Neil Postman, the subject of the following paper, has achieved international

recognition as a major analyst and critic of contemporary

education, politics, and culture . Postman has authored several

provocative books, including Crazy Talk/Stupid Talk, Amusing

Ourselves to Death, Conscientious Objections, and Technopoly.

He edited ETC. from 1977 through 1986.

POST(MODERMMAN,

OR NEIL POSTMAN

 AS A POSTMODERNIST

LANcsSTRATE*

As A FORMER student of Neil Postman's, I want to acknowledge

the debt that I and many others owe to him as an

educator. I would add that in the fourteen years that I have

known him, very little of what I have heard him say might be

categorized as crazy talk or stupid talk. A good portion of it,

however, has been amusing. For even in the midst of the

most conscientious of objections, Neil Postman never loses

his sense of playfulness . I am not sure why this is so . Perhaps

it is because he is the youngest of four children . Perhaps

it is because he is from Brooklyn. Or maybe it has

something to do with his name . After all, how many people

do you know whose first and last name constitute a complete

grammatical sentence (Kneel, postman!) . If "naming is destiny,"

then his surname also may account for his interest in

communication, as "Postman" summons images of messen-

* Lance Strate is an Assistant Professor in Fordham University's Department of

Communications, Bronx, NY .

This paper was originally presented at the 79th Annual Meeting of the Speech

Communication Association in Miami Beach, FL, Nov . 18-21, 1993, as part of a

program entitled "Communication, Education, and Culture : Perspectives on the

Scholarly Activity of Neil Postman ."

159-160 Et cetera • SUMMER 1994

gers, messages, and media, particularly of the pre-electronic

variety . Moreover, given our current era of epilogues, this

age of poststructuralism, postMarxism, postfeminism, and of

course, postmodernism, the name Postman seems especially

timely. But whatever the relationship between the word and

the thing it represents, this much is clear : His is a name that

is rich in meaning, a name that invites wordplay . And it is in

this spirit that I have taken his name and conflated it with

the term "postmodern" in order to arrive at the title of this

paper, "Post(modern)man ." In doing so, I wish to suggest

that we can gain some insight into Postman's perspective on

media and technology by framing it as a theory of the postmodern.

I also mean to imply that those who are interested

in the concept of postmodernism would benefit from a review

of Postman's scholarship.

I should make it clear at this point that Neil Postman has

never claimed to be a postmodernist . Rather, he has referred

to himself as an Educationist, his original area of expertise

(see Postman, 1961, 1979, 1988; Postman & Weingartner,

1966, 1969, 1971, 1973); as a general semanticist, having

served as the editor of ETC. for many years (also see Postman,

1976, 1988; Postman & Weingartner, 1966 ; Postman,

Weingartner, & Moran, 1969) ; and as a Media Ecologist (see

Postman, 1979, 1982, 1985, 1988, 1992; Postman, Nystrom,

Strate, & Weingartner, 1987; Postman & Powers, 1992, for his

scholarship on media and technology) . Media Ecology, a

phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan, is the name Postman

gave to the graduate program that he founded at New York

University, and the term that he has used to refer to the general

perspective of McLuhan (1962, 1964) and others such as

Harold Innis (1977), Eric Havelock (1963, 1976, 1978, 1982),

Walter Ong (1967, 1977, 1982), Lewis Mumford (1934), and

Jacques Ellul (1964, 1973, 1985) . I should also make it clear

that these scholars, in turn, have never claimed to be Media

Ecologists, the point being that self-identification is irrelevant.

Still, it should be duly noted that not only has Neil

Postman never referred to himself as a postmodernist, but he

never, to my knowledge, uses the term "postmodern ." Nor

does he use the jargon associated with postmodernism, including

such terms as "decentering," "hyperreality," or "pastiche."

In short, Postman does not speak postmodern. He

speaks English. I would argue, however, that it is not necessary

to speak postmodern in order to speak of the postmodern,

and Postman's clarity could serve as a welcome

corrective to the excessive use of jargon and notoriously esoteric

writing that is typical of postmodernists (see, for example,

Baudrillard, 1981, 1983, 1988 ; Jameson, 1991; Lyotard,

1984).

The difference in linguistic style is, at least in part, symptomatic

of differences in intellectual background . Postman is

very much a part of the Anglo-American tradition of empiricism,

utilitarianism, and especially, pragmatism, particularly

as manifested in the fields of education and communication ;

among his chief influences are John Dewey, Karl Popper,

George Herbert Mead, Alfred Korzybski, I.A. Richards, and,

of course, Marshall McLuhan . Postmodernism, on the other

hand, is firmly rooted in continental philosophy, in

Nietzsche, Marx, and Sassure, and is intimately intertwined

with the disciplines of art and literary criticism . There is

some common ground, however, as postmodernists such as

Jean Baudrillard (1981, 1983, 1988) and Frederic Jameson

(1991) also list McLuhan as a major influence ; their path to

McLuhan, however, was longer and more convoluted than

Postman's.

Having gone on at some length about postmodernism and

postmodernists, I realize that some discussion of the concept

of the postmodern is overdue . In its most basic sense, the

term "postmodern" implies that a period of time that has

been labeled "modern" has ended, and that we find ourselves

in new and uncharted territory . There is, of course, a certain

irony to the term "postmodern" if we interpret it as meaning

"post-contemporary" (a phrase actually used by Jameson,

1991), but this is ultimately a reification of the term "modern ."

For rather than referring to our present point in time, "modern"

here signifies an historical era that comes to a close some

time during the late 1940s and 1950s . Critics differ on when

this period begins, however. Critics who focus on the history

of the arts, and on the modern as an aesthetic style, place the

beginning of the modern period at the turn of the 20th century.

Clearly, this concept of the modern is relatively narrow

and specialized . Social theorists, on the other hand, trace the

origins of the modern back to the late 18th and early 19th

centuries, and to such factors as the rise of democracy, capitalism,

and urbanization, and the influence of the Enlightenment,

the industrial revolution, and mass culture (Lyotard,

1984; Jameson, 1991 ; see also Ewen, 1988 for a familiar but

comprehensive summary of these historical developments).

There is no doubt that these developments are of great importance,

but they are overshadowed by the periodization

used by Postman (1979, 1982, 1985), inspired by McLuhan

(1962, 1964), and perhaps expressed most clearly in the work

of Elizabeth Eisenstein (1980); according to their chronology,

the 18th century may have seen the beginnings of a late modernity,

but this follows an early modern period that begins

in the 15th century with the European printing revolution .

Postman, McLuhan, and Eisenstein argue that the changes

brought on by this revolution resulted in the termination of

the medieval period and set the stage for the further mutations

that occurred during the 18th century. In short, they

argue for the essential unity of this larger modern period, a

period also known as the "age of Gutenberg" (a phrase used

by Postman as early as 1961, one year prior to the publication

of McLuhan's Gutenberg Galaxy) . Thus, from Postman's perspective,

postmodernity represents the end of five hundred

years of print-dominated culture, a state of affairs that he laments.

In this context, I find it worthwhile to note that postmodernists

do not necessarily celebrate the postmodern ; many are

quite critical of it (e .g., Baudrillard, 1981, 1983, 1988; see also

the discussion in Jameson, 1991, chap . 2). And this brings me

back to the title of this paper, "Post(modern)man," and to a

second meaning that it holds for me : that Postman contains

the modern, that he acts as a champion of the modern in the

postmodern world. In making this assertion, I realize that I

am placing myself at odds with Joli Jensen who argues in Redeeming

Modernity (1990) that Postman is hostile to the modem;

her use of the term "modernity" however does not

clearly distinguish between the modern as an historical period

with distinct boundaries and the modern as simply the

contemporary. Instead, I would suggest that Postman is a

defender of modernity, and in particular of print culture as

the better part of modernity. He is at his best when he gives

voice to print culture, acts as an avatar of typographic discourse,

and plays the role of "Minerva's owl" in the "gathering

dusk" of postmodernity (see Innis, 1977, p .3, for a

discussion of this quotation from Hegel) .

In keeping with this role, Postman not only sounds the

alarm, but also identifies those forces responsible for the assault

on modernity. They include, of course, television . Like

McLuhan (1964), Postman links the adoption of television

technology to the demise of the modern . He differs from

McLuhan, however, in his explanation of this phenomenon.

McLuhan focuses on the relationship between technology

and the senses, arguing that after five hundred years of eye

dominance through typography, television has restored the

ear to its previously held position of superiority . Walter Ong

(1967, 1977, 1982) echoes McLuhan in referring to our age as

one characterized by "secondary orality ." Postman, on the

other hand, is concerned with the relationship between

technology and discourse . Consequently, while he acknowledges

the distinction between orality and literacy, he often

focuses on what is common to all forms of language ; he is a

defender of the word, not just the printed word, but also the

handwritten word and the spoken word . For him, the eloquence

of print culture is rooted in a balance between what is

read and what is said . This balance has now been upset by

televisual discourse, which shifts the emphasis from verbal to

visual forms of communication. In other words, Postman's

concept of postmodernity is that of a culture in which the

image has come to overshadow the word (in this respect he is

in perfect agreement with other postmodernists such as Baudrillard,

1981, 1983, 1988, and Jameson, 1991) . While other

postmodernists become preoccupied with hyperreality, simulation,

and the relationship between signifier and signified,

Postman focuses on the concreteness of the image in comparison

with the word's capacity for abstraction, on the inability

of pictures to represent propositional statements, on

the association between visual communication and pathos as

opposed to verbal communication and logos, on the relative

accessibility of iconic forms in contrast to the long process of

schooling associated with literacy, and, of course, on the

image's tendency to amuse, entertain, and ultimately, to

trivialize.

The shift from linguistic to image-based discourse is a key

element of Postman's perspective on postmodernity, but he

uncovers other aspects of televisual discourse that are hostile

to the modern . For example, the continuous, linear, and logical

arguments favored by the moderns are left behind in the

dust of instantaneous electronic communication's accelerated

discourse (for more on the relationship between speed and

postmodernity, see Virilio, 1986 ; Virilio & Lotringer, 1983);

ultimately, it is a form of discourse that is present-centered

and therefore ahistorical (see Jameson, 1991, for the connection

between postmodernism and the loss of a sense of history).

Also, telecommunications all but eliminates the concepts

of distance and location that the moderns went to such great

effort to map out, resulting in a discourse that is decontextualized

and often of little direct relevance to postmodern populations

(in this respect, McLuhan's, 1962, 1964, concept of

the global village is well known, but see also Jameson's, 1991,

emphasis on the connection between postmodernity and the

rise of the multinationals) . Moreover, our new communication

technologies have dramatically increased the volume of

information transmitted in our culture, crippling the notions

of secrecy and privacy that were constructed through typographic

discourse, resulting in information overload and the

inability to process and control information (also see Lyotard's,

1984, arguments concerning the relationship between

science, information technology, and the disappearance of

metanarratives) .

Postman's emphasis on television might seem to imply

that, like many other postmodernists, he views the end of

modernity as a sudden collapse and surrender . On the contrary,

he traces the attack on modernity back to the 19th century's

revolution in communication technologies, which

include photography and telegraphy . The evolution of audiovisual

media such as the motion picture and radio put

modernity on the retreat. The art world's discovery of the

modern and its transformation into an aesthetic style at the

turn of the 20th century was, as McLuhan would conclude, a

sign of modernity's obsolescence . Thus, the fall of modernity

associated with the widespread adoption of television during

the 1950s and 1960s was part of a longer process of decline .

This more gradual view of the advent of postmodernity is

consistent with Postman's use of the notion of the extended

modern period associated with the printing press ; modernity

itself develops gradually from the invention of typography

through the incunabula of the early modern era .

Postman's arguments about the triumph of the televisual

over typographic discourse are the best known elements of

his perspective on postmodernity, but they do not represent

that perspective in its entirety . Rather, he also points to the

triumph of the technological over the traditional (see Postman,

1992, and also 1976, pp . 178-185, and 1979, chap. 5) .

The modern period, he argues, gave rise to a technocratic

culture in which traditional values and customs coexist with

an emerging scientific and technological worldview . In this

case, the assault on modernity occurs when this balance becomes

upset, and the technological, with its emphasis on efficiency,

takes command . (This coincides with Jameson's,1991,

description of the modern era as a period marked by the process

of modernizing, whereas postmodernity is a sign of a

state of full modernization) . Postman refers to this aspect of

postmodernity as "technopoly," a culture monopolized by the

technological . Here again, the shift is not a sudden one, as

Postman traces the roots of technopoly to the early twentieth

century, and the development of scientific management .

Full blown technopoly seems to be associated with the post-

war development of computing technology and the creation

of what is sometimes known as the information society . He

argues that it is a society characterized by information overload

and an inability to screen out or evaluate information,

except by technology's own criteria of progress and efficiency.

(This corresponds to Lyotard's, 1984, description of postmodernity

as characterized by the absence of any ruling

ideas, narratives, and myths, and to Jameson's, 1991, explanation

of postmodernism as the cultural logic of late capitalism,

of a culture in which capitalism has penetrated to all sectors

of life; technopoly and late capitalism may be viewed as competing

explanations of the same phenomenon, and/or two

sides of the same coin .)

Thus, Postman presents us with two paths to postmodernity:

from print media to electronic media, and from technocracy

to technopoly. What he has yet to do is to explain in its

entirety the relationship between these two paths . There is

no doubt that a connection exists between typographic discourse

and technocracy; Eisenstein (1980) has amply documented

that printing technology was a necessary precondition

for the development of modern science and technology.

The association between the computer and technopoly is

also quite clear. What is something of a puzzle is the relationship

between technopoly and television. Of course, technopoly's

preeminence insures that television technologies

will be accepted and adopted without doubt or question .

Television in turn serves as technopoly's user-friendly interface;

in its programming as well as its advertising, it functions

as the great communicator and promoter of the

technological . And yet, there is a fundamental contradiction

between televisual discourse and technopolistic discourse .

Whereas televisual discourse trivializes what is truly important,

technopolistic discourse gives the truly trivial the illusion

of importance. Whereas television amuses us to death,

technopoly's information glut gives us all anxiety attacks .

And whereas the discourse characteristic of television might

be characterized as irrational, that of technopoly may best be

described as hyperrational . The postmodern, therefore, is a

product of these two opposing forces; it is a culture pulled in

two directions at once, a culture that is, perhaps, strained to

its limits and in danger of being ripped apart . The question,

then, is: Can Postman's perspective account for the cultural

contradictions of postmodernity?

I believe the answer is yes, and I will extrapolate from Postman's

scholarship in order to provide an explanation. As I

have noted, Postman favors modernity for its high level of

verbal discourse, for its emphasis on the spoken, written, and

printed word. Televisual discourse, on the other hand, is

largely based on the image, and it is this iconic discourse that

is seen as responsible for "the humiliation of the word," as

Ellul (1985) puts it . But I believe it fair to say that the word

would never have lost to the image had the fight been a fair

one, that, in fact, the word was outnumbered, and forced to

do battle on two fronts . The other enemy of the word, the

image's ally in its victory of the postmodern, is none other

than the number. In other words, technopolistic discourse is

quantitative discourse, so that it is not so much any particular

type or class of technology that is at the core of technopoly,

but rather it is the woridview which not only believes but

demands that all reality be reduced to numeric form, measured

and statistically manipulated in order to maximize efficiency.

In sum, the postmodern world is one in which the

image and number have outflanked verbal communication

and have emerged victorious in the battle for control of our

culture and our collective consciousness .

While the biases of the visual and the numeric contradict

each other, it should be noted that the two codes have had a

long and distinguished relationship, a relationship based on

developments such as Euclidean geometry and Cartesian

coordinate graphing . In many ways, television reflects the

uneasy tension between these two forces, for while its content

is dominated by the image, the television industry is run

almost entirely by the numbers, by audience ratings, shares,

and demographics, and by profits (Postman, 1988 ; Postman

et a!,1987; Postman & Powers, 1992) . And while the computer

has long been viewed as a number-cruncher, widespread

adoption of computer technology has been dependent on the

development of an iconic interface (e .g., that of Macintosh or

Windows) . Moreover, the visual and the numeric have come

together in the form of the digitized image, which represents

digital technology in the service of analogic communication .

I would suggest to you that the digitized image, free of any

necessary relationship with reality, but rather in the realm of

pure simulation, represents the ultimate expression of postmodernity's

triumph over typographic discourse and the

epistemology of the printed word.

This brings me to a third meaning for my title, "Post-

(modern)man" : that it refers to the type of "man" or rather the

type of person characteristic of postmodern culture . In his

book The Disappearance of Childhood, Postman (1982) explores

one aspect of the postmodern population --- that it is one in

which the distinction between childhood and adulthood has

all but disappeared (this is an example of what postmodernists

call the decentering of the subject) . Postman is not content

simply to describe the postmodern sense of self,

however. Instead, he has an idea of how postmoderns might

be shaped, of how the negative effects of postmodernity

might be mitigated. His answer, the answer that runs

through just about every one of his books, is education . In

his role as Minerva's owl, it is the school, more than any other

of typographic culture's institutions, that Postman seeks to

salvage. It is schooling, education in the book and by the

book, that he offers as a mediator between the binary oppositions

of image and number. Postman is a postmodernist because

he does not deny that modernity has passed . But he is

more than a postmodernist because he does not just accept

and describe postmodern culture, but rather seeks an alternative

in the form of education . In doing so, he reminds us that

teaching is, after all, an activity, not a form of passivity .

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