Disidentifying with the Present: The Multiple Values of the Prefix “Post-”

postmodernism, postcolonialism;

poststructuralism, post-anthropocentrism;

post-blackness, postcritique, post-theory;

post-gender, posthumanism, posthistoire;

postmigrant, postethnic, postfeminist;

post-industrial, post-digital, post-capitalist;

post-fact, post-truth, post-politics.

‘The posts seem to want to proliferate’, wrote Linda Hutcheon in 1994. It’s the year 2024, and the posts are everywhere. The selection above offers an illustration, featuring only some of the buzz words circulating in academia and the press. The Oxford English Dictionary Full reference in Zotero Library tells us that common to the terms using the prefix “post-” is their ‘reference to time or order in the sense “afterwards, after, subsequently”’. What the dictionary entry omits, though, are the sets of values permeating any such reference to succession. This is because time tends to appear as an abstract category in modernity; the sense of succession implicit in post- may, consequently, seem like a neutral fact rather than a construction imbued with values. In what follows, I unpack the contradictory and competing values that invariably attach themselves to posts by building upon the writings of Ann McClintock, Naika Foroutan, Jean-François Lyotard, and Rita Felski, among others. In particular, I approach the contemporary proliferation of posts as indicating a coexistence of opposing temporal notions and values rather than as a monolithic trend. The diverse temporalities articulated in posts crystallise into temporal communities, which I understand here as ‘imagined communities’ Full reference in Zotero Library sharing certain ideas of what is valuable about past, present, and future. In other words, I wish to argue that the perceived ubiquity of posts today evidences the ongoing competition of various temporal communities for the right to define what the “coming after modernity” means for today in ethical and political terms. My aim is, thus, not to advance a new theory of posts, but rather to offer a systematic and critical discussion of the fashion for the prefix, which will eventually show why the posts resist new conceptualisations.

The prematurely celebratory post-

I’d like to start with the post- that continues thriving within academia and beyond, while at the same time attracting unflagging criticism—namely, post- as referring to the present as having surpassed and overcome the past for the sake of improving the human condition. Ann McClintock holds that such a progress-oriented “post-” dominated the common usage of the term “postcolonial” at the time when she was writing in Full reference in Zotero Library. I revise McClintock’s critique below, before demonstrating in a next step that the progressivist way of thinking about post- remains highly pertinent to today’s discourse.

Even though the notion of absolute, universal, and linear time does not exhaust the temporalities of Western modernity Full reference in Zotero Library, this idea of time has played a crucial role in the Western imperial conquest. Temporalities of the colonised were conceived as essentially “other” and described with features such as cyclical, reversible, or nature-based, by contrast to the linear, irreversible, evenly sequenced “Western” time Full reference in Zotero Library. The colonised were, thus, denied coevalness with the colonisers Full reference in Zotero Library and cast out of historical progress as “backward” and “primitive”. Postcolonial theory contrasts this imperialist notion of universal and absolute time with the idea of time as always plural or hybrid (see Full reference in Zotero Library), always encompassing various temporal constructs, experiences, and practices. McClintock clearly has this history of time in mind when she writes:

If the [postcolonial] theory promises a decentering of history in hybridity, syncreticism, multi-dimensional time, and so forth, the singularity of the term [“postcolonial”] effects a re-centering of global history around the single rubric of European time. Colonialism returns at the moment of its disappearance. Full reference in Zotero Library

In temporal terms, the post- in “postcolonial” seems to presume the very idea of time that informed colonialist thinking by introducing the linear and universal succession of “precolonial”, “colonial”, and “postcolonial”. Using the term “postcolonial” as a sweeping diagnosis for a variety of different cultures and countries all around the globe reinstalls the very notion of singular and absolute time that was key to the colonial project. It implies that most of the world’s countries ‘share a single “common past”, or a single common “condition”, called “the post-colonial condition”’ Full reference in Zotero Library. And the defining feature of this common past is its relation to Western imperialism. Thus, in “postcolonialism”, time and history continue revolving around the Western axis.

Beside re-installing time and history as linear and singular, the term “postcolonialism” seems to imply that the time of colonialism is over today. For McClintock, this implication is the term’s gravest flaw. She provides four examples of how colonialism persists in “the postcolonial” era. Firstly, countries such as the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand remain ‘settler colonies that have not undergone decolonization’ Full reference in Zotero Library. Secondly, some liberated colonies have suffered from neocolonial aggression of their immediate neighbours, as the conflicts between East Timor and Indonesia or between Mozambique and South Africa demonstrate Full reference in Zotero Library. Thirdly, economic and cultural imperialism, most notably of the United States, can also serve as an example of neocolonial tendencies (although McClintock contends that the term “neo-colonial” does not do justice to the complexity of these phenomena). Finally, gender inequality in many postcolonial countries is, among other things, a lasting effect of the colonial rule. The term “postcolonial” obfuscates all these continuities of colonialism, according to McClintock.

Although McClintock’s criticism targets primarily the broad community that consolidates around postcolonial studies, it is not limited to academic contexts: ‘The enthusiasm for “post”-words [. . .] ramifies beyond the corridors of the university’ Full reference in Zotero Library. Like Hutcheon Full reference in Zotero Library, McClintock observes a global spread of posts, which she explains in terms similar to those of Jean-François Lyotard Full reference in Zotero Library: both scholars regard the “post-” as indicating a crisis of dominant modern ideologies. I will return to this diagnosis below; for now, I’d like merely to rephrase McClintock’s analysis as describing a vast temporal community. A community that believes to have moved beyond certain pitfalls of the past, yet in reality reproduces them precisely by valorising the progress of the present. A community that rests on the belief in the possibility of overcoming past mistakes by moving “forward” in a singular, abstract, linear time.

The seemingly mindful post-

McClintock’s criticism has gained a wide recognition in postcolonial studies (one of its effects being the rise of an alternative term, “decolonial”); however, the progressivist understanding of post- is anything but obsolete today. Among other things, it survives in a camouflaged form even in those posts which seem to be mindful of the issues McClintock raises. I will provide just one prominent example. The term “postmigrant” (postmigrantisch) was originally coined in 2008, when the Berlin theatre producer and director Shermin Langhoff took over as the head of the theatre Ballhaus Naunynstraße and set the theatre’s course for “postmigrant” productions (see Full reference in Zotero Library). The term has been trending in academia since the late 2010s;¹A search in Google Books Ngram Viewer shows that the frequency of postmigrantisch and its English equivalent, “postmigrant”, has increased dramatically since 2014 for German and since 2018 for English (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). among its most prominent adherents today is Naika Foroutan, social and political scientist and head of the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (Deutsches Zentrum für Integrations- und Migrationsforschung). On the surface, Foroutan’s understanding of the term “postmigrant” seems to take up McClintock’s criticism:

Ebenso wie das Postkoloniale sich auf ein Nachwirken von Kolonialisierungsprozessen […] bezieht, rekurriert das Postmigrantische auf das Nachwirken von Migration über die Generationen hinweg. Full reference in Zotero Library

[Just as the postcolonial refers to the after-effects of colonisation (…), so does the postmigrant refer to the after-effects of migration across generations.] (here and henceforth my translation)

By assuming that post- implies looking backwards as much as looking forwards, Foroutan seems to distance herself from the logic of progress and rupture. Her powerful rethinking of democracy through the lens of postmigrant experiences zeroes in on the recognition of equal rights and opportunities lacking in the present. In this regard, Foroutan seems to take cue not only from McClintock but also from Homi Bhabha, who sees the value of the posts in their capacity to ‘transform the present into an expanded and ex-centric site of experience and empowerment’ Full reference in Zotero Library. A closer look at Foroutan’s argument reveals, however, that her critical investigation of the present is inseparable from its valorisation:

Das Präfix “post” im Postmigrantischen macht deutlich, dass man eine gesellschaftlich etablierte und zunehmend defizitär konstruierte Unterscheidungskategorie—nämlich das Migrantische—zur Erklärung von gesellschaftlichen Ungleichheitsverhältnissen hinter sich lassen will. […] Das “post” bezieht sich außerdem auf die Überwindung von überholten Konzepten (wie gender, black oder race). Full reference in Zotero Library

[The prefix “post” in the postmigrant makes it clear that we want to leave behind the explanation of social inequality by means of an established and increasingly deficiently constructed category of differentiation—namely the migrant. (…) The “post” also refers to overcoming outdated concepts (such as gender, black, or race).]

Foroutan’s “postmigrant” thus fits into the row of posts such as post-gender and posthistoire, which imply that the respective “old” concepts are inadequate for describing the realities of the late twentieth and/or twenty-first centuries. Not only does the idea of overcoming the flaws of the old concepts reproduce the logic of progress; worse still, the “postmigrant” might inadvertently perpetuate a Eurocentric view of history. For what societies is it safe to assume that their ‘self-perception is increasingly going beyond [the category of] “the migrant”’ Full reference in Zotero Library? At what point does a society achieve the ‘recognition of having become a country of migration’ Full reference in Zotero Library? It seems to me that such an approach to “postmigrant” runs the risk of separating societies into those which have progressed beyond “the migrant” and those lagging behind.

Foroutan’s usage of the term has become extremely influential in German-speaking academia and beyond, inspiring an ongoing surge of works on postmigrant societies and cultures (to name just a few: Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). Most of these studies are mindful of the hazardous rupture with the past implicit in post-; they unanimously stress that the processes of migration are in no way a thing of the past. Yet, these works also share the hope for a new way of thinking about migration that the term “postmigrant” seems to promise: a going beyond the older idea of Migrationsgesellschaft (literally: migration society) with its focus on integration and on individual rather than collective experiences of migration. The modern valorisation of the present resurfaces here in a different form. Rather than asserting a belief in social progress as such, studies of “postmigrant” subscribe to the belief in the progress of academic thought. In this way, their mindful understanding of post- undermines itself by succumbing to the modern ideals of originality and newness.

Excurse: Lyotard’s ‘Note on the Meaning of “Post-”’

The contradictory notion of post- that rejects progress-oriented and Eurocentric thinking, while simultaneously reintroducing it through the back door, is far from being an exception. In fact, such a notion features prominently in Jean-François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge Full reference in Zotero Library, originally published in 1979 as La Condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir), a work that arguably precipitated the burgeoning of posts in the first place. Revising Lyotard’s influential study is beyond the scope of this essay; however, I’d like to provide a glimpse of his approach to post- based on his lesser-known and very short ‘Note on the Meaning of “Post-”’ Full reference in Zotero Library²Lyotard’s essay was originally published in 1986 as ‘Note on the Meaning of “Post-”’ Full reference in Zotero Library; how and why the plural meanings (les sens) became the singular “meaning” in the translation, remains unclear.. My reading will demonstrate a continuity between Lyotard’s line of thinking and the later approaches to post- I’ve discussed above.

By the time Lyotard composed the ‘Note on the Meaning of “Post-”’, his conception of postmodernity as ‘incredulity toward metanarratives’ Full reference in Zotero Library was already widely known. And yet, he doesn’t start the brief essay with his own prominent understanding of the term. Intead, he opens by contrasting two views on how postmodernism has been described in architecture. According to the first view, represented by the architect Paolo Portoghesi, ‘the rupture of postmodernism consists in an abrogation of the hegemony of Euclidean geometry’ Full reference in Zotero Library. For Lyotard, such a notion of “postmodern” is naïve, insofar as it reproduces the modern belief in the possibility of breaking away from tradition and opening radically new directions of thought. By ‘repressing’ Full reference in Zotero Library the past, such a perspective runs the risk of repeating it—in particular, by reinforcing the modern value of progress.

Another Italian architect, Vittorio Gregotti, stands for an opposing view of postmodern architecture, characterised by ‘the disappearance of the close bond which once linked the project of modern architecture to an ideal of the progressive realisation of social and individual emancipation encompassing all humanity’ Full reference in Zotero Library. This view of postmodern architecture corresponds to Lyotard’s own take on postmodernity as a lack of faith in that which constituted modernity. Following Lyotard’s famous definition, the coming after modernity amounts first and foremost to a condition of disbelief in the metanarratives (a.k.a. grand narratives) ‘such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth’ Full reference in Zotero Library.

Lyotard’s rhetorical move of starting with Portoghesi and then proceeding to Gregotti, whose position closely resembles his own, is meant to demonstrate the surplus of the latter view in contrast to the former. In other words, Lyotard’s own concept of postmodernity only takes shape against the backdrop of a more “simplistic” understanding. Yet, such a rhetoric seems at odds with the argument Lyotard makes: isn’t the belief in the possibility of overcoming the “wrong” conception of postmodernity itself part of a grand narrative, that of discovering the true meaning or Zeitgeist of an epoch? This rhetorical incongruity indicates that the post- in Lyotard’s view of the postmodern is imbued with contradictory values.

At first glance, Lyotard calls for an understanding of postmodernity that focuses on its connections to the past rather than on the ways of breaking away from it. He discards the possibility of a rupture with the past as merely reproducing modern values and therefore being a way of ‘repeating it [the past] and not surpassing it’ Full reference in Zotero Library. By contrast, Lyotard likens his understanding of post- with the meaning of another prefix, ana-, as in analysis or anamnesis. Just like ana-, post- is for Lyotard about ‘freely associating’ Full reference in Zotero Library the present with the past in order to address the problems of today.

