Postmodernism, irony and the ontology of violence

I seem to be engaging more and more with Sam Crane’s Useless Tree these days, in a fairly critical fashion; though it is absolutely a compliment to him and to his writing that it remains so thoroughly thought-provoking. Recently he addresses a comment from the (likewise thoughtful and thought-provoking) melektaus of Hidden Harmonies on this blog post, which goes thus:

All this talk of imposing or importing outside values on China but there is little talk I hear of importing Chinese values to the west. I believe that the west needs more of Chinese values, especially Confucian values, than China needs western values.

Which is perhaps true; I would prefer to say that I believe that the West more usefully could take reference from more of its own traditional values and virtues, particularly those values which overlap (more or less) with Confucianism, particularly those from the apostolic Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox traditions.  This is because I am in favour of a society which treats people more equally and with greater dignity (in all senses of the word, social, economic, cultural and political), and which treats opinions and values strictly and rigidly hierarchically.  But I digress somewhat.  Mr Crane has, in reply, a careful reply here (though one with which, naturally, I tend to disagree - as I am very unabashedly one of ‘those who want to hold on to a more traditional “Chinese” notion of Confucianism’), which makes reference to the backdrop of a post-modern world within which this debate over culture and ‘soft power’ is taking place.

Though there are absolutely minor points where I could nitpick Mr Crane’s lesser arguments, particularly about colonialism and imperialism (NATO and EU actions in the former Yugoslavia over the past three decades spring readily to mind, not to mention Iraq and Libya), Mr Crane’s broad argument, if I am parsing it correctly here, is that modernism:

1. has impacted what became the ‘West’ just as deeply as it impacted the ‘Rest’;
2. has inevitably progressed from the centralisation and bureaucratisation of power and the secularisation of mass culture into a phase of self-critical, difference-based post-modernity;
3. has allowed the West to be open to (fragmentary) cultural influence from the ‘Rest’ in ways it had not previously.

As a consequence:

1. attempts at unilateral transmission of uniquely Chinese forms of ‘soft power’ are somewhat misguided given the fragmentation of political / social / economic spheres and the celebration of difference which lies at the heart of post-modernity, which (along with the modernity with which it is in dialectic tension) is the dominant global paradigm; and
2. if Confucianism is to be adopted as a system of cultural thought, it must be freed from its particularistic Chinese moorings and adapt itself to Western-style individualism and liberalism.

I believe that Mr Crane’s conclusions rather reflect his own ideological orientation, and there appear to be several antinomies inherent to his argument which he doesn’t really address. One cannot discuss the fate of modernity and the current dominance of post-modernity without a sense of irony. For example, as Mr Crane puts it:

There will have to be a more democratic understanding of Confucianism, or else it will be seen simply as a crude apology for authoritarianism. There will have to be a more individualized Confucianism, or liberal societies will not embrace it (this is not to say it will have to jettison its familial and social ethics; rather, these will have to be re-imagined in the context of a stronger sense of individual self-possession). Instead of being associated with hierachies of power, it will have to adapt to horizontal network relationships.

Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether or not such an accommodation to democracy and individualism destroys what makes Confucianism actually tick as a value-system, there remains the subtle question at the back of every post-modernist mind. If, as Mr Crane says, ‘global cultural flows’ get to consistently redefine and reconstruct not only Chinese cultural categories but also ‘Western’ ones (as I believe he has demonstrated very well that they have), what is it that makes ‘democracy’, ‘individualism’ and ‘horizontal networks’ sacrosanct? If there are no firm, hierarchical structures of values upholding these particular cultural constructions, they are every bit as open to negotiation, redefinition and reconstruction as is Confucianism - in all its traditionalist, particularist and hierarchical glory.  To assume otherwise is to miss out on all of the ironies of which the forerunners of post-modern thinking were all too well-aware.  Democratic norms are very easily dismantled by ‘democratic’ processes; just as easily, in fact, as traditionalist norms are (one need not cite, one hopes, every example of a ‘democratically’ elected dictator in world history).  Post-modernism, indeed, further complicates matters by opening spaces for new and destructive forms of particularism:  fundamentalism, ultra-nationalism and fascism are all very much post-modern constructs, dependent upon a post-modern logic which is parasitical upon the epistemic categories of (not to mention the existential threat implied by) modern liberalism.

The demand that Confucianism adapt itself to this particular construction of the cultural ‘arena’, as it were, where ‘soft power’ is really only an extension of ‘hard power’ and values are only justified by success rather than by their intrinsic worth, leaves us in a very un-Confucian (and, for that matter, un-Christian) place; that is to say, a place which assumes (to use the terminology of radical-orthodox theologian John Milbank) an ontology of violence.  Values, and those holding to them, are thrust into an existential zero-sum game, (un-)regulated by the threat of state power should they fall out of line into real zero-sum games.  No preference is a priori given to values which reflect actual human interests over those which do not; the naked pursuits of power, of wealth and of social dominance are given equal standing, in a liberal framework, with the pursuit of justice and the pursuit of love.  Confucianism sits very ill-at-ease with such a framework; classical, apostolic Christianity rejects it outright.

So is it possible to reconcile Confucianism with Western liberalism?  Perhaps, but only at the expense of what makes Confucianism Confucian, just as modern Western liberalism (distinguished by its usury, its disregard for the poor and the abandoned, its contempt for the stability afforded by families and communities, its reliance on state violence as the preferred and often the first means of solving problems) has completely jettisoned what used to make the Christian order Christian.