Postmodernism and Its Critics

  

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Postmodernism and Its Critics

Daniel Salberg, Robert Stewart, Karla Wesley, and Shannon Weiss

(Note: authorship is arranged stratigraphically with the most recent author listed first)

Basic Premises

As an intellectual movement postmodernism was born as a challenge to several modernist themes that were first articulated during the Enlightenment. These include scientific positivism, the inevitability of human progress, and the potential of human reason to address any essential truth of physical and social conditions and thereby make them amenable to rational control (Boyne and Rattansi 1990). The primary tenets of the postmodern movement include: (1) an elevation of text and language as the fundamental phenomena of existence, (2) the application of literary analysis to all phenomena, (3) a questioning of reality and representation, (4) a critique of metanarratives, (5) an argument against method and evaluation, (6) a focus upon power relations and hegemony, (7) and a general critique of Western institutions and knowledge (Kuznar 2008:78). For his part, Lawrence Kuznar labels postmodern anyone whose thinking includes most or all of these elements. Importantly, the term postmodernism refers to a broad range of artists, academic critics, philosophers, and social scientists that Christopher Butler (2003:2) has only half-jokingly alluded to as like “a loosely constituted and quarrelsome political party.” The anthropologist Melford Spiro defines postmodernism thusly:

"The postmodernist critique of science consists of two interrelated arguments, epistemological and ideological. Both are based on subjectivity. First, because of the subjectivity of the human object, anthropology, according to the epistemological argument cannot be a science; and in any event the subjectivity of the human subject precludes the possibility of science discovering objective truth. Second, since objectivity is an illusion, science according to the ideological argument, subverts oppressed groups, females, ethnics, third-world peoples." [Spiro 1996: 759]

Postmodernism has its origins as an eclectic social movement originating in aesthetics, architecture and philosophy (Bishop 1996). In architecture and art, fields which are distinguished as the oldest claimants to the name, postmodernism originated in the reaction against abstraction in painting and the International Style in architecture (Callinicos 1990: 101). However, postmodern thinking arguably began in the nineteenth century with Nietzsche’s assertions regarding truth, language, and society, which opened the door for all later postmodern and late modern critiques about the foundations of knowledge (Kuznar 2008: 78). Nietzsche asserted that truth was simply:

"A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are." [Nietzsche 1954: 46-47]

According to Kuznar, postmodernists trace this skepticism about truth and the resulting relativism it engenders from Nietzsche to Max Weber and Sigmund Freud, and finally to Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and other contemporary postmodernists (2008:78).

Postmodernism and anthropology - Postmodern attacks on ethnography are generally based on the belief that there is no true objectivity and that therefore the authentic implementation of the scientific method is impossible. For instance, Isaac Reed (2010) conceptualizes the postmodern challenge to the objectivity of social research as skepticism over the anthropologist’s ability to integrate the context of investigation and the context of explanation. Reed defines the context of investigation as the social and intellectual context of the investigator – essentially her social identity, beliefs and memories. The context of explanation, on the other hand, refers to the reality that she wishes to investigate, and in particular the social actions she wishes to explain and the surrounding social environment, or context, that she explains them with. In the late 1970s and 1980s some anthropologists, such as Crapanzano and Rabinow, began to express elaborate self-doubt concerning the validity of fieldwork. By the mid-1980s the critique about how anthropologists interpreted and explained the Other, essentially how they engaged in “writing culture,” had become a full-blown epistemic crisis that Reed refers to as the “postmodern” turn. The driving force behind the postmodern turn was a deep skepticism about whether the investigator could adequately, effectively, or honestly integrate the context of investigation into the context of explanation and, as a result, write true social knowledge. This concern was most prevalent in cultural and linguistic anthropology, less so in archaeology, and had the least effect on physical anthropology, which is generally the most scientific of the four subfields.

Modernity first came into being with the Renaissance. Modernity implies “the progressive economic and administrative rationalization and differentiation of the social world” (Sarup 1993). In essence this term emerged in the context of the development of the capitalist state. The fundamental act of modernity is to question the foundations of past knowledge, and Boyne and Rattansi characterize modernity as consisting of two sides: “the progressive union of scientific objectivity and politico-economic rationality . . . mirrored in disturbed visions of unalleviated existential despair” (1990: 5).

Postmodernity is the state or condition of being postmodern. Logically postmodernism literally means “after modernity. It refers to the incipient or actual dissolution of those social forms associated with modernity" (Sarup 1993). The archaeologist Mathew Johnson has characterized postmodernity, or the postmodern condition, as disillusionment with Enlightenment ideals (Johnson 2010). Jean-Francois Lyotard, in his seminal work The Postmodern Condition (1984) defines it as an “incredulity toward metanarratives,” which is, somewhat ironically, a product of scientific progress (1984: xxiv). Postmodernity concentrates on the tensions of difference and similarity erupting from processes of globalization and capitalism: (i) the accelerating circulation of people, (ii) the increasingly dense and frequent cross-cultural interactions, and (iii) the unavoidable intersections of local and global knowledge.

Some social critics have attempted to explain the postmodern condition in terms of the historical and social milieu which spawned it. David Ashley (1990) suggests that “modern, overloaded individuals, desperately trying to maintain rootedness and integrity . . . ultimately are pushed to the point where there is little reason not to believe that all value-orientations are equally well-founded. Therefore, increasingly, choice becomes meaningless.” Jean Baudrillard, one of the most radical postmodernists, writes that we must come to terms with the second revolution: “that of the Twentieth Century, of postmodernity, which is the immense process of the destruction of meaning equal to the earlier destruction of appearances. Whoever lives by meaning dies by meaning” ([Baudrillard 1984:38-39] in Ashley 1990).

Modernization “is often used to refer to the stages of social development which are based upon industrialization. Modernization is a diverse unity of socio-economic changes generated by scientific and technological discoveries and innovations. . .” (Sarup 1993).

Modernism should be considered distinct from the concept of “modernity.” . Although in its broadest definition modernism refers to modern thought, character or practice, the term is usually restricted to a set of artistic, musical, literary, and more generally aesthetic movements that emerged in Europe in the late nineteenth century and would become institutionalized in the academic institutions and art galleries of post-World War I Europe and America (Boyne and Rattansi 1990). Important figures include Matisse, Picasso, and Kandinsky in painting, Joyce and Kafka in literature, and Eliot and Pound in poetry. It can be characterized by self-consciousness, the alienation of the integrated subject, and reflexiveness, as well as by a general critique of modernity’s claims regarding the progressive capacity of science and the efficacy of metanarratives. These themes are very closely related to Postmodernism (Boyne and Rattansi 1990: 6-8; Sarup 1993).

Postmodernism - Sarup maintains that “There is a sense in which if one sees modernism as the culture of modernity, postmodernism is the culture of postmodernity” (1993). The term “postmodernism” is somewhat controversial since many doubt whether it can ever be dignified by conceptual coherence. For instance, it is difficult to reconcile postmodernist approaches in fields like art and music to certain postmodern trends in philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. However, it is in some sense unified by a commitment to a set of cultural projects privileging heterogeneity, fragmentation, and difference, as well as a relatively widespread mood in literary theory, philosophy, and the social sciences that question the possibility of impartiality, objectivity, or authoritative knowledge (Boyne and Rattansi 1990: 9-11).

The following are some proposed differences between modern and postmodern thought: Contrast of Modern and Postmodern Thinking
	Modern	Postmodern
Reasoning	From foundation upwards	Multiple factors of multiple levels of reasoning. Web-oriented.
Science	Universal Optimism	Realism of Limitations
Part/Whole	Parts comprise the whole	The whole is more than the parts
God	Acts by violating "natural" laws" or by "immanence" in everything that is	Top-Down causation
Language	Referential	Meaning in social context through usage

Source: http://private.fuller.edu/~clameter/phd/postmodern.html (note: this link is no longer working as of 4/30/2012)

Points of Reaction

"Modernity" takes its Latin origin from “modo,” which means “just now.” The Postmodern, then, literally means “after just now” (Appignanesi and Garratt 1995). Points of reaction from within postmodernism are associated with other “posts”: postcolonialism, poststructuralism, and postprocessualism.

Postcolonialism

Postcolonialism has been defined as:

1. A description of institutional conditions in formerly colonial societies.
2. An abstract representation of the global situation after the colonial period.

3. A description of discourses informed by psychological and epistemological orientations.

Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism (1993) uses discourse analysis and postcolonial theory as tools for rethinking forms of knowledge and the social identities of postcolonial systems. An important feature of postcolonialist thought is its assertion that modernism and modernity are part of the colonial project of domination.

Debates about postcolonialism are unresolved, yet issues raised in Said’s Orientalism (1978), a critique of Western descriptions of Non-Euro-American Others, suggest that colonialism as a discourse is based on the ability of Westerners to examine other societies in order to produce knowledge and use it as a form of power deployed against the very subjects of inquiry. As should be readily apparent, the issues of postcolonialism are uncomfortably relevant to contemporary anthropological investigations.

Poststructuralism

In reaction to the abstraction of cultural data characteristic of model building, cultural relativists argue that model building hindered understanding of thought and action. From this claim arose poststructuralist concepts such as developed in the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1972). He asserts that structural models should not be replaced but enriched. Poststructuralists like Bourdieu are concerned with reflexivity and the search for logical practice. By doing so, accounts of the participants' behavior and meanings are not objectified by the observer. (For definition of reflexivity, see key concepts). In general postructuralism expresses disenchantment with static, mechanistic, and controlling models of culture, instead privileging social process and agency.

Postprocessualism

Unlike postcolonialism and poststructuralism, which are trends among cultural anthropologists, postprocessualism is a trend among archaeologists. Postprocessualists “use deconstructionist skeptical arguments to conclude that there is no objective past and that our representations of the past are only texts that we produce on the basis of our socio-political standpoints (Harris 1999).

Leading Figures

Michael Agar Agar is critical of traditional scholarly studies related to the social world for two reasons. Firstly, he feels that it is far too difficult to reconstruct human interactions based on notes in a meaningful way. Secondly, he feels that American anthropology tends to draw a barrier between “applied” and “practiced” work (Agar 1997). This effectively means that those who are currently paid to teach anthropology in an academic setting have become out of touch with the current state of scholarship being done by “practitioners” whose positions within academia are far less secure, having not yet attained status in a university setting. To define this distinction he uses the terms “slave labor academic instructors” and “practitioner civil servants.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929 - 2007) Baudrillard was a sociologist who began his career exploring the Marxist critique of capitalism (Sarup 1993: 161). During this phase of his work he argued that, “consumer objects constitute a system of signs that differentiate the population” (Sarup 1993: 162). Eventually, however, Baudrillard felt that Marxist tenets did not effectively evaluate commodities, so he turned to postmodernism. Rosenau labels Baudrillard as a skeptical postmodernist because of statements like, “everything has already happened....nothing new can occur,” and “there is no real world” (Rosenau 1992: 64, 110). Baudrillard breaks down modernity and postmodernity in an effort to explain the world as a set of models. He identifies (i) early modernity as the period between the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, (ii) modernity as the period at the start of the Industrial Revolution, and (iii) postmodernity as the period of mass media (cinema and photography). Baudrillard states that we live in a world of images but images that are only simulations. Baudrillard implies that many people fail to understand this concept that, “we have now moved into an epoch...where truth is entirely a product of consensus values, and where ‘science’ itself is just the name we attach to certain modes of explanation,” (Norris 1990: 169).

Jacques Derrida (1930 - 2004) Derrida is identified as a poststructuralist and a skeptical postmodernist. Much of his writing is concerned with the deconstruction of texts and probing the relationship of meaning between texts (Bishop 1996: 1270). He observes that “a text employs its own stratagems against it, producing a force of dislocation that spreads itself through an entire system.” (Rosenau 1993: 120). Derrida directly attacks Western philosophy's understanding of reason. He sees reason as dominated by “a metaphysics of presence.” Derrida agrees with structuralism's insight, that meaning is not inherent in signs, but he proposes that it is incorrect to infer that anything reasoned can be used as a stable and timeless model (Appignanesi 1995: 77). According to Norris, “He tries to problematize the grounds of reason, truth, and knowledge...he questions the highest point by demanding reasoning for reasoning itself,” (1990: 199).

Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984) - Foucault was a French philosopher who attempted to show that what most people think of as the permanent truths of human nature and society actually change throughout the course of history. While challenging the influences of Marx and Freud, Foucault postulated that everyday practices enabled people to define their identities and systemize knowledge. Foucault is considered a postmodern theorist precisely because his work upset the conventional understanding of history as a chronology of inevitable facts. Alternatively, he depicted history as existing under layers of suppressed and unconscious knowledge in and throughout history. These under layers are the codes and assumptions of order, the structures of exclusion that legitimate the epistemes by which societies achieve identities (Appignanesi 1995: 83, http://www.connect.net/ron). In addition to these insights, Foucault’s study of power and its shifting patterns is one of the foundations of postmodernism. Foucault believed that power was inscribed in everyday life to the extent that many social roles and institutions bore the stamp of power, specifically as it could be used to regulate social hierarchies and structures. These could be regulated though control of the conditions in which “knowledge,” “truth,” and socially accepted “reality” were produced (Erikson and Murphy 2010: 272).

Clifford Geertz (1926 - 2006) Geertz was a prominent anthropologist best known for his work with religion. He was somewhat ambivalent about Postmodernism. He divided it into two movements that both came to fruition in the 1980s. Geertz describes these as follows:

The first led off into essentially literary matters: authorship, genre, style, narrative, metaphor, representation, discourse, fiction, figuration, persuasion; the second, into essentially political matters: the social foundations of anthropological authority, the modes of power inscribed in its practices, its ideological assumptions, its complicity with colonialism, racism, exploitation, and exoticism, its dependency on the master narratives of Westerns self-understanding. These interlinked critiques of anthropology, the one inward-looking and brooding, the other outward-looking and recriminatory, may not have produced the ‘fully dialectical ethnography acting powerfully in the postmodern world system,’ to quote that Writing Culture blast again, nor did they exactly go unresisted. But they did induce a certain self-awareness and a certain candor also, into a discipline not without need of them.. [Geertz 2002: 11]

Ian Hodder (1948 - ) Hodder is one of the founders of postprocessualism and is generally considered one of the most influential archaeologists of the last thirty years. The postprocessual movement arose out of an attempt to apply insights gained from French Marxist anthropology to the study of material culture and was highly influenced by a postmodern epistemology. Working in sub-Sahara Africa, Hodder and his students documented how material culture was not merely a reflection of sociopolitical organization, but was also an active element that could be used to disguise, invert, and distort social relations. Bruce Trigger (2006:481) has argued that perhaps the most successful “law” developed in recent archaeology was this demonstration that material culture plays an active role in social strategies and hence can alter as well as reflect social reality.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1944-) Scheper-Hughes is a professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. In her work "Primacy of the Ethical" Scheper-Hughes argues that, "If we cannot begin to think about social institutions and practices in moral or ethical terms, then anthropology strikes me as quite weak and useless." (1995: 410). She advocates that ethnographies be used as tools for critical reflection and human liberation because she feels that "ethics" make culture possible. Since culture is preceded by ethics, therefore ethics cannot be culturally bound as argued by anthropologists in the past. These philosophies are evident in her other works such as, "Death Without Weeping." The crux of her postmodern perspective is that, "Anthropologists, no less than any other professionals, should be held accountable for how we have used and how we have failed to use anthropology as a critical tool at crucial historical moments. It is the act of "witnessing" that lends our word its moral, at times almost theological, character." (1995: 419)

Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924 – 1998) Lyotard was the author of a highly influential work on postmodern society called, The Postmodern Condition (1984). The work was a critique on the current state of knowledge among modern postindustrial nations such as those found in the United States and much of Western Europe. In it Lyotard made a number of notable arguments, one of which was that the postmodern world suffered from a crisis of “representation,” in which older modes of writing about the objects of artistic, philosophical, literary, and social scientific languages were no longer credible. Lyotard suggests that:

The Postmodern would be that which in the modern invokes the unpresentable in presentation itself, that which refuses the consolation of correct forms, refuses the consensus of taste permitting a common experience of nostalgia for the impossible, and inquires into new presentations--not to take pleasure in them, but to better produce the feeling that there is something unpresentable.[Lyotard 1984]

Lyotard also attacked modernist thought as epitomized by "Grand" Narratives or what he termed the Meta(master) narrative (Lyotard 1984). In contrast to the ethnographies written by anthropologists in the first half of the 20th Century, Lyotard states that an all-encompassing account of a culture cannot be accomplished.

Key Works

• Baudrillard, Jean (1995) Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Derrida, Jacques (1997) Of Grammatology. Corrected ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Foucault, Michel (1970) The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon.
• Jameson, Fredric (1991). Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Lyotard, Jean-Francois (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Marcus, George E. and Michael M. J. Fischer (1986) Anthropology as Cultural Critique. An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Norris, Christopher (1979) Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge.
• Scheper-Hughes, Nancy (1993) Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Tyler, Stephen (1986) Post-Modern Ethnography: From Document of the Occult To Occult Document. In Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford and George E. Marcus. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Vattimo, Gianni (1988) The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics. In Post-Modern Critique. London: Polity.

• Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics. In Post-Modern Critique. London: Polity.

Principal Concepts

“Culture” in Peril - Aside from Foucault, other postmodernists felt that “Culture is becoming a dangerously unfocused term, increasingly lacking in scientific credentials” (Pasquinelli 1996). The concept of Culture as a whole was tied not only to modernity, but to evolutionary theory (and, implicitly, to euro centrism). In the postmodernist view, if “culture” existed it had to be totally relativistic without any suggestion of “progress.” While postmodernists did have a greater respect for later revisions of cultural theory by Franz Boas and his followers, who attempted to shift from a single path of human “culture” to many varied “cultures,” they found even this unsatisfactory because it still required the use of a Western concept to define non-Western people.

Lament - Lament is a practice of ritualized weeping (Wilce 2005). In the view of Wilce, the traditional means of laments in many cultures were being forced out by modernity due to many claiming that ritualized displays of discontent, particularly discontent with the lost of traditional culture, was a “backwards” custom that needed to be stopped.

Metanarrative Lawrence Kuznar describes metanarratives as grand narratives such as the Enlightenment, Marxism or the American dream. Postmodernists see metanarratives as unfairly totalizing or naturalizing in their generalizations about the state of humanity and historical process (2008:83).

Polyvocality - Paralleling the generally relatativst and skeptical attitudes towards scientific authority, many postmodernists advocate polyvocality, which maintains that there exists multiple, legitimate versions of reality or truths as seen from different perspectives. Postmodernists construe Enlightenment rationalism and scientific positivism as an effort to impose hegemonic values and political control on the world. By challenging the authority of anthropologists and other Western intellectuals, postmodernists see themselves as defending the integrity of local cultures and helping weaker peoples to oppose their oppressors (Trigger 2006:446-447).

Power - Foucault was a prominent critic of the idea of “culture,” preferring instead to deal in the concept of “power” as the major focus of anthropological research (Barrett 2001). Foucault felt that it was through the dynamics of power that “a human being turns himself into a subject” (Foucault 1982). This is not only true of political power, but also includes people recognizing things such as sexuality as forces to which they are subject. “The exercise of power is not simply a relationship between partners, individual or collective; it is a way in which certain actions modify others. Which is to say, of course, that something called Power, with or without a capital letter, which is assumed to exist universally in a concentrated or diffused form, does not exist” (Foucault 1982: 788).

Radical skepticism - The systematic skepticism of grounded theoretical perspectives and objective truths espoused by many postmodernists had a profound effect on anthropology. This skepticism has shifted focus from the observation of a particular society to a reflexive consideration of the (anthropological) observer (Bishop 1996). According to Rosenau (1992), postmodernists can be divided into two very broad camps, Skeptics and Affirmatives.

• Skeptical Postmodernists – They are extremely critical of the modern subject. They consider the subject to be a “linguistic convention” (Rosenau 1992:43). They also reject any understanding of time because for them the modern understanding of time is oppressive in that it controls and measures individuals. They reject Theory because theories are abundant, and no theory is considered more correct that any other. They feel that “theory conceals, distorts, and obfuscates, it is alienated, disparate, dissonant, it means to exclude, order, and control rival powers” (Rosenau 1992: 81).
  
  
• Affirmative Postmodernists – Affirmatives also reject Theory by denying claims of truth. They do not, however, feel that Theory needs to be abolished but merely transformed. Affirmatives are less rigid than Skeptics. They support movements organized around peace, environment, and feminism (Rosenau 1993: 42).

Realism - “...is the platonic doctrine that universals or abstractions have being independently of mind” (Gellner 1980: 60). Marcus and Fischer note that: “Realism is a mode of writing that seeks to represent the reality of the whole world or form of life. Realist ethnographies are written to allude to a whole by means of parts or foci of analytical attention which can constantly evoke a social and cultural totality (1986: 2323).

Relativism – Relativism is the notion that different perspectives have no absolute truth or validity, but rather possess only relative, subjective value according to distinctions in perception and consideration. Gellner writes about the relativistic-functionalist view of thought that goes back to the Enlightenment: "The (unresolved) dilemma, which the thought of the Enlightenment faced, was between a relativistic-functionalist view of thought, and the absolutist claims of enlightened Reason. Viewing man as part of nature...requires (us) to see cognitive and evaluative activities as part of nature too, and hence varying from organism to organism and context to context. (Gellner in [Asad 1986: 147]). Anthropological theory of the 1960s may be best understood as the heir of relativism. Contemporary interpretative anthropology is the essence of relativism as a mode of inquiry about communication in and between cultures (Marcus & Fischer, 1986:32).

Self-Reflexivity - In anthropology, self-reflexivity refers to the anthropologists in the process of question, both theoretically and practically, themselves and their work. Bishop notes that, “The scientific observer's objectification of structure as well as strategy was seen as placing the actors in a framework not of their own making but one produced by the observer, “ (1996: 1270). Self-Reflexivity therefore leads to a consciousness of the process of knowledge creation (1996: 995). There is an increased awareness of the collection of data and the limitation of methodological systems. This idea underlies the postmodernist affinity for studying the culture of anthropology and ethnography.

Methodologies

One of the essential elements of Postmodernism is that it constitutes an attack against theory and methodology. In a sense proponents claim to relinquish all attempts to create new knowledge in a systematic fashion, instead substituting an “anti-rules” fashion of discourse (Rosenau 1993:117). Despite this claim, however, there are two methodologies characteristic of Postmodernism. These methodologies are interdependent in that interpretation is inherent in Deconstruction. “Post-modern methodology is post-positivist or anti-positivist. As substitutes for the scientific method the affirmatives look to feelings and personal experience. . . the skeptical post modernists most of the substitutes for method because they argue we can never really know anything (Rosenau 1993:117).

Deconstruction - Deconstruction emphasizes negative critical capacity. Deconstruction involves demystifying a text to reveal internal arbitrary hierarchies and presuppositions. By examining the margins of a text, the effort of deconstruction examines what it represses, what it does not say, and its incongruities. It does not solely unmask error, but redefines the text by undoing and reversing polar opposites. Deconstruction does not resolve inconsistencies, but rather exposes hierarchies involved for the distillation of information (Rosenau 1993).

Rosenau’s Guidelines for Deconstruction Analysis:

• Find an exception to a generalization in a text and push it to the limit so that this generalization appears absurd. Use the exception to undermine the principle.
• Interpret the arguments in a text being deconstructed in their most extreme form.
• Avoid absolute statements and cultivate intellectual excitement by making statements that are both startling and sensational.
• Deny the legitimacy of dichotomies because there are always a few exceptions.
• Nothing is to be accepted, nothing is to be rejected. It is extremely difficult to criticize a deconstructive argument if no clear viewpoint is expressed.
• Write so as to permit the greatest number of interpretations possible.....Obscurity may “protect from serious scrutiny” (Ellis 1989: 148). The idea is “to create a text without finality or completion, one with which the reader can never be finished” (Wellberg, 1985: 234).
• Employ new and unusual terminology in order that “familiar positions may not seem too familiar and otherwise obvious scholarship may not seem so obviously relevant”(Ellis 1989: 142).
• “Never consent to a change of terminology and always insist that the wording of the deconstructive argument is sacrosanct.” More familiar formulations undermine any sense that the deconstructive position is unique (Ellis 1989: 145). (Rosenau 1993, p.121)

Intuitive Interpretation - Rosenau notes that, “Postmodern interpretation is introspective and anti-objectivist which is a form of individualized understanding. It is more a vision than data observation. In anthropology interpretation gravitates toward narrative and centers on listening to and talking with the other, “(1993:119). For postmodernists there are an endless number of interpretations. Foucault argues that everything is interpretation (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983: 106). “There is no final meaning for any particular sign, no notion of unitary sense of text, no interpretation can be regarded as superior to any other” (Latour 1988: 182-3). Anti-positivists defend the notion that every interpretation is false. “Interpretative anthropology is a covering label for a diverse set of reflections upon the practice of ethnography and the concept of culture” (Marcus and Fisher 1986: 60).

Accomplishments

Critical Examination of Ethnographic Explanation - The unrelenting re-examination of the nature of ethnography inevitably leads to a questioning of ethnography itself as a mode of cultural analysis. Postmodernism adamantly insists that anthropologists must consider the role of their own culture in the explanation of the "other" cultures being studied. Postmodernist theory has led to a heightened sensitivity within anthropology to the collection of data.

Demystification - Perhaps the greatest accomplishments of postmodernism is the focus upon uncovering and criticizing the epistemological and ideological motivations in the social sciences, as well as the increased attention to the factors contributing to the production of knowledge.

Polyvocality – The self-reflexive regard for the ways in which social knowledge is produced, as well as a general skepticism regarding the objectivity and authority of scientific knowledge, has led to an increased appreciation for the voice of the anthropological Other. Even if we do not value all interpretations as equally valid for whatever reason, today it is generally recognized (although perhaps not always done in practice) that anthropologists must actively consider the perspectives and wellbeing of the people being studied.

Criticisms

Roy D’Andrade (1931-) - In the article "Moral Models in Anthropology," D'Andrade critiques postmodernism's definition of objectivity and subjectivity by examining the moral nature of their models. He argues that these moral models are purely subjective. D'Andrade argues that despite the fact that utterly value-free objectivity is impossible, it is the goal of the anthropologist to get as close as possible to that ideal. He argues that there must be a separation between moral and objective models because “they are counterproductive in discovering how the world works.” (D’Andrade 1995: 402). From there he takes issue with the postmodernist attack on objectivity. He states that objectivity is in no way dehumanizing nor is objectivity impossible. He states, “Science works not because it produces unbiased accounts but because its accounts are objective enough to be proved or disproved no matter what anyone wants to be true.” (D’Andrade 1995: 404).

Ryan Bishop - “The Postmodernist genre of ethnography has been criticized for fostering a self-indulgent subjectivity, and for exaggerating the esoteric and unique aspects of a culture at the expense of more prosiac but significant questions.” (Bishop 1996: 58)

Patricia M. Greenfield Greenfield believes that postmodernism’s complete lack of objectivity, and its tendency to push political agendas, makes it virtually useless in any scientific investigation (Greenfield 2005). Greenfield suggests using resources in the field of psychology to help Anthropologists gain a better grasp on cultural relativism, while still maintaining their objectivity.

Bob McKinley - McKinley believes that Postmodernism is more of a religion than a science (McKinley 2000). He argues that the origin of Postmodernism is the Western emphasis on individualism, which makes Postmodernists reluctant to acknowledge the existence of distinct multi-individual cultures.

Christopher Norris - Norris believes that Lyotard, Foucault, and Baudrillard are too preoccupied in the idea of the primacy of moral judgments (Norris 1990: 50).

Pauline Rosenau (1993) Rosenau identifies seven contradictions in Postmodernism:

1. Its anti-theoretical position is essentially a theoretical stand.
2. While Postmodernism stresses the irrational, instruments of reason are freely employed to advance its perspective.
3. The Postmodern prescription to focus on the marginal is itself an evaluative emphasis of precisely the sort that it otherwise attacks.
4. Postmodernism stress intertextuality but often treats text in isolation.
5. By adamantly rejecting modern criteria for assessing theory, Postmodernists cannot argue that there are no valid criteria for judgment.
6. Postmodernism criticizes the inconsistency of modernism, but refuses to be held to norms of consistency itself.
7. Postmodernists contradict themselves by relinquishing truth claims in their own writings.

Marshall Sahlins (1930 - )- Sahlins criticizes the postmodern preoccupation with power. "The current Foucauldian-Gramscian-Nietzschean obsession with power is the latest incarnation of anthropology's incurable functionalism. . . Now 'power' is the intellectual black hole into which all kinds of cultural contents get sucked, if before it was social solidarity or material advantage." (Sahlins, 1993: 15).

Melford Spiro (1920 - ) - Spiro argues that postmodern anthropologists do not convincingly dismiss the scientific method (1996). Further, he suggests that if anthropology turns away from the scientific method then anthropology will become the study of meanings and not the discovery of causes that shape what it is to be human. Spiro further states that, “the causal account of culture refers to ecological niches, modes of production, subsistence techniques, and so forth, just as a causal account of mind refers to the firing of neurons, the secretions of hormones, the action of neurotransmitters . . .” (1996: 765).

Spiro critically addresses six interrelated propositions from John Searle’s 1993 work, “Rationality and Realism":

1. Reality exists independently of human representations. If this is true then, contrary to postmodernism, this postulate supports the existence of “mind-independent external reality” which is called “metaphysical realism”.
2. Language communicates meanings but also refers to objects and situations in the world which exist independently of language. Contrary to postmodernism, this postulate supports the concept of language as have communicative and referential functions.
3. Statements are true or false depending on whether the objects and situations to which they refer correspond to a greater or lesser degree to the statements. This “correspondence theory” of truth is to some extent the theory of truth for postmodernists, but this concept is rejected by many postmodernists as “essentialist.”
4. Knowledge is objective. This signifies that the truth of a knowledge claim is independent of the motive, culture, or gender of the person who makes the claim. Knowledge depends on empirical support.
5. Logic and rationality provide a set of procedures and methods, which contrary to postmodernism, enables a researcher to assess competing knowledge claims through proof, validity, and reason.
6. Objective and intersubjective criteria judge the merit of statements, theories, interpretations, and all accounts.

Spiro specifically assaults the assumption that the disciplines that study humanity, like anthropology, cannot be "scientific" because subjectivity renders observers incapable of discovering truth. Spiro agrees with postmodernists that the social sciences require very different techniques for the study of humanity than do the natural sciences, but while insight and empathy are critical in the study of mind and culture, intellectual responsibility requires objective (scientific methods) in the social sciences (Spiro 1996)

Comments

Schematic Differences between Modernism and Postmodernism
Modernism	Postmodernism
romanticism/symbolism	paraphysics/Dadaism
purpose	play
design	chance
hierarchy	anarchy
matery, logos	exhaustion, silence
art object, finished word	process, performance
distance	participation
creation, totalization	deconstruction
synthesis	antithesis
presence	absence
centering	dispersal
genre, boundary	text, intertext
semantics	rhetoric
paradigm	syntagm
hypotaxis	parataxis
metaphor	metonymy
selection	combination
depth	surface
interpretation	against interpretation
reading	misreading
signified	signifier
lisible (readerly)	scriptible
narrative	anti-narrative
grande histoire	petite histoire
master code	idiolect
symptom	desire
type	mutant
genital, phallic	polymorphous
paranoia	schizophrenia
origin, cause	difference-difference
God the Father	The Holy Ghost
Metaphysics	irony
determinacy	indeterminacy
transcendence	immanence

(SOURCE: Hassan "The Culture of Postmodernism" Theory, Culture, and Society, V 2 1985, 123-4.)

For more information on the foundational theories of Postmodernism, Phenomenology, Existentialism, and Marxism, you may wish to reference such philosophers as Heidegger, Hegel, Marx, and Kant. This information may be accessed easily from the this Web site, http://www.connect/net/ron

Sources and Bibliography:

