Postmodernism and Its Critics

Daniel Salberg and Robert Stewart and Karla Wesley and

Shannon Weiss
(Note: authorship is arranged stratigraphically with
the most recent author listed first)

Basic Premises:
As an intellectual movement postmodernism was born
as a challenge to several modernist themes that were
first articulated during the Enlightenment. These
include scientific positivism, the inevitability of human
progress, and the potential of human reason to
address any essential truth of physical and social
conditions and thereby make them amenable to
rational control (Boyne and Rattansi 1990).
The primary tenets of the postmodern movement
include: (1) an elevation of text and language as the
fundamental phenomena of existence, (2) the
application of literary analysis to all phenomena, (3) a
questioning of reality and representation, (4) a
critique of metanarratives, (5) an argument against
method and evaluation, (6) a focus upon power
relations and hegemony, (7) and a general critique of
Western institutions and knowledge (Kuznar
2008:78). For his part, Lawrence Kuznar labels
postmodern anyone whose thinking includes most or
all of these elements. Importantly, the term
postmodernism refers to a broad range of artists,
academic critics, philosophers, and social scientists
that Christopher Butler (2003:2) has only half-
jokingly alluded to as like “a loosely constituted and
quarrelsome political party.” The anthropologist
Melford Spiro defines postmodernism thusly:
The postmodernist critique of science consists of two
interrelated arguments, epistemological and
ideological. Both are based on subjectivity. First,
because of the subjectivity of the human object,
anthropology, according to the epistemological
argument cannot be a science; and in any event the
subjectivity of the human subject precludes the
possibility of science discovering objective truth.
Second, since objectivity is an illusion, science
according to the ideological argument, subverts
oppressed groups, females, ethnics, third-world
peoples. [Spiro 1996: 759]
Postmodernism has its origins as an eclectic social
movement originating in aesthetics, architecture and
philosophy (Bishop 1996). In architecture and art,
fields which are distinguished as the oldest claimants
to the name, postmodernism originated in the
reaction against abstraction in painting and the
International Style in architecture (Callinicos 1990:
101). However, postmodern thinking arguably began
in the nineteenth century with Nietzsche’s assertions
regarding truth, language, and society, which opened
the door for all later postmodern and late modern
critiques about the foundations of knowledge (Kuznar
2008: 78). Nietzsche asserted that truth was simply:
a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and
anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human
relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and
embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which
after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to
a people: truths are illusions about which one has
forgotten that this is what they are. [Nietzsche 1954:
46-47]
According to Kuznar, postmodernists trace this
skepticism about truth and the resulting relativism it
engenders from Nietzsche to Max Weber and Sigmund
Freud, and finally to Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault
and other contemporary postmodernists (2008:78).
Postmodernism and anthropology - Postmodern
attacks on ethnography are generally based on the
belief that there is no true objectivity and that
therefore the authentic implementation of the
scientific method is impossible. For instance, Isaac
Reed (2010) conceptualizes the postmodern challenge
to the objectivity of social research as skepticism over
the anthropologist’s ability to integrate the context of
investigation and the context of explanation. Reed
defines the context of investigation as the social and
intellectual context of the investigator – essentially
her social identity, beliefs and memories. The context
of explanation, on the other hand, refers to the reality
that she wishes to investigate, and in particular the
social actions she wishes to explain and the
surrounding social environment, or context, that she
explains them with. In the late 1970s and 1980s
some anthropologists, such as Crapanzano and
Rabinow, began to express elaborate self-doubt
concerning the validity of fieldwork. By the mid-1980s
the critique about how anthropologists interpreted
and explained the Other, essentially how they
engaged in “writing culture,” had become a full-blown
epistemic crisis that Reed refers to as the
“postmodern” turn. The driving force behind the
postmodern turn was a deep skepticism about
whether the investigator could adequately, effectively,
or honestly integrate the context of investigation into
the context of explanation and, as a result, write true
social knowledge. This concern was most prevalent in
cultural and linguistic anthropology, less so in
archaeology, and had the least effect on physical
anthropology, which is generally the most scientific of
the four subfields.
Modernity first came into being with the
Renaissance. Modernity implies “the progressive
economic and administrative rationalization and
differentiation of the social world” (Sarup 1993). In
essence this term emerged in the context of the
development of the capitalist state. The fundamental
act of modernity is to question the foundations of past
knowledge, and Boyne and Rattansi characterize
modernity as consisting of two sides: “the progressive
union of scientific objectivity and politico-economic
rationality . . . mirrored in disturbed visions of
unalleviated existential despair” (1990: 5).
Postmodernity is the state or condition of being
postmodern. Logically postmodernism literally means
“after modernity. It refers to the incipient or actual
dissolution of those social forms associated with
modernity" (Sarup 1993). The archaeologist Mathew
Johnson has characterized postmodernity, or the
postmodern condition, as disillusionment with
Enlightenment ideals (Johnson 2010). Jean-Francois
Lyotard, in his seminal work The Postmodern
Condition (1984) defines it as an “incredulity toward
metanarratives,” which is, somewhat ironically, a
product of scientific progress (1984: xxiv).
Postmodernity concentrates on the tensions of
difference and similarity erupting from processes of
globalization and capitalism: the accelerating
circulation of people, the increasingly dense and
frequent cross-cultural interactions, and the
unavoidable intersections of local and global
knowledge.
Some social critics have attempted to explain the
postmodern condition in terms of the historical and
social milieu which spawned it. David Ashley (1990)
suggests that “modern, overloaded individuals,
desperately trying to maintain rootedness and
integrity . . . ultimately are pushed to the point where
there is little reason not to believe that all value-
orientations are equally well-founded. Therefore,
increasingly, choice becomes meaningless.” Jean
Baudrillard, one of the most radical postmodernists,
writes that we must come to terms with the second
revolution: “that of the Twentieth Century, of
postmodernity, which is the immense process of the
destruction of meaning equal to the earlier
destruction of appearances. Whoever lives by
meaning dies by meaning” ([Baudrillard 1984:38-39]
in Ashley 1990).
Modernization “is often used to refer to the stages
of social development which are based upon
industrialization. Modernization is a diverse unity of
socio-economic changes generated by scientific and
technological discoveries and innovations. . .” (Sarup
1993).
Modernism should be considered distinct from the
concept of “modernity.” . Although in its broadest
definition modernism refers to modern thought,
character or practice, the term is usually restricted to
a set of artistic, musical, literary, and more generally
aesthetic movements that emerged in Europe in the
late nineteenth century and would become
institutionalized in the academic institutions and art
galleries of post-World War I Europe and America
(Boyne and Rattansi 1990). Important figures include
Matisse, Picasso, and Kandinsky in painting, Joyce
and Kafka in literature, and Eliot and Pound in poetry.
It can be characterized by self-consciousness, the
alienation of the integrated subject, and reflexiveness,
as well as by a general critique of modernity’s claims
regarding the progressive capacity of science and the
efficacy of metanarratives. These themes are very
closely related to Postmodernism (Boyne and Rattansi
1990: 6-8; Sarup 1993).
Postmodernism - Sarup maintains that “There is a
sense in which if one sees modernism as the culture
of modernity, postmodernism is the culture of
postmodernity” (1993). The term “postmodernism” is
somewhat controversial since many doubt whether it
can ever be dignified by conceptual coherence. For
instance, it is difficult to reconcile postmodernist
approaches in fields like art and music to certain
postmodern trends in philosophy, sociology, and
anthropology. However, it is in some sense unified by
a commitment to a set of cultural projects privileging
heterogeneity, fragmentation, and difference, as well
as a relatively widespread mood in literary theory,
philosophy, and the social sciences that question the
possibility of impartiality, objectivity, or authoritative
knowledge (Boyne and Rattansi 1990: 9-11).
The following are some proposed differences between modern and postmodern thought: Contrast of
Modern and Postmodern Thinking

Modern Postmodern

Reasoning From foundation upwards Multiple factors of multiple levels of

reasoning. Web-oriented.

Science Universal Optimism Realism of Limitations

Part/Whole Parts comprise the whole The whole is more than the parts

God Acts by violating "natural" laws" or by Top-Down causation

"immanence" in everything that is

Language Referential Meaning in social context through usage

Source: http://private.fuller.edu/~clameter/phd/post
modern.html (note: this link is no longer working as
of 4/30/2012)
Points of Reaction:
"Modernity" takes its Latin origin from “modo,” which
means “just now.” The Postmodern, then, literally
means “after just now” (Appignanesi and Garratt
1995). Points of reaction from within postmodernism
are associated with other “posts”: postcolonialism,
poststructuralism, and postprocessualism.
Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism has been defined as:
1. A description of institutional conditions in formerly
colonial societies.
2. An abstract representation of the global situation
after the colonial period.
3. A description of discourses informed by
psychological and epistemological orientations.
Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism (1993) uses
discourse analysis and postcolonial theory as tools for
rethinking forms of knowledge and the social
identities of postcolonial systems. An important
feature of postcolonialist thought is its assertion that
modernism and modernity are part of the colonial
project of domination.
Debates about postcolonialism are unresolved, yet
issues raised in Said’s Orientalism (1978), a critique
of Western descriptions of Non-Euro-American Others,
suggest that colonialism as a discourse is based on
the ability of Westerners to examine other societies in
order to produce knowledge and use it as a form of
power deployed against the very subjects of inquiry.
As should be readily apparent, the issues of
postcolonialism are uncomfortably relevant to
contemporary anthropological investigations.
Poststructuralism
In reaction to the abstraction of cultural data
characteristic of model building, cultural relativists
argue that model building hindered understanding of
thought and action. From this claim arose
poststructuralist concepts such as developed in the
work of Pierre Bourdieu (1972). He asserts that
structural models should not be replaced but
enriched. Poststructuralists like Bourdieu are
concerned with reflexivity and the search for logical
practice. By doing so, accounts of the participants'
behavior and meanings are not objectified by the
observer. (For definition of reflexivity, see key
concepts). In general postructuralism expresses
disenchantment with static, mechanistic, and
controlling models of culture, instead privileging social
process and agency.
Postprocessualism
Unlike postcolonialism and poststructuralism, which
are trends among cultural anthropologists,
postprocessualism is a trend among archaeologists.
Postprocessualists “use deconstructionist skeptical
arguments to conclude that there is no objective past
and that our representations of the past are only texts
that we produce on the basis of our socio-political
standpoints(Harris 1999).
Leading Figures:
Michael Agar Agar is critical of traditional scholarly
studies related to the social world for two reasons.
Firstly, he feels that it is far too difficult to reconstruct
human interactions based on notes in a meaningful
way. Secondly, he feels that American anthropology
tends to draw a barrier between “applied” and
“practiced” work (Agar 1997). This effectively means
that those who are currently paid to teach
anthropology in an academic setting have become out
of touch with the current state of scholarship being
done by “practitioners” whose positions within
academia are far less secure, having not yet attained
status in a university setting. To define this distinction
he uses the terms “slave labor academic instructors”
and “practitioner civil servants.”
Jean Baudrillard (1929 - 2007) Baudrillard was a
sociologist who began his career exploring the Marxist
critique of capitalism (Sarup 1993: 161). During this
phase of his work he argued that, “consumer objects
constitute a system of signs that differentiate the
population” (Sarup 1993: 162). Eventually, however,
Baudrillard felt that Marxist tenets did not effectively
evaluate commodities, so he turned to
postmodernism. Rosenau labels Baudrillard as a
skeptical postmodernist because of statements like,
“everything has already happened....nothing new can
occur,” and “there is no real world” (Rosenau 1992:
64, 110). Baudrillard breaks down modernity and
postmodernity in an effort to explain the world as a
set of models. He identifies early modernity as the
period between the Renaissance and the Industrial
Revolution, modernity as the period at the start of the
Industrial Revolution, and postmodernity as the
period of mass media (cinema and photography).
Baudrillard states that we live in a world of images
but images that are only simulations. Baudrillard
implies that many people fail to understand this
concept that, “we have now moved into an
epoch...where truth is entirely a product of consensus
values, and where ‘science’ itself is just the name we
attach to certain modes of explanation,” (Norris 1990:
169).
Jacques Derrida (1930 - 2004) Derrida is identified
as a poststructuralist and a skeptical postmodernist.
Much of his writing is concerned with the
deconstruction of texts and probing the relationship of
meaning between texts (Bishop 1996: 1270). He
observes that “a text employs its own stratagems
against it, producing a force of dislocation that
spreads itself through an entire system.” (Rosenau
1993: 120). Derrida directly attacks Western
philosophy's understanding of reason. He sees reason
as dominated by “a metaphysics of presence.” Derrida
agrees with structuralism's insight, that meaning is
not inherent in signs, but he proposes that it is
incorrect to infer that anything reasoned can be used
as a stable and timeless model (Appignanesi 1995:
77). According to Norris, “He tries to problematize the
grounds of reason, truth, and knowledge...he
questions the highest point by demanding reasoning
for reasoning itself,” (1990: 199).
Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984) - Foucault was a
French philosopher who attempted to show that what
most people think of as the permanent truths of
human nature and society actually change throughout
the course of history. While challenging the influences
of Marx and Freud, Foucault postulated that everyday
practices enabled people to define their identities and
systemize knowledge. Foucault is considered a
postmodern theorist precisely because his work upset
the conventional understanding of history as a
chronology of inevitable facts. Alternatively, he
depicted history as existing under layers of
suppressed and unconscious knowledge in and
throughout history. These under layers are the codes
and assumptions of order, the structures of exclusion
that legitimate the epistemes by which societies
achieve identities (Appignanesi 1995:
83, http://www.connect.net/ron).In addition to these
insights, Foucault’s study of power and its shifting
patterns is one of the foundations of postmodernism.
Foucault believed that power was inscribed in
everyday life to the extent that many social roles and
institutions bore the stamp of power, specifically as it
could be used to regulate social hierarchies and
structures. These could be regulated though control of
the conditions in which “knowledge,” “truth,” and
socially accepted “reality” were produced (Erikson and
Murphy 2010: 272).
Clifford Geertz (1926 - 2006) Geertz was a
prominent anthropologist best known for his work
with religion. He was somewhat ambivalent about
Postmodernism. He divided it into two movements
that both came to fruition in the 1980s. Geertz
describes these as follows:
The first led off into essentially literary matters:
authorship, genre, style, narrative, metaphor,
representation, discourse, fiction, figuration,
persuasion; the second, into essentially political
matters: the social foundations of anthropological
authority, the modes of power inscribed in its
practices, its ideological assumptions, its complicity
with colonialism, racism, exploitation, and exoticism,
its dependency on the master narratives of Westerns
self-understanding. These interlinked critiques of
anthropology, the one inward-looking and brooding,
the other outward-looking and recriminatory, may not
have produced the ‘fully dialectical ethnography
acting powerfully in the postmodern world system,’ to
quote that Writing Culture blast again, nor did they
exactly go unresisted. But they did induce a certain
self-awareness and a certain candor also, into a
discipline not without need of them.. [Geertz 2002:
11]
Ian Hodder (1948 - ) Hodder is one of the founders
of postprocessualism and is generally considered one
of the most influential archaeologists of the last thirty
years. The postprocessual movement arose out of an
attempt to apply insights gained from French Marxist
anthropology to the study of material culture and was
highly influenced by a postmodern epistemology.
Working in sub-Sahara Africa, Hodder and his
students documented how material culture was not
merely a reflection of sociopolitical organization, but
was also an active element that could be used to
disguise, invert, and distort social relations. Bruce
Trigger (2006:481) has argued that perhaps the most
successful “law” developed in recent archaeology was
this demonstration that material culture plays an
active role in social strategies and hence can alter as
well as reflect social reality.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1944-) Scheper-Hughes is
a professor of Anthropology at the University of
California, Berkeley. In her work "Primacy of the
Ethical" Scheper-Hughes argues that, "If we cannot
begin to think about social institutions and practices
in moral or ethical terms, then anthropology strikes
me as quite weak and useless." (1995: 410). She
advocates that ethnographies be used as tools for
critical reflection and human liberation because she
feels that "ethics" make culture possible. Since culture
is preceded by ethics, therefore ethics cannot be
culturally bound as argued by anthropologists in the
past. These philosophies are evident in her other
works such as, "Death Without Weeping." The crux of
her postmodern perspective is that, "Anthropologists,
no less than any other professionals, should be held
accountable for how we have used and how we have
failed to use anthropology as a critical tool at crucial
historical moments. It is the act of "witnessing" that
lends our word its moral, at times almost theological,
character." (1995: 419)
Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924 – 1998) Lyotard was
the author of a highly influential work on postmodern
society called, The Postmodern Condition (1984). The
work was a critique on the current state of knowledge
among modern postindustrial nations such as those
found in the United States and much of Western
Europe. In it Lyotard made a number of notable
arguments, one of which was that the postmodern
world suffered from a crisis of “representation,” in
which older modes of writing about the objects of
artistic, philosophical, literary, and social scientific
languages were no longer credible. Lyotard suggests
that:
The Postmodern would be that which in the modern
invokes the unpresentable in presentation itself, that
which refuses the consolation of correct forms,
refuses the consensus of taste permitting a common
experience of nostalgia for the impossible, and
inquires into new presentations--not to take pleasure
in them, but to better produce the feeling that there is
something unpresentable.[Lyotard 1984]
Lyotard also attacked modernist thought as
epitomized by "Grand" Narratives or what he termed
the Meta(master) narrative (Lyotard 1984). In
contrast to the ethnographies written by
anthropologists in the first half of the 20th Century,
