Title: Postmodernism, critical theory and emancipation
Abstract: Postmodernism constitutes the dominant intellectual force of late capitalism. Though a highly loaded and contested conceptual term, postmodern social theory is characterised by, among other things, an epistemological and historical rejection of ‘metanarratives’, a thoroughgoing critique of reason and embrace of subjectivism. The ultimate result of which, I argue, is an ‘epistemological quietism’ that, if accepted, undermines emancipatory social theory. This paper, in an effort to preserve emancipatory social theory, explicates this tendency within postmodernism. After illuminating the historical and theoretical bases of postmodernism, I explore how, despite claims to a radical subjectivity, it actually amounts to a philosophical ‘neo-conservatism’. Postmodernism, through its totalising rejection of universalism, reason and truth, is actually epistemologically committed to a rejection of political commitment and the development of objective critical standards. Though proclaiming concern for subjectivity and existence, this ‘epistemological quietism’ actually engenders in postmodernism a ‘vow of silence’ that undermines political engagement and emancipatory theory. Though able to engage in perpetual negation – exemplified conceptually and methodologically by the Derridian notion of ‘deconstruction’ – postmodernism ultimately acts to reify the status quo, insulating it from penetrating critique. The paper concludes with a defence of modernity’s emancipatory potentialities through the lens of Habermasian critical theory.
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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