Postmodern Relativism Research Articles

Unraveling the Threads of Microhistory: Exploring Key Features and Notable Examples

This study aims to comprehensively characterize microhistory as a modern historiographical genre. It examines the key attributes, features, and epistemology of microhistory in relation to conventional historical approaches. By tracing the emergence of microhistory and analyzing sample texts, this research identifies the distinctive elements of microhistorical research. These include a granular focus on marginalized individuals, skepticism toward grand narratives, and a sensory emphasis on material artifacts over abstract facts. The study elucidates how microhistory’s postmodern relativism and localized subjectivity contrast with traditional historiography. While acknowledging microhistory’s unique focus on overlooked experiences, the analysis cautions against overly presentist and emotive reinterpretations of the past. This study maps the philosophical underpinnings and practices of the microhistory movement, clarifying its significance within modern historiography and its potential impact on historical research methodology.

Postmodernism and the Challenges of a Christian Education Worldview in Higher Education in Indonesia

Postmodernism gravely calls into question the feasibility of a modern educational enterprise since postmodern relativism appears to undercut the possibility of justification, both inside and outside of education. As a result, some educators believe that postmodernism is the declared end of education. This article presents a biblical worldview as the unifying theme for the combination of knowledge and religion in higher education. The biblical story has significance for the Christian faith and Christian ethics and serves as a strong basis for a complete worldview to face the challenge of the postmodern world. According to this viewpoint, the biblical story offers solutions to the most important problems in life, such as: Who are we? We are where? What is the issue? What is the remedy? The biblical story offers a strong basis for an all-encompassing worldview that responds to these concerns and aids in resolving any potential separation in our lives were postmodern gives questions in higher education.

The Practices of Historicism in Metamodern Condition

The paper answers the question, if metamodern, which replaced the postmodern discourse, is conceptually viable. The discussion is focused on a particular case of rethinking the Historicist views that are increasingly arising in connection with the task of creative justification of the theory of history. This problem is supposed to be solved, first, by showing that metamodern practices actualize a special type of subject that can be demanded in the context of creative attitude to history, and second, by analyzing what the strategies of constructing a newly emerging historicist narrative will be after the critique of the projects of ‘big stories’ put forward by postmodernity. By doing so, we aim to analyze the epistemological and aesthetic aspects of historicism in the metamodern condition. The return to the principles of Historicism on the grounds constructed by contemporary authors (B. Latour, G. Harman, D. Haraway, etc.) appears to be debatable, so the article pays special attention to the criticism of the conceptual issues and aspects associated with them. As a result of the study, we come to the following conclusions: metamodern requires the revival of a special subject, and the revival itself is by default connected with the aesthetic rethinking of the subject formed by the modern era and neutralized by postmodern relativism. Further, the metamodern subject can be described as ‘flickering’ in the sense that it is not a ready-made construct, but is in constant formation, passing through such ‘nodal points’ in which its conditioning by the totality of circumstances of the present is manifested. Finally, the aesthetic instruments that contribute to the formation of the metamodern subject also make it possible to form post-historical narratives, in which the principle of eventuality restores the unity of time and space of interaction between different actors.

Impact of Postmodernism on the Thought of Indonesian Muslim Intellectuals (IMIs)

