A postmodern caring: Feminist standpoint theories, revisioned caring, and communication ethics

Abstract

Many communication ethicists have made the postmodern turn toward recognizing and incorporating diversity and difference in morals and reasoning. Although the core theoretical tenets of postmodern theory offer communication ethicists exciting ground, adopting any postmodern theory, whether extreme or moderate, ultimately challenges core prerequisites of communication ethics: The assumptions that there is some common ground from which diverse subjects can draw upon when communicating and reasoning with one another, and the view that subjects have agency and, as a consequence, accountability. In this essay, I suggest that a fully elaborated view of feminist standpoint theories provides a basis for a feminist ethics that both respects diversity and values care, such that a “revisioned” ethic of care is possible—a postmodern caring—that offers some possibility for diverse people, who have interpretive capabilities and intentionality, to deliberate together across their differences, make choices, and be held accountable for those choices in moral reasoning. I conclude the essay by suggesting that the postmodern orientation entailed in revisioned caring transforms modern theoretical thinking in ways that make it uniquely qualified to attend to and challenge the conflicting and contradictory demands of our current epoch.