Postmodern Challenge Research Articles

Let X = X: Generation X and world mission

The work of mission agencies is predominantly structured in a modernist fashion. The challenge of postmodernity and the cultural shifts experienced in the world of Generation X necessitates a fresh approach to world mission and evangelisation. This paper seeks to address some of the challenges raised by this issue with some pragmatic suggestions for the forward.

Service-Learning as Postmodern Art and Pedagogy

Service-learning is like community service in that it engages students in working with the community and contributes to the development of their civic responsibility. Though learning undoubtedly occurs during community service, in service-learning there is an intentional effort to utilize the experience as a learning resource (Howard, 1993). In some cases service-learning is approached as a social action that stresses the need for collaborative self-transformation of all parties in creating a more just society (Pearson 1999, p. 98). When linked to Harold Pearse's (1992) postmodern reconstructionist view that art is a social process in the service of social justice, this idea suggests that service-learning can be considered a work of art in some cases. According to postmodern and critic Estella Conwill Majozo, Our relevance as human beings can be seen in the meaning of our acts as (1995, p. 88). Through this article, I am challenging art educators and future art educators to understand that our work as artists continues far outside our studios and even our classrooms. As postmodern and critic Suzi Gablik puts it, we need an art [and an art education] that transcends the distanced formality of aesthetics and dares to respond to the cries of the (1991, p. 100). Postmodernism, Artists and Works of Art Today, anyone seriously concerned with art cannot ignore the question of how art functions socially and politically (Risatti, 1998, p. 66). The emphasis placed on the social and political function of postmodern art extends the definition of both art and artists. For example, works of art in a postmodern world do not necessarily always come from those artists considered masters, nor are works of art always housed in museums or galleries. A postmodern view of art does not focus on the place works of art are exhibited, the ways they are created, or the materials with which they are made. It focuses more on the way the art affects, provokes, and challenges both and viewer. Therefore, postmodern art may be considered a transformative vehicle of sorts in that the process of and in its creation and interpretation may serve to transform both the and viewer. Postmodernism challenges many artists to change both how and why they make art. As many university art instructors are discovering, this challenge is met with both anger and fear. Postmodern art often employs such paradox and conflict (Efland, Freedman & Stuhr, 1996; Garoian, 1999). Majozo (1995) warns that the fear many have for this postmodern approach to both making and looking at art is the fear that elitism will be destroyed and that the function of art will once again be recognized. Art in today's postmodern world can no longer be simply described as selfexpression. Gablik (1991) believes that this art embodies aliveness and collaboration, a dimension excluded from the solitary, essentially logocentric discourses of modernity (p. 106). The postmodern practice of collaboration extends beyond the artists themselves and to the viewers who become directly active in the art through participation. Art critic Jeff Kelley (1995) says, participation is not simply a matter of agreeing with the at the outset of a project or of her agreeing with her participants. Rather, is a dialogical process that changes both the participants and the artist (pp. 232-233). Collaborative has become the key to postmodern Dominique Mazeud's performance work entitled The Great Cleansing of the Rio Grande. Since September 1987, Mazeud walks the riverbed of the Sante Fe River on the 17th day of each month. She brings large garbage bags and with the help of friends and local community volunteers, works to collect and remove the trash that litters the river's beaches and shallow areas. Originally, Mazeud's performance art was designed as a political catalyst for environmental awareness. …

Postmodern Evaluation—or Not?

Postmodernism, once an obscure little cloud, has descended as a fog of disbelief and cynicism. Should evaluators change, worry, laugh, cry? The postmodern challenge to social science, particularly to program evaluation, and its potential contribution are the subject of vignettes from practice and a limited exploration, one that borrows occasionally from playfully absurdist postmodern style. For some, postmodernism is a fog of incomprehension. The meaning of the term postmodernism 1 The term postmodernism was reputedly first used in the nineteenth century to refer to a style of painting considered more modern than French Impressionism. 1 is complicated by the borrowings from such contrasting movements as populism, existentialism, and nihilism. Postmodern philosophy, assaulting truth and its hidden relationship with power, bears a striking resemblance to modern art, assaulting representational truth and offering instead allusions to that which cannot be represented directly. These complications, combined with postmodernism’s opposition to superficial or enforced consensus, leave a lack of agreement about its meaning ( O’Doherty, 1971; St. Pierre, 2000). Even among those whose names are closely associated with postmodern philosophy, there is disagreement. Lyotard, for instance, insisted on the interconnectedness of postmodernism and modernism (1979/1984, p. 79; see also Dickens & Fontana, 1994). Habermas (1987) and others (e.g., McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2000) have suggested that postmodernism might be subsumed within, invigorated by, or retro-eclipsed by the modernist Marxist project.

