Post-and Pre-Modern Ambiguities
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6086555 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Diana Wong, Diana Ayi Wong (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1995 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 140-144 |
| Publication date | 1995-04-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0217-9520 • E-ISSN: 1793-2858 |
| Publisher | ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute (PUBLISHER • SG) |
| DOI | 10.1355/sj10-1i |
| OpenAlex | W2047274262 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
This paper argues for an acceptance of the post-modernist postulate of without its misappropriation as a methodological licence for anything goes. Taken as a serious challenge to rethink fundamental premisses of social thought, post-modernist scholarship would allow for a much-needed reconstruction of the concept of the social based on difference rather than identity. The view that ambiguity is an inexcusable methodological flaw derives from what Rorty calls the notion of science as the mirror of nature (Rorty 1980). Flawed mirrors lead to equivocal images. Exact representability, however, is, as Derrida argues, predicated on the myth or metaphysics of presence - of spatial and temporal essentialism (Derrida 1978). Language, and the discourses and texts generated with it, does not and cannot bear an immediate and transparent relation to the world. This calling into question of foundationalist epistemologies does not, however, mean the negation of all referentiality and the methodological licence of anything goes. It would be salutary to recall here Derrida's very definite position on the necessity for rigorous attention to the material or, to use another term, empirical: This comprehension of the sign in and of itself, in its immediate
Political science · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism
| Highly cited | No |
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