HEATHER MacDONALD
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descended to explain why these questions were so preposterous. If he told
someone seeking examples of postmodernism to study the work of, for in–
stance, Julian Schnabel, he would risk canonizing Schnabel. But
postmodernism is precisely about the rejection of a canon. Likewise, to ask
for a definition of postmodernism presupposes that language can objectively
describe or define things. But, he added, postmodernism views language as
an unstable and self-referential medium, incapable of capturing the essences
of things. Moreover, postmodernism is a "practice," not a theory (hence, by
implication, too varied to be defined).
The other people in the audience who had applauded the first two
questioners may not have been informed, but they were not dumb. After the
naivete underlying any request for information had been so mercilessly ex–
posed, they faded into the woodwork and were heard from no more.
The remaining questions fell comfortably within the boundaries of
postmodernist discourse. The rhetorical query, inevitable in any gathering of
postmodernists - "Who is speaking and who is being silenced in contempo–
rary discourse?" - gained a certain irony from the earlier exchange, which
the panelists appeared not to notice. The final comment was gratefully
adopted by the panelists as the official gloss of the earlier difficulties: some
members of the audience apparently wanted "documentation" of postmod–
ernism, but postmodernism exposes the impossibility ofdocumentation.
Now perhaps when the topic of a public symposium deals with matters
of common knowledge, or is clearly meant for a specialized audience, the
panelists may justifiably be impatient when a questioner professes complete
ignorance of the subject. Postmodernism, however, is not yet a component of
basic cultural literacy (at least outside of the academy or SoHo), nor does it
flash a warning sign, "For Ph.D.s Only." The panelists at the Whitney should
have steeled themselves in advance to the deplorable fact that there are
members of the educated public who either missed the latest shows of Sher–
rie Levine and Jeff Koons, or saw them without a clue as to what they were
seeing, and that these people might attend the panel to find out what post–
modernism
is.
The refusal of the panelists to explain postmodernism, however,
represents more than just a protest against audience manners. Poststruc–
turalists and postmodernists unfailingly respond with either disdainful reti–
cence or labyrinthine evasion to requests for explanation, no matter what the
forum. The lack of an official explanation of poststructuralism and postmod–
ernism (which might be referred to together as "post-ism") constantly tempts
outsiders to offer their own versions of the theories. But any attempt by
someone not of the post-ist camp to define its basic premises sets off howls of
protest. The outsider will be angrily accused of having either misunderstood
or misrepresented the theory, and may even be castigated for using the term
"deconstruction," though no such ban exists for its practitioners. Sometimes
