Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the postmodernism as a political theory and practice by surveying political thoughts of three postmodernists--Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard--as well as the critique of postmodernism by Jurgen Habermas. In general, the postmodernists intend to displace politics to other spheres by deconstructing conventionally established political discourses and practices. ;According to Derrida, a political practice is always to be deferred to 'writings'; but, as only traces of meanings, the deference to writing is to be arbitrary and artificial. Appropriating the characteristics of Derrida's writing to the sphere of the "body," Foucault more explicitly examined the networks of power by which the body is normalized and disciplined. For Foucault, the body is a realm; not only that the disciplinary power flows, but also that a possibility of resistance. Baudrillard, displacing Derrida's writing to socio-political theory, argued that the political reality is only simulated based on hyperreality in postmodern society. ;Against the claims made by the postmodernists, Jurgen Habermas criticizes that postmodernism shall be regarded as degeneration of the Enlightenment tradition, rather than exhaustion of Western modernity. Thus, for Habermas, post modernism is serious threat to the contemporary society and politically dangerous. Through the critique of Habermas the politics of postmodernism is revealed, whereas the postmodernists do not explicitly claim their political implications by themselves. I submit that while both postmodernists and Habermas have valid points in the theoretical problems of subject-object duality, however, they differ in political implications of such duality in contemporary Western societies. Whereas postmodernists opt for open-ended social evolution Habermas wants to keep the Enlightenment tradition going. ;Furthermore, using Richard Rorty's critique on both postmodernists and Habermas, I argue that both postmodernists and Habermas' construction of political theories eventually has to return to the dimension of Derridean writing and textual politics. Furthermore, these complicated theoretical maze of postmodernity suggests the exhaustion of metalanguage in Western rationality, and submit that the example of Buddhism would show the possibility of achieving the claims of postmodernists. In other words, I highly regard the argument of postmodernists that the Western rationality is exhausted, but at the same time they fail to provide a base for such a claim and example