PART 10 POSTMODERN SOCIAL THEORY

10.1 Background/Overview
Q. What factors led to the emergence of postmodern social theory?
A1 In Seidman’s article, The End of Sociological Theory (1994), he discussed the
distressing condition of sociological theory as having gone astray. It has lost most of
its social & intellectual importance; it is disengaged for the conflicts and public
debates that have nourished it in the past; it has turned inward and is largely self-
referential. He stressed this situation originates, in part, from its central project: the
quest for foundations and for a totalizing theory of science.
A2 West sketches a broad genealogy of what he calls the “new cultural politics of
difference” referring to the challenges to a hegemonic Eurocentric, male dominated,
heterosexist culture by marginalized, disempowered groups. He traces the declining
authority of a European and Anglo-American social elite in the postwar west who
managed to claim universality for their particular, ethnocentric culture and politics. The
social rebellions associated with the counterculture, the New Left, feminism,
lesbians, and gay, and ethnic, and racial minorities along with the Third World
rebellious against Western colonialism, criticized the Enlightenment culture for
perpetuating inequality and oppression in the name of reason and social progress
(cited in Seidman, 1994:7

A3 Power (1990) pinpointed the Frankfurt School as influential to the emergence of

postmodernism. Specifically, he identified the Frankfurt School’s notions and critiques:
 Critique of instrumental reason,
It is an attack on the whole notion of reason as inherently oriented towards the
maintenance of ‘order’ and control. Modernity in this sense is broadly identified with
the Enlightenment tradition rather than with the late 19th and early 20th century
movements in art.
 Critique of meaning and of the subject as the source of that meaning
 Critique of the unity implicit in the Enlightenment concept of reason
It is a process subject to considerable tensions; it gives rise to increasing liberation from
the natural world and to the splintering of culture into discrete spheres such as science.
In the same publication, Power (1995) uses the works of Habermas and
Lyotard for constructing a meaning of postmodern for the concept of organization.
Jurgen Habermas belongs to the second generation of the Frankfurt School, whose
members sought to adopt the co-ordinates of Marxism to address the predicament of the
20th century western culture; the dominant objective of their approach was to confront
the increasing power of instrumental reasons in organizing social life –
rationalization – in Weber’s sense.
Habermas’ critical task was aimed at reconstructing the elements of a communicative
rationality in public life; and decoding the repressive dimensions of this phenomena
and to realize the emancipation of social agents. Habermas critique of systems, the
theoretical approaches to the knowledge of sociology. He questioned the analogy
between social organization and biological organisms which inspires the version of
the functionalist programme being unlimited. He offers a ‘rational reconstruction’ of
the developmental forces in social organization which depends centrally upon a
distinction between the concepts of system and lifeworld.

A4 In Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition (1984), he analyzes knowledge and

distinguishes its types as narrative and scientific. Narrative knowledge stresses the
legitimizing function that myths and stories have played in traditional communities.
Scientific knowledge presents a break with the former since it abandons metaphysical
authority in favor of the ‘facts’. Lyotard claims that the decline of the Enlightenment
concept of reason is due less to a single and balanced splintering of knowledge than to the
growing hegemony of the particular form. Like Habermas, he is troubled by the
domination of technical reason (performativity) and argues that performativity
extends beyond technical pragmatics and is reciprocally related to wealth and the
control of research funds. His critique of the notion of performativity is epitomized by
the image of the computerized society and its implications on the educational system.
Lyotard’s approach centers upon the indeterminancy of organizational systematic. If
classicism is the ‘ideology of form’, postmodernism is the celebration of formless
and undecidable content.

Q. What is postmodernism?
A. Postmodernism is a complicated term, or a set of ideas, it is one that has only emerged
as an area of academic study since the mid-1980s. Postmodernism is hard to define,
because it is a concept that appears in a wide variety of disciplines or areas of study,
including art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion,
and technology. It is hard to locate it temporally or historically, because it is not
clear exactly at what point postmodernism emerges.