Lyotard states that an all-encompassing account of a
culture cannot be accomplished.
 Key Works:
 Baudrillard, Jean (1995) Simulacra and Simulation.
Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.
 Derrida, Jacques (1997) Of Grammatology. Corrected
ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
 Foucault, Michel (1970) The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York:
Pantheon.
 Jameson, Fredric (1991). Postmodernism, or, The
Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
 Lyotard, Jean-Francois (1984) The Postmodern
Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
 Marcus, George E. and Michael M. J. Fischer
(1986) Anthropology as Cultural Critique. An
Experimental Moment in the Human
Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
 Norris, Christopher (1979) Deconstruction: Theory
and Practice. New York: Routledge.
 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy (1993) Death without
Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in
Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press.
 Tyler, Stephen (1986) Post-Modern Ethnography:
From Document of the Occult To Occult Document. In
Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography, ed. James Clifford and George E.
Marcus. Berkeley: University of California Press.
 Vattimo, Gianni (1988) The End of Modernity: Nihilism
and Hermeneutics. In Post-Modern Critique. London:
Polity.
 Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics. In Post-
Modern Critique. London: Polity.
Principal Concepts:
“Culture” in Peril - Aside from Foucault, other
postmodernists felt that “Culture is becoming a
dangerously unfocused term, increasingly lacking in
scientific credentials” (Pasquinelli 1996). The concept
of Culture as a whole was tied not only to modernity,
but to evolutionary theory (and, implicitly, to euro
centrism). In the postmodernist view, if “culture”
existed it had to be totally relativistic without any
suggestion of “progress.” While postmodernists did
have a greater respect for later revisions of cultural
theory by Franz Boas and his followers, who
attempted to shift from a single path of human
“culture” to many varied “cultures,” they found even
this unsatisfactory because it still required the use of
a Western concept to define non-Western people.
Lament - Lament is a practice of ritualized weeping
(Wilce 2005). In the view of Wilce, the traditional
means of laments in many cultures were being forced
out by modernity due to many claiming that ritualized
displays of discontent, particularly discontent with the
lost of traditional culture, was a “backwards” custom
that needed to be stopped.
Metanarrative Lawrence Kuznar describes
metanarratives as grand narratives such as the
Enlightenment, Marxism or the American dream.
Postmodernists see metanarratives as unfairly
totalizing or naturalizing in their generalizations about
the state of humanity and historical process
(2008:83).
Polyvocality - Paralleling the generally relatativst
and skeptical attitudes towards scientific authority,
many postmodernists advocate polyvocality, which
maintains that there exists multiple, legitimate
versions of reality or truths as seen from different
perspectives. Postmodernists construe Enlightenment
rationalism and scientific positivism as an effort to
impose hegemonic values and political control on the
world. By challenging the authority of anthropologists
and other Western intellectuals, postmodernists see
themselves as defending the integrity of local cultures
and helping weaker peoples to oppose their
oppressors (Trigger 2006:446-447).
Power - Foucault was a prominent critic of the idea of
“culture,” preferring instead to deal in the concept of
“power” as the major focus of anthropological
research (Barrett 2001). Foucault felt that it was
through the dynamics of power that “a human being
turns himself into a subject” (Foucault 1982). This is
not only true of political power, but also includes
people recognizing things such as sexuality as forces
to which they are subject. “The exercise of power is
not simply a relationship between partners, individual
or collective; it is a way in which certain actions
modify others. Which is to say, of course, that
something called Power, with or without a capital
 letter, which is assumed to exist universally in a
concentrated or diffused form, does not exist”
(Foucault 1982: 788).
Radical skepticism - The systematic skepticism of
grounded theoretical perspectives and objective truths
espoused by many postmodernists had a profound
effect on anthropology. This skepticism has shifted
focus from the observation of a particular society to a
reflexive consideration of the (anthropological)
observer (Bishop 1996). According to Rosenau
(1992), postmodernists can be divided into two very
broad camps, Skeptics and Affirmatives.
 Skeptical Postmodernists – They are extremely critical
of the modern subject. They consider the subject to
be a “linguistic convention” (Rosenau 1992:43). They
also reject any understanding of time because for
them the modern understanding of time is oppressive
in that it controls and measures individuals. They
reject Theory because theories are abundant, and no
theory is considered more correct that any other.
They feel that “theory conceals, distorts, and
obfuscates, it is alienated, disparate, dissonant, it
means to exclude, order, and control rival powers”
(Rosenau 1992: 81).
 Affirmative Postmodernists – Affirmatives also reject
Theory by denying claims of truth. They do not,
however, feel that Theory needs to be abolished but
merely transformed. Affirmatives are less rigid than
Skeptics. They support movements organized around
peace, environment, and feminism (Rosenau 1993:
42).
Realism - “...is the platonic doctrine that universals
or abstractions have being independently of mind”
(Gellner 1980: 60). Marcus and Fischer note that:
“Realism is a mode of writing that seeks to represent
the reality of the whole world or form of life. Realist
ethnographies are written to allude to a whole by
