SOURCE: "Tocqueville and the Postmodern Refusal of History," in Liberty, Equality, Democracy, edited by Eduardo Nolla, New York University Press, 1992, pp. 187-92.

In this essay, Gargan points out Tocqueville's continuing relevance for postmodernists such as Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard.

In March of 1839 Tocqueville was elected to the Chamber of Deputies from Valognes. It was possible for him to take this step because the final volume of his Democracy was at last finished and would be published in 1840. In 1990 the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Democracy invited and continues to encourage reflections on the significance of the Democracy's place in serious efforts to understand the transition of our time from that of modernity to that of the postmodern. Anniversaries are indeed times to honor, to acknowledge obligations. This is especially so when time has not diminished our debts, but indeed may have increased our obligations. In...