Exam Paper 2: Friedrich Nietzsche, Postmodernity and Digital Media Theory (Week 9b)
Sara Wasouf
School of Communication & Culture, Royal Roads University
COMM365: Media and Cultural Studies Dr. David Black
August 28, 2022
As we stand at the midst of a digital age, where technology and communication through media encompasses our everyday lives, it is important to revisit history, what was once a contrasted point in time manifesting our world today. We witness this pattern as we look back in retrospect upon the early 16th century when Modernity began as a period of intellectual growth and a considerable change in culture (Black, week 9, slide 19). Modernity is a historical condition associated with the growth of human intervention in the improvement of the world, a time of industrial production and economic growth, and an emergence of political institutions enticing mass democracy (Black, week 9, slide 23). While some believe that presently, we remain in the period of Modernity, many counter this, arguing that a new era has emerged in the 1960’s and continues today (Black, week 4, slide 27). This new epoch is Postmodernity, a critical theory that refers to a state identified with cultural conditions that reject key features of Modernity such as hierarchies, high and low cultures, and is one that transcends a playful ground in which simulation and the digital define it (Black, week 9, slide 29). Prominent thinkers like Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Fredic Jameson, and Mike Featherstone among others have vocalized their thoughts on the epoch (Laughey, 2007). Perhaps one with the most influence on modern intellectual history and one who anticipated Postmodernity, is Friedrich Nietzsche, a profound German philosopher, philologist, author, and cultural critic (Black, Host, 2022). Through the analyzation of his book Twilight of the Idols, we are able to dive into the deep, arguably esoteric thoughts and foreshadows of a world today.
Nietzsche was an incredibly talented intellectual whose thoughts were quite enigmatic, credited with the famous sayings of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, “God is dead”, and “I am dynamite” (Black, Host, 2022). Explosive, esoteric,
and daring, his words were. Considering that he lived a painful life accompanied by migraines and later, a mental disease, his outlook on life was an existential one denying all meaning and metaphysical foundation in the world (Black, Host, 2022). To introduce Nietzsche is to embark on a journey of deep rationality that places us face to face with challenging and what may be arguably disturbing outlooks of life. What compels me the most, is Nietzsche’s confidence in meaningless, untruthful, and fruitless life. It is almost as if Nietzsche reached over to the gods, demanded an answer, only to find a mirage glittering from a distance. But this isn’t the big concern, the despair arises when a godless world produces a life without meaning, value, or innate truth. God is certainly “dead”, but so is a moral world of order (Black, Host, 2022). In his book titled Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche launches an inquiry on history, raising the Egyptian tradition of mummifying the dead in belief that they are to eternally live on, "sub specie æterni” (Nietzsche, 1889/2019, p. 14). He criticizes this outlook, placing it as a part of the present Modernity. Being is an illusion (Nietzsche, 1889/2019, p. 15). Nietzsche’s outlook thrusts us into a Postmodern world, one where there is increasing doubt, question, and distrust. While the thinker did not live in the Postmodern epoch and neither explicitly predicted it, he himself embodied it, giving society a taste of what is about to emerge. While Modernity moves away from a substantive definition of religion and as religious institutions lose their significance, truth and order continue to be sought after (Black, week 9, slide 23). There is an accommodation of science allowing the belief in religion that is more philosophical and less literal (Black, week 9, slide 23).
Nietzsche anticipated Postmodernity, without coining the term, but through coining a predefinition. Postmodernity believes in a world where an absolute and
universal law does not exist and where nothing is certain, destroying the concept of a metaphysical (Nietzsche, 1889/2019, p.13). Truth does not exist; it is only an illusion limiting our agency and self-determination (Nietzsche, 1889/2019, p.19). We use our senses to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, but Nietzsche argues that this is not indicative of a larger certainty, reality, or experience (Nietzsche, 1889/2019, p.19).
Sensuousness is nothing but deception, and to believe in it is to believe in “falsehood” (Nietzsche, 1889/2019, p.19). Before Nietzsche lives on to see a Postmodern world, he stands at the forefront of the truth conversation, not only challenging it, but bringing it to a demise in his own legacy.
This truth that Modernity relates to is one achieved through a world governed by structure (Black, week 9, slide 33). To Nietzsche, this seriousness and need for order places life in an inflexible and rigid place, “falling off the rhythm of life”, or in other words, “decadere” (Kaag, 2018, p. 24). Nietzsche believed that the animal in us was killed. He believed in a time where humans would live enthusiastically, with a sense of excitement and collaboration through less individualism and less ego (Kaag, 2018, p. 24). Nietzsche’s philosophy was one that compelled a life of liberation and introspection, one that reproduced the energies of the “liberator” Eleutherios, a drunken wild child wandering through the horizons (Kaag, 2018, p. 13). Indeed, he applied this way of living to his own life, hiking through the Alpine Terrain in the pursuit of newer experiences as he produced many of his written works in the 10 years (Kaag, 2018, p. 15). In a book titled Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are, American philosopher John Kaag follows his footsteps, quite literally, embarking on an introspective journey through the same mountain (2018). This is reminiscent of a Postmodern life, identified with less rules on individual and collective lives, and more on
a free life, drifting through the times in a flow state. Postmodernity, through its release of structure and order allows relationships to form and develop exclusive of boundaries, compelling a world of interconnectedness and expansion (Black, week 9, slide 23).
Through its release of official seriousness in everyday affairs, the digital like broadcast and social media become platforms depicting reality through a less stern lens, offering us with a social environment highly depicted through playful representations (Laughey, 2007, p. 159). We live a playful life when we break free from the shackles of order that enslave us.
While Nietzsche may be regarded as a controversial personality, ensuing thought well beyond the establishments of his time and ideas that even today, may elicit fear and trigger, we cannot deny that he shaped a future ahead of him. And while Nietzsche himself referred to the discovery of nothingness as a fearful void and brought forward what he believed was the issue of humankind, we ought to appreciate his pursuit for reality (Kaag, 2018, p. 31). His flexible, exuberant, but also pessimistic outlook on the world is a paradox in of itself, informing, guiding, and offering the world with a perspective that was once and may still be forbidden, shameful, and disturbing to consider. Nietzsche is a daring man who places us at the dawn of Postmodernity, giving us not only an introduction, but a deep understanding of it extending beyond time, space, and realities in the midst of an era defined by structure. His criticism opened a door into the unknown, the mysterious, and the esoteric realm. Through his belief that truth did not exist, he may have stumbled upon truth anyway, shaping his life and thoughts as a concoction of paradoxes. As Nietzsche sets the tone for a Postmodernity he never lived to see, other thinkers live through it and follow in their opinions of it.
In Key Themes in Media Theory, Dan Laughey presents us with a discussion on Postmodern theory through a collection of thoughts, praises, and critiques of it by different major thinkers (2007). In the Postmodernity and the Information Society chapter, we are introduced with Jean Baudrillard’s theories on Postmodernity (2007). Baudrillard, who is a French philosopher and theorist is best known for his analyses of media and technology (Black, week 9, slide 34).
The thinker induces a similar effect as Nietzsche, compelling us to enter a world of ultimate doubt- simulation and hyperreality (Black, week 9, slide 35). He argues that Postmodernity is an age where the line separating reality and representation is blurred, better yet erased (Laughey, 2007, p. 148). We live in a world that is heavily reliant on simulacra- signs, imagery, and the artificial in using these elements to make sense of our environments (Laughey, 2007, p. 150). While Nietzsche believed Modernity imprisoned the people through structure, Baudrillard believes Postmodernity imprisons the people through obstructions of reality (Laughey, 2007, p. 150). Awareness of the tangible and the actual is distorted, and we are at a point in time where social relations are fragmented as we become networked into machine-like creatures, exposed to a fake world producing fake news, lives, and realties (Laughey, 2007, p. 151). Media corporations often release inaccurate information on the state of the world, what he refers to as a “non-event” (Laughey, 2007, p. 151). Baudrillard uses his belief that the Gulf War never happened as a strong depiction of a non-event. It was a hyperreality, “the outcome of simulated imagery” (Laughey, 2007, p. 151). The war involved a high and large technological process involving the precise pinpointing and hitting of targets through a virtual system. This was not a war taking place on real ground, this was a war unable to differentiate between the physical and the images on the screen (Laughey,
2007, p. 151). In 2010, footage of US military conducting attacks in Iraq was leaked by Wikileaks (McGreal, 2010). In the video, we witness US air crew target and gun down 12 people in the streets of Baghdad. The pilots laugh through the attack, treating it like a virtual video game. (McGreal, 2010). Baudrillard would argue that this is hyperreality. The war and virtual process has become so efficient, easy, and an entrenched part of our world that it is so out of touch with the reality of what it really means to point a physical gun and shoot it. The Postmodern society has become so virtual that it is at a point furthest away from what we once considered reality (Laughey, 2007, p. 149).