means of parts or foci of analytical attention which
can constantly evoke a social and cultural totality
(1986: 2323).
Relativism – Relativism is the notion that different
perspectives have no absolute truth or validity, but
rather possess only relative, subjective value
according to distinctions in perception and
consideration. Gellner writes about the relativistic-
functionalist view of thought that goes back to the
Enlightenment: "The (unresolved) dilemma, which the
thought of the Enlightenment faced, was between a
relativistic-functionalist view of thought, and the
absolutist claims of enlightened Reason. Viewing man
as part of nature...requires (us) to see cognitive and
evaluative activities as part of nature too, and hence
varying from organism to organism and context to
context. (Gellner in [Asad 1986: 147]).
Anthropological theory of the 1960s may be best
understood as the heir of relativism. Contemporary
interpretative anthropology is the essence of
relativism as a mode of inquiry about communication
in and between cultures (Marcus & Fischer, 1986:32).
Self-Reflexivity - In anthropology, self-reflexivity
refers to the anthropologists in the process of
question, both theoretically and practically,
themselves and their work. Bishop notes that, “The
scientific observer's objectification of structure as well
as strategy was seen as placing the actors in a
framework not of their own making but one produced
by the observer, “ (1996: 1270). Self-Reflexivity
therefore leads to a consciousness of the process of
knowledge creation (1996: 995). There is an
increased awareness of the collection of data and the
limitation of methodological systems. This idea
underlies the postmodernist affinity for studying the
culture of anthropology and ethnography.
Methodologies:
One of the essential elements of Postmodernism is
that it constitutes an attack against theory and
methodology. In a sense proponents claim to
relinquish all attempts to create new knowledge in a
systematic fashion, instead substituting an “anti-
rules” fashion of discourse (Rosenau 1993:117).
Despite this claim, however, there are two
methodologies characteristic of Postmodernism. These
methodologies are interdependent in that
interpretation is inherent in Deconstruction. “Post-
modern methodology is post-positivist or anti-
positivist. As substitutes for the scientific method the
affirmatives look to feelings and personal experience.
. . the skeptical post modernists most of the
substitutes for method because they argue we can
never really know anything (Rosenau 1993:117).
Deconstruction - Deconstruction emphasizes
negative critical capacity. Deconstruction involves
 demystifying a text to reveal internal arbitrary
hierarchies and presuppositions. By examining the
margins of a text, the effort of deconstruction
examines what it represses, what it does not say, and
its incongruities. It does not solely unmask error, but
redefines the text by undoing and reversing polar
opposites. Deconstruction does not resolve
inconsistencies, but rather exposes hierarchies
involved for the distillation of information (Rosenau
1993).
Rosenau’s Guidelines for Deconstruction
Analysis:
 Find an exception to a generalization in a text and
push it to the limit so that this generalization appears
absurd. Use the exception to undermine the principle.
 Interpret the arguments in a text being deconstructed
in their most extreme form.
 Avoid absolute statements and cultivate intellectual
excitement by making statements that are both
startling and sensational.
 Deny the legitimacy of dichotomies because there are
always a few exceptions.
 Nothing is to be accepted, nothing is to be rejected. It
is extremely difficult to criticize a deconstructive
argument if no clear viewpoint is expressed.
 Write so as to permit the greatest number of
interpretations possible.....Obscurity may “protect
from serious scrutiny” (Ellis 1989: 148). The idea is
“to create a text without finality or completion, one
with which the reader can never be finished”
(Wellberg, 1985: 234).
 Employ new and unusual terminology in order that
“familiar positions may not seem too familiar and
otherwise obvious scholarship may not seem so
obviously relevant”(Ellis 1989: 142).
 “Never consent to a change of terminology and
always insist that the wording of the deconstructive
argument is sacrosanct.” More familiar formulations
undermine any sense that the deconstructive position
is unique (Ellis 1989: 145). (Rosenau 1993, p.121)
Intuitive Interpretation - Rosenau notes that,
“Postmodern interpretation is introspective and anti-
objectivist which is a form of individualized
understanding. It is more a vision than data
observation. In anthropology interpretation gravitates
toward narrative and centers on listening to and
talking with the other, “(1993:119). For
postmodernists there are an endless number of
interpretations. Foucault argues that everything is
interpretation (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983: 106).
“There is no final meaning for any particular sign, no
notion of unitary sense of text, no interpretation can
be regarded as superior to any other” (Latour 1988:
182-3). Anti-positivists defend the notion that every
interpretation is false. “Interpretative anthropology is
a covering label for a diverse set of reflections upon
the practice of ethnography and the concept of
culture” (Marcus and Fisher 1986: 60).
Accomplishments:
Critical Examination of Ethnographic
Explanation - The unrelenting re-examination of the
nature of ethnography inevitably leads to a
questioning of ethnography itself as a mode of
cultural analysis. Postmodernism adamantly insists
that anthropologists must consider the role of their
own culture in the explanation of the "other" cultures
being studied. Postmodernist theory has led to a
heightened sensitivity within anthropology to the
collection of data.
Demystification - Perhaps the greatest
accomplishments of postmodernism is the focus upon
uncovering and criticizing the epistemological and
