On Postmodernism, Pragmatism, and Plasterers: Some Interactionist Thoughts and Queries

Abstract

Postmodernism is assessed as inherently flawed and largely irrelevant to interactionist work. It is suggested that the stage approach used by postmodernists, in which they define themselves as representing the next, superior stage after modernism, be replaced with a lineage approach in order to assess the possible merits of postmodernism. It is argued that such an approach would reveal postmodernism as a weak approximation of interactionist and pragmatist thought. This is the first of two and perhaps three papers in which I address an array of issues concerning recent claims pertaining to the relation between postmodernism and interactionism.' The primary issue before us is the general proposition that interactionism and pragmatism represent tired and out-dated perspectives, and that while they can be reinvigorated by a healthy dose of poststructural and cultural studies sensibilities into a "postpragmatism," they certainly can no longer stand on their own. In addressing that issue, encased as it is under the rubric of the "postmodern turn," I orient my remarks to those interactionists who are tempted but not convinced by postmodernism and to those who say things like "there seems to be something there" but cannot quite articulate what that "something" is. Others, perhaps the passionate, the true believers, the agenda-setters, and the pied pipers, will no doubt dismiss me, which, of course, is one of the natural fates of authors and their texts (e.g., note the dismissal of Farberman 1991).There is a paradox that rests at the base of my argument. It is that symbolic interactionism, by virtue of its interpretive center, finds an easy affinity with much of postmodernism, but, because of that same center, has no need for it. Interactionists who have advocated the postmodernist perspective have focused on the first term of the paradox, and they have attempted to make the argument that some version of a postmodernist interactionism represents an advance over a nonpostmodernist interactionism. In contrast, I will focus on the

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