Rethinking the Postmodern Perspective

Excavating the Kantian System to Rebuild Social Theory

Bibliographic Data

ID2276969
AuthorsMichael Roberts (0000-0002-0929-3044, The Graduate Center, CUNY, corresponding author)
Year2000
Volume41
Issue4
Pages681-698
Publication date2000-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociological Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0253 • E-ISSN: 1533-8525
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1533-8525.2000.tb00079.x
OpenAlexW2007492559
LanguageEN
References cited28

The postmodernism debate in the social sciences has been misunderstood as primarily an epistemological problem concerning method. The evolution of the postmodernism debate into the science wars has raised the same issues Critics blame postmodernism and science studies for epistemological relativism and hostility toward science, while supporters attempt to use postmodernism as a part of a project to replace positivism with interpretive methods. Both critics and supporters of postmodernism miss the most important aspect of the postmodern perspective: the attempt to break out of epistemology and the Kantian conceptual framework. Critics of postmodernism and science studies also mistakenly argue that postmodernism is the sole creation of the humanities. Many of the key concepts of the postmodern perspective, however, were developed through reflections on novel developments in the natural sciences. Because critics and supporters of postmodernism in the social sciences remain within a Kantian conceptual framework, the postmodern break from epistemology has been overlooked. A close reading of reflexive texts on the natural sciences rules out any claim that the post-modern perspective is simply a relativistic methodology that dislikes science. The pages below focus on key texts by Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault and Bruno Latour as an attempt to re-orient the postmodernism debate in the social sciences. A reexamination of these texts reveals how the postmodernism debate in the social sciences has mistakenly understood postmodernism as a problem of method and epistemology. Science studies represents the maturation of the postmodern perspective by building a non-epistemologically oriented social theory. The possibility of rebuilding social theory after the dismantling of epistemology is the unique halimark of science studies, the most recent development of the postmodern perspective

Epistemology · Philosophy of science · Postmodern music · Postmodern theatre · Postmodernism · Relativism · Social science · Sociology · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism

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