ideological motivations in the social sciences, as well
as the increased attention to the factors contributing
to the production of knowledge.
Polyvocality – The self-reflexive regard for the ways
in which social knowledge is produced, as well as a
general skepticism regarding the objectivity and
authority of scientific knowledge, has led to an
increased appreciation for the voice of the
anthropological Other. Even if we do not value all
interpretations as equally valid for whatever reason,
today it is generally recognized (although perhaps not
always done in practice) that anthropologists must
actively consider the perspectives and wellbeing of
the people being studied.
Criticisms:
Roy D’Andrade (1931-) - In the article "Moral
Models in Anthropology," D'Andrade critiques
postmodernism's definition of objectivity and
subjectivity by examining the moral nature of their
models. He argues that these moral models are purely
subjective. D'Andrade argues that despite the fact
that utterly value-free objectivity is impossible, it is
the goal of the anthropologist to get as close as
possible to that ideal. He argues that there must be a
separation between moral and objective models
because “they are counterproductive in discovering
how the world works.” (D’Andrade 1995: 402). From
there he takes issue with the postmodernist attack on
objectivity. He states that objectivity is in no way
dehumanizing nor is objectivity impossible. He states,
“Science works not because it produces unbiased
accounts but because its accounts are objective
enough to be proved or disproved no matter what
anyone wants to be true.” (D’Andrade 1995: 404).
Ryan Bishop - “The Postmodernist genre of
ethnography has been criticized for fostering a self-
indulgent subjectivity, and for exaggerating the
esoteric and unique aspects of a culture at the
expense of more prosiac but significant questions.”
(Bishop 1996: 58)
Patricia M. Greenfield Greenfield believes that
postmodernism’s complete lack of objectivity, and its
tendency to push political agendas, makes it virtually
useless in any scientific investigation (Greenfield
2005). Greenfield suggests using resources in the
field of psychology to help Anthropologists gain a
better grasp on cultural relativism, while still
maintaining their objectivity.
Bob McKinley - McKinley believes that
Postmodernism is more of a religion than a science
 (McKinley 2000). He argues that the origin of
Postmodernism is the Western emphasis on
individualism, which makes Postmodernists reluctant
to acknowledge the existence of distinct multi-
individual cultures.
Christopher Norris - Norris believes that Lyotard,
Foucault, and Baudrillard are too preoccupied in the
idea of the primacy of moral judgments (Norris 1990:
50).
Pauline Rosenau (1993) Rosenau identifies seven
contradictions in Postmodernism:
1. Its anti-theoretical position is essentially a theoretical
stand.
2. While Postmodernism stresses the irrational,
instruments of reason are freely employed to advance
its perspective.
3. The Postmodern prescription to focus on the marginal
is itself an evaluative emphasis of precisely the sort
that it otherwise attacks.
4. Postmodernism stress intertextuality but often treats
text in isolation.
5. By adamantly rejecting modern criteria for assessing
theory, Postmodernists cannot argue that there are
no valid criteria for judgment.
6. Postmodernism criticizes the inconsistency of
modernism, but refuses to be held to norms of
consistency itself.
7. Postmodernists contradict themselves by relinquishing
truth claims in their own writings.
 Marshall Sahlins (1930 - )- Sahlins criticizes the
postmodern preoccupation with power. "The current
Foucauldian-Gramscian-Nietzschean obsession with
power is the latest incarnation of anthropology's
incurable functionalism. . . Now 'power' is the
intellectual black hole into which all kinds of cultural
contents get sucked, if before it was social solidarity
or material advantage." (Sahlins, 1993: 15).
Melford Spiro (1920 - ) - Spiro argues that
postmodern anthropologists do not convincingly
dismiss the scientific method (1996). Further, he
suggests that if anthropology turns away from the
scientific method then anthropology will become the
study of meanings and not the discovery of causes
that shape what it is to be human. Spiro further
states that, “the causal account of culture refers to
ecological niches, modes of production, subsistence
techniques, and so forth, just as a causal account of
mind refers to the firing of neurons, the secretions of
hormones, the action of neurotransmitters . . .”
(1996: 765).
Spiro critically addresses six interrelated propositions
from John Searle’s 1993 work, “Rationality and
Realism":
1. Reality exists independently of human
representations. If this is true then, contrary to
postmodernism, this postulate supports the existence
of “mind-independent external reality” which is called
“metaphysical realism”.
2. Language communicates meanings but also refers to
objects and situations in the world which exist
independently of language. Contrary to
postmodernism, this postulate supports the concept
of language as have communicative and referential
functions.
3. Statements are true or false depending on whether
the objects and situations to which they refer
correspond to a greater or lesser degree to the
statements. This “correspondence theory” of truth is
to some extent the theory of truth for postmodernists,
but this concept is rejected by many postmodernists
as “essentialist.”
4. Knowledge is objective. This signifies that the truth of
a knowledge claim is independent of the motive,
culture, or gender of the person who makes the claim.
Knowledge depends on empirical support.
5. Logic and rationality provide a set of procedures and
methods, which contrary to postmodernism, enables a
researcher to assess competing knowledge claims
through proof, validity, and reason.
6. Objective and intersubjective criteria judge the merit
of statements, theories, interpretations, and all
accounts.

