Postmodernism and poststructuralism challenge fundamental positions in social theory. This book sets out some of the components of a postmodern social theory of health and healing, deriving from theorists including Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault, Cixous and Kristeva. Nicholas J. Fox observes that the knowledge of the medical profession about the body, illness and health supplies the basis for medical dominance. The body of the patient is inscribed by discourses of professional `care,' an interaction which subjectifies the patient. Fox (...) explores the character of this power - and how it may be, and is, resisted. The book illustrates with detailed examples how the organization of health care and the caring relationship itself are sites for this contestation of power. Elements of feminist theory, and Derridean concepts of diffrance and intertextuality, supply the framework for the politics and ethics of the postmodern position on health. Deleuze and Guattari's radical challenge to psychoanalysis and familial repetitions within the healer/patient contact allows a re-reading of central ideas in medical sociology. While focusing upon the possibilities of postmodern social theory, the book demands a reappraisal of issues of structure, identity and knowledge in modernist medical sociology. Modernist sociology, Fox suggests, has been complicit in the creation of `the patient,' and of 'health' and 'illness.' Written with an emphasis on accessibility, this book explores the practical consequences of postmodern theory as well as familiarizing the reader with the concepts of postmodernism. (shrink)

This paper surveys three controversial new directions in research about the nature of science and briefly summarizes both the intellectual and sociological impact of this work. A bibliographic introduction to the major literature is provided and some fruitful directions for future research are proposed. Philosophers of science are also exhorted to perform 'community service' by correcting misunderstandings of the methods of science fostered by these new approaches.

"Ever since the explosion in relationships of power during the 1960s, the humanities have become a battlefield. What had previously been thought of as merely academic concerns have spilled over academic boundaries and attracted the attention of politicians, government officials, members of the media, and, ultimately, the general public. As a way of addressing this turmoil, Karlis Racevskis considers the legacy of the Enlightenment and revaluates modernity's claims for objective knowledge and the traditional model of reason. How relevant, he asks, (...) are the Enlightenment ideals of freedom, democracy, and equality in today's attempts to understand society and gauge the prospects for civilization? What responsibility can or should intellectuals assume in promoting Enlightenment values? What, in the end, constitutes a humanistic education?" "Drawing largely on the work of Foucault, Racevskis elucidates the philosophical and political problems at issue in the debate and the changes taking place in our ways of seeing ourselves and our relations with others. He shows how the theme of enlightenment has been a central component in the conflicts that pit modernists against postmodernists, Marxists against post-Marxists, and liberals against conservatives, and he juxtaposes the arguments in such a way as to place reason and enlightened action in a new perspective. One result of the upheaval, argues Racevskis, is a sense of renewed purpose and intensity in the study of the humanities that constitutes a fundamental reorientation in our ways of understanding society. Viewing the tension between the chaos of current theories and the comfort of traditional values, not with horror but with excitement, he suggests how postmodern criticism can be seen as a dynamic and promising development in the renewal and expansion of the liberal arts." "This wide-ranging book should have general appeal across a broad spectrum of disciplines-among them, literature and the arts, philosophy, social and political theory, and intellectual history."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Introduction 9 -- Postmodernism and the End of 'Humanism'? 19 -- Postmodern Ambiguities: -- Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire 34 -- In Postmodern Disorder: -- The Confused and Confusing World of The Hand that Signed the Paper 40 -- Ethics, the Literary Imagination, and the 'Other': The Hand that Ought, or was Imagined, to have Signed the Paper 47 -- Jew and Anti-Jew in Australian Fiction 58 -- Helen Garner's The First Stone: Ethical (...) Confusions and Contretemps 72 -- Antisemitism and Literature: Robert Manne's The Culture of Forgetting and Anthony Julius' T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form 83 -- Abraham Biderman, Daniel Goldhagen,and Telling It as It Was 96 -- Literary Studies as Ethics or Anarchy? 110 -- An Imbrication of Heteroglossic Discourses? Or Plain Speaking? 118 -- The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring, tra-la: Postcolonialism and Other Messiahs 127 -- Postcolonialism and the Exotic 135 -- Perpetually Moralists: Truth, Ethics and The Empire Writes Back 146 -- Towards a New Ethics 159 -- Conclusion 167 -- Index -- 176. (shrink)

Pragmatism, Postmodernism and the Future of Philosophy is a vigorous and dynamic confrontation with the task and temperament of philosophy today. In this energetic and far-reaching new book, Stuhr draws persuasively on the resources of the pragmatist tradition of James and Dewey, and critically engages the work of Continental philosophers like Adorno, Foucault, and Deleuze, to explore fundamental questions of how we might think and live differently in the future. Along the way, the book addresses important issues in public (...) policy, university administration, spirituality, and the notion of community and its meaning in a global world of difference. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of philosophy, and the ways in which philosophical thinking can help us live better, more fulfilling lives. (shrink)

Postmodernism -- Classical pragmatism : waiting at the end of the road -- Pragmatism, postmodernism, and global citizenship -- Classical pragmatism, postmodernism, and neopragmatism -- Technology -- Classical pragmatism and communicative action : Jürgen Habermas -- From critical theory to pragmatism : Andrew Feenberg -- A neo-Heideggerian critique of technology : Albert Borgmann -- Doing and making in a democracy : John Dewey -- The environment -- Nature as culture : John Dewey and Aldo Leopold -- Green (...) pragmatism : reals without realism, ideals without idealism -- Classical pragmatism -- What was Dewey's magic number? -- Cultivating a common faith : Dewey's religion -- Beyond the epistemology industry : Dewey's theory of inquiry -- The homo faber debate in Dewey and Max Scheler -- Productive pragmatism : habits as artifacts in Peirce and Dewey. (shrink)

Postmodernism too often seems to be an evasive body of ideas rather than a clear cut concept, mainly characterized by all-embracing assertions. Yet it can be referred to as an intellectual project with specific roots and a historical development. The Postmodernism Reader traces the origins, evolvement and the politics of postmodernism through the key writings of postmodernist thinkers. This collection of foundational essays restores the poignancy that has been lost - or even emphatically rejected - in the (...) debate about postmodernism by focussing on central formative texts and the predominant thinkers we have come to associate with postmodernist theory. Michael Drolet's authoritative introductory essay and his careful selection of texts provide a solid basis for the study of postmodernism by uncovering the philosophical origins of present theories and focussing on their major aspects, thus clearing a path through the maze of knowledge that we call postmodernism. Arranged in three parts, theessays cover the origins of the term postmodernism, its evolution and its political ramifications. Included are writings by Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Bauman, Jameson, Berman and Irigaray. (shrink)

_Requiem for the Ego_ recounts Freud's last great attempt to 'save' the autonomy of the ego, which drew philosophical criticism from the most prominent philosophers of the period—Adorno, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. Despite their divergent orientations, each contested the ego's capacity to represent mental states through word and symbol to an agent surveying its own cognizance. By discarding the subject-object divide as a model of the mind, they dethroned Freud's depiction of the ego as a conceit of a misleading self-consciousness and (...) a faulty metaphysics. Freud's inquisitors, while employing divergent arguments, found unacknowledged consensus in identifying the core philosophical challenges of defining agency and describing subjectivity. In _Requiem_, Tauber uniquely synthesizes these philosophical attacks against psychoanalysis and, more generally, provides a kaleidoscopic portrait of the major developments in mid-20th century philosophy that prepared the conceptual grounding for postmodernism. (shrink)