From the politicalsciencenotes.com, Postmodernism may be taken to refer to

movements, philosophies or responses to the state of post-modernity, or in reaction
to modernism. Many philosophers, particularly those seeing themselves as being within
the modern project, use post-modernity with the reverse implication: the presumed results
of holding postmodernist ideas. Most prominently this includes Jurgen Habermas and
others who contend that post-modernity represents a resurgence of long running
counter-enlightenment ideas

Q. What is postmodernity?
A1 According to Jameson (1991), Postmodernity (post-modernity or the postmodern
condition) is the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to
exist after modernity. (In this context, "modern" is not used in the sense of
"contemporary", but merely as a name for a specific period in history.) Some schools of
thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century – in the 1980s or early 1990s –
and that it was replaced by postmodernity, while others would extend modernity to cover
the developments denoted by postmodernity, while some believe that modernity ended
after World War II. The idea of the post-modern condition is sometimes characterised as
a culture stripped of its capacity to function in any linear or autonomous state as opposed
to the progressive mindstate of modernism.
A2 For Nilges (2015) Postmodernity can mean a personal response to a postmodern
society, the conditions in a society which make it postmodern or the state of being that is
associated with a postmodern society as well a historical epoch. In most contexts it
should be distinguished from postmodernism, the adoption of postmodern philosophies or
traits in art, literature, culture and society. In fact, today, historical perspectives on the
developments of postmodern art (postmodernism) and postmodern society
(postmodernity) can be best described as two umbrella terms for processes engaged in an
ongoing dialectical relationship the result of which is the evolving culture of the
contemporary world
A3 Hudson (1989_ :139-159) described Postmodernity as characterized in the
international literature as:
 A myth, not in the sense of falsehood but in the sense of a piece of chronopolitical
bric-a-brac. As such, it involves various description of:
 the organization of knowledge & research
 consciousness & sensibility
 values
 culture
 the organization of work & leisure
 patterns of settlement

 A periodization
Those who take postmodernity as a periodizing term are unable to agree when
postmodernity begin whether 100 years or 25 years ago; to be just beginning and to be
still to come; to be now, to be something recently gone; to be a recurrent structural
possibility in determinate periods.
Those who viewed postmodernity as a situation or condition is referring it to many
different ways, such as:
 an experience or a set of modes of experiencing;
 a historical consciousness, that new chronopolitical spaces, new
horizons of expectations, may be becoming available to human
beings;as a sensibility or syndrome which can be characterized as:
a non-totalizing sensibility which refuses traditional unification
and homogenizations
 sensibility which desire complexity and rejoices in antinomian
play; a sensibility which is accepting of disorder, discrepancies,
discontinuities and gaps, which delights in paradoxes and
contradictions and which is prepared to countenance and make
allowance for the unpresentable; a sensibility which refuses a new
equilibrium; a sensibility which respects difference and
heterogeneity, which is attentive to the singular, and the particular
rather than the abstract generic; and a sensibility which marks out
and reverences incommensurable qualities between different areas
 of life, different cultures and centuries, different psychologies and
genders.
Still in line with viewing postmodernity as a periodization, there are those who
considered it as a climate of ideas, attitudes, values. This view is often firmed up by
more precise specification in terms of alleged changes in philosophical stances with
frequent references to:
 the end of humanism and the death of the subject, or, in later
versions, the de-centering of ‘man’ or the subject;
 the end of representation;
 the end of realism or mimesis;
 the end of truth, or the contemporary inability to distinguish
between truth and falsehood, appearance and reality;
 the need to recognize our unavoidable immanence (in language,
society, history, the body) the lack of any transcendent standpoint,
the impossibility of a transcendental signifier;
 the centrality of interpretation, understood as inherently political,
linguistically shaped, rhetorical, contestable and incomplete;
 a new understanding of mathematics as derived from language and
of logic as derivative from metaphor and rhetoric;
 the reorientation of contemporary criticism to the tropes of
discourses.

 As crisis. Among those who viewed postmodernity as a crisis, it includes as a

crisis of authority in (and of) Western European culture; a crisis of values of
Legitimation, of finalities. At the most general level, Lyotard’s term as a crisis of the
metanarratives allegedly characteristic of modernity or even of western culture since the
Renaissance. Alternatively the crisis may be construed as a crisis of the Enlightenment
which questions the benefits of an unqualified rationalism and argues that such
rationalism has had harmful or disintegrating effects, and has led to a more refined
oppression rather than to emancipation.

 As an episteme. Postmodernity is characterized in terms of epistemological

scepticism, antirationalism, antinomianism, pluralism, immanence, relativity,
indeterminancy, discontinuity and disjunction, acceptance of chance, the aleatory,
disorder, and incommensurability.

 As a discourse. Postmodernity as a discourse turns out to mean the theoretical

discourse of structuralist and post-structuralist French critical theory. It is above all
discourse about the subject, the body, desire, and language. On this account Lacan,
Deleuze, Guattari and Lyotard become key figures.

 As a poetic. Alternatively, organizational changes in the nature of aesthetics or of

art objects may be alleged.

 As a retreat. Postmodernity is a retreat from the project or enlightenment of

the project of modernity. On this account postmodernity is associated with the rejection
of the universalism, its belief in equality and in progress, its goal of the realization of
reason in history.

 As a topos. Postmodernity is a cultural space in terms of which large parts of

contemporary culture are discussed and re-evaluated.

 As a project or task. On one account postmodernity as a project would be the

attempt to rethink the democratic universalism of the Enlightenment, individual
and collective self determination, and the goal of realizing reason in history in
pluralist non-totalizing terms. But it might also be argued that postmodernity could be
the task of continuing or reviewing modernity by resisting the concessions to pluralism
the earlier account implies.

A4 Another definition on postmodernity offered by Eagleton (1994) is:

“Postmodernity is a style of thought which is suspicious of classical notions of truth,
reason, identity and objectivity, of the idea of universal progress or emancipation, of
single frameworks, grand narratives or ultimate grounds of explanation. Against
these Enlightenment norms, it sees the world as contingent, ungrounded, diverse,
unstable, indeterminate, a set of disunified cultures or interpretations which breed a
degree of scepticism about the objectivity of truth, history and norms, the givenness
of natures and the coherence of identities are visible in the processes of de-
differentiation, the breakdown of boundaries between social institutions and cultural
spheres, and de-territorialization of national economies and cultures.

A5 Lassman (1989:138-158) observed that accounts in books and literature conflates:

 postmodernity as an alleged new era or epoch after the modern;
 postmodernity as an allege phase of modernism or after modernism
 postmodernity as a new philospohical climate
Thus, it appears that postmodern is confused with postmodernist and postmodernism is
confused with postmodernity in existing literature.

Q. What are the differences between modernity theory and postmodern theory?
A1. Modernity, as an epoch, offers guiding premises of the human sciences:
 the privilege of science as knowledge
 the establishment of foundations
 efforts to elaborate basic premises and concepts into general theories, laws,
models, and explanation
 the mathematization of knowledge
 the separation of facts and values
 the extension of moral & political from sciences
 austere culture of methodological rigor,
 empiricism, and conceptual justification based upon truth claims.

A2 Against this backdrop, postmodern as a social theory, have offered the following key
statements:
 Contesting foundations: the crisis of representation
 Human studies as rhetoric, narrative & critique; social analysis combines
empiricism and moral advocacy
 Post modern social analysis: empirical illustrations

