Postmodern Policies? the Erratic Interventions of Constitutive Criminology

The constitutive criminology of Henry and Milovanovic and associated writers is the most positive and systematic attempt to develop a postmodern criminology. One way in which to judge a new departure of the sort is in terms of its results: what interventions, what ideas about policy or politics, does it offer in contrast to its antecedents? This article starts by very briefly outlining the theoretical foundations of constitutive criminology, which it identifies as a particular interpretation of Lacan, matched with chaos theory. It then reviews some of the main interventions proposed by constitutive criminologists. It argues that these add little to existing radical ideas, except for a potentially disastrous fascination with far-from-equilibrium conditions. 1 Mark Cowling is a Reader in Criminology, School of Social Sciences and Law, University of Teesside, UK Internet Journal of Criminology © 2006 www.internetjournalofcriminology.com 2 Introduction Many criminologists use aspects of postmodernism as a critique or as a source of inspiration (for example, Smart, 1989, 1990; Sumner, 1994; Carrington, 1998, 2002, Presdee, 2000, Ferrell and Saunders, 1995, Ferrell et al., 2004) but the only well-developed attempt to rethink the central issues and themes of criminology in terms of postmodern theories is the constitutive criminology of Henry and Milovanovic and others. This article starts by briefly reviewing their underlying theorising, arguing that it is open to a variety of powerful objections. The bulk of the article assesses their ideas about policy and about specific issues which follow from their postmodern approach arguing that they are either already part of the general cultural repertoire of western liberal societies, or are liable to produce unjust and oppressive consequences not intended by those who advocate them. As Stuart Henry and Dragan Milovanovic explain (Henry and Milovanovic, 2000), constitutive criminology originated in a series of conversations between themselves. They had been working independently on various ideas which have subsequently been presented as part of constitutive criminology during the 1980s, which they got together to develop more fully in the early 1990s. They have subsequently been joined by a small group of associates (see below). Thus in one sense constitutive criminology is the work of a small group of academics not affiliated to any major party or movement. On the other hand postmodern ideas are, of course, a substantial and possibly even a dominant intellectual trend of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The two books which are the starting point of this critique are Stuart Henry and Dragan Milovanovic’s Constitutive Criminology: Beyond Postmodernism (1996) and their edited collection Constitutive Criminology at Work: Applications to Crime and Justice, (1999). These are backed up and further explicated by extensive writings, notably Milovanovic (1997, 1997a, 2002), Arrigo, Milovanovic and Schehr (2005), Williams and Arrigo (2004). My criticisms are restricted to the more substantial direct collaborators of Henry and Milovanovic. I have charitably assumed that some of the more exotic discussions of monsters (Dion, 1999) or of the bodily degradation of the members of the US Supreme Court (Brigham, 1999) are included in the Applications collection without detailed analysis of their relation to the main constitutive criminology theories. Most postmodernism engages in the deconstruction of existing discourses. Postmodernists find it harder to construct positive theoretical frameworks. Henry and Milovanovic attempt just that. Henry and Milovanovic’s account of post-modernism is fairly standard. There are no privileged knowledges: everyone or anyone is an expert. Post-modernism celebrates diversity, plurality and the subjugated. It does this so much that it includes authors who deny that they are postmodernists. Post-modernism had its roots in poststructuralist French thought in the late 1960s and 1970s. Its starting point is a disillusion with the modernist thought, notably Marxism, but also with liberal theories of progress. Post-modernism links to a shift from manufacturing of goods and services for their usefulness to the manufacturing of goods and services valuable only for their image. This could be described as a shift to a ‘consumer society’, an ‘informational society’, or a ‘risk society’. The chief way in which modernism is attacked is through ‘deconstruction’ of ‘texts’. All discourse of any kind is a text, as are all phenomena and events. Thus discourse can be written, spoken, or can be a film or television image, or indeed, a dream. Deconstruction tears a text apart and reveals its contradictions and assumptions. Various earlier ideas anticipated some Internet Journal of Criminology © 2006 www.internetjournalofcriminology.com 3 of postmodernism, notably Freud’s ideas as interpreted by Lacan, symbolic interactionism and Matza’s theory of neutralisation and drift. As we have seen, post-modernism involves discourse analysis. Discourse analysis sees people as formed by and through their use of language. People do not occupy ‘roles’, they occupy ‘discursive subject positions’. Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle is important because it stipulates the impossibility of simultaneously specifying the precise location and velocity of social phenomena (Henry and Milovanovic, 1996: 4-11). There is a fairly standard and widespread riposte to postmodernism, some main features of which are as follows. There are arguably some quite widespread patterns of oppression, e.g. capitalism, patriarchy, which have quite well established explanations, even if there are problems and anomalies. It denies grand theory except for its own grand theories. Given the overwhelming number of dubious theories employed it is a bit hard to know where to start in producing a critique. Postmodernists play fast and loose with scientific theory. Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle properly applies to subatomic phenomena, and society is not subatomic. Postmodernism is a reaction to the failure of the left in France in 1968 and in Britain from 1979. A very lengthy book would be needed to give a thorough account of these criticisms, which are in any case available elsewhere (e. g. Callinicos, 1989; Geras, 1990; Norris, 1990; Gross and Levitt, 1994; Sokal and Bricmont, 1999). For the purposes of the present article it is worth expanding a little on one issue which separates postmodernism and its critics. Postmodernists emphasise some features of the modern world which lead to claims that we are now living in 'postmodernity'. This is one major reason for their advocacy of what might be called the postmodernist theory of knowledge involving the death of grand theory and the equal status of a multiplicity of approaches to truth. There is a twofold critical riposte to these claims. The first line of argument is that the division between postmodernity and modernity is not at all sharp. There may, for example, be more emphasis today on the consumption of images than in past. However, 'postmodern' societies still manufacture steel, aluminium etc using large quantities of gas, electricity and coal. Looking back to 'modern' societies, they were not exclusively concerned with usefulness. The consumption of products linked to image was discussed at least as far back as Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) and noted in the pop sociology of Vance Packard (1959). Recognising a greater shift to the consumption of images does not in itself require a new theory of knowledge. The same comment is made in the context of criminal justice by Penna and Yar (2003). They point out that Hallsworth's identification of a 'postmodern penality' involves the conflation of statements from politicians and selected aspects of the criminal justice system of some countries mixed with a new epistemology to produce an entity which has very limited and dubious claims to reality. The unthinking conflation of modernist and postmodernist elements is also found in the work of the constitutive criminologists. Having set out their postmodernist credentials and criticised the foundations of modernism, one would expect the central concepts used by the constitutive criminologists to be found within a postmodern analysis. However, the constitutive criminologists depend on aspects of modernism in order to identify variables to put in their equations and to identify the marginalised, oppressed etc. For example, at the beginning of an analysis of power, crime, and chaos we find Young (1997a: 88) stating: ‘There are several forms of power available with which one can manage uncertainties. I want to focus on four: physical power, economic power, social power, and moral power’. What makes him start with these Internet Journal of Criminology © 2006 www.internetjournalofcriminology.com 4 (sensible) forms of power, rather than, for example, astral power, magical power and spiritual power? Surely he is implicitly accepting the fundamentals of modernist social science, but without explaining why he is doing so? Milovanovic states that the ‘control parameter’ in the bifurcation diagram that chaos theory offers us to understand ‘the dynamic movement toward the creation of new master signifiers and replacement discourses’ is: ‘the emerging postmodern society characterised by alienation, the intrusion of the hyperreal, and capital logic (the commodification process and the law of equivalence)’ (1997a: 207). ‘Alienation’ and ‘capital logic’ are both concepts derived from Marxism, part of the modernist social science that the new paradigm overthrows; and the three concepts listed would require considerable work before they could appear in any sensible way on a diagram with a numerical basis (cf. Milovanovic, 2002: 125). Henry and Milovanovic claim to derive their theories from numerous sources: ...the strengths and limitations inherent in: the insights of Laclau and Mouffe; the notion of hyperreality developed by Baudrillard; the semiotics of Saussure and Lacan; the autopoiesis/dissipative structure theses; the paralogism of Leotard; the structuration theory of Giddens; the dialogical pedagogy of Freire; the summary representation hypothesis of Knorr-Cetina; the calls for deconstruction or ‘reversal of hierarchies’ of Derrida (Henry and Milovanovic, 1996: 69). Alternatively, and with some variation: .. it draws on complexity theory (Mandelbrot, 1983; Gregerson and Sailer, 1993; Pickover, 1988), structural coupling (Luhmann, 1992; Teubner, 1993), strategic essentialism (Spivak, 1988; Jessop, 1990), relational sets (Hunt, 1993), critical race theory and intersections (Matsuda et al., 1993), autopoietic systems (Teubner, 1988, 1993; Cornell, 1991), dialectical materialism (Marx, 1975; Sayer, 1979), and topology theory (Lacan, 1961; Milovanovic and Ragland, 2001; Milovanovic, 1996) (Henry and Milovanovic, 2000). In practice, however, the two main theoretical foundations of constitutive criminology are a particular interpretation of Lacan, and chaos theory, which will now be briefly examined in turn.