Interculturalism, Postmodernism, Pluralism

Interculturalism, Postmodernism, Pluralism Daryl Chin ALTHOUGH "INTERCULTURALISM" is a concept that is gaining a great deal of visibility as well as credibility, this situation is aligned to a number of issues, some of which are political and sociological, and others philosophical and aesthetic. Taking interculturalism as a specific philosophical and aesthetic issue, it continues the agenda set by postmodernism , pluralism, and marginalism. But what is postmodernism? What are pluralism and marginalism? "Postmodern" has become one of those terms, like "existential" for an earlier generation, which everyone tosses around like a beanbag, while aiming at different targets. For most of the commentators who insist on using the term, its meaning is not defined, but denoted by catalogues and lists. I'll take the widest possible context for postmodernism on a philosophical level: as described by Jean-Frangois Lyotard in The PostmodernCondition: A Report on Knowledge, it is a crisis in categorization, resulting in equivalence. The effect of this equivalence is the lack of hegemony in perspective. This break in unity has been the occasion for a crisis in cultural practice. Splintering in so many separate pieces, any aesthetic enterprise is fraught with suspicion, haunted by the possibility of misinterpretation. In order to grapple with even the most momentary meaning, art has now been occupied by the pastiche, the parody, the appropriation, on the assumption that nostalgic meaning is better than no meaning at all. But the result of this nostalgia is the depletion of the centricity of artistic 163 endeavor. Irony, reproduction, and simulation have become central to contemporary art, with all the distance that implies. The attempt to define postmodernism is linked to a consideration of modernism, its limits and deficiencies. The problem of defining modernism is compounded by the multiplicity of "modernisms," that is, modernism in literature, modernism in the visual arts, modernism in architecture, and so on. What is defined as the modernist epoch in each art form is not necessarily congruent with modernism in another art form. Thus, in architecture, the modernist movement was associated with the consideration of materiality , purity of line, and restrained monumentality, as exemplified in the work of Alvar Aalto, Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier. Robert Venturi, one of the leading theorists of postmodernism in architecture, proclaimed: "Architects can no longer afford to be intimidated by the puritanically moral language of orthodox Modern architecture. I like elements which are hybrid rather than 'pure,' compromising rather than 'clean,' distorted rather than 'straightforward,' ambiguous rather than 'articulated,' perverse as well as impersonal, boring as well as 'interesting,' conventional rather than designed , accommodating rather than excluding, redundant rather than simple, vestigal as well as innovating, inconsistent and equivocal rather than direct and clear." Venturi's theoretical proclamation of a postmodern ambition in architecture was defined through "double-functioning," a recognition of pluralism in the living arrangements which must be acknowledged in architectural planning. When pluralism is invoked, the assumption is that alternative perspectives are being permitted into the discourse, displacing the dominant hegemony. In the most basic sense, pluralism is an acknowledgement of alternatives so that additional perspectives have the possibility of being understood. Marginalism is an accreditation of these additional perspectives by defining a dominant, and ceding territory to the sidelines. During the last two decades, as an example, a feminist perspective has been established in the arts, with theoretical and artistic practices in theatre, in the visual arts, in film and video. The acknowledgement of that feminist perspective has occurred in ways which have preserved sharp demarcations, resulting in a continuance of marginalism for the feminist perspective. The consideration of pluralism and marginalism is crucial to any attempt at comprehending contemporary aesthetics. More than twenty years ago, Susan Sontag attempted to define the new agenda in her essay "One Culture and the New Sensibility." She proposed a relativism in aesthetic judgment, so that appreciation could embrace the beauty of a machine, the solution to a mathematical problem, a painting by Jasper Johns, a film by Jean-Luc Godard, and the music of the Beatles. During that period, critical 164 debates in all arenas, from high art to popular culture, were engaged in the questions of modernism, pluralism, and postmodernism. Critical debate was...