10 Conclusion: Chaos and Culture: Postmodernism(s) and the Denaturing of Experience

Abstract

Wh a t in the present cultural moment has energized chaos as an important concept? Why does it appear as a pivotal concept for us here and now? I conjecture that disorder has become a focal point for contemporary theories because it offers the possibility of escaping from what are increasingly perceived as coercive structures of order. But in privileging disorder, theorists cannot extract themselves from the weight of their disciplinary traditions, even if they want to (and scientists, for the most part, do not want to). Thus there arise complex layerings in which traces of old paradigms are embedded within new, resistances to mastery are enfolded with impulses toward mastery, totalizing moves are made in the service of local knowledge. The convoluted ambiquity that arises from these layerings is the leitmotif of this chapter; it is deeply characteristic of what I shall call cultural postmodernism. For it to come into being, earlier paradigms first had to be understood as constructions rather than statements of fact. I define cultural postmodernism as the realization that what has always been thought of as the essential, unvarying components of human experience are not natural facts of life but social constructions.1 We can think of this as a denaturing process. To denature