Postmodern Worldview Research Articles

The Sound of Silence: Eschatology and the Limits of the Word in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas

It should come as no surprise that the Wachowskis elected to adapt David Mitchell’s 2004 tour de force Cloud Atlas into a film. Like Mitchell’s works, the Wachowskis’ 1999 film The Matrix is a part of a contemporary trend in which artists and writers such as Angela Carter, Paul Auster, and Salman Rushdie engaged in postmodern discourse, themes, and techniques without necessarily subordinating itself their visions to a postmodern worldview. 1 Mitchell received an M.A. in 1987 from the University of Kent in comparative literature focusing on the postmodern novel, and his first three novels employ the themes and problematic tensions raised by the theory dominant during the rise of continental philosophy in Anglo-American graduate programs during the 1980s and 90s. 2 Cloud Atlas engages theory ranging from overt metafictional winks, such as Timothy Cavendish’s disapproving mockery of “flashbacks, foreshadowings, and tricksy devices,” which “belong in the 1980s with M.A.s in postmodernism and chaos theory” (150), to more subtle uses of popular postmodern metaphors apparently drawn from the theory, as when Henry Goose poisons Adam Ewing with a fake medicine, thereby literalizing Derrida’s riff in “Plato’s Pharmacy” on Socrates’s claim that writing is a pharmakon, a word that means both “cure” and “poison” (759). Like the theory it interrogates, such engagements necessarily front language, speech, and writing as central thematic concerns. Mitchell’s work is systematic in its logic, self-consciously employing a kind of neostructuralist aesthetic, wherein the novels enact a series of tensions that provide a formal structure, distinct from Levi-Straussian structuralism, insofar as the author is aware of the binaries as useful heuristics rather than as necessary universals. As Mitchell told Adam Begley concerning a later work, “Black Swan Green is carefully structured—like all halfway decent books” (“David Mitchell”) and this structure is essential to his project. In this essay, I will use Cloud Atlas as a case study to demonstrate how David Mitchell’s novels explore the problematics of language using a systematic binary logic, resisting the Derridean deconstruction made

Communitas and civitas: an idiographic model of consumer collectives

Variously called consumer collectives, subcultures of consumption, brand communities, consumer tribes and brand cults, consumer collectivism is a rising area of interest in scholarly and industry circles. This paper develops an idiographic conceptual model for consumer religiosity, specifically those who worship/consume in groups.Producers enjoy the positive market leverage consumer collectives can provide. Collectives develop, maintain and promulgate rituals, traditions, myths and consumption behaviours. These collectives recruit new users, provide peer support, reinforce the choice to consume the brand and promote the brand to outsiders. Some collectives produce and engage in product/brand-related events, festivals and promotions. Generally self-generating and self-sustaining, the collectives do so with little support from the producers (Belk & Tumbat, 2005; McAlexander, Schouten, & Koenig, 2002; Muniz & O'Guinn, 2001; Shanker, Cova, & Kozinets, 2007).The model's foundation derives from the work of the American philosopher James Carse. Carse explicates the relationship between churches and their congregations, with the intent of parsing religions from belief systems. The communitas/civitas model presented in this paper uses principles derived from his work. A postmodern worldview underpins the civitas/communitas model, accounting for the role of consumption as a means of identity formation and self-actualisation. The marketing-specific service-dominant logic paradigm strengthens the model by pinpointing value creation. The model describes marketing in a Carsean fashion, as an infinite game, and then expands on the interaction of the communitas (the collective) with the civitas (the producer), using principles derived from philosophy and religion. The model delineates the relationships between producers and consumer collectives, and draws parallels between consumer religiosity and spiritual religiosity. These parallels reveal a rich and deep understanding of how to manage and leverage these relationships.