Postmodernism is a worldview that borrowed its nomenclature from an era after modernism into progressive thought that turned into a reputed idea denouncing the absolute truth, affirming relativism, pluralism, and hermeneutics. The current study attempted to disclose their impact on the thought of Indonesian Muslim intellectuals (IMI). However, the depiction of the idea of postmodernism and its embedded concepts would precede it. The current study was based on a qualitative research design and the data was utilized from the prevailing discourses in mass media, journal articles, books, MA thesis, and PhD dissertation. To analyze the data, descriptive and critical analysis methods were adopted. The research determined the impact of postmodernism on the thought of IMI which can be identified in three major issues namely, in the Qur’ānic studies, in gender equality, and in religious pluralism. In a number of articles, books, and theses the IMIs have applied the postmodern hermeneutic approach to Qur’ānic studies uncritically. Consequently, it can shift or override the science of interpretation in Islam (tafsīr). In gender equality, the influence is even clearer, since the IMIs applied this postmodern doctrine and search justification from the Qur’ān by using hermeneutical approach which brought about discrepancies in legal decisions. The impact of postmodern relativism on religious pluralism is apparent. In this part, the IMI discourses revolve around the validity of all religions, implying the denouncement of absolute truth or the exclusivity of religion, including Islam. In fact, each of the three major issues could be scrutinized further.

Catholic theology in the context of postmodernist relativism

The article considers modern Catholic theology in the context set by the postmodern cultural attitudes, namely, the phenomenon of the decline of metanarrations and fundamental relativism, which does not correlate well with the classical theological tradition. Under these conditions, Catholic theology, starting with the Agiornamento tradition, demonstrates new attitudes that can also be considered in the context of the rejection of severe intolerance, that is, a kind of humanization.

Cyberpunk as a Metacultural Movement: Philosophical-Cultural Analysis

The aim of the article is to analyse the phenomenon of modern mass culture and during this analysis find out its ontological status including scientism-technological imperatives of cyberculture and ideas of transhumanism. Results. Cyberpunk is an interesting, functional and new (in comparison with classical examples) form of mass culture, cultural-ideological movement, and sphere of translation and the intersection of protest ideas and meanings, due to its genre and sectoral pluralism (science fiction, film industry, music, design, video games, fashion, ideology, etc.), and also logics of technodeterminism, is still an important factor of transformation cultural-art space in the 21st century. Scientific novelty. In the article, for the first time, realised the philosophical-cultural analysis of cyberpunk including its peculiarities as a literary genre, phenomenon of mass culture and aesthetics. Conclusions. It is proved that cyberpunk appeared as a genre of science fiction literature in the 1960s-1970s and then later through conceptualisation of ideas in the 80s and agreeing of transcendental impulses counterculture of the 60s with computerisation and the specifics of technological evolution in the 90s, has evolved to the level of a metacultural movement. As the latter, it encompasses the literary genre, the film and fashion industry, architecture and graphic design (with a special aesthetic), technoanthropology, futurology and identity theory, and ideological discourse. It is confirmed that thanks to protest as a manifestation of freedom, the actualisation of the problem of corporeality, and dystopian high-tech projections, with the help of postmodern relativism and poststructuralist rhizomorphism, cyberpunk annihilates modern cultural narratives, thus creating many risks, including the potential formation of pathological forms of identification, declarative asociality, and cyber-prosthetics, which often develop into horrific manifestations of dehumanisation.

Colonial Romanticism and Postmodern Relativism in the Soundtrack of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

Colonial Romanticism and Postmodern Relativism in the Soundtrack of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

Dialectical roots and routes from Hegel to Bloch

The "critical" element present in many critical information literacy (CIL) studies shows a commitment to the practical challenge of the power structures that shape current information regimes. In this article, we argue that it is necessary to analyse how such power structures, organised under a capitalist social order with neoliberal contours, benefit from disinformation, scientific denialism and class, race and gender oppression. In addition to discussing how philosophical notions of language and postmodern relativism appear in the present time, our main theoretical objective is to highlight some thoughts of Hegel, Marx and Bloch on the notions of dialectics, praxis and concrete utopia, aiming to contribute to strengthen the critical element that names and distinguishes CIL as a field of inquiry in library and information studies.

