Global Pedagogies: From Universal to Situated Ethics

Abstract

While postmodernism and poststructuralism are not synonymous, they have enough in common that in this chapter we will use the term postfoundationalism as a label of inclusion of these terms. We begin by outlining how differences in the traditional, the modern, and the postmodern are framed. Postmodernism and poststructuralism have been central concepts among recent post-isms. The term postmodernism stands in reference to discussions among social scientists, architects, and artists both to a periodizing and a theoretical concept. In periodizing terms, reference is made to the traditional, the modern, and the postmodern. In conceptual terms reference is often made to Americans such as Richard Rorty, who has led a resurgence of modern day philosophers of neo-pragmatism, in challenging foundational notions of contemporary scientific and social knowledge (1980, 1989, 2002). Poststruralism as a new theory can be traced to deconstructionist in France, who worked in literary theories and philosophy Advocates of poststructuralism such as Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jean-Francois Lyotard challenged structuralist claims in France, particularly dominating linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure, and the anthropology of Claude Levi-Strauss. Unlike structuralists, who accepted the unitary correspondence of the text, and language, depicting the reality of the outside world, deconstructionist argued that language itself, with its particular structure or code, acquired its meaning internally, within the text, rather than external world. Using the metaphor of a ‘chain of signifiers’, Derrida further explained that meanings are not fixed, but are continually moving and changing, depending on the context, location, and subjectivities (individuals’ interpretations of meanings). Hence, poststructuralists emphasized the instability of meaning and the slippery nature of language (Derrida 1976; Eagleton 1996). Eagleton explained the slippery dimension of language and meaning as ‘approximation’: