Insomnia and the (t)error of lost foundation in postmodernism

Certain familiar theoretic claims of both popular and academic postmodernism are examined for their implications as to the necessary and desirable limits of social life. Taken to the end, these claims promote errancy as a means of freeing conduct from the constraints of foundation. But this kind of freedom, one which treats all limitation as pernicious, generates social action that is mechanical, scattered, and without substance—it is a pyrrhic emancipation which trades content for self-sufficiency and thus constitutes an empty life of unhappy social dispersion. And yet an opportunity does remain to address the way a limit can also be inspiring if we think through how interpretation, a limit which is itself limited, invites nevertheless what Derrida glossed as joyous affirmation. Interpretation, though imperfect, offers powers that are genuine and enjoyable because these powers supply life with content and thus with the vitalizing collective and individual possibility of conduct which is affirmative (and disaffirmative). Perhaps it could even be said that interpretation emancipates us from the emptiness of pure freedom.Revision of paper delivered to Society for Phenomenology and Human Science, Seattle, WA, 31 September 1994. My thanks to those discussing the paper following its presentation, and to Alan Blum, for helping me to realize it would be better understood with the addition of what is now Section 5. That part also draws on conversations with Blum over the years.