly recognised worldview. We can already see the connection between Kierkegaard and the ancient Greek philosophers in the way the Kierkegaard insists on separating and distancing himself from the beliefs of the public. More importantly however, is that Kierkegaard positions himself against the totalising, static framework of Christendom which translates aspects of the Greek privilege of being into nineteenth century Denmark, by favouring the dynamic and constantly developing relationship found in ‘Becoming Christian’. Just like Heraclitus, Kierkegaard finds truth in Becoming.

One of the most significant and misunderstood notions in Kierkegaard's writings is his 'either/or'. Either/Or is the title of his first major work which presented two opposing positions on life - one aesthetic and the other ethical. Readers and commentators have consequently regarded the 'either/or' to mean a radical existential choice between these two ways of life. However, if we look at a key aphorism in the opening Diapsalmata of Part 1 entitled "Either/Or: An Ecstatic Discourse" we find a completely different understanding of the notion.
Despite being an aphorism which on its surface portrays feelings of pathos, resignation and indifference, the Ecstatic Discourse is loaded with philosophical weight. The opening section is both repetitive and distinctly negative with subjects such as marriage, laughter and weeping, suicide and relations being greeted with a depressing apathy. To get a taste of this negative veneer it is worthwhile to recite the first line:

Marry and you will regret it. Do not marry and you will regret it. Marry or do
not marry, you will regret it either way. Whether you marry or do not marry
you will regret it either way.

However, the apparent meaninglessness projected in statements such as this make a very important philosophical point. Instead of creating a harmony between two opposing positions a dissonance is opened up by the either/or. There is no clarity or erudition of meaning in this series of contradictory terms. The either/or presents us with a view of life from which scientific and systematic thought cannot operate. It offers a view that cannot be brought into accordance with any modernist thought structures. It exposes a side of existence which is unexplainable, uncertain and remains outside any system. This is why Kierkegaard refers to it as an Ecstatic Discourse, not because it is raises feelings of rapturous joy, but because the original Greek Ekstasis means to step outside oneself. For Kierkegaard, philosophy is stepping outside itself. It is for these reasons that Kierkegaard holds the apparent meaninglessness and indifference in such high regard. He declares, "This gentlemen, is the quintessence of all the wisdom of life". It is clear that he is re-interpreting the wisdom of the Teacher in Ecclesiastes who, like Kierkegaard, declares actions and thoughts to be meaningless: "Vanity of Vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?". But like Kierkegaard, this is only the start of something much bigger.
The full profundity of the either/or is not revealed until we look at this dialouge in relation to Hegel. We have seen that Kierkegaard places his philosophical emphasis outside conventional structures of wisdom. As Hegel's thought is regarded as conventional wisdom by Kierkegaard, the either/or must disrupt the Hegelian system. Hegel's philosophy is structured according to "sublation" or "mediation" where two opposing terms are brought into unity with each other. A thesis (for example: to love I must first posit my own existence - I am) is brought together with its antithesis (to love I must lose myself in the other person) to form a synthesis (In love, I am myself only when I am lost in the other).
But in the either/or there is no harmony and there is no movement towards a single idea which incorporates all terms. Kierkegaard calls teh either/or a "double regret". It holds open two positions in separation, never allowing a resolution or conclusion. The either/or operates as the gap in meaning between two positions, ideas, or terms. The either/or can never be incorporated into an overarching system or worldview. In the modern grandnarratives meaning can only be determined and given within a systematic framework and this consequently means that the meaning of the either/or can never be given because it actively dismantles the structures of meaning. It is the saying of that which cannot be said, the philosophy of anti-philosophy, or the wisdom of anti-wisdom.
But the either/or is not an entirely new notion. The oscillation between two opposing terms without synthesing either is essentially a Greek idea. (Kierkegaard will say as much in his 1843 work Repetition) In Plato's Parmenides dialouge an aging Parmenides probes the thinking of a young Socrates and presents the idea of the "moment" or "instant". Parmenides states:

This queer creature, the instant, lurks between motion and rest – being in no time at all –
and to it and from it the moving thing changes into resting and the resting thing changes into
moving [...] it would never be in motion or at rest’.

(This may be strange considering that in Part One of this discussion we claimed Plato privileged being and held the single Idea of the Good in the highest position. But this only goes to show that what is taken to be Platonism does not always correspond to what Plato wrote). Its is clear from this discussion that Kierkegaard presents a philosophy that privileges being over becoming as his introduction of the either/or resists the modern translations of being into the grandnarrative form.

Jacques Derrida

In his work Margins of Philosophy Jacques Derrida introduces “différance” into philosophical discourse. However implicit the connections are, Derrida’s différance draws heavily upon Kierkegaard’s either/or. Derrida’s construction of this word renders it unstable and it can never be reduced to a single and definite meaning. He explains that his word is a combination of two different words. The first is ‘defer’ – which is to delay the fulfilment or explanation of something. Meaning is always yet to come and we once again touch on the idea that postmodernism is contingent as meaning is located in the after-now. We should also not that deferral is a key feature of Kierkegaard’s writings. In his Point of View (1848) Kierkegaard attempts to give an account and explanation of his life’s writings. But the book is a series of introductions, prefaces, opening remarks and notes to the readers. Kierkegaard’s attempt to explain himself becomes a constant deferral of explanation: The Point of View is a preface to a preface, an introduction to an introduction. This feature of the Point of View only cements the relationship between Kierkegaard and Derrida further. Différance as a deferral, pushes meaning beyond the boundaries of systematic thought. We find that meaning is always slipping from our grasp because it is already passing into the infinite outside.
But to differ does not only mean to delay. It also means to stray from the set course. It is a divergence. In Différance meaning strays from any calculable and systematic knowledge. We can therefore see that différance, just like the either/or, is an attempt to disrupt and open up the structures of the modern grandnarrative.
Derrida claims the second word which constitutes differance is ‘differ’. This means to pose a gap in relation between two things. Like Kierkegaard’s either/or, différance resists any movements of sublation and unification. It disrupts any attempt to incorporate differing ideas into any single and totalising idea. But to differ does not only mean to pose a gap in relations. It also means to stray from the set course, to deviate from something. Difference is a divergence.
Both of these terms, defer and differ, in their very definitions, resist any stable definition and secure meaning. Différance is the opening up of a gap in meaning, the delay of meaning and divergence from any given meaning. We can therefore see that différance, just like the either/or, resists any closure and completion and is an attempt to disrupt and continually open up the closed structures of the modern grandnarrative.
Because it is structured according to these two words, it can never be reduced to any single definition. ‘It is immediately and irreducibly polysemic’, Derrida tells us, which is to say, it continually offers multiple meanings.
Derrida also introduces another term that relates to différance. It is the ‘undecidable’ and it shares a similar structure to that of différance. He writes in a later work, Dissemination, that in regards to the undecidable, ‘what counts here is the formal or syntactical praxis that composes and decomposes itself’. This means that it is the order or syntax of a word or idea that prevents any order and meaning from being determined. Just as the construction of différance deconstructs any systems which attempt to determine meaning, the undecidable also decomposes any structures which will determine meaning. He writes that ‘it is an indefinite pivoting’ which ‘escapes philosophical mastery’. With this notion of an indefinite pivoting – a continually oscillation in the gap between two terms – we return to the notion of the ‘instant’ presented by Parmenides in Plato’s writing. It presents a dynamism and a continually change between what is at motion and what is at rest. The stability of any static and secure meaning is replaced by a continual movement – a continual opening up, divergence, deferral and oscillation. These terms – either/or, différance, and the ‘instant’, all have the dynamism of becoming underlying them.