Postmodern Research, Postmodern Practice: Studying the Barriers to Cyberliteracy Among Mentally Disabled Women

The conversation about the postmodern challenge to sociological practice is just beginning. Harding advocates a positive tension between the postmodern vision of an antiessentialist, antiepistemological future and the postmodern vision of successor science projects grounded in the epistemologies of marginalized communities. In this paper, I describe my study of barriers to cyberliteracy among mentally disabled women and how it has been informed by these two contrasting postmodern visions represented, respectively, by the work of Newman and Holzman (The End of Knowing: A New Developmental Way of Learning, Routledge, London, 1997) and Smith (Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Zed Books, London, 1999).

A Postmodernist Challenge to Imperialism

Eunjung Park's Study on Thomas Pynchon: Empire and the Postmodern, the first critical book on Pynchon published in Korean, is remarkable for its systematic and comprehensive approach to Pynchon's postmodernist critique of imperialism. According to the author, Pynchon's concern with imperialism consistently pervades his novels. A Study on Thomas Pynchon begins with the paradoxical premise that America both denies and inherits European imperialism. With her keen criticism, Park explores how Pynchon's novels suggest that America reproduces and reinforces an ideology of imperialism in various forms rather than continuing to carry out what the founding fathers and their nineteenth-century heirs proclaimed against the evil force of British empire. What Pynchon points out through this paradox is relatively self-conscious: America itself has become an empire that increases entropy more and more.

International Relations and the Challenge of Postmodernism: Defending the Discipline

International Relations and the Challenge of Postmodernism: Defending the Discipline

History's living legacy: an outline of ‘modern’ historiography of the common law

This essay offers a survey and analysis of the principal methodologies adopted and the aims pursued by ‘modern’ historians of the common law in England, Canada, and America, from Blackstone's time to the opening of the twenty-first century. From the beginning of this period through to the 1950s, the analysis reveals a steady current of contention amongst legal historians in respect of what legal history could do and just how these aims might be realised. The post-1950s era is characterised by the accelerating influence of the methodologies and objectives of extra-legal disciplines. These include, most especially, the work and techniques of social and political historians, and, eventually, the various manifestations of the postmodernist challenge to the segregation of ‘objective’ historical interpretation from the polemical and creative reconstruction of the past. It is argued that the infusion of this methodological new blood has been largely beneficial, enhancing the reach and subtlety of legal historiography, and boosting its overall capacity to act as an intellectually enriching discipline.

On the Importance of Being (Earnestly) Hybrid—Or, Qualms of a Quasi-Postmodernist: Commentary on Paper by Susan Fairfield

Dr. Fairfield makes a strong case that contemporary analytic theorists fail to live up to their apparent aspiration to present a thoroughgoingly postmodern conceptualization of the self. She argues instead in favor of a “hybrid” model—one that includes a dollop of modernism in the postmodernist brew. In this commentary, I critique the theorizing process inherent in psychoanalytic postmodernism, and then comment on and give a clinical example involving the self's “configurality.” I argue that we need to embrace the challenges of postmodernism without so privileging this position that we let it loosen our grasp of the realities of everyday clinical experience that might cause us to question postmodernism's tenets or values. Moreover, we must not assume that we can gauge the full impact of our “model of subjectivity” on the therapeutic process by knowing what we think we think.

