A reconsideration of theories of subjectivity in a postmodern world, as reflected in contemporary critical theory and David Cronenberg's film 'Crash'.
The
collected writings of cultural theorists Patrick Fuery, Nick
Mansfield and Brian Massumi all reveal that the postmodern
commodification of culture, compounded by a general feeling of
groundlessness , have created a new ambiguous form of
subjectivity where fear is central. The lifestyle portrayed in
the film 'Crash' actualises Massumi's notion of the dominant
postmodern accident form of subjectivity. All four sources reveal
that crisis, anxiety and stress have come to exemplify post
modern subjectivity at the end of the millenium.
According to Feury and Mansfield (1997), postmodernism is the
dominant cultural mode of late capitalism, which dynamically
separates itself from modernism and modernist subjectivity
through its reappropriation of meaning, support of plurality and
differencem and rejection of the grand narratives of sovereign,
humanist subjectivity. According to Jean Baudrillard (in Ashley,
1990) "postmodernity is the immense process of the
destruction of meaning".
Brian Massumi (1993) contends that under post modernism "the
capitalist relation has colonised all of geographical and social
space... it has become an ungrounded space." Massumi submits
that the colonisation of culture by capitalism has extended to
theories of subjectivity, and that traditional notions of
subjectivity where individuals indentify with a specific discrete
form of subjectivity that best describes who they are: i.e.
homosexual, heterosexual, male or female - have virtually become
obsolete. He states that it is now only the categories that
remain, that is the demographics, and how they operate within the
capitalist relationship in a culture where "the self is
created in and through the commodity". Mansfield (1998)
further describes postmodern subjectivity as "a collocation
point of diffuse agencies... a subjectivity of infinite
possibilities" in a culture where "possibility without
optimism is everywhere".
Massumi reasons that the inherent ephemerality of capitalism's
cycles of recession, depression and boom has created a culture of
instability which has been heightened by postmodern
reappropriation of meaning and the advent of a global economy and
culture. Furthermore, increased use of non linear technology such
as the internet, the spectre of the approaching information age
and a consequent increase in dualistic cyborg imagery whereby
"it is not clear who makes and who is made in the relation
between human and machine" (Haraway, 1991) have further
contributed to a postmodern culture where "unitary
identity" (Haraway, 1991) is under attack. Massumi states
that these factors have collaborated to create a climate of
crisis, anxiety and stress where a feeling of groundlessness is
the only certainty that remains in a culture where "being on
the brink is considered normal"(1993). He argues that
"Fear is not fundamentally an emotion. It is the objective
of the subjective under late capitalism".
Massumi further
asserts that "the commodity endows us with identifiable
qualities. It registers our gender, social status and character
traits... the commodity stands (in) for our existence... Identity
is determined (given content) through the serial commission of
the act of groundless consumption. We buy and buy, until we
die... The commodity encounter not only specifies but also
actualises the subject of the purchase. The subject of late
capitalism can not be said to exist outside the commodity
relation."
Mansfield (1998) argues that as a consequence, what we have under
postmodernism "is a subjectivity that is intence and
pressing, immmediate and in your face... A subjectivity where
meaning and value are ironised". Massumi reveals how that
postmodern subjectivity, driven by the capitalist relationship,
fosters a cultural climate which relies upon fear, anxiety and
stress for its perpetuation, then tries to sell the remedy for
such a climate back to its subjects.
The film 'Crash' exemplifies Massumi's theories on the dominant
postmodern accident form of subjectivity. This film features a
group of characters who have been brought together by crisis and
who soon evolve to revel in anxiety and stress. These characters
develop into cyborgs who base their subjectivity around car crash
emotions, polygamous sexual relationships, violence and "the
reshaping of the human body by modern technology". The
characters in Crash ensure that the postmodern form of
subjectivity that they prescribe to inscribes itself upon their
bodies, with central characters tattooing car insignias onto
their bodies and viewing scars and impairments gained in car
crashes as desirable status symbols.
