Postmodern Philosophical Critique and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Higher Education (Critical Studies

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Editorial Reviews

Postmodern theory in it quest to vanquish systemic modernism, has ignored the contributions of critical postmodern and the dark side of the virtual postmodern hyperreality. We do not advocate the dismissive of all grand narratives, and we think that ethical standards can be worked out in networks of local discourse. Critical postmodernism is also "a play of differences of the micropolitical movements and impulses of ecology, feminism, multiculturalism, and spirituality without and unifying demand for theoretical integration or methodological consistency" p.

Critical postmodern theory is a middle between critical modern, critical pedagogy, critical feminism, critical hermeneutics, critical-ethnomethod, critical-ecology, and post-colonial theories p. Instead of Baudrillard, we invoke Debord's analysis of the spectacle of late capitalism, and its Frankenstein marriage of postindustrial global supply chains with sweatshops, and the fetish of postmodern consumer identity formations facilitated by NikeTown, Disneyfication, McDonaldization, and Las Vegatization.

What does this mean for praxis. For me, it means the pursuit of non-violent alternatives to the violence of predatory capitalism, deconstructing spectacle, and resisting premodern fundamentalism. Praxis is taking action, not just writing more theory. That is for pretenders to critical or critical postmodern. There needs in addition to theory, to be a life style of action, more than cynicism and skepticism, there needs, in my view, to be action. Mine may differ from yours.

In whatever praxis, disabuse yourself of the notion that postmodern is without ethical or critical purchase or answerability. Volume 5 Issue 3 pp Australian Feminist Law Journal. Paper rejected by Organization Science. Guest editor for the issue. Before the Story Can be Told: What does it mean to be anti-sweatshop and anti-globalism in the Post World?

Toward a Wholistic Animal and Vegetable Consciousness. Storytelling at Administrative Science Quarterly: Warding off the postmodern barbarians. Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of black feminist thought. Social Problems, 33 6 , This is call for a critical postmodern ecology. Originally appeared in the Voice Literary Supplement, February, Where critical postmodern theory meets practice: Working in the intersection of instrumental, social, and cultural education.

Studies in Continuing Education, 19 1 , Building a critical postmodern theory of adult learning community. Critical, postmodern, and liberation perspectives. Meet me behind the curtain: Critical theory and educational research. The geography of computer writing spaces: A critical postmodern analysis. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Purdue University, West Lafayette. Contributions to a New Paradigm. The book has a focus on critical postmodern theory as a new paradigm.

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Postmodern Dictionary on line. Deleuze and Guattari's Social Schizophrenia. Tamara, Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science - Tamara and its subtitle, Critical Postmodern Organization Science applies critical and postmodern theory, along with critical pedagogy and postcolonialism to the social milieu that is organization science. Building communities of difference: Higher education in the twenty-first century.

Postmodernism and critical theory in higher education: Implications for research and practice. Handbook of theory and research, pp. Multiculturalism in higher education: An organizational framework for analysis. This article suggest that a critical postmodern organizational perspective offers significant ways to asses an institution of higher education's effectiveness. The first part of the article outlines what is meant by "critical post-modernism" and then delineates a definition of multiculturalism in higher education based on the work of Henry Giroux, Michael Foucault, and bell hooks.

Philip Wexler, religion, and the transformation of social-education theory.

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Postmodernism is defined as a set of quite different social science theories. Some are highly affirmative, looking at positive aspects of complexity, progress, and technologization of life and work.

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Others are more skeptical looking at the dark side of claims of progress since 16th century Enlightenment, and the impact of technology, such as in biotechology, and cyberization. There are quite radical positions by Baudrillard claiming all is simulacra , and Lyotard claiming incredulity to all modern narratives of science, progress, etc. Less radical are postmodern approaches that combine with Critical Theory Frankfurt School, before Habermas.

Critical postmodernism contends some modern narratives, such as ethics, is worth retaining, while managerialism manager's monologic perspective , for example, needs to be balanced with labor and environmental perspectives. Boje, Feb 20 Critical Postmodern Ring has been growing steadily as people add more links. Most are sites have some text explaining their critical postmodern position. This site is a member of WebRing. To browse visit Here. Boje, Feb 20 Was there ever a pre-postmodern consensus about history, identity, core cultural values? A Report on Knowledge.

