Sherry Fahimi

Chapter 10 introduction

Page 749-755

Postmodern legal theory: Pragmatism and post-structuralism

Any discussion of postmodernism starts with an introduction of modernism.

The postmodern way of life is not to be accepted or refused: it simply is, and to live today- in a
postmodern world- is to live a postmodern life, intentionally or not, consciously or not, happily or not.
Postmodernism is unavoidable and all pervasive.

Unavoidable as it may be, all-pervasive as it may be, the sense of the postmodern life remains
remarkably elusive. For some, the elusive nature of the “modern” makes the “post”-modern doubly
elusive, for others, the very relational nature of the postmodern counsels against the definitional
endeavor.

Modernity and post modernity

3 major themes of modernism:

The belief in the autonomous and self aware subject, the notion of progress-a notion that would itself
generate a wide variety of dichotomies and hierarchies-and the awareness of change, of history and of
time.

The differentiating feature of advanced culture was its embrace of rationality over the traditional orders
of spirituality or nature: only through reason was human progress ensured. In politics the result was the
liberal state. In Public, the result was respect for some “private” or in modern terms “rights”.

Difference of modern and postmodernism: the world as it was supposed to be and the world as it now
seems.

This chapter presents many dialogues about the meaning of the postmodern. They show that the
conventional ways of thinking and talking about law are no longer adequate to describe law as it is
practiced, and law as it is lived. Those epistemologies are no longer adequate to convey a sense of the
world. The crisis of justice in short is concurrent with the crisis of truth. the crisis of truth may be more
particularly described as a crisis of representation. It is essentially a three-fold crisis, generated by
radical challenges to the traditional conceptions, first, of reality; second, of the language we use to
describe that reality; and third, of the subject who perceives and describes that reality, that is, the self.

Two types of postmodern thinkers:

Poststructuralists: relentlessly skeptical, vigilantly deconstructing, they recognize only language games,
rhetorical tricks, and performative moves.

New pragmatists: relentlessly hopeful, vigilantly reconstructing, they recognize principally the
instrumental value of the language games.