• Agar, Michael (1997) The Postmodern link between academia and practice. * RSS Feed National Association for the Practice of Anthropology Bulletin, 17(1), 86-90.
• Asad, Talal (1986) The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology. In James Cliford and George E. Marcus (eds), Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (pp. 141-164). Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Ashley, David (1990) Habermas and the Project of Modernity. In Bryan Turner (ed),Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity. London: SAGE
• Appignanesi, Richard and Chris Garratt (1995) Introducing Postmodernism. New York: Totem Books.
• Barrett, S., Stokholm, S., & Burke, J. (2001) The Idea of power and the power of ideas: a review essay. American Anthropologist, 103(2), 468-480.
• Bishop, Ryan (1996) Postmodernism. In David Levinson and Melvin Ember (eds.), Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
• Boyne, Roy and Ali Rattansi (1990) The Theory and Politics of Postmodernism: By Way of an Introduction. In Roy Boyne and Ali Rattansi (eds), Postmodernism and Society (pp. 1-45). London: MacMillan Education LTD.
• Brown, Richard H. (1995) Postmodern Representations. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
• Butler, Christopher (2003) A Very Short Introduction to Postmodernism
• Callinicos, Alex (1990) Reactionary Postmodernism? In Roy Boyne and Ali Rattansi (eds), Postmodernism and Society (pp. 97-118). London: MacMillan Education LTD.
• Clifford, James and George E. Marcus (eds) (1986) Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• D'Andrade, Roy (1995) Moral Models in Anthropology. Current Anthropology, 36(3): 399-407.
• Dreyfus, Hubert and Paul Rabinow (1983) Michel Foucault, Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. 2nd. ed Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Foucault, M. (1982) The Subject and Power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777-795.
• Erickson, Paul A. and Liam D. Murphy (eds) (2010). A History of Anthropological Theory. 3^rd Ed. Toronton: University of Toronto Press.
• Gellner, Ernest (1980) Society and Western Anthropology. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Geertz, Clifford (1973) The Interpretations of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, Inc. (pp.15)
• Geertz, Clifford (2002) The Anthropological life in interesting times. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31, 1-19.
• Greenfield, P. (2000) What Psychology can do for anthropology, or why anthropology took postmodernism on the chin. American Anthropologist, 102(3), 564-576.
• Hall, John A. and I. C. Jarive (eds) (1992) Transition to Modernity. Essays on power, wealth, and belief. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Harris, Marvin. (1999) Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira.
• Kuznar, Lawrence A. (2008) Reclaiming a Scientific Anthropology. Lanham, MD: Altamira.
• Johnson, Matthew (2010) Archaeological Theory: An Introduction. 2^nd Ed. Wiley-Blackwell.
• Lash, Scott (1990) Sociology of Postmodernism. London: Routledge.
  Latour, Bruno (1988) The Pasteurization of France. Cambridge: Harvard.
• Lyotard, Jean-Francois (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
• Lyotard, Jean-Francois (1992) The Postmodern Explained. Sidney: Power Publications.
• Marcus, George E. and Michael M. J. Fischer (1986) Anthropology as Cultural Critique. An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• McKinley, B. (2000) Postmodernism certainly is not science, but could it be religion?CSAS Bulletin, 36(1), 16-18.
• Nietzsche, Friedrich (1954) [1873] On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense. In W. Kaufmann (ed and trans) The Portable Nietzsche (pp. 42-47). New York: Penguin.
• Norris, Christopher (1990) What’s Wrong with Postmodernism. England: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
• Pasquinelli, C. (1996) The Concept of culture between modernity and postmodernity. In V. Hubinger (ed), Grasping the Changing World (pp. 53-73). New York: Routledge.
• Reed, Isaac A. (2010) Epistemology Contextualized: Social-Scientific Knowledge in a Postpositivist Era. Sociological Theory, 28(1), 20-39.
• Roseneau, Pauline (1993) Postmodernism and the Social Sciences
• Sahlins, Marshall (1993) Waiting for Foucault. Cambridge: Prickly Pear Press.
• Said, Edward (1978) Orientalism. New York: Routledge.
• Sarup, Madan (1993) An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism. Atlanta: University of Georgia Press.
• Scheper-Hughes, Nancy (1995) The Primacy of the Ethical. Current Anthropology, 36(3): p.409-420.
• Spiro, Melford E. (1992) Cultural Relativism and the Future of Anthropology. In George E. Marcus (ed), Rereading Cultural Anthropology (124-151). Durham: Duke University Press.
• Spiro, Melford E. (1996) Postmodernist Anthropology, Subjectivity, and Science. A Modernist Critique. Comparative Studies in Society and History. 38(1), 759-780.
• Tester, Keith (1993) The Life and Times of Postmodernity. London: Routledge.
• Trigger, Bruce G. (2006) A History of Archaeological Thought. 2^nd Ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Turner, Bryan S. (1990) Theories of Modernity and Postmodernity. London: SAGE Publications.
• Wilce, JM. (2005) Traditional laments and postmodern regrets. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 15(1), 60-71.
• Winthrop, Robert H. (1991) Dictionary of Concepts in Cultural Anthropology. New York: Greenwood Press.

 

Relevant Web Links:

• Postmodernism Generator:: A little fun with postmodernism. And yes, some of it is almost this bad.
• Postmodern Thought (U of Colorado, Denver): A great source for weblinks on postmodernism.
• After Postmodernism (U of Chicago): What happens after postmodernism?
• The PoMo Page (U of Georgetown): A solid overview on postmodernism.
• Anthrobase Postmodernism Page: An encyclopedia-like description of postmodernism with relevant links.
• Writing, General Knowledge, and Postmodern Anthropology: An essay by Paul Smith.
• Dinosaur Comic on Postmodernism: Pretty self explanatory.
• Postmodernisnm and Psychology
  
  
  
  

There is No Conflict Between Science and Faith

A Must Read: Plantinga’s Gifford Lectures: “Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/12/a-must-read-plantingas-gifford-lectures-where-the-conflict-really-lies-science-religion-and-naturalism/

 

by Roger Olson

December 7, 2012

Comments

 

A Must Read: Plantinga’s Gifford Lectures: Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, & Naturalism.

 

Recently I wrote about a long forgotten and neglected theology book that has fortunately been taken out of the “cemetery of forgotten books” and republished (Adrio König’s Here Am I!) right now I am about half way through a book that should never suffer that fate (and need such a resurrection). Well known Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga delivered Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews University in 2005; Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, & Naturalism (Oxford University Press, 2011) is based on those lectures. Plantinga states his central thesis thus:

 

“there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion,

but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism.” (p. ix)

 

Obviously, since I have not finished the book (it’s not an easy read and must be read slowly) I cannot review it thoroughly. My intention here is only to recommend it. I also confess that I’m not expert enough in either philosophy or science to evaluate it thoroughly competently. All I can say is that I have so far not found any flaw or fault in Plantinga’s arguments and would like to know what those are if anyone thinks he or she has found one or more. For the most part, the author is providing philosophical arguments to support what I and most other conservative (very broadly defined) Christians have always believed -

 

that there is no essential conflict between true science, that is science

when it is true, and essential, that is “mere,” Christian theism.

 

I picked up this book with a bit of reluctance for two reasons. First, I’m not that excited about apologetics or philosophical theism. My own theological orientation trends more toward what evangelical theologian Donald G. Bloesch infelicitously called “fideistic revelationism” or “revelational fideism” (I don’t remember which but either phrase could describe it).

[*fideism. noun. "exclusive reliance in religious matters upon faith,

with consequent rejection of appeals to science or philosophy."]

That is, I tend to agree with

 

• Pascal about the God of the philosophers not being the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”

 

and with

 

• Kierkegaard that authentic Christianity is always a leap of faith, a risk, involving commitment that transcends reason.

 

However, I also tend to think that Christianity cannot be irrational and that the proper role of apologetics is to demonstrate that. There I agree with, for example, Hans Küng in Does God Exist? An Answer for Today. Küng argues that belief in God, especially the Christian God, is not amenable to rationalism. That is, there are no (and need not be) absolute, knock-down, drag-out proofs of God’s existence such that anyone who thinks otherwise is being irrational. However, Küng argues, and I agree, that, overall and in general, believing in God is more consistent with reason insofar as nihilism is not an option than atheism. I think reason can be an ally of Christian faith in removing the false stumbling blocks modernity has put in the path to faith.

 

Plantinga’s book is of that nature. That is, it does not seem to be an exercise in critical rationalism (a lá Popper) or even foundationalism but an exercise in Reformed epistemology. According to Plantinga, it can be shown rationally that belief in God is rationally justified basic belief that needs no proof (like belief in other minds) and that so far, anyway, nothing true in philosophy or science has undermined belief in God.

 

Plantinga’s basic argument can be summed up this way: All the alleged scientific and philosophical arguments against belief in God and miracles are presuppositional and perspectival. Nothing that is truly scientific about science, for example, undermines belief in God or miracles. All that atheists can base allegedly scientific arguments against God on are philosophical, “worldviewish,” metaphysical add ons to science that carry no more weight than belief in God itself. The same can be said for miracles. Nothing about either Newtonian science or quantum physics really conflicts with belief in miracles. All the objections raised against miracles, including those by modern naturalistic theologians (e.g., Bultmann), are of a non-scientific nature.

 

Ultimately, what Plantinga is demonstrating step-by-step, very logically, is that there is no real conflict between real science and Christian theism, including miracles but only between naturalism and Christian theism and that not only is naturalism not essential to science, it is actually in conflict with science!