Spiro specifically assaults the assumption that the

disciplines that study humanity, like anthropology,
cannot be "scientific" because subjectivity renders
observers incapable of discovering truth. Spiro agrees
with postmodernists that the social sciences require
very different techniques for the study of humanity
than do the natural sciences, but while insight and
empathy are critical in the study of mind and culture,
intellectual responsibility requires objective (scientific
methods) in the social sciences (Spiro 1996)

Comments:
Schematic Differences between
Modernism and Postmodernism
Modernism Postmodernism
romanticism/symbolism paraphysics/Dadaism

purpose play

design chance

hierarchy anarchy

matery, logos exhaustion, silence

art object, finished process, performance

word

distance participation

creation, totalization deconstruction

synthesis antithesis

presence absence

centering dispersal

genre, boundary text, intertext

semantics rhetoric

paradigm syntagm

hypotaxis parataxis

metaphor metonymy

selection combination

depth surface
 interpretation against interpretation

reading misreading

signified signifier

lisible (readerly) scriptible

narrative anti-narrative

grande histoire petite histoire

master code idiolect

symptom desire

type mutant

genital, phallic polymorphous

paranoia schizophrenia

origin, cause difference-difference

God the Father The Holy Ghost

Metaphysics irony

determinacy indeterminacy

transcendence immanence

(SOURCE: Hassan "The Culture of Postmodernism"