It has become an intellectual commonplace to claim that we have entered the era of 'postmodernity'. Three themes are embraced in this claim the poststructurist critique by Foucault, Derrida and others of the philosophical heritage of the Enlightenment the supposed impasse of High Modern art and its replacement by new artistic forms and the alleged emergence of 'post-industrial' societies whose structures are beyond the ken of Marx and other theorists of industrial capitalism. Against Postmodernism takes issue with all these (...) themes. It challenges the idealist irrationalism of post-structuralism. It questions the existence of any radical break separating allegedly Postmodern from Modern art. And it denies that recent socio-economic developments represent any fundamental shift from classical patterns of capital accumulation. Drawing on philosophy and history, Against Postmodernism takes issue also with some of the most forthright critics of postmodernism -- Jurgen Habermas and Fredric Jameson, for example. But it is most distinctive in that it offers a historical reading of the theories of such currently fashionable thinkers as Baudrillard and Lyotard. Postmodernism, Alex Callinios argues, reflects the disappointed revolutionary generation of '68, and the incorporation of many of its members into the porfessional and managerial 'new middle class'. It is best read as a symptom of political frustration and social mobility rather than as a significant intellectual or cultural phenomenon in its own right. (shrink)

Why is postmodernist discourse so biased against the Enlightenment? Indeed, postmodern theory challenges the validity of the rational basis of modern historical scholarship and the Enlightenment itself. Rather than avoiding this conflict, the contributors to this vibrant collection return to the philosophical roots of the Enlightenment, and do not hesitate to look at them through a postmodernist lens, engaging issues like anti-Semitism, Utopianism, colonial legal codes, and ideas of authorship. Dismissing the notion that the two camps are ideologically opposed and (...) thus incompatible, these essays demonstrate an exciting new scholarship that confidently mixes the empiricism of Enlightenment thought with a strong postmodernist skepticism, painting a subtler and richer historical canvas. (shrink)

In Postmodernism and Democratic Theory, Aryeh Botwinick is concerned with defining postmodernism and exploring its political-economic dimensions. Previous attempts at definition have foundered because the theory has a built-in incoherence: in their rejection of reasoned argument, postmodernists must rely on reasoned argument to make their case. This issue of "self-referentialism" is pivotal, for example, in Jurgen Habermas's criticism of the postmodernists. But Botwinick shows that postmodernism can be coherently conceived as a "generalized agnosticism," which remains open to (...) all possibilities - including the possibility of its own falsity. In developing this view of postmodernism, the author applies it to the work of a wide range of contemporary political philosophers, from Jurgen Habermas and Jean-Francois Lyotard to Leo Strauss. Botwinick also invokes a "generalized agnosticism" in assessing the ideas of such classic thinkers as Rousseau, Freud, and Wittgenstein. In the second part of the book, Botwinick uncovers and analyzes participatory undercurrents in the thought of both Hobbes and Plato. On the basis of their work, Botwinick tries to plot the transition between modernist and postmodernist democratic society. (shrink)

Postmodernism Rightly Understood is a dramatic return to realism—a poetic attempt to attain a true understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the postmodern predicament. Prominent political theorist Peter Augustine Lawler reflects on the flaws of postmodern thought, the futility of pragmatism, and the spiritual emptiness of existentialism.

During the past three decades, two terms, “postmodernism” and “globalization” have entered not only academic discourse, but everyday discussions outside the groves of academia. This book contains essays assembled with a conviction that both postmodernism and globalization have the potential to be valuable tools for social analysts, this despite the uncertainties and ambiguities that persist. The editors and the contributors make no claim to have found a solution that would overcome the uncertainties and ambiguities. Rather, it is assumed (...) that at some level both the concepts will remain contested. All the essays are expressions of efforts to employ one or both of the concepts in terms of empirically grounded topics. They also add further precision or clarity to the concepts themselves in order to enhance their utility in making sense of the dynamics of social change. (shrink)

Postmodernism and Education responds to the interest in postmodernism as a way of understanding social, cultural and economic trends. Robin Usher and Richard Edwards explore the impact which postmodernism has had upon the theory and practice of education, using a broad analysis of postmodernism and an in-depth introduction to key writers in the field, including Lacan, Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard. In examining the impact which this thinking has had upon contemporary theory and practice of education, Usher (...) and Edwards concentrate particularly upon how postmodernist ideas challenge existing concepts, structures and hierarchies. (shrink)

Postmodernism seemed to promise an end to the grim Cold War era of nuclear confrontation and oppressive ideologies. This expanded edition brilliantly elucidates this hall of mirrors with Richard Appignanesi's witty and easy-to-follow text and the inspired cartoonist Chris Garratt.

Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis is the only book to combine cultural theory and environmental philosophy. In it, Arran Gare analyses the conjunction between the environmental crisis, the globalisation of capitalism and the disintegration of the culture of modernity. It explains the paradox of growing concern for the environment and the paltry achievements of environmental movements. Through a critique of the philosophies underlying approaches to the environmental crisis, Arran Gare puts forward his own, controversial theory of a new postmodern (...) world view. This would be the foundation for the environmental movement to succeed. Arran Gare's work will be a vital reading for advanced students of environmental studies, as well as for environmental philosophers and cultural theorists. (shrink)

_Post-Postmodernism_ begins with a simple premise: we no longer live in the world of "postmodernism," famously dubbed "the cultural logic of late capitalism" by Fredric Jameson in 1984. Far from charting any simple move "beyond" postmodernism since the 1980s, though, this book argues that we've experienced an _intensification_ of postmodern capitalism over the past decades, an increasing saturation of the economic sphere into formerly independent segments of everyday cultural life. If "fragmentation" was the preferred watchword of postmodern America, (...) "intensification" is the dominant cultural logic of our contemporary era. _Post-Postmodernism_ surveys a wide variety of cultural texts in pursuing its analyses—everything from the classic rock of Black Sabbath to the post-Marxism of Antonio Negri, from considerations of the corporate university to the fare at the cineplex, from reading experimental literature to gambling in Las Vegas, from Badiou to the undergraduate classroom. Insofar as cultural realms of all kinds have increasingly been overcoded by the languages and practices of economics, Nealon aims to construct a genealogy of the American present, and to build a vocabulary for understanding the relations between economic production and cultural production today—when American-style capitalism, despite its recent battering, seems nowhere near the point of obsolescence. Post-postmodern capitalism is seldom late but always just in time. As such, it requires an updated conceptual vocabulary for diagnosing and responding to our changed situation. (shrink)

This is a critique of Peirce, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Buchler, Derrida, and Rorty as anti-realists, showing that each of these philosophers affirms some form of self-undermining relativism that cannot account for itself.

James A.K. Smith has argued that postmodernism and religious belief can have a positive relationship. I argue against his views in this paper. I begin with a brief overview of what I take postmodernists to be saying, before examining Jean-Francois Lyotard's views on language-games, legitimation, and universal reason, concepts to which he appeals to support his claim that we should have incredulity toward metanarratives. I next look at how Smith appeals to Lyotard's ideas to argue that the biblical metanarrative (...) escapes the postmodernist critique. I argue that Smith fails to show how religion would escape the postmodernist critique, because he fails to provide an analysis of what "religious faith" means. I illustrate that on any of the standard meanings of this phrase, his argument faces serious objections. I show that the epistemological and moral relativism of postmodernism means that not only is the postmodernist critique itself problematic, but it is not possible for religious belief to welcome this critique and retain its integrity, especially in the political realm. (shrink)

Why ask ‘what after post-modernism’? This question implies that postmodernism, as a grand narrative, recently withered away, that this is an event educators should be concerned with, and that it ca...

Are there no new ideas to be invented? Are today's ideas really just borrowed from previous times? Postmodernism says this is so, and it's one of the hottest philosophies of today. The book provides an indispensable guide to this often-demanding terrain for readers encountering theories of postmodernism for the first time and places the subject in a broad context. It introduces a wide range of ideas, thinkers, and views yet maintains the readers' focus by linking theory with concrete (...) examples from both "high" and "popular" culture. After completing Teach Yourself Postmodernism , readers will never look at their world the same way again. (shrink)

Postmodernism has emerged as a significant cultural, political and intellectual concept which has fundamentally altered our understanding of architecture, selfhood, knowledge formation, ethics, history, economics and politics. Until now, the primary and most historically significant accounts of postmodernism have remained uncollected. This set provides scholars with a much needed interdisciplinary and comprehensive collection of essays that map out the ways in which postmodernism is conceptualized and demonstrate how it has caused a wide range of traditions and disciplines (...) to redefine their objects of study and modes of inquiry. The volumes include: * foundational essays * critical texts * disciplinary texts covering the visual arts and architecture, the humanities and the social sciences. (shrink)

