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brief notes concerning
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by Theodore Walker, Jr.
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a note concerning "postmodernism"
in Native American thought
"Postmodernism" is not a prominent interpretive theme in Native American social thought.
"Modernity" and "modern" are more frequent themes,
but for much Native American social thought,
modern-modernism-modernity is subordinate to the more basic theme of tribalism.
To be sure, "modern" is frequently defined by failure to be rightly tribal.
While in Native American experience, modernity began in 1492, Vine Deloria, Jr. of the Sioux nations offers a critique of modern peoples and modern religions which reaches back further than 1492.
[See GOD IS RED: A NATIVE VIEW OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION (Golden, Colorado: North American Press, 1992) by Vine Deloria, Jr.]
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[See THE METAPHYSICS OF MODERN EXISTENCE (New York: Harper & Row, 1979) by Vine Deloria, Jr.]
Deloria'a critique of modern failure to embrace rightly tribal existence includes criticism of European feudalism, Greco-Roman cultures and early Christianity.
For Deloria, being insufficiently tribal, wrongly tribal and/or anti-tribal is a characteristic and defining feature of modern existence.
And modern peoples have not yet repented.
Accordingly, speech describing contemporary existence as "postmodern" is premature.
I say "premature" rather than simply false because Deloria does envision the possibility of modern peoples responding to the present crisis of modern existence by retribalizing; and Deloria reports seeing early signs of retribalization in some contemporary philosophical and religious movements. Moreover, Native American prophecies and the recent birth of a white buffalo calf have given many Native Americans reason to expect a rightly different future.
Native American visions of a rightly different future are visions of peoples embracing rightly tribal existence, and while such visions may be spoken of as visions of a "postmodern" world;
among Native Americans it is more the norm to speak of envisioning resurgent tribal existence.
[See GOD IS RED: A NATIVE VIEW OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION (Golden, Colorado: North American Press, 1992) by Vine Deloria, Jr.]
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[See THE METAPHYSICS OF MODERN EXISTENCE (New York: Harper & Row, 1979) by Vine Deloria, Jr.]
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a note concerning "postmodernism"
in African-American thought
"Postmodernism" is not a prominent interpretive theme for most African-American social thought.
See "Modernity, Postmodernity,
Social Marginality" by Kenneth Mostern in CTHEORY on the world wide web at
http://www.ctheory.com/r-modernity_postmodernity.html.
Here Mostern reviews both
Paul Gilroy's THE BLACK ATLANTIC: MODERNITY AND DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 1993)
and
Phillip Bryan Harper's FRAMING THE MARGINS: THE SOCIAL LOGIC OF POST MODERN CULTURE (New York: Oxford U. Press, 1994).
Also,
Mostern is attentive to Houston Baker's MODERNISM AND THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
Mostern describes himself as "an unreconstructed dialectician."
Mostern says he is generally convinced that "postmodernism is characterized by the presentation of a decentered human subjectivity,"
but
he is "not convinced that most theoretical or critical accounts adequately engage certain key sociopolitical factors in that decenteredness."
Mostern draws upon W.E.B. DuBois's "double consciousness," Gilroy's "new ways of inserting ... modernism into contemporary black studies," and
Harper's view that postmodern themes "have been present in socially marginal writers for most of the century."
And Mostern notes that Henry Louis Gates says African-Americans have been "deconstructing white people's languages and discourses since that dreadful day in 1619 when we were marched off the boat in Virginia. Derrida did not invent deconstruction, we did!"
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Social marginality is expanding.
For some populations, social marginality is hundreds of years old.
For others, social marginality is a relatively new experience.
Those experiencing social marginality for the first time refer to their new experience as "postmodern."
For those with generations of marginalized experience,
the "postmodern" is merely "modern,"
and
the so-called "postmodern" witness is merely witnessing to the continuation and expansion of "modernity."
Accordingly, "postmodernism" is not a highly prominent interpretive theme in most African-American social thought.
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NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT: copyright 1997 Theodore Walker, Jr.
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This copyright covers all content and formatting (browser-visible and HTML text) in this and attached documents created by Theodore Walker, Jr.
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c@Theodore Walker, Jr.
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most recent update: 5 July 1997
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