 

Now, as I said, all I really want to do here is recommend Plantinga’s book. I’m not going to get into the details of his arguments. I happen to think they are valid. But I do want to mention one specific point he makes on pages 52-54. In this section of Chapter 2 “Evolution and Christian Belief” Plantinga asks (and answers) “Why Do People Doubt Evolution?” Here he suggests that one major reason is because leading evolutionists have wrongly linked evolution with naturalism such that (they have implied if not outrightly stated) the two are inseparable. Leading evolutionary theorists and popularizers of evolution have wrongly taught that in order to accept evolution one must reject God as playing any role in designing and guiding the processes of emergence of life forms. Because this idea, that either atheism or deism is necessary for belief in evolution, has caught on, the believing public has to a very large extent reacted against evolution. “The vast majority of Americans are Christians, and many more (some 88 or 90 percent, depending on the poll you favor) believe in God. But when that choir of experts repeatedly tell us that evolution is incompatible with belief in God, it’s not surprising that many people come to believe that evolution is incompatible with belief in God, and is therefore an enemy of religion.” (p. 53)

 

Anyone who knows anything about Plantinga and his careful, precise, step-by-step way of arguing a point knows that I cannot begin to do justice to his arguments (stated overly simply above) here. I strongly recommend that people read the book; in my opinion, it completely clears away the rubble of false stumbling blocks to faith in God and miracles put there by naturalistic scientists, philosophers and theologians. It does not and does not intend to “prove” the existence of God or miracles. But it demonstrates that there is a large element of fideism involved in the arguments against God’s existence and miracles. There are, in other words, identifiable unsupported presuppositions smuggled into the arguments against them. Plantinga reveals what they are and shows they are not necessary to the integrities of science, philosophy or theology.

 

I’m sure someone will be tempted to remind me (or tell me, as if I didn’t know) that Plantinga is a Calvinist. Indeed. He’s even a supralapsarian! And he implies that all Christians (meaning, of course, all real Christians) embrace meticulous providence. (He quotes from the Heidelberg Catechism as if that were the doctrinal standard for all Christians.) But, I have never said or implied that Calvinists are wrong about everything; I have learned much from and appreciated the writings of many Calvinist authors and theologians. It’s the aggressive Calvinists who teach (directly or indirectly) that only Calvinism is authentic, biblical Christianity that I oppose. I also oppose Calvinism as it relates to soteriology, but that’s not the subject of Plantinga’s book and his arguments are not tied to it.

 

Now, as often, I have to stop and tell a story. I’ve lived long enough in this world of theology to have a lot of them to tell! (I could tell, for example, about the two world class theologians who argued with each other standing right in front of me. One of them was drunk and cursed the other one out. Or I could tell about the world class theologian who said very publically about theology “After all, it’s all just guess work.”) One time I saw and heard Plantinga attempt to engage in “dialogue” with Paul Holmer, a Wittgensteinian fideist or at least postliberal theologian. Never have I witnessed a better example of “two ships passing in the night.” It was an amazing spectacle of the proverbial “whale” and “elephant” attempting to meet. Two giants of Christian thought and they might as well have each been speaking in tongues to each other. Very obviously, neither one could make any sense of the other one because of their radically different presuppositions and methods of thinking and talking about God. For example, in true Kierkegaardian fashion, for Holmer, God can never be an object. It’s not just that we should never “make” God into an object; God cannot be an object so that when we attempt to talk about God in objective language we are not talking about God. Absolutely no light was shed on the subject of God or theology in that failed attempt at dialogue—except that there are, unfortunately, apparently, incommensurable ways of thinking about God and “God-talk” in contemporary Christian theology. And the problem for me was that I could sympathize with both. Cognitive dissonance to the max!

 

 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

ADDENDUM

* * * * * * * * * * * *

 

 

*John Caputo wrote an article that basically said that it is harder to prove ones atheology than it is that of faith. That the burden of proof for unbelief is so extensive that a true atheism essential is nonexistent - Towards a Radical Theology, Not a Radical Atheism: A Review of Modern Atheism, Atheology and Divine Inexistence:

"I think, and Watkin seems to agree, that there are no non-circular arguments against the existence of God, if by God we mean a being outside space and time. If that is what a radical atheism would mean, there is no such thing (243, n.3). What resources could we ever marshal to show what there is not in a world beyond space and time? If it is "difficult" enough to try to prove that something is there, it is even harder to prove there is not."

 

- R.E. Slater
 

 

 For Further Reference See Also:

 

 

Differences between Evolutionary Creationism

and Darwinian Scientific Naturalism

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/01/differences-between-evolutionary.html

 

 

 

 

 

Emergent Christianity and a Calvinistic Philosopher's Assertion

for Theism and Evolution (re Alvin Plantinga)

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/12/calvinistic-philosopher-asserts-theism.html

 

Adam Bird for The New York Times. The

philosopher Alvin Plantinga, whose new

book is called “Where the Conflict Really

Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism.”

 

Reviewing Thomas Oord's "Revisionary Postmodernism and the Christian Faith"

The endless Nautilus of Postmodernism

After reading Thomas Jay Oord's piece on revisionary postmodernism (written 2 years ago in March 2010) I thought to myself how amazingly helpful those insights would've been to my personal journey over the past 12 years if I had had some kind of knowledge and understanding back then of the different kinds of postmodernism being banter about and promoted. However, it wasn't postmodernism that was at issue, but the knuckleheads I was paying attention to and trying to discern by their insights and decisions they were making while demanding highhandedly the immediate relinquish of all previous doctrinal commitments without communal assent and accord as allowed within the normal forums of discussion and debate.

Quizzically, those armchair philosophers had it both right and wrong. Right, in that postmodernism is a real event beginning back during the dissettling days of the Vietnam War (cf. The Day America Died & the Birth of Postmodernism) when so many teenagers and young twenty-somethings were dying by the hundreds every day for years and years. One of these kids could've been myself except that by the time I was draftable the war was in its finally year. And for the fact that my draft number just managed to be a hair's breath out-of-reach of the cutoff point (not that I didn't seriously consider accepting the Air Force Academy's offer to be trained and to fly for them a year earlier).

Wrong, in that those same quasi-philosopher's never came forward to tell us exactly what flavor, or kind, of postmodernism they were espousing (largely because I suspect they didn't know themselves - though should have. Or in the least had been more humble about their ignorance as our specially annointed enlightened ones). And as they spouted-and-touted this-way-and-that about doctrinal issues it would've been a help to people such as myself if they had just told us what they were trying to do and accomplish instead of demanding all to follow without rhyme-or-reason. But, on the other hand, there was a very good chance that the problem lay with my boneheadedness and stubborn need for a fuller explanation than the short, cryptic ones I was receiving in public. I had grown comfortable in my Christian faith and had lost sight of the fact that every now-and-again it demands new ways and means that should not be confused with heresy. For surely wasn't I ever taught in the watchwords of reproof and rebuff? In either case, an impasse had been reached, and mostly it was mine when I look back upon those very quixotic days in perplexion and alarm, assurance and wisdom.

So I had the double (or even triple) task of trying to (i) discern how church doctrine would change one theme at a time (and I could see right away that it was going to be total and comprehensive - as you've come to discover through the reading of this blog these past 18 months). While at the same time trying to (ii) retain faithfulness to Scripture and not to a movement of some kind (whatever its name or label). What I didn't realize was that there was a third task hidden amongst the rest requiring even further distillment per (iii) the kind or type of postmodernism that was being espoused (for in reality there was more than one kind, though I knew it not, thinking postmodernism was all "one-and-the-same").

And so yes, it was all very confusing and oftentimes created strong emotional, or visceral, reactions within me.... Positively, I knew they were on to something. But negatively, it was a mish-mash of eclectic posturing and positioning. And it was being preached in a high-handed, in-your-face, suck-it-up, take-it-or-hit-the-road-Jack, smug-and-inflammatory attitude. Which I suspect was occurring because of the fierce public backlash being experienced. And after a while you just get numb to criticism and simply push on as best you can. If it required austerity, then fine. If emotional withdrawal, ok, so be it. But, by one-way-or-another, the Gospel of Jesus needed to be preached. Even though this was not something you would expect to find from the pastoral, shepherding staff and supporting boards of your newly elected church when all first seemed roses and daisies.

Of course, part of the dilemma was the fact that they were all so young. And so terrifically idealistic and prideful over the "secret" truths that they themselves knew that no one else could know unless allowed into the inner sanctums of their cliche'd societies. Added to this dilemma was the fact that age and generational discrimination was rampant so that the older men and women of the church were not allowed in unless they first signed off on the teachings of the church as the church was then envisioning them (they seemed to change by the year). Added to this was the feeling that many of us "older" Christians were suspect of being unable to adapt and change, preferring the older kinds of ingrained traditions that we grew up... consequently, a younger variety of naivete reigned. Finally, added to all of this was the combative invitation that welcomed all to the show - but sadly, not to any discussion, dissent, or veto of it. To do so was to be labelled an outcast within the fellowship with little hope of input except to invite estrangement due to our previously inculcated Evangelical short-sightedness (for such I was, and glad for the title at the time). Paradoxically, this also exactly described the church's inner-circle as well... they were shortsighted and naive themselves. Though they had parts of postmodernism and Emergent Christianity right, it was still all one big giant puzzle requiring years of study and theological posturing until the miscreant pieces could fall into place - both up and down. On paper it looked good. But in public it was being received badly. And in dissemination it was a battle.