Over the past 50 years, postmodernism has been a progressively growing and influential intellectual movement inside and outside the academy. Postmodernism is characterised by rejection of parts or the whole of the Enlightenment project that had its roots in the birth and embrace of early modern science. While Enlightenment and ‘modernist’ ideas of universalism, of intellectual and cultural progress, of the possibility of finding truths about the natural and social world and of rejection of absolutism and authoritarianism in (...) politics, philosophy and religion were first opposed at their birth in the eighteenth century, contemporary postmodernism sometimes appeals to (and sometimes disdains) philosophy of science in support of its rejection of modernism and the enlightenment programme. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show that in Western postmodernism, both religion and the university are under the sign of simulacra. Friedrich Nietzsche’s “death of God” instigates a discussion of postmodernism and a simulacrum of religion. According to Jean Baudrillard and the theory of the Three Orders of the Simulacra, reality died and “hyperreality” took its place and now governs our existence. If, for Michel Foucault, the religious phenomenon today is outside theological beliefs and traditions, oriented (...) towards the body, power and panoptic supervision, for Jacques Derrida the phenomenon appears more as a negative theology of deconstruction. The theoretical objective seeks to explore the mutations that have occurred both in the academic environment and in religion under the phenomenon of globalisation and the technologisation of humanity. Here, the study of religion in universities is a third order simulacrum, the consequence of which is the illusion of knowledge and the unconditional independence of humanity, manipulated by technological evolution. The methodology used is Derridarian decon­struction, Nietzschean nihilism and the Baudrillardian criticism of the postmodern consumerist system. (shrink)

The essays collected here present a cross section of the debates on postmodernism being waged in philosophy and the arts. Some contributors raise general questions about postmodernism, for example, its language and its politics. Others offer specific readings of architecture, painting, literature, theatre, photography, film, and television.

Postmodernism is a term that has been used extensively to describe general trends and specific works in many different cultural contexts, including literature, cinema, architecture and the visual arts. This introduction clarifies the term and explores its relevance for music through discussion of specific musical examples from the 1950s to the present day, providing an engagement between theory and practice. Overall, this book equips students with a thorough understanding of this complex but important topic in music studies. It: • (...) outlines and addresses the problems of defining what we mean by postmodernism • explores when postmodernism begins • engages with a broad range of literature and reference sources, inviting wider reading and thinking • uses specific musical examples to present ways of interpreting music that can be defined as postmodernist. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that the corresponding rise of postmodernism and the triumph of neo-liberalism are not only not accidental, the triumph of neo-liberalism has been facilitated by postmodernism. Postmodernism has been primarily directed not against mainstream modernism, the modernism of Hobbes, Smith, Darwin and social Darwinism, but against the radical modernist quest for justice and emancipation with its roots in German thought. The Social Democratic State, the principles of which were articulated by Hegel, is (...) construed as a partial triumph of this radical modernism, realizing a higher level of reciprocal recognition and overcoming much of the brutality of the Liberal State. Postmodernism is shown to be a manifestation of the decadence of the Social Democratic State, characterized by the disintegration of cognitive and ethical developments which have been the condition for people to form communities based on reciprocal recognition. In this regard it parallels the decadence which took place in ancient Rome, for similar reasons: both the Roman Empire and the Social Democratic State reduced people to passive recipients of the benefits of their societies. The implications of this are twofold. If Social Democracy is to be revived, it will require a struggle for ‘strong’ democracy; that is, for a major role for participatory democracy. On the other hand if people opt for the creation of confederations of genuinely democratic communities to replace the State, this will not be achieved by postmodern decadence but through the developments of cognitive forms and communities through which the recognition of people as free agents is instititionalized. (shrink)