Q. What conditions transformed the postmodernist arguments from a critique of

logocentrism into a set of sociological propositions about postmodern society?
A Gurnah and Scott (1992) opined through the following:
 The declining significance of consumption.
This argument is in fact not so new. It is foreshadowed in the work of neo-Marxist in the
1970’s, notably in Manuel Castella’s influential analysis of urban form and collective
consumption. Likewise, theories of urban industrial society (Tourraine, Bell) have tended
to characterize modern capitalism primarily as a means of consumption.
But the postmodernist implications of this argument have more recently been brought out
by Bauman who considers the following proposition:
In the present-society, consumer product moves steadily into the position of,
simultaneously, the cognitive and moral focus of life, integrative bond of the
society, and the focus of systematic management. In other words, it moves
into the selfsame position which in the past-during the ‘modern’ phase of
capitalistic society-was occupied by work in the form of wage labour. This
means that in our time the individuals are engaged (morally by society,
functionally by the social system) first and foremost as consumers rather
than as producers. (Bauman, 1989:46 cited in Gurnah & Scott, 1992: 147)

 The increasing domination of the symbolic.

This view of the sign over meaning and function is associated above all with the French
sociologist Jean Baudrillard when he said: “today the scene and the mirror no longer
exist; instead, there is a screen and a network” (1983:126). What is now sold and
bought is the sign. The commodity is the image, and the image of the subject into a
perfectly ordered and controlled world; the world of the computer and simulation.

 The decline of class and class struggle and their replacement by diverse lines of
tension (e.g. generational, gender, ethnic, linguistics, etc.).
A key component of this argument is that there no ‘privileged’ points of social cleavage
and no forces into a coherent challenge to the existing social order.

 The intellectual pluralism of postmodernist arguments is imputed to postmodern

society.
Such societies are themselves held to be increasingly unintelligible, a babble or more-or-
less mutually ideology or central authority which maintains order and consensus

1.2 THEMES, FEATURES, CHARACTERISTICS

Q What are some postmodern themes?
A1 Seidman (1992:2) identifies several postmodern themes in the realm of knowledge,
such as the following:
 Disciplinary boundaries are blurring and new interdisciplinary hybrid
knowledges such as lesbian, feminism, & gay studies are moving into the center of
the human studies
 Postmodern knowledge contests disciplinary boundaries to separation of science;
literature, and ideology and the division between knowledge & power.
 Decline of the legitimating power of metanarratives and the decentering of the
subject and the social world as announced by Lyotard’s in his The Postmodern Condition
as a chief theme of the postmodern turn. The shift is described from the Enlightenment’s
notion of the universal mind, a rational knowing subject to the postmodernists multiple
minds, subjects, and knowledge reflecting different social locations and history.

 Theme of a decentered world is pivotal to Foucault. In his The History of

Sexuality, instead of viewing knowledge in terms of ahistorical mind and a language of
truth and enlightenment, he speaks of:
 Dominant & subjugated knowledges
 Multiple subjects and procedures of knowledge
 Interconnection of knowledges to various axes of domination and
resistance.
Instead of science he favors genealogies which are historical-critical analysis tracing the
making of identities, selves, social norms, and institutions which focus on the role of the
medical & human sciences in the shaping of a disciplined society.

A2 Power (1990) also identifies general themes of postmodernism as follows:

 In its most stark and general sense, postmodernism stands for the ‘death of
Reason’.

 It is the rejection of a particular model of reason and the various ontological

commitments perceived to lie at the heart of it. Such a rejection or ‘deconstruction’
extends to a number of philosophical aspects: the unities of representation, of meaning, of
theory, and of self

 Postmodernism is an assault on unity. “Post” comes to express both an ‘end’ of

the former and a radical continuation of it.

 It rejects the concept of reference as a universal relation between forms of

representation such as words/images and an external world.

Q What are postmodern features and characteristics?

A Calhoun (1995) views postmodern, as a new phase of the modern, as a reflection of
late capitalism, has the following features:
 It avoids a tendency to intellectual domination, characteristic of many
Enlightened theories;

 It extols difference/relativism thus fails sharply to make sense of real cultural or

historical specificity;

 It is a kind of pseudohistory as seen in its use of the prefix ‘post’ and the
proliferation of contrasts to putative modernity;

 It posited an end to subjectivity, rendering it universally problematic rather than

addressing the ways in which agency and subjectivity are constructed in specific
historical and cultural situations;

 It views social and cultural changes as departure from previous trends thus
warrants an argument that modernity is dead or dying.

