Talking Postmodernism To A Duck

Ducks have played a very important role in my intellectual development during the last four years. Those who do not know me 'outside' this blog might well exclaim : 'Excuse me? What was that again?'

Well, then, for around three years or so, I used to walk early in the mornings to the banks of the river Cam (from which the mediaeval (yes, I prefer the Queen's English spelling, not that I am a Royalist though, mind you) university-town of Cam-bridge gets its name) where I used to talk to the bleary-eyed caffeine-deprived morning ducks, some of them brownish, others blackish.

Ok, ok, time for one more question : 'Excuse me? Are you a wacko or something? Don't you have human beings around you to talk to? I mean, ducks? Are you serious? How depressing! They teach you anything so far, huh? Honey, trust me, the next time you are feeling a bit low, just come over to my place. Did you get that?'

(Hmm, I seem to be getting better at playing the Devil's Advocate on myself. No? But what if I were really the Devil Her(?)self? Would I then have to play God's Advocate?)

Ok, let me drag myself out of this perfidious monologuing with myself, and answer that question about duck-talking : 'No, dear, I do have humans around me to discuss my views with. But you see, talking to ducks is a rare kind of a challenge, one of trying to explain your beliefs to creatures with whom you do not share your sort of linguistic capacities.'

'But this whole thing sucks. I mean, here are these ducks, these poor dumb little thingies, and there you are, Mr Philosopher, sermonising to them about the profundities of human existence. Have you never heard of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French wise guy?'

'Yes?'

'Well, he (sort of) married this illiterate girl who had not the faintest clue to what philosophy was about, and this because Rousseau was scared of talking to women who might prove to be superior to him in intellectual prowess. Are you not doing a similar thing with the ducks? Why can't you hunt down some Ph.D. students who have done the relevant literature reviews?'

'Because duck-talking is not about accumulating bits and pieces of information, for which I would rather go to www.wikipedia.org; nor is it about demonstrating your rhetorical powers to passive listeners, for which I would rather supervise some first-year undergraduates. It is a challenge to express your ideas so clearly and transparently that you can, for half an hour at least, be emboldened to believe that even a duck will be able to 'understand' it.'

'Hmm. Well, I am not convinced.'

'Why not join me now? I am walking down to the river in a few minutes?'

'Really?'

'Be my guest.'

The Transparent Ironist (TI) : Dear duck, I shall talk to you today about postmodernism. Ever heard that term?

The Duck (D) gets very excited, apparently postmodernism is in the air : Quack, quack, quack.

TI : I shall start by noting that there are, broadly speaking, two versions of postmodernism, one I shall call Weak postmodernism (WP) and the other Strong postmodernism (SP). Let me start off with WP.

D : Quack!

TI : Very well, my friend, let's get off to a quacking start with WP. Suppose I want to ask the question, 'What is the best way of living in this world?', how shall I go about answering this question? Firstly, I shall have to think of my familial background, then my childhood experiences, the various books I have read, and also the different human beings whom I have interacted with in my life. All of these will have varying degrees of significant influence on my response to that question. Consequently, the answer that I give to that question cannot be 'objective' in the sense of being stated as a 'view from nowhere' that will be 'universally' applicable for all human beings. Are you with me so far?

D : Quack, quack, quack!

TI : So far, things are somewhat obvious : most of us know that we are 'conditioned' to think and believe in certain things by the ways in which we are brought up. What WP says is that human beings belonging to different cultures, communities, faiths, or traditions come to develop their distinctive views of The Way Things Are in accordance with their environmental influences, linguistic idiosyncrasies, and localised contexts. Therefore, we should resist the attempt made by any group to project its view of the world as the 'global perspective', for there is no Archimedean point, no God's-eye-view vouchsafed to us mortals, no way of getting 'behind' our environments to see how 'correct' our views are.

The duck buries its head into its chest, goes into the water, stays there for a while, comes out of it, flutters its wings and cries : Quack!

TI : So, then, let us move onto SP which moves one step ahead of WP and claims that we are completely incarcerated within our local environments and cultures which act as water-tight compartments sealing us off from initiating or fostering any genuine communication with people in other environments around us. Not only is it the case that what one culture holds to be true is different from what a second culture does, but the very notions of 'truth' and 'reality' change from the former to the latter. Consequently, according to SP, a quantum physicist from Oxford, England, cannot go to a tribe in the lower Niger and pronounce that the beliefs and the practices of the local witch-doctor there have no purchase on 'reality', since the term 'reality' cannot be directly translated without remainder from the first context to the second.

The D tries to fly into the air, hovers over my head for a few seconds, and then dashes down the ground.

TI : Now, needless to say, both WP and SP have been, in turn, celebrated and criticised by people from different cultural, academic, and social backgrounds. Scientists in particular are edgy about both these forms and, rightly so, since the acceptance of SP will ring the death-knell of the scientific enterprise with its (potentially) universalisable truth-claims. Many social anthropologists too, however, have been suspicious of some versions of SP and argue, with a lot of detailed evidence, that human beings are not, in fact, as hermetically sealed within their parochial contexts as the proponents of SP seem to claim.

D : Quack, quack, quack!

TI : Now both WP and SP have far-reaching political implications, one of which is that we human beings should not step on the toes of one another since we all belong to our own particularised contexts where we should be allowed to flourish without any intervention or interference. Hence the recent craze for acquainting oneself with 'politically correct' modes of speech so that we allow one another their 'space'. Do you know, dear duck, what the implications of WP and SP are for you?

D : Quack?

TI : Well, it means that one species of animals on this planet, namely, human beings, do not have the right to violate the privacy and the autonomy of another species, namely, you ducks. Therefore, if human beings were to accept WP and/or SP rigorously, it would mean that you shall never end up as Peking Duck on someone's dinner plate.

The duck is thrilled to hear this piece of free legal advice, and flies out to inform its buddies of the Good News : Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack!