From: John Cromby <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] Post Modernism doesn't believe in progress
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Friday, 12 December, 2008, 9:22 AM

Keith, both of these are good:

Parker, I. (1998) Against Postmodernism: Psychology in Cultural Context 
Theory & Psychology, Vol. 8, No. 5, 601-627

Eagleton, T. (1996). The Illusions of Postmodernism. Oxford: Blackwells.


If you'd like a left critique more concerned with the impact on science 
and truth, the best known is perhaps:

Sokal, A. & Bricmont, J. (1998) Intellectual Impostures. London, Profile 
Books.


Within psychology, postmodernism was closely associated with social 
constructionism and so sympathetic evaluations of constructionism give 
you some sense of its good and bad aspects: see Viv Burr's
'Introduction 
to Social Constructionism' (Routledge) and the contributions to a book I 
co-edited (with Dave Nightingale) 'Social Constructionist Psychology: a 
critical analysis of theory and practice'(Open University Press).

Postmodernism is not a unitary 'thing' or paradigm, although in most 
variants it does share some or all of the characteristics that Maclure 
identifies.

In my view, on the plus side its given us an increased sensitivity to 
diversity, a more nuanced understanding of the ubiquity and 
transitiveness of power, a set of deconstructive methods that are useful 
for unpicking the workings of ideology, and a greater sense of 
psychological fluidity, instability and the interpenetration of 
individuals by the social.

On the negative side its produced a lot of work that says very little of 
substance in extremely complicated ways; allowed reactionaries to 
present themselves as radicals because it legitimates assertions of 
'undecidability' 'contingency' and 'mulitplicity' as
though they are 
necessarily of themselves progressive political statements; produced a 
focus on 'playfulness', 'multiplicity' and
'instability' that can divert 
attention from enduring structural inequalities and grinding 
exploitative continuity and sameness; and promoted forms of (most 
commonly discursive) idealism that then problematise attempts to take 
seriously the influence of material forces.

J.




Venables,Keith (Children and Younger Adults) wrote:
> Colleagues,
> 
> I was shocked to read this from MacLure (1995) on the Impact of
> Postmodernism :
> 
> As a starting point: think fragmentation, ambiguity, loss of certainty.
> Think of postmodernism as a kind of undoing of all the habits of mind of
> so-called western thought that have prevailed over the last two
> centuries - the decidability of truth, the inevitability of progress,
> the triumph of reason, the possibility of a universal modern code, the
> objectivity of science, the forward march of history, the existence of
> the singular, autonomous self. These foundational principles, are all to
> do with making the world knowable, accountable, unambiguous,
> generalisable, predictable, coherent, manageable and mutually
> comprehensible. They have all, at one time or another, been held to be
> characteristic of modernism. And post-modernism says 'No' to them.
You
> will begin to understand its widespread unpopularity.
> 
> MacLure, M. (1995) Postmodernism: a post script, Educational Action
> Research, 6 (3) 453-469
> 
> Is there anyone out there who might offer me a critique of this
> postmodernism?
> 
> Keith Venables 
>  
> 
>
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-- 
********************************************************
John Cromby
Department of Human Sciences
Loughborough University
Loughborough, Leics
LE11 3TU England
Tel: 01509 223000
Email: [log in to unmask]
Personal webpage: http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~hujc4/
Co-Editor, "Subjectivity": www.palgrave-journals.com/sub
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