Which is what I've been attempting to correct in Relevancy22 as I sift through the maze-like portions of this blog working out what had become of my past 35 years of church history and its more recent postmodern regeneration of itself to the ill-knowledge and tardy recognition of its faithful flocks and congregants. Nor was this task made any easier when turning to my more conservative brethren who had no clues as to what was going on... nor did they wish to. It was all too easy to leave behind while casting stones backwards in our direction and making very loud, vociferous, statements of self-righteous denial and condemning anathemas.

And so, there I was. Caught in between. Standing in the middle unable to turn right-or-left, and finding no knowledgeable help at hand to guide me. First, I didn't know the questions I needed to ask. Second, I didn't know who to listen too (apparently neither! LOL). And thirdly, it was all so new that what appeared to be cultic in fact turned into a rebirth of the Gospel quite unlike what was found during the past 2000 years of the church. And because no one could find "any instance of postmodernism previously occurring in church history" (pun intended) than it was assumed that this new Emergent movement had to be cultic - or at the least an aberrant sect of some doubtful kind. But never to vie in form and operation as a progenitor of mainline Christian orthodoxy! "Oh! How wrong I was!" What it was lacking was absorption into the public purview. A process that would require exactly the kinds of feelings and emotions I was going through over so many long years from dissent to amazement. My awakening and final sealing only awaited its much maligned reception upon the publication of an obscure book entitled Love Wins, by Rob Bell, which immediately relived my own previous spiritual journey publically. From that point forward I began to make my choices and thus, began writing of mine own evolving journey (for isn't an emergent faith exactly that? Intensely personal with intensely personal responses and repercussions?).

What few Emergent Christian books I could find at the time were not particularly enlightening - at least at first. Nor was the Internet in 1999-2006 at the stage of information delivery that it has now become (which is now my primary medium for help and content). On the plus side, the Emergents that I knew were all saying the right things but it just wasn't sitting right to its newest inductees (fellow knuckleheads like myself. LOL) unused to criticizing their beloved church through the positive language of faith renewal held under the guise of criticizing one's roots of Evangelicalism or Denominationalism. Though truly, I little realized how much the Evangelical church (and progressive denominational churches) had changed over its past 35 years. Espousing not the Gospel of Jesus, but some form of its own subcultural values and dogmas ("conservatism" or "progressive liberalism") though couched within that same Gospel of Jesus. And on the minus side, all non-Emergents had come to find themselves judging Christianity's newest fellowship with a severely critical eye which resulted in saying all kinds of things that were not true and unkind about the body of Christ. The rhetoric on both sides was both deafening and defeating. Peace was not in the air amongst God's children. And it hurt to watch it being played out publically.

Postmodernism has many varieties

But this newest segment of Christianity (described as Emergent Christianity) had staying power - evidencing the mighty work and protection of the Holy Spirit who somehow kept it moving forward - incredible as it seemed. If ever a peaceful sit-in, or demonstrable protest by good deeds, ever led so willfully and successfully, so it was with Emergence Christianity. Leading by prayer, grace, mercy and forgiveness to the forgotten, the neglected, the abandoned, found along the highways and byways of life's 2-laned, dirt roads. Jesus fellowships began to minister their way into their own rebirthed version of themselves. Showing little regard to the rigid observance of Evangelic or Denominational decorum as they marched forth on servant's knees to the unwashed masses of humanity. The spirit and temperament was awesome to behold.

And it is only now, years later (as this blog can testify to), that in hindsight the issues confronting the postmodern day church have become better understood and received. That a calm is beginning to settle into it through a latent repentant recognition of the larger-than-life issues that were being missed when squabbling about for our subcultural religious planks and platforms. Whether churches are Emergent or not, those churches and fellowship groups that are listening and praying are following in like suit of humility and obedience - even some of our Evangelic brethren, in one aspect or another, that were so loud at first in their protestations. Perhaps not to the degree one would wish. Nor at the quickening pace desired. But I suspect that in time (or by the roll calls of death and societal irrelevance) the fellowship of God's body will repent one-community-at-a-time until the Spirit of God has leavened the people of God with the gospel of Jesus just as yeast leavens itself throughout a loaf of bread. Or as a mustard seed grows to great height and breadth, starting out tiny at first and becoming a place where the many varieties of the birds of the air may settle into its branches. Or as a mountain of trouble may be removed by the apportionment of a loving and gracious faith. God will not be defeated. This is the mystery and the majesty of His glorious Name.

And so, when reading through Oord's March 2010 article (below) I quickly realized that nearly every one of the themes of revisionary postmodernism had in some way been heavy on my heart and soul. So much so that as bread requires kneading and pounding to form and rise, so too did I feel the same confluences under the Holy Spirit (at least I'm pretty sure I felt the "pounding" part!). Since the inception of this blog, I have unwittingly worked through as many of these themes as possible not realizing that what I was doing was fleshing out the much larger framework of "Revisionary Postmodernism" (well, admittedly I kinda did as we've explored postmodernism more than once here within this blog's postings. Just not revisionary postmodernism... until now). While at the same time we've investigated (amongst others) the juxtapositioned extremes of deconstructivist, liberal, or relativistic postmodernism. (It should also be mentioned that David Ray Griffin had coined the earlier term "Reconstructive Postmodernism." Which theme Thomas Jay Oord takes up in his "Revisionary Postmodernism" explorations).

For apparently, most of my real-life, experiential postmodernism seems to have  come under the requisite deconstructivist  kind (though never the relevatistic kind). One that I admitted but never liked. And largely chaffed under it. Not that I don't believe that every new system must have a deconstructive element within it to identify the why's and wherefore's of its separation from its previous contemporaries. Deconstruction is necessary for any ideology to grow and expand just as it is necessary in the believer's life when first becoming a Christian and examining our lives and finding ourselves wanting in the flesh and devoid of God's Spirit... separated as we were, from the will, and fellowship, of the living God. Whose redemption draws nigh to us through Jesus His Son, the very Incarnate Personage of the Triune Trinity. Savior. Redeemer. Immanuel. And King of Kings both now and forevermore.

That said, by nature I'm a reconstructivist that is willing to deconstruct where necessary, but not so as to linger overlong in abject unknowing, or in  over harsh criticism of God's faithful remnant and spell bound brotherhood. Likewise, I have always considered the apophatic tag forced on Emergent Christianity as unfair. Under revisionary postmodernism I find that I can be gladly rid of that label while keeping my Emergent Christianity healthily intact. And since philosophy isn't my bag, I've been very glad for the level-headedness shown by our perceptive process theologians who have done a yeoman's job standing in the vanguard for us. True, I may not exactly be a devotee of theirs, but they have convinced me enough to move towards a kind of benevolent process thought and away from the guarded stoicism found in classical theism. Towards something of a middling ground (or synthetic position) we've been describing as relational theism (but not of the panentheistic kind, though I more-or-less understand the usage of that appendage both rightly and wrongly as we've examined the quantum physics claims of creational inception).

So, please enjoy this article on postmodernism's features and warrants. Because I have found it to be a very enlightening declaration of just what kind of postmodernist we might strive towards that seems to fit - at least for myself - a good many of the theological platforms that we have been declaring here at Relevancy22. For me, postmodernism was never the issue. However, its type and portrayal was. Along with all the rhetoric that therein occurred. My journey has ended - I am glad to say. And a new one now begins. One that requires telling of my evolving (or emerging) journey hopefully to the benefit of many others as similarly confused as I was once myself.

And with that, I believe we'll be able to use these thoughts for some directional guidance and Christian level-headedness. Please enjoy. And please receive my sincere apologies for this overlong introduction. But when confronted by deeply significant, and foundational pieces of thought, I many times find it helpful to provide a little personality into the academic words less we miss their deep, foundational importance. Humbling as they are. Thank you again for following along. And to all those fellow knuckleheads out there be thankful for our God's all gracious, and loving patience, towards us. And for delivering us from our religious pride and zeal. A sad reality that continues even unto this day as it did in Jesus' day of ministry and reform. We are all in this together. And must never loose sight of the value of community couched within individual well being and sustenance. May God's peace and mercy be upon all His children and upon humanity in general this day. Amen.

R.E. Slater

December 7, 2012

Reclaiming the Past. Imagining a Future:

Revisionary Postmodernism

http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/reclaiming_to_move_ahead_revisionary_postmodernism/#.UMJv_rc8enc.facebook

by Thomas Jay Oord

March 15, 2012

The final postmodern tradition of the four I identify as most prominent may prove

most helpful for Christians in our emerging world. It revisions reality by drawing

from a wide spectrum of resources.