Postmodernism may seem a particularly inappropriate term when used in conjunction with a region that is usually thought of as having only recently, and then unevenly, acceded to modernity. Yet in the last several years the concept has risen to the top of the agenda of cultural and political debate in Latin America. This collection explores the Latin American engagement with postmodernism, less to present a regional variant of the concept than to situate it in a transnational framework. (...) Recognizing that postmodernism in Latin America can only inaccurately be thought of as having traveled from an advanced capitalist "center" to arrive at a still dependent neocolonial "periphery," the contributors share the assumption that postmodernism is itself about the dynamics of interaction between local and metropolitan cultures in a global system in which the center-periphery model has begun to break down. These essays examine the ways in which postmodernism not only designates the effects of this transnationalism in Latin America, but also registers the cultural and political impact on an increasingly simultaneous global culture of a Latin America struggling with its own set of postcolonial contingencies, particularly the crisis of its political left, the dominance of neoliberal economic models, and the new challenges and possibilities opened by democratization. With new essays on the dynamics of Brazilian culture, the relationship between postmodernism and Latin American feminism, postmodernism and imperialism, and the implications of postmodernist theory for social policy, as well as the text of the Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle of the Zapatatista National Liberation Army, this expanded edition of boundary 2 will interest not only Latin Americanists, but scholars in all disciplines concerned with theories of the postmodern. Contributors. Xavier Albó, José Joaquín Brunner, Fernando Calderón, Enrique Dussel, Néstor García Canclini, Martín Hopenhayn, Neil Larsen, the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, Norbert Lechner, María Milagros López, Raquel Olea, Aníbal Quijano, Nelly Richard, Carlos Rincón, Silviano Santiago, Beatriz Sarlo, Roberto Schwarz, and Hernán Vidal. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Postmodernism's Challenge Responses to the Postmodern Challenge Continuing Crisis of Incompatibilities Conclusion Bibliography Further Reading.

Machine generated contents note: Introduction: The Rise of Philosophical Art Criticism 1 -- Chapter 1. In the Beginning Was Formalism 17 -- Chapter 2. The Structuralist Adventure 33 -- Chapter 3. The Historicist, Antiessentialist Definition of Art 55 -- Chapter 4. Resentment and Its Discontents 71 -- Chapter 5. The Deconstruction of Structuralism 87 -- Afterword: The Fate of Philosophical Art Criticism 111.

In the decade that followed 1972, the journal _boundary 2_ consistently published many of the most distinguished and most influential statements of an emerging literary postmodernism. Recognizing postmodernism as a dominant force in culture, particularly in the literary and narrative imagination, the journal appeared when literary critical study in the United States was in a period of theory-induced ferment. The fundamental relations between postmodernism and poststructuralism were being initially examined and the effort to formulate a critical sense (...) of the postmodern was underway. In this volume, Paul A. Bové, the current editor of _boundary 2_, has gathered many of those foundational essays and, as such, has assembled a basic text in the history of postmodernism. Essays by noted cultural and literary theorists join with Bové’s contemporary preface to represent the important and unique moment in recent intellectual history when postmodernism was no longer seen primarily as an architectural term, had not yet come to describe the wide range of culture it does now, but was finding power and place in the literary realm. These essays show that the history of postmodernism and its attendant critical theories are both more complex and more deeply bound with literary criticism than often is acknowledged today. _Early Postmodernism_ demonstrates not only the significance of these literary studies, but also the role played by literary critical postmodernism in making possible newer forms of critical and cultural studies. _Contributors_. Barry Alpert, Charles Altieri, David Antin, Harold Bloom, Paul A. Bové, Hélène Cixous, Gerald Gillespie, Ihab Hassan, Joseph N. Riddel, William, V. Spanos, Catharine R. Stimpson, Cornel West. (shrink)

Argues that despite claims of self-styled 'postmodernists of resistance', postmodernism provides neither a viable educational politics nor a foundation for effective radical educational practice. In place of postmodernism, the bookoutlines a 'politics of human resistance' which puts the challenge to capitalism and its attendant inequalities firmly on the agenda of educational theory, politics and practice.

This chapter contains sections titled: Modernism Postmodern Thought Law and Postmodernism The Postmodern State Conclusion References.