BEING, BECOMING AND POSTMODERNISM(S)- Part II: Fukuyama and Lyotard

What is important to us is the way in which the ancient argument over being and becoming translates into our own contemporary culture and our understanding of postmodernism. Postmodernism is a term that lends itself to a variety of different interpretations. This variety of definitions is often bound to an implicit privileging of either being/stasis or becoming/dynamism. One approach is to read postmodernism as being aftermodernism in the sense that it is a continuation of modernism. In philosophical terms what we mean by modernism is the philosophical projects that were bound to the Enlightenment. Modernism viewed reason and the intellect as the sole path to truth and upheld the liberation of humanity from superstitious and false beliefs. In its attempt to liberate humanity, the Enlightenment sought a total knowledge of the world and it was assumed that this knowledge would lead to a universal peace and brotherhood of man. Already we can see a link emerging between Parmenides and modernism. Parmenides’ “being” presented a totality with which to account for reality, while in a similar fashion modernism desired totality in an attempt to order and understand the world. Modernism is characterised by its rigorously systematic and scientific approach and its erection of grand philosophical systems. We only have to look at Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit to see this. These grandnarratives of modernism also share another feature of Parmenides’ being, namely exclusion. Just as “what is not” cannot be included in the single being and therefore in an understanding of truth and reality, the grandnarratives also declare anything that cannot be included into their system as meaningless and irrelevant to an understanding of the world. When we speak of postmodernism being a continuation of modernism we do not mean that it is fundamentally different to the grandnarratives of modernism, but only a change of goals and ideals. Postmodernism is a continuation of modernism, only with different terms.

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

The American theorist Francis Fukuyama is an excellent example of this. In his work The End of History and the Last Man (1992) he (in)famously announced the ‘end of history’ after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This declaration was not a denial of further historical events, but the recognition that all major socio-economic and political grandnarratives had proved to be failures - all except one: Liberal Democracy (that is democracy with a free-market economic structure). Fascism had lost out in the Second World War and Communism had proved a failure by the 1990s. Liberal democracy was now realised as the highest ideal for humanity. The victory of liberal democracy initiated a process of globalisation through the structures of western capitalism. According to Fukuyama, this in turn paved the way for rapid cultural exchange and eventual cultural homogenisation. Fukuyama celebrated this victory and the hegemony that it initated by speaking of it in religious terms; it was a 'promised land' and a 'good news' - terms drawn from the Old and New Testament respectivley. However, this globalisation and homogenisation through the very specific socio-political-economic structures of western capitalism was revealed to be the same drive towards totality that occurred in modernism, including fascism and communism (albiet with significantly less oppression and violence). Significantly, Fukuyama's thesis is invested with a re-appropriation of Parmenides' "being". Just as becoming was excluded from the totality of being, so to are all other discourses excluded from Fukuyama's account of the world. The 'end of history' means that all other forms of socio-political discourse are rendered invalid in the face of free-market capitalism.
There are numerous criticism of Fukuyama. The most obvious being that the free-markets that he idealises were never put into practice by those nations supposedly advancing them. In reality, as is now clear in various WTO meetings and G8 summits, free-markets are only promoted if they favour rich western countries. When China undercut the E.U. in the cost of clothing, which is quite fair according to free-market economics, a 'crisis' was declared and European politicians were sent in to resolve it. Fukuyama upholds an idea while reality slips through his fingers. Also significant, is the continual rise of fundamentalism as a counter-discourse, signalling that Liberal Democracy does not remain the only socio-poilitcal discourse. Even in the USA Christian Fundamentalism is a significant political force. (The USA: where fundamentalist Christianity and Capitalism are in a happy gay marriage).
However, what concerns us is Fukuyama's relation to modernism. Although he claims to be offering a new ideal for the world, he is in fact reproducing the structures of modernism under the term 'liberal democracy'. Fukuyama's unconcious appropriation of modern discourse can be traced further back to the ancient Greek debate between 'being' and 'becoming'. Fukuyama takes on board certain features of the Platonic and Parmenidean being, such as the desire for a secure Ideal, but whereas Plato and Parmenides presented on a poetic account of being which allows different interpretations to be made, Fukuyama manages to turn it into a conservative discourse focused on maintaining the cultural hegemony of western capitalism. If postmodernisn is to be understood according to Fukuyama's thesis, then it must be viewed as a conservative discourse, taking the stasis of being found in ancient Greek philosophy and re-shaping it in order to preserve the status quo for certain nations.


JEAN-FRANCOIS LYOTARD

In 1979 the French theorist Jean-Francois Lyotard published The Postmodern Condition which has become a core text in understanding postmodern theory. Lyotard regarded postmodernism as a cultural and intellectual condition ermerging in post-industrial, or multnational capitalist, society. The fact that Lyotard was European, but the book itself was commissioned as a report for the Quebec government signalled that postmodernism was a condition that had settled on Western nations from Europe to North America. Lyotard offers a very critical and incisive investigation into the postmodern condition which sets his text up as a far more valuable resource than the naive and celebratory writings of Fukuyama.
For Lyotard, Postmodernism is entirely bound up to the collapse of the modern grandnarratives in the second half of the twentieth century. Alongside this Lyotard also lays particular focus on how knowledge has been reshaped under postmodernism as the subtitle of his work is A Report on Knowledge. It is therefore important to have a closer look at the modern grandnarrative and to offer an account of the transition of modern knowledge into postmodern knowledge.
Lyotard provides specific examples to explain what a grandnarrative is, one political - the French Third Republic, one philosophical -German Idealism. However, we can speak more generally than this. A grandnarrative is an account of knowledge which is attached to an all encompassing philosophy of history. It posits an origin and end or goal and orders and frames the world according to the origin and goal. This is what constitutes a philosophy of history.
So, for example, the philosophy of history of the Enlightenment is the history of the development of reason in order to understand the world. Other examples of a grandnarrative would include Darwinism – which uses evolution as the philosophy of history with the survival of the fittest as the goal. Or Marxism, which accounts for history in economic and material terms with socialism as the goal. Or Christianity where history is viewed according to God’s relation to humanity and the final revelation of Christ as its goal. In otherwords, a grandnarrative is a worldview. It is a static and all encompassing account of the world incorporating all history and experience.
The modern grandnarrative is a static form of knowledge which operates according to inclusion and exclusion. In a political grandnarrative what is included in the narrative of the state is termed 'just' while what the state exlcudes from its narrative is termed 'unjust'.
Similarly, in philosophical grandnarratives, such as that provided by Hegel and Fichte, what is included in the philosophical system is regarded as real and true, and what is excluded is false, meaningless and is regarded as unreal. It is these categories of 'just' and 'unjust', 'true' and 'false', and 'real' and 'unreal' which frame modern knowledge.
These characteristics of the modern grandnarrative - the inclusion and exclusion, the static framework for knowledge, and the rasing up of an ideal, are interesting to us because they model aspects of Parmenides and Plato's account of being. The static, ossified frameworks reflect both the unchanging, and static nature of being in Plato and Parmenides and the drive towards a total account of the world. The raising up of a high ideal or goal, reflects Plato's lifting up of the Idea of the Good as the source of being. Finally, the grandnarratives which function using inclusion and exclusion reflect Parmenides' inclusion of 'what is' into being and the exclusion of 'what is not'.
A central feature of postmodernism, in Lyotard's understanding, is the break up of the modern grandnarratives. This is in no small part due to the horrors of the 20th century, which were often caused in the name of a social-political grandnarrative . Lyotard writes: "the grandnarrative has lost its credibility, regardless of what mode of unification it uses, regardless of whether it is a speculative narrative or a narrative of emancipation" and that "We no longer have resource to the grandnarratives". With the loss of the grandnarratives the traditional categories of knowledge are also lost. The question then arises, what categories of knowledge replace 'just' and 'unjust', 'right' and 'wrong' and 'true' and 'false'?
Lyotard claims that in the post-industrial or multinational capitalist sociey knowledge is now based upon the "performativity criterion" – ‘that is the best possible input/output equation’. What he is claiming is that knowledge is judged according to its market performance - that is knowledge is maximizing profit while using the least possible resources. In the 'performativity criterion' the catagories with which to judge knowledge are based upon the ‘efficient/inefficient distinction’. Knowledge no longer operates according to such categories as 'true' or 'false' but is streamlined to . Knowledge is judged purely according to its efficiency in the world of business. It is knowing how to best generate a profit.
But we can go further: good knowledge is good business and in the post-industrial world knowledge itself is a commodity that is bought and sold. Last year IBM sold of its computer hardware manufacturing to Chinese investors. What remains of the American company is simply programmers and computer consultants. Basically, they have sold their physical computers but have kept the technical and highly specialized knowledge. Their core market resource is now IT knowledge. This is performativity in action - they streamlined their business by selling off everything except their knowledge. This goes to show, not only the heightened importance of specialized technical knowledge, but also the significance of knowledge as a commodity in the market place.
Importantly, Lyotard claims that this business knowledge has infiltrated the institutions of higher education. He writes:

"The question (overt or implied) now asked by the professionalist student, the State, or institutions of higher education is no longer “Is it true?” but “what use is it?”. In the context of the mercantilization of knowledge, more often then not the question is equivalent to: “Is it saleable?”"

It is here in the university, which is now a skills centre for the market place, that Lyotard uncovers the fundamental problem with post-industrial knowledge. Although the performativity criterion appears to be a restructuring of knowledge it is actually not that different from the old systems it replaced. There remains an authoritative goal or ideal – that is profit (Profit has replaced the modern ideals). There also remains in place a strict system of regulation – that is efficiency – minimising input while maximizing output. As it is a strict system it excludes those who do not conform to it. For example, in the University setting some courses do not aim for business efficiency and Lyotard writes that humanities students in particular, ‘do not in fact belong to the new category of the addressees of knowledge’. Humanities studetns, who were formerly central to the formation of knowledge, now find themselves excluded from the postmodern framework of knowledge.
Post-industrial, or postmodern knowledge is therefore revealed not to be radically different than modern forms of knowledge. Instead, the static and systematic structures remain with only the terms being changed. We therefore end up making the same claim that was made after our analysis of Fukuyama - postmodernism is a continuation of modernism under different terms.
This also means that with Lyotard's account of postmodernism, like that of Fukuyama's, we can trace a lineage back to aspects of the ancient Greek privilege of being.
The fundamental difference between Lyotard and Fukuyama is that Lyotard does not idealise postmodernism, but instead recognises the need to look beyond it. Lyotard, taking a position outside the structures of modern and postmodern knowledge (and Greek being), finishes his work by declaring ‘Let us wage war on totality’. This statement comes from an alternative position that has been excluded by these systems of knowledge. Lyotard is suggesting that any criticism of postmodernism must take place from a position outside static and totalising systems. Frederic Jameson, in his essay Postmodernism and Consumer Society asks a similar question - 'can postmodernism offer anything new?' - which addresses the need for postmodernism to step outside itself and look beyond its own framework. If the answer to this question is found to be an affirmative one, than perhaps there is a chance of postmodernism becoming something more than a simple continuation of modernism.
We must look at the possibility that postmodernism might offer something radically alternative to modernism, and it is likely that this view will be bound to that alternative to the Greek privilege of being- the privilege of becoming.

BEING, BECOMING AND POSTMODERNISM(S)- Part 1: Ancient Greek views

The debate over whether to privilege being or becoming in our conception of reality continually raged in ancient philosophy. This argument would shape our understanding of truth and the world in which we live.
Parmenides distanced himself from the everyday experience of life as a continual process of change by declaring true reality to be a single, unitary, eternal and unchanging being. He wrote, “What is, is and cannot not be” which denied any truth in becoming. Belief in birth and death, change and movement were merely failings of common understanding. “What is” could not have come into being, nor could it pass out of being. It could not be divided or separated from itself. This unitary and single being is the totality of all that is.
Heraclitus, on the other hand, made it clear through his insightful proverbs that a continual state of change was natural. Reality and truth lay in an understanding of the process of becoming which underlies all life. This is why Heraclitus viewed the dynamism of fire to be the essence of the world. In his aphorisms he also took the opportunity to ridicule the public and pick apart common religion. Offended, the public responded by branding him with the label: ‘Obscure One’.
Plato returned to Parmenides’ position – albeit with variation, by claiming the Idea of the Good to be the sole source of truth, being and beauty in the world. Truth rested in this single, eternal and static Idea which could only be perceived by the intellect. The common man, however, based his understanding on the physical world and its natural processions of change. For Plato the physical world was a second-rate reality. It was an inferior version of the Idea of the Good. Plato privileged being over becoming and in his writing Heraclitus became derisively portrayed as a philosopher of this second-rate truth, only ever quoted as saying: “You cannot cross the same river twice”.
Do we recognise reality and truth through change and movement, or do we rely on the idea of a single and eternal being to understand the truth- a more secure and totalising account of reality? Condescending remarks towards the public, mocking epitaphs and deliberate misrepresentations marked the debate surrounding being and becoming in ancient philosophy.