The final postmodern tradition of the four I identify as most prominent may prove most helpful for Christians in our emerging world. It revisions reality by drawing from a wide spectrum of resources.

 

Growing a beautiful garden is an art. Exceptional gardeners draw from a wealth of wisdom to nurture their plants to survive and thrive. Some elements of garden growing are nonnegotiable: seeds, water, nutrients, sunlight. Other elements arise from tried and true methods that, while not necessary, have been proven time and again to produce beautiful gardens. And the best gardeners seek novel gardening insights and resources that enhance their horticultural husbandry. After all, even the art of gardening changes.

Similar to good gardeners, revisionary postmodernists identify the nonnegotiables of life, draw from past wisdom, and incorporate novel ideas as they propose a credible postmodern worldview.

Like other postmodern traditions, revisionary postmodernism overcomes or transcends features of modernism.

But revisionary postmodernism also criticizes other postmodern traditions.

The remainder of this essay sketches out some features of revisionary postmodernism.


Constructing a New Worldview -

Revisionary postmodernists accept the project of constructing a worldview adequate for our time. In this, they distinguish themselves from deconstructionists. Espousing some worldview or another is inescapable. Instead of fooling ourselves, say revisionists, we should propose a worldview that seems best to account for life in all its dimensions.

Revisionary postmodernists reject, however, the idea that we have a certain center or sure foundation upon which to build. Our worldviews will always be "on the way," partial, and in need of further revision. We must always be prepared to recast, generalize, and adapt a postmodern worldview to new experiences and information. Revisionary postmodernist seek to do so with humility. Know-it-alls need not apply.


Embracing those at the Margins -

Modernity failed to consider the experiences of those at the margins (e.g., women, ethnic minorities). It failed to account for animal experience. And it failed to consider the essential role of divine action or providence. These and other modern failures resulted in the loss of a holistic perspective on realit

The worldview revisionary postmodernists offer is intended to account for the voices of those at the margins and the mainstream. Revisionists seek to account for a variety of sensibilities, including religious, scientific, ecological, liberationist, economic, and aesthetic.

They seek a story big enough and adequate enough to include everyone. This story appreciates and promotes diversity and difference.

The “other” is not reduced to the self. Discerning tolerance is a moral imperative, and wisdom with regard to difference is crucial.


The Limits of Language -

Revisionary postmodernists share to a large degree the deconstructionist’s suspicion of language. Language is slippery, even if often helpful and necessary.

Revisionary postmodernists argue, however, that language is not the only or even the most important lens on reality. Rather, experience is prior to and more basic than language. In fact, most experience is nonlinguistic.


Experiential Nonnegotiables -

When constructing a worldview, we should privilege those beliefs that we inevitably presuppose in our experience. These beliefs are the bottom layer of experience we all share. These beliefs include the idea that some things are better than others, the notion that we are free to some degree, the notion that an external world exists beyond us, the idea that some events are caused by others, etc. We inevitably presuppose various beliefs in our day-to-day living. I call these beliefs “experiential nonnegotiables.”

Revisionary postmodernist, David Ray Griffin, calls these inevitable beliefs, “hard-core commonsense notions.” We cannot help presupposing these notions in the way we live our lives, he says. We are guilty of self-contradiction if we adopt a theory or worldview that denies them. Any scientific, philosophical, or theological theory is irrational to the extent that it contradicts whatever notions we inevitably presuppose in practice.[1] Common sense counts.


Overcoming Relativism -

I noted in earlier blog posts that some postmodern traditions result in radical relativism – either individual or communal. Deconstructive postmodernism is most prone to extreme relativism. Some postmodern traditions reject any basis for believing that one worldview corresponds to all of reality better than others do.

The experiential nonnegotiables of revisionary postmodernism, however, allow one to overcome radical relativism. These notions are features of existence we all share. In affirming this, revisionary postmodernism continues the premodern and modern conviction that at least some universal standards exist.


Ways of Knowing -

Revisionary postmodernists join feminists in arguing that knowledge is not confined to logic or facts obtained through our five senses. It affirms the view of Michael Polanyi that personal knowledge must play a role in our attempts to make sense of the world.

Knowledge in revisionary postmodernism typically resides between certainty about absolutes and the disarray of relativism. Catherine Keller suggests that the middle ground between absolute and relative is the postmodern virtue of being resolute.


Ecology and Purpose -

Revisionary postmodernists agree with ecological postmodernists that living things are more than mindless machines. Creaturely freedom, purpose, and intentionality are real. All creatures possess intrinsic value.

Many revisionary postmodernists also adopt the theory of theistic evolution, because it affirms a necessary place both God and evolution in an adequate explanation of creation. One can affirm both the main contours of contemporary science and the belief that God originally and continually creates.


Centrality of Community –

Revisionary postmodernists agree with narrative postmodernists that creatures are not isolated individuals. Community is essential. An adequate postmodern worldview speculates that all creatures -- both human and nonhuman -- are interrelated. We live in a relational world, and who we are is largely determined by our relations with others. With the Apostle Paul, revisionists argue that we are members of one body.

We must affirm a necessary role both for the individual and community, argue revisionists. Humans might best be called “community-created-individuals” or “individuals-in-community.” Bono of U2 says it well: “We’re one, but we’re not the same.”

Revisionary postmodernists agree with the conclusion Bono draws from this insight: “We’ve got to carry each other.” We are designed for community, and our individual well-being is caught up in - and largely dependent upon - the well-being of the whole.


Progress is Possible but not Inevitable -

Modernists celebrated what they thought would be the triumphant march of science to make the world a better place. They often equated advances in technology with overall progress in making the world better. Full-speed-ahead is always right, say modernists.

Modern “progress” has caused so much unnecessary destruction, however. E. E. Cummings called progress a “comfortable disease.” It’s a disease wreaking havoc on humans, nonhumans, and all of planet earth.

Like other postmodern traditions, revisionary postmodernism denies that progress is inevitable or that technology always results in good.

Revisionists believe that genuine progress is possible, however. We are not doomed to the same old self-destructive rut. Transformation can occur.

Revisionary postmodernists join narrative postmodernists by looking to ancient resources for wisdom about how best to proceed into the future.

But they are also open to emergent insights that might help facilitate the experience of abundant life. John Wesley’s optimism of grace fits the revisionary mindset: “the best is yet to be.”

Progress toward a better world is possible by divine grace and proper creaturely responses.


God –

An important plank in revisionary postmodernism is its doctrine of God. Revisionary postmodernists reject the modern tendency to think God could be completely comprehended. We see through a glass darkly.

But it also rejects absolute negative theology and the utter silence of apophatic theology. We know in part.

Revisionists are in many ways pre-modern in their beliefs, because they affirm that God is actual, active, and interacting in the world. God really lives and truly loves.

Revisionary postmodernists often call God “relational” to account for the give-and-receive relationships God enjoys with others. The invisible Spirit works in all creation, and we have direct access to this Spirit. Our non-sensory interaction with God and sensory inferences from nature provide awareness of right and wrong, true and false, beautiful and ugly. For in God we live and move and have our being.

Many revisionary postmodernists look to doctrines of the Trinity to ground their emphasis upon divine relatedness.

Others focus upon the relational God who by nature relates with all creation. God is not unmoved.

Revisionary postmodernists argue that beliefs about God should not be relegated to their own domain while beliefs about the world function without reference to God. We cannot neatly separate the secular and the sacred. A revisionary postmodern worldview reserves an essential place for both creatures and the Creator.

The interaction of God and creation is central to understanding reality. Some call this view “panentheism.” Others call it “participation” or “cooperation.” I like the word “theocosmocentrism.”


Conclusion

We live in a new world. Postmodernism reminds us of that. Revisionary postmodernism promotes the task of constructing a new worldview to account for truths in the widest range of experience. It places God and creation front and center.

The philosopher-poet-environmentalist, Wendell Berry, warns that in this new world...

“we have reached a point at which we must either consciously desire and choose and determine the future of the earth or submit to such an involvement in our destructiveness that the earth, and ourselves with it, must certainly be destroyed.”[2]

Berry’s prophetic words beckon us to reckon with our past, our present, and our possible future.

Many revisionary postmodernists agree with Berry. Some dare to hope that a better way of thinking and acting is now possible. But this better way must involve being, acting, and thinking differently.

---

[1] David Ray Griffin, Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001).

[2] Wendell Berry, “The Loss of the Future,” in The Long-Legged House (New York: Harcourt, 1969), 46.

Wisdom, Choices and Temptations

 

 

 

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