Postmodernism is viewed as a confluence of several partially distinct trends:

 Postmodernism is a rejection of artistic modernism in favor of freeing the
aesthetic from the functional, putting signification, intertextual reference, and self-
reflexivity forward as good.

 Postmodernism as a theoretical and/or critical position derives substantially from

poststructuralism. This is largely a retrospective label for a series of French-led shifts in
cultural, psychological and social theory, notably the critique of subject-centered reason,
monological texts or reading, grand narratives, general truth claims, and the
normalization of Enlightenement rationality. Central players include Derrida, Foucault,
Lyotard, Baudrillard, and various British, American, and Antipodean epigones.

 It is closely related to poststructuralism, in the postmodernist critique of

foundationalism in philosophy and theory. At a minimum, it is an extension of the
Nietzschean and Hedeggerian critique of metaphysics into an attack on all claims to an
external standpoint for judging truth.

 Postmodernism includes sociological, political, and economic claims to identify a

basic transition from modernity to a new stage of (or beyond) history. These variously
emphasize postindustrial, information or knowledge society as the new societal
formation. A new centrality is posited for media, information technology, and the
production of signification (e.g. culture industry) as an end in itself. They figure they
include Bell, Torraine, Toffler, Naisbits) are nor directly apart of the Postmodernism
movement but their arguments have influenced it substantially.

Q What is the postmodern critique to Sociological theory?

A What do sociologists typically understand by the terms postmodernity and
postmodernism? A number of writers (Gurnah & Scott, 1992; Seidman, 1994) suggest the
following list of features of postmodernism as it has come to, or is coming to be
understood by sociologists:
 The rejection of grand narratives
Grand narratives are single-order theories or discourses which attempt to be
comprehensive and inclusive of a wide man cognitive and cultural practices. For the
postmodernists, general theories have not succeeded. Their basis premises, concepts,
and explanatory models, along with their metatheoretical rationales, consistently
have been shown to be local and ethnocentric projections (Turner & Wardell, 1986
cited in Seidman, 1994). When concepts are stretched to cover all times and places or to
be socially inclusive, they have become so contentless as to lose whatever explanatory
value they have. For example, the categories of labor, mode of production, or class
conflict may be useful in explaining 19 th century France or Germany or the United
States and are virtually irrelevant for societies that are more kinship-centered or
politically centered (Baudrillard, 1995, Habermas, 1997 as cited in Seidman, 1994:128).

 Anti-foundationalism.
Foundationalism are world-views which attempt to ground or justify single order theories
in some absolute – e.g. in sense data, transcendental categories of an isolated knowing
subject (Kant), or human communicative communities (Habermas). Such foundationalist
perspectives are spurned by postmodernists. Postmodernism displays what one of its
critics has calls an aversion against the universal (Honneth, 1985).

The critique of sociological theory as a foundationalist discourse has been given ample
attention by Seidman (1994). The search for the right one vocabulary or language that
would mirror the social world, that would uncover the essential structures and dynamic or
laws of society, has been integral to sociological theory. The quest to discover one true
language of the social world, to uncover its laws, general structure, and universal logic,
has been abiding an aim of sociological theory.

In German Ideology, Marx & Engels believed that they had uncovered a universally valid
language of history and society. In their view, the categories of labor, mode of
production, class, class conflict crystallized what they considered to be general theory.

In Division of Labor in Society & in The Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim

proposed the dual categories of collective representation and the social morphology as the
conceptual bases for a universal theory of society.