Postmodernism and the Hermeneutics of Nigerian Pentecostalism: Implications for Class Mobility

This paper explores the impact of postmodernism on the hermeneutics of Nigerian Pentecostalism. It argues that the attempt of Pentecostals to employ the lure of social mobility as a strategy for church growth and economic development has compelled a compromise of the meta-narrative and objective truth in the cannon of Christian scripture. This compromise was effected through a contextual and broader postmodern world view which Pentecostals envisage will open their doors to larger crowds. This process has however ensured a clear path towards syncretism that may eventually label Pentecostalism as a plural Universalist brand of Christianity. Although such church growth strategies have positively impacted human economic development through the creation of potentials for social mobility, the moral integrity of the movement seems to have been compromised. With the present state of affairs the paper concludes that the possibility of new reformist movements emerging from Pentecostals is very likely in the light of Church history.

Thomas Pynchon, High Theory, and the Legacy of the Long Sixties

Gravity's Rainbow, Domination, and Freedom by Luc Herman and Steven Weisenburger University of Georgia Press. 224 pages During seventeen-year period between 1973 and 1990, Thomas Pynchon did not publish any new fiction, but his nascent critical industry more than picked up his slack, producing a score of monographs and hundreds of scholarly essays about his first three novels and early stories. Much of this attention focused on his masterpiece, Gravity's Rainbow, whose famed richness and difficulty sustained full-length studies like Thomas Moore's The Style of Connectedness and Kathryn Hume's Pynchon's Mythography (both 1987). Pynchon's subsequent production of five new novels since 1990 has diluted his critics' focal energies somewhat: though there's usually a new full-length Pynchon study out every year, as well as flurries of articles, they tend to spread more broadly over Pynchon's nine volumes now. That shift is part of what makes Luc Herman and Steven Weisenburger's new book, Gravity's Rainbow, Domination, and Freedom--the first major monograph this century devoted exclusively to Pynchon's greatest novel--so intriguing, though its publication would demand our attention regardless. First, its authors are veteran Pynchonists with impeccable credentials: Weisenburger is author of perhaps most indispensable Pynchon book, A Gravity's Rainbow Companion ([1988] 2006), while Herman is an eminent narrative theorist whose work on Pynchon's early manuscripts positioned him to co-edit The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Pynchon in 2012. Second, while earlier books on Gravity's Rainbow still struggled to get a handle on novel's mind-boggling intricacies, Herman and Weisenburger seem confident enough in their understanding of material to focus not on explication for its own sake but on a subject commensurate to novel's enormous ambitions: concept of freedom. Taking as their opening epigraph protagonist Lt. Tyrone Slothrop's philosophic query just prior to his fateful journey into ungoverned Zone of post-V-E-Day Central Europe--Free? What's free?--their goal is to address the novel's 'confusion' in terms of its major concerns: domination and freedom (3). The result is a valuable work of criticism--though not only for reasons Herman and Weisenburger likely intended. In many ways, their book constitutes summa of what we might call second-wave postmodern theoretical perspective on this most postmodern of novels: that is, most sustained, wide-ranging effort yet to understand Gravity's Rainbow not merely in terms of literature's disruptive possibilities (as was common in earlier criticism), but also via an associated radical left critique of political power and authority. In making that argument, though, book also dramatizes some of inherent contradictions within left political perspective, a tension we might associate with its dual authorship. Although book is nominally written from a unified, joint perspective, this voice occasionally seems to evince two divergent sensibilities: one that conceives book as a nihilistic counterculture jeremiad, other as a more dialectical engagement with nature of narrative ethics. Consequently, Gravity's Rainbow, Domination, and Freedom provides a good opportunity to assess legacy of postmodern worldview at present moment and to analyze where criticism on postmodern literature might go from here. The first of book's three sections, Novel and Decade, primarily addresses contexts of 1960s counterculture. Its first three chapters are devoted to extended discussions of neo-Freudians Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, and Norman O. Brown, collectively arguing for importance to Pynchon's worldview of polymorphously perverse subversions of socially and sexually repressive norms. These connections are not wholly new, but Herman and Weisenburger give them a more sustained airing than anyone else has, and they emphasize political dimensions of such resistance work more than others have done. …

Exploring inner and outer worlds: A quantitative study of worldviews, environmental attitudes, and sustainable lifestyles

This study generates insight into how environmental attitudes and sustainable lifestyles relate to worldviews. First, environmental attitudes are contextualized cultural-historically (using Charles Taylor's work) and psychologically (using self-determination theory, SDT). Then, a questionnaire exploring worldviews, environmental attitudes, and sustainable lifestyles was conducted (n=1043) in the Netherlands. Component analyses resulted in five worldview-factors (Inner growth, Contemporary spirituality, Traditional God, Focus on money, Secular materialism) and three environmental attitudes (Connectedness with nature, Willingness to change, Instrumentalism). The results show that Inner growth and Contemporary spirituality relate to Connectedness with nature and Willingness to change (and more sustainable lifestyles), while Focus on money and Secular materialism relate to Instrumentalism (and less sustainable lifestyles). In line with STD, the results suggest that intrinsically oriented worldviews correlate positively with pro-environmental attitudes and lifestyles, while extrinsically oriented worldviews correlate negatively. In line with Taylor, the results indicate a more traditional, modern, and postmodern worldview in the Netherlands.

Філософські маркери буття в романі Мюріель Барбері “Елегантна їжачиха”

The article deals with the design features of philosophical novel in the creations of french writer Muriel Barbery. The plot is simple, but there is much more to this book than that. It reminds you of so many things that make life wonderful – art, literature, music, ideas and so many wonderful small things. Considered the leading features of philosophical novel since the Enlightenment and to postpostmodernism relates to text. Analyzes the main philosophical allusions (to the philosophy of Marx, Husserl, Ozu, Kant, others), opposition (adult world / world of childhood, life / death, true philosophy / philosophy imitation), simulate (children's suicide, genuine beauty, imitation thoughts) reflections in the novel “The elegance of the hedgehog” by Barbery. Details the principle of deployment of dilemmas in the novel. This novel is characterized by a game statuses: the concierge is a philosopher; a twelve year old girl intellectually superior graduate bachelor; professor can only sign the invitations. Interpreted the E. Shevyakova`s term “intergenre Novel poly form”, recreated philosophical context of the writer, her preferences and dislikes regarding various philosophies and representatives. Accentuated ideological the confrontation of Barbery`s novel with regard to postmodern worldview. The novel was adapted into a film “The Hedgehog” (“Le herisson”) released in 2011, starring Josiane Balasko as Michel, Garance Le Guillermic as Paloma, and Togo Igawa as Kakuro Ozu.

Impact of Postmodernism on Public Sector Leadership Practices: Federal Government Human Capital Development Implications

This paper explores the nexus of contemporary leadership theory and postmodern worldview influences within the public sector with special emphasis on the staffing challenges of the federal government. The postmodern values embraced by the replacement cohorts (Millennial and Generation X) for the retiring baby boomers are in direct conflict with traditional leadership theories reducing the attractiveness of governmental employment. The paper concludes with a series of specific recommendations to more closely align federal human capital development strategies with employee values and organizational needs including generational diversity education, strategic value alignment approaches, values-based recruiting and selection, more systematic mentoring programs, both traditional and reverse mentoring (younger employees coach older workers on technology issues), and a full range of work/life benefits.

UNIWERSALNE ZNACZENIE PRAWDY I WOLNOŚCI

Having been distorted since modern times, the notions of truth and freedom have been radically juxtaposed in post-modern world views, consequently resulting in losing the very values: the truth is questioned, while freedom is determined and limited by worldly purposes. J. Ratzinger/Benedict XVI shows that the terms are, de facto, theologically important (Theological Hermeneutics), i.e. they may be fully and properly understood from the heart of Christian faith. God is the right guarantor of the truth (involving the existence of the objective and judicious reality) and the Embodiment of God’s Son, Logos, is the ultimate argument for its attainability and cognizability. When Jesus confessed: ‘I am the truth’ (John, 14. 6), He convinces that the truth is universal and belongs to God. Thereby, it remains universally binding – it is the appropriate basis of ethos. The truth constitutes the key to interpret reality and a superior (independent) criterion for its arrangement (also in the social and political sense). Thus, the task of Christianity and theology is to restore the proper, Christological understanding of truth and freedom for the world, as well as their inseparable, redemptive relationship: ‘the truth will set you free’ (John, 8. 32).