Dawns, Twilights, and Transitions: Postmodern Theories, Politics, and Challenges

The postmodern turn which has so marked social and cultural theory also involves conflicts between modern and postmodern politics. In this essay, we articulate the differences between modern and postmodern politics and argue against one-sided positions that dogmatically reject one tradition or the other in favor of partisanship for either the modern or the postmodern. Arguing for a politics of alliance and solidarity, we claim that this project is best served by drawing on the most progressive elements of both the modern and postmodern traditions. Developing a new politics involves overcoming the limitations of certain versions of modern politics and postmodern identity politics in order to develop a politics of alliance and solidarity equal to the challenges of the new millennium.

Who's that girl? Who's that boy? Clinical practice meets postmodern gender theory.

Drescher, Foreword. Introduction. Beyond Narcissism: Toward a Negotiation Model of Gender Identity. Gender Benders/Gender Binders: A Psychoanalytic Look at Contemporary Popular Culture. Who's That Girl? Madonna. Trauma, Gender Identity, and Sexuality: Discourses of Fragmentation. Blue Velvet: A Parable of Male Development. What Is a Man? Postmodern Challenges to Clinical Practice. A Deconstruction of Kohut's Concept of Self. Performance Theory, Act 3: The Doer Behind the Deed Gets Depressed.

Rethinking the Rhetorical Tradition: From Plato to Postmodernism (review)

In Rethinking the Rhetorical Tradition, James Kastely presents an alternative to the "standard" rhetorical tradition; he calls this alternative skeptical rhetoric, describes its characteristic activity as refutation, and claims for it special relevance in negotiating postmodern challenges to rhetoric, specifically, that it can serve as a "refutation of postmodernism" (23). This alternative tradition inheres in a canon of works somewhat different from the standard canon, and an examination of key works organizes most of the chapters in this book. To establish and articulate this tradition in the classical era, Kastely examines Plato's Gorgias and Meno, Sophocles' Philoctetes, and Euripides' Hecuba; he then moves to the modern era, and to two works that address themes central to ancient rhetorical skepticism: Jane Austen's Persuasion (1818) and Jean-Paul Sartre's What Is Literature? (1949). Finally, Kastely turns to the two prongs of the postmodern reappropriation of traditional rhetoric, the tropological formalism of Paul de Man and the ideological approaches of Marxist critics such as Terry Eagleton, challenging both of them with the comic skepticism of Kenneth Burke.

International relations and the challenge of postmodernism: defending the discipline

Offers an appraisal of the various postmodern and poststructural theories sweeping the discipline of international relations. Tracing the development, importation, and application of these epistemologies, the author develops a series of typologies for the scholar working in international relations.

Transforming Biography: From the Claim of Objectivity to Intersubjective Plurality

The future of biography can be explored by looking at the itinerary of historian Robert Rosenstone, who has moved from writing an exemplary and classical work - Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed (1975) - to creating an innovative, multi voiced one - Mirror in the Shrine (1988) - in which he freely utilizes his own subjectivity to tell the story of lives. Here Rosenstone both accepts the challenge of postmodernism and manages to express the plurality and multiplicity of his subjects without falling into fragmentation or unhinging his competencies as historian. His work, which should inspire other narrative experiements, also suggests that to create a suitable biography for our times, we historians need to admit the intersubjectivity of our own scholarly activity.

The Postmodern Challenge – From Economic to Creative Management

This paper discusses economic and creative management, not as two different ways of understanding and managing the world, but as part of an integrated framework. This is done against the background of the creative process, where the early, more open and flexible stages basically reflect the requirements of postmodern theory, while the later, more closed and analytical stages, are similar to the modern world view of economic theory and related approaches to management. In a rapidly changing world, where we need to both develop and apply new knowledge, we should adopt a balanced modern and postmodern approach to theory generation and implementation, to better understand and evaluate both individual, organizational and societal action.

The Poverty of Truth-Seeking

In this article I examine one of the thorniest aspects of the relationship between feminism and postmodernism, in order to see what a discursive analytic approach can contribute to this important debate. The problem I refer to concerns the threat that the postmodern turn-despite its benefits-is said to pose for a politically committed feminism. I begin with a brief recapping of the postmodernist challenge to the tenets of social science. I then advance a two-part argument promoting discourse analysis for feminist scholars who seek to benefit from postmodernism's respect for difference and inclusivity, yet refuse to give up a critical perspective. The first part of the argument deals with the charge that the postmodern turn disables critical inquiry; the second with the related debate over the need for `generalizing' or `totalizing' concepts (e.g. the concept `women') in the service of a feminist politics. I argue that postmodernist scholars' wide-spread tendency to discuss language outside its context of use has hobbled their ability to respond to this serious challenge, and I suggest that a closer look at routine talk can help feminists reframe these debates about politicality in helpful ways.

Japanese Theatres: 1960s-Present

From the Meiji restoration of 1868 through the period of Japan-as-colonial-power, to the birth of Japan, Inc. after World War II, the Japanese have responded energetically to the challenges of modernism and postmodernism— no less in theatre than elsewhere.

A Conscious and Inclusive Family Studies

I argue that family scholars must take bolder steps to engage the tensions between our heritage of positivist science and its postmodern challenges. I also argue that constructing theories, utilizing research methods, and examining substantive issues should be relevant to the diversity of the families we study and to ourselves as members of families. I offer examples of developing an informed reflexive consciousness to broaden the rationalist foundation that dominates family scholarship. For a more inclusive, balanced, and invigorated family studies, our subjective experiences and commitments as researchers should be acknowledged, confronted, and integrated. A family studies that is responsible to our readers, students, selves, and the people whose lives we study requires that we engage the critical intersections of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and age as they define family diversity.

The Challenge of Postmodernism and the Health of Theology

This article addresses the situation of contemporary theological thinking in relation to postmodernism, or contemporary Continental philosophy. Using a criterion of health from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, it argues that theology should avoid either simpleminded assimilation of postmodernism or closeminded rejection. After critically surveying some current theological movements and figures, such as Radical Orthodoxy, I turn away from a paradigm of theology based on Barth to one based on Paul Tillich. Finally, an alternative notion of health is elaborated which leads to a deep and transformative encounter between postmodernism and theology.

The Meaning of Experience: Theoretical Dilemmas in Depicting a Peruvian Curandera's Philosophy of Healing'

In 1995, Professor Armin Geertz presented a paper at this Congress in which he very succinctly outlined some of the post-modern chal lenges to the study of religion which face contemporary scholars.2 In that paper, he re-emphasized his call for an ethnohermeneutic approach to the study of religion. As I understand it, this approach seeks to overcome the oppositional poles of positivist and herme neudc inquiry by locating and making explicit the perspectives of both researcher and subject of inquiry in the production and the presenta tion of knowledge. In this paper, I want to address how this ethnohermeneutic approach to inquiry fits into my own research agenda, as an ethnog rapher and anthropologist. I also want to outline some of the dilem mas I have encountered in attempting to apply the method which Professor Geertz advocates. If my presentation emphasizes concerns and questions more than answers and insights, it is because this is very much a work in progress. The context of my research is the following. For more than fifty years, an ancient tradition of shamanic healing in northern Peru has been studied by Peruvian and international investigators alike. In this

The Challenge of Postmodernism to the Human Service Professions

My main argument in this article is that the human service professions (law, social work, education, nursing, psychiatry, etc.) have a crucially important modernist legacy which is partly constitutive of their identity and mission and that when considering whether or not postmodernism is a threat to these professions or a harbinger of fresh opportunities, it is important to note that postmodernism is characterised by a tension between 'outright anti-modernists' and ambivalent anti-modernists'. Focusing mainly on social work, I shall argue that outrightly anti-modernist postmodernism' is generally deleterious in its effects on the human service professions and that ambivalently anti-modernist postmodernism', whilst it promises to be more benign in its effects on these professions, actually fails in its present form to live up to its promise. I will also suggest that there is no good reason why the human service professions cannot embrace a form of postmodernism, provided that it is genuinely modern, i.e. that it does not disparage the value of the modernist' legacy of the professions and preserves it intact, whilst incorporating the insights of postmodernism into their various practice theories.