Living on Border Lines: Man, Poststructuralism, and War

Richard K. Ashley

Aim of the essay is to make clear the argumentation of postmodernism and to define its position within world politics.
The analytic problem that postmodernism wants to take up is the boundary between domestic and international politics.
Postructuralism understands modernity not as a coherent time unit, it understands it rather in sense of historicity. Modernity is an attitude that goes against the attitude of countermodernity. Regime of modernity is „economy of power“.

Logocentrism: practical orientation and a procedure that invokes and effects normalizing practical expectation. Logocentrism can be seen in opposites (male/female, domestic/international…) It inclines the participant in the regime of modernity to impose the hierarchy. It looks for simple, pure priority.

Historicity - effect of presence which allows us to speak about phenomenon as a referent object independent of our interpretation is never attributable to essential qualities of the phenomenon as an ideal. No phenomenon (i.e. social system,…) exist independently of our practice and interpretation. The present community defines the phenomenon.

» logocentrism is looking for pure definition independent of time, place,… X historicity says that it is not possible, it asks: What is the place for differences?
Modern discourse wants to comprehend history according to the interpretive model (i.e. not interpret the text as such, but according to the time, place…) and modern discourse imposes upon history a narrative structure. Narrative regards textual elements not in historicity, but as fixed and self-sufficient origins of meaning, as basic truths.
» modern discourse supposes unexamined metaphysical faith in its capacity to speak a sovereign voice of suprahistorical truth.