Constructing a philosophy of chiropractic: evolving worldviews and premodern roots

Objective The philosophy of chiropractic can be framed as an attempt to correct the problems inherited from the Western Enlightenment. Its origins can be found in the long tradition of Western philosophy. The purpose of this article is to describe in a broad context chiropractic’s roots in premodernity and establish the structural and hermeneutical differences between chiropractic’s original philosophical ideas and those of premodern philosophers. Discussion The worldview or cultural mindset the philosophy arose from must be situated in the context of its time, the birth of the unique postmodern worldview, aperspectival consciousness, and the modern sense of self. This is accomplished by exploring several metatheories about the development of the self through history, with an emphasis on the premodern roots to the chiropractic terms; Universal Intelligence and Innate Intelligence. By contextualizing the philosophy of chiropractic in terms of a structural genealogy of the self and of ideas, a new approach to philosophy in chiropractic emerges. Conclusion Without accounting for chiropractic’s origins as a reflection of the unique time, place, and culture, in terms of the evolution of worldviews through history, any approach to construct or reconstruct a philosophy of chiropractic will potentially miss the seminal feature of chiropractic’s emergence.

The Book of Black Fire: An Eco-Theology of Revelation

The Book of Black Fire:An Eco-Theology of Revelation Lawrence Troster (bio) Rabbi Pinḥas says in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish: The Torah that the blessed Holy One gave to Moses was given as white fire written on black fire. It was fire, mixed with fire, hewn from fire, and given by fire, as is written: "From His right, a fiery law to them" (Deuteronomy 33:2). —JT Shekalim 6:1 Introduction What does it mean when we say we believe in the revelation of the word of God? In the Abrahamic faiths, this usually refers to the belief that God has communicated with humans through a prophet (or prophets) and that communication was then written down. Thus those who identify themselves as fundamentalist Christians claim that the (Christian) Bible is "the true word of God" and, therefore, inerrant and unchangeable. Revelation, however, whether from a biblical or a modern theological perspective, is in fact a more complicated process. And when one considers the creation of a modern religious response to the environmental crisis, what we believe about how God communicates will have a significant impact on the way that response will be shaped—for revelation creates and shapes the values and normative actions of a religious community. In rabbinic Judaism, revelation is one of the three central categories of divine action—Creation, Revelation, and Redemption—which have been codified in the traditional liturgy.1 In modern Jewish theology since the [End Page 132] nineteenth century, the category of Revelation has received the most attention because of the impact of the historical analysis of the Bible.2 In recent Jewish environmental theology Creation has been the central concern, while the categories of Revelation and Redemption have been mostly ignored.3 This lack of theological attention has created a disconnection between Jewish environmental theology and the other major concerns of modern Jewish theology, and it has also meant that Jewish environmental theology has been unable to generate the creative new moral imperatives and ritual practices necessary to deal more comprehensively with the environmental crisis. In his article on Process Thought and Judaism, Brad Artson shows how a process theology of revelation can emphasize human partnership with God in an ongoing dynamic relationship. While he shows how this approach is fully compatible with Jewish sources, he does not go far enough in showing the radical implications of such a theology of revelation. In particular, he does not integrate sufficiently the implications for theology of the modern scientific worldview. In this article I will show how a process theology of revelation can broaden and deepen Jewish environmental spirituality and ethics. A theologian who has fully explored the implications of Process Thought for modern eco-theology is Thomas Berry, who asserted that, in this age of environmental crisis, Creation itself must be our primary source of revelation. According to Berry, reading Creation today means learning the new "story" of Creation from the modern sciences of cosmology, evolutionary biology, and ecology. This new theology of revelation must be formulated in the context of science, historical analysis of the Bible, and the ways people spiritually respond to the natural world. In creating this eco-theology of revelation, I will be following the method that Process theologian David Ray Griffin calls "Constructive Post-Modernism": It seeks to overcome the modern worldview not by eliminating the possibility of worldviews as such, but by constructing a postmodern worldview through a revision of modern premises and traditional concepts. This constructive or revisionary postmodernism involves a new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, [End Page 133] and religious intuitions. It rejects not science as such but only that scientism in which the data of the modern natural sciences are alone allowed to contribute to the construction of our worldview.4 Through this methodology science can help illuminate meaning in the universe, while religion can infuse science with ethical responsibility. In fact, following Thomas Berry and also the work of Norbert Samuelson, the facts of modern science are essential to a modern theology of revelation.5 Jewish Law and Environmentalism In a Jewish context, a theology of revelation is pivotal as well as to how halakhah is created and...