Reality for the Spanish sociologist Manuel Castell on the other hand, is depicted through virtuality (Laughey, 2007, p. 163). With his focus on electronic virtuality, he offers multi-media systems much credit, arguing that the texts they embody, are the experience itself (Laughey, 2007, p. 164). His positive outlook grants media strong power and influence, but also the internet in which many become interconnected through. Castell believes that we are able to reduce the power of mass media and its output of traditional cultural views and instead place the diverse cultural expressions in the hands of the people through a network combating uniformity across populations (Laughey, 2007, p. 163). Castell points out the benefits of a virtual world and is more optimistic in his view, echoing Nietzsche’s expressions on a less individualistic world. Both Baudrillard and Castell offer us ideas relevant to our world today, taking on a bird’s eye view of virtuality and its different parts. In a world that relies heavily on technology and the virtual, which we have become so entrenched in, it’s crucial to recognize the opinions of cultural critics who have provided communicators with a scope of ideas that relate to our everyday lives. While some believe we are indebted to the creation of the virtual for offering further access to almost anything and making life
convenient, others believe that it has took over our lives, robbing us from our most humane characteristics that we may never get back.
While some believe that the rise of technology contributes to connection and unification of people, Postmodernist Fredric Jameson believes that this is a robbing of individualism (Laughey, 2007, p. 155). The move from Modernism to Postmodernism meant that the distinction between high and low forms of art and culture became blurred (Laughey, 2007, p. 155). To Jameson, this is the disappearance and disregard of the value of the individual. Society becomes a place of rampant capitalism, where all forms of art are available in the public sphere in the goal of serving the intention of consumerism (Laughey, 2007, p. 156). Strolling through a relatively cheaper furniture store like Homesense would place you amongst all forms of art, some pieces indicative of a high level of sophistication, handmade and imported from India. In Postmodernism, there is a lack of appreciation for the individual progression and effort and a large-scale replication system placing all art under one category (Laughey, 2007, p. 155). Jameson also contributes the lack of originality to the notion of pastiche, the imitation of literature, art, or music in another piece of production (Laughey, 2007, p. 155). In Postmodernism, pastiche is commonly incorporated into art, pointing to a threat to the existence of the original form or meaning (Laughey, 2007, p. 155). Today, we may come across people attempting to keep a tradition or art such as shoe repair, knitting, or sculpting alive by practicing it. There is a sense of nostalgia in our societies and people commonly longing for the past because it may be that once it is lost, it is out of reach forever. We may look back in the future on our present as past and view it through a nostalgic lens, but Jameson seems to deny this as he expresses our
Postmodern ways as lacking in novelty. The idea is: who would want to look back on that?
Postmodern theory has clearly aroused a plethora of reactions among thinkers in the world. The debate on the past versus the present and what has worked best for our societies is a very divided one. Through pieces acquired from several thinkers’ ideas, we are able to produce our own painting of the world. Postmodern theory is only a continuation of a pattern witnessed throughout millennia, epoch after epoch. To learn from the past, the present, and what may be an anticipated future is of crucial practice.
Nietzsche conceptualized and longed for a world he did not live in while those who live in it criticize it and long for Nietzsche’s time.
References
McGreal, C. (2021, May 7). Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/05/wikileaks-us-army-iraqattack
Nietzsche, F. (2019, First published in 1889). "Reason" in Philosophy (pp. 12-15), and How the "True World" Finally Became a Fable (p. 16). In Twilight of the Idols. Dover Publications. [Retrieved from the Ebook Central e-book database*]
Kaag, John (2018). Chapter 1, How the Journey Began. In Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are. Picador. Pages 11-36.
Laughey, Dan (2007). Chapter 8, Postmodernity and the Information Society. In Key Themes in Media Theory. Pages 147-168. [Retrieved from the Ebook Central ebook database*].
Black, D. (2022). COMM365 -- week 9 -- Nietzsche and postmodern media theories -- 2022.pptx. [PowerPoint slides]. Moodle. https://moodle.royalroads.ca/moodle/mod/folder/view.php?id=603664
Black, D. (2022). COMM365 -- week 9 -- Nietzsche and postmodern media theories [Podcast]. https://moodle.royalroads.ca/moodle/mod/folder/view.php? id=598963