The 14th century Chinese fiction 三國演義 Romance of the Three Kingdoms begins with an ominous warning of historical truism: "話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分" It is said that the great tendency under heaven is that the long split must unite, and the long united must split.

As my own tendency recently has been to accept, and understand, how the larger patterns of historical change play out against individual will and social action, I have not been able to let go of more specific considerations of the BuffPo list's now ended debates about postmodernism. While my economic understanding is too shallow to follow what Frederic Jameson means by referring to "late capitalism," I have been considering the "cultural logic" that is postmodernism. I've also come across a blog about the particular Frenchness of postmodernism. The idea is that most great thinkers of postmodernism are French simply because postmodernism is a particularly French phenomenon: who better to discuss the new tensions of decentralization against the impulses of centralization than the intellectuals in a country that has lost its central position?

Though I'm hesitant to throw in my support on an argument that has that ominous tone of xeno- (and especially franco-) phobia, something in there compels me. If history does determine much of what we as individuals do and believe, then the postmodern views of French intellectuals exists in relation to their experiences within a decentered--and decentering--Europe since World War II. What was long united had to split, and that split caused a new ethic. That ethic, that cultural logic, is postmodernism.

Two questions follow, one more obvious than the other: if postmodernism is a particularly European phenomenon, then why do so many Americans--whose centrality has only risen since WW2--also follow this postmodernist ethic? And if decenteredness is our historical dominant, then how do we explain the fact that some people--in America and, presumably, other countries--do not adhere to this postmodernist ethic?

Inasmuch as the two questions are related, I guess I'll start with the second. If what The Romance of the Three Kingdoms says is true, and contries with a long history of unification are bound to break into contending regions and vice-versa, then I suppose that creates for individuals an opportunity to perceive the new era and tweak their beliefs accordingly, or else to long for the past era and maintain faith in its cultural logics. The former is progressive, and the latter is conservative (although that said, I don't think one is inherently more appropriate than the other; that would have to depend on the necessities of the moment). In very broad strokes, I could say that during the Warring States, after the unity of the Zhou dynasty, Confucius proposed holding on to a non-existent morality; the Daoists opted to embrace the uncertainty of a less controlled or centralized political realm. I don't know much about European history, but I'm sure that after the fall of Rome, some welcomed the opportunity to toss off the old notions of Roman superiority, while others longed for the old days of a stable empire.

Today, I think we're in a similar situation, made somewhat more complex because, in many ways, our global cultural logic is one where modernism and postmodernism are fighting each other in a thousand different local arenas. To take the United States as one example, our centrality is something the conservatives have succeeded in maintaining, but our participation in a decentered, multipolar world is something the progressives insist on as necessary. Though they scare me, I want to aknowledge the American conservatives' success. Then again, the fact that they are part of a fight against the postmodern in a multitude of local arenas also means that the decentered, always already local postmodernism is already upon us.

And you'd better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone.