Example research essay topic: Power Discourse Theory Power Knowledge Production Language - 1,291 words

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In a world of delusions, illusions, allusions and virtual realities, but also of constructed realities and of deconstructed textual ities, the means of representation, the signs, have dissolved in the ongoing process of infinite symbiosis. The crisis of representation is the apprehension of a world in which the signs have lost their power to represent anything. Where is the structural foundation of text in a network of hypertextuality, exactly what is this structural ground for postmodernism to exist? Jean Francois Lyotard argues that the post in postmodern has always existed, that modernity always contained moments of postmodernism. From early architecture onwards mankind rarely rebuilds a space but generates a multiplicity of small transformations in the space it inherits (Defining the postmodern).

This succession is dependable upon earlier periods whether progressive or regressive. Lyotard claims that chronology is totally modern and if postmodern means breaking away by forgetting or repressing the past, then we would be repeating it and not overcoming it. His second point in differentiating modern and postmodern is contained within the idea of progress rooted in the certainty that the development of the arts, technology, knowledge and liberty would be profitable to mankind as a whole (Defining the postmodern). Yet what is the subject to be emancipated between the 19 th and 20 th centuries and earlier periods and surely liberation is too be held by discoveries, institutions and enterprise as well. Lyotard further questions Auschwitz in relation to modernity as empirical and utopian.

Then there is the progress of science and its resulting complexification; the ability to complexity, mediate, memorize and synthesize every object is seen more as an obligation rather than emancipation. His third argument is related to the expressions of thought, for example art and the avant garde. It is apparently to mankind's relief that avant garnish is over because of its strict structure and military connotations. Yet was it not the works of such artists such as Manet, Duchamp and Newman that paved the way for others, were their presuppositions of modernity taken into consideration?

Surely we should not see postmodernism as an attack on our failed attempts thus leading to the modern neurosis and Western schizophrenia which I will later talk about. Lyotard reckons postmodernity is not a process of coming back or flashing back, feeding back, but of analyzing anamnesis, of reflecting. (Defining the postmodern). Thus it is a need of reflection and understanding, but as a whole do we have a language that can thread us together towards enlightenment in realization of our postmodernity. Apparently not, Lyotard reasons that postmodernism are an incredulity towards meta-narratives... There is no such thing as a meta-language, meta-narrative or meta-theory through which all things can be connected or represented.

This crisis needs to desperately be addressed since by condemning such interpretive notions of reality we make war on totality which then results in the power discourse theory by Foucoult and the fragmentation of language by Lyotard. Thus, according to Harvey this branches into two theories that are closely related. Briefly Foucoult reasons that there is no relations of power without resistance we therefore cannot escape from the power-knowledge relation in non-repressive ways. Foucoult acknowledges that we must all explore and build upon the open qualities of human discourse, and there by intervene in the way knowledge is produced and constituted at the particular sites where a localized power discourse prevails. (The condition of Postmodernity) Harvey recognizes that Lyotard's Language games in which each of us have separate codes depending on the situation we find ourselves along the constant flux of Language itself refers to a certain power-knowledge production in communication itself and should be pinpointed within a heterogeneity of language games and therefore with greater flexibility of utterances, perhaps true communication can take place as long as we realize the change in flux of language. To which certain institutions will never recognize because they have been erected to define only certain points of power-knowledge production. Thereby giving rise to smaller institutions Let us make war on totality.

At this point one recognizes that postmodernism is fragmented by language, by power and difference of metaphysics and if mankind must be considered as a whole then how do we represent a totality through postmodernism. Frederic Jameson, whom portrays Foucoult as a postmodern theoretical discourse, since he is nether categorized as sociologist, nor philosopher, nor literary critic but a generalized mixture of thought. Jameson's significant features towards the identification of postmodernism in Postmodernism and consumer society are termed pastiche and schizophrenia. In an elaborate prose he questions that which parody mocks - style and individuality in respect to the linguistic norm. Yet what if linguistic norm did not exist and in this postmodern world we fragmented to the extreme scenario where each individual became a linguistic island. What then does parody mock in a world of such rich diversity and heterogeneity?

Parody becomes weak and no longer mocks but mimics into speech of a dead language. Jameson argues that either the death of the subject (individualism) is truly dead due to globalisation, corporate capitalism, bureaucracies in business as well as state; the modernist aesthetic of the older bourgeois individual is dead. Or that it was a myth that individuality never existed at all in which we fooled ourselves by some philosophical and cultural mystification. Either theories result in this death of the subject which raises the question again; what are then representing as artists and writers of this postmodern period? Are we left with pastiche, wearing of dead masks and imitation of old styles that we once mocked, or is the new message of art the failure to represent the new whilst imprisoned in the past?

Could this art be collage / montage , Derrida reckons this is the primary form of postmodern discourse. Its heterogeneity of that (be it painting / architecture /writing / photography /textiles) stimulates us. In which each element breaks the continuity or the linearity of discourse and leads necessarily to a double reading: that of the fragment perceived in relation to its test of origin or that of the fragment as incorporated into a new whole, a different totality (The Condition of Postmodernity). I must emphasize upon Derridas different totality, for it is a totality that recognizes elements of Foucaults power-discourse theory and Lyotard's language games. Taking into consideration, Lyotard's argument that modernity has always had its post modern moments then is not the art of John Heartfield a postmodern attack on power, on fragmentation, on language and totality and if so then surely hope and strength of the minority in a time of a Holocaust is perceived as a valiant attempt to struggle against the complexity rather than as a paradoxical representation when discussed today. There is nothing fortuitous about Heartfield's compositions.

The voracious animal, skull and the hood, the skeleton and the midnight landscape, the snake, the cemetery and the medieval architecture all echo the traditional iconography of German, not to say Western European art... (beyond art). Using a knife of intertextuality, Heartfield merges the iconography of modern militarism and that of technology and commerce. Yet is there a point in dissecting what is schizophrenic in the first place. Postmodernism insist we cannot aspire to any unified representation of the world, or picture it as a totality, then how do we act coherently with the rest of mankind? Is the postmodernist answer an illusion, deemed to aspire further dissolving of any solid community. Or is the answer the local determinism's, in which we enter small incongruous worlds like that of Blue Velvet questioning which is reality and which is truth.

This unhealthy preoccupation with the fragmentation and instability of language, discourses and representation can be seen as schizophrenic, a development from the...

Research essay sample on Power Discourse Theory Power Knowledge Production Language