Table Of Content9780230619814ts01:PPL-US_NM Samuels 10/16/2009 9:03 AM Page i
New Media, Cultural Studies,
and Critical Theory after
Postmodernism
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Education, Psychoanalysis, and
Social Transformation
Series Editors:
jan jagodzinski, University of Alberta
Mark Bracher, Kent State University
The purpose of this series is to develop and disseminate psychoanalytic knowl-
edge that can help educators in their pursuit of three core functions of education:
1. facilitating student learning
2. fostering students’ personal development, and
3. promoting prosocial attitudes, habits, and behaviors in students (i.e. those
opposed to violence, substance abuse, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.).
Psychoanalysis can help educators realize these aims of education by providing
them with important insights into:
1. the emotional and cognitive capacities that are necessary for students to be
able to learn, develop, and engage in prosocial behavior
2. the motivations that drive such learning, development, and behaviors, and
3. the motivations that produce antisocial behaviors as well as resistance to
learning and development.
Such understanding can enable educators to develop pedagogical strategies and
techniques to help students overcome psychological impediments to learning and
development, either by identifying and removing the impediments or by helping
students develop the ability to overcome them. Moreover, by offering an under-
standing of the motivations that cause some of our most severe social problems—
including crime, violence, substance abuse, prejudice, and inequality—together
with knowledge of how such motivations can be altered, books in this series will
contribute to the reduction and prevention of such problems, a task that education
is increasingly being called upon to assume.
Radical Pedagogy: Identity, Generativity, and Social Transformation
By Mark Bracher
Teaching the Rhetoric of Resistance: The Popular Holocaust and Social Change in a
Post 9/11 World
By Robert Samuels
Television and Youth Culture: Televised Paranoia
By jan jagodzinksi
Psychopedagogy: Freud, Lacan, and the Psychoanalytic Theory of Education
By K. Daniel Cho
New Media, Cultural Studies, and Critical Theory after Postmodernism: Automodernity
from Zizek to Laclau
By Robert Samuels
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New Media, Cultural Studies,
and Critical Theory after
Postmodernism
Automodernity from Zizek to Laclau
By
Robert Samuels
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NEWMEDIA, CULTURALSTUDIES, ANDCRITICALTHEORYAFTERPOSTMODERNISM
Copyright © Robert Samuels, 2009.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States – a
division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this
is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered
in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire
RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and
has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the
United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978-0-230-61981-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Macmillan Publishing Solutions
First edition: January 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
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For Sophia, Madeleine, and Jacqueline
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Contents
Preface ix
Part I: A Radical Critique of Academic Theory 1
1. Automodernity: Autonomy and Automation after Postmodernity 3
2. Henry Jenkins: Cultural Studies, New Media, and the Ends of the
Modern University 27
3. After Frederic Jameson: A Practical Critique of Pure Theory and
Postmodernity 51
4. The Political without Politics: Slavoj Zizek and the Psychoanalysis of
Automodernity 69
Part II: The Psychopathology of Automodernity 85
5. On the Psychopathology of the New Right: From Jurassic Parkto the
Gendered Culture Wars 87
6. The Automodern University: The Universal Individual and the
Backlash against Social Discourse 105
7. Grand TheftAutomodernity: Globalizing Individualism and Cultural
Nihilism from Eminem to The Matrix 123
Part III: Postmodern Education, Social Movements, and Politics 145
8. Postmodern Education and Social Ethics after Automodernity 147
9. Taking Back the Automodern University: Postmodern Progressive
Social Movements and the Academic Class System 167
10. Beyond the Zizek-Laclau Debate: Coalition Politics and
Academic Theory after Obama 187
Notes 207
Works Cited 241
Index 249
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Preface
This book argues that we have moved into a new cultural period, automodernity,
which represents a social, psychological, and technological reaction to post-
modernity. In fact, by showing how individual autonomy is now being generated
through technological and cultural automation, I posit that we must rethink
modernity and postmodernity. Part of this rethinking entails stressing how the
progressive political aspects of postmodernism need to be separated from the
aesthetic consumption of differences in automoderntiy. Ultimately, I posit that
what defines postmodernity is the stress on social constructionism, secular
humanism, and progressive social movements that challenge the universality and
neutrality of modern reason.
In order to distinguish automodernity from postmodernity, I begin this book
by analyzing the role of new media in catering to an antisocial model of libertar-
ian politics and subjectivity. Thus, Chapter 1 concentrates on the use of new
media technologies in the current backlash against the postmodern welfare state
and progressive social movements. This chapter also introduces my critical
rereading of postmodernity and postmodern academic theory.
In Chapter 2, I switch my attention to the recent history of cultural studies and
the analysis of new media in critical theory. In examining the work Henry Jenkins,
I reveal how the field of cultural studies has become a backlash discourse, and while
this mode of academic criticism once concentrated on the roles of race, gender, and
class in the social construction of media representations, it has now shifted its atten-
tion to how particular individuals find meaning in diverse media. By performing a
genealogy of cultural studies, I will argue that academic criticism is itself mirroring
the cultural move from the stress on the social to the emphasis on the individual,
and this transition has important political and theoretical effects.
In Chapter 3, I use the work of Frederic Jameson to posit that we need to rethink
his notion of postmodernity in order to differentiate between the progressive
aspects of social constructivism and the regressive appropriation of cultural differ-
ences for aesthetic and economic purposes. I also demonstrate that radical academic
thinkers, like Jameson, tend to unknowingly participate in a conservative backlash
against postmodern social movements. In fact, Jameson is openly hostile to these
new modes of political protest and organization because they do not take on a
classic Marxist stress on a total revolution against a totalizing system.
Chapter 4 continues this critique of academic theory by looking at the work
of Slavoj Zizek. My central contention is that Zizek also participates in a strong
automodern backlash against postmodern progressive social movements, and
by critiquing his work, we can see how academic theory often functions to repli-
cate destructive aspects of the status quo, while it pretends to offer a space for
