Duane Rousselle

Duane Rousselle is a Canadian professor of sociological theory, author, and a practicing psychoanalyst. He reports to Julie Reshe on recent mutations in postmodern ideology.

- Julie Reshe

Why don’t you like the TV hospital drama Grey’s Anatomy?

Something strange is happening in Western culture. For a few decades we’ve talked a lot about postmodernism. Jean-François Lyotard first developed his theory of postmodernism in 1979 in his book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on the Status of Knowledge. At precisely the same time a profound change was happening in political economics, namely the onset of neoliberalism. In noting this, Fredric Jameson made an interesting claim: that postmodernism is the ideological doctrine of neoliberalism. Well, it seems to me that Grey’s Anatomy exemplifies the most recent developments of postmodern ideology, concerning such things as identity politics.

In that light, the first thing we should ask ourselves is: what is Grey’s anatomy? I emphasise the noun to highlight that it is something the show’s central character Dr Meredith Grey believes she possesses. In other words, the show deals with enigmatic questions about the body, gender, and sexuality. Every week the show stages a confrontation with the fundamental questions facing humanity. To answer these questions, the protagonist develops a technique of repetition, which occurs in two registers simultaneously: first, through the practice of medicine; second, through particular self-affirmations or ‘life lessons’. These lessons retroactively provide a justification for the traumatic mystery that compels the original questions of gender, sexuality, even death.