P O S T M O D E R N I S MA CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE OR THE MOMENT OF TRUTH

Presented by:Imran Khalid KhanMadiha ShakirAbdullah SaleemMomina Azim

REMEMBER THE ‘GOOD OLD DAYS’!Life was once predictable

Things were well structured –

mapped out for us

We knew who we were – a clear

identity

We had firm beliefs about the

nature of things

FROM MODERNITY TO POST-MODERNITY

MODERNISM

production Community life Social class identity Family A belief in continuity and situation A role of education A one-way media Overt social control Nationhood Science aided progress and finding the truth

consumption fragmentation (individualism) Identity from other sources Families (many options) Breakage with the past/tradition Education for what? Duality of media (choice/interchange) Covert control (CCTV etc.) Global Science is only one source of knowledge –

plurality of truths now

POST-MODERNISM

Structure/security/place/stabilityYOU KNEW WHO YOU WERE

Confusion/lack of structure/incessant choice

YOU CREATE WHO YOU WANT TO BE

KEY FEATURES OF POST-MODERNISM

• Truth is relative

• Consumerism is all

• Transformation of the self (‘pick ‘n’ mix’)• Disillusionment with the idea of progress

• Uncertainty

• Fragmentation of social life

• Incessant choice

• Globalisation

• The impact of ICT on social life

Postmodernism

Modern age has lost the

enlightenment

Search for

truth

People less

likely to follow

rigid ideology

Greater pluralism

is modern life

No absolutes

Culture and structures

are fragmented

Less predictable

Traditional labels

and categories

lose relevance

We recreate

the past,

blend with

the present

Globalisation

has narrowed

time and

space

FURTHER THOUGHTS…

Science no longer has the

answers

Progress is now a

questionable enterprise

Post modern society

feeds upon

itself..recreating the

past, entwining it with

the present, with some

self mocking humour

Cultural cohesion

comes from sharing

the same media

Accepting many realities

and that all the big

explanations are only

bigger stories

Each cultural identity can co-

exist…giving the individual

many ways of being

10 POINTS OF POST-MODERNISM & STYLE

1. Emphasis on the centrality of style, at the expense of substance

2. Recycling past cultures and styles – pastiche

3. Playful use of ‘useless’ decoration

4. Celebration of complexity and contradiction. Mixture of high and low culture.

5. Sensitivity to the subtleties of image, language and signs

6. Intermixing – different styles – collaging

7. Accepting the collapse of distinction and difference

8. Rejection of monolithic definitions of culture – celebrate pluralism and diversity

9. Scepticism towards metanarratives and ‘absolutism’

10. Decline of the idea of only one source of meaning –truth.

FAITH COULD RE-EMERGE AS SCIENTIFIC THINKING LOSES SIGNIFICANCE

• Science and progress always undermined faith (see Comte and the demise of the theological stage)

• As technical and bureaucratic (Weber) thinking/living lose favour

• Think about the acceptance of the alternative ‘spiritual’

JACQUES DERRIDA• Modernism = logocentrism

• Post-modernists rejected this and argue that trying to tell the ‘big story’ now is impossible

• Social structure is in a state of flux

• All meaning is now relative and socially constructed

• Reality is fragile and confusing

JEAN FRANCOIS LYOTARD (1984)

• Science has helped destroy the metanarratives

• All metanarratives are simplistic and reductionst

• We should focus on playing language games to explore the many narratives that exist

• Knowledge is no longer a tool of the authorities – we have choice/freedom

• Actions/ideas are now judged on how useful they are…rather than how true they are.

JEAN BAUDRILLARD

‘we are constantly surrounded by an ecstasy of communication and

that communication is sickening’

We are now just customers whose desires are created by the media.

We pursue the images attached to the products

'simulacra’- make believe goods which bear no relationship to the real world

We live in hyper-realities in which appearances are everything.

IMAGE IS EVERYTHING !

POST-MODERNISM ILLUSTRATED – ‘REALITY TV’

• Reality TV illustrates the interchange between the consumer and the media

• They are ‘real people’ who people can be observed and scrutinised.

• They do not entertain – rather than exist…they are a mish-mash of cctv surveillance and gameshow

• In the real world they are talentless nobodys who are treated as stars

POST-MODERNISM ILLUSTRATED –’DISNEYLAND’

• Disneyland is a simulacra. It is a simulated reality.

• It is artificial – yet ‘real’.

• It is a place that exists and is accepted because our imagination makes it so.

• The fine line between reality and fantasy is ‘greyer’.

• The power of the symbol over substance.

POST-MODERNISM ILLUSTRATED - DIET

• The high street is global. Look at the choices and combination that we now have.

• What is the impact on traditional culture? Identity?

• People are also driven by to change their body shape through diet…a control…choice.

• People are constructing themselves and designing their individual identities

RELIGION IN A POST-MODERN AGE

• Faith could re-emerge as scientific thinking loses significance

• Religious symbols have new life in new contexts

• Faith is now ‘up for grabs’ in the absence of absolute truth

• People can blend elements of various faiths to suit their lifestyle

• Globalisation has divorced faiths from locations and cultures

• fundamentalism is a response to a moral vacuum

• People can make choices which are more personal and meaningful

• Collective worship no longer needs to be based on ‘face to face’ interaction

RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS HAVE NEW LIFE IN NEW CONTEXTS

• How have traditional religious symbols been recycled.

• Where can we find crucifixes, pentangles, kaballah bracelets, buddhas, etc.

FAITH IS NOW ‘UP FOR GRABS’ IN THE ABSENCE OF ABSOLUTE TRUTH

We can now make spiritual choicesthat fit in with our identity and our own version of ultimate truth and meaning.

PEOPLE CAN BLEND ELEMENTS OF VARIOUS FAITHS TO SUIT THEIR LIFESTYLE

Many people are finding greater freedom to

‘pick ‘n’ mix’ faiths to suit their lifestyles.

This is about individual interpretation and incorporating elements, ie, buddhistphilosophy with Christian morality

(Yuppie Buddhist experience in early 1990s)

GLOBALISATION HAS DIVORCED FAITHS FROM LOCATIONS AND CULTURES

Religion is now more universal and there are less barriers to hold people back from joining faiths that differ to tradition

FUNDAMENTALISM IS A RESPONSE TO A MORAL VACUUM

There has been a revival of ultra traditional

ideas and ‘strict morality’ with some religions which many have found inviting

and a source of ‘security’

PEOPLE CAN MAKE CHOICES WHICH ARE MORE PERSONAL AND MEANINGFUL

Almost an extension of individuation and the search for individual meaning.

the control and oppressive elements of religion can be edited (see Rastafari)

COLLECTIVE WORSHIP NO LONGER NEEDS TO BE BASED ON ‘FACE TO FACE’ INTERACTION

Organised religion may be suffering – but faith is still alive.

Structures/institutions are melting away as they now existing within individual minds and action.

Modernism

Description and

uncovering of the object of

inquiry through ‘objective’

technique

Even ‘human

subjectivity’

through

linguistic

description

Language is a

neutral mediumPost-Modernism

Description and

uncovering of the object of

inquiry through ‘objective’

technique

Language is a

neutral medium

POST-MODERN RESEARCHthrough

linguistic

description

PRAGMATIC POSTMODERN METHODOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES

4 Central Elements single participants may convey multiple representations

research work and texts capture a plurality ‘of different identities or voices associated with different groups, individuals, positions or special interests’

‘Command of different theoretical perspectives’ and ‘strong familiarity with the critique of … these’ on the part of researchers (reflexivity). This leads to the possibility of ‘openness and different sorts of readings to surface in the research’ (flexibility)

phenomena can be presented using a

variety of modes and media, including ‘the

use of different sorts of descriptive languages’

POST-MODERN RESEARCH

Daredevil Research1• break the mould of traditional research patterns through

• subversion,

• inversion,

• irony,

• pastiche,

• innovative forms,

• humour,

• slyness,

• paradox, and so forth

to make the strange, familiar – and the familiar, strange

1- Janice Jipson and Nicholas Paley (1997, p.11)

CONTINUED…

Post-Modern Researchers:

fret less about ‘proving’ a point, or providing evidence to ‘support’ an argument, and concentrate

more upon generating a ‘polyvalent data base that is used to vivify interpretation’.

call for ‘alternative forms of research presentation … such as fiction, art installations, dance, and

readers theater (sic)’

Postmodern curriculum research lends itself particularly to exploration through ‘arts-based inquiry’.

The ground for research rigour is thus shifted from traditions of validity and reliability to aesthetic and

ethical interests.

CONTINUED…

Asks: what counts as valid research evidence?

‘Inquiry’ is often used as a substitute for ‘research’, to undo expectations set up by normative, positivistic models for

controlled experimentation, or by inductive mechanisms for ‘rigour’ through coding, classifying and deriving

schemata from data.

Reflexivity and flexibility are preferred to such classifications.

does not start from a naïve ‘realist’ position. James Scheurich (1997) explicitly challenges the assumptions of the

realist position of modernist research on three counts:

1. that there is a transparent, autonomous subject (agency) who authentically ‘speaks’ the research (this is termed

the crisis of identity of both researchers and subjects of research)

2. that there is a reasoning mind executing practices of reason, to which methodologies conform (the crisis of

methodological certainty)

3. that the narratives or accounts of the autonomous, reasoning and authentic-speaking agency can be taken as

direct representations of reality (the dual crisis of representation and validity)

CONTINUED…

does not seek essences or truths

data are not taken as ‘facts’, but as descriptive terms, both contextualised and relativised (placed in a

historical and cultural setting). Scheurich (1997) offers three informing guidelines for research in the

postmodern. It must be stressed that turning such guidelines into principles, a prescriptive manifesto,

or fundamental truths, is resisted by the postmodern sensibility. The guidelines are:

1. Research in the postmodern attempts to erase the distinction between research practices and

the subjectivity of the researcher. It is recognised that the two are intertwined. Research

practices, like all social practices, come to construct identities, of which ‘researcher’ is one.

Moulding this identity, as an aesthetic and ethical project, is what Foucault (see Bernauer and

Rasmussen, 1994) refers to as a ‘practice of the self’. Thus, what happens to the researcher in

the social practices of research is considered to be as important as what happens to the

subjects or objects (usually ‘texts’) of the research.

2. Research in the postmodern notes, reflexively, that modernist research is ‘disciplined’ by

CONCLUSION

Research in the postmodern demands practices of ‘reflexivity’ and understanding of

the possibility that ‘reality’ is socially constructed. Again, where modernist research

assumes that there is a reality ‘out there’ waiting to be investigated, described, and

catalogued, social constructionism does not abandon the notion of an external world

to be investigated. Rather, it focuses upon how meanings are ascribed to a ‘reality’,

thus constituting (constructing or producing) that reality through social conventions,

discourse, conversations and negotiations within communities of practice.