It is impossible to overlook the logic of progress under this programmatic surface. Just as Lyotard’s rhetoric in ‘Note on the Meaning of “Post-”’ presents a “false” concept of postmodernity to replace it with a more “correct” one, so does the logic of his argument ultimately presume the possibility of overcoming a past mistake—namely, the constant repetition of the past. Lyotard’s post- thus comprises both the modern valorisation of the present and the attempt to undermine it. In this regard, his concept of the postmodern prefigures Foroutan’s “postmigrant” and similar contradictory attempts to open a new avenue of thinking without addressing the modern problematic of newness. These ways of conceptualising post- coalesce into a temporal community that recognises continuities between the past and the present in societies and cultures, yet glosses over such continuities in its own way of thinking.

The weakened post-

Lyotard’s historical narrative may convey the impression that prior to postmodernity, very few people had reasons to doubt the Hegelian and Marxist metanarratives; that the opposite is the case has long transpired from studies of modernity focusing on women, queer people, people of colour, and other disenfranchised groups. Modernity is actively constituted by all those who are routinely considered its victims and Others—those who might hesitate to celebrate the present as a universal betterment of the past. Rita Felski Full reference in Zotero Library takes this insight as the starting point in her discussion of postmodernity. She submits that the disenfranchised subjects are not ‘suddenly bursting onto the historical stage’ in postmodernity Full reference in Zotero Library, announcing the triumph of diversity and pluralism. Rather, Felski argues, modern values and narratives seamlessly continue into postmodernity, either in their original or in a recycled form Full reference in Zotero Library.

Attending to the impossibility of clear-cut distinctions between modernity and postmodernity, Felski proposes thinking along the lines of multiplicity, hybridity, ‘difference within sameness’, and ‘sameness within difference’ Full reference in Zotero Library. However, unlike McClintock, Felski does not stop at suggesting a simple replacement of the flawed singular and linear approach to history with terminological and methodological pluralism. Instead, following the theory of weak thought (pensiero debole) by Gianni Vattimo (Full reference in Zotero Library; see also Full reference in Zotero Library), she points out that assuming the possibility of such a shift in approaches is itself a continuation of dualist modern thinking:

To assume the superiority of the postmodern is to make the quintessentially modern gesture of valuing the present for superseding the errors of the past. To reject the errors of modernity is to repeat the motif of historical overcoming that defines modernity itself. Much postmodern thought thus turns out to be deeply enmeshed within the very historical and temporal dynamic that it wants to disavow. Full reference in Zotero Library

Striving to overcome the post- and replace it with a terminological pluralism thus produces the same paradox as the post- itself, namely the idea that the erroneous past can be, or even already is, replaced with a better future. In other words, both the unequivocal acceptance of post- and its radical rejection breed a dualist thinking in terms of “before” and “after”, a thinking that is prematurely celebratory and dominated by a Eurocentric perspective.

Following Vattimo, on the one hand, and deconstructionist thinkers, on the other, Felski suggests that any dualism, including that of pre- and post-, ‘cannot be overcome, but at best displaced’ Full reference in Zotero Library. In other words, we can neither break with, nor overcome, the heritage of modernity. We can, however, be self-consciously aware of it, and ‘we can seek to be cured of it’ by twisting the continuity of the modern ‘in a different direction in order to drain it of its strength’ (Full reference in Zotero Library, quoted in Full reference in Zotero Library)³This formulation alludes to the idea of of Verwindung, a term Vattimo borrows from Martin Heidegger as an alternative to the idea of overcoming something, Überwindung Full reference in Zotero Library.. The heroic, progress-oriented modern thinking can be productively met with a rhetoric of weakness and uncertainty, which recognises its own limits and rejects the possibility of a resolution.