Postmodernism as a movement in arts and culture corresponding to a new configuration of politics and economics, "late capitalism": Postmodernity as a phase of knowing and practice, abandoning the assumptions, prejudices, and constraints of modernism to embrace the contradictions, irony, and profusion of pop and mass culture. The grand linear narrative of art history and Western cultural history is exposed as ideological and constructed for class interests.

If the jargon of our times - postmodernity, postcoloniality, postfeminism - has any meaning at all, it does not lie in the popular use of the 'post' to indicate sequentiality - after -feminism; or polarity - anti -modernism.

These terms that insistently gesture to the beyond, only embody its restless and revisionary energy if they transform the present into an expanded and ex-centric site of experience and empowerment. The wider significance of the postmodern condition lies in the awareness that the epistemological 'limits' of those ethnocentric ideas are also the enunciative boundaries of a range of other dissonant, even dissident histories and voices - women, the colonized, minority groups, the bearers of policed sexualities.

The very concepts of homogenous national cultures, the consensual or contiguous transmission of historical traditions, or 'organic' ethnic communities - as the grounds of cultural comparativism - are in a profound process of redefinition. Postmodern historians and philosophers question the representation of history and cultural identities: Art works are likewise caught up in the problem of representation and mediation--of what, for whom, from what ideological point of view?

History requires representation, mediation, in narrative, a story-form encoded as historical.

Dissolution of the transparency of history and tradition: Can we get to the unmediated referents of history? History and identity politics: Walter Benjamin's recognition of the non-neutrality of history:. Hence empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers. Historical materialists know what that means. Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate.

According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession.

Postmodern Philosophical Critique and the Pursuit of by Roger Mourad

They are called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism From "Theses on the Philosophy of History" in Illuminations, ed. Pastiche and parody of multiple styles: No individualism or individual style, voice, expressive identity. All signifiers circulate and recirculate prior and existing images and styles.

The postmodern in advertising: Po-Mo as late capitalism: History has become one of the styles; historical representations blend with nostalgia. The information function of the media would thus be to help us to forget, to serve as the very agents and mechanisms of our historical amnesia" Jameson. Culture on Fast Forward: Time and history replaced by speed, futureness, accelerated obsolescence. Master Narratives and metanarratives of history, culture and national identity as accepted before WWII American-European myths of progress.

Myths of cultural and ethnic origin accepted as received. Progress accepted as driving force behind history. The following works spanning philosophy, art theory, architecture, and cultural theory have played a major role in defining the discourse and arguments of this field of study, or are useful syntheses for orientation and overviews.

In all the discourse, we need to differentiate the terms and concepts of the postmodern as a condition of a historical era or postmodernity as simply what we are in whether we know it or not , and postmodernism reflected in movements with varying levels of intention and self-awareness , When interpreters of culture discuss postmodern strategies or features in architecture, literature, philosophy, and the arts, this usually includes uses of irony, parody, sampling, mixing "high" and "low" popular cultural sources, horizontal vs.

The Postmodern and Globalization From Homi Bhabha, " The Location of Culture " If the jargon of our times - postmodernity, postcoloniality, postfeminism - has any meaning at all, it does not lie in the popular use of the 'post' to indicate sequentiality - after -feminism; or polarity - anti -modernism.

Postmodernity, History, Mediation, and Representation Crises in the Representation of History Postmodern historians and philosophers question the representation of history and cultural identities: Multiculturalism, competing views of history and tradition. Walter Benjamin's recognition of the non-neutrality of history: Debord and Baudrillard 2 "the fragmentation of time into a series of perpetual presents" "the erosion of the older distinction between high culture and so-called mass or popular culture" Jameson.

Some features of postmodern styles: Did this ever exist? The Modern and the Postmodern: Contrasting Tendencies The features in the table below are only often-discussed tendencies, not absolutes. In fact, the tendency to see things in seemingly obvious, binary, contrasting categories is usually associated with modernism.

The tendency to dissolve binary categories and expose their arbitrary cultural co-dependency is associated with postmodernism. For heuristic purposes only. All educational uses permitted with attribution and link to this page. Cited and quoted works are the property of the respective owners. Ways of working with the term postmodern. Postmodernity, History, Mediation, and Representation. Crises in the Representation of History Postmodern historians and philosophers question the representation of history and cultural identities: The features in the table below are only often-discussed tendencies, not absolutes.

Suspicion and rejection of Master Narratives for history and culture; local narratives, ironic deconstruction of master narratives: Faith in "Grand Theory" totalizing explanations in history, science and culture to represent all knowledge and explain everything.

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