In The Structure of Social Action and The Social System, Parsons reveal a universal set of
premises and concepts that would unify and guide all social inquiry.
Foundational disputes to date have admitted of little, if any, consensus because the
criteria that guide conceptual decisions seem, in the end, local, heterogeneous. The
search for ultimate or universal grounds for our conceptual strategies should be
abandoned in favor of local, pragmatic justification.
The notion that foundational discourses cannot avoid being local and ethnocentric is
pivotal to what has come to be called postmodernism (Rorty, 1979, 1982, 1991 as
cited in Seidman, 1994). How can knowing subject - who has particular interests and
prejudices by virtue of living in a specific society at a particular historical juncture and
occupying a specific social position defined by his or her class, gender, race, sexual
orientation, and ethnic and religious status - produce concepts, explanations, and
standards of validity that are universally valid? How can we both assert that humans are
constituted by their particular socio-historical circumstances and also claim that they can
escape their embeddedness by creating non-local, universally valid concepts and
standards?

Postmodernism elicits the suspicion that science is tied into the project of Western
modernity. This epistemic suspicion is at the core of postmodernism. Postmodernists
challenge the charge of theory as a foundational discourse.

Aside from this epistemic doubt, there are practical and moral reasons to consider in
assessing the value of the foundational project. Postmodernists view such discourses as
exhibiting a bad faith: concealed in the will to truth is a will to power. To claim there are
universal and objective reasons to warrant a social discourse, to claim that a discourse
speaks the language of truth, is privilege that discourse, its carriers, and its social agenda.

On the other hand, if theorists- as postmodernists- believe that all appeals to universal
standards or justificatory strategies are not ultimately compelling, they will be
forced to offer local moral, social, and political reasons for their conceptual
decisions.

A pragmatic turn has distinct advantages. It expands the number of parties who may
participate more or less equals in a debated about society. When a discourse is judged by
its practical consequences or its moral implications, more citizens are qualified to assess
it by considering its social and moral implications. A pragmatic move, in principle,
implies an active, politically engaged citizenry participating in a democratic public realm.

The critique of attempts to adjudicate between competing cognitive claims from a

position of assumed, or usurped privilege. Within the English-speaking world the best-
known expressions of points (1) to (3) is Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of
Nature (1979) though Rorty has distanced himself from the post-modernist position.
Rorty’s polemic is aimed at the claim of epistemology and by extension Western
philosophy generally, to be able to adjudicate between rival cognitive claims or to play
the role of cultural arbitrator. Rorty attacks the pretensions of the theory of knowledge to
act as cultural arbiter, and recasts philosophy as conversation.

 Anti-Eurocentrism.
The postmodernist critique of grand narratives has also become associated with an
intellectual critique of Western rationality in general, and of its cognitive imperialism and
its excessive self-assurance, and a social critique of the Enlightenment project’ on the
grounds of its cultural parochialism. Thus Heller and Feher identify the notion of the end
of the European project as one of the central assumptions of postmodernists:
…at some point the time had come when Europeans were bound to
question the project ‘Europe” as a whole; when they had to expose the
false claim of universalism inherent in the ‘European particular’. The
cultural and political campaign against ethnocentrism has in fact been a
major campaign for postmodernity (cited in Gurnah and Scott,1992:145)
In similar spirit, Bauman notes:
…there is hardly a power left in the world which can blithely entertain an
ecumenically universalistic ambition (cited in Gurnah & Scott, 1992:145).
In place of ground positions, postmodernism embraces what its critics would consider
relativism, and in particular a relativism of discourses. There are two central aspect here:
1. its radical anti-essentialism (scepticism towards notions of noumena or real
structures), particularly antihumanistic essentialism;
2. its anti-materialism-the tendency to prefer explanations of social practices
couched in the language of discourses rather than in more conventional sociological, and
particularly Marxist materialist. Foucault’s analysis of repressive and humane
punishment as incommensurable forms of penal discourse, and his consequent refusal to
side himself with human penal practices, illustrates both this and the scepticism towards
Western notions of progress and improvement (Foucault 1977 cited in Gurnah & Scott,
1992:146).

10.3 SOME FAMOUS POSTMODERNIST PHILOSOPHERS

Q Who is Jacques Derrida?