Applied to post-, such an approach means, firstly, regarding the proliferation of posts as a direct continuation of the modern will to progress and to overcome the past. Yet, it is not enough to acknowledge that the post- always produces both continuities and discontinuities, as, for instance, Sofie Van Bauwel and Nico Carpentier Full reference in Zotero Library do in their overview of the prefix’s recent history. Rather, Felski’s approach demands recognising the conflict at the heart of such posts as postcolonialism or postmodernity: the conflict between what the term promises and what it actually yields. Most importantly, her approach means exploiting this conflict as a productive one. An example of how this might work is the volume on postcritique that Felski co-edited with Elizabeth Anker Full reference in Zotero Library. As they write in the introduction,

the “post-” of postcritique denotes a complex temporality: an attempt to explore fresh ways of interpreting literary and cultural texts that acknowledges, nonetheless, its inevitable dependency on the very practices it is questioning. Full reference in Zotero Library

The weak post- Felski and Anker propose features not simply a bidirectional but rather a circular temporality, as postcritique can come into its own only by engaging with the past (critique) it seems to reject. In this way, Felski and Anker recognise ambiguity as an inescapable linguistic product of post-. It is precisely the impossibility of arriving at a singular, unequivocal interpretation of post- that makes the prefix viable for the project of engaging with the legacy that one can neither endorse nor escape.

Another brilliant example of weakening the post- is the work on postethnic literatures by Florian Sedlmeier Full reference in Zotero Library. The term “postethnic” originally started circulating in academia after David A. Hollinger’s Postethnic America came out in 1995. However, Sedlmeier Full reference in Zotero Library distances himself from ‘the liberal, progressive narrative associated with the label “postethnic”, ever since David Hollinger coined it’. Instead, he uses “postethnic” to refer to works that problematise the qualities commonly ascribed to ethnic literatures. In particular, Sedlmeier argues that ethnic literatures have been pressed into ‘the paradigm of cultural and communal representativeness’, defined as

the interlinked assumptions that ethnic writers write about their ascribed ethnic identities, subordinate their authorship to a communal purpose, and produce more authentic, or at least more legitimate, representations than writers who are not considered to be part of the respective community. Full reference in Zotero Library

These assumptions underlie much of the scholarship on ethnic literatures as well as its anthologising and publishing. Consequently, literature that Sedlmeier calls “postethnic” critically engages with these assumptions; it develops ‘from within and against the modes of production and reception […] which comply with the paradigm of cultural representativeness’ (Full reference in Zotero Library, my emphasis). Rather than overcoming the ethnic or dissolving it as a category altogether, postethnic literature seeks to shift the prevalent criteria by which it is judged, according to Sedlmeier. In this, ‘it differs from modernist artistic fervour—it demands less a radically new position for itself, than rather, and simply, a different one that emerges from within and against the prevalent differentials’ Full reference in Zotero Library. Sedlmeier’s use of the term “postethnic” therefore engages with the problematic nature of post- by focusing on the continuities of ethnic in postethnic and the emergence of the latter ‘from within’ the former. In this way, Sedlmeier appropriates the term “postethnic”, detaching it from the progressivist context of Hollinger’s book and placing it instead in a context congruent with weak thought.

In lieu of conclusion: the posts that are not

It seems to me that the weak avenue of thinking corresponds in many ways to the idea of disidentification as developed within queer theory by José Esteban Muñoz Full reference in Zotero Library. Writing around the same time as Felski, Muñoz Full reference in Zotero Library conceives of disidentification as ‘the third mode of dealing with dominant ideology, one that neither opts to assimilate within such a structure nor strictly opposes it; rather, disidentification is a strategy that works on and against dominant ideology’. Muñoz’s search for a third way of dealing with a phobic majoritarian society echoes Felski’s (as well as Vattimo’s) quest for an alternative approach to modern thinking. This is just one example of parallels between the appeal for the weakening of literary theory and several other undertakings that question the ideals of progress and newness within the humanities. Jeffrey J. Williams surveys some of these projects under the roof of ‘The New Modesty in Literary Criticism’ Full reference in Zotero Library, and Paul K. Saint-Amour Full reference in Zotero Library scrutinises the presence of weak thought across modernist studies. The imagined community of scholars working on twisting strong theories has evidently been expanding; yet, to my knowledge, Sedlmeier Full reference in Zotero Library and Felski and Anker Full reference in Zotero Library remain the only ones to have attempted a re-definition of post- in terms of weak thought. Perhaps this is because the latter deliberately shies away from all-encompassing theories, such as most posts seem to promise. One is reminded of McClintock’s Full reference in Zotero Library view that the logic of overcoming is inherent in the prefix “post-” itself. However, if the aim of weak or “modest” thinking is not to overcome the modern valorisation of the present but rather to bend and weaken it, then working with a term that incorporates much of the modern will for progress might not be such a bad idea. It is by disidentifying with this term rather than by jettisoning it altogether that the aspiring temporal community of weak thinkers might seek a different (though not necessarily new) understanding of what is valuable about the past, present, and future.