Postmodernism the Movie

Postmodern cinema, in its various expressions over the past three decades, represents a form of popular culture characteristic of the post-Fordist, globalized phase of capitalist development most visible in the United States. As a crucial dimension of media culture with its strong emphasis on new modes of technology, commodification, consumerism, and the society of the spectacle, filmmaking today celebrates increasingly diverse, experimental, and in some cases subversive types of aesthetic representation. It often questions established social hierarchies and discourses while at the same time depicting a society in the midst of turmoil, chaos, fragmentation, and violence - a social order that gives rise to and sustains a popular mood of anxiety, cynicism, and powerlessness. Postmodern cinema reflects and helps reproduce this milieu through its embrace of disjointed narratives, dystopic images, technological wizardry, and motifs dwelling upon mayhem, ambiguity, death of the classical hero, and breakdown of dominant values or social relations. While such film culture calls into question certain dimensions of the class and power structures, it simultaneously negates prospects for collective identity and subjectivity required for effective social change; its cultural radicalism is never translated into anything resembling political radicalism. On the contrary, postmodern cinema more than anything encourages a flight from politics - a cynical, detached, disempowering attitude toward the entire public sphere - typical of an increasingly depoliticized society.     

Social crisis and political decay: The contemporary American malaise

Abstract

By the 1990s American society had become more depoliticized than at any time in recent history, with the vast majority of the population increasingly alienated from the political system. This has occurred, ironically, at a time when deepening social problems—environmental degradation, homelessness, eroding public services, civic violence, threats to privacy—require extensive and creative political intervention. Further, it has taken place during a period of accelerated growth of higher education, informational resources, and communications. Most people seem to have lost hope for remedies to social problems within the existing public sphere. The political system has atrophied, with differences between the two major parties narrower than ever; citizenship is in drastic decline, as reflected in lower voter turnout, collapsing sense of political efficacy among ordinary citizens, and declining knowledge about the social and political world. This triumph of anti‐politics is not a matter of failed leaders, parties, or movements, nor of flawed structural arrangements, but mirrors a deeper historical process—one tied to increased corporate colonization and economic globalization—that shapes every facet of daily life and political culture. Depoliticization is the predictable mass response to a system that is designed to marginalize dissent, privatize social relations, and reduce the scope of democratic participation.     

Corporations and the law: Historical lessons for contemporary practice

Abstract

This article examines the role of the courts, especially the Supreme Court, in facilitating the development of a capitalist economy and enhancing corporate power. Theoretically, I employ an approach which treats the law as a constitutive process. I first survey key legal developments in the nineteenth century through which the courts fostered and nurtured the development of a capitalist economy. Then I analyze the post‐New Deal era, examining the transformation of economic doctrines by the Supreme Court to legitimate a newly emergent corporate‐administrative state. In the last part of the article I use this historical analysis to address contemporary issues for the Left of how to bring about fundamental change in the United States. I discuss the degree to which the law can be used as a means of progressive reform and how strategic legal choices are related to the debate about social movement, discourse, class‐based, and political strategies for change.     

Seeds of hope,seeds of despair: Towards a political economy of the seed industry in southern Africa

The seed industry in Southern Africa has been radically transformed by a policy of liberalisation and privatisation started under structural adjustment. Traditionally under the domain of parastatals, seed research, production and distribution has been criticised for failing to provide modern variety seed to smallholder farmers. However, the private companies which have stepped in to replace seed parastatals in southern Africa have proven no more effective in meeting the demands of smallholders. The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement, concluded in 1994 as part of the Uruguay Rounds of GATT negotiations, as well as certain biotechnological innovations such as Terminator or Traitor technologies, threaten to further undermine local seed production and consumption by destroying the informal seed sector so central to agricultural production in the region. What alternatives exist? The success of Zimbabwe's maize seed network offers some insight. Resting on a unique relationship between government and nationally based producer co-operatives, Zimbabwe's maize programme was able to provide nearly every farmer in the country with hybrid maize suited for local growing conditions.     

Book reviews

Lena Jonson, The Tajik War: A Challenge to Russian Policy (Discussion Paper No. 74) London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1998. Pp.54, no index. NP. ISBN 1‐ 86203–061–8.

Charles‐Philippe David and Jacques Lévesque (eds.), The Future of NATO: Enlargement, Russia and European Security. Montreal: McGill‐Queen ‘s University Press, 1999. Pp.xii + 261, incl. notes, no index. Cdn $65 (cloth); Cdn $22.95 (paper). ISBN 0–7735–1850–9 and 1872‐X (paper).

Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (eds.), Security Communities. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp.xiii + 462, index. $69.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). ISBN 0–521–63953–0 and ‐63051–7.

A.S. Panarin, Global'noe politicheskoe prognozirovanie v usloviyakh strategicheskoy nestabil'nosti [A Global Political Forecast under Conditions of Strategic Instability]. Moscow: Editorial URSS, 1999, Pp.277. NP. ISBN 5–8360–0027–1.

Nikolai Bindyukov and Petr Lopata, Osobaya tret'ya sila: Novyy politicheskiy fenomen [The Special Third Force: A New Political Phenomenon]. Moscow: ITRK, 1999. Pp.321. NP. ISBN 5–88010–066–9.

A. Podberezkin and V. Makarov, Stategiya dlya budushchego prezidenta Rossii: Russkiy put’ [A Strategy for the Future President of Russia: The Russian Path]. Moscow: Dukhovnoe Nasledie, 2000. Pp.168. 21 Rubles. ISBN 5–86014–106–8.

Nash put’: Strategicheskie perspektivy razvitiya Rossii v XXI veke: Tezisy kontspetual'nogo proekta [Our Path: Strategic Perspectives on the Development of Russia in the 21st Century: The Theses of a Conceptual Project], Moscow: ZAO ‘Russkoe Zoloto (A. P. Tarantsev), 1999. Pp.143. 49 Rubles. ISBN 5–8186–0002–5.     

Democracy promotion: the relationship of political parties and civil society

Organizations involved in the growing field of democracy promotion need to find effective ways to aid both political parties and civil organizations and, where necessary, to foster close collaboration between them. But they also must respect their autonomy and help them realize their own democratic objectives. It is important to recognize the differences between the two sectors: civil society should not be subordinate to parties, and it would be a mistake to wrap the party sector into an undifferentiated concept of civil society. Strategies to assist democracy should, then, distinguish between four main political contexts: authoritarian; emerging democracy; post-dictatorial situations where government is not committed to democracy; and war-torn or post-conflict countries.