The divisions between heterosexuality and homosexuality, subject
and object, sex and violence, 'machine and organism' (Haraway,
1991) are blurred in a rhizomatic film which is deeply subversive
of dominant ontology with its eroticisation of the spectre of
death. The characters in Crash resist a heavily administered
society, defying a cultural milieux of conservatism, fear,
disempowering marketing and stress; and thus come to embrace the
accident form.
After the main character, James Ballard, has a crippling car
accident, he comments in hospital that "After being
bombarded endlessly by road safety propaganda, its almost a
relief to find myself in an actual accident". The characters
in Crash are tired of vicarious experience through the media and
its ultimate generalisability and have developed to overcome the
fear of death and ultimately personify Freud's notion of the
death drive. Like the lesbian vampires in Sue Ellen Case's essay
'Tracking the Vampire' (1990), the characters in Crash have also
penetrated the subject / object divide and defy the dominant
culture's abjection and binary ontological oppositions. The link
between sex, death, technology and desire has never been as
overtly portrayed as it is in 'Crash'.
In the production notes for 'Crash'(1997) it's author JG Ballard
entthuses "The car crash occupies a huge place in the public
imagination, particularly among film goer's and television
viewers; its almost impossible to see a film these days without a
car crash. Now why? What is it about the car crash that touches a
vital part of human experience?" Massumi might contend that
the dominant accident form of postmodern subjectivity is what
makes the film 'Crash' so resonant with contemporary audiences.
Moreover, Crash realises what Lyotard (1992) describes as the
essence of postmodernism. He stated that "The postmodern
would be that which in the modern evokes the unpresentable in
presentation itself, that which refuses the consolation of
correct forms, refuses the consensus of taste permitting a common
experience of nostalgia for the impossible, and inquires into new
presentations - not to take pleasure in them, but to better
produce the feeling that there is something unpresentable".
Crash is a film whose very abjection brings modernist prejudices
to the fore regarding acceptable modes of desire, mourning,
femininity and conduct and deconstructs these facades to reveal a
view of postmodernism which is ultimately centred around
Massumi's accident form; around the dissolution of historical
meaning, hierarchy and known forms of subjectivity.
Both the film Crash and postmodernism leave us treading on new
ground. Whether either will become a widespread basis of
subjectivity is unknown. In the postmodern era, modernist notions
of subjectivity, despite the ambiguity that postmodernism has
introduced to them, still dominate. POstmodernism has been deeply
criticised because of its superficiality and retrogressive
reintroduction of class bias through its emphasis on commodified
subjectivity. Postmodernism's "refusal to offer a set of
principled beliefs" (Rothfork 1995) has seen some critics
charge it as being depthless and "a convenient alibi for
thinkers with a large (if unacknowledges) stake in the cultural
logic of late capitalism" according to Christopher Norris
(1990). Only time will tell whether postmodernism will engender
dynamic new forms of subjectivity, or merely repackage those of
the past.
REFERENCES
Ashley, David (1990), 'Habermas and the Project of Modernity" in Turner, Bryan (ed) 'Theories of Modernity and Post Modernity', London, Sage.
Crash (1995) Fine Line Features. Written and directed by David Cronenberg. Based on the 1973 book by JG Ballard.
Case, Sue Ellen (1990) 'Tracking the Vampire' in 'Differences'.
Fine Line Features (1997) 'Crash Production Notes'.
Feury, Patrick and Mansfield, Nick (1997) 'Cultural Studies and the New Humanities: Concepts and Controversies', Melbourne, Oxford University Press.
Haraway, Donna (1991) "A Cyborg Maifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century' in 'Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature', New York, Routledge.
Lyotard, Jean Francois (1992) 'The Postmodern Explained', Sydney, Power Publications.
Mansfield , Nick 'Subjects of Rapture / Subjects of Rupture: towards a possible history of the future' in Diprose, Roslyn, 'The Politics of erotics'.
Massumi, Brian (1993) 'The Politics of everyday fear', Minneapolis, UNiversity of Minneapolis Press.
Norris, CHristopher (1990) 'What's wrong with postmodenrism', England, Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Rothfork, John (1995) 'Postmodern ethics: Richard Rorty and Michael Polanyi', Southern Humanities review.
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