Postmodernism:

Cont.
Pre modern Modernity Post modernity

Supernatural Anti-supernatural No ultimate authority

Authority of god Supremacy of science and Fragmentation

reason

Hunter-gatherer Foundational Anti-foundational

(there is some
fundamental belief or
principle which is the basic
ground or foundation of
inquiry and knowledge.
(Anti-foundationalist is one
who does not believe that
there is some fundamental
belief or principle which is
the basic ground or
foundation of inquiry and
knowledge.

Agrarian Industrial revolution Post industrial

 Introduction:
• Postmodernism is considered as a sharp reaction against the
predominance of modernism.
• Modernism was the product of the industrial era when the
traditional method of explanation and expression got
replaced by reason and science.
• The fundamental attributes of reason and science are to
formulate grand narratives and theories.
• Modernity is an age of science.
• According to modernity there is objective truth which can be
understood objectively.
 Cont.
• Origin:
• Postmodern thought originated principally in continental
Europe, especially France.
• Postmodernism constitute a challenge to the type of
academic political theory that has to come be the norm in
the Anglo-American world.
• According postmodernists, modern societies are structured by
industrialization that is largely determined by one’s position
within the productive system.
• Since the 1970s postmodern political theories have become
increasingly fashionable.
• In particular they attacked all forms of political analysis that
stem from modernism.
 Cont.
• Postmodernism emerged as a radical alternative to modernity.
• It argues that modernism is too centralized and monolithic in
nature and so it suppresses the minor identities’ and voices.
• Postmodernism rejects the notion of a single meaning of
truth.
• It challenges the various established and settled assumptions
pertaining to society, culture and the nature of knowledge.
• It contradicted the fundamental foundations of epistemology
in general and the practices of the social sciences in particular.
• It advocates multiplicity of narratives and refutes the
possibility of meta-narratives.
• Postmodernity is thus linked to post-industrialism, the
development of a society that is no longer dependent on the
manufacturing industry, but more dependent on knowledge
and communication.
 Cont.
• Postmodernism does not believe in supremacy of any system
of knowledge be it science and religion.
• They have skeptical attitudes towards all systems of
knowledge.
• According to them objectivity is not possible nor desirable.
• Postmodernism is primarily an attitude which represents
skepticism towards any form of knowledge.
• According to postmodernism no knowledge can know the
absolute truth.
• Postmodernism is a style of thought which is suspicious of
classical notions of truth, reason, identity, objectivity, of the
ideas of universal progress or emancipation, of single
frameworks, grand narratives or ultimate grounds of
explanation.
 Cont.
• Postmodernism against the enlightenment
norms.
• It sees the world as contingent, ungrounded,
diverse, unstable, indeterminate, a set of
disunited cultures or interpretations which
breed a degree of skepticism about the
objectivity of truth.
 Cont.
• Prominent themes in Postmodernism:
• Metanarratives or grand theories
• Knowledge as situated knowledge
• Fragmentation and plurality
 Cont.

• Metanarratives or grand narratives:

• Coined by French philosopher Jean-François  Lyotard
• Grand narrative – to refer to a theory that tries give a
comprehensive and totalizing accounts to various historical
events and experiences.
• To social and cultural phenomenon based upon the appeal to
universal truth.
• The narrative of Marxism is a concrete example of a grand
narratives.
• Marxists believe that in order to be emancipated, society
must be undergo a revolution.
• Lyotard criticized grand narratives in his work, The
Postmodern condition: A report on knowledge.
• According to Lyotard grand narrative is a feature of the period
of “modernity”.
 Cont.

• Lyotard characterized as postmodern condition as one with

increasing skepticism toward the totalizing nature of
metanarratives.
• Fro Lyotard the grand narratives of the past have to be
rejected in favour of “little narratives” or cultural
representation of local or minority subject.
• Postmodernists attempt to replace metanarrrative by focusing
on specific local contexts as well as the diversity of human
experience.
 Cont.
• Knowledge as situated knowledge:
• Postmodernist challenge the objective attempt to explain the
reality.
• There is rejection of the quest for a objective truth behind
subjective experience.
• For postmodernist – modernist focus on scientific knowledge
and truth.
• Postmodernists attack such projections. Postmodernists claim
that there is no universal truth, no objective value or given
reality. Postmodernists claim that there is “multiplicity of
truth”.
• People understand and interpret the world from their own
vantgae point. This implies that the perception of ideas and
things of the one community may not be the same for
another community.
 Cont.
• Postmodernists stands as a challenge to many established
modes of understanding.
• In that sense it challenged certainty, objectivity, universality,
and all knowledge.
• In political theory, critics see postmodernism as a rejection of
the quest for an objective truth behind subjective experience.
 Cont.
• Fragmentation and plurality:
• Fragmentation emerges precisely because of the redundancy
of metanarrrative paving way to multiplicity of truths, claims
and ways of lives.
• With the explorations in postmodernism, diversity has been
started to be seen as something that is worth celebrating.
• Scholars in this field recognize that everything is constituted
by its elation to the other things and hence is plural.
• In other words, the human self is not simple unity,
hierarchally composed rather it is a multiplicity of forces or
elements.
• In this sense, acknowledging the difference is very important
to postmodern understanding.
 Cont.
• The objective of unanimity and homogeneity is often revealed
as fictitious and based on act of exclusion.
• Therefore recognition should be given a positive status.
• Societies are becoming more accepting to the difference and
diversity.
• They are turning more and more multicultural, multiracial,
ploy-ethnic yet relating to co-exist together.
 Cont.

• Divergence of modernism and postmodernism on

crucial issues
• Modern thought:
• Grand narratives
• Universal objective truths
• Linear logic reasoning
• Uniformity
• Postmodern thought
• Skepticism of grand narratives
• Decentering of knowledge
• Subjective experience
• Multiplicity of truth