Mirrors and Windows: Synthesis of Surface and Depth in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

ABSTRACT This article argues that Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021) represents an attempt to synthesize modernist and postmodernist conceptions of surface and depth in a positive way. In doing so, it parallels moves by metamodern and transmodern theorists, who are in the process of attempting to divine the dominant artistic mode following postmodernism. However, Klara and the Sun differs from most meta- and transmodern work in that its synthesis give surfaces primacy over depth. Surfaces possess three qualities in the novel. The first is that they can act as a bridge between individuals and groups by expressing hypothetical scenarios that enable cooperation between different parties. The second, explored through the image of the horizon, is that surfaces can be dynamic, and can combine a modernist sense of groundedness with postmodern relativism. Finally, positive surfaces are framed by soft borders, and as such the frames that delineate an image or field of vision can be recognized as subjective while still allowing communication to take place. Taken together, these factors suggest that the concept of depth is a misleading mirage, while positive surfaces are the medium by which empathy and understanding can be achieved.

Post-Postmodernism: Mapping Out the Zeitgeist of the New Millennium

At the turn of the millennium, many theorists questioned the survival of postmodernism and, although it is true that their statements were not supported by a general consensus, the new century brought with it an intense debate on the subject. With this in mind, the aim of this article is to map out the taxonomy of the alternatives to postmodernism proposed by several theorists during the first decade of the twenty-first century in order to understand their nature. This article analyses an extensive corpus of theories, to arrive at the conclusion that this period was an interstitial moment of change whose direction seemed to be heading towards the recovery of a much-nuanced unfinished project of modernity, as advocated by Jürgen Habermas. This attempt at debunking postmodern relativism was thwarted by the social dissatisfaction generated by the bank bailout of 2008 and the ulterior intensification of neoliberalism. However, the subsequent attempts to define the zeitgeist of this cultural phase that followed postmodernism started to dwindle. The desired recovery of this unfinished project responds to a need for univocity that, during the 2010s, leads to a hyper-neoliberalism sponsored by populism and constructed on a kind of reactionary post-truth.

Paul Auster’s Transcendentalism: Shifting Postmodern Sensibility in the New Millennium

This article traces Paul Auster’s shift in sensibility after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. While his earlier novels where paradigmatic of postmodern self-referentiality, several critics have argued that his post-9/11 production turned towards realism. This might be interpreted as subsidiary evidence in favor of the polemic debate around the death of postmodernism. However, the aim of this article is to outline the transformation of the writer and offer explanations as to why that change in sensibility does not respond to a divestiture of postmodernism, but to an intensification of it. I trace Auster’s alternative to postmodern relativism, that is, transcendentalism, to arrive at the conclusion that his stance towards it is the same in his later novels.

The Committed Objectivity of Science and the Importance of Scientific Knowledge in Ethical and Political Education.

Despite advances in discussions about the nature of science, there is still a paucity of discussion on the ontological dimension of science in science education research that makes it difficult to defend its content and teaching. In this article, the reasons for trusting science and science education are analyzed through three arguments. The first is that both the belligerent obscurantism and fake news of the ultra-right and the postmodern relativism of sections of the leftwing are connected to objective movements from the capitalist socioeconomic reality. The reestablishment of trust in science and its teaching requires an effort to understand the contemporary social contradictions, problems, and challenges. The second argument is that scientific knowledge does not need to abdicate objectivity in order to ground ethical and political positions. The third argument is that the socialization of scientific knowledge through school education is a necessary, albeit insufficient, condition for the ethical–political education of younger generations. The article concludes by stating that it is necessary to overcome the choice between an education that is supposedly neutral in political and ideological terms and an education that rejects the socialization of scientific knowledge in the name of respecting the multiplicity of culturally rooted voices from within the different oppressed groups present in today’s society.

A World Grown Strange: A Summons to Teachers of Literature

Abstract: The calamities of our dystopian time tempt teachers of literature either to a stiff defense of traditional Western civilization or else to a flaccid acceptance of post-modernist relativism. This essay argues that both strategies are mistaken. Since for post-modernists no tradition can be definitive, they are obliged to welcome Christians to voice our own history-laden tradition in a tournament of narratives. I buttress this claim by reference to the lessons that Flannery O’Connor learned, albeit imperfectly, about the intrinsic claims of art that must not be suborned to anything extrinsic, not even to unprecedented evils.