A Jacques Derrida was an Algerian-born French philosopher best known for developing
a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction, which he discussed in numerous
texts, and developed in the context of phenomenology. He is one of the major figures
associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy

Q What is Derrida’s deconstruction? Deconstructive cultural analyais?

A1 Deconstruction involves the decomposition of unities in order to uncover
hidden differences (Ritzer 2008).
A2 Deconstructive cultural analysis is concerned with ‘reading’ texts by
deconstructing them or breaking down the narrative to show how it is composed to
different textual elements and fragments (Mondal 2915).

Q Who is Jean Francois Lyotard?

A Jean-François Lyotard was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist.
His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication,
the human body, modern art. His famous books include The Postmodern Condition
(1979) The Different Phrases (1983), The Discourse Figure (1971)
Q What is Lyotard’s concept of metanarrative?
A A metanarrative is a 'grand theory' like Marxism or Christianity which attempts to
provide an explanation for a wide range of things. Lyotard argued that all grand
narratives should be viewed with suspicion as human experience is so disparate and
varied. The way people interpret the world is, to a large extent, dependent upon
their different cultural backgrounds and individual personalities

Q What is rejecting the rational self?

A From philosopherkimg.com, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Michael Foucault challenged
the idea that we have a fixed 'self' at all. Humans exist as a bundle of experiences that
change throughout life. Trying to identify a fixed unchanging 'self' in all this is
pointless.

Q Who is Paul-Michel Foucault?

A Paul-Michel Foucault, generally known as Michel Foucault, was a French
philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories
primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are
used as a form of social control through societal institutions.

Q What is embracing plurality?

A From philosopherkings. co., abandoning the idea that absolute truth exists and
is obtainable leads naturally to embracing plurality. If we can never get beyond our
subjective experience of the world then we can never categorically say 'I'm right
and you are wrong'.

Q. Who is Jean Baudrillard?

A4. Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political
commentator, and photographer. He is best known for his analyses of media,
contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulation of
concepts such as simulation and hyperreality.

Q What is simulation? Simulacra?

A1 Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system
over time (Baudrillard 1994).
.
A2 Simulation according to Ritzer (2008) explains the distinction between signs and
reality imploding, it is increasingly difficult to tell the real from those things that
simulate the real.
A3. Si mulacra are copies that depict things that either had no original to begin with, or
that no longer have an original (Baudrillard 1994),
A5. Richard Rorty
A1 In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Rorty's principal target is the
philosophical idea of knowledge as representation, as a mental mirroring of a mind-
external world.
Each person interprets reality in accordance with his own subjective condition.
But Rorty does not argue for an individualistic free-for-all notion of truth. He emphasizes
the social influence upon the individual and his beliefs. Truth, or what for Rorty
substitutes for it, is an intersubjective agreement among the members of a community.
That intersubjective agreement permits the members of the community to speak a
common language and establish a commonly accepted reality. The end of inquiry, for
Rorty, is not the discovery or even the approximation of absolute truth but the
formulation of beliefs that further the solidarity of the community, or "to reduce
objectivity to solidarity.” He argues that once the notion of objective truth is abandoned,
one must choose between a self-defeating relativism and ethnocentrism, neither of which
can be justified in a manner that is not circular. He responds that one "should grasp the
ethnocentric horn of the dilemma" and "privilege our own group.” As far as any new
beliefs that we are to consider, they must at least roughly cohere with those already held
by the community, or, as Rorty puts the point, "We want to be able . . . to justify
ourselves to our earlier selves. This preference is not built into us by human nature. It is
just the way we live now."
Richard Rorty argues in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature that contemporary analytic
philosophy mistakenly imitates scientific methods. In addition, he denounces the
traditional epistemological perspectives of representationalism and correspondence
theory that rely upon the independence of knowers and observers from phenomena and
the passivity of natural phenomena in relation to consciousness. As a proponent of anti-
foundationalism and anti-essentialism within a pragmatist framework, he echoes the
postmodern strain of conventionalism and relativism, but opposes much of postmodern
thinking with his commitment to social liberalism
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