The Postgraduate Deaf Experience

The Postgraduate Deaf Experience Guy McIlroy When I started studying toward a master’s degree in Deaf education, I had reached an important point in my identity development as a Deaf person. The process of self-discovery of a Deaf identity had begun by virtue of my self-acknowledgment of myself as a Deaf person, where previously I had naively attempted to pass as a hearing person in the hearing-dominated world. I had reached the point where my prior self-construction as a hearing [End Page 503] person was being challenged, and I wanted to take this transition further; I joined the Center for Deaf Studies and started on my master’s degree research. Being a Deaf researcher introduced a number of new and unique challenges and successes. The most significant issue was the introduction of myself as an auto-ethnographic participant in this research by virtue of being Deaf. Initially, and for a long period of the time I spent doing research, I maintained an objective distance from the study. However, I was struck by the intensely personal and intimate nature of the scrutiny of identity, as well as the acceptance in academic literature (particularly in anthropology) of the idea of the researcher as a research subject embedded in the study constituting both a valid and valuable source of data. This conceptual shift emerged with the self-acknowledgment of myself as an oral Deaf person whose identity was undergoing a radical transition. This identity shift provided me with a template as a researcher with an insider’s perspective for developing a greater understanding of a range of Deaf identities. But with this frame of reference as an insider came a deep sense of unease about the orthodox binary medical model/social model construction of Deaf identity. Increasingly, as my own journey into understanding Deaf identity took shape, I found that the current identity discourses did not match my own experiences and those of other Deaf persons in a postmodern worldview in which Deaf persons like myself did not fit into either of the conventional structures. I realized that I had moved away from the “Deaf and culturally hearing” sphere of influence, and although I both appreciated and became immersed in the Deaf community by adopting sign language as my preferred language, I came to the realization that sign language was not my first language. Thus, I could not fully embrace the Deaf identity. Consequently, I discovered that other Deaf persons and I occupy an alternative territory that had not been adequately explained or explored—hence the theorizing and auto-ethnographic exploration of bicultural Deaf identity (McIlroy, 2008). Once this barrier had been breached, I became more sensitized to the richness and diversity of the “voices” of Deaf persons. To me as a master’s candidate, finding my own voice became an important skill through letting go of the need as an oral Deaf person to fit into the hearing community by pretending or bluffing. This activity is an ongoing process of actively acknowledging to people around me that it is acceptable to say, “Please say that again, I missed it, I am Deaf,” rather than fooling people into believing that I understand what they say in order to fit in. This statement became a mantra of liberation for me at meetings and with administrative and support staff. Using an interpreter made even more visible the point that I had communication needs as a Deaf person. Fundamentally, my need to communicate and understand now takes precedence over the previous survival mode of placidly going along with the speaker by pretending, which was a denial of being Deaf. To graduate with distinction was an especially satisfying experience. This was an opportunity to look back at the (5 years) of change in myself as a Deaf person into an oral Deaf academic. Reference McIlroy, G. (2008). A narrative exploration of educational experiences on Deaf identity. Unpublished master’s dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Google Scholar Vocational and Occupational Training In addition to the need for academic training at a university level, the need for vocational and occupational training cannot be overlooked. The next contributor shares his experience in...

Pourquoi y a-t-il Baudrillard Plutôt Que Rien? The Reception and Perception of Jean Baudrillard in France

The contrast between the positive perception and reception of Jean Baudrillard in the English-speaking world and his doubtful reputation in France was thrown into relief by his recent death and the responses it produced, highlighting some interesting cultural and intellectual differences. The French resistance to his theories is not merely traditionalist academic wariness of cross-disciplinary thought but also stems from more ideological considerations. His complicity with a postmodern worldview and his cynical celebration of the immanence of the information order seems to grate on a society in which many intellectuals are still committed to some form of transcendence, albeit relative, and refuse to accept that power and politics no longer signify.

