The Nature of Political Theory

258 The Nature of Political Theory

the bulk of modern epistemology (the Cartesian cogito, Kantian transcendental ego,
Husserlian transcendental subjectivity, or the empirical concept of mind) are seen
to be premised on this false conception of an essential self prior in some manner to
language.
Further, traditional metaphysics and epistemology assume (falsely) that there is
something outside language and linguistic signification that can be represented or
spoken about sensibly. This is dubbed logocentrism or the metaphysics of pres-
ence by Derrida, or ontotheology by Heidegger. For Nietzsche, also, this traditional
perspective indicates a deep error that has permeated Western thinking since Plato.
In Lyotard we find the most well-known formulation of this notion, where post-
modernism is defined as an ‘incredulity towards metanarrative’—metanarrative being
roughly equivalent to the use of terms such as foundation, objective truth, classical
metaphysics, regime of truth, or presence. What remains is heterogeneity, difference,
and fragmentation and at most particularized or localized knowledge. There is there-
fore nothing for language to correspond to or represent. Human vocabularies are, as
Rorty thinks of them, conventional pragmatic tools to navigate the world.
In addition, philosophy is not some specialized metalanguage, it is just another
type of writing, the bulk of which is in error. In rejecting metaphysics, traditional epi-
stemology, and humanism, postmodernism tends to be radically anti-foundational.
Language does not refer to anything outside itself, or as Lyotard would have put it
phrases just refer to other phrases. Meaning is inexhaustible because words have no
essences. It just depends on our ability to experiment. We should therefore relinquish
the idea that language gives us unique access into the reality of the world. What we call
truth is in fact not discovered or proved to be the case; conversely it is created. What
this reveals is that all discussion of knowledge is simply a discussion of particular
interpretative perspectives. All human knowingisperspective. All else is academic
pretension. This is the core of Nietzsche’s doctrine of perspectivism. The abandon-
ment of foundations and objective truth also entails the abandonment of all secular
universals such as reason. Reason is always particular never universal. More import-
antly reason is also embedded—as in all human endeavours including natural science
and morality—in what Nietzsche referred to as the will to power and Foucault as
power/knowledge. The linkage of power and knowing leads to a more sceptical view
of the boundaries between disciplines. Disciplinary boundaries are conventional arti-
fices underpinned by a will to power. Overall, this is the core of what I have taken as
a radical use of conventionalist argument characterizing postmodernism.
However, the question arises as to the effects all these have on political theory and
politics in general. More pertinently, where does politics go from here? As I stated in
the opening section of the chapter, there is still a yearning for some form of grounding
in postmodern theory, even if it is a dedivinized and fragmented ground. There are
therefore degrees of enthusiasm through which the conventionalist logic is pursued.
Another way of putting this would be that there are degrees of postmodern scepticism.
The underpinning for this lies in a point noted by a number of commentators on
postmodernism, that is, that there are various schools, types, or forms of postmodern
argument. Common distinctions are made in the literature, for example, between