Quantification in Experimental Psychology and Pragmatic Epistemology: Tension Between the Scientific Imperative and the Social Imperative.

Our position is critical of the dominant method in psychology, and critical of the social use of psychological models. We assert that the scientific approach in psychology must break with modernist claim, but without sinking into post-modernist relativism. We consider that the epistemology associated with experimental psychology should be a specific epistemology associated with the particular objects studied. By calling on pragmatism and realism, psychology can find the resources to use quantitative studies as an action deployed within a complex, interactive and dynamic social space, and thus break with its normative practice and function.

Arab World in 2010s: Metanarrative Games

The article is devoted to the analysis of the socio-political transformation of the Arab world in the 2010s. The author analyses its changes through the concept of neo-modernity, which was already developed in a number of his earlier publications. The key thesis is the idea of a new turn of society to metanarratives, or “big stories” after postmodern relativism led to attempts to abandon them. In the first part of the article, the problem of metanarratives is considered at the theoretical level. The author proposes a methodology for studying socio-political processes and determines the influence of the condition of neo-modernity on political reality. The second part of the article highlights the main modern (liberal, left, nationalist, conservative) and premodern (tribal, Islamist) “big stories”. These “stories” determine the content and nature of public and political life in the Arab world in the 2010s and problematize new aspects of social relations. It shows how the actualization of metanarratives affected the course of the political process in Arab countries, as well as the organization of political systems, building new relations between societies and states. The third part of the article is devoted to the analysis of international political processes in the region. The influence of “big stories” on the configuration of the regional subsystem, armed conflicts, the composition of key actors, the specifics of their strategies, their identity and the identity of the region as a whole is revealed. In conclusion, the author shows a possibility of gradual harmonization of the system of regional relations in the case of the formation of hypertext, which makes it possible for the coexistence of actors guided by different narrative strategies.

Problemen van bewijs in etnografie: een methodologische verkenning van de Goffman- en Mead-controversesDe auteur bedankt dr. Jan Kees van Donge, dr. Geert de Vries en dr. Tessel Jonquière voor hun inhoudelijke suggesties en praktische steun bij het schrijven van dit artikel.

Problems of evidence in ethnography: A methodological exploration of the Goffman and Mead controversies Ethnographic authority in the post-truth era is contested and the discussion revolves around the credibility of ethnographic evidence. Doubting ethnographic evidence is usually explained as the consequence of postmodern relativism coupled to political opportunism and the social impact of the Internet. This article argues, however, that evidence in ethnography comprises a much older, unresolved methodological problem. That is because: (1) the ethnographers’ unique observations are difficult to marry to the scientific ideal of replication and what other tests are then available to support direct observation? (2) social proximity to the community one studies is essential for making direct observations and how does that correspond to the ideal of outsider verification? (3) when reporting ethnographic thick description in a credible way, facts are considered central but is it possible to write on ethnography in an interesting way without resorting to the instruments of fiction? These methodological challenges are further explored in a comparative discussion of two ethnographic controversies – Margaret Mead’s Coming of age in Samoa (1973) and Alice Goffman’s On the run: Fugitive life in an American city (2014). I conclude with a proposal for methodological rules of thumb for conducting ethnographic research in the 21st century in a way that is (hopefully) both effective and convincing. In a short reaction Fred Wester defines scientific facts (including ethnographic facts) are produced by scientific procedures. Scientific observations have a conceptual and methodical context. In Beuvings discussions the conceptual ground of ethnographic observations are hardly discussed and his definition of replication is too limited as method for qualitative research.

Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Postfoundational Ecclesiology

This article interprets Wolfhart Pannenberg’s ecclesiology through a postfoundational framework. Pannenberg’s postfoundational theological methodology, based around the centrality of sub ratione Dei, is a dialectical relationship between the ‘from below’ movement of context (‘true infinite’) and the ‘from above’ movement of universal truth (Trinity) which reflects the differentiation-in-unity found in the immanent and economic Trinity. Accordingly, this article argues, Pannenberg’s ecclesiology, including his understanding of church essence (its role in creation and its constitutive members) and its activities (baptism, Eucharist, ministry) displays postfoundational relations between the particular and the universal bridging the divide between the secular and the sacred, the past, present, and future, and individual and community. In the discussion, concepts such as Christ’s ‘person,’ ‘transignification,’ Christocentric election, and social trinitarianism are used to move the discussion past modern dualism and postmodern relativism and toward postfoundational relationality.

Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Postfoundational Ecclesiology

This article interprets Wolfhart Pannenberg’s ecclesiology through a postfoundational framework. Pannenberg’s postfoundational theological methodology, based around the centrality of sub ratione Dei, is a dialectical relationship between the ‘from below’ movement of context (‘true infinite’) and the ‘from above’ movement of universal truth (Trinity) which reflects the differentiation-in-unity found in the immanent and economic Trinity. Accordingly, this article argues, Pannenberg’s ecclesiology, including his understanding of church essence (its role in creation and its constitutive members) and its activities (baptism, Eucharist, ministry) displays postfoundational relations between the particular and the universal bridging the divide between the secular and the sacred, the past, present, and future, and individual and community. In the discussion, concepts such as Christ’s ‘person,’ ‘transignification,’ Christocentric election, and social trinitarianism are used to move the discussion past modern dualism and postmodern relativism and toward postfoundational relationality.

Философские конгрессы:понимание и субъект-свидетель

The article considers philosophical congresses as phenomena of scientific and cultural life. The experience of holding international philosophical conferences “Russian Logos – 1. Horizons of Comprehension” and “Russian Logos – 2. Modern – Borders of Control” was illustrated illustratively, where a comprehen­sive diagnosis of research related to understanding the Russian logos was pre­sented. This revelation of unity in plurality is an actual strategy of acquiring meaning, which is extremely indicative in a situation where uncertainty appears as a challenge in science, philosophy, and culture. In terms of perspectives and benchmarks, it is precisely the reflection of uncertainty that characterizes the sit­uation (post) of modernity, acting as one of the intellectual gestures for overcom­ing the postmodern relativism. In conducting philosophical congresses, the eco­nomics of philosophical production in its reflexive and personal content is essential. It can be said that a topological strategy of sense genesis is being im­plemented with varying degrees of success. This is very important for the forma­tion of a possible philosophical community in Russia, which is quite hetero­geneous and controversial in a number of positions. In this context, there is an acute problem of creating a new philosophical “poem of affirmation”, which, for all the features of cultural differences, has similarities and kinship in the mul­tiplicity of projections. The leading role of topological reflection and subjectivity in their correlation with the landscape of life and cultural tradition is indicated. Particular attention is paid to the importance of ethical and aesthetic knowledge in the philosophical reflection of post-modernity. The figure of the subject-wit­ness is presented as an actual configuration of subjectivity in philosophical cre­ativity and socialization processes.

LA NORMALIDAD DEMOCRÁTICA DE DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

David Foster Wallace’s “E Unibus Pluram” is an account of the prevalence of destructive irony at the end of the twentieth century. Trying to break free from the solipsism brought about by postmodern relativism, Wallace embraced sincerity as the cornerstone of the zeitgeist of the new millennium. This article offers an analysis of two salient sources of influence that could be considered as inspiration for Wallace’s alternative to postmodern irony: American transcendentalism and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. It does so with the intention of furthering the understanding of the cultural significance of the work of the author for the generation of writers that followed in his wake, and to demonstrate how the recovery of Romantic ideals may be the key to map out the nature of the paradigm shift to post-postmodernism.