A Handbook on Bears

This article is an autopsychobiography. It is, therefore, as described by Dr. William Todd Schultz, a combination of psychological theory and biography and not quite either one because it looks at only one subject or unit of analysis, and it does not presume to tell an entire life story but merely a splinter from a life story. It is a post postmodern worldview that it seizes the moment to capture a story on paper (http://www.psychobiography.com/definitions2.html).

Hermeneutics against Instrumental Reason: national and post-national Islam in the 20th century

Islamic identity and secular anti-colonial nationalism implied initially similar approaches to modernity in the Middle East. Islamic currents of the time reinterpreted Islam in an ‘instrumental’ fashion as an accompaniment to developmental nationalisms, elaborating their cultural aspects. However, new Islamic currents of recent decades reject secularism in favour not of instrumental Islam but of a hermeneutic one. Unlike instrumental Islam, in which the project was to organise society, the goal in the emerging hermeneutic movement is to organise knowledge. While instrumental Islam mirrored the nationalism of the time, articulating many of its themes in spiritual format, the hermeneutic movement seems to be moving away from it. Therefore it does not easily fit the concept of cultural nationalism, appearing to go beyond the nation towards a post-national and postmodern world-view in which questions of development and cultural identity are subordinated to questions of universality, human existence and the possibility of knowledge.

Reductionist inference‐based medicine, i.e. EBM

Unbeknown to many, reductionist and postmodern worldviews competitively coexist in science and society. The debate on evidence-based medicine (EBM) is at the tip of this 'iceberg'. Via systems thinking and complexity science EBM reveals crucial flaws and its reductionism entails an inability to appreciate (even tolerate) contrasting ideas and/or 'see a bigger picture'. An interdisciplinary approach provides insight into novel explanations. Thereafter, the conceptual barrier shifts to communication, a challenge which mandates attempts to steer the discourse by reframing the debate. Interdisciplinary perspectives serve to illustrate a 'bigger picture'. Also, 'wicked' questions stimulate reflection, discern leverage points and dismantle resilient defences. Lastly, a proposal: exploring the value of 'glasses half full'. Some may realize that postmodern concepts behind compelling criticisms to EBM have already taken root, being shared by policymakers, practitioners and patients as well.

The post-evangelical emerging church: Innovations in New Zealand and the UK

This article explores new religious groups who build a distinctive vision of the ‘emerging church’ by drawing from a post-evangelical perspective. Specifically, we explore the ways in which two groups (a Baptist church in Auckland, New Zealand, and a group attached to a Church of England parish in York, UK) re-imagine church and reflexively reconfigure ideas of Christian religion, in light of their embrace of a ‘post-modern’ view of the world. Throughout, the focus remains on the question of how religious groups, which self-consciously embrace a post-modern worldview – emphasising detraditionalisation and individualism – sustain durable Christian communities.

Postmodern as a factor in the transformation of the functionality of a religious complex

The radical changes that take place in the social world always directly or indirectly affect the content and forms of functioning of the religious complex in society. Significantly influenced by this process, as shown, were the Renaissance and Modern times, which through secularization processes brought to life new types of religiosity. Undoubtedly, they are greatly influenced by the proliferation and establishment of postmodern worldviews.

Evil's Political Habitats

Evil’s Political Habitats Jodi Dean (bio) In his 2002 State of the Union address, George W. Bush invoked an “axis of evil.” What available rhetorical fields enabled the President to link together North Korea, Iran, and Iraq and then judge the result as evil? What could hold this unstable train of signification together? Within what discursive registers was such a monstrous, bizarre moral geography even comprehensible?1 “Evil” finds a hospitable environment in Bush’s presidential addresses because of the speculative identity of two seemingly opposed patterns of belief prominent in contemporary America — pervasive relativism and absolutist conviction.2 Through a retrospective on “evil” in presidential speeches, I show how this coincidence of opposites first inhabits the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, arguably the figure Bush most seeks to emulate as president. At work in the words and personae of both the fortieth and the forty-third presidents is a powerful combination of conviction and vacuity such that resolve exists simply for its own sake. In Bush’s speeches this resolve culminates in a vision of himself and America as instruments of the will of God. “Evil” could inhabit the 2002 State of the Union address not simply because of Bush’s fluency in the language of the faith, but because of the coincidence of conviction and the broader culture of relativism in which the term “evil” floats so freely. “Evil” is powerful, efficacious, because its very lack of meaning (or the excesses of meaning over-determining it, which is the same thing) enables the term to produce a conviction-effect: no matter what “evil” means, people can be confident in Bush’s conviction — he knows.3 Hearing the 2002 State of the Union address, we believed that he was convinced there was an axis of evil.4 Many Evils At first glance, it might appear that “evil” could inhabit the 2002 State of the Union address because of the ready availability of a discourse of fear and terror following the events of September 11th, one, and of the prominence of religion in American life, two. Although “evil” no doubt flourishes in these discursive environments, to focus on either distracts attention from the pervasiveness of “evil” and the multiplicity of its modes of appearance. September 11th has been said to have changed everything.5 It exposed the pernicious danger of postmodern relativism and the soul-destroying impact of irony. It proved decisively the reality of evil in the world. And, it has reconfigured reality by challenging us, the civilized (according to Bush and Samuel Huntington), to confront, wage war on, evil. These claims for September 11th are rooted in a discursive habitat formed by and nourished through the culture wars. They stem from the assumption that over the past forty years Americans have lost their moral sense, their capacity to speak seriously about evil. This loss is said to be significant, a truncating of the moral world insofar as the category “evil” is necessary for evaluating experiences, harms, sufferings, and dangers. This concern about the amputation of Americans’ moral sense, moreover, shares its discursive habitat with critical claims regarding the culture of irony, a fecund environment already in the post WWII era as the presumption of the general secularization of American society took hold.6 That these claims for September 11th stem from the discursive environment of the culture wars is also attested to by a second assumption, namely, that relativists hate America. A number of conservative thinkers contend that the problem with liberals or postmodernists is not that they are relativists, but, on the contrary, that their apparent ethical pluralism is in fact ideological. Liberals and their ilk aren’t really relativist at all. Rather, they believe that America itself is evil.7 For these conservatives, relativism, and its multicultural, ecumenical, and ethically pluralist kin, serves as the ideological guise of a treasonous anti-Americanism. These conservatives assume that “evil” remains part of a postmodern worldview, a worldview that is antithetical to American values and that September 11th revealed to be a threat to American unity and security. The problem with the idea that September 11th provides the conditions of possibility for Bush...

Returning From Exile: Exploring John Dominic Crossan's Concept of the Passion-Resurrection Narratives as Prophecy Historicised1

AbstractThe modern and post-modern worldviews are inimical to the worldview of theistic religions and the fundamental assumptions and credal articulations of the Christian faith. John Shelbey Spong has characterised the situation of Christians who take seriously the (post)modern worldview as well as their commitment to Jesus of Nazareth and the biblical tradition as 'living in exile.' In this article I explore to what extent the insights of New Testament historical scholarship, specifically John Dominic Crossan's concept of the passion-resurrection narratives as prophecy-historicised, as well as his historical construct of Jesus as the founder of the Kingdom Movement, could enable a reformulation of basic Christian concepts so that commitments to Christianity and (post)modernism can be held in a creative and meaningful tension. It is suggested that Christians in exile can return and contribute to the Christian community and tradition, and to the transformation of the (post)modern world, if the Church recognizes that different interpretations of Jesus can exist creatively side by side within the tradition. On the basis of Crossan's research-findings it is argued that that is exactly what happened at the birth of Christianity. It remains a possibility today.

Ecological Consciousness in Traditional Chinese Aesthetics

Ecological consciousness in traditional Chinese culture is a very important thought resource in the process of constructing ‘a postmodern worldview’.(Griffin, 1995)