Theory, Culture, and Society, V 2 1985, 123-4.)
For more information on the foundational theories of
Postmodernism, Phenomenology, Existentialism, and
Marxism, you may wish to reference such
philosophers as Heidegger, Hegel, Marx, and Kant.
This information may be accessed easily from the this
Web site,http://www.connect/net/ron
Sources and Bibliography:
 Agar, Michael (1997) The Postmodern link between
academia and practice. * RSS Feed National
 Association for the Practice of Anthropology
Bulletin, 17(1), 86-90.
 Asad, Talal (1986) The Concept of Cultural Translation
in British Social Anthropology. In James Cliford and
George E. Marcus (eds), Writing Culture. The Poetics
and Politics of Ethnography (pp. 141-164). Berkeley:
University of California Press.
 Ashley, David (1990) Habermas and the Project of
Modernity. In Bryan Turner (ed),Theories of Modernity
and Postmodernity. London: SAGE
 Appignanesi, Richard and Chris Garratt
(1995) Introducing Postmodernism. New York: Totem
Books.
 Barrett, S., Stokholm, S., & Burke, J. (2001) The Idea
of power and the power of ideas: a review
essay. American Anthropologist, 103(2), 468-480.
 Bishop, Ryan (1996) Postmodernism. In David
Levinson and Melvin Ember (eds.), Encyclopedia of
Cultural Anthropology. New York: Henry Holt and
Company.
 Boyne, Roy and Ali Rattansi (1990) The Theory and
Politics of Postmodernism: By Way of an Introduction.
In Roy Boyne and Ali Rattansi (eds), Postmodernism
and Society (pp. 1-45). London: MacMillan Education
LTD.
 Brown, Richard H. (1995) Postmodern
Representations. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
 Butler, Christopher (2003) A Very Short Introduction
to Postmodernism
 Callinicos, Alex (1990) Reactionary Postmodernism?
In Roy Boyne and Ali Rattansi (eds), Postmodernism
 and Society (pp. 97-118). London: MacMillan
Education LTD.
 Clifford, James and George E. Marcus (eds)
(1986) Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
 D'Andrade, Roy (1995) Moral Models in
Anthropology. Current Anthropology, 36(3): 399-
407.
 Dreyfus, Hubert and Paul Rabinow (1983) Michel
Foucault, Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics.
2nd. ed Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
 Foucault, M. (1982) The Subject and Power. Critical
Inquiry, 8(4), 777-795.
 Erickson, Paul A. and Liam D. Murphy (eds) (2010). A
History of Anthropological Theory. 3rd Ed. Toronton:
University of Toronto Press.
 Gellner, Ernest (1980) Society and Western
Anthropology. New York: Columbia University Press.
 Geertz, Clifford (1973) The Interpretations of
Cultures. New York: Basic Books, Inc. (pp.15)
 Geertz, Clifford (2002) The Anthropological life in
interesting times. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31,
1-19.
 Greenfield, P. (2000) What Psychology can do for
anthropology, or why anthropology took
postmodernism on the chin. American
Anthropologist, 102(3), 564-576.
 Hall, John A. and I. C. Jarive (eds) (1992) Transition
to Modernity. Essays on power, wealth, and belief.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 Harris, Marvin. (1999) Theories of Culture in
Postmodern Times. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira.
 Kuznar, Lawrence A. (2008) Reclaiming a Scientific
Anthropology. Lanham, MD: Altamira.
 Johnson, Matthew (2010) Archaeological Theory: An
Introduction. 2nd Ed. Wiley-Blackwell.
 Lash, Scott (1990) Sociology of Postmodernism.
London: Routledge.
Latour, Bruno (1988) The Pasteurization of France.
Cambridge: Harvard.
 Lyotard, Jean-Francois (1984) The Postmodern
Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester, UK:
Manchester University Press.
 Lyotard, Jean-Francois (1992) The Postmodern
Explained. Sidney: Power Publications.
 Marcus, George E. and Michael M. J. Fischer (1986)
Anthropology as Cultural Critique. An Experimental
Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
 McKinley, B. (2000) Postmodernism certainly is not
science, but could it be religion?CSAS Bulletin, 36(1),
16-18.
 Nietzsche, Friedrich (1954) [1873] On Truth and Lie
in an Extra-Moral Sense. In W. Kaufmann (ed and
trans) The Portable Nietzsche (pp. 42-47). New York:
Penguin.
 Norris, Christopher (1990) What’s Wrong with
Postmodernism. England: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
 Pasquinelli, C. (1996) The Concept of culture between
modernity and postmodernity. In V. Hubinger
 (ed), Grasping the Changing World (pp. 53-73). New
York: Routledge.
 Reed, Isaac A. (2010) Epistemology Contextualized:
Social-Scientific Knowledge in a Postpositivist
Era. Sociological Theory,28(1), 20-39.
 Roseneau, Pauline (1993) Postmodernism and the
Social Sciences
 Sahlins, Marshall (1993) Waiting for Foucault.
Cambridge: Prickly Pear Press.
 Said, Edward (1978) Orientalism. New York:
Routledge.
 Sarup, Madan (1993) An Introductory Guide to Post-
Structuralism and Postmodernism. Atlanta: University
of Georgia Press.
 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy (1995) The Primacy of the
Ethical. Current Anthropology, 36(3): p.409-420.
 Spiro, Melford E. (1992) Cultural Relativism and the
Future of Anthropology. In George E. Marcus
(ed), Rereading Cultural Anthropology (124-151).
Durham: Duke University Press.
 Spiro, Melford E. (1996) Postmodernist Anthropology,
Subjectivity, and Science. A Modernist
Critique. Comparative Studies in Society and
History. 38(1), 759-780.
 Tester, Keith (1993) The Life and Times of
Postmodernity. London: Routledge.
 Trigger, Bruce G. (2006) A History of Archaeological
Thought. 2nd Ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
 Turner, Bryan S. (1990) Theories of Modernity and
Postmodernity. London: SAGE Publications.
 Wilce, JM. (2005) Traditional laments and postmodern
regrets. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 15(1), 60-
71.
 Winthrop, Robert H. (1991) Dictionary of Concepts in
Cultural Anthropology. New York: Greenwood Press.
Relevant Web Links:
 Postmodernism Generator:: A little fun with
postmodernism. And yes, some of it is almost this
bad.
 Postmodern Thought (U of Colorado, Denver): A great
source for weblinks on postmodernism.
 After Postmodernism (U of Chicago): What happens
after postmodernism?
 The PoMo Page (U of Georgetown): A solid overview
on postmodernism.
 Anthrobase Postmodernism Page: An encyclopedia-
like description of postmodernism with relevant links.
 Writing, General Knowledge, and Postmodern
Anthropology: An essay by Paul Smith.
 Dinosaur Comic on Postmodernism: Pretty self
explanatory.
 Postmodernisnm and Psychology

Collected from :
http://anthropology.ua.edu/cultures/cultures.php?culture=Postmodern
ism+and+Its+Critics